Life, Death, and Time - A Books Of Beginning Collection

Oneshot: All The World Will Dance

WARNING: This is NOT a nice oneshot. Not nice at all. It's dark and terrible and why do I even do this to myself? My muse and I need to have words. But anyways, if you aren't comfortable with everything mentioned in the content description, you might wanna skip this one. If you're like me and you live for this pain, welcome, and enjoy your suffering.

Background: Takes place starting in the canon events of the Black Reckoning, during Kate's POV of the battle of Loris, but then turns into a VERY alternate ending from there.

Content: PAIN. ANGST. Darkness. Very Tragic Ending. The Apocalypse. Character Death. Kate x Rafe but dark. This is probably the worst thing I've written so far and not for the faint of heart.

Kate Wibberly had never had the luxury of doing nothing. Her whole life she had always been moving, fighting, checking things off an infinite to do list. She couldn't sit back and let someone else handle it, not when her siblings and later the world were at stake. For better or worse, she made choices and committed actions, just trying to do her best. Kate had never stopped before, and she certainly wouldn't now.

Her brother was leading a too-small army of too-weary soldiers, trying to take back Loris against a much larger and stronger force. He fought certain doom for the fate of all his friends across the magical world. Her sister was journeying across the land of the dead to retrieve the reckoning, walking right into the trap that awaited her once she returned to the realm of the living. She hoped to kill the Dire Magnus, but Kate knew she might never get the chance. 

Both of her beloved siblings were going up against insurmountable odds. And Kate refused to just stand beside The Dire Magnus (Rafe, that treacherous part of her brain whispered) on this balcony and do nothing. She had to help them, though she was alone and unarmed and her options were limited. 

Despite those facts, there was one thing she could do to give her siblings a chance. She could remove the trap waiting for Emma and take away the leader of the army Michael fought. She could use the Atlas to take the Dire Magnus away, far away from her family. It would be like moving the central foundation of a building - the whole thing would come crashing down.

It was a huge risk to her, of course. She couldn't control the Atlas properly, not with the tapestry of the world stretched to its limits. And the Dire Magnus himself was incredibly powerful and deadly, even without the books in his control. There was every possibility that she would die.

Kate didn't care at all about that, not if it meant her siblings had a greater chance of survival. It made her choice oh so easy.

She tightened her hold on Rafe's (she couldn't stop calling him that even though he was The Dire Magnus) hand. He didn't seem to notice, his attentions fixed on the action in the city below them. He didn't notice when she reached for Time's magic, pulling it, telling her to take them away from here, it didn't matter where, just to take them away. He only noticed, and looked at her in shock, when the world disappeared from under them as they were taken across the earth in a blink.

They appeared a great number of miles away, on the hard surface of a flat roof. Kate stumbled, her brain, her heart, her lungs all crying with the pain of using the Atlas under so much stress. She pitched forward, certain she was about to collapse. But Rafe caught her, and pulled her upright, still looking stunned even as he steadied her.

"Kate, you-"

Kate cut him off, "you can't lead your army. You can't trap my sister. You can't hurt my family. Not from here. Your plans are over."

"Not if you take us back, right now-" he argued, fire rising in his eyes at the thought of all he worked for being ruined.

"I won't," Kate tilted her chin stubbornly, pulling away from him to stand on her own.