Chapter 26 Sera's Choice

Chapter 26 Sera's Choice
Luna POV

After the fight, Sera did not move out of Pine Ridge. She remained there because she did not know where to run. Elena left her in a little dwelling by the woods. Sera spent her days sitting on her porch and looking at nothing every day. She was everyday trying to determine her identity now that she was free.

I visited her regularly. Sometimes we talked. Sometimes we sat in silence. Something changed very gradually, however. Sera began posing questions. She began to desire to know the world that she had lacked at the time she was an animal.

"Why do you care about me?" Sera asked one afternoon. We sat there in her house, taking tea. "I tried to destroy you. I would have murdered everyone in the Pine Ridge had my mother not stopped me.

You did not choose before, which is why that was not possible, I said. And I feel that every person should have an opportunity to make actual decisions. Real ones. They are not decisions that have been achieved through torture or manipulation.

What would happen in case of the wrong choice? Sera asked.

Then you will learn it--then you will learn it, said I. "That's what living is. It is about making wrong choices and working out.<|human|>It is about getting things wrong and improving.

Sera gazed at me long. "I want to help," she said. I desire to make something out of this power. A thing that has a meaning in it.

"What kind of power do you have?" I asked.

I am not quite sure, Sera told her. It is human instinct and immortal strength and brutality of creatures. I can break things when I am mad. When I'm calm, I can heal things. I'm like a walking paradox."

That makes you sound like you are one good at helping such as you, I answered. Other liberated animals that are battering to establish their own position in the world.

Sera nodded slowly. That is what I would like to do, I said. I would like to make them realize that their future is not their past. The fact they can be better than weapons.

During several weeks, Sera was their leader among the released creatures. She educated them on how to live. How to be human. How to be a werewolf. The way to accept those aspects in themselves that they could not comprehend easily.

However, there was another thing that was taking place in this period. There was something blacker that was forming in the mountains.

Thomas held an emergency council meeting. He was as childish as he had not slept in days. His eternal mantle was toying with manifestations of suffering that I had never previously seen.

Something is approaching, close, that I told you to be careful of, Thomas said. He spread a map on the table. It presented the world where some places are highlighted by red color. Such is where the elder immortals have been concealing themselves. Things that were there even prior to the commencement of human history. And they are all heading to Pine Ridge.

"How many?" Kieran asked.

"We don't know," Thomas said. However, judging by the indications, I would say at least a dozen. Maybe more."

"What do they want?" Elena asked. She was holding my hand. She appeared to require the touch of hands to soothe herself since Thomas was there.

Everything they want to do, Thomas said, is to destroy. "Not through conquest. Through erasure. They will forget the history that the human beings and werewolves were in peace. They will travel back in time and alter the course of events that resulted in the commencement of the peace movement.

"They can do that?" I asked. I felt my stomach drop. "Can they change the past?"

"Yes," Thomas said. There is no time of ancient immortals like there is of us. They can fold time. They can create loops. They are able to make it seem like some occurrences never took place. Assuming that they forget the moment Luna ran out of her wedding, then none of this occurs. Pine Ridge is never transformed into a place of peace. The peace movement never begins. And the world goes back to war."

I felt like I couldn't breathe. Everything I had worked for. All that everyone had all grown without. It could all be erased. Like it never existed.

There must be a method of stopping them, Kieran said. Something we can do there there must be.

The thing is, they were one, said Thomas. Now someone is needed to take the place of Pine Ridge. Some people must travel or visit the place of time-manipulation. Some one must go to the place where these old immortals are meeting. And they must be stopped by somebody or they will finish the ritual.

"I'll go," I said immediately.

"No," Elena said. "You can't. When you go off Pine Ridge, the whole movement is ruined. Thou the figure of this tranquility. You're what holds it together."

"Then what do we do?" I asked.

Someone must go, somebody has to go, Thomas said. He was looking at Sera. Both a member of the human world and the immortal world. One who stands to suffer nothing and to have all to gain. Someone like Sera."

Sera had just presented himself in the council chamber doorway. She had been listening outside. She did not seem to look surprised at what Thomas had suggested. She simply crossed the floor and shook her head.

"I'll go," Sera said. "Tell me what I need to do."

Before the ritual is done, you must get to the Temple of Eternal Time, said Thomas. When you get there, you must find the Heart of Time. It is a crystal which appears to contain all moments at the same time. You have to break it. Break it and you shatter the time manipulation capability of it.

How shall I break out of that which is time-itself? Sera asked.

As freeing the creatures, so did Thomas say. With the mixture of immortal and human and something other than that. You must take that contradiction. You must be allowed to deal with the fact you should not be and get to destroy a thing that should not be either.

Sera looked at me. "If I do this, will I survive?" she asked.

I know not, Thomas said sincerely. Breaking the Heart of Time may kill you. It might make you immortal. It can obliterate your life. I do not know whether I can guarantee you a return.

Sera took a deep breath. "Okay," she said. "Then I'd better say goodbye."

She approached and stood before me. A smile showed on her face for the first time I had seen her. It was a small smile. A sad smile. But it was real.

I would like to say thank you to you, for giving me a choice, said Sera. Thanks to you, I have seen that there are other ways to resolve the problem than to get angry.

You will come back, I said. "You have to. You are required by these liberated living animals. They require a person who has been able to learn what they were going through.

"I hope so," Sera said. But not, or I will tell them that their liberty means everything. Make them know that I died knowing that one thing at least has been good that I have done.

Thomas instructed Sera on the way to locate the Temple. He provided her with a map that took place out of normal space. He has presented to her words of power that could be her strength. Then she was gone.

The following morning something wrong happened to the sky. It was purple, green, colors of which there was no name. And things began changing in that sky. Memories began to blur.

Individuals in Pine Ridge began losing memories. Her woman became a forgotten mother. A werewolf forgot his mate. A child forgot their own name. The past was being rewritten on the spot.

Elena grabbed my hand. "It's starting," she said. "They're erasing us. They are making it to be that none of us was.

As I glanced around I saw that something had happened to me, as well. I was becoming confused in my memories. I could not recall the time when things occurred. I was losing my memory about the importance of things.

"Hold on," Elena said. She was pulling me close. "Hold on to who you are. Hold on to me. Don't let them erase you."

The erasure was becoming more powerful. More complete. I could feel myself fading. I was experiencing the world attempting to deny that I ever lived.

Then something went down out of the purple and green sky. A figure. Glowing with power. Changed but alive. Sera fell right down to Pine Ridge like a meteor, and up the sky reverted to normal.

Sera was different now. She was white-hot like starshine. At the same time all the moments filled her eyes. She was gorgeous and horrible and strong unworldly.

"I broke it," Sera said. She sounded like time. "I broke the Heart of Time. But the old immortals will not intervene. They are bringing something through the hole of reality. Something closed up ten thousand years ago. Something that must have remained closed.

The opening in the sky was increasing. and within it came something so enormous and so wrong that I was not able to know even what it was. It was bigger than the mountains. It was older than the world. It was furious as I had never been before.

"What is that?" I screamed.

The face of Sera was full of terror. "It's the first enemy," she said. The monster that mortals were supposed to struggle with. The creation that almost annihilated all. The creature was what they were withholding ten thousand years of magic and power, and sacrifice. And now it's free. And it's hungry."