My green eyes sparkled with le Fey’s satisfaction as her eyes roved up and down me. She liked what she saw and felt, everything to her satisfaction, save perhaps that I was shorter than she was, albeit not as slender, that being a part of her Faerie heritage.

I waited patiently as the last of her links to her old body were allowed to fade, and she wove herself into me, integrating Public’s memories and personality into her own, fusing with the knowledge of a young woman of the future, the technology here, my physical capabilities, and life and position, and how she could take advantage of all those things to gain her rightful place at the top of the world.

The ‘major memories’ and ‘significant events’ played out as she walked over to my bed, and started to lay down.

As she did, she ran into the first blank spot. My head had just hit the pillow when she suddenly followed a trace of dance lessons where I’d fallen badly and my teacher had been so kind in attending to me... and then there was nothing there afterwards.

My eyes that were closing flared open, and she reached for her magic instantly, sensing something was wrong.

That magic blew through Public’s persona, scattering it instantly with lethal force she could feel herself, connected to it as she was.

No, it didn’t scatter it. It instantly realigned it into its true form.

As a time traveler, even if she hadn’t known anything about it back in merry Olde England, she would certainly know what a tai-chi symbol was now. She was also staring at the very big spider whose body it was inscribed upon, and all the strings and ties of her magic that she had woven into me were now part of it.

“What is this?! Who are you?! What have you done?!” she shrieked, as suddenly all the strings of her magic, the very essence of her power, tensed up, and like a spider reeling in its prey, began to pull her forwards.

She writhed, she screamed, she pleaded, she begged, she cursed, and she struggled.

My Patron watched silently, predatory red eyes slowly and carefully pulling her in, giving her no chance whatsoever, reinforcing the very bonds she’d made to me and my soul, weaving them tighter, stronger, firmer.

As she was drawn closer to the black side of the tai-chi, she could peer through the white and the body of the Totem to the other side.

I looked at her calmly from over there.

“You!” she shrieked at me. She was half-obscured by soul-strands and magic now, being dragged into the darkness of the tai-chi, and could certainly tell that symbol meant death for her. “What have you done, child!?”

“Technically, it’s what you have done. I simply went along with it,” I responded calmly. “You wanted to jump bodies and gain a new life in the modern age. That is exactly what is going to happen. You are about to become my preincarnation.”

“What? NO!” she refuted, trying to deny it.

“This is a very natural process, of course. Powerful souls often enter reincarnation. Death, of course, is required for that to happen, so I simply added the natural order into what you were doing, helping everything along.

“My Patron seems to be an expert on such things, and contributed without my even asking. Your magic is very powerful, and combined with the power of the Underweb, was more than up to the task. Congratulations, your scheme was successful. You are going to reincarnate into the future, beyond the reaches of Merlin’s Curse.”

“You, you cannot do this! I am immortal! My spirit will endure-!” she cursed as she was drawn into the symbol by her own power.

“Yes, I will,” I agreed calmly. “I will not repeat your mistake, rest assured.”

Her wail and curse faded across the tai-chi as she was dragged into it, and I felt something, a wholeness that I had not had before, surging up from beneath me, inside me, as mystical power billowed out into the new Matrix swirling within me.

Before, I’d been a shard of a soul, cut off another, growing on my own. Now, I was the reincarnation of one, too, with a past and history extending out before my own life.

Made me wonder if ol’ Aelryinth had a preincarnation, crazy templated-personality that he was in.

Well, time to make my new history official, too.

The chronal gate she had opened was gaping in front of me. Astrally traveling such a thing wasn’t actually all that difficult, and it was literally perfectly attuned to me.

I put my Astral Ward Ring back on, which would ensure nothing came wandering along to Possess my body, although anything dumb enough to do so with my Totem looking at it was going to get what it deserved, and headed into the slice through time.

-------

The blurring quantum shift was fairly quick, and didn’t upset me at all. I could see the iron nature of the lived-lines around me suddenly soften, the lines before becoming more malleable, but somehow anchored by that century and a half of Sama and Briggs being there, not permitting any deviation from how such things interacted with them.

Any messing with the past would happen perfectly up until it met their lives, and then would snap off into an alternate, artificial reality without them, soon to degrade and fail. Leaving that reality would mean leaving behind anything in it, too... memories, items, objects, experiences, insights, as if they never were, because they weren’t.

Time travel is a little different with Forsaken around.

I was not worried about that happening with me. I had it on very good authority that what I was about to do had already happened, said authority being that Morgan le Fey had been able to reach me in the first place.

I came back into reality along the trail she had blazed, emerging next to her tower in England, the remote and hidden edifice concealed by her magicks and those of Merlin, and woven about with a mighty Curse that did not allow her to leave.

In the Marvel universe I remembered, that didn’t actually stop her much. Fully capable of travel with her astral form and using her powers in full, Possessing others or just materializing a body, she had journeyed through time and space almost without restriction as her real body lay safe in her tower, virtually immortal and safe from all.

I had no problem entering past the tower’s Wards, bearing her magic as I did, but I was also obviously not her, so Merlin’s Curses ignored me completely.

There she was, laying on a couch, surrounded by the sorcerous paraphernalia of another time and place. I eyed the books and magical objects around with a wary eye, and smirked despite myself.

More importantly, I ghosted over next to her, and laid my hand upon the soulless body there.

The residual power there was easy to draw out. Indeed, she had probably been expecting to travel to this tower in the future, find her body here, and drain it of all power, thereby reclaiming all her might and sidestepping Merlin’s power at the same time.

She had not known that she and her tower were reputed to fall in the ancient past and never be found, despite many other powerful sorcerers attempting to do so. Arrogantly, she had likely just assumed they were weak, and the spells she had woven were mighty enough to thwart them... which might have been true.

I put my hand on her, and the power flowed into me.

In the Marvel universe, Morgan le Fey was actually half-Faerie, her mother Igraine and her father possessed of the blood of elemental spirits of Avalon. It was the root of her magical power, giving her incredible, instinctual control of magic without actually needing to comprehend it, she could just wield it.

It also made her weak in several ways, especially to Truename magic and cold iron, among other things, and certainly she could be beaten by spellcasters with deeper knowledge of the arts, as opposed to raw willpower and talent.

That residual power was now mine, and the Matrix she’d built to house her power inside me was swelling in counterpoint to the one that had been spun by the Underweb.

I watched her beauty begin to crumple and wither as the power left her, agelessness becoming the passing of years as her immortality fell with the magic she was giving away to her future self.

I waited, and I watched as her power grew inside me, shaking my head as it did, and the elemental might of a Fey sorceress rippled around me.

There were ways to become an archsorceress, and then there was just inheriting it from the woman who had tried to eat your soul. The irony was hardly lost on me.

That said, I had none of her knowledge of her power. That was totally dependent on me doing a Preincarnation Dive, which could totally wait.

I raised my spectral hand when nothing more was forthcoming, and a hollow shell of a withered, aged woman was all that was left behind.

I hadn’t taken her power, I had reclaimed my own. The difference in feeling was surreal.

I still didn’t have her knowledge and experience, but I knew magic, and that hadn’t slacked off at all. Having made friendly contact with Wong, I discussed things with him frequently and had been allowed access to peruse the Vishanti traditions as Dealer, while being able to read up on magical history and what alchemical stuff the Sanctum had as Dynamo had kept me very up with the times.

I had fifteen hundred more years of magical knowledge to draw on than Morgan le Fey had, more cross-Traditions, and of course, the Power of Ten knowledge, which was a completely different functioning paradigm than ‘traditional’ magic. Nobody used Valences here, after all, it was simply power and how much you were willing and able to spend on stuff, backed by will and whatever costs were required.

The entire contents of her Tower, except for herself, were picked up and swirled around as I wove the spell. I wasn’t putting them into stasis, and I wasn’t concealing them. I was sending them on a one-way trip forward in time, supporting all the stories that all her lore and wealth were completely lost, even to the most devoted of seekers, because they absolutely were.

After all, I had the conduit to do so right outside.

Everything from inside the tower vanished, riding the flow of time forwards, removed from it, yet part of it. They would ‘exist’ all this time, solidifying their presence, even aging as appropriate, but they would be Outside Time, and so impossible to locate.

Then, I telekinetically chucked the withered, soulless body of Morgan le Fey right out the window, as I was meant to do.

The Curse of Merlin activated instantly as she left her tower. Her body burst into flame, and, already stressed beyond the limits of life, almost instantly blew into ash and was gone.

With it went the last of her ties to her tower, which began to shake and rumble around me. I calmly followed her out the window, and watched as the tower she had built with her magic cracked, crumbled, and fell, dispersing back down into the stone that it had once been built from, leaving basically a completely natural expanse of stone behind, with scarcely any sign there had ever been anything here at all.

With nothing to protect, the illusions, Wards, and Curses all dispersed back into the free winds of magic, leaving nothing behind for other occultists to sense, disturb, or attempt to unravel.

Nodding to myself, I entered the Portal through time once more, but this time I closed it behind myself, because I would never be coming back.