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Chapter 192
🕑 Added 2025-08-04 13:48:17 +0000 UTCThe Time Variance Authority, the brave men and women who fought to protect the sacred timeline above all else. They worked endlessly, for eons without rest, all to ensure the proper flow of time.
Countless dangerous variants had attempted to harm the sacred timeline, yet the endless work and dedication of the TVA had ensured that the universe continued on in all its singularity.
No branches were allowed; the sacred timeline continued on as the timekeepers had decreed. Moving ever closer towards the promised end of time.
No matter how much some variants struggled, no matter their efforts, they were all pruned one by one… well, most of them, a few still struggled, escaping from hunters and even killing them, but it was only a matter of time before they were found, caught, and pruned.
That was… until she appeared.
One day, a new branch on the sacred timeline appeared. Nothing new, it happened all the time, but this one soon proved to be different, very, very different.
Most branches appeared when someone stepped off the path the timekeepers had set out for them, when they turned from order, and towards chaos and madness.
This time, however, the cause of the branch was someone who shouldn’t exist at all. A person, or a being that should have long been dead, or just someone who took on the name of another.
It hadn’t mattered at first, everyone knew what they had to do.
Arrest them.
Prune the branch.
Protect the sacred timeline.
And only then, could they try to figure out what had happened.
But when the Hunters arrived, they didn’t come back.
Whole squads lost. Teams trained to take down Nexus threats reduced to bloodstains and screaming temporal echoes.
Nevertheless, the TVA didn’t stop, they mourned the heroes, the friends lost in the endless challenge of keeping the universe and timeline from spiraling into chaos.
They pushed on, but no longer were they casual about it; they went in force to end the threat once and for all, to get rid of the anomaly and prune the branch before it went out of control.
Nonetheless, despite that, despite continuing to throw lives at it, despite every possible tactic employed, nothing worked.
The anomaly was unbeatable, and they could do nothing to stop her; she even stole a tempad and caused chaos inside the TVA itself, though at least she never fully attacked them.
A small mercy.
Still, the TVA was supposed to be absolute. It couldn’t afford to lose… Yet, they had no way to solve this problem, they couldn’t just continue to throw lives at the issue, not when it clearly wasn’t working.
Mobius leaned back into the couch, letting out a long deep sigh as he did so. “You know, I’ve always been jealous of how soft your couch is. Compared to the chair I have to sit in all day? This is heaven.”
Renslayer didn’t turn around, she just kept pouring them both a drink, filling her own glass a good bit more than she normally did. These days were tasking, and she needed a bit more to get through it.
“Is that the only reason you keep coming up here? And here I thought we were friends.” Renslayer said as she finally turned around and handed Morbius his glass.
Mobius gave her a sheepish grin. “Well, that... and your bourbon collection is second to none. Can’t get this stuff down in Records.”
Renslayer sat across from him, her usual posture stiff, but today—less so. She sipped her drink in silence.
They didn’t speak for a moment. The hum of the TVA's artificial skyline pulsed softly through the walls, casting golden light through the shutters.
“So,” she said finally. “What’s your read on it? And don’t give me the usual Mobius optimism.”
Mobius blew out a breath. “Well, I would be able to give you more if you allowed me to go down there to investigate.
“That’s not happening.”
“But Ravonna, I can’t fully analyze someone I have nothing on, she isn’t in the files, so all I can do is look at everything around her… and there isn’t much, so I need to go there and figure this out.”
“No, Mobius, it's too dangerous, even the best of the hunters didn’t stand a chance. If you go down there, you will likely die.”
“We can’t handle her from here, we can’t go down there, it sounds to me like we are well and truly fucked.” Mobius said without holding back.
Renslayer didn’t respond immediately. She stared into her drink like it might offer her a better answer than Mobius had.
“I’m not saying I like it,” she said finally. “But we’re not equipped to handle this. Not her. Not whatever she is.”
Mobius leaned forward, elbows on knees, brow furrowed. “You know what bothers me the most? It’s not the power. Or the sword. Or even the fact that she walks through pruning fields like they're morning fog.”
Renslayer looked up.
“It’s that she’s not doing it out of malice. Not really. She’s not trying to destroy the TVA. She’s not trying to conquer anything. She’s just... living. On a path we don’t control.”
“And that terrifies you?” Renslayer asked.
Mobius laughed once, humorless. “It should terrify everyone.”
Renslayer stood abruptly and walked toward her console, the glowing interface casting a soft light across her face. She stared at the red-highlighted branch marked ARTHURIA-PRIME. The anomaly. The one that refused to fade.
“We’ve tried force. We’ve tried infiltration. We’ve tried suppression. None of it works. You said it yourself—she’s not hostile to us. Just... disinterested.”
Mobius tilted his head. “Which, frankly, might be worse.”
“Maybe.” She typed a few commands. “But the Time-Keepers still demand stability. So from here on out, we’re classifying this as an Active Autonomous Fork.”
Mobius blinked. “You’re not pruning it?”
“No. We’re doing something we’ve never done before.” She glanced back at him. “We’re standing down.”
He let that sink in. “Standing down. That’s a hell of a headline.”
“Observation only. No more hunter deployments. No more strike teams. If she makes another move against us, we reassess.”
Mobius looked impressed. “Big move for the TVA.”
“It’s not a move. It’s survival.” She entered one final command, and the screen shifted.
“We can’t stop her, we can’t stop that rogue timeline, we have tried, tried everything, but she herself is anchoring the timeline, that means that as long as she is around, we can’t prune it. Dropping hundreds of reset charges, but they do nothing, because of her.”
“Yeah that will complicate matters, forcing a confrontation, and one we can’t handle, the timekeepers don’t have some secret card up their sleeves for this?”
“I wish, but they are normally busy as it is, and having to handle this rogue timeline? They are far too overworked to help us. They are all that stand between us and the abyss.”
Mobius took a long drink, brow furrowing as he watched the shifting data. “So we just watch? Hope she doesn’t wake up one morning and decide she’s done playing nice?”
Renslayer didn’t answer immediately.
“She’s already rewritten history,” she said at last. “Not by time travel, not by tampering with events... but just by being. She’s too anchored. Too real. Too—” she hesitated on the word, then spat it out, “—fundamental. Like a fixed point that was never supposed to exist.”
Mobius stared at the glowing red line labeled ARTHURIA-PRIME, arcing across the timeline like a crack in glass. “What happens if she becomes hostile?”
Renslayer didn’t blink. “We tried to block the Tempad from letting her in here, but they were never made with that kind of feature… so if she does… we might be, as you put it, fucked.”
Mobius leaned back, a hand over his face. “Great. So what do we do until then?”
Renslayer closed the console. “We continue our work, because it is important, our work is still meaningful, so we continue. It is at times like this we have to work extra hard. We can’t afford more branches.”
“But isn’t one already one too many? It can branch off endlessly, and we can’t do anything?” Mobius was a skilled analyst and instantly saw the key issue.
“True,” Renslayer admitted. “There is honestly a risk that we have to replace the Sacred timeline with Arthuria-prime, because we can’t get rid of her and her timeline. But for now, the timekeepers aren’t willing to go down that route.”
Mobius couldn’t really understand how the timekeepers couldn’t deal with his Arthuria on their own.
Sure, he understood they were busy, weaving together the future and all that, but surely something this important would get their attention. If this branch threatened their endless work, surely they could get off their seats for a moment?
“I know what you are thinking.” Renslayer set down her empty glass. “You think they won’t act. I think they can’t.”
Mobius blinked. “You’re saying even the Time-Keepers...?”
“Everything we know says that this thing, human or not, isn’t affected by time, and that is what we master. The timekeepers control time, so against her… I guess they judge it too risky, at least until they know more.”
Mobius let that sit for a while. “Just what is she? Even all those so-called gods are nothing we can’t handle, but this one? Not even a variant… could she be something leftover? From before the sacred timeline?”
Renslayer didn’t answer at first. She stared at the console, at the timeline that refused to be corrected, red and vibrant and immune to pruning.
“It’s a possibility,” she said at last, her voice low. “One that was passed around at the last meeting, though the timekeepers themselves didn’t weigh in, neither confirming nor denying it.”
“So it could be possible?”
“Or at least that time was so chaotic that even they aren’t sure about all the things that were around at the time, and well… yeah, it's possible.”
Mobius leaned forward again, resting his elbows on his knees. “Well, we for sure aren’t just dealing with another troublesome variant like that one Loki one I’m still hunting… we are dealing with something much worse than that.”
Renslayer didn’t disagree.
She just stared at the red line on the screen.
“Indeed, this is far worse than just a rogue variant; this is a real threat, and one that might be the end of everything we know and love.”
“Well, whenever you feel like sending someone down to investigate, I guess I will get back to work, finding this damned variant that has been running circles around us for years now. Do my part in keeping the timeline from ending.” Mobius said as he finished his drink.
Renslayer too downed her drink. “Don’t count on it, that place… It's too dangerous, there is too much we don’t know.”
“And we won’t know unless you send someone down there to find out.”
“Take care, Mobius, and keep up that drive. You will find the variant sooner or later.” She put down her glass, the stress of the current events even making her forget about a coaster.
“You too, Ravonna.”
“For all time.”
“Always.”
