The Beginning After The End novel Chapter 482

Chapter 482

Chapter 480: Providence

ARTHUR LEYWIN

Through the cacophony of indistinguishable sounds, I heard a muffled voice.

“Kill her.”

“No.”

A bright blur in the heart of darkness. The bitter backdrop for the echoes of ten thousand splintered aspects of a mind pushed beyond the edge of capability, of sanity.

Against the back of my closed eyelids, aether seeped like blood from the pores between worlds. Interposed over this image was another: golden threads stretching beyond the bounds of one world and into the next, through a rift, reaching far and wide as they spread from the nexus point that was a single man, a man whose hands were red with the blood of civilization after civilization. In the image, I cut the cords of Fate and watched an empire fall. In the image, I looked down at my own hands, and they were red like his.

Not like that. I cast the vision aside. A small dot of light was growing behind it.

I tried to speak. The words came out as a cry.

Another image. One I considered harder, longer: me, a crown of light above my brow, the threads of Fate wrapped around me like armor, Agrona powerless against me. In the vision, I struck him down ten different ways, and yet each Fateful blow reverberated across time and space to ensure failure and destruction, and ten different visions within the vision collapsed around me. Me, standing at the epicenter of failure.

I cast the image aside with some difficulty.

The light grew closer, brighter.

I pondered the last vision, the only way. It was a door I could open but not see beyond. But it was the only way.

The visions melted into a bright blur. I tried to close my eyes, but they were already shut.

Indiscernible sounds battered my ears.

“Kill her.”

“No.”

“Arthur-Grey.”

Lightning behind my eyes. Breath trapped in my lungs. A world written in fire, seen through closed lids.

My eyes snapped open, and a weak cry escaped my lips.

I saw myself from above, a mind out of body. I was sitting cross-legged in the pool of aether-rich liquid, which rippled slightly and cast an uneven blue-purple light across the interior of the large underground cavern where Sylvia had hidden so long ago. Beside me, Sylvie sat in an identical position. Her face was scrunched into a tight frown, her eyes still closed, the lids moving as the eyeballs below raced back and forth, as if she were having a tortured dream.

There was no emotion in what I saw before me. The scene was still too detached from me, too distant and unreal.

Tessia—no, Cecilia—was on her hands and knees next to the pool. Her gunmetal hair hung down in front of her face. Almond-shaped teal eyes narrowed, glowering through the silvery strands at the man standing above her. Blood pooled around her fingers and spilled into the pool, staining the dimming blue light.

I didn’t have to search for the source to know it wasn’t her blood, but my eyes still flicked to Nico. Each faint beat of his dying heart sent more of what little blood he had left pouring from the unearthly, branching black spike that protruded from his back.

Neither did I need to guess at how this had come about. The mana that had conjured the fatal spell still floated around Agrona, barely controlled. He had already forgotten Nico, I knew. His entire will was bent on Cecilia as he matched her glowering stare with a look of cruel, expectant command.

Many golden threads ran between the three. Those around Nico were beginning to snap one by one. Most led from him to Cecilia, wrapping around her, and fewer to Agrona. A couple of threads bound Nico to me, but these were trembling with tension, ready to snap.

While few threads connected Nico and Agrona, Agrona himself radiated more than I could count. _{fɾeewebnoveℓ.co๓}

And yet I was covered in even more golden threads than the others. Wrapped around every inch of my body so that I was nearly hidden beneath them, the golden threads connected me to all the others, and then spread out into the wider world, just like Agrona. So thickly were the threads wound, that I almost looked like—

“Arthur-Grey.”

Through the woven threads, dimly glowing around me like the wrappings of an ancient mummified king, I saw it. The aspect of Fate, in and around me, bound to me, sitting just behind and above me—not in three-dimensional space, but in time and the pressed layers of the fabric of the universe that separated the physical world and the aetheric realm in which it was trapped.

“I accept the vision of the future you have offered as also being within the natural order, the necessary advance of the arrow of time,” the aspect continued, its voice only for my ears. “But I offer also a warning.”

My vision retracted even further, pulling back through the roof of the cavern and the soil above it into open air. Instead of looking down on the Beast Glades, I was above Etistin, just like in the visions Fate had shown me of the past events there.

Now, it showed me the future.

Just like before, white blurs representing the dragons arrived, and Etistin as I knew it was wiped from the face of Sapin. The bay looked lonely and forlorn without the city looking down on it, but time sped by, and soon a new civilization was building there. The simple structures they constructed did not last long before they too were wiped out. The speed of the vision seemed to be increasing, so that I only saw flashes of each new city being built before it was destroyed.

I withdrew further, until the entire world was only a distant bit of color against an expansive dark sky, empty except for the distant stars. All the wide universe was laid out before me in exaggerated colors, the stars bright pin-pricks of light against a swirling, oil-on-water backdrop of purples, blues, and grays.

And humming just beneath the surface, pressing against the walls of reality, was the building pressure of the aetheric realm. A consistent rhythm began to pulse outward from the aetheric realm like a heartbeat, and with each pulse, the stars brightened and bulged. The beats grew stronger, faster, and I suddenly understood what was about to happen.

As if my understanding had conjured it into existence, the world ruptured. It was like the vision I had seen before—the future Fate was attempting to conjure into being through me—but the resulting cataclysm didn’t occur on a global scale.

It was with a deep, vague horror that I watched as the aetheric explosion spilled across the sky, wiping away the stars and leaving behind only an endless void.

The scene faded away, and I was once again looking down on myself and the aspect of Fate sitting within and around me.

With the fading of the vision, my horror faded as well. What it left behind was like a distant dream only half-remembered in the deep dark of the night. One that none-the-less stops the dreamer from returning to sleep for fear that the nightmare will resurface.

“Kill her.” The cold words issued from Agrona, and he pressed down on Cecilia with his killing intent, pinning her to the ground on all fours.

She closed her eyes, her pain written in the golden threads that connected them. Two by two, the threads connecting her to Agrona were snapping and fizzling away to nothing.

Through gritted teeth, she uttered a single word. “No.”

My eyes snapped open, and a weak cry escaped my lips.

Agrona’s head began to turn toward me, his intent sharpening into a killing blade. Crouching at his feet, Cecilia’s eyes shifted to me, and through them I saw down deep into the heart of her, where a trembling Tessia uncurled and reached outward. Knots of golden thread strung back and forth between the two, a muddy, chaotic mess of past and future tying them together.

Another thread connecting Nico to Cecilia snapped, and I sensed that the breath leaving his lungs was the last he would breathe in this world.

“Nico!”

The pool erupted into commotion as, beside me, Sylvie burst upright. Her hands flung out, and a silvery, half-formed shield began to wrap around me.

The scythe of Agrona’s intent struck it, and it burst with a sound like a bell. Sylvie was lifted up, her body spinning through the air like a ragdoll.

Warmth spilled into my empty core as Regis desperately expelled all his own aether, forcing it through the gates around my core. Strength ran through my channels like lava, burning and inexorable.

Agrona rebounded back from Sylvie’s shield, stumbling a step.

Beside him, Cecilia rose.

Just as Fate hovered above and behind me like a golden shadow, a silver shadow rose with Cecilia. Emerald vines writhed through the silver light as Cecilia and Tessia stood together. The knotted golden threads binding them were unwinding. Not breaking, but unspooling, each frayed knot coming undone and straightening rapidly.

The silver shadow that was Tessia raised her arm. Half a heartbeat later, Cecilia did the same.

Emerald vines erupted from Tessia, snapping like green lightning through the air between her and Agrona. They slammed into him, knocking him back another half a step and clutching at his wrists and horns.

Cecilia’s hand tightened into a fist, and the threads around her flexed and vibrated, pulsing with golden light. Her jaw worked, her eyes closed, and tears leaked from them. Her hand fell an inch.

Agrona scoffed, and Cecilia was lifted off the ground. She hurtled into the air until her back slammed against the cavern roof, losing a hail of small stones, and then she fell back to the ground, landing heavily in front of me. A dozen threads or more snapped and burned away between Cecilia and Agrona.

The silver shadow that was Tessia was gone, dragged back into the prison of her body.

Agrona’s scarlet eyes lingered on Cecilia, his lips curling into a disappointed grimace.

I raised my hand. Agrona’s eyes shifted to me, widening.

Many threads still bound Cecilia and Agrona. Aether hardened between my thumb and forefinger, and I pinched down on the golden bundle, shearing through the threads of Fate as if they were no more than spun wool.

A shockwave rolled back in both directions from the cut, slamming into Agrona and spilling over Cecilia’s prone form, tossing her into the pool at my feet.

Agrona stumbled and fell, going to one knee. His eyes lost focus, and in the rippling of space and time I saw the burning away of all potential futures in which Agrona was able to use the Legacy, as a weapon in the form of Cecilia or as his own power. The shockwave continued to jolt through him, striking him again and again as each potential future collapsed in his mind.

Leaning forward, I pulled Cecilia toward me, holding her face-up on the surface of the dense liquid, now depleted of aether and casting a weak purple light. Many threads still connected her to the wider world. I reached for them next, but even the faint cutting edge of aether around my hand was difficult to maintain.

Reaching into the emptiness around me, I grabbed hold of the relic armor.

Black scales began to fold into existence over my skin as the armor formed, spreading out from my chest to cover my entire body.

But as the armor spread, brilliant white plates and ridges started forming over it, growing into pauldrons and greaves over top the black scales. Heavy plated boots melded seamlessly into the greaves, and delicate gauntlets grew around my hands between my skin and Cecilia’s in my arms.

I had no time to consider the implication of this change, and, as the armor began drawing in aether from the surrounding atmosphere, I turned my attention to absorbing what I could. The aetheric edges around my gauntleted fingers grew firm again, and I again reached for the golden threads extending from Cecilia.

Time seemed to stutter. Beneath me, the blood-stained pool exploded upward, forming into swords, axes, and spears. Black-lined wind struck me like a battering ram, and I pulled Cecilia closer to me, shielding her as best I could. The wind began to pick up the weapons and spin them, leaving me at the center of a deadly vortex.

As the liquid swords and axes struck me, the armor pulled at my meager aetheric reservoir, fighting to reform as each blow ripped it apart piece by piece.

Through the storm of swords, I met Agrona’s eyes, now the color of clotted blood.

With a shaking hand, I reached for the golden threads. My fingers closed around a handful of the threads of Fate, and the aether bit into them.

Again, shockwaves rolled along the strings, spreading out across the entirety of the world. I felt every one, saw behind my eyes a hundred different cascading effects as the lives of Alacryans and Dicathians everywhere were changed forever. My legs trembled and my arms shook under the weight of it.

The vortex subsided, the conjured weapons splashing back down into the pool, now stained with my own blood as well. Agrona was on his hands and knees, his body heaving with every breath, his face a grimace of pain and desperate perseverance.

Only a few threads remained around Cecilia, while the golden lines radiating from Agrona were uncountable. I had seen so many possibilities in the keystone when searching for the way forward so that Fate would free me of its bonds. I didn’t know what I’d have done if I’d faced this moment before. Even now, it was a difficult decision to make, to accept. It felt wrong. It felt unfair.

There was no thread spreading out from Agrona that I could cut that would result in a victory here. No blow I could strike against him directly would bring about a world in which the future I had shown to Fate could come to pass.

I looked back at Cecilia. Her eyes fluttered open. There was no hint of Tessia in them; she had exhausted her strength and was buried deep underneath the stronger spirit of the Legacy, bound by Agrona’s magic and the spellforms drawn into her flesh.

Another thread between Tessia and Nico fizzled out. Only a single thin golden line remained.