Lexie didn't quite know how to react to that announcement.

She blinked twice and said, "Oh."

"Oh?" Tate rotated his head to eye her. "Is that all you're going to say? 'Oh'?"

She didn't know what else to say. Somehow, she wasn't shocked.

It made sense for Torin to be the main character. He was extremely powerful, from a powerful family, and he was also hardworking with a deep-seated code of honor. He had 'main character' written all over him.

And the thing about Torin killing her dad, well, that made sense too. In the original storyline, Aiden was a super-villain and had probably become that either out of grief from his wife and daughter's death or maybe even due to his final oath with Naem. Given that he was the villain, he was supposed to die or be otherwise defeated at the end of the original timeline.

But at least they were past that now, right? Aiden wasn't going to be a supervillain because Lexie wasn't dead. Her presence changed the trajectory of the story, didn't it?

"I guess that's understandable," Lexie said. "But given that we're here, that's not going to happen anymore, isn't it?"

"I wouldn't be so sure," Tate said quietly. "Fate has an interesting way of setting you up when you least expect it."

"Is that what happened to you?" Lexie asked mostly as a test to see if he would tell her about Lexie taking his fate points. He shook his head.

"No," he said. "I don't matter enough to even bother setting me up. Right now, all it cares about is wiping me off the map."

Lexie thought she knew where this was going. He was dropping hints, but they were still too cryptic for Lexie's liking, because she wanted to ensure she got it straight.

"Do you die if you lose all your fate points?"

He nodded. "Yeah. If you think about it, we're not supposed to be here anyway, and if we don't have enough fate points to win the game, there's no reason for me to be in this world. So the narrative tries to write me out."

"So…are you low on fate points? Is that why you're dying?"

He turned his attention to the ceiling. Instead of answering, he smiled almost loopily. "Whatever pain relief they gave me is really effective. I haven't felt this good in ages."

"I'm glad." She assessed his body and thought about taking a look at his pathways, but decided that they could do it after their talk. She didn't want to distract him even though it looked like he was getting distracted anyway, staring at the ceiling.

"Tate…" She prompted.

"I know, I know. I'll finish the story. Or maybe I should let you finish it."

"Huh?"

"You know Torin is the hero, and your dad is one of the major villains. How about other characters? Can you guess who they are?"

Lexie thought about it. She guessed that most of the Firebringers would be characters involved in the game, given how close Torin was to his family and also given the complex relationship between Stella and Aiden. That might be central to the plot. Beyond that, though, she struggled to think of where the narrative would go. Since it was about the Heroes, then Vacek had to be involved too, right? What role did he play? What about Monty and Dee, and heck, even Conrad, seeing as he was a hero's kid who didn't want to be a hero? Did they all warrant storylines beyond a brief mention?

"Your friends, for instance," Tate spoke up, and Lexie started.

"Who? Conrad?"

"No. The ones you came to the arena with."

"You mean Xena and Dewie?"

He nodded.

Lexie's jaw dropped. "Wait, they're in the original storyline?"

"Of course. She's a long-lost Lightlark princess, and he has a funny future-seeing power."

Lexie choked on air. She'd always known Dewie had foresight, but it was bizarre having it confirmed so plainly by someone who didn't even know him.

Lexie hadn't thought about Xena and Dewie being part of the narrative. She should have, but she hadn't.

"They're in one of the story arcs, where Torin helps them track down an Eldritch gang that somehow made its way to District 5," he said. "It happens in his final year of hero school, which is their third year. The little that is known of their background is that they became friends in elementary school after Xena Lightlark saved Dewie from a pack of bullies. In turn, he defends her from his sister, who mocks Xena for being an orphan. They grow their bond when they go to Victoire and later, she also helps him channel his powers accurately, so he can translate his premonitions, or what he calls 'red flags'."

As Tate spoke, Lexie could picture it playing out. She took herself out of the equation and imagined Dewie getting bullied and beaten up by that guy whose girlfriend had the invisible warts. Xena would have intervened at some point. As much as she'd liked to pretend not to care about anyone or anything, she wouldn't have watched Dewie getting beaten up without at least trying to save him. And once she did, Dewie would have stuck to her like glue. He would have borne her prickliness well, and his open acceptance and easygoing nature would have softened Xena eventually.

They would have no choice but to be friends at that point.

A strange feeling of unease crept over Lexie's skin, bringing with it the texture of being out of place, being somewhere she didn't belong.

That feeling had been there since she first landed in Hovelton, and it still cropped up from time to time. She would always brush it off whenever it did, but she could never truly forget that she didn't belong here.

"How did Xena help him?" Lexie moved to the next point of curiosity, needing to divert herself instantly. "With his powers that is?"

Tate's brows furrowed. "I think they tried to suppress it at first. Dewie's condition…is not really good for his overall health. It makes him sick, leads to complications later on with his pathways, and makes his magic dysfunctional. So they try pills, and when that doesn't work, they try healers. Then in their second year, Dewie decides to embrace his powers, and Xena helps him harness his sights into something useful. Clairvoyance. She helps him see things clearly."

"How?" Lexie had been trying to figure out how to work Dewie's powers for months now. How did Xena know?

"I'm not sure of the exact mechanism, but she uses her powers to do it," he mentions. "You know 'powers of light' doesn't just refer to physical light, right?"

Lexie wasn't sure what he was talking about at first, and then it hit her.

Of course.

Powers of light.

Enlightenment.

It was so obvious that Lexie was kicking herself for not realizing it before.

Xena managed to make sense of Dewie's visions because her light could give that clarity, and that helped him understand what it meant.

"The kicker was that his powers only worked around her, though, so he became her sidekick," Tate continued. "And then in their third year, they work together with Torin. I don't know what happens to them after, seeing as how they're really only in the story for an arc or two, but I assume everything works out well for them."

"Oh. That's good."

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Tate raised an eyebrow, like he knew she didn't really mean those words. But she did mean it. It was just that, while she was happy things had ended up well for Dewie and Xena, it did nothing to get rid of the feeling of wrongness within her.

"What about Conrad and the dojo?" Lexie asked because her curiosity took over. "What happened to them?"

"In the game, there's a final battle which involves a lot of people. The Alchemist and his minions lead an uprising, and they successfully attack the heroes. In the final battle, a lot of people die."

"Including Conrad?"

"Including a lot of people."

So that was a yes. Lexie swallowed. "What about my father? Do you know why he turns evil?"

Tate gave her a droll look. "What would you do if, while grieving the death of your daughter, your wife were set up and assassinated by the very association that you work for?"

So Lexie's prediction as to how Aiden became a supervillain was correct. "I thought my mother died in a dungeon accident."

"That's the story they gave the Archmage, but it doesn't make sense. Too many holes in it. He never finds out for sure what happened, though. He dies without ever knowing, but it didn't matter. After your mom's death, it was like something broke inside him. He loses his mind. He searches for answers, going deeper and darker until he crosses a point of no return."

"How?"

"I think you know how."

Lexie swallowed. She wanted to think that her father wouldn't do certain things, that there were lines he wouldn't cross, but she knew she couldn't say that for sure.

She got her obsessive nature from him after all.

He was also arrogant enough to think he could achieve the impossible, just like she was.

When it came to people he cared about, Aiden wouldn't admit defeat. He would probably have kept trying to find a way to revive his family, refusing to accept the fact that they were gone forever.

And with that, he would become a force to be reckoned with.

"But all that can change, can't it?" She said. "You said there were different endings, so that final story isn't set in stone?"

"Of course," he said. "For what it's worth, lots of things in the main narrative have already changed. Like with your Uncle Max, for example."

"What about my Uncle Max?"

"He never died in the original timeline."

"What?"

He sighed. "After your father's death, in one of the final scenes of the game, Mad Eye Max attends The Archmage's funeral. He's the only one there. He was the one who made sure your father was properly buried, in a grave next to yours and his wife's. Aiden had no other friends by that point, and most people celebrated his death, except Max. While he was angry at what Aiden had done and what he'd become, there was a part of him that still understood him and still treasured their friendship, so he visited often." Tate shrugged. "Max's dungeon disappearance thing is…new."

Emotion rose swiftly in Lexie's throat at hearing that. Her heart raced, fingers tingled.

She got to her feet, her hands shaking, and began to pace.

Tate gave her the time to collect herself as she pressed her hand against her mouth.

"So what you're saying…" She swallowed before she continued. "What you're telling me is that….he was never supposed to die? And my being here led to his death?"

Tate stiffened. "No, that's not what I'm saying."

"But it's what happened, isn't it? If I were not in this story, then Uncle Max would still be alive?"

"You don't know that for sure."

She did. She totally did.

"That's not...that's not what I wanted you to get from that." Tate sounded frustrated, more with himself than her.

Lexie knew that Tate was just backtracking to make her feel better. What he'd said first was the truth. She was somehow the reason that Uncle Max had ended up in the dungeon. Something she'd done had already altered the timeline and led to his death.

"Oh my God."

"Lexie, listen to me." Tate's voice was firm. "There's nothing you could have done about, nothing anyone could have done. Because you're a Chosen with a lot of fate points, the narrative would rather prioritize and protect you than almost anyone else."

"What do you mean by that? And how do you know I have a high amount of fate points?"

"It's obvious," he said. "No one really knows how many fate points another person has, but there are signs, because there are things you can do to increase your fate points. You can increase it by improving your strength and power level, by fostering proximity and intimate relationships with other major characters in the narrative, and by expanding your influence over the world. Those factors are all indicators that someone has a high amount of fate points. You have all three."

"I do?" Lexie frowned. "So that means that–"

"It means that the narrative begins to prioritize you." Tate cuts her off. "The choices you make become more important to the outcome of the story than any other Chosen. Your ending becomes the only one that matters. Within reason, the narrative will try to keep you alive even if it means eliminating someone else in your place." He brushed his hand over your face. "It's not that cut and dried, though. If you do something stupid, or put yourself in harm's way, or just get unlucky, you will die. If you go jump off a bridge right now or tangle with a powerful villain, the narrative won't save you from that. That's not how it works. That's part of why I didn't want to tell you all this earlier, because I don't want you to think of this as a game. This is the real world. Everything here is real. But so is fate." His eyes glowed with intensity. "In a meta way, think of reality as a giant choose-your-own-adventure novel. A few people are playing it, and their choices determine reality. All the Chosen are placed strategically in the narrative with the same amount of starting fate points, and they're made to rise and grow their influence on their own. Your fate points determine how much your choices matter. If you have the highest amount of fate points, then it means that your choices matter the most and fate tends to bend–not alter, merely bend–reality in your favor. Not all the time, of course, and like I said, it doesn't mean everything will work out for you or that you can overcome all obstacles by sheer dumb luck. That's why things like your power level and influence still matter because you need to be able to fight your battles and win. So technically, the fate points are simply an indicator of your strength and influence, so you have to grow those to have fate points. But just like in a game, it's easier for a higher-level player to defeat a lower-level player. The lower-level player can still win, but it's rare and far more difficult. That's kind of what happens here. If you have fewer fate points and another Chosen has higher fate points, reality is more likely to go in their favor than yours."

"And if you're the lowest on the spectrum then..."

"Then you don't matter at all. You're a nuisance, and that's why the narrative actively works to take you out because it sees you as an unnecessary complication that has almost zero chance of winning anyway. The narrative will give you time to work your way up, but if you can't... The only way to escape being eradicated is to gain more fate points by building power and influence, and all of that. But the thing about being on the lower end of the fate ladder is that the lower you are, the harder it is to climb." He grinned, "As you can see from my predicament."

Of course. It was like money. If you were poor, it was harder to gain wealth, and it was easier to gain wealth when you were already rich.

Lexie could see that she'd had an unfair advantage from the beginning. Yes, she'd worked crazy hard to get where she was, but she'd been born with a genius father who loved to teach her, and had people like Elvira and Conrad and Torin to help her. She also had Naem and the little Eldritch well of power within. Yes, it was a burden, but it had saved her butt so many times, it was as much a blessing as it was a curse.

It was easy for her to be good and follow the rules because the narrative, as Tate put it, favored her.

Yet, it didn't favor him. No matter how hard he'd tried, it kept putting him in the bottom caste and trying to take him out.

Maybe that was why he'd gotten so mad when he couldn't beat Boris. Maybe he'd needed to win that game, not just for the ego of it, but to gain enough influence to save his life.

Because before that, all he had was knowledge of the future with no power to change it, all the while being stalked by your impending doom...

That must have felt like hell.

As Lexie stared at him, she felt like, for the first time, she could finally see Tate. The real Tate.

"That was how and why I got into crime," he said. "I tried a few different things before that, and made money that way, but it wasn't just about the money. It was about the fact that I could die at any moment. I needed strength and influence. The only way to get that as a mundane was to get close to the villains. Which is what I did. I started to provide them with illicit material, and the closer I got to the bigwigs, the more my fate points grew." He said. "And then I met you, and they grew even more."

"Why?" That didn't correlate with her dream, because he'd told her he lost his fate points because of her. But she didn't ask that right now.

"I don't know. I just know meeting you and delving with you strengthened my fate points enough that things finally started going my way. But then, when you left, it was back to square one. And this disease hit me out of nowhere. So I had to go into hiding."

"Why did you go into hiding? Why didn't you just keep delving like you were already doing without me?"

"Because it was too dangerous. By that point, I had enough fate points to register as a threat to him."

"To who?"

Tate sighed. "Fate points are a finite resource, shared amongst the players. The more players there are, the fewer fate points each individual player gets. So one way to gain fate points is to..."

"Take out the competition," Lexie said.

"Yes. And there's someone doing that right now. A man by the name of Vulcan. He takes out all the biggest players so that he gets more fate points and more 'luck' as it were. So far, he's ignored me mostly because my fate points were too low to get his attention. But after I built my fate points, I became a threat to him, so it means that he'll want to take me out."

"I don't understand. How is he taking you out without being able to even meet you or know that you exist? You told me that the ISTS doesn't let Chosen meet each other, right?"

"Right. But there are ways to find out about other Chosen, and he has a peculiar set of skills."

"Meaning."

"He can see the future."

Lexie froze.

Hold on.

Hold the fuck on.

It couldn't be...could it?

Just then, they heard footsteps leading to the door, and it slid open. Aiden walked in.

"Hello, Tate," he said. "It's nice to meet you. I believe we need to talk."

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