118

118
Thane's POV

In awe, I gasp "it is done" as the Original Void at last recognizes our extended hand, its millennia separated space now melded into the brightness of kinship for the foremost time in cosmos annals. It is at once a majestic and tragic sight.
Time rights itself, realities knit shut one by one as if sealing in the breach, and the flicker of universal death that had already wrapped around their collective throats… stops.

"The void entities are selectionists, they desire 'existence'." They are emerging as part of the larger fabric of reality instead of trying to pull it apart.

But even while I boast of victories, my attention is caught by something else entirely: a change in the very air about us that has nothing to do with wars on other worlds and all to do with the woman at my side. In our mate bond, I feel Astella's mind turning inward from its multidimensional expansion, coalescing quickly as her form recalls its imperatives.

"Astella!" My green eyes widen in alarm, and I cry out when her pale skin gets even paler and she starts breaking out in a cold sweat; one hand clutching her stomach. "Something's wrong. The plain old-fashioned toil of holding all those connections, of stretching herself across planes — it's taking its toll on the pregnancy.”

My baby, when she doubles over gasping for air from the ever-thickening air. "Something's happening. Again, it's just a little bit too early for this kind of thing and.... God in Heaven... Thane I think.... Oh god”

"High Priestess Morgana!" The power of my Alpha King command roars, toppling chaos upon our already spreading empire. "We need healing magic, now! A way to anchor the pregnancy, to keep the baby a little longer!”

The ancient witch is dashing toward us, her wrinkled hands already shimmering with a soft healing light, but I see the fear in her eyes when she looks over Astella. “Those cosmic energies she channeled” she grimly reports, “have sped up everything. Her body autocycles days instead of hours. Only the pregnancy progresses at an impossible speed."

"Can you stop it?" I insist, my words strained with the widow of a challenge as I carry Astella into my arms while she weeps. I can feel her fear mixing with resolve through our link. She is scared for our child, but also has an odd sense of inevitability that this would need to happen.

"…I can't keep him from it," Morgana confesses, her professional honesty slicing through me like a knife. “Help direct it, maybe? If the baby is indeed an infinite potential incarnate, then its conception very well might be biologically impossible. Maybe, it will be born when it wants to be born, and not when my biology demands it.”

“The twins!” Astella gets out her face contorting in premature contractions to match her tone, still as strong as ever. "Where are the twins? No oje knows cosmic piwer more than they do. They might know what's happening."

Materializing next to us with an unanticipated weighty hand, the spectral forms of our choice gather around; their forms now more tangible due to all we've shared.

"Because it must," the female twin unhesitatingly states, gently.

“The cosmic Battle opened up its power. It can no longer stay in the liminal space between potential and actualization — it shall pick one or the other.”

"What does that mean?" And I, now possessive of my mother bear and daughter vestiges in addition to primal rage that will no longer allow for the presence of coherent thought, belt out with a snarl. “Is our baby gonna survive?”

The male twin tells me, his ethereal face looking like it might be smiling. “Your offspring is the first creature to ever live in two states of reality at once – corporeal and divine, separate and collective, physical and metaphysical. It will fill in things that simply haven't been done yet.”

Yet, as comforting as the twins have become, Astella's labor continues at a rapid rate. It should be a process of hours but instead takes minutes, as her body is literally made to accommodate cosmic forces that break every law of biology I have ever known.

Yvonne whispers as she whirls her young, awe-filled eyes towards Astella’s glowing bod. “She's pulling light toward her, but it's not just light — it is potential energy made manifest. The baby isn't simply coming into the world physically, it is emerging from possibility into actuality in the material realm.”

“Impossible,” Lord Cassius says, but his ancient voice speaks of awe, not disbelief. And finally, quoting from a brilliant observation I read last year, with regards to the argument about the metaphysical implications of pregnancies: 'Birth is a physical process, not a metaphysical process'.

"This one, no," says Lord Valerian—his complexion ashen, at a true miracle. “This was the child of deliberate love, the child whose fragile life had been nurtured into existence at a price willingly exacted and paid, and who now rode by will alone upon cosmic winds. The moment it's born, what we think can and cannot be will change.”

Via this Bond I feel Astella's labour, but also her tremouring anticipation as our child readies itself for life. “Thane,” she gasps, and those brown eyes always pull me in, and I lose my breath. “No matter where this goes, I made this decision. I chose you, us, and life during the scariest experience of our lives. Older mamas sometimes do risk undernourishment and slipping away in their sleep from a miscarriage because of the vulnerability that comes with concealing conception, but I defied fate on that front. Those are the decisions that brought us to this point and I would not change any of them.”

My voice is an Alpha growl, all my strength going down the bond to bolster her. "You won't be touched. You're not going anywhere. Our child is going to be born healthy and perfect, and we are going to bring it into our world,… the one that we made”

Yet, as I say these words something remarkable occurs. The light which envelopes Astella does more than gain intensity; it starts to… sing, harmonizing with resonances that we perceive across dimensions. The sound is unimaginable, as if the music of creation.

“It's like, here it is” says High Priestess Morgana - her voice seemingly professional with the attitude of a seasoned pro. “The potential is there, crossing into reality as the child.Though I've lived centuries, millennia nearly, delivered thousands of babies and not once in all my life had I ever seen anything like this.”

And then, just like that the child is born… with a shock of light, jolting us from the chill of our world. I mean, yes, she is this in a purely physical sense and also as constrained by the nature of her being — a very living bridge between what is and everything that humanity could be in chosen love.

Then Astella whispers it into the right side of my ear, motions toward the nurse carrying our first son and allows those last two syllables to drip like honey as she lets them out: “A son.”

"He's perfect. He's absolutely perfect."

Effortlessly, I chuckle to myself at the thought of my angel of a daughter alone with Neil in nothing but their underwear; but then I glance down and it doesn't even seem appropriate to call her perfect for what she is. Our little boy doesn't merely occupy our dimension — I could feel his presence in any number of dimensions simultaneously, as if he embodied every potential iteration of him at the same time.

I utter his name in a whisper, and I know it to be true. — “Draco…His name is Draco. And he is going to fix everything.”