“How do you mean?” Ben asked urgently.
Was she saying what he thought she was saying? Could this quest in the past rectify the present?
But the Jade Emperor said:The past is written. Choices have been made.
AndShifuhad always emphasized that the rules of the Universal Balance forbade that the past could be changed by the quests.
Yet…
Ere’s voice whispered through Ben’s mind.
Rules were meant to be broken.
“It is a quest for Truth,” Miss Seventh said, “should you have the courage to reclaim it. A truth that has long been forgotten. A truth that ties each of your fates together in the tapestry of time and space. Find and embrace this Forgotten Truth, and weave a future with different possibilities. The past cannot be unwritten, but the truth can shine a different light on what you thought you knew.”
“Vague much?” Ben muttered, narrowing his eyes at the mysterious woman.
Miss Seventh’s eyes crinkled into half-moons, shimmering with barely suppressed indulgence, a moment before her expression smoothed into a mask that gave nothing away.
“What say you, warrior angel? Make your choice.”
Ben’s brows shot up his forehead.
“Warrior an—oh, I see what you did there. My name is totally badass, right?”
Cloud exhaled a small sigh, one that Ben was intimately familiar with. It meant that he was taxing his mentor’s patience. It happened often when he was a boy, less and less recently.
But, well, despite his old soul, as his loved ones attested to, Benwasonly twenty years-old.
“Ben,” Cloud said, gaining his attention immediately.
“You will be alone in this. There are many unknowns. It is too dangerous.”
Ben turned back to Miss Seventh.
“Which reminds me, where will I be going? What time period?”
“The Mirror Pond will take you where and when you need to go,” she replied. “Even I do not know.”
“Well, that does sound iffy,” Ben noted.
“Ben…” Cloud warned again.
“But it would help, right?” Ben talked over him. “If I do this, things can change for the better.”
“Or for the worse,” Miss Seventh said with a shrug.
“Bollocks,” Ben muttered.
“Ben—” Cloud tried again.
“Okay, I’ll do it,” Ben made a split-second decision.
His gaze met his dragon trainer’s.
“This is what you’ve prepared me for,” he said to Cloud. “What all of you have prepared me for. I can feel it. I have to do this. For Ere, for Sorin, and forme.”
He faced Miss Seventh with determination.