Time Loops, Wheel of Time

An: I had a long week and I was driving myself a bit crazy trying to write the next chapter of Written in the Cards today, so we get something a bit different.


Egwene al'Vere woke up feeling a bit out of sorts, though that could be forgiven since the last thing she remembered was dying thanks to channeling more of the one power than she should have. Of course, it didn't help that she was sprawled on what had to be an expensive bed in a room with black stone walls without a scrap of clothing or the ability to sense the source. She glanced at the carved wooden desk that had countless glass bottles of various types then looked around, not finding any doors or even a window. She glanced at the metal sconces set into the walls at various points that contained glowing crystals. "Am I dreaming?" she muttered, not really expecting a response as it didn't feel like a dream.

"Yes and no," a male voice offered.

Egwene turned and focused on the average looking dark haired figure standing next to the table wearing a pair of shorts and a shirt that looked to have been dyed every color of the rainbow in weird patterns. "Where are we?"

"We're in a pocket dimension, think of it like a piece of the World of Dreams that I've borrowed for this discussion," the figure replied.

"Am I dead?" Egwene asked warily.

"Do you remember our last conversation?" the man asked as he used his Telepathy to toss her a 'memory' of meeting him. 'Sorry, I'm not going through the whole song and dance where I have to prove everything.'

Egwene blinked a couple of times as she suddenly recalled meeting the man a couple of years ago when a trolloc had killed Rand on Winternight, he'd stopped by the inn and asked her what she'd give to have Rand back. "Rand died?"

The man shrugged. "Technically, time gets a bit fuzzy when you're dancing back and forth in a temporal loop."

"What happened with the Last Battle?" Egwene asked warily, deciding not to bother asking about clothes since he would have already taken care of it or at least offered to if he was going to and she didn't want to appear bothered.

"What usually happens," the man grumbled. "The Dark One won and everything will play out again in a couple of thousand years."

"Rand died? Again?" Egwene asked, not sure how much she trusted the figure, despite him saving Rand the last time around.

"Not exactly, he sort of stole Mordin's body and sealed the Dark One, it's basically a win for the Dark One because the bastard gets to try again the next time someone cracks his prison," the man argued.

"Isn't the point to keep trying?" Egwene asked.

The figure shook his head. "That depends entirely on the age. Even if the Dragon kills him, you'll end up with a new dark god eventually, it's a function of the prison. He's actually supposed to kill him now and then, it keeps things interesting."

"Why would we end up with a new dark god?" Egwene asked, trying to figure out if he was insane.

"To put it simply, sentient creatures build up a certain amount of dark energy as they live, when they die, most of the darkness is pulled into the prison where it collects and transforms into a dark god if there isn't already one present. The dark gods can use the energy to empower their champions and to influence the world but they're bound to their prison unless the Dragon releases them."

"What happens when they die?" Egwene asked, figuring there was more to his story.

"When the dark gods are destroyed, a core of purified magical power remains that can be used to create worlds, change the laws of reality or create wells of power like Saidar and Saidin."

Egwene stared at the man, trying to figure out if he was lying. "You're saying that Saidin and Saidar were created by killing a dark god?"

"I don't know," the figure admitted, not actually sure how much of the information packet that his boss had handed him on this particular version of the Wheel of Time was complete shit. "The Creator of this branch of the multiverse might have used their personal power to get everything started but I know that the cores of dead gods have been used to create magical wells in the past."

Egwene studied his face, trying to find some trace of glee, fanaticism or deception, having gotten rather good at reading people after dealing with the Tower. "Even if that's true, the battle is over, why does it matter?"

"Because it doesn't have to be, I created a reset point when you made your deal to save Rand, I can send you back and you can get it right this time," he told her, hoping she took the deal so that he'd get paid by the company for setting everything up.

Egwene stared at the figure. "Why take the risk? Rand sealed him, isn't that enough?"

"The fight is basically rigged in the Dragon's favor, the Dark One has to win in every world, the Dragon only has to win or seal the prison in one. Even if we reset things and lose, another version of Rand will seal his prison, assuming I don't just reset things and let you try again."

"Are you the Creator?" she asked warily.

He laughed. "No, I'm just a person with the power to create time loops and pull off some interesting tricks related to souls. Look, we have a chance to kill the bastard, can you honestly tell me that you don't want to actually win? That you don't want the chance to actually have a full life or see your children grow up? Because if I don't reset things, you'll stay dead and everything that makes you Egwene al'Vere will be washed away when you reincarnate."

Egwene smiled slightly as she realized she might have more leverage than it appeared. "You need my permission, don't you?"

"Free will is a bitch," he replied with a shrug, not seeing a point in explaining that he only needed her permission once to bind her to the loop.

"What happens if I say yes? Egwene asked. "Does everything go back to how it was on Winternight and I forget everything?"

"No, you were just a village kid the last time around, you hadn't channeled and giving you that knowledge wouldn't have ended well," he offered, figuring he wasn't really even lying that something would have gone wrong. "If you go back, you'll remember everything."

"And none of my friends will remember anything will they?" Egwene asked warily.

"That depends on you and the nature of your friends," the man replied with a sigh, rather happy that she couldn't use the power in his pocket dimension because he doubted she'd appreciate the strings the company had stuck him with for bringing her friends back. "For various reasons I'm not going to explain, I'm limited to only bringing creatures or beings with a link to the supernatural back in the loops."

"What counts as supernatural?" Egwene asked as she sat up and put her feet on the ground, finding the stone surprisingly warm.

"Anyone with a magical talent or the ability to channel, such as dreamers, channelers, wolf brothers or even people with enough of the old blood like Mat or people heavily influenced by magic," he explained.

"What's the catch?" Egwene asked, figuring there had to be one.

"The catch is you have to decide if you're going back before I explain how I'd bring your friends back," he replied.

"Will it damage their souls or corrupt them?" Egwene asked warily, wanting to be sure that she wasn't dooming them to a fate worse than death.

"I'm not the Dark One, their souls will be perfectly fine," he assured her. "The first time we met, you said that you'd do anything to have him back, this is part of that deal. If you want your friends to come back with you, that requires an additional investment on your part."

"Or I could stay dead and the world gets to have peace," Egwene pointed out.

"Less than twenty years," he replied with a sigh. "Tuon gets murdered by a Seanchan lord and the Seanchan start taking over, it doesn't end well for anyone, especially the White Tower. But yeah, it's your choice."

'Ashes!' Egwene thought, thinking about the Seanchan taking everything over and ruining the peace that they'd fought and died for. 'I can always go back by myself and destroy them if the price is too high,' she told herself, unwilling to let the Seanchan win despite knowing that she was risking the Dark One escaping. "Fine, I'll go back. What do I have to do to bring people back?"

The figure gestured toward the glass bottles, lamps and jewelry on the table. "I have several methods for bringing people back in a loop, one of them involves trapping people in a magical container, it basically lets people summon them out of the container and put them back, unless you can find someone to trade places with them, then they're free and clear."

"Why would anyone agree to be bound?" Egwene asked, trying to wrap her mind around the idea of willingly stepping into a prison.

"Because you're effectively immortal while you're bound, even if you get hurt you'll just reappear in the container and heal," he explained. "The other method involves summoning them here and letting you have sex with them."

"Have you lost your mind?!" Egwene demanded.

"No," the figure assured her. "Every magic system has advantages and disadvantages, channeling is addictive and you can kill yourself if you channel too much at once but it can do some amazing things and it stretches your lifespan. My type of magic involves making deals and it has some annoying restrictions, like having to harvest energy to do more than basic tricks."

"So my suffering powers your magic?" Egwene asked, trying to wrap her head around his magic.

"It's more your discomfort than suffering, I only really get something out of evil people's suffering," the figure explained, mixing some truth in with his lies since the restriction wasn't really on his magic, just on the contract that he was working under and the power that he was borrowing. "There's a difference. I understand that the idea of having sex with your friends probably makes you twitch for various cultural reasons, but you'd also double their channeling abilities."

"Double?" Egwene sputtered out. "How does that work?"

"They're basically taking their magic with them into the past and it stacks, just imagine the look of horror on the Forsakens' faces when they realize that Rand is twice as strong as he should be," the man replied with a grin, looking forward to the chaos Egwene would cause.

"What do you get out of this?" Egwene asked.

"I get the satisfaction of knowing that your chances of successfully killing the Dark One increase with every ally you bring back and I get to watch you have sex with everyone. I'm also going to be charging five spanks for the magical containers, as in I get to spank your ass five times for each container you need," the figure explained, using his Telepathy to share an image of Elayne, Aviendha and Rand welcoming her to their bed, carefully framing it as an idle thought.

"You're a pervert, I'm married," Egwene argued, trying to ignore the images dancing in her mind and reminding herself that she was married.

"I'm not going to dispute the fact that I'm a pervert but you're not married, you both died because Gawyn tossed his life away trying to fight one of the forsaken with a sword," he argued. "And you're going back in time to before you ever met him, you're free and clear to do what you want with whomever will take you. If you want to fuck Rand, all you have to do is ask and I'm sure he'll jump at the chance to come back, if only to spare his younger self the pain and suffering he went through. If you want to spank Bodewhin and tongue fuck her so you can keep her around, I'm sure she'll agree."

Egwene found herself understanding Nynaeve's tendency to pull her braid in frustration as she glared at the man. "You're seriously deranged, you know that, right?".

"Does that mean you want to leave them behind to get erased?" the figure asked, not seeing a reason to disagree about him being a bit off his rocker since he was willingly working for a company that was at best questionable when it came to morals.

"No," Egwene admitted with annoyance. "Where do we start?"

"I suggest Rand or maybe Elayne or Mat? I'm sure she'd love to improve her talents and power and Mat is always up for a tumble."

Egwene shook her head, knowing she should be more disgusted with the entire deal but the man had a point, no one was forcing her to do anything and Gawyn was dead. "I don't think she'd want to remember losing her children."

The man gestured at the bottles on the table. "That just means I get to spank your ass at least ten times, probably fifteen if you want to bring your mother back, though that would make a duplicate so it might be better just fucking her."

"That's not remotely fair," Egwene complained, trying to keep her mind from going to weird places.

"Everything has a price," he replied with a sigh. "Some you pay in gold and sometimes you pay in good will, favors or sex."

Egwene spent ten seconds weighing her modesty and dignity against the chance to save her friends from being erased and realized that she was going to be having a lot of sex. "Fine, let's start with Mat, I figure he'll be the easiest to convince," she said, pushing off worrying about the best way to bring her family back for the moment.

"Sounds good," the figure replied as he snapped his fingers and pulled Mat out of a future where Tuon had been murdered and he'd watched everything he'd tried to build burn.

"Bloody ashes!" Mat sputtered when he appeared and saw Egwene sitting on a bed looking the same as the last time he'd seen her twenty years ago, if you ignored the fact that she wasn't wearing a scrap of cloth. "Egwene?"

"Nice to see you Mat," Egwene replied as she studied the various scars on Mat's body, not surprised to realize that he still looked good despite the fact that he looked as old as his father.

Mat looked down and froze when he realized the only thing he was wearing was his foxhead medallion. "What's going on?"

Egwene gestured toward the man wearing shorts. "Long story short, I have a chance to go back to Winternight before the trollocs showed up and do things right."

"Do things right?" Mat asked as he glanced between Egwene and the man with dark hair and blue eyes that he'd never seen before.

"How do you feel about getting Tuon back or destroying the Whitecloaks before they convince a bunch of people that they've turned over a new leaf? What about crippling the Black Ajah or killing all of the Seanchan nobles that conspired to kill Tuon?" the man asked, knowing Mat would want revenge on the nobles.

"What's the price?" Mat asked, wanting to get the price up front this time since the deal felt too good to be true.

"She basically has to let me spank her ass five times if she takes people back in magical containers or fuck the people if she wants to bring them back in spirit so they can merge with their younger selves," the figure explained.

"That's it?" Mat asked in surprise, having been expecting something worse thanks to his experience with the Finn.

"Isn't that enough?" Egwene complained.

Mat gestured at his missing eye. "I lost an eye dealing with the Finn, you're getting off easy or a lot," he teased, unable to resist.

"Mat!" Egwene complained.

"Sorry, it's been a long couple of months," Mat admitted, trying not to remember some of the battles that he'd fought over the last couple of months.

"What happened?" Egwene asked.

"Bloody Seanchan nobles," Mat complained. "They killed Tuon so they could start taking over and sent a force to capture as many Aes Sedai as they could."

"Don't worry, we'll kill them," Egwene assured him, not sure what else she could say as Tuon had been more than a bit insane as far as she was concerned but not seeing a problem in killing the nobles that were willing to plunge the world into another war so they could chain everyone that could channel.

"She would have been better off arranging a couple more accidents for the worst of the nobles," the figure offered.

"It would have certainly helped," Mat agreed, fairly sure they could have turned things around if they'd had another twenty years and the worst of the nobles had died.

"Either way, you have a choice," the man replied. "You can refuse the deal and fade out of existence, leaving Egwene to deal with things herself or you can let me bind you to a bottle or a ring so that Egwene can summon you as you are or you can fuck like rabbits while I watch and I'll send your soul and memories back to your younger self so that he won't make the same mistakes."

"Will I keep everything I got from the Finn?" Mat asked, wanting to make sure he kept his foxhead medallion and his memories of old battles.

"Everything that matters, meaning the memories, the foxhead and the ashandarei, you'll lose the connection to the Finn and the scars but that's for the best," the man replied with a smile, happy to see the Finn lose. "You should probably avoid getting anywhere near them this time around, they might sense the old deal and try to collect."

"I'm not a fool or at least I'm not foolish enough to go back," Mat argued when Egwene gave him a look that said she didn't believe him. "If I had a choice, I'd go back in spirit, I've taken my fair share of injuries over the years."

"Get over here," Egwene told Mat, willing to admit, if only to herself, that she'd always sort of wondered if he was worth the trouble in the bedroom or in a barn for that matter, since she'd heard plenty of stories of his flirting and kissing.

The figure smiled as he watched the pair's somewhat awkward start quickly turn into something more amusing, a couple of old friends having sex because they needed the stress relief and something to hold onto while everything changed around them. 'Gawyn was an idiot,' he mused as he watched Egwene grind against Mat as he thrust into her from behind, knowing he would have danced through an army to come back if he had someone like that waiting for him. He smirked when Egwene let out a squeak as Mat started playing with her breasts with one hand and trailing kisses down her neck.

He watched for a couple of minutes then summoned Elayne from twenty years down the timeline along with her daughter, a rather adorable, if tall, girl with long red hair and curves in all the right places in addition to some muscle from her sword practice.

"Egwene!" Elayne blurted out, not having expected to see her friend again, certainly not in the middle of having sex with Mat.

"Damn," Moria Trakand muttered as she stared at her 'uncle' Mat and the attractive girl that he was in the middle of having sex with. 'Maybe she swings both ways.'

Egwene sighed and glared at the man that had obviously grabbed Elayne and someone she didn't know while in the middle of things. "You could have waited," she complained as she tried to untangle herself from Mat.

"Not as much fun," the figure replied with a grin.

"Not the worst situation you've caught me in," Mat offered when Elayne glared at him, doing his best not to stare at Elayne or Moria, despite the fact that they weren't wearing a stitch.

"She looks like Egwene!" Elayne snapped, pissed that Mat would dishonor Egwene's memory by hooking up with some girl that looked like her.

"That's because she is," Mat replied with a smirk. "Rand doesn't know what he missed."

"Nice to see you again," Egwene offered, sort of amused despite her embarrassment.

Elayne glanced between Egwene and the man that she didn't recognize who was wearing shorts and a strangely bright shirt. "What's going on?"

"For various reasons, I'm sending Egwene back in time so Rand can actually kill the Dark One and so that she can destroy the Seanchan Nobles before they become a problem," the figure explained. "And before you say that's impossible, my style of magic doesn't involve channeling, it involves deals and Egwene made one."

"What did you offer?" Elayne asked Egwene, wondering why she'd risk everything.

"Everything," Egwene admitted. "I made the original deal before we left Emond's Field, the trollocs had killed Rand and…" she trailed off as she realized she hadn't gotten a name. "What is your name?"

"I have many but you can call me Mist," the figure replied with a grin, a touch surprised that it had taken her this long to ask his name.

"Rand died and Mist said he'd reset things so that I could save him, I didn't recall the deal until I ended up here after dying in the Last Battle," Egwene explained.

"She's free to return to the past but unless she imprisons people in magical containers that let her summon them or has sex with them, they'll vanish into the wind when the wheel is spun back," Mist explained.

Elayne stared at Mist for a couple of seconds as what he'd said sunk in. "That's twisted."

"I will absolutely fuck you if it means that I'm not going to vanish," Moria offered with a grin, perfectly willing to have sex with Egwene even if she didn't have to since she'd grown up with stories about her.

"Moria!" Elayne snapped.

"What? She's attractive and I don't want to die," Moria replied, not sure why her mother was acting like she'd never had sex with the maids. "Don't start, the walls of the palace shake when you're having sex with Min and Aviendha, you have no room to judge."

"I'm your mother," Elayne argued, fairly sure most of the shaking was Rand's fault.

"I'm nineteen," Moria pointed out. "I can make my own choices."

Elayne rubbed the bridge of her nose in frustration. "Where's George?"

"I haven't summoned him," Mist replied with a shrug. "I wanted to watch Egwene fuck Moria, I figured she didn't want her brother around to see it."

"Pass, we tried that once, he couldn't stop making bad jokes and the maid kept looking at him rather than tongue fucking me," Moria complained causing Elayne to glare at her. "It's a lot better if we just find someone that wants both of us."

"There are some things I don't want to know," Elayne grumbled.

"Says the woman with two wives and a boyfriend that swings by every now and then, you have no room to talk about weird relationships," Moria told her mother.

Egwene glanced at Mat. "Do you have any suggestions on dealing with this mess?"

"I suggest letting Moria tongue fuck you then having Mist summon Rand, Aviendha and Min so that you can have sex with Elayne and the four of them without causing issues in their relationship. Once that's done, I suggest sticking Perrin in a container or getting Mist to summon Faile and having some fun with both of them."

"Can you even summon Faile?" Egwene asked Mist, fairly sure she didn't have enough magic.

"I'd have to cheat and you'd have to bind her to a container while she's pregnant," Mist told her, not seeing a point in explaining that he could summon her, he just couldn't bind her or merge her soul with her younger self without her having magic or cheating.

"Probably for the best," Egwene admitted, not all that interested in having sex with Perrin since he was happily married.

"After that, you should probably see about seducing Moiraine, Lan and Nynaeve," Mat teased.

"Then Mat's sisters," Mist suggested, causing Mat to roll his eyes.

"I don't need to see that," Mat complained, not actually seeing a problem with them coming back or having sex with Egwene, it just wasn't something he wanted to see.

"Enough procrastinating," Moria said as she walked over and jumped on the bed. "Do you want me to kiss you silly before I start tongue fucking you or after?"

"I need a drink," Elayne complained as she turned her attention to the various bottles, lamps and jewelry items as her daughter and her old friend started kissing. "Are these ter'angreal?" she asked, trying to distract herself from her daughter kissing her old friend and wiggling her naked behind like a cat.

"That depends on how you define ter'angreal, if you mean items that have magic, the bottles are expanded to contain more than they should but they haven't been turned into actual magical items yet, so I don't think they'd count. If you mean objects that do interesting things because the One Power was used on them, I'd have to say no, my magic has nothing to do with Saidar or Saidin," Mist explained, not taking his attention off the girls, rather amused that Egwene was getting into things a bit more than he'd been expecting. 'Elayne is probably going to try to kill me when she realizes that I could have just tossed Moria into a container since she wasn't alive during Winternight so having sex wasn't required, oh well, better than Moria trying to kill me for ruining her fun.'

"Where did you learn your type of magic?" Elayne asked, wondering if he had some sort of block or if he was telling the truth about his magic and everything else.

"In another world. I found a book that teaches magic and I've been traveling between worlds for a while," Mist replied. "Speaking of magic and the bottles, do you want me to stick you in a bottle or do you want to have sex with your friend and double your magic?"

"Double my magic?" Elayne asked with interest.

"Your magic would stack, meaning you'd have double the potential power, talents and affinities, you'd be an extremely powerful channeler," Mist offered.

"All for the price of having sex with my friend who has been dead for twenty years?" Elayne asked as she glanced over at Egwene, fairly sure they were going to end up rather drunk as soon as they could.

"While I watch and yeah, basically," Mist agreed. "Before you start screaming or complaining, I literally can't pull them back through time without the show or the bottles."

"What do you get out of this other than a show?" Elayne asked, doing her best to ignore her daughter's giggling.

"I want the Dark One dead, the longer he exists the more chances he has of breaking out and unleashing his hatred on the rest of the multiverse," Mist explained.

"Multiverse?" Elayne asked.

"You know how the portal stones work, right?" Mist asked, already knowing the answer but wanting her in the right frame of mind.

"I've studied them but I don't think I could reproduce them," Elayne admitted, wishing she'd had more success.

"Close enough. Basically every world you could reach through the portal stones is one small branch of the multiverse. I don't want the bastard escaping and destroying entire sections of the multiverse before he's stopped."

"Can you even kill him?" Elayne asked.

Mist smiled as Egwene flopped down on her back, spread her legs and enjoyed the sensations that Moria's tongue was causing her. "I can't but Rand can. He had a chance the last time around, he was just told that destroying him would cost humanity in a way he believed."

Elayne glanced at Egwene out of the corner of her eye, wondering what it would be like to kiss her friend since she'd realized that she rather enjoyed kissing girls or at least Min and Aviendha and she'd always had a spot in her heart for Egwene. "You're saying the Egwene's ghost lied?"

"The Dark One didn't invent lying but he's certainly made it an art form and he can duplicate just about everything the power can do and a lot more in his prison, which means he can create illusions. Egwene's spirit wasn't anywhere near the bore," Mist explained, fairly sure he wasn't actually lying. "Rand had it backward, the Dark One exists because of humanity's darkness, not the other way around. Killing him just means you'd eventually get a new dark god, which is absolutely a good thing as they're all a bit different and it helps keep things interesting."

"Rand is going to be pissed," Elayne admitted, already coming up with the best way to sell having sex to Egwene to her wives and Rand.

"I don't blame him," Mist assured her. "Speaking of, do you want me to summon Rand or should we give Moria another five minutes?"

Moria stopped running her tongue over Egwene's bits long enough to call out, "Ten!"

"Might as well wait, unless we're in a hurry?" Elayne asked, knowing her daughter would hold it against her for months if she interrupted her.

"Not particularly," Mist admitted, not seeing a point in explaining that they weren't in the world at the moment or that he could step back into the world at any point in time.

"Can you show me how you bind people?" Elayne asked.

"Sure," Mist replied as he summoned Faile from the point where she was nine months pregnant with her first child, a child that happened to be a channeler when she grew up, which should give the containment spell enough to latch onto.

Faile twitched when she found herself in a strange room without any clothes. "What's going on?"

"We're basically spinning the wheel back so we have a chance to kill the Dark One, do you want to come back or do you want to fade out of existence?" Mist asked the hawk nosed woman that Perrin had fallen in love with.

"Kill the Dark One?" Faile asked then focused on Elayne. "Has he lost his mind?"

"Probably not," Elayne admitted then started explaining things as she understood them.

"We should probably wait until they finish then summon more people so we don't have to keep explaining things," Mat suggested, enjoying the show more than he wanted to admit with Elayne standing there.

"Works for me," Mist replied as he turned his full attention back to Egwene and Moria, rather enjoying the fact that Egwene's ears were red in embarrassment. 'At least this means I get to spank her ass,' he mused.