110
110
Astella's POV
“You want me to risk it all,” I whisper to the twins as they float in front of me, their forms ghostlike, fluctuating between dimensions, stuck in the space that divides them. I make instant eye contact with theirs, trying to find a hint of deceit on those otherworldly faces. Their demand feels like a huge weight on my shoulders that will crush me. My life, and every single supernatural creature in every reality.
The female twin’s voice reverberates in my mind like distant thunder, rebounding through spheres of consciousness I’d no idea were there. Her figure is half-solid, half-permeable, like she is in multiple places at once. The Architects think forced unity is the end all, be all, Astella. Their whole life is built on that premise. Even in the case of chosen unity that spans multiple realities at once, they have never seen it before.”
"But what if we're wrong?" I am shaking in my pale hands as the weight of all of these lives bears upon my shoulders, each one is a demand I never made but am unable to walk away from. The air around us tingles with interdimensional energy, causing my waist-length brown hair to whip around in ghostly gusts coming all directions at the same time. What if this nature unity magic isn't powerful enough to free them from their implanted group mind? What if I fuck up and condemn everyone to this empty existence?”
Thane’s deep voice slices through my uncertainty via our mate bond the unshakable link that forever binds our souls to each other irrespective of the distance and dimensions that come between. I can sense his strength pulsating through me, his absolute trust in my powers melting away the icy terror that would curl me in on myself. Astella, whatever you are planning, you are not going to do it alone. I can sense your fear through the bond- but I also feel your resolve. You're stronger than you know."
"It's a risk we've got to take," the male twin argues, his image flashing even faster as the Architect nears its destination. Reality itself bends around him like heat rising up from summer pavement, warping into painful distortions to watch head-on. "Take a chance upon it or all into their line they’ll subside. Free will will itself will never have happened in the whole of the dimensions, possibilities, dreams that might have been."
I face the cosmic horror lumbering towards me, alien geometry bending reality around it like a cancerous growth on the loom of existence. The sight, it turns my stomach and my shaman powers instinctively recoil me from it. Every fibre of me wants to run, to cower, to let someone else carry this impossible load. But my shaman powers are thrumming with unprecedented force, siphoning from places I hardly know exist. The unity magic that courses through our intertwined supernaturals is like a symphony of singular sounds, so very distinct, and yet complementary and at balance, like the parts of an orchestra playing different parts of the same beautiful tune.
"Yvonne," I shout at Thane’s sister, who lifts her whip into the air, the determination on her young face so much like her brother. As young as she is, she has a bearing of the self-assurance that only people who have already overcome insurmountable odds can carry. "Can you feel it? The way our powers work hand in glove without us being all the same?”
“I can,” she says, her voice level, even as the cosmic horror above us presses closer. Her cool, dark eyes are wise beyond her years. “It’s like music when each instrument makes a noise but together they make something wonderful. “It’s something that’s greater than any individual instrument could create by itself.”
Lord Valerian speaks, and his ancient wisdom can be seen in every crease of his pale face. There is ancient wisdom in his eyes, the experience of countless skirmishes and close calls.
“The Architects are of the belief that unity is just a function of removing personal agency from the equation. They don't understand participation from love vs fear. “We should have almost a reverence for the other parties because they allow for this to happen,” said Sarah Longwell, a prominent anti-Trump conservative strategist, in an email to me. "Assuming they’re not flaming idiots on the intelligence front, sharing information among parties who disagree is valuable so long as that info is largely accurate. They are simply afraid of difference and distrust. To them, difference equals discord, and discord equals weakness.”
"Exactly." My voice becomes like a shofar, as comprehension washes over me like sunlight piercing a storm. Dots of a great, cosmic jigsaw are clicking together in my head into a picture that both horrifies and sends shivers up my spine. “They have been coercing entities into their collective for eons, stripping from them everything that makes them an individual, everything that gives their lives any meaningful value. But they have never faced willing unity. They don’t realise that, when we decide to work side-by-side, when we chose to willingly mingle our strengths, all the while respecting each other’s differences, any ‘forceful assembly’ pales into comparison with the strength we actually become.”
The quantum weapons we’ve resurrected so far start to ring us, their faces finally emerging as the unique individuals the Architects had once sought to wipe from existence. I can see them in myself, now - a werewolf who used to be a pack leader, eyes filled with the memory of protecting his kind; a vampire who used to roam the world as a scholar, translucent features lit by the curiosity she had for so long and not even death could take from her; a witch who had spent her life healing, a sickly green glow lighting up her withered hands, magic pouring out of her in waves intended to heal and not harm. Each one so different, each one so unique, each one making the choice to stand together not because they had to but because they believed in something bigger than themselves.
“And Tell me what you need me to do.” I whisper in the twins, my brown eyes heated with a resolution that torched out the last of my doubts. If this is my fate, if this is what I was born for, then I will meet it as strong as I am able.
"You have to be the vessel," says the female twin, with that air of urgency that threatens to make the very air around us crackle and disturb the peaceful tranquility that has enveloped us within the past several hours. " "Tap the unity magic not only from this reality but from all of the other successful ones, in which the supernaturals have managed to find the balance that nature intended. Absorb their knowledge, rise above them, and teach the Architects that which they have never known - the unlimited power of cooperation of the Chosen”
“The pain will be overwhelming,” the male twin cautioned, his ghostly countenance tight with true concern. “You will feel all the unity magic you can possibly imagine at once. The human brain just wasn’t built for that much input at once. Some of you tried this, and they died through doing it, they were crushed by the massive influx of multi-dimensional consciousness.
My heart beats against my chest like a bird trapped in a cage longing to be free, but I nod anyway. I’m still scared to death, it’s a sharp cold thing in my chest, but it’s even more of another thing, hope. "And some succeeded?"
“One did,” they say in unison, singing in a cadence that makes my hair stand on end. "The one who discovered that strength isn't to be measured by how many weight of the world you can carry alone, but by the people you trust enough to help you carry the weight. She knew that unity is not uniformity, and that cooperation does not necessitate the sacrifice of self.
I can feel the familiar faces of my friends all around me – Thane who looks at me with unwavering support in his green eyes as if he’s never doubted me, as if he’s known me all my life and believes in me even when I didn’t believe in myself; Yvonne whose loyalty refuses to fade no matter how many times the danger finds me no matter how far I run; Lord Valerian whose ancient understanding steers us past horrors that would have crushed lesser beings into paste; Queen Titania whose fae magic lends an elemental strength to our cause like starlight woven into armor. Even Matthias, who is still resisting the mold he was engineered for, is determined to be an aid and not a hindrance, fighting against the very thing the Architects sought to turn him into.
“I cannot do this without help,” I proclaim and stretch my frail arms out toward my companions. Power rushes below my body like light itself, twisting to my emotions and burning brighter with every word I say. "That's the point, isn't it? Unity does not entail one person doing everything at another person’s expense. It’s about us all electing to give up something for one another, sharing both the burden and the power.”
But as our hands touch, as the first delicate tendrils of real joint-manual magic materialize between us, the Architect entity changes tactics—moves forward abruptly as the double-archways parts. Instead of plowing straight on at us, it starts to fractal - there are suddenly four, five, ten Evas - and each of them are now also opening their mouths at different realities at the same time. The sight is a cosmic horror replicating via mitosis, generating identical replicas of total uniformity in infinite dimensions.
"No way," Elder Raven gasps — her wrinkled face curling into a gasp of surprise and despair. Her immortal eyes, which have gazed upon the rise and fall of civilizations, try to comprehend what we are seeing. “It’s hitting on all dimensions at the same time. Even if we succeed here, even if we achieve perfect unity in our reality, the others will succumb to their own coerced collective. Our victory would be meaningless."
"Not impossible," I gasp, the realization just then striking me like lightning through the sky in the black, storm-torn night. The knowledge slams into my brain with a force of reality that's too big to pretend it isn't true. "Inevitable. "The Architects aren’t just building one perfect society in our reality - they are trying to erase free will from the existence of existence itself; every dimension it has ever taken hold in, or might ever spring up in.
The revelation rocks our linked supernaturals, reverberating outward like rocks tossed in a pond. I can feel their horror, their disbelief, the one-sided dawning that the stakes indeed are exceedingly high. If the Architects win in any reality, they have an entry point to every other one. They’ll propagate like a virus throughout the multiverse, erasing every shred of individuality, every flash of creative thought, every dream of what might be different or better.
“Then we intercept them in all places,” Thane snarls, his Alpha King power vibrating across realms, like the bellow of a cosmic lion. “We’re not saving our world — we’re saving all worlds.