Xavier sat across from the woman who claimed to be Elitsa Flian, a humble bookstore owner in the city of Mareketh, and a Level 102 Inscriber.

  He sat in a plush chair, on the opposite side of her desk, in a luxurious office that suddenly didn’t feel right. He almost clutched the armrests to dig his claws into them when his mind clicked, as he thought he figured out who this woman truly was.

  Xavier had been taken off guard many times before since being integrated into the System. But this felt… Like his world had turned upside down. Though it wasn’t the most surprised he’d ever been—that was probably back when he’d met, well, himself. An older version of himself, from a different universe, but still someone who was him.

  “Empress Larona?” Xavier ventured, his voice soft.

  “Very good,” Elitsa—Larona—said. She leant back in her seat. “You figured that out rather quickly. Saves me a bit of time.”

  The woman’s appearance changed, then. She remained human, but her hair turned dark, and her features appeared younger, more perfect, more polished, than they had before. Though the woman before him was a thousand years old, that age didn’t show anywhere.

  A thousand was no doubt considered young in the grand scheme of the Greater Universe.

  “Why are you here?” Xavier had intended to find this woman. Intended to speak with her. He’d known she was spying on him. Having him watched. Sam was one of her agents, after all.

  There were insights he wished to gain from her. Insights about his future. Much like the Spirit of Time, this woman could see what might happen. See possibilities. Though she saw it on a different scale to the Spirit of Time. Though Xavier wasn’t entirely sure how that worked, he knew that she had seen him—or, at least, someone very much like him.

  Someone who was destined to save the Silver River sector from being wiped out.

  “Why did you pretend to be Elitsa?” Xavier asked.

  Empress Larona smiled. “I was never pretending to be Elitsa. I am Elitsa. She is… One version of my broad personality, you could say.” She looked to her left. Xavier followed her gaze, but all she saw was a bare wall. “I had a vision, many years ago. Nothing terribly descriptive, just… an urge. To open a bookstore. Here. These urges, when they come, they often lead to something important. Because of that, they are hard to ignore.”

  “You knew I’d come to this bookstore,” Xavier muttered. He furrowed his brow. He didn’t know how to feel about that. This woman had opened this bookstore, who knew how many years ago—perhaps well before he’d even been born—because one day he would walk into it? “There had to be other ways for us to meet.”

  “I didn’t know you would come. Not until you did.” Empress Larona tilted her head to the side, peering over at him. He had to say, she wasn’t what he’d been expecting. Then again, he wasn’t sure what he’d expected. “I don’t see everything, Xavier Collins, as much as I wish I could.”

  “I intended to come see you,” Xavier said. “You, as in the Empress Larona, not Elitsa. Our meeting would have happened soon.”

  Emperor Larona’s gaze flicked up in thought. “Perhaps you needed to see me earlier than you intended.”

  Xavier frowned. Something suddenly became obvious that he hadn’t noticed the entire time he’d been in this room. “I can’t hear sounds from outside. Is this room being blocked for noise?”

  It would make sense, if the woman had taken him here for a private conversation. Usually, a privacy bubble blocked the noise from inside it from sounding without, not the other way around. He was surprised it had taken him so long to notice it, then again, it was always hard to notice the absence of something.

  “Yes, this room is protected from outside noise.” Empress Larona stood. She walked over to a landscape painting hanging on the wall. It was of a forest. It was well done, beautiful, but Xavier didn’t see the significance of it. “Though I don’t imagine it’s in the way you expect.”

  She picked up the painting, and she must have put it into her Storage Ring because it disappeared from her grasp.

  The removal of the painting revealed something that made Xavier jump straight out of his chair, his eyes widened in genuine shock for the simple surprise of what he was seeing.

  The portrait revealed a window. Outside that window was…

  The vacuum of space.

  “What… Where are we?”

  Empress Larona smiled peacefully. “We’re in my Personal Space. A portable homebase, I suppose you could call it. Somewhere in the middle of the Silver River sector.” The woman folded her arms at her back, staring out the window. “This is where I come to think.”

  She stepped over to the door they had come in through, which she’d closed behind them when they’d entered. There was a dial he hadn’t noticed beside the door. It looked kind of like a steam punk version of a light dimmer.

  “This door is a portal. This dial…” Empress Larona turned the dial and opened the door. Instead of the bookstore that had been there the last time the door had been opened, now it showed an expanse of woods, as though the door opened straight into the middle of a forest. “Shifts where that portal goes.”

  “Okay,” Xavier said. “Well, I suppose stranger things have happened to me.” He lowered himself back into his chair, though a part of him wanted to go straight to the window that had been behind the painting and stare out into space.

  He’d always thought it would be a wonderful thing, going into space.

  Xavier released a breath. There was nothing to do but to take what was happening in stride. He had planned to meet this woman, so what if those plans had turned out to happen earlier than he’d expected?

  But there was a reason he’d come to Elitsa Flian. A woman who was supposedly an Inscriber. That reason hadn’t changed. He needed the ability to hide his identity.

  This meeting, however, was more important than that. At least for the moment. He frowned at the woman. “Why didn’t you tell me who you were when I first stepped into the bookstore?”

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  “The bookstore isn’t privacy protected,” Empress Larona said, “and I don’t wish for others to know who I truly am. This world isn’t one that I control. It would make things… Inconvenient.”

  Xavier only had a vague grasp of the wider politics of the Silver River sector. He knew that this woman was the most powerful Denizen within the sector, and that she ruled much of it, but he didn’t know much more than that.

  She was C Grade, but nothing like any C Grade he’d faced before. Though scanning her again didn’t show that. He still saw exactly what she wanted him to see. That she was merely a Level 102 Inscriber.

  “Now, what was it you wished to speak to Elitsa about?” Larona asked.

  Xavier raised an eyebrow. “You’re a seer. You don’t know what it is I wanted?”

  She smiled again. “As I said, Xavier, I see much, but I do not see all. My abilities only extend so far. I didn’t foresee this encounter.” Her gaze turned to the window. “The future has always been… Uncertain. There is much that I know will happen, but other things… I am less sure of as the days go by. Your future, for instance. It shifts and changes more than any I have ever seen, tied to it, the fate of our sector. Something I am sure Sam has told you.”

  “He told me a few things,” Xavier replied. “He said that you wouldn’t help me.”

  Empress Larona waved a hand. “Sam doesn’t understand the nuances of exactly what it is I do. That isn’t a failing on his part. Very few people could ever understand what I do.”

  “Does that mean… You will help me?” Xavier leant forward. If he had this woman as his benefactor—assuming he didn’t have to sign any contracts—she could provide him with a great deal. Knowledge. Spirit coins. Access to different parts of the sector.

  Her smile became a little sad. “Not in the ways you might expect.”

  Xavier deflated. Of course, gaining her help in the way he wanted it was unlikely.

  That would just be too easy, wouldn’t it?

  Xavier shook his head. “The threat. To this sector. What is it?” he asked. “How long will it be until I’m able to face it? What level? What grade? Will you fight by my side when it comes, or will I fight it alone?”

  “All good questions,” Empress Larona said. “Ones I, at this time, am unable to answer.”

  Xavier deflated again, this time releasing a long sigh. He tapped his thumb on the desk. This meeting had been… Unexpected. Incredibly so. The humble bookstore owner he’d come to see had turned out to be the most powerful Denizen in the Silver River sector. A woman who’d seen his future.

  And yet, it seemed as if he wasn’t going to get anything out of this conversation.

  “I asked you why you came to speak to Elitsa,” Empress Larona said. “Is it because she’s an Inscriber?”

  Xavier, withholding another sigh, told the woman why he’d come. He told her about The Collector, and the C Grade Hunt Squad he had sent after Xavier. The woman’s face changed as he spoke.

  Gone was the calm, serene image of the woman that he’d been looking at since she changed her appearance from that of Elitsa Flian to the Empress Larona. Now, she wore an expression of increasing anger that lent a sharpness to her beautiful features.

  “The Collector is encroaching on my territory?” was what she’d said after all was explained.

  Xavier nodded.

  The empress looked out the window again, into the blackness of space. She hadn’t returned to her seat since she’d risen.

  Xavier tilted his head to the side and frowned. “Wait… Your territory? I thought you didn’t lay claim to this planet? I mean, the planet we were just on.”

  “I’m not speaking of the worlds they stepped upon.” The Empress Larona turned her head to face him. “I’m speaking of you.” She raised her chin. “I laid my claim on you, Xavier Collins.”

  Xavier’s frown deepened. He finally let himself grip the armrests of the chair he sat on, his claws digging into the plush fabric with ease. “You don’t own me,” he growled out, and he was surprised by the strength of his words. The strength of his revulsion at what the woman had said. He wanted to fight her. And at the same time, he wanted to bolt.

  For this woman wasn’t like any C Grade that Xavier had dealt with in the past. They were in space. And she didn’t merely command an army of D Grades.

  She commanded thousands of planets within the wider sector.

  And here he was, trapped on some space station or whatever the hell it was in the middle of gods knew where.

  If he tried to take her out, before he was ready to…

  “Hush, Xavier.” The empress’s expression softened. “I do not mean what you think I mean. “No reason to raise hackles, young man.” She tilted her head to the side, looked down at his claws. “Dragonkin,” she said, her voice sounding curious. “I did wonder if you would go down that route, as I saw the option before me.”

  “Then what did you mean?” His voice still came out as a growl. He did not retract his claws.

  “Merely that you are supposed to be under my protection.” The empress waved a hand. “Not against the petty enemies you’ll face in this sector, but from outside threats… However, it looks as though my authority has not been heeded.”

  Xavier blinked. Protection. That certainly wasn’t something he’d expected from the woman. “You mean, you’ll stop The Collector from coming after me?” Again, the mere possibility of this seemed… Far too easy. There would have to be a catch. “Is that even something within your power? He’s B Grade.”

  “I’m well aware of who The Collector is and his power.” The woman’s head bowed. “The man went after me, once. Centuries ago.”

  “You stopped him. How?”

  Empress Larona smiled at him, her face softening again. The shift in her demeanour had taken him off guard. Much as her being the empress in the first place had. “By being a nuisance. I may not have been able to take him on, but The Collector has enemies. And I have knowledge. Knowledge of the way things might go. It was easy enough to stay off his radar. As my powers progressed, I was able to apply a little… Leverage.” She winked.

  Xavier shut his eyes. “And this protection you speak of?”

  “The leverage still exists,” Emperor Larona said. “All I need do is remind him of it.” She paused. “Besides, he may be B Grade, but I am more than strong enough to take him now.”

  There was no arrogance in her voice. It didn’t sound particularly strong or brave. Simply matter-of-fact. Like someone being asked if they can hold the door open.

  Which made him realise just how much stronger the empress must be than himself. Rhaalir’s warning came back to him—about the true powers that were out there.

  I still have a long way to go. Xavier opened his eyes and looked at the woman. Protection…

  The B Grade was way out of Xavier’s league. If he had protection, maybe he wouldn’t need to hide his identity. Maybe he would be able to walk more freely through the Silver River sector.

  Only…

  He frowned, hanging his head in thought. The empress came to sit across from him at the desk once more. She remained quiet, seemingly letting Xavier think, as though she could tell what was going through his mind.

  She isn’t able to read minds, only futures, he thought to himself, though there was no way he could be sure of that.

  Xavier had been offered protection before. Not just his protection, but the protection of Earth. Had he made a deal with Adranial’s ancestor, all of Earth would be safe. Forever. And he would have been spirited off to the first sector to have ever existed in this universe.

  He had turned that protection away, back then. It had been difficult to say no to. Perhaps selfish, even. But it had felt too much like offering his wrists over to someone to put shackles on them. Volunteering to be beholden to another.

  And more, it felt like it would weaken him.

  The empress wasn’t asking him to sign a contract. At least, she hadn’t done that yet—it didn’t seem to be her style.

  But he would still owe her something. And…

  Challenge breeds adaption.

  Xavier had gone up against many challenges that had been too much for him. Many things that had been impossible. Having his life under threat was part of what had pushed him so far. Part of what had gotten him to where he was now.

  If he hadn’t endured all of that difficulty, hadn’t done the impossible over and over, without the help of some all-powerful Denizen there to watch over him, he wouldn’t be where he was right now.

  And so, Xavier came to a decision. He didn’t know if it was the right one. If he had insight as to which decision was the right one to make, they wouldn’t really be decisions.

  “I don’t want your protection, Empress Larona. I will deal with The Collector myself.”

  The empress raised an eyebrow, but there was no look of surprise in the woman’s eyes. She had probably expected his answer. Why wouldn’t she?

  “I was hoping you would say that.” Empress Larona smiled.

  “I have to stand on my own two feet,” Xavier said. “If I’m to become what I need to become.” He raised his head, locking eyes with the woman. “But I have questions. Many questions. About the future.”

  The empress tilted up her chin, peering at him. “I will answer one of them.”

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