The Magician 45

"What are you going to do now?" Orison asked Yev, as the dragon in human form rose from the second coffin.

Parenthood between them had become nothing more than a memory of a technicality. But for some reason, that had improved the man's disposition towards Orison rather than souring it.

"I'm going to the younger reality and try to become the patriarch of a guardian clan there. Like you, I'm sick of getting wrapped up in a superior's... BS, as you say." Yev said.

The young mage gave him a weak smile and said, "Just remember, you promised to go give the world a Piran that's complete. Let that psycho living artifact have the stone AND the flower. This barrel of 'Ganymead' is worth ten times those two piddly things."

Yev sighed. "I'll do as I've said but you're wrong... in a way. There are many beings out there that are desperate to have a living legacy. To those few, that stone and flower are priceless. This barrel of god booze is good but only truly useful to tier threes and demigods. There are several well off tier sixes who drink this stuff as a recreational beverage. Special occasion, perhaps, but little more."

The young mage laughed. "Say that AFTER you've drank it. It's not what it once was after everything its survived."

Mentally, he added to himself, "And that's just the copy. The original is even more augmented, along with all the rest of the stuff in the cabin. Sadly, who knows if any of it will survive."

Once the dragon, Daniel and Five of Seven were zipping off on byways only known to the astral and afterlife supernaturals, the young mage looked at the last remaining coffin. It's inhabitant had only just appeared. Grant had been through literal and figurative hell. Only time and the playing out of events would see what would become of that suffering.

"This is the one thing I can't really forgive you for, mom. It's not my offense to give pardon to. I can't believe you hid Their soul in the Grit story line. I'd ask what you were planning of making out of Them but I don't really care. They still wanted to be bonded to me, even after all of that. So, They're mine and I'm going to do my best to keep Them from regretting that."

He took one last look at the other four souls strongly anchored to his own. Either he'd succeed, at least survive, or they'd journey with him down the darkened road of true endings. He was still slightly surprised at the substitution of Birgir for Cole that Babs had managed to pull off but it made more than perfect sense on an emotional level.

Corvinus, much like himself, made the lives of his loved ones better by not being in it. The young mage knew how much of a bitter pill that was to swallow and greatly sympathized. The protean soul inside the chakram had merged itself with the living armor, giving them both a better chance of survival but Orison highly doubted the end result would be an entity he'd recognize as the Centurion he had once known.

Amos wasn't any less tragic than the sorry group he'd thrown lots in with. As a last act of defiant hope, he'd gifted the majority of his non-horse knowledge and comprehensions to his little girl. The remaining parts of himself kept as a personal treasure did little to dampen the nearly wild and fey-like existence he had become while on the run. His decision to accept Orison's invitation to be a familiar had a lot more to do with loneliness and a desire for a place to belong than any fear of death or oblivion.

With little to examine and even less to do, the young mage got down to deep trance like he'd never done before. Reduced to little more than complete suspended animation himself, he shared the last coffin with Grant and hoped for the best. In a timeless nowhere of the most condensed and unknowable chaos, he briefly stirred only long enough to feel the entirety of his existence crunch to near nothingness.

A minute speck of ignored, next-to-nothing drifted through the unknowable for quite some un-time. The strangely chaos resistant flying saucer protected it from the worst of what seeped in to strengthen, twist or corrupt it while five nearly imaginary particles orbited. Eventually, even that protection had dissolved away.

The speck hadn't been static during that period. Several rings surrounding it had continued to crunch down further and further til they couldn't have been distinguished from the speck and it's communing particles. By the point that it was exposed to the raw Greater Void, a strange little squiggle of spiraling fractal had budded around the speck.

From their seemingly endless no-when together, the particles had taken in some of the qualities of the speck. That was exchanged for some of the qualities the particles had held. The speck couldn't use them but it did store them within itself.

At some undetermined point, the fractal shielded speck passed near a 'something'. Three of the five particles took their chances and reached out to be dragged into that something's pull. Freed of their need for its resources, the speck spawned another particle but this one was slightly bigger than the outside of itself and contained things that the speck considered almost as important as the particles that had orbited within its protective yet fragile bud of spiraling fractal.

Stirring from basic instinct was a sense of attachment and growing sentiment to the little particles that had clung weakly to its gravity. It held only the most rudimentary kind of hope towards the three that had broken free to seek salvation elsewhere. And even though that had been a good thing for itself, it felt a sense of loss at their departure after a small passing of un-time.

Even more un-time passed. They had swirled around several somethings yet the two remaining particles and the growing dark particle, which projected no sense of self, continued to orbit their small but efficient fragile protector. Finally, they encountered a something that exerted a pull on the speck itself.

The corroding and twisting un-place they had been passing through had did little to or for the speck but this new something was violent and energetic. The only thing that had saved them from destruction time and time again was merely their size. Being so small, all the colliding and exploding bits, they simply pushed through.

That was starting to change as the speck and its particles, affected by their energetic environment, began growing in size. The fractal was spreading out father from it as well. The springy parts on the very outside of the spiraling fractal would occasionally break off and send it ricocheting further into the pull of some force that drew the speck and its satellites further 'inside'.

Whenever there was energy to spare, the speck would pull the highly energetic broken off pieces of itself back to it along with more pieces from the 'outside' it had once been in. Some of those pieces would go to the particles that were growing into specks themselves. The original speck was starting to grow rapidly larger and condensing into an ocean blue orb that kept pulling and pulling the lost parts back as it's violent environment kept smashing and pulling pieces away.

With the awakening emotion of fear, the speck showing streaks of blue and dark gray hid away in the black speck. The other speck, showing streaks of blue and silver, would purposely knock itself into colliding violent bits to help protect the growing orb. The orb responded in kind by trying harder to call on the silver and blue bits. Most would go to its tiny protector but some would go to the stored particles inside itself that had been left behind by the three fortune seekers that had left it.

When the violence started calming down, the much smaller speck sibling of the ever growing silver and blue orb, became brave enough to start protecting the bright ocean blue globe. In amused indulgence, the ocean star began helping collect the shadowy blue speck's pieces as rewards too. The three of them were growing bigger and bigger by the moment.

It had reached a point where the original gravity that had pulled them, stopped doing so. That seemed wrong to the ocean star. Whatever it was starting to turn into, it isn't what the star wanted to be. So, it started crunching itself down. The increasingly complex fractal within it also started reducing and growing into a different direction.

Sensing what the ocean star was doing, the other two globes imitated. The silver and blue one did it for fear of being separated and the shadowy blue one did it for fear of becoming unprotected by the stronger blue/green star. While they were doing so, the silent and lifeless black globe was drawn into the ocean star to rest within, carrying its precious contents with it.

Eventually, the ocean star condensed back down to orb size again and glowed with aquamarine brilliance. It had ceased growing bigger but it had started growing real, having mass and existing as a physical object despite being made of ethereal essence. The other two couldn't do that but continued to grow minutely in other ways.

Within the fist sized ocean star, a mound of rich substance began to form. Something else tried to form with it but the gravity of the place was too much for whatever that was. That second ominous thing was slowly crushed and ground til its being was absorbed and it beneficial properties taken into the black opaline dirt. Occasionally, a tiny spurt of curse-like essence would erupt out of the star's top or bottom, causing the more timid smoky blue orb to dash within the star's quiet black space.

At some point, the ocean star realized that it could feel the pull again and started following it. The inner edge of violent energy place was no longer helpful to it or its companions. Not only that but it could feel a danger forming to its inner pattern.

It had spent too far not being whatever it wanted to be and the pattern was starting to lose its sharpness. The same was not true for its companions. The shadowy orb had the mixed patterns of a cat and a people in flux between the two. The silvery blue orb held a people too but less and less of the non people part of its pattern.

Fearing that they might be becoming less than they could be, the ocean star helped them hold onto helpful parts of their extra patterns and old bits that kept trying to wash away. In return, they helped the star remember its people parts. It was strange and confusing but the people parts that the two helped the star remember were different. The cat people soul was showing the star a people with larger and rounder top parts and very different bottom bits than the metal people soul, who was showing the star the pattern that was once the star's favorite of many.

As they traveled through the outer calm black, a small hole inside the star's inner calm black was pouring wet life stuff that made small bits of crystal as the star 'sweated' out some. Eventually, it was covered in the crystals and dusty stuff that kept accumulating over it. The 'voices' of the other two were getting harder and harder to hear but the metal people's voice was clearer for longer.

The star didn't like being covered in the crystal and dusty stuff because of that but it was too full to take any more in. There were old memories in the dusty stuff that was showing it un-patterns and ways to be things it didn't recognize. Clinging to the fading voice of the metal people soul, the star didn't get too confused. But, it stopped remembering the people pattern that the cat soul had showed it as clearly.

It was an interesting thought that the star could maybe make more companions with the other two if it took the pattern that the cat people soul had shown it. The pattern the metal people soul had shown it could maybe make more companions if they could find one of the rounder part people patterns with the different bottom bits, anyway. The metal people soul was convinced that there were more 'females' somewhere in the place where they were being pulled or else they wouldn't be pulled there.

So, the star didn't NEED to be one, even if the cat people soul was sad about not being able to start trying to make more companions right away, as soon as they could be people again. As their thoughts grew more complex, the star asked the metal people soul why THEY didn't want to make companions right away like the cat people soul did. The metal people soul said that making companions that way was something called 'painful' for the round parts people and they didn't want to 'hurt' the star.

Even though the star couldn't hear the cat person soul anymore, it could feel that soul's annoyance at the metal people soul. Apparently, there could be a lot of something called 'pleasure' before the hurt of making new companions, the metal people soul passed on. It was also necessary to make something called 'offspring' that carried two different people's parts to make a whole new people pattern.

Pondering on that, the star shared that if this new companion called offspring carried the different parts of the old ones they came from, then the metal people would be a better choice, since it was braver, had a stronger 'voice' and protected the star better. That made the metal people very happy to hear. They wanted to wait til they could provide something they called safety and comfort before trying but was slowly awakening to the desire of maybe wanting this thing called offspring with the star.

Both the star and the metal person soul started remembering how it was done and verified that the 'pleasure' of trying to make new companions was good but there was a lot more to it. There was a lot of sadness around their memories of making offspring that they wanted to avoid adding to. Making offspring was a BIG decision, not a small one. There were plenty of different ways to have 'fun', pleasure and generally enjoy existing companionship that didn't involve making offspring too.

The star was interested in talking more about that. But sadly, that's when the star stopped being able to hear the metal people soul clearly too. With a mental shrug, the star did its best to remember the much clearer people pattern that was its favorite. It might not be too late to change patterns after it could hear the metal people's voice again and it didn't want to risk accidentally being like the patterns the dust tried to show it.

Lost in concentrating on pulling memories together and protecting its clearest people pattern from getting confused by the dust, it missed the moment when things like friction, heat and impact would have instantly become clear to them. The star had missed its chance to become the person it remembered being directly too. It had been released from its rocky prison and was a little too focused on its own pattern to accept the random pattern the person it had come in contact with would have forced on it by accident, as well.

Like its companions that it had yet to realize had been thrown away from the star, it was taken in as a soul for a scared, expecting mother close to the devastation of a meteor impact the star's ball of crystal and dust had gotten stuck to. It's strong presence pushed the protean soul that was starting to drop into the developing fetus, back into the woman's soul giving rise to it. The star's favored pattern would express itself but it had to follow this new reality's laws for such a thing.