Chapter Text
Everything hinges on a single moment.
In one cluster of timelines, two figures stand atop a castle as a great battle ravages the town below them. One branch has the lightning strike and the castle revived. In the other one is subdued and carried away, as her ancestral seat is destroyed. In the third? The lightning strikes...
...power courses through circuits..
...a startled mimmoth--and there is always a mimmoth involved when something like this occurs--relieves itself in shock when it hears the thunder...
...which sends a stray arc of electricity into a device in a dusty, long abandoned lab whose sudden activation reacts in improbable ways with at least seventeen other devices...
...and a vortex of white light erupts engulfs the town and a portion of a gigantic airship, ripping both out of their home reality.
See another cluster of timelines.
Watch closely, because when the town lands in one, things are going to get interesting.
+++++
Upon awakening, Agatha Heterodyne knew that there had better be cake. It was totally self-indulgent. There was a town to rebuild, people to heal, and her psychotic body-stealing mother to deal with. The fate of Europa weighed on her shoulders. Nonetheless, there had better be some cake. Agatha could see it now: one quiet moment where she could eat the sweet reward for all the trouble and chaos she had suffered since that last day in Beetleburg. That's all she really asked for from the universe at the moment. So, of course there wouldn't be any.
She opened her eyes.
A few centimeters away on a small table was a plate emblazoned with the golden trilobite. On it was a vanilla cake covered with green frosting. Sprinkled over it were tiny candy skulls and gingerbread trilobites. Someone had written "OUR BELOVED, MERCILESS MISTRESS" in yellow icing on top. Beside it was a fork and her glasses. Sitting up, Agatha put on her glasses to see where she was. She was lying in a massive four-poster bed that could comfortably hold six people. The carvings on the bedposts depicting various incubi and succubi engaged in practises too spicy for The Sprocket Wench of Prague. There were also, she noticed, hefty iron rings bolted into the corners of the frame. The furnishings and decor were in the same theme. Along one wall was a fully-stocked lab bench with a cunningly-designed miniature forge in the corner.
A door creaked open. A whisp of steam came out. Seizing her prize, Agatha walked across a floor heated to the perfect temperature. Past the door was a great bathroom worthy of the more dissolute Roman emperors. In the center was a marble pool set in the middle. Hot water gushed out of the mouths of brass gargoyles. The surface of the water was covered in froth. Agatha let the nightgown she had woken up in fall to the floor. Bubble bath tickled her nose as she submerged herself beneath the foam. She sighed as jets blasted out from the tub walls, aimed at precisely where muscles ached the most. Agatha picked up the plate she had set down beside the pool. Fork clinked on porcelain. Complex, atonal humming echoed about the bathroom.
"Thanks, Castle," Agatha said, licking the last crumb off the plate.
"Of course, Mistress," came a voice right beside her ear. "You were most adamant about your needs. I hardly think the flood from my cistern--no matter how bracing--would have been enough."
"How long was I out?"
"Four days," the most malevolent example of Europan architecture replied. "And before you panic, all your companions are safe and reasonably unwounded. Vanamonde is handling the aftermath of the battle."
"My poor townspeople," Agatha said. "I come here to save them. And I end up wrecking the town."
"Everyone says this is the best Heterodyne ascension ever!" Der Kestle said. "Death! Destruction! A Heterodyne screaming defiance against an overwhelming force as she calls the very lightning from the heavens! I admit I had unworthy doubts of you before, my mistress. But you are without a doubt worthy of your lineage."
"As long as they're happy about it." Agatha smiled hesitantly. "So we won, right?"
"A brutal, crushing victory snatched from the jaws of defeat." Der Kestle sniffled. "So unfortunate you were unconscious. You really deserved to watch the blood of your enemies run through the gutters. Don't worry, it was diverted to the Great Hospital for the wounded."
"My ancestors might have been homicidal lunatics, but at least they were efficient."
"Now, you are expected to attend the post-ascension ceremonies, mistress," Der Kestle continued. "Duty calls even for the Heterodyne."
"With this place in ruins?"
"Partying amid the ashes is one of the great Mechanicsburg traditions," Der Kestle said. "Don't worry, the festivites won't be too onerous. Confirmation at the cathedral, a torchlight parade, and such. A rant would be appreciated."
"Have some medals struck," Agatha said. "'Hero of Mechanicsburg', Second and First Class. Make sure the one for Von Zinzer is awarded 'for valorous conduct above and beyond the call of a minion'."
"Already done. The souvenir foundries were churning them out within minutes of victory."
"Got to love a tourist town." Agatha slumped down in the tub. "As long as there are no complications."
There was a significant silence.
"Castle? Castle?"
"Um, would mistress want me to have another slice of cake--"
"WHAT WENT WRONG THIS TIME?"
"I am opening the balcony doors," Der Kestle said. A brass succubus offered a silk robe.
Jets of water rinsed her off as she scrambled out of the tub. Wrapping her hair up in a towel turban, Agatha wrestled herself into some semblance of decency. Two doors swung aside on the other side of the bedroom. Blast shutters rattled out of the way. Outside was a balcony several floors above the courtyard. Her room must be in the keep behind the gatehouse tower. She could see over the town to the main gate. What told her things had gone seriously awry was not her eyes. It was her nose. She sniffed deeply. Salty air? Agatha gasped when she looked out upon what should be a grassy plain running down to the river running at the base of where there should have been mountains. Instead, she saw a shingled beach where the river-bank had been. Surf crashed against the pilings of the stub left of the bridge.
Height. She needed height. Agatha ran pell-mell through the halls of the Castle. Its voice guided her through the maze, avoiding the most inconvenient death traps, up to the top of one of the towers. Her knuckles whitened as she gripped the parapet. No longer was Mechanicsburg surrounded by the mountains of the Carpathians. All around was forest growing up right to the walls without a hill in sight. Two headlands curved out from either side of the beach to enclose a sheltered cove. Light from the two moons danced off the waves.
Two moons?
Astronomy was not her field. Star-watching in Europa was usually the province of reclusive sorts who muttered every so often about eldritch creatures from the inky depths of space. Still, she did know the general features of the night sky. Uncle Barry had sometimes taken her outside when she found it hard to sleep, teaching her the simpler constellations. This was no sky that had ever shone on Earth. Two small moons had replaced the one she had always known. A glittering band like one of Saturn's rings arched across the vault of the heavens. Filling the sky was not the Milky Way, but two vast ribbons of stars flowed from a massive bulge that encompassed one third of her view. The clarity of the stars was sharper than she had ever known.
It was beautiful. It was astonishing. She could lose herself forever in the sight.
"We're not in Transylvania any more, are we?"
"No, mistress. We are not."