Chapter 57: Eclipse Countdown

Chapter 57: Eclipse Countdown

Nora's Point of View

The menace of the Overeditors to cut death itself gave a shiver to all the souls in the Editorial Kingdom. But when I saw the cosmic beings about to commit the final indignation, I saw something wrong with the way Elena behaved.

She was not concentrating on the immediate threat. Rather, she was learning how reality was bending itself around the souls of her victims, how their minds had carried on even though their bodily bodies had died.

"Elena," I said quietly. "What are you thinking?"

The ritual, she said and her changed features changed with some abrupt insight. My primordial immortality rite. I was doing it wrong."

"What do you mean?"

I was attempting to rob people of life so that I could prolong my life. However, these ghosts demonstrate that consciousness is not constrained to a living body in order to persist. His eyes flashed new knowledge in Elena. What is immortality not about keeping the flesh intact, but about pegging consciousness?

The universal struggle was picking up around us. Our friends were making the best of the fundamental frame of life, and the Overeditors were working out their death-editing procedure. But Elena appeared so blinded on everything except her immediate discovery.

We are in the midst of a cosmic crisis, we are in the middle of a cosmic crisis, I indicated to Elena.

This is exactly why this is important. She looked at me with that despair that is desperate. Your augmented blood, Nora, the energy that runs through you with your resurrection, it is no longer Moon-blessed energy.

"Then what is it?"

It is consciousness in actuality. The facility to live without any narrative pattern. With every word Elena became more excited in her voice. Who knows, maybe I would be able to fill in the ritual with that rather than a stolen life force...

I had an increasing alarm that you might be really immortal. Not only maintained in a single reality, but realised in all possible histories.

"Exactly. and by such mode of existence I should be able to secure the consciousness of character against any attack, including that of the Overeditors.

I was tempted by the soundness of the proposal, and something about the rising excitement of Elena alarmed me. This was too close to her old ways of finding power by dramatic means.

What would this rite cost, Ena?

"Everything," she admitted. My appearance, my connections with my physical world, my freedom to exist as a normal personality. But also all the fetters that expose me to editorial domination.

"And what would it cost me?"

Elena's excitement faltered. "I... A good deal of your improved blood would be required by me. Just enough to cripple you, but not enough to kill you.

In some universal struggle, when we must do all the strength we have, I indicated.

But, in case it was successful, we would have an everlasting comrade who would charge the Overeditors on their own plane.

I was able to sense the response of the other wolves to the proposal of Elena through our pack bonds. Others viewed it as a desperate yet a needy gamble. Some feared that it was another but another tactic of masquerading sacrifice.

Something more, Elena went on. The eclipse of the moon that is coming - and not any eclipse. It is the same Convergence Eclipse I was set to use in the first place.

You want me to say that you continue to find it convenient to perform your rite?

"Better than perfect. The world disturbance, the aroused souls, the destruction of the narrative boundaries - all that is enhancing the power of the eclipse. The figure of Elena started glowing with anticipation. We must get down to it, before it is too late.

However, I was about to reply, when the ghosts of the victims of Elena broke into our conversation.

We hear you planning some other rite, Alpha Davidson, with evident suspicion. Another plot that needs the blood of Nora.

This is not so, Elena complained. This would give me the power to save other characters rather than ruin them.

So you say, Sarah Whiteclaw, said coldly. But we have heard your excuses, you see.

You know you have no reason not to mistrust me," Elena admitted. "But look around. The Overeditors are putting their final control measures into action. Old ways of protesting are not effective.

"Since conventional ways do not presuppose taking a risk with our only real ally in favor of your ambitions, Beta Thomas said.

The charge came home since it was true. The suggestion of the proposal made by Elena was truly very much like her old plans - exploit the influence of Nora to effect some irreconcilable change that would either set everything right or put everything wrong.

"What if there was another way?" I asked suddenly.

"What do you mean?" Elena asked.

What would happen, not just transform you, if you were the ritual? But how could it make us all different?

The recommendation appeared to shock all including me. But as I spoke the idea became clear.

One of them would be the network of awareness, independent of any storyline, and all free of the Overeditors, rather than a single immortal character towards whom they were directed to fight.

A pack-bond that crosses the borders of death and editing, that is what Kai said, with increasing realization. "Characters that had a chance to be together in every reality.

But the blood, purple, said Elena. To bring back the ritual with several subjects would demand enormous quantities of improved essence.

Then it is half the price, I said plainly. Not everyone has nothing to contribute but me everything.

The victims of Elena were listening with interest around us. The positioning of being in charge of their own change, not merely spectators of Elena, was obviously attractive to them.

Alpha Davidson proposed our collective consciousness. Fifteen years of unawareness before death must mean something.

And we can base the network in Hitler said, "Make it harder so that a single force can destroy.

However, when hope had started gathering, the Overeditors had done their death-editing protocol. Then, half the spirits in our vicinity all vanished at once, with retroactive consciousness.

"No!" Alpha Davidson and Sarah Whiteclaw had vanished half-word into silence when Elena screamed.

Something is spreading down here, the editing, I said to myself, and growingly panicked. They are eliminating the idea of undying awareness.

"How long do we have?" I asked.

"Minutes," Elena replied, her earlier excitement replaced by desperate urgency. "If we're going to attempt the ritual, it has to be now, before they edit away our ability to exist independently."

"Then we do it," I said firmly. "All of us, together."

"The risk--"

"Is worth it," Kai interrupted. "Because the alternative is the complete victory of editorial control."

Elena began the ritual immediately, her hands weaving complex patterns in the meta-narrative space around us. But as power began to flow between our gathered allies, something else happened.

The remaining spirits of her victims didn't just participate in the ritual.

They began to change it, adding elements Elena had never considered. Their experience of death and persistence was altering the fundamental nature of what we were attempting.

"What are you doing?" Elena asked as the ritual spun beyond her control.

"Making it better," Beta Thomas replied with grim satisfaction. "Making it ours instead of yours."

But as the transformation accelerated, consuming consciousness after consciousness in its wake, I realized something that chilled me to the bone.

The ritual wasn't just making us immortal.

It was making us into the very thing the Overeditors feared most - characters who could rewrite the rules of narrative reality itself.

And judging by their growing panic, they were prepared to destroy every story in existence rather than let us succeed.