Ch. 29

A week later we met up at the ship and saw that it looked all shiny and new now. Serenity had been written by Inara and it now stood out as the paint had been waved and glossed over to make it shiny as well. The whole ship was clean and upgraded. Gone were the rusty pipes and chains and new ones made of trinium-carbon alloy was in their place. Every bit of the ship was upgraded and it was almost an entirely new ship in a way.

The framework had been coated in the same trinium-carbon alloy as everything else now. Jayne was happy enough as he'd received Mal's old quarters even though they were nearly identical. Jayne's old quarters was turned into an armory where all our weapons were stored along with crates of ammo and new weapons like the plasma pistols I carried and riffles capable of putting the alliance weapons to shame.

River's stuff was moved into my room at her request and her old room became a storage area for medical supplies as it was right next to the medbay. Kaylee and Simon moved into one room and surprisingly so did Mal and Inara.

They'd clicked after she'd been officially accepted into the merchant guild and retired from the companion guild. With her ties to the merchant guild, I gave up on it and let her be the sole merchant after I showed her how to forge and fake the documents and merchandise lists.

I officially came out as an assassin's guild member and with my recommendation and secret order, River was accepted into the assassin's guild for training. She had couple more weeks of training before she completed the requirements but she'd already mastered most of what they taught.

The rest was just meditation and learning to heal your own body. She'd mastered the rest with relative ease and learned to become void when needed. We stayed on Persephone for those two more weeks while she completed her training. The rest took off in Serenity, leaving us the shuttle.

We could catch up at any time now. When she completed her first kill, a fat greedy noble another fat greedy noble wanted dead, she got her coin and we left the border world.

We caught up with Mal and the rest on the way to their drop off point. They hopped out of hyper space long enough for us to dock before we continued on our way. Inara has a cargo hold full of merchandise she'd claimed after they'd taken it off a wrecked transport ship reavers had hit.

After the galaxy officially accepted reavers were real and the alliance had made them, shit had gotten worse. People went to see what they looked like and many core world scientists had tried to capture a few to study and reverse the process only to be captured and eaten while being raped or worse.

With so many becoming aware and the reavers becoming more active after they lost so many to the alliance armada, it got real bad. The alliance was trying to keep it's dignity and declare the video was false while trying to secretly kill off the problem, but the reavers weren't having any of that.

They killed and converted where they could as the entire quadrant up to Whitefall and Athens fell into their growing territory. Things were boiling over in that area so we stuck to the other three quadrants and avoided most core worlds to stay out of sight and mind.

Our next stop was Harvest, to drop off the goods they'd salvaged and marked as merchant property. I picked off the local warlord and completed a hand full of contracts along the way to Hera.

For the next eight months busines was good until one final all out battle happened between the reavers and the alliance. It rocked the verse to it's core as much as Zoë giving birth on the ship did to the crew.

They were all stunned to hear when she said she was pregnant, but when the baby was born, they were all as confounded as the rest of the verse was when it came to what to do next. That's when River and I told them we were leaving.

I gave them each, including Jayne, an account with a billion credits apiece. It was nearly all the profits the assassin's guild had built up not including what they paid out to the humans that were graduating and taking their places as head assassins.

While Zoë held her baby in the infirmary I told them. "River and I've decided it's time you all knew."

I closed my eyes and let my body fade as it died and turned to energy. The energy shined golden with so much bottled away that is hid, even creature who'd been napping was still there as a black spec in an otherwise brilliant glow of green, blue and gold.

I reformed my image as I was but continued talking to them. "When the mind is enlightened and the spirit freed, the body matters not. It is a path to ascension, immortality of sorts for those wise enough to seek it."

River smiled at Simon before saying. "This is goodbye to each of you. We've enclosed all the money we've managed to gather and split it evenly amongst our family, even baby Darris."

She handed the each an account pad before hugging Simon one last time. Mal asked. "What about the ship?"

I chuckled. "Serenity will not be touched, after all, I was Naga, leader of the assassin's guild and it's founder."

My words ripples over them as I continued. "It will be the one ship in the verse not apart of the assassin's guild that is allowed to use it's technology."

Jayne frowned. "Whose going to be the leader of the guild once you're gone? I mean, if the jobs open-"

I snorted while River laughed and shook her head. "Naga will always be the leader because it's a title as much as a name. The current leader is an old friend of Mal's. He favors a sword and likes to hit people in nerve clusters."

Mal's eyes shot up. "Hey, he ain't no friend of mine."

I chuckled. "No, that's true, but he is the leader now. Don't worry, the crew of Serenity will always be protected from contracts and should you need aid, the coms in our old shuttle have a relay that will call for their aid. They are honor bound to help you without question. A last gift of sorts."

River turned to me and I nodded. She closed her eyes and I helped her ascend. When she took on an energy form, she only had a little gold in her core. When she made a human appearance she said. "It's done. It's time we left."

Simon asked her sadly. "Where will you go?"

She smiled at him before answering. "To the next great adventure of course. But you cannot follow just yet, you've a family to take care of and soon a little one of your own."

Kaylee's eyes went wide as her hand shot down to her abdomen. River nodded. "Congratulations by the way, it's a girl."

Adria appeared next to me with a smile to Inara's shock as well as the rest. She saw her counterpart and nodded politely. "Hello you."

I chuckled at their lack of words before saying. "The alliance is finished with this final battle and parliament is about to be killed by the guild. The rest of the reavers will be destroyed in our wake as we leave, this is all I can and will do for this galaxy. If you decide to make it better, do so with the strength of your own two hands."

I grabbed my mates and we moved as light through the haul of the ship and into space. We became a space storm that shot out, destroying all reaver ships before we landed on Miranda where a stargate had been set up and ready for us to rejoin Destiny.

With a wave of my hand and a though, I opened the portal to Destiny and we flew through. When we exited the portal closed and we looked around to see our old friends and hopefully River's new ones. I'd spent nearly a year showing her all I knew and what we could have.

Now that she was ascended I gave her even more information as I took on all Destiny had learned and all the crew had been through as well. Buffy, Faith, Alice, Lexi and Sam appeared before us as I did so and welcomed us with open arms.

It'd been a little more than a year and a half since we'd left and now we came back with another of our number. They shared what they knew about this new universe and why space wizards were even a thing.

Apparently the potentia energy and where we were now meshed wrong as an ascended here had flummoxed it all up. She'd fused with the potentia energy to the point where it consumed her mind and soul. She become living potentia energy or more accurately a living pocket dimension in sub-space.

My wives had been holding her at bay and hiding Destiny and it's war ship counter part from the being this entire time but now with me here they could finally relax. I reached out as soon as I knew the problem and had creature drain the entity. Creature woke up ravenous and didn't question it as it consumed what these silly space wizards called the living force.

It screamed and tried to pull away but creature was simply too strong as it fed more and more until the 'living' force was killed. I then got to work setting this galaxy to rights again as I rebuilt the potentia dimensional pathways to allow those that could, a chance at ascension again.

The living force has been turning this galaxy into a living meal as it caused chaos and strife to feed. These wizards were just those genetically close to ascension being fed potentia energy by the living force to gain their own powers and fight to become it's next meal.

With the connection reestablished, those that could feel the 'force' before now had clean access to potentia energy once more. I appeared beside Jacob who said. "You did something I take it?"

I nodded. "The scanners should work now and we should be able to continue on our way. The entity was something close to an extreme of what the Ori were. It's dead now so there's nothing here that can harm the ships or my wives again."

He nodded and ordered a scan of this galaxy before taking us into FTL where we headed on the continued path while hailing the war ship that followed. He told them the news and we went onwards. (Why? Cause fuck Star Wars. Space cowboys are way better then creepy old Wizards!)

Time passed as the crew aged and changed while we traveled on. Galaxy after galaxy we collected technology and research. Our understanding of how a universe as a whole functioned grew as did our strength as my wives gradually took on a golden, green and Blue glow of their own.

It wasn't anywhere near mine now as my own essence grew rapidly over time until it dwarfed a star in it's full form. A thousand years had passed before the ship had advanced enough to simply hop to wherever in the universe we'd mapped out or had a stargate to. Towards the end of the journey we found what appeared to be a sleeping giant in a cloud of ion gasses until further inspection showed it was just a dead body the size of several planets put together.

It radiated power even in it's clearly dead form and in what appeared to be it's had was a jewel the size of a persons head. Idly small by comparison but I recognized it immediately as the core of this universe.

My wives and I told the human descendants of the original crew to be careful. "That is the body of a fully realized god. I can only guess at what happened from the looks of it but it was far more powerful than my current self. If I had to guess, that is the body of a chaos god. Odds are he fell in the last battle of the gods and his body landed here."

I floated out of the ship and to the body in wonder as I realized how wrong I was. The god was dead sure, but it's body was fueling this reality's source. Like a car battery jump starting another. It must've been him that the Alteran's picked up on when the universe was created.

I thought it through until I realized his death must've given birth to this reality cluster. When I touched his body the seed flowed and I backed off as I chuckled. "Relax, I'm just curious is all. I've yet to ascend and I don't need any more essence. I just want to see how he formed himself when he did so."

The seed responded by hitting me with a powerful blast that had me reeling as it showed me what happened. The god in question had been an underling for the god Zeus. When Zeus found him useless to his cause he threw him away because his core world had been damaged.

The other lower gods had taken the chance to drain him of all primordial energies before leaving him for dead here. His core world had shattered, killing him, and in that moment this reality cluster was born. The first races, the Alteran and the like, were his friends and family that had survived only barely and had lost their way, mating with the inhabitants that had formed as the reality was born.

When he'd been born a god, which told me he couldn't help me in understanding the process, he'd been sold to serve Zeus in exchange for a trifling amount of primordial essence. He'd hid some of his primordial essence but that had only been enough to form the potentia energy when this reality absorbed it.

I backed away and nodded to the reality seed before backing away with my wives and saying. "Thank you for understanding."

I took them back to the ship and relayed all I'd learned to the crew and the galaxies they came from through Destiny's universal coms. Destiny has achieved it's mission and all the races originally involved in it's undertaking had branches out and evolved further.

More and more of them had ascended, waiting for the opportunity to go further once I opened the door. My wives and I decided it was time so we stepped out of the ship once more and I apologized to the reality gem as I began the final ascent.

Illyria joined us as she was beyond ready as well. The gem glowed brightly, trying to suppress my ascension but it couldn't stop me at all as I tore a hole in reality that led to the empty. I and my mates stepped through as our forms grew brighter and absorbed the tiniest spark of primordial essence, signifying that we'd become full gods and goddesses.

To most others in this star like realm where each spec was a reality cluster, it might not seem much, but to us it was enough to form solid immortal bodies. As we did so I realized the door to that reality closed most of the way. It couldn't go further as the tear had been severe but it was enough for others with the proper trading to continue down the same path as us.

When I went to touch it I was zapped and I backed away as a seal appeared on it. Sighing I realized we were locked out. "Well, that sucks."

Buffy snorted. "Let's go home then. I want to see what's changed since we left."

As if by thought we appeared before another reality cluster that wreaked of other gods touching it repeatedly. Just before we could build our avatars and enter, another being stopped us as it appeared in a flash of light.

I recognized it immediately and pulled my wives behind me. The being in question smiled. "Is that any way to great your father?"

I growled. "Lucifer, you are not my father!"

He pouted playfully before saying in his own disappointed tone. "It takes two to tango kid. Gaia gave birth to your soul to allow it a piece of divinity but whom do you think gave her that spark that she turned into the light that is you? Hmmm? Think real hard now."

I felt gut punched as he grinned. "Happy birthday kid. Oh, and here's your present."

He punched me in the face sending me flying backwards into a far off reality. The last thing I saw was him grabbing my wives and disappearing in a flash of light.

My body convulsed and spasmed in agony as it was forced into a meat suit as it were. He'd apparently been kind enough to make the avatar for me as he sent me careening into an unknown universe.

I felt trapped inside it, locked and confined. Now I understood why Glory went crazy and why gods prefer to be on the outside looking in.