The Final Approach

The Final Approach
Elena's POV

"Stop!" I screamed, throwing every ounce of my magical power at Maya to stop her sacrifice spell.
My energy slammed into her just as she was about to release enough magic to destroy herself. The contact sent both of us flying in opposite directions, and I hit the ground hard enough to make my teeth rattle.
But I had stopped her. For now.
"Elena, what are you doing?" Maya gasped, trying to get up. "There are only twenty seconds left!"
"I'm saving you from making the stupidest mistake in magical history," I said, pulling myself to my feet. "Maya, you can't sacrifice yourself. Not because it's noble or sad, but because it won't work."
"What do you mean it won't work?" Damien demanded.
I looked around at all of them - my son Marcus, my daughter Maya, Damien, the other Maya, and the unseen presence of my mother. My family. The family I'd been guarding in secret for sixty years.
"Because I've been lying to you," I said. "All of you. About everything."
The quiet that followed was broken only by the sound of the time bubble crackling as it continued to collapse around us.
"What lies?" Marcus asked quietly.
I took a deep breath. This was the moment I'd been fearing for decades. "I'm not just Elena Martinez, history professor and part-time witch. I'm Elena Ravenwood, Guardian of the Portland Time Junction."
"The what now?" Maya asked.
"Portland isn't just a normal city," I explained quickly, watching the shimmer of the falling bubble get closer. "It's built on top of the biggest natural time rift on the west coast. There are magical people living here who have been protecting it for over a hundred years."
"How many magical people?" the other Maya asked.
"About three thousand. Maya, when you wondered why your adoptive parents happened to move to Portland specifically, and why you ended up at exactly the right college to meet me? That wasn't chance. The Portland magical community has been watching you since you were born."
Damien raised his sword. "You mean this whole thing has been planned?"
"Not planned," I said. "Prepared for. Maya, we knew someday a Blackthorne relative would appear with enough power to either save or destroy the time junction. We've been getting ready for fifty years."
"Ready how?" Maya asked.
I pulled out my phone and hit a button I'd hoped I'd never have to use. "Like this."
Suddenly, the air around us filled with the sound of footsteps. Dozens of footsteps. People were running toward us from every direction, and they weren't normal people.
A woman with silver hair appeared first, her hands glowing with healing power. Then a man who looked like a college student, but his eyes were ancient and he was carrying what looked like a magical stick. Then more people - old, young, every age and race, but all of them radiating magical power.
"Who are these people?" Damien asked, looking around in wonder.
"The Portland Magical Defense Corps," I said. "Maya, meet your backup."
The silver-haired woman stepped forward. "Elena, report." "Collapsing time bubble, sixty thousand civilians at risk, approximately ten seconds until total reality failure," I said quickly.
"Understood." The woman looked at Maya and the other Maya. "You must be our Blackthorne descendants. I'm Catherine Wu, battle organizer. Maya, we need you to anchor a stabilization spell while my team creates a controlled fall."
"A what?" Maya asked.
"Instead of letting the bubble snap back randomly and kill everyone, we're going to collapse it in sections, moving all the civilians to safety as we go," Catherine explained. "But it requires a Blackthorne to anchor the spell, and we need someone with Ravenwood blood to control the time flow."
She looked at me. "Elena, are you ready?"
I looked at my family - Marcus, Maya, Damien, the other Maya, and the spot where I could feel Mother's presence. "I'm ready. But there's something else we need to talk first."
"Elena," Catherine said quickly, "we have about five seconds—"
"Mother," I said loudly, addressing the unseen presence. "Show yourself. Now."
Grandmother appeared, looking confused. "Elena, what are you—"
"You're not our mother," I said simply. "You never were."
Everyone stared at me.
"What are you talking about?" Marcus demanded.
"I'm talking about the fact that our real mother died sixty years ago, just like we always thought. This woman has been imitating her using memory magic and illusion spells."
Grandmother's face went pale. "That's impossible. How could you know—" "Because our real mother had a scar on her left wrist," I said. "A small star-shaped scar that she got from a magical accident when she was sixteen. You don't have it."
I pulled up my sleeve to show my own wrist, which had a similar mark. "The birthmark goes from mother to daughter in our family. Marcus has it too, on his ankle. Maya has it on her shoulder blade - I noticed it the first day she came to my office. But you don't have it anywhere."
The fake grandmother started backing away. "You don't understand—"
"I understand perfectly," I said. "You're not trying to destroy our family magic because you're tired of being forever. You're trying to steal it. You're some other old witch who figured out that if you could convince us you were family, you could get close enough to drain our power."
"But the memories—" Maya protested.
"False memories," I said. "Implanted using very advanced magic. But there are always holes in fake memories, and I've been trained to spot them."
The fake grandmother's look started to shimmer and change. Her hair turned from gray to black, her wrinkled face became smooth, and her kind expression changed into something ugly and cruel.
"Clever, Elena," she said in a totally different voice. "But you're too late. The spell is already complete."
"What spell?" Catherine demanded.
The creature that had been pretending to be our grandma smiled with sharp teeth. "The one that's been taking magical power from every witch in Portland for the past hour. Did you really think a time bubble this big could be kept by accident? I've been using it to collect energy from every magical person in the city."
I felt cold fear creeping up my spine. "How much energy?"
"All of it," she said happily. "Elena, your precious magical guard corps? They're about to find out what it feels like to be completely ordinary people."
As if to prove her point, Catherine suddenly stumbled, the glow around her hands dimming and dying.
"Our magic," one of the other fighters gasped. "It's gone."
"Not gone," the creature amended. "Mine now. And with the combined magical power of three thousand Portland witches, plus the natural energy of the Blackthorne and Ravenwood bloodlines, I'll have enough power to tear holes in time itself."
"What do you want?" Damien asked, raising his sword.
The thing laughed. "I want what every clever magical being wants, young knight. I want to go back in time and prevent the worst disaster in magical history."
"What tragedy?" Maya asked.
"The one where humans discovered magic existed," the creature said simply. "Maya, dear child, do you know what the world was like before humans knew about witches and wizards and magical creatures?"
"N-no," Maya stammered.
"It was paradise," the creature sighed. "Magical beings lived freely, using our powers to help and heal and make beautiful things. But then humans found out about us. And what did they do? They got scared. They got jealous. They started hunting us, burning us, trying to steal our magic or destroy it completely."
She pointed around at the collapsing time bubble. "This is what human understanding of magic has created. Fear. Conflict. Young people like you being forced to choose between love and duty, between saving strangers and saving yourselves."
"So you want to erase human knowledge of magic?" I asked.
"I want to erase humans, period," the creature said cheerfully. "I'm going to go back to the moment the first human found magic, and I'm going to kill that human. And then I'll kill the next human who gets close to finding magic. And the next. And the next."
The time bubble gave another shudder, and I could see the edge was now only a few feet away from us.
"Until eventually," the creature added, "there will be no humans left at all. Just magical beings, living in a world of wonder and beauty, with no one to fear or fight or hide from."
Maya stepped forward, her own power flaring weakly. "That's murder. You're talking about killing billions of people."
"Billions of people who would never be born in my new timeline," the creature corrected. "Really, Maya, I'm being quite merciful. It's much kinder than letting them be born just to live in a world full of magical strife."
"You're insane," Marcus said.
"I'm practical," the creature answered. "And in about two seconds, when this time bubble finishes collapsing, I'll have enough concentrated temporal energy to begin my work."
I looked around desperately. The magical defense corps was helpless. Maya and the other Maya were nearly spent. Marcus was barely standing. Damien had a sword but no magic. And I had just enough energy left for one spell.
One spell that might save everyone, or might make everything worse.
"Elena," Catherine whispered, "whatever you're thinking of doing, do it fast."
I closed my eyes and reached for the deepest, most dangerous magic I knew. Magic that I'd sworn never to use.
"I'm sorry," I whispered to my family.
And then I cast the spell that would erase my own existence from every timeline that had ever existed.