Fetch Quest Side Story: What if Katie didn't mess with history? (Patreon)

Katie peered at her new skill choices, while the elderly fox-kin stood watching her with blank expressions. Her order not to treat her with respect had at least got them up off their knees, but they gave the distinct impression that they would continue standing there until they starved unless Katie either left or gave them orders to eat.

Paradox: You are an effect without a cause.
Courier: You provide safe delivery.

Again.

Timeless: While most drift passively with the streams of time, you swim against its flow.
Ferryman: You are a protected vessel travelling through the Void.

And again.

Anomaly: Time is nothing more than another path for you to tread.
Guide: You show the way.

Right. A time travel skill. As if all the Void crap wasn't bad enough without throwing some good-old temporal paradoxes on top.

Katie sighed as she considered the implications. She could go back in time and rectify any single event she wanted, but she couldn't rectify every event. Some of them were mutually exclusive. As the obvious example, she could go back in time and stop the war, but that would prevent her own summoning and hence the dungeon would never have been created, erasing everyone who lived there. Probably. With her existing class knowledge, it wasn't completely obvious that the dungeon would cease to exist, but it seemed likely. With the time dilation, there would be tens of thousands of years of d20 civilization by now. It wouldn't be fair to just... undo them.

Putting the complicated choices out of mind for the moment, Katie enhanced draconic power and evolved item box.

It didn't take her long to realise her new dimension home skill rendered courier largely superfluous; dimension home permitted storage of people, so she could easily store them in one place and release them in another, even if that other place happened to be another universe.

She couldn't fit the entirety of the fox-kin civilization in there, though. Courier might still have a use in migrating them to Earth, if its capacity was larger, but then she'd be taking it for that single use case, with no guarantee of success. That was worse than paradox.

After considering it, Katie decided that she needed to pick paradox. She needed more information on the skill to know how useful it would be, and the only way to get that information was to choose it. If it turned out to be useless, it would be a wasted skill slot, but Katie was confident it would have some use, even if she couldn't head into the far past.

She picked it, and spent a few minutes working through the information it downloaded.

Time travel required stepping out into the Void, looking at the world from the outside, and stepping back into it at a specific point in its timeline. The act of stepping back in would disrupt that timeline, the future warping in response to her new presence.

The act of stepping out would kill the fox-kin that were bonded to her.

As long as she stepped back in at a point before she stepped out, the future in which she stepped out would be disrupted. It would never have happened. She'd watch them all die, and see the world in which they were all dead from the outside, but as soon as she stepped back in, it would never have happened.

Going back in time to stop the war would indeed destroy the dungeon.

That one was harder to justify. The fox-kin copies had ended up dead, but even so, for a brief time, they had lives and memories of their own. Would it be fair to erase them? Would it even make any difference? They had no souls. The only proof of their existence was Katie's memories, and those memories wouldn't be erased. Wiping the events from history wouldn't make any difference to anyone. But the dungeon contained more than the fox-kin.

Katie had no idea whether the blobs had thrived, or even survived. Maybe they descended back into war. Maybe the guardian tree went insane again, and they were all pickling in happy-juices. But they might also have a flourishing country, as far as the limited space would permit it. Maybe they'd overcome the blight and occupied the upper floors. Or maybe they'd tried to overcome the blight and failed, and brought it back to the fourth floor for a second time, once again triggering the black dragon to kill them all. There was simply no way to know, and without knowing, she wouldn't risk it. Preventing her own summoning was discarded as an option.

That didn't make the skill useless. What if she went back in time to the moment she returned from the dungeon, and protected the fox-kin survivors? Or back to when she'd entered this village? Either option would duplicate herself, but did that matter? It wasn't as if dupliKatie minded, and any new duplicates would be in a better position than her. The biggest problem would be the naming scheme.

It would be a bit unfair to go back to when she entered the village, though. The earlier version of Katie would be stuck with the fox-kin, while the current one would be free to return to Earth. Earlier Katie couldn't consent to that. Or could she? Current Katie could go back to after picking the paradox skill and having all these thoughts. Current Katie would be happy to serve as the fox-kin owner if another one was available to go back home and stop everyone panicking about her disappearance, so that was implicit consent. No one-minute-older Katies sprang into existence at that decision, but that didn't mean anything. This was a paradox, after all.

Why was time travel so complicated?

If she chose that option, she could occupy her last slot with formless and head to Earth, while her new copy could take seeker and bring back the dead fox-kin copies that way.

What about going back to when she first left the dungeon? The main problem with that was that the king would still be alive, and pretty much the only thing the demons and remaining humans agreed on was that he'd never surrender. Katie suspected that if she did that, she'd need to kill him in cold blood to save the humans. She wasn't sure she could do that, unless he turned out to be a complete jerk, and even that required her to put aside the discomfort that came from messing with history.

With a sigh, Katie took a small, one-second long step backwards, ignoring the thuds of the collapsing fox-kin behind her.

"Oh! So I'm the stuck one, then," said Katie the Younger.

"Yeah, sorry," said Katie the Elder. "But I'll be back to visit, and I'll bring Bell, Daisy and Sophie."

"I know. You thought that before you back-stepped. But maybe add dupliKatie to that list?"

The group of elderly fox-kin boggled. The Katies ignored them.

"Here's a thought I didn't have before I duplicated us. What's the collective noun for a group of Katies?"

"A circus of Katies?"

"Wow, harsh."

"What would you prefer? An orgy? How about a fetish of Katies? A disaster of Katies? A bondage of Katies."

"Please stop..."

"You did ask."

"And I regret it immensely. Although you make a good point about our zombie twin. Now that I have dimension home, there's no reason to delay reanimating her until I get back to Earth."

"You just need a body for her. Are you going to use trigger respawn, or do I get to choke the life out of you?"

"I can't help but get the feeling that you're... somewhat hostile," pointed out Katie the Elder.

"Obviously! I was hoping to be the one going back to Earth! I may have agreed to this, but I'm still miffed. Anyway, shall we pick our respective skills? You go first, in case I get forced to take whatever skill you do."

"Right. Besides, dupliKatie will probably want a human-shaped body."

"Make her one of each."

Katie the Elder poked her skill options, selecting formless for her fourth slot, then shifting herself into a human Form.

"Cool, and my slot is still open. Well, here we go."

Katie the Younger checked out her skill options, but didn't pick anything.

"Should I duplicate myself again, do you think, so one copy can leave the slot open in case the new skills at the next level turn out to be really cool?"

"Uhh... I would suggest levelling up yourself before picking your next skill. It's not as if there's a time limit, and we probably shouldn't duplicate ourselves too often."

"Right. That's a good idea. I'll poke around in the collective fox-kin consciousness for a bit and look for more shrines. You get going back to Earth before anyone gets too worked up looking for us."

"You remember we can time-travel, right? I can get back to Earth the second we were taken, spend the day there, and get back here a second from now. Or a second ago."

"Why is time travel so complicated?!"

"It isn't all that bad, once we've had a bit of time to think about it," commented a third Katie, popping in from nowhere behind the two. "By the way, I'm you, and I remember me popping in and saying this, so you need to get going to Earth or we'll end up with another duplicate," she added to Katie the Used-To-Be-Elder-But-Is-Now-Only-Middling.

Katie the Average flashed out of existence.

"Nope. I don't believe you. How long have you been gone, anyway?"

"Only a day. Everyone kept commenting that I was behaving weirdly. Daisy even asked if I was experimenting on her."

"Well, get back over there, and bring them here!"

"I will, but I'll give you time to do what you need to do first. I only came back at this point because I remembered myself doing it, and so I had to follow through, or the paradox would give me a headache."

"See! Complicated!"

"No, not a metaphorical headache. A real one. Messing up the timeline by not time-travelling is counter-intuitively worse than actual time travel."

"Just go away, would you?"

Katie the Newly-Elder giggled and winked back out of the universe, leaving Katie the Younger alone. Shaking her head at the insanity of the situation, she took to the skies and perched herself in a tree a safe distance from the fox-kin village, happy to see the stunned elders coming back to themselves as her subduing presence departed.

"Right, more shrines," she muttered, as she sunk back into the collective knowledge of the fox-kin, watching out through tens of thousands of eyes and listening through tens of thousands of ears. Somehow, it wasn't quite as overwhelming as the last time. Then again, she'd just had a bunch of the mechanics of time-travel shoved into her head. Looking out through ten-thousand eyes at once was easy compared to trying to understand how the heck time-travel worked.

Alas, there weren't any. Only four shrines known to the fox-kin had been destroyed, each protecting a village that had been ransacked prior to the war. Without outside interference, the shrines were well cared for, and none were in need of repair.

Would the humans have any? Ortho had spoken about villages burnt down by the fox-kin, and with the grand barrier shut off and the border overrun by the demons, it wouldn't be hard to visit. Katie took to the air once more and made her way to the border.

She'd been flying for only half an hour when she found what she was looking for. Not through her own eyes, but from a demon squad making their way through human territory. It wasn't a village, but a patch of burnt grass, layered with human corpses that had obviously died some time ago, clustered around a shrine. A painful reminder that the two sides were at war.

Katie made her way there and offered up a mana crystal to the statue.

The first thing that occurred to her was that the duplication-via-paradoxical-time-travel trick had also duplicated the entirety of her item box contents.

The second epiphany came when she saw the new skills.

Omnipotence: As you will it, so shall it be.
Omniscience: All things are known.

"That fucking Goddess," she muttered, not caring about the fact that she was blaspheming in front of the aforementioned Goddess' own statue. "All this time... All this bloody time... Did you come from Earth, too? Is that why everyone here speaks English? And now you're bored with your little pet world, so you put me through all that shit just to train up a replacement? Is that what this has all been?"

Katie had an open skill slot. She could take the new skills there and then. Omnipotence had to include a way of dealing with the fox-kin link, and a way of bringing back the others. It would also, she strongly suspected, play right into the hands of the Goddess.

Katie selected the pair of skills.

Hours passed, the day fading to night as Katie stood frozen against the statue, coming to terms with her new ability, gripping the stone so hard that it cracked beneath her fingers.

"Arise," she said, simply, with a slight shake of her head. These people had been innocent, after all. Their only crime was supplying food to the armies at Muigal Pass.

The former corpses complied, wounds vanishing as if they'd never been, souls recalled to their bodies. There were gasps and noises of confusion as people grasped at unbroken skin, expecting blood but finding only unblemished flesh.

"Go home," commanded Katie, and because it was a Goddess commanding it, their homes were indeed there and intact, as were their fields. "This war is over."

Katie glanced in the direction of a mountain, not at all visible over the horizon. It didn't matter. She could see it clearly, and she was there.

"Call off your armies," she demanded of the demon lord. "They aren't needed."

The green dragon flinched. "Where did... your teleportation ability can even bring you here now? But no. I will not stop until every human that laid their filthy hands on my property has perished. Did you not agree with this outcome? Not one demon has stepped outside of the bounds negotiated with the human leaders."

"That was not my old teleportation ability, and I have no intention of stopping your revenge. Rather, I fully support it. The use of your armies, and the resulting collateral damage, are simply no longer required."

Katie waved her hand, and dozens of humans appeared.

"I'm sure you can tell which are the nobles and which are the lackeys from their outfits. Feel free to do with them as you please."

"Hey?! Who are you? What is this outrage! I demand... mmpfff!" yelled one of the nobles, before Katie clicked her fingers and he found his mouth suddenly occupied by a large ball of leather.

"Hehe. Finally, I can be on the other side of all the weird bondage predicaments!" giggled Katie, whose psyche still hadn't quite recovered from her sudden transition to godhood. She snapped her fingers again, leaving the human group in a variety of compromising positions. There were tree roots. Webs. Rope. Latex. There was, sitting on the head of one of them, a very confused-looking centipede.

"By the Goddess, what are you doing?" roared the green dragon.

"Oi, don't swear on me. It's weird," giggled Katie, who was enjoying being on the other side of the restraints immensely. For a moment, she considered bringing the red dragon back, too, but decided against it. He'd attacked her, and deserved what he got.

"Swear on you? What are you..." the green dragon invoked his soul magic to perform a simple scan, and saw what had become of Katie. A glance at the assembled humans, a couple of whom had passed out, confirmed they included every target he'd been after. In fact, there were more, Katie having grabbed everyone related to the attacks, whether the demon lord's scrying had located them or not.

"...I've ordered the withdrawal of my armies. I see you have already ordered the same of the fox-kin."

"Good boy," giggled Katie, petting the demon lord. He shivered slightly, but didn't dare to raise a complaint. "Right, I need to go rescue all the kidnapped demons. See you."

The demon lord remained silent, not even daring to ask what had happened, watching as Katie simply stopped being there in favour of being somewhere else. She was correct—it wasn't teleportation. She'd just decided that she wanted to be elsewhere, and the universe had rearranged matters to accommodate her.

Or, more accurately, she'd rearranged the universe to accommodate her. The demon lord was left in disbelief, utterly ignorant as to how she had achieved her apotheosis. And below the disbelief was regret; he'd deliberately drawn her ire by attempting to punish her for the death of his brother. Now she had the ability to resurrect him. Had she been more favourably inclined to him, perhaps she would have. His only relief was that she seemed willing to stick to the terms of the humans' surrender, and that she seemed to legitimately care for his brother's pets.

Meanwhile, Katie was standing before the statue in the temple of the fox-kin town, carefully inspecting its face.

"Do you think the previous Goddess ever actually used that face?" asked Katie, but the kneeling priestesses behind her didn't answer. "Perhaps I should adjust the statues to look like me. Or adjust myself to look like them? Nah, I like my wings scaly. Feathers wouldn't suit me."

The priestesses remained silent.

"You lot seriously suck as conversation partners. What the hell did that red dragon do to make you like this?"

This time, they couldn't answer, since none of them knew. Katie did, though, so she fixed it.

"I may be your Goddess, but I want friends, not a bunch of anaesthetised slaves. And maybe a fluff harem, but only with willing members. But before that, I have work to do."

With a wave of a hand, Katie recalled the kidnapped fox-kin from the human territories, alive or dead. All except for one, who she thought it best not to disturb, given how... busy she currently was. A second wave healed and redressed them, removing scars, collars and shackles alike.

Looking over them, and thinking about just how easy that had been, Katie found herself wondering where the line was. One of the victims was likely going to have issues with her rescue; she'd been 'employed' as a nanny for a small child who she'd imprinted on after her husband had been murdered by the humans during her capture. Should she resurrect him? And if she did, what about the rest of the village? But if she was going to restore that village, why not the others? And what about everyone else who had died in the war? Why one and not another?

For the first time since she gained her new powers, Katie paused, the high she'd been riding draining away.

"For the next week, there's a special offer on miracles," she declared, deciding that such lines weren't hers to draw. "Just visit my statue and pray for anyone who died at the hands of the humans, and I'll restore them to life. Make sure everyone knows."

There was no response, her presence still freezing them up, but now for a completely different reason.

"And when I come back, it's gonna need to be in disguise," she muttered, already pondering positioning and fur colour for the new ears her fox-kin disguise would require.

That just left the dungeon fox-kin, but there were too many of them. They wouldn't all fit here. Thankfully, there was somewhere else to put them. Katie took another step, back to the dungeon's past. There was no blob civilization to worry about; they had indeed accidentally blighted themselves trying to expand to the upper floors of the dungeon. She leant against the top floor shrine, idling kicking the decapitated corpse of the spider queen as she listened to the sounds of a hundred fox-kin and one not-quite-human marching to their deaths through the window a short passageway away.

Once the sound had died away, she wandered up the passageway herself, waving a hand over the window and repairing it. With a final glance at the frozen scene beneath, she turned and covered the distance back to the second floor with a single step. The fox kin town stood still, but was completely deserted. A snap of the fingers was all it took to rectify the situation.

In fact, even the snap wasn't required. It was just the look of the thing. Katie needed to do something, or how would any spectators know it was her doing it?

A group of several thousand fox-kin appeared in front of the town, most in a state of confusion, their most recent memories involving their deaths. Explaining the situation to the leaders, Katie left them to it, not teleporting this time, but descending into the catacombs on foot, purifying the blight with every step she took. Another finger click erased it from the dungeon completely. Now the blobs and the foxes could trade, and... do whatever else they wanted to do together.

Another step took her to a small bubble off the side of the sixth floor.

"Was this the resolution you were hoping for?" she asked the black dragon. "You were always so careful to stay on my good side. Did you know this would happen?"

"This? No. I knew only of your ripples in the Void; that you had been chosen as the successor of the previous Goddess. If I'd needed to guess, I'd have expected you to go back in time and stop the war completely. Do you know how many innocent humans have died? Yet you only raised that one village."

"Okay, I was suspicious when you mentioned human kings a while back, but how do you know that? It hasn't even happened yet!"

The black dragon grinned the toothy grin of someone who'd just pulled a fast one on a Goddess.

"Every action you take echoes through the Void. Especially you. With your power, every breath you take causes deafening ripples."

Katie took on the look of someone who, while standing in the middle of a packed but deathly quiet library, had just realised their shoes squeaked.

"Right..." she muttered. "Well, why were you so nice? I know I can be vindictive to those who really piss me off, but there was no danger of you crossing that threshold. Are you expecting some reward?"

The black dragon snorted. "Expecting? No. Hoping? Yes. This place is tiny! I saw few paths of you reaching this point that would not result in your freeing me, yet you managed to find one in which you did not."

"Hardly a tough request. I'll be right back."

Katie moved back to the real world, hovering over the ocean on the opposite side of the world to the twin-lobed continent. She pictured the ocean becoming land, and as she wished it, so it became; a new continent born to house the world's newcomers. Another act of will connected the window of the dungeon to a cliff-face in the centre of the new continent, and embedded the dungeon below it, no longer a world of its own, but now a part of this one.

"Finished," confirmed Katie, returning to the black dragon. "But now that's done, I'll have to do something else."

She vanished again before the black dragon had a chance to respond, but this time returned within a second, now holding a beautifully decorated silver sword.

"This has served its purpose. Best to dispose of it."

The sword shattered in her hand, the fragments breaking apart into dust, and the dust fading to nothing. A distant roar from upstairs implied that someone was unhappy to see it go missing.

"So that was what you meant about preparations to become the original," commented Katie, working out how the red dragon here was still alive. "Clever."

"Thank you," smirked the dragon.

"Well, that's me done. I should get out of here before I completely rewrite the world to my preferences."

"A terrifying thought indeed. I would not wish to be turned into some sort of fluffy, cuddly, silk-spinning toy."

Katie blinked, pondering the existence of such a creature. Was there such a thing as a fluff cocoon?

"Well, thanks for giving me the idea. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go try it out on my clones."

Katie stepped out of the dungeon and back to Earth, no longer bound to the fox-kin. When she'd originally cloned herself, she'd been convinced she'd drawn the short straw, but her opinion was rapidly changing. Even better, there were still damaged shrines back in the other world. Her clone could join her, and they could probably do something about dupliKatie too. But first, there was fun to be had, introducing the pair of comparatively weaker Katies to her new ten-tailed fluff-spider. Maybe the other housemates would want to join in, too?

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And so ends fetch quest. I apologise, but the e-book version is going to be a little delayed; I currently have family commitments to deal with, including but not limited to a gallbladder which has decided to undergo a job change to marble factory, and turned out to be fairly good at it.

There’s still some more what-if’s that could be interesting. What if Katie didn’t make such a stupid wish? (She grabs the sword, hands it over, glances outside the castle and agrees with Kevin about the smell, goes home and spends the rest of her life thinking she had a weird dream.) Or what if Ancora and Lucy (of chapter 99 fame) met up? (They’d be so adorable together that they’d two-handedly solve human-demon relations, because everyone would be too busy going dawwww to fight.) But I think that’s enough for now.

The remaining pair of Wednesdays in March will have bonus unbound soul, and in April I’ll be joining in the royalroad writathon with a new story, which I intended to be crafting related, but the more time I spend plotting the plot, the less crafting actually seems to get done… Ah well, I’ll have to see what happens when I write it.