109

109
Thane's POV

“The first wave coming in,” I call out, my changes werewolf ears picking up the sound of beings that are in two dimensions at once. Movement that shouldn't be happening when the phasing in and out becomes visible reality.Dark eyes in motionSmooth players, moving with confident grace, come forth and try to speak to me. "These aren't like Matthias—they're worse. The Architects have altered them across dimensions, they are become the perfect weapons for the annihilation of nature unity attempts."

Yvonne is at my side, whip quick, and the set of determination on her face shows me she’s no longer that child I once kept safe. “The Denzel pack warriors are armed and ready, brother. We worked with the other factions and with overlapping defensive zones."

"Good." I feel the pack bonds extend themselves across impossible distances as werewolves from scores of territories join their strength to our cause. The feeling is intoxicating and terrifying—power coursing through connections that stretch the width of continents, chained together by common cause instead of by forced domination. "And we've got to remember we're not just defending the reality that you live in. We're fighting for the right for all supernaturals to live in peace."

The breaches in reality grow larger, and through it I watch the good versions of us from other realities get ready to enter the fray. There’s another me, his green eyes shining with the cocky assurance that leading a world where supernaturals had come together generations earlier had afforded him. His shoulders are wide and relaxed, unburdened by the tension my own world knows all too well – the reality of constant fear of inter-species war.

“It’s weird, seeing what could have been,” murmurs Astella, brown eyes trained on her doppelganger from the winning reality. That version of her stands proud and calm, her pale skin radiant with the power that comes from decades of practiced unity magic rather than desperate improvisation.

“We are still becoming it.” I squeeze her hand, allowing the truth of my words to vibrate down our mate bond. “This is not a fight about who we were — it’s a fight about who we’re going to be.”

The Architects appear from tears in reality and the very sight is enough to make Alpha King's composure blink. These things were supernatural like us once, only their weirding was way more intense than what happened to Matthias. They are in a state of quantum superposition, simultaneously werewolfish and vampirish and witchish and faeish and none of those things. They change shape, solid, liquid, gas and can't be hit with regular attacks.

“All the ancient laws,” Lord Valerian whispers, his centuries of accumulated knowledge supplying context for what we are seeing. For the first time that I can remember, his pasty face actually looks scared. “They’ve been completely stripped of any semblance of individual identity. They’re no longer supernatural creatures gone wrong, not even: instead, they are supernatural material weapons.

“How do we beat something like that?” Queen Titania inquires, her ghostly voice tensing as she sees monsters that defy all she knows about the questions of being.

“We do not fight them,” my counterpart in the successful reality replies. His deep baritone is just as alpha mine, if not more so, having dueled for centuries in peace instead of constant war. “We remind them what they were. Unity magic at high levels can bring individual identity even to things screw up this bad.”

“The risk is huge,” warns the successful reality version of Astella, brown-eyed with a mixture of empathy and commercial realism. “If we are not successful, it’s possible the process will subsume us into the collective mind the Architects desire. We became weapons just like them.”

“Then we don’t fail,” I growl, my Alpha King voice booming through the dimensions as both our realities submit to my will. “Everyone link hands—no, not just with your counterparts from your dimension, but with all those versions of unity magic here!

It starts at once, and I don't believe I ever knew anything like it. Through the pack bonds, I feel not only the werewolves of our reality, but the werewolves from the successful dimension who attained natural unity hundreds of years ago. Their memories and stories wash through this link, showing me things I never knew were possible.

“I can see where they live,” gasps Yvonne, an air of wonder in her young voice. Werewolf packs with vampires in them, vampire families with witches, wizards or in a witch coven or wizard enclave or entire cities based on the co-operation of the supernatural as a large entity. It's beautiful."

"It's… and it's what we’re fighting for," Astella says, using her bond with the twins to bring together unity magic from both realities at once. “Not only for ourselves, but for any supernatural being who ever dreamed of a world without species-based prejudices.”

But as our togetherness magic intensifies, the Architect army does worse: It simply quickens its effort to attack. The quantum weapons they have made - calling them soldiers - slip past our physical fortress to assault not our corporal forms but our supernatural selves. Many of our comrades fall as their respective identity is directly attacked.

“They want to shatter our sense of self,” Elder Raven warns, tight-faced with effort like cast weathered rock, keeping the barriers held between us and our most endangered. We are the Architects and we understand that a single identity is the birthplace of chosen coherence. If they can peel that off, we are fodder for their enforced collective.”

"Matthias," I address the ancient Devourer whom has remained unexpectedly silent throughout the inter-dimentional calamity. "You've fought these weapons before. How do we counter them?"

“You don’t fight them,” he returns, visibly exerting himself in his corrupted form, struggling against the temptation of the Architect’s collective. "You absorb them. Not every quantum weapon used to be a supernatural with dreams and hopes and fears. Somewhere, deep down in their transformed self, all of those core identities remain.

“You’re saying we should try to bring back their individuality?” Lord Cassius inquires, his venerable mind latching on to the implications at once. “Use their own weapons against the Architects and return their free will to them?”

“It’s what the twins have been trying to tell us all along,” Astella intuits, her pale skin aglow with prophetic light. “Real unity isn’t that we all march in lock step, don’t differ with each other. It’s about empowering everyone to have the freedom to be themselves while collaborating towards shared goals.”

The first quantum weapons arrive at our location and instead of attacking us, we accept them into our unity magic. It’s painful to do — like trying to encircle living fire while being true to ourselves. But against all odds, slowly, almost imperceptibly, it starts to come together. Faces appear in the chaos now, its formless quantum heart resolving into the beings we call Powers, who were once almost – not quite – like us, before they were stripped clean by the Architects, who doomed them and left nothing but the past behind.

"It's functioning," Queen Titania breathes, and her flawless face looks a little amazed, as both the fae noble and one of the quantum weapons start to slough apart from each other. "We're actually restoring them."

“But we’re being depleted by this,” High Priestess Morgana warns, sweat popping on her leathery brow as she works to funnel witch magic into their effort to restore the place. “We can’t keep this unity magic at this level for much longer.”

“We don’t have to sustain it forever,” my successful counterpart from the reality that’s working says, and I hear the timbre of his voice filled with the confidence with which I’ve grown so intimate. “The point is that we don’t need to restore all of them — just enough to set off a cascade. And when the quantum weapons have remembered themselves, they will help us restore the other."

The plan is even more effective than we dared hope. Every supernatural reclaimed immediately sets out to assist others to escape the Architect adjustments. Within moments, the army of quantum weapons begins to disintegrate as personal identities emerge across numerous realities.

But our progress is not without a direct reaction from the Architects. The alien geometry crowning us erupts in alien fury as they recognize that their perfect weapons are being used against them. The voice that thrusts itself into our consciousness streams with overtones of fury that can cause the hum of reality to resonate with anger.

"Unacceptable," declare the voices of the architects, now sounding not only alien, but tele-multidimensional-threat. "DIR (direct intervention rule) standards are now in place. We, ourselves will see to it that this 'Magic of Natural Unity' is forever purged from all realities."

The gap over our heads yaws suddenly open, and something comes through that makes both our linked supernaturals essences recoils out of fear. It's hard to really describe the Phyrexians, because they're not a being, or a weapon; they're a living concept, a living idea given shape, the literal embodiment of enforced conformity spread through numerous dimensions. Its very existence has started to rob each and every supernatural creature in the vicinity of their individualism, herding us all towards a collective, free will-less existence.

“Everybody keep your sense of self!” I roar, pouring all the authority of the Alpha King that I am into trying to save all the individual identities that are being Sucked. Down the Drain like candy in a machine, all the sucking towards homogenization. “Remember who you are, why you’re here, what makes you special!”

But as the Architect-patch approaches ineluctable fall, Astella utters a bloody sigh of comprehension, the kind that sends flames along her brown eyes without fear, with hope.

"Thane," she breathes, and all the noise rushes away as if her voice alone clears it. These twins are holding up something that’s amazing. The Architects made a mistake in the crossing cosmic blueprint, a big one. They believed forced unity would always overpower chosen unity, but they never experienced their ultimate belief tested against a truly successful natural unity of existence in multiple realities.

"What are you saying?" I query, even as I can sense through our link that she’s found something that might be a game changer.

“I mean that we’re going to show them what happens when free will and voluntary cooperation excel in perfect symbiotic harmony trans-dimensionally,” she tells me, her alabaster skin glowing white as power comes to her from the right realities, the wrong tries turned allies, the uncountable possibilities of potential life that we were seconds away from birthing into our kind’s next phase of evolution. “We are going to demonstrate that love will rise above hate, that kindness will triumph over fear — and that we will all rise together, as united we are stronger than when we are apart.