Yargen. Vi would’ve dropped to her knee, but she was too stunned. She also wasn’t completely certain she could move her knees. Her body was as fresh and primordial as the light around her, yet it mirrored the woman she’d always been.
The magic of the Goddess was within and around her. But mortal flesh still covered that power. She was neither divine nor mortal. A familiar sensation for the princess who had never belonged in any one place—who had never been any one thing.
“Yes,” Yargen spoke as though she heard Vi’s thoughts, because of course she heard Vi’s thoughts. Vi stared at the face—veil—of a goddess. “I am in everything. I am everything. My essence, my being, cannot be comprehended by you or any mortal mind. So this is merely a form your consciousnesses has created, to make me something you can understand—a meager shell for all I am…” She slowly raised her hands, fabric floating unnaturally weightless through the air. “Becausethisis all I am.
“Or, should I say, all I was.” Her hands lowered just as slowly. “I have given you a boon once more, my Champion. Your mind does not deceive you—in you is the last of my power from this world, collected from what fragments were left. The flame has been extinguished. With it, the world you knew is gone.”
“Gone?” Vi repeated in quiet horror.
“The world you were born into, the people you knew, the way you knew them, are no more.”
Gone. Everything was gone. Everything Vi had ever loved, would ever love, vanished at the whim of a goddess. Her mind ached and Vi didn’t know if it was from the struggle of trying to comprehend what was happening, or from what she’d already endured. She would cry in the face of such a truth, but Vi wasn’t sure she even remembered how.
“Do not despair,” Yargen soothed. “They are not gone forever. Just as you are not gone forever. You now possess a new shape… as shall they.”
“What? But you said—”
“This is the only way to thwart Raspian. The only way we can prevent him from destroying my world of light. We must begin anew in the shell of the former world and preserve my power, this time, so that I may face him once more in our deadly, eternal dance.”
“A new world,” Vi whispered.
“Yes, but a familiar one. Everything as you knew it has been wiped away. But the lines of fate remain. The life that was cultivated can still thrive. Everything is as it was, but new once more.”
“I… I don’t understand.” Vi shook her head. She wanted to. She desperately wanted to, because somewhere amid all the talk of the world ending was hope. Vi could hear it, and she lived for that hope, even if she didn’t yet understand its foundations.
“You will, in time,” Yargen assured her. “We begin anew. I return you to before the first moment where fate was changed. I place you back in a new world. You will be free of the bonds of time because my magic is in you. I have given you the power that lived in the watch your past self carried. I have bestowed the power of my Voice and the last vestiges of power from the flame on you as well.
“Together, we have scraped together my meager remnants to make this attempt at a world in which I am not weakened. When I rebuild this new world, you shall enter it as you are, knowing all you know. However, you shall be immune to time’s flow, a traveler among mortals.”
A new world. A traveler. If Vi understood correctly, the world was being remade with the crystal weapons still intact. But that meant…
“But what aboutmyworld? My father, my mother?”
“The only world that exists now, is the one we exist within. I am the fount of life and time. There is no other world.”
Vi shook her head and fell to her knees. What was it for?What was everything for?She’d struggled and fought to spare the world from ending, only to see the world end anyway? Raspian wanted to destroy the world, so Vi fought against him… only to see it destroyed by a different god.
Yet, if Yargen spoke true, there was still a chance to save it.
The Goddess approached, stopping before her. Queen Lumeria’s shifting silks floated through her vision as Vi stared up like a hopeless acolyte, beseeching forgiveness and mercy.
“Regain your birthright as Champion,” Yargen intoned.
The spear that was bestowed. A voice that both was and wasn’t her own replied from within her mind.
“Assume your mantle as Champion.”
To defend the Crystal Caverns.
“See my power is never tuned on itself again. See I am not weakened. See I am able to stand against the incomprehensible darkness that rages at the edge of your mortal world.”
The air was sucked from Vi’s lungs.
Light turned to darkness and she was falling again. Yargen vanished from before her and Vi was left alone. The wind sped around her. Her eyes dipped closed.
If she hit the ground at this speed, she’d die.
Perhaps that was the best end she could hope for.
