In the distance, he could hear the rumble and boom of battle getting closer. Dust fell sporadically, disturbed by the larger explosions, but he kept writing. Nothing stopped the scratch of his pen against paper, unless he needed to brush away debris fallen from the ceiling. Even then it was with an economy’s motion that barely broke the pace of The Work.

The Work would be completed. That had been decided, and so it would happen. Seething fields of probability collapsed into ordered rows of flowing cursive script to make it so. He deftly imposed his will on the process of the composition before him, and allowed himself a smile of contentment.

The moment stretched, poised on the tip of his pen, dragged against the inertia of time, and the shadows deepened around him. Pressure began to gather against his ears and across his skin, defying his steady progress as if the world had begun to hold its breath. Even a particularly loud boom of ordnance detonating right overhead did nothing to distract him.

Then he was done, and the only sound in the chamber was the click of the barrel of his pen as he laid it on the varnished tabletop surface beside the book.

There was another overhead rumble, but he paid it no attention. The future, or at least the moment he had calved away from nature’s flow, was now fixed in place. It spun from the linchpin of his design and this totem of declaration.

His task was done. Now the story would gather its strength and devour all opposition. He looked down, closed the book, and waited for the end.