Can't believe how long I've been sitting on this one! Anyways, this one is a companion piece to This piece of art by  EelMeal. I don't know if I necessarily like how the story turned out, and I feel I could focused on the 'fun' parts more, but I do quite like the setting.

Anyways, enjoy.

Title from To His Coy Mistress (Andrew Marvell, 1681)

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World Enough and Time


“Do you mind if I ask you a sorta-heavy question?” Asked Conall, one arm laying loose on his chest as the other cradled Yoiryu, his boyfriend’s snout pressing gently Conall’s neck. He had been staring at the ceiling, not moving as he felt his body sink into the mattress over the course of hours.

“Shoot,” said Yoi, still half asleep, his voice muffled by Conall’s soft skin.

“So, I know you can mess with time,” Conall said, trying to diagram in his mind what he wanted to express. “And I know that you brag about being able to do anything a mortal mind can imagine. So if that’s the case, why don’t you ever go back in time and fix, you know-“ he said, making a vague gesture into the air, “All the bad stuff’s that’s happened. Seems like it would be easy for you.”

Yoi let out a small sigh. Not one born of exhaustion. Not really. More like an eclectic mix of world-weariness and sympathy. “You’d think so,” he said, turning on his back to face up at the ceiling as well. “The thing about time is that it’s very tricky. It’s one thing to play around with the universe for a bit, return things to the way they were, and then let the world take it’s natural course. It’s another thing entirely to try and remake history in your own image,” he said, clearly struggling to try and explain. “It’s like- It’s like trying to play dice with the universe. The funny thing about mortals- no offense, I mean it in the most complimentary way possible- is that you act very unpredictably. I can make small changes here and there, of course. Prevent one person from dying or this-or-that village from being looted. But the thing is, historical forces are always more complicated than just preventing one event, or removing one person from the equation,” he said, gesturing with his hands in front of him, as if to try and illustrate the point though body language. “Not to mention,” he added, his voice just a bit more playful, “people are incredibly unpredictable.”

Yoi pulled his hand out from under Conall and painted a line in the air above him with his finger, stretching from one end of Conall’s periphery to the other. “Here’s history. And right about… here,” he said, drawing a small circle on the very far left edge of the line, “Is where Genghis Khan lives. Lived. You know what I mean,” he said. “Now, let’s take him out of the picture. Say, pretend he was never born,” and without so much as a Pop, the circle vanished. “But despite the lack of Genghis, most of the same forces that lead to Genghis taking control in the first place are still present. And since nature abhors a vacuum, someone comes in to fill that space. They still manage to establish the Yuan Dynasty, they still conquer a fair part of the known world,” he said, drawing an off-shoot line from the same place that he had originally drawn the circle. “Every change you make creates a new little timeline,” he said, drawing more and more lines shooting off from the first, until the air above the two of them was filled with endless, branching streams, crossing over one another, collating and diverging with haphazard frequency, until the space above the bed was filled with a dome of paint. “And the truth is that historical forces, especially the really nasty ones, are so intertwined with each other, that trying to fundamentally alter a historical inevitability is like trying to force a river to flow in the opposite direction. And suddenly the world you’ve created is so fundamentally different that it’s impossible to judge in the long run if what you’ve made is really better. Sometimes, it’s fundamentally, unambiguously worse,” he said, and his face became serious. “As in, millions dead, worse. And that means that you have a moral imperative to return things to the way they were before you tried to do anything at all. And therein the problem lies…” Yoryui sat up on the bad, dismissing the timelines with a wave of his hand.

“The sudden convergence of all the different versions of me, from different, incompatible universes, does weird things to my brain. It’s kinda like a soft reset. Rather than try to collate everything into a convincing narrative, it just sorta-” he made another vague gesture with his hand. “-vanishes. Everything I mean. Not just the memory of the event. My entire memory. It’s temporary, but it’s not pretty,” he said.

“I dunno,” interrupted Conall. “Still seems like a pretty minor risk for a big potential gain, right? A temporary bout of memory loss seems like a pretty minor issue, honestly. At least in comparison to all the good you could do.”

Yoi sighed. “Here. This’ll explain it better than I could,” he said, and Conall felt the distinct feeling of a plastic box hitting him in the chest. The VCR tape rattled as he took it in his hands. “Where did you-,” he shook his head. Stupid question. “Why, of all things, would you still be using a VHS?” He sighed, putting his hand in his face. “We have DVDs now. Or hell, you could probably make a streaming service or something. I don’t even have a VCR, I don’t think-” he began, before rolling his eyes at the piece of outdated technology that had suddenly appeared on his television cabinet. “Fuck you,” he said in mock anger, before getting (very slowly) out of bed and popping the VHS into the machine.

“What can I say?” said Yoi, who was now laying across the bed horizontally, his face resting on his hand as he gave Conall a coy look. “I’m a big fan of old tech,” he said.

“No you’re not, eat shit,” said Conall, stifling a laugh. “If you were we’d be watching this on an old projector, or a cinema reel or something, not something that’s-” he paused for just a moment as the VCR turned on and the TV screen buzzed to live. “You didn’t even fucking rewind it?” He asked, his voice a mix of mirth and anger. “I don’t know what’s worse, the idea that it existed before and that you didn’t reverse it the last time you used it, or that you summoned it from the ether, and intentionally chose to have it be unrewound,” he said, shaking his head as the whir of the machine filled the silent air.

“A mystery for the ages, I guess,” said Yoi, turning on his back and sticking out his tongue playfully, his head drooping upside-down off the side of the bed.

The tv screen made a quiet whine as Conall turned it on, laying back down on the bed and settling in for a long watch…

---

Footsteps echoed in the castle hallway despite the best efforts of a young man carrying sheafs of leather-bound parchment. Normally, during the day, the hall was full of bodies and voices, which dampened the sound. But in the middle of the night, every sound was amplified, and the last thing the young man wanted was to wake someone…

The gentle tap of his leather boots against the stone was punctuated only by the sound of him swearing quietly to himself as drops of wax fell onto his finger from the candle he was holding. The small basin at the bottom of the candlestick was normally enough to catch the falling wax, but he was holding it at an odd angle, trying to carry several books at the same time, a task that required both hands. He let out a small sigh of relief as he reached the large, wooden door that he was looking for. He tapped the side of his boot against the door, and then mentally chastised himself for having done it too hard as the sound echoed through hallway again. The door swung open, and the young man shuffled easily inside, watching the door close behind him as he entered the room, like he’d done a thousand times.

The room inside was immaculate. Luxurious rugs made of animal furs carpeted the rooms, and tapestries hung delicately from the wall. In the corner sat an vanity with an expensive-looking mirror and exotic make-ups and perfumes. The young man made a curtsy to the woman who had let him in, bowing his head politely before speaking. “Your Grace,” he said, handing the books to her and then setting the candlestick on a nearby table.

The woman was in her early thirties, tall and lithe, in such a way that made her seem almost mystical. Something that was only reinforced by the actual magic she was known to practice. Her marriage to the King of Rheged was not a happy one, that was common knowledge. But she was useful to him, and he to her, and in these uncertain times, that was more than one might hope for.

The younger man struck quite a different figure. Short, scrawny, and unassuming, he was easy to miss, save for his distinctively white-colored hair. Rumors existed at court that the young man was a changeling, though they were rare. Most simply knew him as one of Prince Owain’s many manservants, and those that might’ve suspected otherwise knew not to get on the wrong side of the Fae.

Rummaging through the books, the Queen Rheged smiled as she saw the titles. Nearly all of the books were new to her, and most of them in good condition. “Excellent work, Young Llwynog,” she said, rubbing the young man’s head in approval. “Give my thanks to Myrddin, I’m always thankful for these gifts of his,” she said, placing the books on a nearby table. “Here,” she said, handing one of the books to him. “I’ve already got this one, you can keep it,” she said, smiling a bit to herself as she saw the young man’s eyes go wide with anticipation. Still, he remained as composed as ever.

“Thank you, Lady Morgan,” he said, dipping his head politely in response. She waved him off easily.

“Think nothing of it. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you to not let anyone else see it in your possession,” she said. It was all fine and dandy for a Queen to practice magic, after all. She was royalty. But for someone like Llwynog, who was just a step above ‘peasant’ in the social order, it was strictly forbidden. Magic was a privilege of the Aristocracy and the Druids, and anyone else caught practicing risked everything from losing a hand to burning at the stake.

Queen Rheged was more open-minded than most, however. A trait she shared with her brother Arthur. She had seen something in Llwynog that had made her take him under her wing, and the relationship between the two had grown from ‘Master and Apprentice’ to something like friendship.

“My thanks again to Myrddin,” said the Queen, before adding “but I think it’s best that you be off. The King should be returning soon, and I think neither of us should like to explain what we’re doing in here,” she joked, before quietly ushering him out the door. He gave her another quick curtsy, watched the door shut, and then turned heel back down the hallway.

He turned down another corridor, his feet moving him instinctively back towards the servant’s quarters. But his thoughts quickly turned towards the book in his hands. It was a quiet night in the castle, after all, and Prince Owain was not due to return from Gwynedd until the end of the week. The moon was not quite at its peak, as well, meaning that the night was still a bit young. He had nowhere to be tomorrow, so why not steal a few hours for himself?

He pivoted on his heels and walked briskly down a different hallway, walking along the outer edge of the castle’s interior, until reaching the Northern wing of the castle. The walls were covered with a fine layer of dust and cobwebs, and the door that lead into the north tower had once again fallen off its hinges. Lifting the door up, Llwynog muttered a simple mending spell, and watched with consternation as the hinges were unbent and fell back into place. It looked like new, which was a problem.

This section of the castle was rarely visited, either by servants or by the nobility. The wing had originally been built by the Old King Coel, nearly six generations ago, with the expectation that Rheged would be the seat of power in all Britain. The state of disrepair of the wing was nothing more than a reminder of the old king’s dreams. Still, it meant that the young man always had a place to practice his art away from prying eyes…

Closing the door, Llwynog climbed the stairs of the turret, a goodly walk to the top of the tower could take him a few minutes when he wasn’t tired. Tonight, it took almost 10. Still, the sense of comfort he felt whenever he reached the top was immeasurable. With a simple flick of his wrist, the candles on the wall flickered to life, filling the room with a dim light all around. He smiled, putting the candlestick in his hand down, before placing the book that the Queen had given him on a nearby lectern.

The circular room was decorated with shelves of books on nearly every wall. Shelves lined the upper regions, with scattered reagents, books, and alchemical notes all carefully organized and labeled. A single desk sat on the edge of one wall, with a variety of glass components. Alembics and cucurbits could be found in nearly every corner, some of them filled with colored liquids that seemed to glow in the dim light. In the center of the room stood a font, like one which the Christians used to baptize their infants. Rather than being filled with water, however, it was dry, and the flat, stone surface of the font was almost violently unremarkable.

“The Mystik Arte of Scrying and Fortunetelling,” said Llwynog, translating the title of the book aloud. Opening it, he began to skim the contents, quite confident that he already knew the basics, thank you very much, and hoping to find something concrete to work with. His minds glossed over the words a bit, trying to translate from the Latin the book was written in, to his Kernow tongue.

“Ah, here we are,” he said, his eyes lighting upon a set of simple instructions. Fill the font with water, say some magic words, have the place in mind, et cetera, et cetera. A good a place to start as any, he supposed. Grabbing a jug of water, he poured it carefully into the font, leaving a few inches from the lip dry, and began to utter an incantation…

For all his knowledge of things arcane, he never did quite figure out what the tails were.

The Queen had said that magic manifested differently for each person, and that this was merely his own, personal manifestation. But no other mage that he had seen had manifested it in a way even remotely similar to Llwynog. Usually it was small differences. Some magic had color. Myrddin’s magic made the air smell like the ground after a lightning strike. Being around the Queen’s magic was like feeling the sun’s warmth on your skin. Even Maelmuire’s magic, simple as it was, smelled like fresh parchment paper. But for Llwynog, it was practically a transformation. A set of six vulpine tails, and an equally-odd set of ears, manifested whenever he tried to use magic. It was how he’d gotten his name in the first place. And he knew damn well that it wasn’t normal, but it seemed that no answer to the question was liable to be found any time soon…

Putting the thought out of his mind, he focused a bit more on the spell he was trying to cast. It was pretty simple, to be sure, but all magic demanded some concentration. Mumbling the words to the spell, he watched as the water slowly lifted up from the font, twisting into a variety of formless shapes, dancing in the air in the way that only water can. Rays of orange candlelight danced through it, filling the room with an unearthly, poppy-colored light. He smiled to himself as he watched the show, allowing it to go on for a few seconds longer than strictly necessary, before finally deciding to complete the spell. In his mind, he pictured the city of Lyonesse, far to the south on the border of Dumnonia. In response, the water fell back into the font, swirling with fury as the image in Llwynog’s mind became more clear. He had grown up in Lyonesse, after all. It was the city he knew better than any other, which made it perfect for trying to scry, even if he hadn’t seen the place since Queen Rheged had taken him on as an apprentice back when she was still known as the Lady Morgan Pendragon.

Eventually, the waters dissipated, and at the bottom of the font, lay a perfect representation of the village, complete with irrigation ditches and the shuffling forms of tiny, unaware people below. He could see perfectly the going-ons of the city. It’s almost eerily lifelike, he thought giddily to himself, his hands gently cradling the font on both sides as he looked down from above. It almost feels like I could reach out and touch it. It was an idle thought, but a compelling one. Bringing one of his gloved hands down into the font, he fully expected his hand to pass through harmlessly.

The smile on his face turned to a look of pure horror when it didn’t.

---

Cador the Treeve leaned against the side of his hoe, idly trying to make sense of what he was looking at. He’d seen plenty of strange things in his life; he might be an old man now, but in his soldiering days, he’d seen the width and breadth of the Isles, and had even crossed the Channel to the lands of King Conan. And yet, for all that experience, he had to admit; he’d never seen anything quite like this.

The face that appeared in the sky was hardly what he’d call ‘divine’. It was too boyish, too gentle, too afraid, to be either one of Danu’s folk, or to be the all-powerful God the Romans worshipped. His first intuition was that it must’ve been some powerful illusion, perhaps by the wizard Myrddin, or the sorceress Nimue, or maybe even Maelmuire, the witch of Dál Riata. But he knew that was impossible: he had seen the gloved hand descend upon the hills in the distance, and he had felt the ground shake as it made landfall. Whatever creature it was that loomed over fair Lyonesse, it was a thing of flesh and blood…

Cador turned away from the sight. He was far too old, and far too tired to worry about these strange new developments. Pulling the door to his home behind him, he snuffed the remaining candle, and crawled into bed. Let the people in the town below fret and worry about it; all he wanted was a nice, restful sleep…

---

Llwynog tried not to panic. His master had told him many, many times, that anything other than calm, collected repose risked magical surges, which would inevitably create a downward spiral as the surges only created more panic. He closed his eyes and took a few seconds to inhale, holding his breath for a few seconds, before letting it all come rushing out at once. He felt the anxiety leave his body and his heart stopped trying to punch a hole in his chest, and he offered a silent prayer of thanks to whatever gods were listening.

The panic returned when he opened his eyes.

He barely even had time to chastise himself as he saw the houses removed from their foundations, and the water from the irrigation ditches that flowed through the town spilled out into the streets. It looked as if a hurricane had passed through, and it was then that Llwynog realized just how small the town in his scrying fountain was. He had managed to wreak havoc on the town just by breathing. He tried to remain calm, but he could feel the panic rising within him, and it wasn’t long before his sense of reason had left him entirely.

“Oh, gods,” he said, his voice strained. Not quite sure what else to do, he reached down to one of the now-disconnected houses that littered Lyonesse’s several hills, and pinched it between his gloved fingers. He tried to move it, gently, gingerly, back towards the town’s square, hovering it a few inches as he tried to slowly bring it back down to the center.

He couldn’t hear the house crumble to dust between his fingers. But he certainly felt it. His face blanched even more as he let the pieces of wood fall to the ground, and thanked his lucky stars that there wasn’t any blood coming from between his fingers, not that it seemed to help his quickly-worsening disposition.

His hands gripped tightly to the edges of the fount, nearly cracking it as magic started to emanate from Llwynog’s hands. He felt it, and his sanity, begin to crumble bit by bit until, at last, his eyes fell upon the book that had caused this whole mess in the first place. Reaching across the fount, he rapidly flipped through the pages. He didn’t have time to translate, but he knew that ‘dismissal’ spells were almost always immediately after the spell itself.

He spoke the words in the book, feeling the magic release from the tips of his fingers as he continued to grasp tightly onto the font. He closed his eyes again as he focused again, and, once he’d reached the end, opened his eyes once more.

At first, he didn’t know quite what to make of it. For a brief second, the town of Lyonesse was still there, same as it had just been. He felt the barest tinge of despair pass over him until, he saw the town start to shrink away, as if vanishing into the center of the font. For just a moment, he breathed easy, as the city itself finally vanished. And yet, the font was not empty: in place of the city, what looked like two separate patches of dirt and stone, surrounded on all sides by water, had taken it’s place. It had ridges like tiny mountains, and the water that surrounded it smelled like the ocean. Idly reaching his hand out again, he reached down to touch the dirt with his finger. Just a small part of it, in the rockier region…

The very moment his finger touched the soil, the ground shook with an incredible force. It was like a great earthquake, and the floor seemed to waver beneath him. He pulled his hand back and rested a hand against the wall, and as abruptly as it had started, the shaking had stopped. He took a moment to collect himself, and took another close look at the soil in the font. The curves of the soil he’d touched had an odd familiarity to them. The light shade of green that dusted the soil made it look more like a landmass than a patch of dirt…

As soon as he had realized what he was looking at, Llwynog didn’t even have the wherewithal to panic. The impossibility of it stunted his ability to think, and he idly looked down at the region he had touched: the area he now recognized as the highlands to the north. They were flatter, where he’d touched them, and the mountains themselves looked as if they had caved in.

What little part of him could still think properly realized that he must’ve cast some kind of modification spell: in spell books, they usually came between the spell itself, and the dismissal. He hadn’t even considered the possibility at the time, panicked as he had been, but now, looking at the miniature vision of the British Isles that sat in his font, he had to concede that something had, indeed, gone very wrong.

Still reeling from shock, Llwynog’s senses slowly began to return to him. As horrified as he had initially been, he had to admit, it was hard not to take some small pride in his accomplishment. Seeing the entirety of Greater and Lesser Britain at his fingertips, a small part of him couldn’t help but smile. He wondered if a wizard as powerful as Myrddin could even hope to do what he just had. Not to mention the practical applications it had…

Peering down over Greater Britain, he spied the lands in the South East of the country. They had long been conquered by German invaders. The region had been under the Saxon yoke for decades now, and it seemed that their relentless march inland was unstoppable. The very idea of Saxon dominance of the isles filled him with a passionate rage…

Seeing the Saxon lands now at his fingertips, Llwynog hesitated. His mentor had always told him never to let emotion take hold of his reason, and her words echoed in his head as he stared, eyes full of rage, at the tiny chunk of land far below. He stood for a moment, breath heavily as he refused to move, until, at long last, a thought passed through his mind.

“What does she know?”

His mentor had long warned him about letting power get to his head, as well, but it seemed that lesson had been long forgotten. Sticking out his thumb, he dipped it into the water just north-east of the Wash, and with a long, slow, calculated movement, dragged it across the southern lands.

He couldn’t see the destruction that his action had wrought: both the people and the towns below were far too small for him to see, but a part of him took a libidinal pleasure in imagining their useless cries for mercy and salvation. And even here, far north in Rheged, he could feel the ground shake and moan as if the island itself was shaking. Seeing the dent he’d made in the island, he smiled as the sea water rushed in to fill it. The Christians, he knew, believed that water was a sacred thing, at that a person could be purified by submerging themselves in it. Flipping through the book again, he took a much more careful look for the dismissal spell and began to cast it. Maybe now, with the Saxons crushed or drowned, Britain could once again become pure…

---

Conall was completely speechless when the ‘film’ ended. He simply stared at the black screen, completely dumbfounded, while Yoiryu simply looked away, not quite wanting to make eye contact with his boyfriend.

The silence hung in the air, until it was finally broken by the sound of Conall whispering a soft “Jesus Christ…”

“I told you,” explained Yoiryu. “Whenever I do a Reset, I end up with all the powers I currently have, but without the uncountable years of experience necessary to handle them,” he said.

“Still,” Conall responded, still flabbergasted. “You must’ve killed- what, hundreds of thousands of people?” Yoi nodded solemnly, before Conall continued. “I had no idea you were capable of something like that.”

“Everybody is capable of anything, in the right circumstances,” he said, with all the weight of a thousand years’ experience hidden in his words. “Which is why I try not to change the past. Every string that gets tangled brings me that much closer to a Reset. And Resets tend to spiral into more resets, until, finally, I get to a Timeline where I don’t screw everything up.”

“Well,” said Conall, pulling the covers over him and placing his head on Yoiryu’s shoulder, “At least I can take comfort that, for now, you’re just regular old, sane, you. And that I don’t have to worry about you eating the country while I’m asleep or something,” he said, laughing.

Yoiryu responded with a dry laugh. “Don’t tempt me, I might just do that,” he said, before leaning in to give Conall a quick peck on the lips, before lying back down on the bed, and letting sleep take the both of them.