The Beginning After The End novel Chapter 294

Chapter 294

Chapter 294: The Faintest Hope

No, I thought, my heart pounding in my throat. That’s not possible.

The explosion had broken the closest benches and wrenched Ada hard enough to loosen her bindings, and she was quick to rip free of the rope.

My focus was drawn back to the dodecahedron as the last piece fit into place. Like before, it shimmered and glowed, the outlines of the individual pieces I’d used to complete the puzzle fading away and forming a solid shape.

In the present, Haedrig and Kalon had fallen into a rhythm, working together to keep Mythelias on the defensive, but any time they scored a hit, the wound instantly sealed over.

Half of Riah’s corpse was now covered with scabrous growths, but neither Haedrig nor Kalon had escaped injury themselves. Kalon was bleeding badly from a cut on his leg, and Haedrig appeared to have taken the butt of the spear to his cheek, which was swollen and already changing color.

Finally, the opalescent shimmering on the faces of the dodecahedron smoothed out and stopped moving, and each face displayed a different moving picture.

In one, the hall of mirrors had been obliterated. The entire end of the hall had been burned away, its blackened edges opening directly into the void. Every mirror was shattered, and most of the frames had been incinerated. There was no sign of life in the room.

In another face of the dodecahedron, I saw myself standing with Haedrig and Ada, who was crying furiously as we pushed Ezra’s remains through an empty mirror frame and out into the void.

The hall was scorched and blasted, the fountain empty, many of the mirrors broken, but it was overall intact.

Haedrig pulled the girl into a tender hug, but I turned and walked away.

My eyes were drawn to a third image. Mythelias, in Riah’s corpse, was stalking across the hall of mirrors toward me. Behind him, Kalon and Haedrig had been entirely subsumed by the dark boils; they were clearly dead.

Ada lay unconscious near me. Mythelias leaned down over her and pressed one blackened hand to her cheek. I turned away, pushing the dodecahedron with aether so it spun, removing the awful image from my line of sight.

The revolving dodecahedron brought different images into sight. Some were variations on what I’d already seen, but one in particular caught my eye.

In it, I saw myself activating a god rune that glowed golden through my clothes. Purple motes of aether spun and swirled through the room like dandelion seeds, and everything they touched glowed with aetheric energy.

I watched, awed, as the mirrors mended before my eyes and the pieces of the fountain flew back together as if time was being rewinded, the smoke and steam from the air literally coalescing to reform stone and water.

When the purple motes landed on Ezra, the boils began to shrink, receding until they faded away entirely. The young ascender gasped and his eyes flew open. He was alive.

Just before the glass of the shattered mirror through which Kalon had been hurled snapped back into place, Kalon himself drifted through it, settling gently onto the ground in the hall of mirrors. The wounds he’d sustained from his battle with Mythelias closed; even the damage to his clothes and armor was reversed.

The terrified, heartbroken image of Ada in her mirror dissolved into pinkish smoke, which flowed out of the mirror, then moved purposefully across the hall until it found her unconscious body, returning her to herself.

Where the floor of the hall was most blasted and burned, ash began to swirl, creating a miniature cyclone. As the ash condensed, a form began to take shape.

Riah’s body, still missing one foot, hung in the air like a rag doll, lifeless and somehow incomplete. Then the gnawed flesh of her foot began to regrow, healing before my eyes. When her eyelids fluttered open, she stared around the now pristine hall with confusion and fear before drifting down to the ground where she was met with a running hug from Ada.

Though the visions of the past and present had suggested the possibility that the third puzzle might show visions of the future, I hadn’t dared to hope such a thing might be possible, yet there I was, watching events that hadn’t happened yet.

Each face of the dodecahedron seemed to show a different potential future, some showing our other failure, true, but there was at least a chance we could defeat the Vritra-blooded ascender and escape the hall of mirrors.

Still, fear bubbled in my gut at what I had seen, or not seen; Regis was nowhere to be found in any of the futures I could see, even the one where I was somehow able to bring back the dead.

What is this power? I wondered, still watching the potential futures play across the faces of the dodecahedron. It seemed too incredible to be possible. Was it an aspect of Life, of vivum? A way to bring the dead back to life?

No, I thought, it seemed more like aevum, an aspect of Time. It was like the aether was turning back the clock on whatever it touched, undoing the damage done to glass, stone, and flesh alike.

Excitement surged within me. This was it! This was the power I needed to defeat Agrona and end the war with Alacrya. Not only that, but I could undo the damage Agrona had done. I could save everyone: Buhnd, Cynthia, Adam, Sylvia...my father.

I could bring them all back!

As the dodecahedron revolved around, the panel in which Haedrig, Ada, and I stood alone in the wreckage of the hall came back into view. In that version of the future, I began using aether on any mirrors that were still intact and had an ascender trapped within.

Like in the other vision, the cracks and chips in the mirrors began to disappear as if mending themselves. Then, one by one, the ascenders faded away. When they had all been released from their prisons, the light within the room shifted subtly, taking on a warmer tone, and a portal appeared within one of the empty frames.

In that version of the future, however, the others remained dead.

Why? I wondered fearfully. What is the difference between these two visions of the future? What do I need to do?

Then the images of past, present, and future faded away, and the three shapes I had constructed within the keystone realm began to dissolve into streams of purple sand that eddied around me on gusts of wind I couldn’t feel. Soon I was looking out through the eye of an aetheric tornado, and the scouring wind and rough sand were scraping across all the layers of my mind.

It’s too soon! I thought, panic taking hold of me. I don’t understand yet!

The pain and pressure built and kept building until I was sure the storm would tear my mind apart, rip my consciousness from my body, and cast it into the void...

Then it was gone. In place of the raw, tearing pain I felt a sense of freshness and calm, like I’d just stepped out of a cool shower on a hot summer’s day.

I opened my eyes. My mental cleansing had been so complete that for just a moment I forgot what was happening around me.