16
It was there, in her mind. What the fortress had been before the beast wars, before the Federation’s founding members had come and changed everything. The lush gardens, the well-appointed rooms. The freshwater wells and the docks where ships could land, if they only knew the way. The seams of time and space that held it there within its little bubble. The seven gates that approached it and moved away from it at the same time. The tall and graceful arches of windows and the sweet, sure feeling that peace was real and present.
Tralam, as it had been envisioned by that ancient race. As it had been meant to be kept. As it should have been and would’ve been had it not been for the foolishness of those who would come to it hoping to use the weapon within for their own means. Substance changed, everything faded, and then colors spun and space fell silent in a way before gathering itself up again.
The stone walls formed. The doors, the ones that led to universes that she had never known; all that she knew all too well formed all around her and long columns settled into space, forming a barred prison, a barred existence. The one she had been saved from and now must return to. What would the Tralam that was drawing her into itself be?
She did not know, but she was moving through space and time fast now, and still, she could see it all, see the thing she was made to protect—that the weapon had been made to protect. Behind every door was another door, behind that door yet another door. An endless and infinite amount of universes, some running parallel and some universes within universes, alternate dimensions that also had their place already carved out.
And there in the center of all of them, spinning like a top and presenting nothing but a blank space to any who would open those doors, stood Tralam.
Tralam, and the weapon within it.
Her.
She felt his kiss. She felt Drake’s mouth on hers and his order for the weapon to disarm, but it was too late. The weapon would disarm without any help from her because its power was now spent. And she was being taken away from him, hurtling through space and time, pulled back by the technology of an unparalleled race who had died long ago but not before building the one thing that would ensure that all life would go on every universe, and in every alternate universe beyond them.
Drake was with her. She felt his presence, but she knew that he could not survive this. She was not even sure that she could either. The weapon within her would survive it. Of that she was sure, but whether she would or not—of that she had no way to know. Everything compressed until she felt as if there was no air left in her lungs. Her entire being was broken down, her flesh scraped away in an excruciating and agonizing moment that stretched on for an eternity. A thousand years passed as she writhed in that pain, and only a second passed as she writhed in that pain.
She was everywhere and everything. She knew love and laughter and hope and joy. She knew greed and hatred and anger and rage. She knew violence and sweetness. In that moment, she felt billions of heartbeats racing through her chest and laughing with millions of mouths. Her ears heard millions of voices rising in song and screams of terror. She was the universe, and the universe was her, and she knew everything within every one of those universes.
And then the door slammed shut.
The weapon was once again held in the prison that had been created for it so many millions of years before.
