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"Right on time! Welcome to the time rift!"
Aeon said it before he looked up, and regretted the chipper attitude immediately.
"Wonderful time rift it is!" St. Germain grinned broadly, tipping his top hat. "You always get the best assignments. This place is beautiful. I was in 1479. They didn't have running water."
"You haven't even seen the dungeon yet." Aeon snipped, hopping off his rock. "Why are you here?"
"Just checking up. Everyone is back in their own graves, tucked up snug and tight under the dirt."
"For now."
"For now." St. Germain nodded. "And for now, I am here, come to check up on my favorite apprentice."
"Apprentice!" Aeon shrieked, brandishing his blade at St. Germain. "Which one of us had to live without toilets for a month and which one was put in charge of stopping a parasite on the cosmic reality!?"
"Yes, yes, my little apprentice, you're very important." St. Germain patted the air in front of himself. Aeon threw his sword at the man, but he became insubstantial (rapid dissociation from the time stream, used for something as fickle as dodging). The sword lodged to the clock in the rock behind him. St. Germain laughed.
"Temper, temper!" He sang, dodging again. Aeon gritted his teeth, and played chase. They darted around the castle ruins, until St. Germain got bored and started jumping through realities. Aeon chased him through the throne room and the cathedral, then the torture chamber (he let out a low whistle of appreciation, then yelped when the acid began to eat at his boots). They landed outside the gates of the castle, or rather, a version of the castle.
Soldiers in digital camouflage loitered around the gates. They had tanks. They had anti-drone signal jammers. Aeon pulled St. Germain behind a crumbling pillar.
"This is '99, you idiot!" He hissed. "Why would you pick '99 of all places?!"
"I forget how well equipped they were." St. Germain ignored him, peeking out at the fortification. "Do you think they were really expecting damned aircraft, or were the Flak Cheetahs just for show?"
"Who cares!" Aeon pulled him back behind cover. "We're leaving!"
He picked a neutral event, and stepped into the New York penthouse he maintained in the 1940s.
St. Germain whistled. "Very flashy. Where are we?"
"The Ritz. Charlotte and Jonathan are being sent to Romania next door, so keep your voice down. Now, what do you want?" Aeon crossed his arms. "I need to get back to the rift."
A pensive expression flashed across St. Germain's face, before he hid it behind a wide grin. "As I said, just checking in."
Aeon raised an eyebrow.
"Zead escaped."
"He was supposed to." Aeon sat in his armchair, and gestured St. Germain to the couch across the coffee table. He didn't move. "You can't change the past."
St. Germain raised an eyebrow. "How linear."
"I don't mean your ability," Aeon leaned forward, "I mean your responsibility. And mine too, by extension. Why tell me this? Now I'm witness to your tampering with the timeline. Do you have any idea what kind of position this puts me in?"
"You were always so fussy. I'm speaking in hypotheticals, of course."
"Hm. And if you were to hypothetically kill Zead?"
"A thought exercise." St. Germain waved with hand. "Observation is hard, Aeon. You haven't felt it yet, but I guarantee it—one day, you'll want to change something, to stop a death, or to cause one, and you'll only have your self control to stop you. And it'll hurt worse because of it."
Aeon felt his jaw twitch. "Get out of my apartment. I have a rift to close."
"I'd look the other way for you." St. Germain said genially, tipping his hat. "You are my favorite apprentice, after all."
Aeon threw the Tiffany lamp at him, but he stepped back into the 1400s, and it smashed against the wall. Aeon walked over to it, and plucked it from a second before it had been destroyed. He placed the lamp back on the coffee table.
"Fool." He whispered under his breath, and stepped back to the rift in time.