Chapter 38: Spirit Guide

Chapter 38: Spirit Guide
Nora's Point of View

The ones appearing behind the First Darkness were impossible to describe. While the First Darkness was hollow and vast, these ones were vast and full - full of so much becoming that being curved around them like light around a star.

"The Primordial Concepts," the Moon Goddess panted, her body of silver shuddering with what seemed to be fear. "Time, Space, Causality, Possibility itself."

"And their negative counterparts," Elder Morrison went on grimly. "The Negation Aspects. The forces that work to uncreate what the Primordials create."

The Balance Child regarded the cosmic beings with interest and not fear. "How lovely. I've been expecting all of you to come."

"You expected them to come?" I inquired.

"I called them," the child replied softly. "The ancient cycle of perpetual war between creation and destruction had to end. They're here to witness the change become something more."

And as the cosmic forces converged within the Council space, I felt one presence approaching that I knew intimately. Not one of the titanic powers, but something lesser, yet even more personal.

"Nora," a gentle voice said behind me.

I turned to see my mother coming into being, her spirit form glowing with the same silver brightness that had always marked our family's Moon-blessed legacy. But she looked different from how she had in the underground chamber - more real, more substantial.

"Mother," I gasped, moving towards her.

"Hello, sweetheart." She smiled, though concern lay beneath the smile. "I don't have a lot of time. The cosmic energies building here are making it difficult for spirits to maintain form."

"What is it you need to say?"

"It's Elena's original plan. The one she designed before the First Darkness began interfering with her." My mother glanced around wildly as the Primordial creatures continued to appear. "There is something about the lunar eclipse that no one else knows."

"What about it?"

"It's no normal eclipse. It's the Convergence Eclipse - a once-per-millennium phenomenon where multiple realities converge." My mother's form flickered as she fought to remain lucid. "Elena found out that during the Convergence, every possible iteration of our world becomes connected."

"Multiple iterations?" Kai asked, taking a step closer to listen.

"Endless versions," my mother promised. "Realities where Elena had chosen differently, where you never perished, where the pack developed down different lines. During the Convergence Eclipse, all of those possibilities are available to her."

The implications hit me hard. "Elena was not trying to gather power in this realm. She was going to merge with her alternative selves across all the realities."

"Building an Elena that was the total of information and expertise of all possible versions of herself," my mother snarled. "A being with full information about all the decisions, all the effects, all the potential futures."

"That's impossible," said the Moon Goddess, but hesitation colored her voice. "There are reasons for the walls between alternate worlds. Merging them would produce catastrophic paradoxes."

"Not if you had a Balance Child to balance the process," my mother said, looking unpleased at the small shape between Elena and me.

The child tilted her head consideringly. "So that's why Elena really needed me. Not necessarily as a source of power, but as a cosmic anchor to keep reality from collapsing while the merger took place."

"But the scheme fell through," I said. "Elena's with us now, not against us."

"Is she?" My mother's face darkened. "Consider what is actually occurring here."

I looked at her, then around the room: the cosmic beings, the Balance Child, the dimensional realm in which we stood. "We're in exactly the position Elena had initially devised. All the forces she needed were concentrated in one location."

"And the Convergence Eclipse," my mother said gravely, "arrives in an hour."

The neatness of the clockwork was too good to be coincidence. All the pieces Elena had needed for her ultimate plan were now in the Council chamber, brought together by our own hand.

"Elena," I said slowly, regarding my sister. "How long have you planned this?"

"Planned what?" Elena asked, but I detected a flicker of something in her expression.

"The convergence. Bringing us all here, to this location, at this very moment for the eclipse."

I sat in silence for what felt like an eternity. The cosmic creatures busied themselves with their gathering, unaware they were headed toward a trap that had been twenty years in the making.

"Since I was sixteen," Elena finally admitted. "Since the night that I first made contact with forces outside our reality."

"Even your corruption by evil forces," I realized with growing terror. "Even your apparent redemption a moment before. All part of the plan."

"Not all of it," Elena said quietly. "My feelings for you are real, Nora. My regret for what I did to our family is real. But yes, I have been working towards this for many years of my life."

"Why?" the Balance Child asked, her tiny face furrowed in actual curiosity rather than anger.

"Because this reality is cracked," Elena replied. "Not just our reality, but the entire cosmic system. Look around you - creatures that only exist to cancel one another out, realities stuck forever at war, creatures of tremendous power who do nothing but destroy."

"So you figured you'd fix it by becoming a multiversal goddess?"

"I decided to fix it by becoming a person with enough knowledge and power to actually make changes that stick." Elena's form was beginning to shift again, but this time the shift felt different. More deliberate.

"By merging with infinite amounts of yourself," my mother said with sadness. "Elena, do you have any idea what that will cost?"

"All that is in all of the realities will be sifted through one consciousness," Elena replied. "Mine. Every decision, every outcome, every possibility will be at the mercy of my choice."

"That's not balance," I argued, growing more alarmed. "That's complete control."

"It's necessary control," she said. "Someone has to make the hard choices, Nora. Someone has to decide which realities are worthy of living and which ones need to be. adjusted."

The Balance Child came closer to Elena, her small body radiating anxiety. "Aunt Elena, what about free will? What about the right of animals to decide for themselves, even to make bad choices?"

"Free will is what brought us to this point in the first place," Elena replied. "If humans were trustworthy enough to make good choices, we wouldn't need cosmic intervention."

Above us, the Council space sky darkened as the Convergence Eclipse fell. I felt the walls between worlds start to collapse.

"Elena, please," I pleaded. "Don't do this. We can find a different way to make things right."

"There is no other way," Elena said with tears brimming in her eyes. "I have walked through every alternate course of events across infinite realities. This is the only path that will grant us lasting peace."

"Peace through tyranny isn't peace at all."

"It's better than eternal chaos."

The eclipse began, and I felt the pull of other realities as the shields thinned. Somewhere out there in the infinite possibilities, other versions of Elena were responding to the call.

"I'm sorry, sister," Elena said to me as the change took root. "But this is bigger than both of us."

"No," I said firmly, silver light raging about me. "It's not."

But I could not move until my mother's ghostly apparition arose out of everything in brilliant light. 

"Nora," she implored. "There is something more. Something Elena knows not of the Convergence Eclipse."

"What?"

"It does not just give passage to alternate realities of our own. It gives passage to the reality that existed before ours. The one the cosmic beings destroyed to make room for our universe."

The consequences hit me like a lightning bolt. "The old universe. The one that might have answers we haven't yet imagined."

"And the inhabitants," my mother confirmed somberly, "who have waited very long to get a chance to reclaim what was taken from them."

As if magnetized by her statement, new faces began to materialize in the Council chamber. But these were not starfolk or alternate forms of familiar people.

These were beings from a world that had been slain to make room for ours.

And they were really, really angry.