Copy Protection Void Part 8 (Patreon)

"What happens if we find someone that isn't a fanatic or a darkfriend?" Egwene's clone asked in a whisper as they made their way toward the whitecloak camp, following the trail she'd found in the dream world when she'd scouted out the camp.

"Even if they're not a fanatic or a darkfriend, they willingly joined a group that hangs innocent people after torturing confessions out of people," Mist replied, not feeling particularly generous towards the entire organization.

"And if they surrender?" the clone asked.

"If they manage to surrender before we kill them, we can drop them off in the Borderlands, they probably need soldiers they can toss at the meat grinder. The commander in the camp came to the Two Rivers to kill Perrin because someone lied to him about his father's death. He was willing to let trollocs slaughter a village because they wouldn't give him Perrin, maybe he won't be as much of a fanatic in his next life."

"That hasn't happened yet," the clone pointed out.

"He was also willing to call someone a darkfriend because they played a prank on him and got his cloak muddy, that would have happened tomorrow if things hadn't changed so I don't have a lot of faith in his intelligence or common sense," Mist complained.

"I'm just making sure you don't have regrets," the clone told him.

"I appreciate it but I'm not going to lose any sleep over dead whitecloaks," Mist replied, dropping his voice to barely over a whisper when the trail curved around a tree and he spotted a sentry about a hundred yards up the trail pissing on a tree. "There's a sentry a hundred paces down the trail and he has black fog around his head."

The clone stopped walking and stared into the darkness, barely able to see the trail well enough to follow it, let alone someone three hundred feet away. She embraced the source and smiled slightly when she managed to make out a vague outline that could have been a person. She wrapped a thread of air around the man's throat then slammed his head against the tree he'd been facing, knocking him out and probably giving him brain damage. "Got him."

"Thanks, there's no way I could have made the shot," Mist admitted as they continued walking.

"Rand could," the clone teased.

"He also cheats with his flame and void technique and he's spent a lot more time practicing than I have," Mist replied with amusement.

"Do you think he'll be okay?" the clone asked, worried about her friend.

"I don't know," Mist admitted. "There are countless worlds where Rand lost and all it takes is slipping and falling in a fight and everyone dies."

"That doesn't cheer me up," the clone admitted in a whisper.

"Sorry, I was just trying to be realistic," Mist replied as he stepped around a rock in the trail. "If it makes you feel better, Min seems to think we have a chance of surviving the last battle and we should be able to get a jump on making ter'angreal this time around."

"A little bit," the clone admitted. "We're getting close. I'll cover the tents with a weave to muffle sounds then you can shoot the guards. If you find someone that isn't a cultist or a darkfriend, we can try knocking them out."

"Okay," Mist agreed, hoping they didn't have noncombatants with them as it would just complicate everything. He pulled his knife out of his sheath and walked over to the whitecloak with a fractured skull and slit his throat, putting him out of his misery. He grabbed the man's coin purse and dropped it in his belt pouch then continued walking toward the whitecloak camp.

0o0o0

Egwene spent a couple of minutes or what felt like minutes enjoying her dream before reluctantly pulling herself out of the dream where she was watching Rand and Min have sex while Bodewhin gave her a full body massage and playfully critiqued the show. 'At least everyone was having fun,' she mused as she glanced around her old novice room, not sure how to feel about the dream or the room that she remembered spending a lot of time in when she was in the Tower.

She glanced down at her clothes, not surprised to find herself wearing the loincloth that Mist had given her considering the dream that she'd been having included it. She glanced at the hole in the wall one of the previous novices had created that had let her talk to Elayne after they were supposed to be sleeping. 'I'll miss you but I'd go crazy trying to pretend that I need their lessons. Too many rules, too many chains and for what? An organization that crumbled the moment the Seanchan showed up to collar everyone?'

'How much do I owe them for training no one remembers? Have I paid enough? I died or I remember dying, do I owe them anything?' Egwene asked herself as she left the room she remembered and headed down the hallway, trying to get her thoughts in order. 'I don't know, am I still the girl that wanted an adventure or am I the girl that had her adventure and died?'

'I'm alive and I still want to have an adventure. Is this how Rand felt when he got Lews Therin's memories?' she wondered, wishing she'd actually sat down and had a real conversation with Rand before the last battle. 'I should have checked in, I should have reached out. How did she get so wrapped up in Aes Sedai shit that she couldn't even trust her friend?'

'One day at a time,' she admitted as she reached the stairs. 'How much was his fault? How much was mine?'

Egwene spent a couple of minutes wrestling with her memories of another life as she made her way down to the ter'angreal storerooms, remembering the moments of stolen fun that she'd managed to have between the training and the insane amount of work that she'd buried herself under.

"What are you wearing girl?" Liandrin demanded, figuring the girl was one of the unlucky people that had accidently touched the world of dreams.

Egwene lashed out with a reversed weave of air and knocked the Black sister unconscious as soon as she recognized her as the woman that had sold her to the Seanchan. 'So much for grabbing the oath rod and vanishing without a trace.' She focused on wearing Nynaeve's collection of ter'angreal, causing a copy to appear on her. She hit Joiya when the old Aes Sedai poked her head out to check on Liandrin with flows of air, causing the woman to vanish.

'Did they have someone watching them in the real world or are they lurking around?' Egwene mused as she stepped into the storeroom the woman had looked out of, placing herself so that she could see the room and get the drop on anyone that was waiting to ambush her. She glanced around then relaxed slightly when she realized the room didn't have any lurking Black Ajah.

She stepped to the hallway a split second after one of her ter'angreal gave her a warning that someone was channeling saidin then pushed the image of the Domination Band being around the man's neck and a bag around his head when she caught sight of someone she'd never wanted to see again. She raised her hands and channeled balefire before the flame eyed man could jump away or deal with the a'dam like device that was around his neck, most likely because of his surprise at being caught.

Egwene watched the beam of reality destroying fire strike the forsaken and burn him from the pattern, shocked that her distraction had actually worked. She felt someone channel an instant before a weave hit her in the back and unraveled thanks to Nynaeve's ter'angreal or her mental image of it.

"Bloody ashes," Amico cursed when her weave unraveled rather than making the girl suggestable like it was supposed to.

Egwene lashed out with a reversed weave of air, knocking the Aes Sedai unconscious with an ease that was a bit disturbing and causing her to vanish from the world of dreams. She wove an illusion of an average looking blonde haired woman with an ageless face over herself then inverted it and tied it off so that she didn't have to maintain it. 'Focus!'

She quickly wove the weave to hide her strength in the power, making it appear that her strength was a bit below Moiraine's, something people would respect but not question as much as her own potential. She tied the weave off then walked back into the storeroom that held a decent amount of the Tower's ter'angreal.

'I've got enough for a couple of weaves left then I need some actual sleep,' Egwene thought as she reached out with her angreal and opened a 'reversed' gateway back to the real world inside the case the Oath Rod was held in so that people wouldn't feel the power being used where no one should be using the power and so she could avoid the wards on it. She used a thread of air to pull the Oath Rod out of the real world and into the world of dreams then wove an inverted illusion and tied the weave off, creating an illusionary duplicate of the Oath Rod.

'That should keep people from immediately noticing,' Egwene thought as she carefully unwove the gateway to the real world, wanting to avoid anyone in the Tower learning the weave. She finished unweaving the gateway then stepped into Verin's chambers with the Oath Rod.

She glanced around the familiar room then walked over and jumped up on the table and wove a small inverted gateway to the real world over the table where she wasn't likely to hit anything or anyone. She smiled at the heavy set gray haired woman that was staring at the hole into another world with a shocked look on her face. "Verin Sedai, before you try to kill me, I'm not a member of the Black Ajah, nor am I one of the forsaken."

"Curious, I can feel your ability but I can't see your weave. I don't suppose you'd like to explain how you managed that?" Verin asked, figuring it wouldn't hurt to ask and the answer would probably give her information about the stranger.

"That depends, can I talk you into unswearing the oaths you took to the Black Ajah? I'd like to have an honest conversation but that's hard when you can't tell the truth about any of the Black Ajah's current projects."

"I'm afraid that I'd need an oath rod to unswear the three oaths," Verin replied, making no mention of her oaths to the Black Ajah since that would mean confirming its existence, something she wasn't allowed to do.

"You're in luck," Egwene replied as she tossed the oath rod through the gateway. "I'm going to need that back."

Verin caught the Oath Rod. "How did you get this?"

"I dream walked into the storeroom, opened a gate and stole it using threads of air. Then I left a fake so that we'd have time to break your oaths," Egwene explained. "I'll explain more later but we need to hurry, I had to knock Liandrin, Amico and Joiya unconscious in the world of dreams. They were using sleepweavers like your twisted ring. I want to deal with them before they wake up but I'm going to need your help."

"I need to channel to break the oaths," Verin replied, wanting to make sure the stranger didn't overreact.

"That's fine," Egwene assured her, keeping the image of Nynaeve's ter'angreal firmly in place in her mind in case she was wrong about Verin.

Verin channeled into the oath rod, released her oaths to the Black Ajah and clenched her teeth as pain washed over her as the oaths vanished. "That was unpleasant. What do you need me to swear?"

"Swear that you'll never lie to me and I'll let you break the oath once we're done," Egwene told her, feeling bad about the extra pain but wanting to make sure that her memories were accurate.

Verin channeled into the Oath Rod as she swore her oath, "I swear that I will always tell you the truth."

"Are you a follower of the Dark One?" Egwene asked.

"No, I was a member of the Black Ajah but I only joined because they would have killed me if I hadn't and I figured someone needed to discover their identities. In my heart, I'll always be a member of the brown ajah."

Egwene sighed in relief, happy that she wouldn't have to kill her friend. "I'm glad that I don't have to kill you, you were one of my favorite teachers."

"I don't remember you," Verin admitted.

"No reason you should, this isn't my real face," Egwene replied with a smile. "You have a choice to make, you can leave the oath in place or you can break it and I'll teach you how to conceal the fact that you aren't bound by any oaths."

"What do you want in exchange?" Verin asked, curious what the woman wanted.

"Your help, the Last Battle is coming and I want to cripple the shadow. If we can break their oaths, we can extract information out of them and I know how angreal are made, it requires channeling into a seed item. It temporarily drains your potential power for several weeks, something the black ajah doesn't really need once they're bound."

Verin stared at the stranger, trying to figure out if she was telling the truth. "Can you make the seeds?"

Egwene shook her head. "I can't but I know people that should be able to once they have enough training."

"You're planning on using them to create angreal until they die, aren't you?" Verin asked, not sure how she felt about leaving them alive.

"If they're dead, there's a chance that they can give the Dark One information," Egwene warned her, thinking about what Mist had said about the Dark One. "If they're alive and working for us, we'll have more angreal."

"You'd need to ward their dreams," Verin warned her.

"Or keep them in a stedding," Egwene replied. "Break your oath and hand me the Oath Rod, I'm going to need it for the black ajah."

Verin grimaced as she removed the oath she'd taken against telling the truth. "That's unpleasant," she complained as she handed the woman the Oath Rod, curious where the girl had picked up the strange weaves or learned about the world of dreams.

"It's supposed to, it was used to bind criminals in the Age of Legends," Egwene replied as she pulled the rod back into the world of dreams, being careful not to stick her hand through the gate as she was dreaming and it would probably vanish. "I'll talk to you soon."

Verin stared at the gate as it seemed to come apart and fade away as if it had never been there in the first place. 'Interesting.'

0o0o0

"Bloody ashes, what happened?" Nynaeve demanded when she saw the bloody piece of cloth wrapped around Egwene's leg as she hobbled into the infirmary with Mist.

"You should see the other guy," Mist offered, trying and failing to add some levity to the situation.

"I tripped over a rock," Egwene's clone complained, annoyed that she'd made it out of the 'fight' with the whitecloaks without getting a scratch only to trip on a rock and hit the broken edge of a helmet when they were leaving.

"A rock?" Nynaeve asked suspiciously as she grabbed a kettle of previously boiled water and a clean rag to wipe the blood off before she healed it. "This doesn't look like it was caused by a rock."

"I didn't say I landed on a rock, I just said I tripped on one," the clone replied as she hobbled over and put the foot of her injured leg up on the edge of a bed, giving Mist a nice view of her behind as she was still just wearing her loincloth. "We were dealing with monsters, I tripped after we finished and landed on the edge of a helmet that I cut in half earlier," she explained as she unwrapped the halter top she'd used as a makeshift bandage.

"We need more armor ter'angreal," Nynaeve complained as she poured the warm water on the rag and started working on cleaning the gash up. "Did you get anything useful?" she asked Mist, wondering if he'd picked up anything else that was useful.

Mist reluctantly pulled his attention away from the clone's butt and opened his clothing menu. "Give me a second to check, I was more worried about making sure Egwene didn't bleed out."

"It's not deep and you put pressure on it," Nynaeve replied, glad that someone had listened to her about how to treat wounds. "But you made the right choice, of course telling someone before you went off hunting shadowspawn would have been a good idea."

"Next time," Mist agreed as he read the description for the top hats he could conjure. "Okay, that's more impressive than I was expecting. Wearing the hat keeps any channeler from drawing a dangerous amount of power while worn and doubles your recovery rate from channeling and your mana regeneration. You can also pay mana to conjure silk scarves if you're holding the hat, which is a neat trick."

"That would make training everyone easier or at least a good deal safer," Egwene's clone mused, wondering if she should make the hats mandatory for the students until they got the hang of things.

"Assuming you don't develop bad habits," Nynaeve said as she embraced the source and healed the gash on Egwene's leg, using all five elements rather than the battlefield crap that the Tower used.

The clone sighed in relief as the pain vanished. "Thank you."

"Be more careful next time," Nynaeve told her as she handed Egwene the rag so she could finish cleaning up the blood. "What do your hats look like?" she asked Mist, wondering if they were something she could get away with wearing.

Mist summoned a black top hat in his hands then reached over and set the hat on the clone's head. "Like that."

"I need a mirror," the clone mused as she finished hiding the blood off her leg.

"They don't exactly grow on trees," Nynaeve complained, thinking about the mirrors she'd had in the castle. "Can I have a hat?" she asked, figuring the increased recovery speed was worth wearing the hat.

"Sure," Mist replied as he conjured another hat and handed it to Nynaeve.

"Did you get anything else?" the clone asked, curious what else he'd picked up.

"Silk Gloves of Lightning Storm, they basically let people use and learn a mana based weave that creates a lightning storm. Unfortunately the spell also hits the person creating it and the gloves don't provide any protection from the lightning. The lightning also grows more powerful as you kill shadowspawn."

"That sounds like a good way to kill yourself," the clone complained as the door opened and Egwene rushed in. "What's the matter?"

Egwene glanced at her clone who was wiping blood off her leg and wearing a strange hat then glanced at Nynaeve's identical hat. "I might have pissed Ishamael off or possibly killed him."

"What?" Nynaeve snapped.

"I was sneaking down into the Tower storeroom to grab the Oath Rod when I ran into Liandrin, Amico and Joyia in the world of dreams. I knocked them out then my dream copy of Nynaeve's ring let me know that someone was channeling saidin so I jumped out of the room and saw a man with flaming eyes in the hallway. I didn't stop to ask if he was actually Ishamael, I just forced the dream world to change as hard as I've ever wished for anything in my life then hit him with balefire while he was distracted by the Domination Band on his neck and the hood over his head. If I was a second slower, I don't think it would have worked."

"Are you sure you killed him?" Nynaeve asked warily.

"I don't know," Egwene admitted. "I didn't feel him jump away or leave the dream the normal way and he didn't kill me when I grabbed the Oath Rod and spent a couple of minutes talking with Verin, so there's a chance but it's Ishamael, he's a monster."

"He's also insane and not particularly worried about dying, I doubt he was expecting to run into a powerful dreamwalker that knew the weave for balefire and wouldn't hesitate to use it," Mist pointed out.

"If Ishamael is dead, who marks Rand with the herons?" Nynaeve asked, thinking about the prophecies and the heron shaped scars that Rand's fights with Ishamael had caused.

"For all we know he'll get challenged to prove that he's a blademaster twice and get bestowed a heron marked blade or something completely stupid will happen that people will claim fulfilled that aspect of the prophecy," Mist argued. "If he's dead, great, we'll figure it out. If he escaped or if that was merely a decoy, we're probably fucked when he tracks us down."

Nynaeve scowled at Mist. "I can wash your mouth out."

"Just saying," Mist replied as he checked his gift page for gifts.

"Why were you trying to grab the Oath Rod in the world of dreams?" Nynaeve asked Egwene.

"I needed to make sure my memories of a possible future were accurate when it came to Verin, they were. She has the list and she swore to tell me the truth and I asked about her being a darkfriend, she's not. I used an inverted gate to grab the actual Oath Rod then unwove it so that no one would be able to copy it," Egwene explained.

"What happened to the three black sisters?" Nynaeve asked.

Mist conjured a top hat and handed it to Egwene. "It should help with your fatigue."

"Thanks, I'm running on empty," Egwene admitted as she put the hat on. "I wasn't particularly careful when I knocked them out but they should wake up in the morning with headaches or brain damage if I hit them a bit too hard. We should probably capture them before they wake up and tell the rest of the Black Ajah that someone is hunting them in the World of Dreams."

Nynaeve nodded. "I'll talk to Moiraine, she should be able to arrange things with Siuan. Do you have the Oath Rod?"

"I stashed it," Egwene replied with a yawn. "I'll grab it in the morning when I've had a chance to get some actual sleep."

"Did you get any gifts that can help?" the clone asked Mist.

"That depends, do you want to beat the stupid out of them with a wooden paddle?" Mist asked as he pulled a dark wood paddle out of his gift page so he could examine it with his sunglasses.

"I'm listening," Nynaeve replied, unwilling to admit that the idea of beating the black ajah members black and blue appealed to part of her.

"Don't get annoyed, I'm just reading the description. Paddle of Education: Tired of having to deal with insane girls? Smacking a female on her bare ass with this wooden paddle will damage her faith in or completely erase one foolish bit of culture from her mind. This also increases her ability to learn by twenty percent and safely increases the speed that female channelers acquire their maximum potential by five hundred percent for a week. The paddle can't actually do physical damage to a person, but it's just as painful as it should be."

Egwene shook her head. "Does it say how it determines what counts as foolish?"

"I don't know, it might depend on my views on culture or the person using the paddle or maybe it just checks to see if their culture is self destructive," Mist offered, not actually sure how it worked.

"We're going to have to capture some sul'dam and damane and beat the stupid out of them but the black ajah are probably a good start," the clone mused.

"That's not a bad idea," Nynaeve admitted, wondering if it would help rehabilitate the damane.

"Anything else?" the clone asked.

"Nothing that's going to help with the current problem, so we should probably let Nynaeve get going," Mist replied.

"Can I have the bracelet back?" Nynaeve asked Mist.

"Yeah," Mist replied as he took the bracelet that provided armor off his wrist and handed it to Nynaeve.

"Thank you," Nynaeve replied as she slipped the bracelet on her wrist and headed for the door.

0o0o0