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[Status: Confusion resisted.

Status: Insanity resisted.

Status: Fracture? resisted.]

It did blunt the side-effects however, reducing the damage to \'merely\' debilitating, soul-deep pain that left Emma on the floor, rather than the kinds of harm that usually spelled years of recovery under specialized magical care. It did nothing to solve the root problem however, as hundreds of strands of Anima sought to connect to a single overseer who had never experienced nor prepared for anything at such a scale.

[Deploying Command interface.

ERROR: Insufficient user bandwidth.

Present neural architecture is insufficient to support required upgrades.

Importing file from alternate timeline: 2077.

Denied.

Error 12: Overridden by domain controller Paradox, process terminated.

Initiating contingency measures for User preservation.

Simplifying Command interface to accommodate current bandwidth.

Map unlocked!

Broadcast unlocked!]

Emma blinked as the pain disappeared, so abruptly that she\'d have questioned if it were ever real; had it not been for the floating map now available in the corner of her eye. Her text log had changed as well; names now visible to the left of each line to indicate who had spoken, and a list of all active participants on the right.

"That\'s a lot of members," Emma gaped as she scrolled down a list of over two hundred names, most being combinations of their species title and a randomized number, with all of them united by one common factor.

[Elemental - Level 100]

"I already have the pacifism debuff, but I suppose the developers wanted to really drive home that I\'m not supposed to fight them directly." Emma laughed. "At least I still get experience from completing each step of the challenge."

[Earth subjugated.

100 EXP gained.

Air subjugated.

100 EXP gained.]

Feeling well enough by now to sit back up, Emma took the time to look closely at the battle playing out below. The Water faction was clearly ascendant, as scaled horrors from below pushed forward, dousing the raging Fire one wave at a time. They were held at bay however with the assistance of the Earth golems, who bodily positioned themselves to intercept the water, absorbing much of it and blunting the force of what remained. The Air elementals were avoiding combat, but a number of them were hovering over the Fire, fanning it towards ever higher intensities and helping to keep it alive despite Water\'s onslaught. Looking away from the chaos below and back at her map, Emma found that both Earth and Air were highlighted green, marking them as being under her command.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Alright, obvious solution first," Emma decided. "Air elementals, one each; go and push the two remaining buttons."

Two elementals dutifully attempted to obey her command; the former made it halfway towards the hill of Water before being shot down by pressurized bursts, whilst the latter crossed the domain of Fire without issue, only to vaporize the moment she began her descent towards the pillar.

"Okay then, the Fire has got to go if that\'s the passive effect. How best to do that without Water becoming unstoppable though? If Earth, Fire and Air together are just about holding them back, then losing even one would make Water unstoppable. Unless? Ah, I see it now."

Realizing what she had to do, Emma lay back down on the soft grass, making the most of the current stalemate to take a nice, long nap.

—

"I don\'t need my foresight to see what she\'s doing," Paradox grinned, as she drained her fifth glass of Yamazaki 55.

The bottle floated up for a refill of its own accord, only for nothing to pour out, having finally run dry. Unperturbed, the Queen of Hours tapped a single finger against the neck of the bottle, which began to refill of its own accord; golden liquid topping it up to nearly full before a cork flew in place, leaving the bottle as good as new. Hovering in place for just a moment, it soon began to float out of the room, heading back down towards the cellar her servant had collected it from in the morning.

"What did you think of the whiskey?" Paradox asked her guest, who was still nursing her own cup, deep in thought.

"Expensive," Elizabeth murmured noncommittally. "I can\'t really tell much more than that; I\'m no connoisseur, and internal affairs rarely get invited to whiskey tasting. How much did it go for at auction?"

"Just over half a million pounds, or so I\'m told," Paradox shrugged. "Probably nine-tenths of that after whatever the broker skimmed off the top. More than I\'d spend for a single night of drinks; as a permanent fixture though? That\'s not too bad."

"The bottle was refilled in full, but this glass is still here, also half-full." Elizabeth shook her head in wonder. "Your name really isn\'t just for show, your majesty."

"Time is my domain after all," Paradox boasted. "None alive can challenge my command of what has been, or what has yet to come."

"About that," Elizabeth began before hesitating, unsure if she should broach the subject.

"Ask any question that you might have," Paradox prompted her immediately. "I may not have all the answers, or might refuse to elaborate, but I don\'t ever punish people just for asking a question."

"Right," Elizabeth breathed out slowly, firming her resolve. "Your power; seeing it up close, it\'s far beyond anything I could have ever imagined. Unrestricted access to every timeline, as both a source of information and a vector of attack. How, then, did the founder possibly survive when faced against you?"

"That\'s the funny part," Paradox snorted. "She didn\'t. I killed Edith Knight, then known as Anathema, nearly seven centuries ago; during the peak of what mortals refer to as The Black Death. If I\'d done it even a century earlier, it might have stuck; but I wasn\'t even in Europe back then, was I? No, by the time I\'d both established myself in England and realized what a pest Edith could be, she\'d already severed her spirit from mortal concerns; just as she planned, I\'m sure. Oh, I still went through the motions; I erased her body, burned her home and cast down every written work she ever penned. But her soul, her knowledge, and everything else that really matters at our level? Already untouchable as part of the weave, fully intertwined with an imperishable concept; the concept of the System."

"So as long as the System survives, so does the founder." Elizabeth concluded.

"As long as there\'s a single person alive with even a drop of potential to awaken the System," Paradox corrected with a sigh. "A thousand years is a long time for a bloodline to spread, even in the natural way, and there was nothing natural at all about what Edith went on to do. She had a single daughter in the normal manner, creating the family line leading to your husband, along with maybe sixty or so other lineal descendants who survived the terminus, scattered across Europe and the Americas. But she also freely handed out power to any practitioner who managed to contact her through the weave; no conditions or ulterior motives, or at least none that they ever discerned.

Those practitioners, who by the mere fact they were able to speak with her were often powerful, wise and blessed with many children, also inherited the potential of the System, as do each of their descendants in turn. Those who awaken will receive a weaker System than her direct descendants, sure, but that\'s hardly her problem. To be very clear; approximately thirty percent of all magic users today serve as Edith\'s guarantors, and it\'s nearly impossible to tell just who is or isn\'t one until they awaken, if they ever do. As a proportion of our community\'s population, Anathema\'s meddling puts Genghis Khan to shame."

"Wonderful," Elizabeth grimaced. "At least I know I\'m not part of that thirty percent; the System would\'ve been nicer to me otherwise."