The road I travel will be long [ Narrative ]
Characters: Harry Dresden and the Gatekeeper
Time: A day after the return to Chicago
Location: McAnally's Pub
Content: In which Ghost Story is acknowledged and a purpose is given.
Warnings: None
McAnally’s pub was almost completed deserted.
Despite the hour and the turbulence of magic just beyond the doors, it seemed as if no one even dared venture outside to travel to the neutral haven. Even Mac was conspicuously absent. The fans were still, unlike their usual lazy rotation overhead and the lack of buzzing conversation, fizzing beer, and the dull thunks of glassware on wood was almost eerie.
The only occupant in the room sat in the booth farthest away from the door, back to the door, hood pulled over his head and hands folded on the table in front of him. He seemed to be waiting for something.
Or someone.
Harry wasn't sure how long it had been since everything had begun to fall apart. It could have been days, weeks, even years. Time had become nothing but a jumble of nightmarish images of mists and monsters and the screams of those too far away for him to help.
Yet next to the eternal dark he had found before he had arrived in the false Chicago had apparently given him some perspective on these things, and so when he finally emerged from it all to find himself before his favorite watering hole, he only took long enough to gather himself before stepping wearily down the well worn steps.
Even perspective didn't cancel out his need for a stiff drink. Not that it was Mac waiting inside when he pushed open his door, full of taciturn charm. No way was he that lucky.
"Tell me you're buying."
The man in the cloak turned halfway towards the door so that a ghost of a smile could be seen within the shadows of the hood.
“It may be in order, all things considering.” He gestured to the empty booth opposite of him. “Have a seat. We have a few things to discuss.” He paused and then added with a bit of a smile in his voice, “You might want to grab one of the beers on the bar first.” And sure enough, there were three beers sitting unopened on the counter (that may or may not have been there previously), waiting to be grabbed.
He was probably right about needing the beer. Any discussion with this man was by nature bound to be full of riddles, half explanations, and references that required knowledge that did not yet exist to fully understand. Wizards were, by nature, a extremely cryptic and secretive lot, both out of necessity and very likely a extremely obnoxious sense of humor, but the cloaked man sitting before Harry made every other wizard look like an amateur with their first Big Book of Metaphors. It was just hard to beat being able to glance into What Might Be.
Not that said glances didn’t come with a price, and even someone as hot headed and impatient as Harry was sometimes accused of being had to admit that when a wrong word could unravel all of existence, choosing said words carefully was a necessity.
Not that understanding meant he had to be mature about it.
Grabbing one of the beers off the counter, he took his time opening it and savoring a mouthful of Mac’s ambrosia, knowing he was unlikely to be testing his host’s patience at the moment, before finally moving to take his seat.
“I take it you’re not here to get my report trying to justify how my absence shouldn’t eat up all my warden vacation hours?”
“It’s already been added in,” the Gatekeeper replied evenly, showing no signs of any annoyance with Harry’s display. “Not that any of us could have predicted your, as usual, terrible sense of timing.” The words were delivered lightly and with a hint of a smile that soon vanished completely as he gave the other man an inscrutable look from beneath the shadows of the hood. “It has been some time since I’ve seen such a limited path for the future.”
“There’s a trick to it,” Harry replied tiredly, returning the man’s gaze with a calm, almost morbid, resignation. “Just imagine the worst thing that could possibly go wrong, and then double it.”
Taking another drink, he set the bottle down and mulled over the Gatekeeper’s words, trying to analyze them from every angle possible. “We’re almost out of time, aren’t we?”
He was silent for a moment and then he inclined his head in what may have been a nod. “The future is often open to many different paths - it would take a powerful outside force to limit it down to simply two.” A glint of gold gleamed in the dim light of the pub where one of his eyes would have been. “In that case, yes - time is short. Someone, however, made sure that despite past... consequences, certain people would be able to decide that future.”
Someone with tremendous power to narrow the paths of fate, something even Uriel admitted he could not do. Well now, Harry had a rather good idea of who that could be, a rather unpleasant idea that involved memories of some of the worst pain he had ever suffered. Something else the Gatekeeper said, however, was of greater interest. “I think I know who’s been narrowing our paths, but what do you mean about past consequences, and who’s keeping us from getting railroaded into this plot?”
“I hope you’re certain of that,” the Gatekeeper replied, again with the faint trace of amusement. “As for past consequences...” He stopped pointedly and gave Harry a long, inscrutable look, as if wondering the best way to phrase the next part of the discussion. “There are certain...factors that I believe had to be added into the equation to make sure some futures didn’t come to be. Including nullifying the decision of those who decided to...remove themselves from that future, as it were.”
“I have a faint idea who she is, I’m pretty sure no one knows what she is capable of.” Pressing his lips together, Harry mulled over this new information. “Those who decided to remove themselves? Are you talking about the Three Wise Magicians? Or is this another player?”
“Power of that sort can often be difficult to hide.”
He looked to the door, as if waiting for someone to enter although it was clear that with the chaos brewing outside, no one would have dared left their own warded homes for even the bar. “No, unfortunately. This is someone else entirely, someone usually quite unpredictable. In a different Time, he would have succeeded in his attempt, but a very powerful wizard - more powerful than anyone who is living or has lived - made sure that this time, he would not.”
Harry followed the Gatekeeper’s gaze before returning to the conversation. “Wait, so someone, probably the person causing all this timey whimy bullshit in the first place also took our benefactor out of play? Well how do we undo that?”
The Gatekeeper suddenly laughed at Harry’s words, as if he knew the punchline to a joke that Harry had yet to figure out. “It’s already been undone since said unpredictable wizard is still sitting in front of me.”
Blinking, Harry proceeded to look to his left and right, as if seeing if there were some other unpredictable wizard that had snuck in when he wasn’t looking. Finally returning his eyes to the Gatekeeper, he raised an eyebrow, then pointed at himself.
“Wait, are you saying I was trying to take myself out of the game?”
The Gatekeeper neither confirmed nor denied Harry’s question. Instead, he quietly commented, “Merlin is an exceptionally powerful wizard - if he believed something or someone would benefit his battle against the sorceress, he knew which paths to take to make sure it would come about. Including erasing an entire Time.” He shook his head, the light gleaming off of the shadowed gold again. “It is the rarest form of magic, one not even the angels can replicate.”
“He erased...” Had Harry been standing, he likely would have had to sit down at that. Erasing an entire timeline, all those possibilities, all those choices, and to do so without causing a single error in the fabric of creation, the sheer scale of it was beyond anything he had ever heard of, ever conceived of.
“This is seriously bad news.”
The Gatekeeper watched him solemnly, letting a few moments pass to let those words sink in. But he did not expound on them - there were some truths that he would not and could not reveal, and Harry most likely already knew that. Instead, he folded his hands patiently in front of him and nodded in a way that wasn’t an agreement to his words.
“For lack of a better term, it’s a very strategic game that they have been playing with far more at risk than the usual.” The smile that he gave Harry had no humour at all. “There are only two possible outcomes of this fight.”
“I’m guessing one involves the end of existence as we know it.” Because that was the stakes they were playing with, the level that the woman who had taken him out operated on. “So how do we make sure we get the good end?”
“It is an outcome even she is unaware of, I believe. Her goal is erase the magic that holds the worlds together, but...” The Gatekeeper trailed off pointedly before adding, “To end a game, one of the players must forcibly admit defeat.”
“So, we have to force either her, or Merlin, who we can’t find, to admit defeat, when both can smash us without even breaking a sweat?” Yeah, that called for more beer. “You don’t ask for much.”
The Gatekeeper chuckled, reaching for one of the beers and lifting it in a toast. “You may be quite surprised of what and who you can and cannot find. And often, admitting defeat is no more than a forfeit if one of the players can no longer be in the game.”
“Alright then, looks like I better start looking for two all powerful wizards then.” No mention that doing so was probably suicide. That could be assumed. “Any clever hints on where to start?”
The ghost of a smile on the other wizard’s dark face told of a joke that Harry still hadn’t caught on to.
“You might want to check the city.”
That got the man as flat and level a look as Harry had ever given anyone, Thomas included. “Thanks, that just narrows it down to one of the largest cities in America. That won’t take a lot of time. Can you at least give me something I can track?”
“The two most powerful wizards who ever lived are throwing magic around and you’re curious as to how you may track them?” The Gatekeeper raised one brow. “Do as the Senior Council does when we look for you - follow the burning buildings.”
“Burning buildings? I’ve been stuck wandering around in this mist crap for-”
And then it hit him, like the first tiny edge of a supernova slamming him back into his chair, making his ears pop and his nose bleed from the sheer scale of it.
“Oh,” he managed to gasp after a moment, “Those burning buildings.”
Time: A day after the return to Chicago
Location: McAnally's Pub
Content: In which Ghost Story is acknowledged and a purpose is given.
Warnings: None
McAnally’s pub was almost completed deserted.
Despite the hour and the turbulence of magic just beyond the doors, it seemed as if no one even dared venture outside to travel to the neutral haven. Even Mac was conspicuously absent. The fans were still, unlike their usual lazy rotation overhead and the lack of buzzing conversation, fizzing beer, and the dull thunks of glassware on wood was almost eerie.
The only occupant in the room sat in the booth farthest away from the door, back to the door, hood pulled over his head and hands folded on the table in front of him. He seemed to be waiting for something.
Or someone.
Harry wasn't sure how long it had been since everything had begun to fall apart. It could have been days, weeks, even years. Time had become nothing but a jumble of nightmarish images of mists and monsters and the screams of those too far away for him to help.
Yet next to the eternal dark he had found before he had arrived in the false Chicago had apparently given him some perspective on these things, and so when he finally emerged from it all to find himself before his favorite watering hole, he only took long enough to gather himself before stepping wearily down the well worn steps.
Even perspective didn't cancel out his need for a stiff drink. Not that it was Mac waiting inside when he pushed open his door, full of taciturn charm. No way was he that lucky.
"Tell me you're buying."
The man in the cloak turned halfway towards the door so that a ghost of a smile could be seen within the shadows of the hood.
“It may be in order, all things considering.” He gestured to the empty booth opposite of him. “Have a seat. We have a few things to discuss.” He paused and then added with a bit of a smile in his voice, “You might want to grab one of the beers on the bar first.” And sure enough, there were three beers sitting unopened on the counter (that may or may not have been there previously), waiting to be grabbed.
He was probably right about needing the beer. Any discussion with this man was by nature bound to be full of riddles, half explanations, and references that required knowledge that did not yet exist to fully understand. Wizards were, by nature, a extremely cryptic and secretive lot, both out of necessity and very likely a extremely obnoxious sense of humor, but the cloaked man sitting before Harry made every other wizard look like an amateur with their first Big Book of Metaphors. It was just hard to beat being able to glance into What Might Be.
Not that said glances didn’t come with a price, and even someone as hot headed and impatient as Harry was sometimes accused of being had to admit that when a wrong word could unravel all of existence, choosing said words carefully was a necessity.
Not that understanding meant he had to be mature about it.
Grabbing one of the beers off the counter, he took his time opening it and savoring a mouthful of Mac’s ambrosia, knowing he was unlikely to be testing his host’s patience at the moment, before finally moving to take his seat.
“I take it you’re not here to get my report trying to justify how my absence shouldn’t eat up all my warden vacation hours?”
“It’s already been added in,” the Gatekeeper replied evenly, showing no signs of any annoyance with Harry’s display. “Not that any of us could have predicted your, as usual, terrible sense of timing.” The words were delivered lightly and with a hint of a smile that soon vanished completely as he gave the other man an inscrutable look from beneath the shadows of the hood. “It has been some time since I’ve seen such a limited path for the future.”
“There’s a trick to it,” Harry replied tiredly, returning the man’s gaze with a calm, almost morbid, resignation. “Just imagine the worst thing that could possibly go wrong, and then double it.”
Taking another drink, he set the bottle down and mulled over the Gatekeeper’s words, trying to analyze them from every angle possible. “We’re almost out of time, aren’t we?”
He was silent for a moment and then he inclined his head in what may have been a nod. “The future is often open to many different paths - it would take a powerful outside force to limit it down to simply two.” A glint of gold gleamed in the dim light of the pub where one of his eyes would have been. “In that case, yes - time is short. Someone, however, made sure that despite past... consequences, certain people would be able to decide that future.”
Someone with tremendous power to narrow the paths of fate, something even Uriel admitted he could not do. Well now, Harry had a rather good idea of who that could be, a rather unpleasant idea that involved memories of some of the worst pain he had ever suffered. Something else the Gatekeeper said, however, was of greater interest. “I think I know who’s been narrowing our paths, but what do you mean about past consequences, and who’s keeping us from getting railroaded into this plot?”
“I hope you’re certain of that,” the Gatekeeper replied, again with the faint trace of amusement. “As for past consequences...” He stopped pointedly and gave Harry a long, inscrutable look, as if wondering the best way to phrase the next part of the discussion. “There are certain...factors that I believe had to be added into the equation to make sure some futures didn’t come to be. Including nullifying the decision of those who decided to...remove themselves from that future, as it were.”
“I have a faint idea who she is, I’m pretty sure no one knows what she is capable of.” Pressing his lips together, Harry mulled over this new information. “Those who decided to remove themselves? Are you talking about the Three Wise Magicians? Or is this another player?”
“Power of that sort can often be difficult to hide.”
He looked to the door, as if waiting for someone to enter although it was clear that with the chaos brewing outside, no one would have dared left their own warded homes for even the bar. “No, unfortunately. This is someone else entirely, someone usually quite unpredictable. In a different Time, he would have succeeded in his attempt, but a very powerful wizard - more powerful than anyone who is living or has lived - made sure that this time, he would not.”
Harry followed the Gatekeeper’s gaze before returning to the conversation. “Wait, so someone, probably the person causing all this timey whimy bullshit in the first place also took our benefactor out of play? Well how do we undo that?”
The Gatekeeper suddenly laughed at Harry’s words, as if he knew the punchline to a joke that Harry had yet to figure out. “It’s already been undone since said unpredictable wizard is still sitting in front of me.”
Blinking, Harry proceeded to look to his left and right, as if seeing if there were some other unpredictable wizard that had snuck in when he wasn’t looking. Finally returning his eyes to the Gatekeeper, he raised an eyebrow, then pointed at himself.
“Wait, are you saying I was trying to take myself out of the game?”
The Gatekeeper neither confirmed nor denied Harry’s question. Instead, he quietly commented, “Merlin is an exceptionally powerful wizard - if he believed something or someone would benefit his battle against the sorceress, he knew which paths to take to make sure it would come about. Including erasing an entire Time.” He shook his head, the light gleaming off of the shadowed gold again. “It is the rarest form of magic, one not even the angels can replicate.”
“He erased...” Had Harry been standing, he likely would have had to sit down at that. Erasing an entire timeline, all those possibilities, all those choices, and to do so without causing a single error in the fabric of creation, the sheer scale of it was beyond anything he had ever heard of, ever conceived of.
“This is seriously bad news.”
The Gatekeeper watched him solemnly, letting a few moments pass to let those words sink in. But he did not expound on them - there were some truths that he would not and could not reveal, and Harry most likely already knew that. Instead, he folded his hands patiently in front of him and nodded in a way that wasn’t an agreement to his words.
“For lack of a better term, it’s a very strategic game that they have been playing with far more at risk than the usual.” The smile that he gave Harry had no humour at all. “There are only two possible outcomes of this fight.”
“I’m guessing one involves the end of existence as we know it.” Because that was the stakes they were playing with, the level that the woman who had taken him out operated on. “So how do we make sure we get the good end?”
“It is an outcome even she is unaware of, I believe. Her goal is erase the magic that holds the worlds together, but...” The Gatekeeper trailed off pointedly before adding, “To end a game, one of the players must forcibly admit defeat.”
“So, we have to force either her, or Merlin, who we can’t find, to admit defeat, when both can smash us without even breaking a sweat?” Yeah, that called for more beer. “You don’t ask for much.”
The Gatekeeper chuckled, reaching for one of the beers and lifting it in a toast. “You may be quite surprised of what and who you can and cannot find. And often, admitting defeat is no more than a forfeit if one of the players can no longer be in the game.”
“Alright then, looks like I better start looking for two all powerful wizards then.” No mention that doing so was probably suicide. That could be assumed. “Any clever hints on where to start?”
The ghost of a smile on the other wizard’s dark face told of a joke that Harry still hadn’t caught on to.
“You might want to check the city.”
That got the man as flat and level a look as Harry had ever given anyone, Thomas included. “Thanks, that just narrows it down to one of the largest cities in America. That won’t take a lot of time. Can you at least give me something I can track?”
“The two most powerful wizards who ever lived are throwing magic around and you’re curious as to how you may track them?” The Gatekeeper raised one brow. “Do as the Senior Council does when we look for you - follow the burning buildings.”
“Burning buildings? I’ve been stuck wandering around in this mist crap for-”
And then it hit him, like the first tiny edge of a supernova slamming him back into his chair, making his ears pop and his nose bleed from the sheer scale of it.
“Oh,” he managed to gasp after a moment, “Those burning buildings.”