The less than mysterious yet still nameless woman sat at her desk once again (because really, even for a supernatural being, it's nearly impossible to look mysterious in business attire). She had not had a good day in quite a while and was becoming very familiar with the up close and personal view of the surface of her desk from an amount of time spent with her head laying face down upon it. Now she sat leaned back, hands folded in her lap, face upturned towards the ceiling but eyes closed. If she focused she could see, hear, sense the things happening on earth that had anything to do with her work. What she saw was a complete mess. Nothing was happening in the right order, or right at all for that matter. Plants all over the world should have been wilting and trees dropping dry brown leaves as if it were deep autumn- part of the very first sign, 'the world will begin to show signs of the curse'. And yes, some forests were doing that. But just as many were behaving perfectly normally, and all the rest of them had burst into springtime behavior. Orchards all over the world were blooming and even bearing fruit entirely out of season. Plus since it had only been a few weeks, that should be the only sign going into effect so far. Hah. As if just the one confused verse wasn't bad enough. 'Disasters come upon the earth'? There was a sharp enough increase in tornadoes and earthquakes that people were becoming afraid, but they still weren't happening with nearly the strength or frequency they should have been. Sudden shifts in pockets of burning steam and sulphur deep in the earth should have been venting at random, burning or choking people on the gasses. Instead there had been a sudden burst of new hot springs discovered. People everywhere were clamoring to either build or visit the explosion of natural spa retreats. 'Swarming plagues of insects'? They were supposed to be locusts, bees, mosquitoes. Anything else with stingers or an ability to bite. But no, nearly half of the swarms were butterflies and ladybugs. Ladybugs, for crying out loud! And the other verses of the prophecy weren't holding up any better. How could they? They should have been waiting their turns, not happening all at once! Worst of all, to her sensibilities at least, she could hardly sense her cast of characters anymore. She had come up with all the major players to this legend so carefully, lovingly. The powers and titles should have been released along with the beast to soar like eagles through the entire world in an instant, each one stopping to rest on the person who best fit the role. The Seer, learned and skilled in every kind of fortune telling. The Druid who spoke to creatures of every kind. The Thief with hands like lightning from whom nothing could be kept hidden. The One Who Puts All Things In Their Places who would have brought important people and events together. The Sorcerer who could command the elements themselves- oh she would miss him! She could see just how he should have turned out. He would have been beautiful. And there were more, so many more. All of them gone now. Expired. The window had passed and none of them had come to be. She ached to think of them all vanishing like smoke without her ever getting to see them for even a moment. Not even a chance to say goodbye. There came a sense that someone else was present in the room. The woman opened her eyes slowly and sat up straight. "Would you manifest and speak audibly please? I'm trying to maintain something of a human mindset." "Certainly." Two human shapes formed in the middle of the room, a middle aged man and behind him a young woman who looked like she was biting the inside of her cheek to keep from giggling but couldn't do anything about the grin. Both of them looked vaguely frosted over somehow; there was a white fog tint to them that made it seem like one should be able to squint and see through them to the wall behind. The man gave the desk woman a respectful nod. "Will that do?" "Just fine. It's nice to see you again Reese. What did you want?" He gave her a patient but hungry smile that brought to mind a teenager trying to pretend he was too old to be excited about Christmas anymore. "We heard what happened to your Prophecy. Terrible shame." "I've never known you to beat around the bush. Let's cut to it- you want to punish the one at fault?" "Someone surely ought to, ma'am. I was fortunate enough to be the one called to the job." "You were the one called, and yet-" The desk-woman craned her neck to look beyond Reese to the girl behind him, who was still fighting off the giggly smirk but quickly gave a respectful half-bow. "Hello again Donia, if that is still your name?" "He's finally convinced me to stick with one and keep it, yes, ma'am." "Shouldn't you be working solo by now?" "I do usually, but I like to bother the old man when he gets a good one, ma'am. I worry he would go stale otherwise." The woman looked back to Reese. "Alright, why are you really here? If you heard to call to take care of this job, it's already your assignment. You don't need my permission." "I know how much you liked this prophecy. I wondered if there was anything in particular you might want done as punishment." "And if I don't have any requests?" He shrugged one shoulder. "We'll make her into a statue and put her in the cavern with all the other frozen combatants. Leave her alive, of course. She's the one that broke things by blockading the place up, she should get to enjoy the result of her hard work. And then she'd be the first one to meet the Destroyer. Or at least, that's plan A. We might think of something better on the way over." The desk woman sighed and ran a hand over her face tiredly. "...No. I'm sorry, I know how rare a case like this is, but no. Too many of the people who were supposed to be characters in the legend know her, if she disappears it will just worsen the distortion. I would rather she have to deal with the chaos along with the rest of her world. That's probably punishment... enough... anyw.... " Her eyes went wide. "What was the last thing that you said? She would be the first one to meet the Destroyer?" "Right, because its doorway to earth is in that temple cavern." "...No. It's not. Not anymore." The woman stood up slowly with a horrified expression. "Everything is confused and running sideways. The events are wrong and out of order. Almost all of the creatures coming through should be evil aligned but instead it's been randomized. So what does that mean for him?" She hurried across the room to take a coat down from the hook mounted next to the door. "I have to go dimension hopping right away. I need to look into this. Would you two keep an eye on the city that the Kyle boy lives in while I'm gone? I know it's not your department at all but I'm still trying to find a solution, I can't have all the people who might have been characters dying in a freak storm of fire and brimstone rain." Though I wish more of those were happening, it would mean some-thing's going according to plan, she thought distantly. Reese raised an eyebrow in concern but nodded. "We'll do our best. Be careful." The woman hurried right out the door without waiting for the two of them to leave first. Donia held her tongue until she was gone and then gave a tiny, wistful sigh. "I told you we should have just done it instead of asking her permission. That Dina girl deserves whatever she gets. She ruined everything, probably caused the death of her entire planet." "Hush. It's the desk-woman's Prophecy, so it's her call. I've known her too long, and this one means too much to her. Besides, I won't have us running around like children trying to sneak a second desert. We'll do the job proper or not at all." A hint of his smile came back. "Though if you noticed, she only asked us not to make the kid disappear. Doesn't mean we can't play with her a little. I mean... we can't just not do anything." "Absolutely not. All those destinies she derailed? If that's not a crime I don't know what is." "Exactly. And besides. We promised to stay there and keep an eye on the city." "We did didn't we." The two of them faded away and the tension of their presence leaked out of the room. The woman searched everywhere. First she tried the infernal dimension where the Destroyer should have been gathering strength for its invasion. She hated visiting that plane- the sky and earth were both equally bleak and barren, the twiggy excuses for trees were perpetually on fire, and if you spent as many as five minutes there you had to throw out whatever clothes you had worn on the trip because you would never get the smell of sulphur out of them. She went all the way to the obsidian stone island, all shining and ink black, where the thing should have been pacing hungrily. The dark expanse stood empty. No giant demon-dragon. Thinking that maybe things were reversing alignment, next she visited one of the celestial planes where a mortal could be so enraptured by the beauty of something simple like the leaves on a tree that they would accidentally spend the rest of eternity sitting there staring with eyes wide in adoration. (Which she had always thought was completely absurd and had a hard time not cracking up into laughter about whenever she saw it happen. This did not make her popular with the natives.) The beings there looked at her strangely for the smell that had indeed permeated her clothing but humored her asking around. Nobody knew about any kind of big legendary creature getting ready to head to earth. She searched, and she sought, and she looked, and she asked, but when it came down to it there were just too many dimensions. It was looking for an atom in a million haystacks. Even for the two major alignments there were too many dimensions, too many variations on 'pure good' or 'pure evil'. And don't even get started on the different shades of gray that made up neutrality. And even if she did find it, what then? Things were still broken. But it was the only thing she could think of to do. That and pray that with everything running this haywire it wouldn't time-flux backwards and have appeared a hundred years ago in the past. Or something. Who knew, now? She kept searching. ~End Page Four~