Ouroboros 4: End (19 page)

That crack kept forming, growing deeper, wider, darker. The light of the cosmos beyond was now covered by that swathe of crackling energy.

She should have been terrified. She should have fallen to her knees and wrapped her arms around her body to seek out what little defense they could provide. Instead she stood and she faced it.

‘I want to help you,’ she suddenly said, her voice nothing compared to the boom and roar rolling over the land. ‘Show me how to help you!’

Though the entity was now nothing more than a mere presence within her. She was still connected to it, and she could still draw on its power. Its incredible power.

A month ago, it had assaulted her with images of destruction. Corruption, it had called it. Objects forcing their way towards her, circling around and collapsing into a point.

Terrifying.

She remembered how it made her feel, watching the universe crush in on her . . . .

She still had that power in her hand. And she could still call on it. She could still use it.

She was still standing. That was all that mattered.

The grain flattened around her, the trees groaning and snapping under the force spilling from the crack. Yet she was still standing.

As she glanced at Carson, she knew his armor would be keeping him safe. For how much longer, she couldn’t tell.

Only the entity’s presence kept her safe, yet as it dwindled, she had no idea how much longer she had.

The entity was leaving her. As that crack in space formed, time was running out.

No, time was always in her hand.

And it was time to use it one last time.

A plan formed in her mind. It had been forming since this adventure began.

The entity once assaulted her with visions. Visions of corruption. Those same visions now filled her mind, and they gave her the solution she so desperately sought.

What if she could draw that crack in space towards her? What if she could use all her will, energy, and stamina—her grit—to stop the entity from leaving her?

She knew it couldn’t be in two places at once. Either the entity left her and the crack in space opened completely, or the entity remained, stopping that crack in its tracks.

. . . .

She had no idea whether this would work.

She wasn’t a scientist, in fact, she’d failed science on multiple occasions.

She had something else though: access to the entity and its boundless knowledge.

She also had hope. Kindling deep in her heart, the kind of faith that told her to try.

Unless she accessed the entity and stopped it from leaving her, the pressure pouring down from above would kill her anyway.

Though the force surging from the crack was astounding, she raised her hand up. She closed her eyes, and she plunged her mind right into the core of the entity that remained. That final flickering speck of light.

It should have been impossible to shut her senses off from the storm, from the lightning, from the energy, from the force pushing down and flattening the grain to nothing but dust. Yet it was easy.

A calm certainty spread through her as she closed her eyes. She saw nothing but the darkness of mind, darkness with a single speck of blue light puncturing it.

She pushed towards it.

Once she had feared the entity, once it had feared her. But now she sprang towards it with open arms, offering it the one solution it had always sought.

Nida was a terrible cadet, but she was willing to give the only thing she had: the will to never give up. And though the entity shared that exact same characteristic, hers was tempered by kindness, not hatred.

She let that kindness build through her. It kept her safe as she opened up to that last remaining scrap of the entity.

She called to it, sang to it, whispered, begged.

They could end this together, if only it trusted her enough to help.

As she embraced the entity, she connected to its wisdom—its endless, boundless knowledge. Once upon a time, that connection would have terrified her. She would have been a loss in the foggy depths of its reality. Now she held onto her clarity as she plunged deeper and deeper.

Finally, she reached the entity. It rose up to meet her. There wasn’t time for words. There wasn’t time to convince it she knew how to save it and Vex. For time was condensing into a point, coiling in on itself over and over again in an endless loop of eternity.

To do this, she needed the entity’s full power. She needed its trust. And in a moment, a single moment—for that’s all that there was—she gained it.

That moment stretched on and encompassed her entire journey. With that endless dimensional being before her mind, in a single instant flashed every experience she’d endured over the past several months, from meeting Carson, to the statue, to the Vex. They all condensed in on a point.

The entity rose up and released itself. It used the last of its energy and gave it to her.

She opened her eyes.

The darkness above was now all-encompassing. And a crack—blue and vibrant and violent—was forming directly above her.

She didn’t shudder back. Instead she reached her left hand up and called on the entity itself. She used its power to pull the crack in space towards her. She kept her feet anchored to the ground, the crushed wheat a carpet of gold dust by her shoes.

She used all her force, all of her training, and most importantly all of her experience to focus her attention on pulling that crack in space towards her.

The power of the entity surged up, jumping over every centimeter of her flesh and deep into her body.

It was a risk drawing the crack in space towards herself. There was no other way though.

She just knew that if she stopped the entity from leaving her, the crack could never form in full, stopping the damage to Vex’s timeline from ever occurring.

She just knew this could work.

And she would give her all to make it happen.

If her classmates were here, they’d decry her plan. What kind of idiotic cadet thought they could fix a timeline by sucking a great big crack in space towards herself?

Well, Nida was a terrible cadet, that was for sure.

But Sharpe was right, so was Carson—she was just the person to fix this.

As the crack was sucked towards her, the entity within became stronger. Relying on it, forcing it to use its power, kept it locked within her, and locked into this space time.

Violent strikes of lightning started to erupt from the crack, discharging up into space.

It was categorically the most frightening thing she’d ever seen. Yet she didn’t stumble back, grab Carson and try to run.

There was nowhere to run to.

The only thing left to do was open up to the entity, and hope this most desperate of plans would work.

More lightning discharged from the crack, illuminating the sky in bursts of vibrant, shocking white and yellow.

Something was happening.

The crack started to shift. Vibrate violently as if it were succumbing to harmonic resonance, getting ready to crack like a glass subjected to a high pitch.

She kept pushing herself into the entity, kept telling it this was the only way.

If she could anchor it here, time would heal itself.

A thunderous roar wrought the air. She couldn’t hear anything but this deafening, moaning boom.

Without the entity surging within her, she’d be dead. Pulverized by the pressure and burnt to a cinder.

Carson’s armor was still protecting him, but it couldn’t last.

She had to end this.

She closed her eyes.

She shut out everything.

Everything.

Every memory, every doubt, every last voice in her head that told her she couldn’t do this. She was the worst recruit in 1000 years, and she was unfit for this task.

She eliminated every distraction, retaining only enough focus to believe in herself.

And she pulled the crack forwards.

Right into her.

Except, it did not reach her body. It did not play across her skin, ripping through her flesh and rendering her as nothing but torn blood and bone drifting on the wind.

It disappeared.

As the entity within her returned to its full power, it displaced the crack forming in place.

It could not be in two places at once.

As the crack receded, for the first time, Nida felt the entity’s true power. She couldn’t help it. For the force welled within her, flowing into every cell, membrane, and tissue.

In a dance or power, it owned every part of her.

The crack disappeared.

The line in space, the cut in time, vanished.

The dark that had once blotted out the stars, lifted. The thunderous roar of power petered out.

Yet Nida remained.

As did the entity.

She stood, it stood with her.

All around her, within her, through her.

It had done it. It had saved Vex.

With her help, it had prevented the damage to the timeline from every occurring.

It was over.

Vex was fixed.

Cade Nida Harper

It took her a long time to realize what had just happened.

She’d won.

Somehow, she’d done the impossible.

It wasn’t over though.

She was still in the past.

As that realization dawned on her, two things happened. Carson started to stir, and the entity moved within her.

She was still standing in a completely trashed meadow, the once tall grain nothing more than dust at her feet.

‘Nida?’ Carson moaned from behind her.

She didn’t turn; she couldn’t. The entity captured her full attention.

It was . . . overjoyed. What it felt went beyond normal happiness. It was such a pure feeling, Nida couldn’t begin to comprehend it.

For countless, countless eons, it had tried but failed to fix the Vex timeline.

Now its endless task was finally complete.

It flowed through her, all its power, all its joy.

Though it was incredible to feel it, Nida didn’t let the entity’s elation touch her too deeply.

She couldn’t forget what it had done—all those countless races it had sacrificed in its desperate quest to fix Vex.

The entity had committed great evil. And yet, at the same time, she could appreciate how hard it had worked to fix its mistake.

She couldn’t forgive, but she could understand.

‘Nida?’ Carson questioned again, and with a creak of his armored joints, she heard him shift to his knees.

The scene around them was one of total destruction, and yet beyond, the forests still stood, the meadows reached out to a beautiful green pastureland. In other words, the rest of Vex remained. And it would continue to stand, for it was free.

Though Carson said her name once more, she took a while to turn. Instead she closed her eyes, curled a hand around her modified TI, and sought out the entity within.

It was shifting about, moving quicker and quicker.

‘Nida?’ Carson now made it to his feet, and with a shaky step, he reached her. Just as he did, blue light escaped her palm. It didn’t shoot forth and send Carson spinning backwards, nor did it send every single grain of dust swirling around Nida in a deadly vortex.

Instead the entity simply left her. She could feel it. It pulled up from her bones, from the depths of her, and simply left.

As it did, it took with it its power. Every last drop.

Cadet Nida Harper returned to normal.

She also fell to her knees. But Carson was there to grab her and hold her steady.

‘Nida?’ he looked into her eyes questioningly, pressing his fingers across her cheek.

‘I’m fine,’ she managed as she pushed past the fatigue.

Now the entity was gone, it had taken not only its power, but its protection.

She was cold, fiendishly tired, and shaking unsteadily.

But she was still awake, and watched as the entity drifted forward into the sky.

It was a pulsating blue mass, like a condensed storm cloud billowing around itself.

Carson snapped his head towards it warily. ‘What’s happening?’ he asked through clenched teeth.

‘It’s over,’ Nida said. At the exact same moment, the entity spoke too. Its words boomed out, rolling along the meadows and down the pastureland like an explosion.

Carson’s grip around her shoulders tightened. It was clear he was readying for a fight.

And maybe he’d get one.

Granted, she’d fix Vex’s timeline. The entity had finally achieved what it had always sought. But what would it do now?

Leave peacefully? Or continue the fight? It had become so twisted through guilt anything was possible.

And yet she held onto the hope—the slimmest of hopes that it really was over.

Though the seconds ticked on, the entity did not attack. Instead it floated there, as if considering her. Eventually, however, it spoke again, ‘it’s over,’ it affirmed in that same booming voice that could have wrought the heavens in two.

Carson stiffened even more. Though he was still weak, that wouldn’t matter.

He was Carson Blake; he’d push through.

Before he could jump up and try to bat the entity out of the air, Nida leaned forward and placed a hand on his shoulder reassuringly.

‘Just wait,’ she said, her tired words barely leaving her lips.

Though he turned his head to her sharply, he didn’t shake it.

Instead they waited.

The entity shifted to and fro, as if checking its environment. As if it couldn’t quite believe what had happened.

‘What now?’ Nida broke the silence.

Would the entity leave?

Would it go back to its dimension?

Now it had left her, Nida could no longer travel through time, which meant she had to face the fact she and Carson were stuck in the past.

There would be no making it back to the Coalition. All they had was Carson’s armor.

No, they’d simply have to live out the rest of their lives in Vex’s past, 5000 years from their own present.

Though that fact tried to demand her full attention, it couldn’t. For the entity still floated there, twitching back and forth as its blue energy illuminated the crushed wheat and flattened ground.

‘What now?’ she asked once more. ‘Will you return to your own dimension?’

The entity appeared to consider her before answering, ‘you assisted where no one else could. Without you, this could not have been achieved.’

Nida didn’t know how to answer. Instead she sat there, her chin angled up as she stared at the entity.

It had brought her so much pain. And yet it had taught her. Without it, she would still be the worst recruit in 1000 years.

Maybe Carson was quickly catching up to the situation, because he didn’t question. He remained there by her side, his hands locked into her shoulders, and hers into his.

‘There is nothing more to do, the Vex are now safe,’ the entity said, its voice ringing out so loud it was a wonder Nida’s ears drums didn’t rupture.

‘You’re going to leave, go back to your own dimension?’ she questioned hopefully.

‘Home, yes, home,’ there was a thoughtful, far-off tone to the entity’s voice.

It reached right inside Nida, resonating powerfully.

Home. If only she could return there. But she couldn’t, and that was the price for having saved the Vex.

It was one she would happily pay.

‘Home,’ the entity said, but as it spoke, something strange occurred. It began to shift backwards, and as it did, Nida felt a strange power emanating from it. A power that broke against her like a wave, yet one that hooked into her arms, drawing her forward.

‘What’s happening?’ she tried not to fall, but the entity’s force kept pulling her forward. ‘What are you doing? I helped you,’ her voice shook with fear, ‘let us live out our lives on Vex, don’t kill us. Please. If you want revenge on someone, take it on me, let Carson live. Please.’

‘Home, we must all return home.’ The entity appeared to ignore her.

Its power grew, until she was lifted into the air, Carson at her side.

He had a hand locked around her wrist, and it would take more force than the entity had to break his grip.

‘Please,’ she begged once more.

‘You cannot stay here, this planet is about to realign. I will return you to your own time. Then I will return home. I will leave you in charge of shepherding the Vex.’

‘What?’

‘Their timeline will realign with your present. The barren world you know as Remus 12 will spring to life. Not with the Vex of the future, but with the Vex of this moment. They are a young race, and you will guide them. I will be gone, you will stand in my place, shepherd them forward, give them the future they have always deserved.’

Nida was speechless.

‘The realignment will begin minutes after I return you to your present. I will leave you then. Forever. And you will shepherd the Vex,’ it commanded.

‘ . . . We’ll look after them,’ Nida managed.

Then it happened. The entity plucked both her and Carson up and it sent them through time once more.

Power swirled around her, breaking against her form, but she never let go of Carson’s hand and he never let go of hers.

Then there was a snap. One that echoed and echoed and echoed, as if it reached out to eternity.

In fact, time stilled, stopping in an instant.

The entity left.

For a moment that stretched on and on, it appeared to consider her quietly.

Perhaps it regretted all it had put her through. Perhaps it left her with a gift.

But soon it turned.

She could feel it find a crack in the weak space-time around Vex, only for it to disappear and finally return to its home.

It was time for her to return to hers.

. . . .