The sound of voices grew louder. Drake’s heart lightened with each step. He asked, “Who are they? These people that are here.”
Lornia said, “My race came to Tralam once, and we were many. We died, yes, as all things do, but not all of us. In that Tralam, there was a war with the beasts. The beasts created by Franchine, the Federation’s first founder in his attempts to achieve immortality. He killed the rest, all but me. But here—here they still live because that event did not happen here and if they do come here, I know what they did there—and will repel them with everything I have in me.”
His teeth chewed at his lip. “Time. They may not have come here yet. This Tralam may be in a different time and a different dimension, one the Federation had no way to enter. But they could enter it if they had the Orb.”
“As could any race who possessed the Orb.”
Then they would hide that Orb as her race had done for so long. He asked, “How do you know that you are not here already?”
“If I were, I would have already died. The thing is, only those who are of a single nature, beings like the machine, who exist only in one place and no other, can cross the dimensions. If I had ever lived here, I would not be here now, and neither would you.”
That he was of a single nature shocked him. “There’s nobody like me anywhere in any universe or other dimension?”
Her grin was impish. “No.”
“And there’s nobody like you either.” He wanted to kiss her again but she was already moving on again, and he went with her, treading down the hallway toward the sounds of life just beyond.
They exited the great hall at that moment and stepped into a smaller, but no less wide room. His mouth fell open as he stared at the rows and rows of cryo-chambers positioned on the walls. Within them were people! He found he couldn’t breathe. “How is this possible?”
Lornia said, “They sleep, but only some. Mostly because they need to sleep in cycles to prevent the gardens from giving out. They grew in number, you see, but the machine only has so much energy, and the rest is up to them. But they need a keeper of the gardens here as one has never yet existed within this Tralam. I am not here, you see, and I was the one who grew them.”
He felt a sense of sheer awe. This was beyond what he had imagined, what he had thought was possible. “The gardens that were in the old Tralam, can you grow them here?”
“I can.”
She could. The weapon had not stripped that talent away from her, and he believed her. He believed that she could and would regrow all the lush and beautiful greenery that had been in those gardens and the greenery that had stung his soul with its beauty, much as Lornia herself did.
Faces turned toward them. Mouths opened as Lornia walked forward, her voice ringing with authority. “My name’s Lornia. I too am an Eldern.”
An Eldern. That word was one he had never heard before, but he understood it now with his rudimentary understanding of her language. They, his race, had called her kind the Speakers because they had not had a word in their known languages that would simulate the one she had just used.
He stood there, staring at them all. Lornia said, “And this is Drake, who commanded the weapon against those who would have breached Tralam at its weakest point. That Tralam is no more. I am the sole keeper of the gardens, and I’ve come to keep yours.”
Gasps rolled through the hall. Then came a shout of pure victory and hope. Then they surged toward them. Drake found himself being met with cheers and rapid speech, much of it he could not understand or respond to yet, but he would. He had a lot to learn, yes, but he had much time to learn.
A feeling Drake had never known before washed over him, leaving him flooded with gratitude and exhilaration.
He had given up all of the power of one universe, and he had found himself possessed of something far sweeter.
Love. Home. And the people of which he could be a part. A family.
The night had come to Tralam. It hung across the sky, which was visible outside the windows, and Drake stood at one of the windows, his hands still on the sash as he leaned close to the thick panes that held the atmosphere of space out, and the wind as well.
Lornia stood behind him, her eyes locked on his lean frame. This was the being that she loved, and they had somehow managed to stay together despite the pull of space and time and everything in between. That they would stay together from now on was not something that she doubted.
She went to him. Her hands slid along his shoulders, and he said, “It’s beautiful out there.”
She looked out the windows. It was beautiful. The machine had created that outer view, all rugged mountains and long vistas of sky. They were there, yes, and they could leave the fortress now to go to them, something that had not been possible for so many centuries.
This Tralam was not exactly like the old one. It was a different one, one that had never known the beast wars, the perfidy of Franchine. In this universe, the Federation’s founding fathers had never come, and she had never become the weapon that she had been in that universe where Drake hailed from.
But it too had its problems and sorrows.
Drake drew her into his side. His fingers stroked across her arms, and then he turned her into him for a long and lingering kiss that left her shivering and loose of limb.
Fire started within her and kept building. This was her mate, her man. The one that she loved and wanted in her bed and life.
His kiss brought the taste of sweet water and the nut breads that grew in this Tralam as well, the favored food of her people. His teeth tugged at her bottom lip gently, and his body pressed closer, bringing the feel of his hardening manhood to her lower belly. Her body responded, and her back arched so that she could rub closer to him.
