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Title: The Wheel of Time Breaks
Posted By: The_Amyrlin_Seat
Posted On: 5/21/99 7:47:19 AM


The Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and go. The Wheel rolled away from the Creator and smashed itself on a hill. He put it back together hoping and praying (Well, not praying, I guess. He is the Creator, after all) that no one would notice the shoddy patch job he had done.


Egwene al’Vere, the Watcher of the Seals, the Flame of Tar Valon, the youngest Amyrlin Seat in memory, moved quickly through the halls of the White Tower towards her study. As she absently acknowledged the nods and curtsies of those she passed, she mused on recent events. It had been surprisingly easy to take the Amyrlin Seat away from Elaida; she just wished she could remember how she did it. Frowning, she walked into her study.

"What are you doing?" A short, dark haired woman sat behind her desk, eating pudding out of a strange looking cup with her bare hands.

She looked up guiltily, "Oh, um.... Arik stole my pudding spoon and created his own religion with it. I haven’t been able to replace it yet, so I’m stuck eating with my hands. Anyways, who are you?"

"I am Egwene al’Vere, the Amyrlin Seat," she said drawing herself up, hoping she didn’t sound too ridiculous. People always gave her strange looks for being so young.

"No, you're not. I’m the Amyrlin around here."

"Do you know what I did to the last woman who usurped the Amyrlin Seat?", Egwene demanded.

The stranger licked a stray glob of pudding off the side of her hand. "Umm... No, actually I don’t. RJ didn’t write that into Path of Daggers."

"What are you talking about? Who is this Arr-jay?"

"Wait a second.... You're her, aren’t you? The real Egwene? The one from the books? This is so cool!"

The strange woman bounced to her feet and came around the desk to grab her hand. Egwene noticed that she left pudding smears where she touched her.

"I’m Kathana and I think you're the best! You're right up there with Moiraine! Can I have your autograph?"


Downstairs, Lan was looking for his bond-holder Nynaeve. "Nynaeve! Oh Nynaeve! Where are you hiding?"

"I’m right here you wool-headed man! Where do you think I’d be?" Nynaeve stalked out from around a corner and tugged her braid. "Honestly, you think that I have nothing better to do than hang around, waiting for you?"

"Nyn, what’s wrong? Are you having a bad day or something?"

"Of course not, you lummox! And why are you calling me by that ridiculous nickname? You think just because we got married in that bizarre Sea Folk ceremony, that you can call me silly names. I don’t think so!"


Lan staggered beneath this verbal onslaught. His bondholder NEVER acted like this. Something was very wrong here.


Moridin walked the slopes of Shayol Ghul. He soon came to the one he sought.

"Demandred, you have overstepped yourself. You have claimed to be Nae’blis."

"You know, I’ve gotten really sick of people saying that. I’m the Nae’blis. Me! Demandred! It doesn’t matter what the books say!"

"Ah, I see. You’ve gone mad. No excuse, Demandred. You are not Nae’blis. I am."

Moridin reached for the True Power at the same time as Demandred did.

"We’ll see about that." Demandred muttered.


"So I’m just a character in a bunch of books?" Egwene asked.

Kathana nodded.

"And you people are so obsessed that you spend your free time pretending to be us?" She nodded again.

"And somehow, you think that your pretend world and my real world have gotten mixed up?"

"Yup, you got it." Kathana smiled at her.

"Okay, just one more question." Egwene held up one sticky hand. "Could we find some spoons? This pudding is really messy."


In the Spring of the Morning, Perrin and Darksmoon were commiserating.

"Yeah," Darksmoon said. "Every time, I ask an Aes Sedai for a kiss, she laughs at me. It' so humiliating. All I want is some affection." He took another pull on his beer.

Perrin patted his shoulder. "You think you got it bad? My wife, Faile, won’t even let me look at another woman. Plus, I keep thinking that I’m going to turn into a Howler one day."

"Yeah, I get that too. Just because we like to howl at the moon and have fleas, the Aes Sedai treat us like animals."

"At least you don’t have to worry about the gorgeous First of Mayene chasing you."

Darksmoon gave Perrin a funny look. "Umm... Buddy? Most of us would like that."

Perrin ignored him, "And all you really want from life is to curl up in front of the fireplace and have Faile rub your tummy. Maybe throw you a few sticks once in awhile. But no. You have to be friends with the Dragon Reborn, don’t you? You have to be ta’veren, don’t you? You have to save the world, don’t you?"

As Perrin rambled on, Darks slipped quietly out the back.


"I think we might be able to put everyone back in their own stories." Kathana told Egwene. Kathana was taking her fellow Amyrlin on a tour of the Dragonmount White Tower.

"Really? How?"

"I’m still trying to work out the details. But I think we’re going to need more channelers to link with."

"How about Elayne?"

Kathana shook her head, "We don’t have a Daughter-Heir here, so she wouldn’t have come through. We ought to find both of the Dragons Reborn. Them plus two more women ought to be able to send you back to your story."

"Okay, sounds good. Where do you think we can find them?"

"I don’t know, but we can always check at the Black Tower."

"Are you sure that’s safe?" Egwene was dubious.

"Oh, of course it is. We bond them all as Warders here and the taint never bothers anybody."

"Sounds like a good deal."


Balefire lept from Demandred’s hand as he dodged a lightning bolt blasted by Moridin. It slammed into a shield woven of the True Power and reverberated through his skull. By the Great Lord, that hurt!

Moridin smiled at him urbanely, "Nice try, Demmy. Now I think I’ll finish you off."

Demandred growled. "No....One...Calls...Me....DEMMY!!!!"

Furious, he channeled and created a sword out of Fire. A gateway ripped open as he charged Moridin and they fell through.


Egwene and Kathana stepped through the gateway Kathana had created. Egwene glanced about at all the men wearing black coats nervously, until she realized that most of them were more interested in chasing around the large flocks of chickens than in a pair of Amyrlins.

A little man, with crazed eyes sidled up to them, then bit the head off a chicken. "Yum!" He said, spitting out feathers. "Do you know what chickens taste like?"

"Umm.....Chicken?" Egwene ventured a guess.

"Nope! They taste like pigeons! MWA HA HA HA!!!" He then broke into a spate of asthmatic coughing and wheezing and ran off.

"Was that Padan Fain?"

"No, it was Sathinar. He’s kind of an acquired taste. C’mon, we need to find out where the
Dragons are."

They continued across the courtyard of the Black Tower. Once they ran into an imposing looking fellow

"GREETINGS, MOTHER. I HOPE THE LIGHT SHINES ON YOU AND YOUR FRIEND." He bowed, then left them.

"Was that just....the Dark One?", Egwene whispered.

"No, he’s just annoying." Kathana shook her head. "He calls himself The Hunter, if you can imagine that."


Finally, after searching nearly the entire Black Tower grounds, they found the two Dragons.

"You give that back! I’m the real Dragon Reborn!" Rand attempted to yank the broken Seanchan spear away from Phoenix.

"I don’t think so! This is my website!" Phoenix wrested it away from him. "Ha ha!! I win!"

"Yeah! Well, I didn’t want it anyways!!" Rand crossed his arms and got a pouty expression on his face.

"Oh dear." Egwene sighed. "I’m not sure we can get those two to work together. They don’t seem to get along."

"Nonsense. You just have to know how to deal with Dragons Reborn."

She walked over to where Phoenix was dancing around, waving the Dragon Scepter.

"Oh Phoenix." She said in a sing-song voice and pulling a chocolate chip cookie out of her pocket. "You play nice with the other Dragon and you can have this cookie."

Kathana waved it slowly in front of his eyes. They tracked it like a greedy child’s.

"Two cookies."

Kathana felt her pleasant smile slip slightly. "Fine. You can have two cookies. Just promise to behave yourself."

"Alright, but I want my cookies."

She pulled out another cookie, this one was peanut butter. "Here you go. Now remember, play nice!"

Phoenix snatched them away, dropping the spear. "Ha Ha!! Sucker!" Rand ran over and picked up the Dragon Scepter.

"Wow. I didn’t know Dragons liked cookies."

"Oh yeah. They’re suckers for ‘em." Kathana told her. "You ought to try it in the next book when Rand gives you trouble."

"Do you think we have enough channelers to get us home now?"

"I’m not sure. Maybe we ought to find Lanfir."

"Lanfear?"

"No, not the evil Forsaken from the Age of Legends. We want the perky blonde from Holland."

"Holland?"

"Yeah, it's... Nevermind. Let’s just find a sa’angreal or something and use that instead."

"How about Callandor?" Rand suggested, pulling his thumb out of his mouth. "I brought it with me."

"Yeah, that’s a good one." agreed Kathana. "We ought to be able to send you home with that. Now we just need to find all of the characters that don’t belong here."

"I’ve got one right here!" yelled Darksmoon. He came up the hill, leading a snarling, drooling Perrin on a leash. "At first I thought he was cool, then he kept trying to sniff my rear."

"Wait a minute, they don’t usually act like this. What happened?" Egwene gave Kathana a puzzled look.

"I think they’ve been infected with the silliness that runs rampant around Dragonmount. If we don’t get you back soon, the next book will be full of chickens and chocolate pudding."

"But, I haven’t been affected yet", Egwene protested.

"Um... Egwene? Can we see your hands?" asked Darksmoon.

She hid them behind her back, with a guilty flush. "Why would you want to see them?"

"Because I have a suspicion that they are covered in chocolate pudding." he told her. To
prove it, Perrin crawled around behind her and began happily licking it off of her.

"We need to get you out of here, before you start calling everyone ‘hun’ and ‘dear’ and start
smacking Rand around with a shovel." Darksmoon looked around. "Is this everyone?"

"Here, I've got one!" Lan was dragging a kicking and screaming Nynaeve across the grounds. "Take her away, please. I miss my nice, sweet Nynaeve."

Nynaeve twisted out of his grasp and began kicking him. "Not good enough for you anymore, huh? You great bloody wool-headed lummox of a... a man!", she finished with the worst insult she could think of.

A gateway ripped open in front of them. Demandred fell out pinning an unconscious Moridin to the ground. "Who’s the Nae’blis now, you little punk? Huh?" He smacked him in
the face. "You like that, don’t you? You want some more?" Smack! "Huh?" Smack!

"What did he do to you?" Rand asked in awe.

"He called me... Well, nevermind. Just get him out of here before I kill him for you."

Demandred looked up at the small crowd of onlookers that had gathered. "Hey wait a minute, there’s two Dragons. And two Amyrlins! What’s going on here?"

"Never mind that." Kathana snapped. "Rand, channel through Callandor, if you would. I’ll try to link with you and we’ll open a gateway back to the real Randland."

"Hey! That tickles!" yelped Callandor.

"Huh?" said Rand.

"I forgot about him. His name is Callandor. He cleans the Black Tower. Try using the sa’angreal Callandor instead." Kathana told him.

"Alrighty." Rand pulled out the shining crystal sword and channeled.

"Okay, now you, Phoenix."

Kathana linked easily with Egwene. She stretched and managed to find the Source through the two Dragons. All the Asha’man and Aes Sedai watching applauded dutifully.

"Shut up, you morons." muttered Egwene through clenched teeth. They really needed to get her out of here. She was even starting to talk like Kathana.

Kathana deftly wove a gateway back to their home. With a final kick to the ribs, Demandred rolled Moridin through the opening. He muttered something that sounded like, "That’ll teach you to call me Demmy." Lan picked up Nynaeve and threw her into the shimmering square.

"Good riddance to a miserable piece of rubbish." Rand jumped through the gateway, taking Callandor (the sa’angreal one) and the Dragon Scepter with him. "Ha ha!! I get to keep my pointy stick!" he yelled back.

"Here, have some pudding for the road." Kathana said, handing Egwene a six-pack of pudding cups.

"Thanks, hun." Egwene snatched the pudding gleefully with one hand and Perrin’s leash with the other.

"May the Force be with you!" Phoenix yelled.

"What?"

"Just ignore him. It's the taint talking." Kathana told her. Egwene gave a wave and stepped through the gateway, which winked out behind her.

Kathana gave a relived sigh and let go of the Source. The gateway collapsed with a hiss.

"Well, that was interesting." she said.

"Hey, I’ve got a question. If Egwene was turning into you, how come you didn’t turn into her?" Phoenix asked, taking a bite from one of his cookies.

Kathana crossed her arms beneath her breasts and sniffed. "Do you really want to know, Cookie Boy?" she asked, raising one eyebrow.

"Umm... I guess not." he said, sharing a quick glance with Demandred and Darksmoon.

"Good." she said, sniffing again for emphasis.

"Will someone please explain what just happened?" Demandred asked.

"I’ll explain while we play JK." Phoenix put one arm around Demandred’s shoulders and took another bite from his cookie. "You see, Demandred..."

"Hey! Your getting crumbs on me!"


~THE END~