rss1.15 – Storm
Between the layers of space, behind the facade of reality, the subspace storm whirled and thundered. It moved into random worlds and times, riding the timestream and all of its eddies and currents, destroying everything it touched. With each new swallowed world, it grew bigger, stronger, faster.
The storm drifted down the timestream toward another reality in its path, trailing poisonous streamers of null space and dead time, absorbing lives from surrounding worlds not yet consumed. Like a giant bloated jellyfish, it squeezed into this new reality and began sampling elements. The timestream swirled around it, trying to tug it onward, but the storm dug its feelers into this world. Its greed and hunger were insatiable. Time was no object when there existed such morsels to devour.
Carda took his bath and plugged into some video games for the rest of the day. He wanted to do something that didn’t require a lot of brainpower, and also didn’t need him to move very much.
His parents came back from the hospital that evening. Abigail had a thick bandage on her wrist, and carried her arm in a sling. She entered Carda’s room, raised an eyebrow at the video games, then bent and kissed him on the cheek.
“Hi Mom,” said Carda. “What was that for?”
“For taking the knife out,” she replied. “For facing that hoodlum and being so brave. Who was he?”
Carda searched for a suitable explanation. “Xironi’s ex-boyfriend.”
Abigail’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh.” She looked thoughtfully at the TV screen, and Carda could see that she wanted to tell him off for playing video games. But she restrained herself. Instead, after a moment, she said, “He had powers like yours.”
“Sort of,” replied Carda, feeling uncomfortable. He didn’t know how much he could tell her, because she might twist it around to use against him later. “I haven’t really had as much training as he did.”
“But you still won,” said Abigail, smiling.
“Yeah.” Carda thought it was safer to let her believe that. He didn’t want to try to explain Ben.
“Well,” said Abigail, fussing with his hair, “try not to get in any more fights like that. You could have been seriously hurt.”
“Believe me, fights are the last thing I need right now,” he replied.
“Good.” She hugged him and departed with another cold look at his game.
Carda sighed and resumed playing.
A few minutes later his father walked in. David stood and watched Carda play for a moment. Then he said, “Did you whip him?”
“Yes sir,” said Carda, eyes on the TV.
David slapped Carda on the shoulder. “Good man.” And he walked out.
Carda grinned.
Carda went to bed late and slept late the next morning. He was sleepily eating a bowl of cereal when his mother entered the living room and turned on the television. Carda watched through the doorway of the kitchen. A special report was on.
“…early this morning. Experts are calling it a weather anomaly, because instead of losing strength, it appears to be accellerating. Our weather satellites have given us these pictures…” Images of a swirling black hole that covered half the United States. It looked like a hurricane made of soot.
“Strangely, the storm is accompanied only by lightning. There is no wind and no rain. We cannot tell yet if it is a threat, or merely an annoyance. We will keep you updated as the story unfolds. Back to you, Bob.”
Carda’s spoon dropped from his fingers. “It’s here,” he muttered. He jumped up and ran to his room to grab some clothes.
The subspace storm had found Earth.
Xironi watched the same newscast with Ben in her lap and Esca crouched on the sink. “It’s here,” she whispered. “Esca, what do we do?”
“Evacuate this world?” Esca suggested.
Xironi gave Esca a sarcastic look. “Do you know how many people are on Earth? There’s not enough time.”
She got up and turned off the television. She knew that Carda would show up any time, and she knew she needed to be ready.
She was in her room, packing her things, when Carda walked in without knocking. “There you are,” he said. “The storm’s here.”
“I know,” she said, pointing her ears. “Where are we going?”
“You’re going to the Library of World’s Ages,” said Carda. Sera appeared in the doorway behind him, looking grim.
Xironi stood up. “You’re back!”
“For you and your families,” said Sera. “We saw the storm hit Earth, and all we can do is move you to safety.”
“But… what about the rest of Earth’s population?” said Xironi.
Sera looked at Carda. An understanding passed between them. Carda turned to Xironi and cleared his throat. “I won’t be coming with you.”
Xironi stared at him. “What are you talking about? Of course you’re coming!”
“I’m the Strider of Chronos,” said Carda, speaking slowly and clearly. “I have the power to stop the storm, and I’m going to do it.”
This was not what Xironi wanted to hear. “Like heck you are!”
“Xironi, there’s no time to discuss this in a committee.”
“I am NOT a committee! I’m…” Xironi faltered. Was she really about to admit how she felt?
Carda stepped forward. “Exactly. You’re my girlfriend. Which is why I asked Sera to make sure you made it to the Library.”
“But… but you—”
Carda grabbed Xironi by the shoulders and planted a long kiss on her lips. When he stepped away, she could see the love evident in his gaze.
“I WILL come back for you. I promise. Now go. I won’t have you risking yourself for my sake.”
And then he was gone, rushing out the door to face the storm.
Sera rested a gentle hand on Xironi’s shoulder. “He’s going to be okay.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because Carda has NEVER kissed a girl before, to my recollection. He definitely loves you, which means he’s not likely to let a little thing like a subspace storm keep him from you.”
Xironi tried to grin, but couldn’t hide her apprehension.
“Come on, let’s grab Esca and Ben and get clear of this world while we still can,” Sera prompted.
Carda knew that the machine he’d seen down underneath the Strider Academy had to be the source of the storm. If he could shut down the machine, perhaps the storm would dissipate. Carda practically ran along the wall as he careened down the spiral staircase, hitting the brakes just as he reached the bottom.
The machine thrummed heavily, the sound reverberating around the room and pulsing through Carda’s body. Octavius stood at a control panel, apparently monitoring energy levels or the like. Carda’s flurry of motion at the foot of the staircase caught his attention.
“What are YOU doing here?” he asked, eyes narrowed.
“I’m here to stop that machine, Octavius,” Carda retorted. “You’re going to destroy everything!”
“Destroy everything? I think not. I’m merely rebuilding the multiverse the way it should be.”
“I’ve seen what happened to Atlantis already. The storm destroyed half the city!”
“I never said there wouldn’t be casualties,” Octavius smirked.
A shadow approached behind Octavius, and Dimetrius melted into view. The latter seemed oblivious to Carda’s presence, his eyes locked on the other man’s back.
Normally, he would’ve made some snarky comment by now, Carda thought. Then a flash of metal caught his eye: a dagger, all curves and angles, possibly ceremonial in nature. No, that can’t be right, Carda thought. He’s not going to… is he?
What happened next was a blur. Dimetrius rushed forward the last few steps and drove the dagger upward into Octavius’ spine. Octavius arched his back, a silent scream on his face. The elder strider collapsed to the floor, the back of his robe darkening with blood. “I regret to inform you that our contract is at an end,” Dimetrius informed him in a mockingly businesslike tone.
Carda gaped as Dimetrius turned a triumphant gaze in his direction. “You can’t stop this, Carda,” he stated matter-of-factly. “The storm will end everything. All the same…” He stepped forward, brandishing the dagger, which still dripped with blood.
Octavius’ hand shot out and caught Dimetrius by the ankle. Carda couldn’t believe Octavius was still alive after being stabbed so brutally, but he didn’t have time to question providence. As Dimetrius turned toward the strider with a vicious snarl, Carda bolted form the room and back up the stairs, two steps to a stride. He tried very hard not to imagine what might cause the sounds he heard echoing up the stairwell.
“Okay, that didn’t go as planned,” he panted. “Guess it’s time to go straight to the source of the problem… the storm itself.”
Carda used his abilities to accelerate his roadster well beyond the physical capabilities of the car itself, and would likely have earned about fifteen traffic tickets if he had been traveling slowly enough to be seen by the state troopers. The storm grew on the horizon, a swirling pillar of blackness that extended up into the stratosphere. From Carda’s perspective it seemed to arch backward over him, so he felt that he was already under the storm.
The base broadened, becoming a hazy black cloud with purple lightning racing through it. He put on a burst of extra speed. Within a manner of minutes he reached ground zero… and a roadblock, of all things. Several police cars were parked across the road, with orange barracades and flashing yellow lights. Carda pulled his car up to the nearest policeman, who walked up to the car.
“I can’t let you past this point, sir,” the uniformed officer explained.
“You don’t understand. I’ve got to get through!” he countered.
“Until we know what that thing is, no one is getting near it!”
“I’m one of the few people on earth who DOES know what that thing is!”
“You don’t say?” the officer snarked. “Then please, enlighten us, professor.”
“It’s a subspace storm. Reality is tearing itself apart, and if I don’t get in there to stop it, it’s going to destroy everything.”
The officer stared at him for a moment, then pulled his radio out. “Be advised, we have a ten-sixty-six at roadblock twelve…”
Carda sighed. At this rate, this world was doomed.
…So what was he doing hanging around here?
The officer got the response he was expecting over the radio and turned to the cockpit of the car again. “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to step out of the car—?”
Carda no longer occupied the driver’s seat. He had teleported himself past the roadblock and was running full-tilt towards the glowering storm.
The police at the roadblock were mobilizing a pursuit when a sudden flash of purple light lanced out from the near edge of the storm and struck Carda with a resounding BOOM that echoed across three states. When the officers dared to look again, there was no sign of Carda.
Or his car, oddly enough.
Xironi stepped through the portal into the Library of World’s Ages with Esca in her arms and Ben on her shoulder. Sera followed her, wings trailing behind her like a cape, and closed the portal behind them.
Xironi looked around and realized that the portal had opened on top of a low, flattened pyramid. It was a step pyramid, made of progressively smaller and smaller flat squares stacked on top of each other.
Surrounding them in every direction were bookcases. They stretched into the distance as far as the eye could see. Xironi looked up and saw more aisles of bookcases stretching straight up into infinity, but the world would have to tilt at a 90 degree angle to be able to walk up the sideways flooring up there.
Dazed, she descended the steps of the pyramid. Ben and Esca stared around, especially up, and clung to her a little tighter.
“Hey Xironi,” called Lucas, who had been waiting for them to arrive at the pyramid’s foot. “I think you should see this.”
“This isn’t quite what I’d anticipated,” Carda muttered to himself.
He had tried to summon time and space power at the same time, but so close to the edge of the storm, both powers were distorted. All he had done was attract the thing’s attention. It sent out a feeler of polluted energy and sucked him up.
Now he hung inside the storm, surrounded by the roaring of wind and the flying fragments of other worlds. He didn’t feel like he was moving at all—the storm moved around him. But his medallion floated out from his chest, glowing gold. He had a feeling that it was keeping him from being ripped apart.
He watched a piece of a planet fly past him. He could see trees and tiny houses on it.
“I’m inside the subspace storm,” he said aloud.
“That you are,” said a voice from behind him, audible even through the storm’s roar. “You’re obviously a Strider of Chronos. No one else could have survived passing through the edge of the storm.” Carda turned to see another man floating toward him, wearing the same medallion that Carda was wearing. It, too, glowed gold. “My name is Joseph Planarre. You must be James Carda, my successor.”
“How did you— Gah. Never mind. Time scrying, right?” Carda blinked. “You… look familiar.” Joseph looked suspiciously average—neither short nor tall, brown hair, brown eyes. Yet Carda felt as if he had seen him somewhere before.
“You’ll figure it out in time,” Joseph grinned. “Anyway, we should get going. The others will be here soon.”
“Others?” Carda looked around at the contents of the storm. Lots of stuff and no living people.
“The other Striders of Chronos, naturally. Surely you didn’t think that stopping a subspace storm was something you could do alone.”
“Well…” Truth be told, Carda really thought he could have done it.
Joseph laughed again. “Come on, Carda. Let’s get to the core of the storm. I think you’ll find it very interesting.”
Xironi walked around the bottom of the pyramid until she reached Lucas. He was staring avidly into a pane of thick glass that stood on end at the foot of the pyramid. There was one on each of the four sides of the pyramid, about twenty feet long, segmented with strips of silver metal.
Lucas was looking into the second one from the end, and Xironi walked up and looked into the glass. Then she realized that it was not a mere pane of glass—it was a window into another world.
Felicia.
She recognized the tree-houses in the distance, and the peculier violet color of the sky. She also recognized the swirling black hole in space that was descending to consume the planet. As she looked, she saw a tiny pinprick of light. She gazed at it, and the window seemed to zoom in, giving her a better view. The light was a portal, and two men were holding it open as a crowd of people hurried through it.
Joseph, Strider of Chronos, and her grandfather, Arthur.
Xironi stopped breathing. Her surroundings ceased to exist. She was there again, slipping through the portal, looking over her shoulder at the two of them. She could see the little girl who was herself as she departed Felicia, never to return.
Xironi watched, frozen, as Joseph and Arthur had an argument, arms waving, and at last, as the storm descended on them, Arthur stepped through the portal. She watched as Joseph closed the portal and sealed it with a cross of violet lightning and green flame, as the ground around him began to vanish in chunks, leaving only blackness behind.
Then the window went dark, and Joseph was gone.
Xironi turned away from the window and put her hands over her face.
The subspace storm’s core was a pillar of swirling fire and lightning, stretching infinitely up and down, feeding the rest of the storm around them. And inside the pillar floated a body, unconscious but still breathing, as best Carda could tell. He nearly cried.
It was Michelle, his sister.
Carda stepped forward, but Joseph stopped him with a hand on Carda’s shoulder. “What do you plan to do?”
“I’m going to get my sister out of there,” Carda replied, resisting Joseph’s grip.
Joseph held on to him. “Not likely, unless you plan to sacrifice yourself for her sake. That stasis pillar is a one-way trap, I’ve seen things like it before. If you went in there, you would free her, but be trapped yourself. Forever.”
Carda wilted. “You mean there’s no way to get her out of there?”
“Not without one of us getting stuck in her place,” another voice replied. Carda turned to see a Felician girl who looked a lot like Xironi floating toward him. The same medallion glowed on her chest. “It’s been a while, Carda.”
“Um, have we met?” Carda answered quizzically.
“Yes. And no,” the Felician smiled. “That is to say, you haven’t met me yet, but I entered the storm from a point in time where I’ve already met you.”
Carda squinted, trying to follow this. “I’m still not used to all this. A few weeks ago I was a regular guy.”
The Felician shook her head. “A few weeks ago, you were still the Strider of Chronos. You just didn’t know it at the time. You can’t fight the Creator’s plan, no matter how hard you may try.” She glanced downward. “Trust me, I know all about that.”
By now a large crowd, all of whom wore identical glowing medallions (or was it the same one, from different times? Carda wondered), had gathered around the pillar, looking at Michelle worriedly. “We can’t stop the storm if there’s someone inside the core,” one said.
“But who will take her place?” another replied. “We’re all needed back in our own worlds and times.”
Carda stared at Michelle. He was the only one who even had a reason to enter the pillar; Michelle was HIS sister! But hadn’t he promised Xironi that he would return for her? How would he keep that promise without sacrificing his own sister…?
How could he choose between the two people he cared for the most?
“Say, where did you get that pendant?” the Felician asked.
“Huh?” Carda mumbled, having been drawn out of his mental argument with himself.
“Not the medallion, the other one,” she said. “You didn’t have it when I first met you.”
Carda glanced down and spotted the echo-fragment dangling from his neck. It had become so second-nature, he’d forgotten he even wore it!
Carda’s mind suddenly raced with new possibilities. It was asking a lot, true… but if the echo of Alatha wasn’t supposed to exist…
Carda gently removed the necklace and held it in front of his face. “I think I know what to do.”
Before he could talk himself out of it, he thrust the pendant into Joseph’s hands. “Hold this for a second.”
“What are you doing?” Joseph asked, puzzled.
“Resonance,” Carda answered. “Hold it out for me.” Joseph let the broken pendant hang on its chain. Carda cupped his hands around the fragment and ignited both his powers. His hands became wreathed in green fire and purple lightning.
“That’s odd; his powers are backwards,” someone said.
“I heard about a Strider of Chronos whose powers were mirrored,” another added. “I heard that HE was the one who…”
Carda didn’t hear the rest; the medallion hanging from his neck began ringing with a clear metallic tone, while the fragment resonated with a different tone. Carda adjusted the flow of power between his hands, trying to match the fragment’s tone to the medallion’s. It was like tuning a sensitive musical instrument; too much of a change and he would slip right past the note he was searching for.
After a minute or so, Carda managed to match the fragment’s resonance to his medallion’s, and both rang with a clear bell-like tone. Carda allowed a pulse of energy to harmonize the pendant, raising its tone by an octave.
And suddenly the fragment was no longer there. Alatha’s echo stood in its place, a tall, thin girl with glasses. Carda could see right through her, as if she were only partly there. Which was a good thing, because the storm would have shredded her otherwise.
“What is this place?” Echo asked, looking up at the pillar, the swirling blackness, and the strangers with golden medallions.
“We’re at the center of the subspace storm,” Carda replied.
“Subspace…” Echo frowned. “Is Michelle here?”
“See for yourself,” Carda replied, pointing at the pillar behind her.
Echo turned and gasped. “It’s worse than I imagined! Why hasn’t anyone gotten her out of there?”
“It’s a trap,” Joseph replied. “Anyone who goes into that pillar will only trade places with her. They’ll be trapped instead.”
Echo stared at Michelle’s unconscious form for a moment. “But that would mean that they’ll die…” She trailed off, and looked down at her transparent hands. She smiled a little. “I’ll go.”
Carda blinked. “What?”
“I said I’ll go.” Echo’s smile vanished. She looked almost angry. “The timeline we shared included Michelle too, Carda. She and I were good friends; I’ll be more than happy to take her place.”
“I don’t think you understand the situation,” another Strider of Chronos said. “We have to destroy that pillar in order to stop the subspace storm.”
“And whatever, or whoever, is inside that pillar when it’s destroyed… Well, it won’t be pretty,” another added.
Echo continued to stare at Michelle. The fierce expression on her face did not change. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not supposed to exist anyway. I’m the last fragment of a timeline that never happened. Time cleaned up after itself, but… it didn’t do a good enough job.”
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” Carda asked her.
Echo closed her eyes. “Don’t worry about me, Carda. Take care of Michelle, and Xironi, too.”
“But—”
Echo looked at him, her eyes like chips of flint. “Carda, listen to me. The past we shared doesn’t exist anymore. Once I’m gone, the memories we shared will vanish over time. Let go of the past. Look to the future—the one you and Xironi will share. Make new memories.”
Carda stared at Echo for a moment, then nodded. “All right.”
“Good,” Echo replied as she floated toward the pillar. She reached out both transparent hands and touched the swirling fire. The flames and tongues of lightning lanced through her hands, and she winced. But she kept moving forward. For a moment she was enveloped in fire, and Carda thought she had been consumed. But no, a second later she appeared in the pillar’s center, floating with her hair whipping above her head in a spiral. Michelle’s inert form fell out at the same point where Echo had entered. Carda dashed forward and caught her. Relief flooded through him; his sister was safe, finally. He pulled her away from the pillar.
The other Striders of Chronos stepped forward and surrounded the pillar, blocking Echo from view. Carda suddenly had a thought. He straightened up and peered at the pillar of fire. “Echo, wait! What happened to you? What caused you to split off from Alatha in the first place?”
“It doesn’t matter now,” Echo replied faintly. “It never happened, remember? That’s why I shouldn’t exist anymore. Let the future take its course.”
“All right…” Carda responded. I trust you, my friend, he added silently.
He looked down at Michelle and saw to his horror that she was becoming transparent, the same way Echo had been. “Joseph!” he yelled.
Joseph flew to him and saw the problem at once. “Oh no. James, she’s not a Strider of Chronos. The storm will devour her.”
Carda swore through his teeth. He ripped the medallion off his neck and threw it around Michelle’s neck. She became solid at once. What was more, her eyes opened. “What the—Carda! Where are we?”
“A subspace storm,” said Carda. “You’ve been the focus of it.” He pointed at the pillar.
Michelle looked. “Oh my gosh! There’s a girl in there! Who is that?”
“She traded places with you,” said Carda, feeling his throat tightening. “And now we have to stop the storm with her in there.”
“Is she going to die?” Michelle floated to what would have been a standing position, clinging to Carda’s arm.
“I don’t know.” Carda turned grimly to Joseph. “I’m ready.”
“Don’t let go of your brother,” Joseph told Michelle. “Things are about to get really rough.”
Joseph shouted to the others, and they moved out from the pillar, forming a ring around it. Carda had not realized how many Striders of Chronos there were. He looked at the circle of faces and glowing medallions, and wondered which ones had written the journals. He spotted the Felician that he would meet in the future, and she winked at him.
As one, they all raised their hands. Carda did the same, conscious of Michelle shifting her grip to his shoulders. He summoned space and time powers, and to his surprise, golden light burst into being in both his hands. It flashed out of his hands and into the pillar in a long beam of light.
“Jack, you have SO much to tell me when we get home,” Michelle breathed in his ear.
The other Chronostriders were also firing beams of gold light into the pillar. It looked like an arching tent of yellow fire connected to the red pillar in the center. Echo watched them with her arms at her sides, floating in the eye of the storm with a sad expression.
Then the storm noticed.
Red flame lashed out of the pillar and knocked some of the Chronostriders backward, breaking their beams. Some of them screamed.
“Get back into position!” Joseph roared. “Hold it in!”
The injured Chronostriders scrambled back to their places, just as the storm lashed out in a different place. Carda saw the Felician girl go flying out into the darkness of the storm, only to return a second later, ears flat to her head and tail brushed out. Xironi never looked like that on her worst day. This girl was a spitfire. She shot the gold beams into the storm again and yelled, “I hope it HURTS!”
Michelle laughed nervously into Carda’s back.
Carda was waiting for the storm to attack him, so when it did, he was ready. He threw up a barracade of energy between them, and the fire glanced off. To his left, Joseph had done the same. The other Chronostriders saw what they did, and the next time it struck at them, shields met it on every side.
Then the pillar bent sideways, and from the darkness of the storm around them, long tendrils of blackness raced inward and wrapped around the Chronostriders. “Steady!” Joseph bellowed as the darkness hid them from each other.
Carda and Michelle were enveloped in the dark, and it was numbingly cold. But he could still see the golden beams of light burning from his hands up into the storm. Michelle fell against him and wrapped her arms around his chest. “It’s trying to pull me away,” she said, muffled.
“Don’t let go,” Carda told her, wishing he had a hand free to hold onto her.
The blackness lifted suddenly, and they saw that the pillar had absorbed Echo, taking on her form. Instead of a pillar of red fire, they now faced a woman made of fire whose legs stretched down into infinity, and whose head and shoulders were out of sight overhead. Her hands were knotted into flaming fists, and she swung at the circle of Chronostriders. Her blow collapsed their shields and knocked them flat, but she could not hurt them. “Give up,” boomed a deep voice that sounded sort of like Echo’s. “The end of all worlds is oblivion.”
The gold light from the Chronostriders was finally starting to take effect, though. Golden bonds crept across the storm’s torso, down toward the legs, and up toward the arms.
The storm struggled—or that’s how Carda phrased it to himself. In reality it was much harder to understand. Sometimes he could see nothing but his own golden energy. Other times they all seemed to be standing on charred earth, fighting a flaming creature in a black sky. Sometimes he felt as if he was hanging upside down, and the storm was a void beneath him, waiting for him to fall.
Through it all he felt Michelle’s death grip on him, and he was always aware that they were not really fighting Echo. The storm was merely using her form. What would have happened if they had had to fight Michelle? He didn’t think he could have done it.
At one point he heard Joseph yelling, “We’ve got it! We’ve got it! Shield yourselves!”
Carda threw up a shield, but it seemed to make no difference. Things were flying past him, and through him, up toward the being in the distance. He saw black things with eyes, and unliving creatures gnashing their teeth, and colors that hurt his eyes. He closed them and strained to keep his power going.
He felt a heavy pressure on him, crushing his head. His eyes were forced open, and the world was stretched and blurred. The storm was thin and shrinking, its strength compressed into a smaller and smaller space, wrapped in golden bands.
Carda realized what was going to happen a second before it did. He reached out, found a gap in space, and plunged through it with Michelle in tow, just as the storm imploded.
Lucas grabbed Xironi’s arm. “Look out this window! Look!”
Xironi wiped her eyes and looked up. The next windowpane held a view of Carda’s homeworld Earth, and the ominous black cloud that had first appeared on the horizon. It was now miles and miles across, eating up half the horizon. But something was happening to it. Golden threads of light were looping back and forth, in and out, through the black of the storm, weaving space back together. It seemed to Xironi that they were straining to hold the storm in, to net it like a struggling fish.
“Ohh, that’s at home,” Esca remarked, also watching. A few seconds later, she added, “Miss Xironi, is that girl over there related to you? She has a tail.”
Xironi looked over her shoulder, then quickly turned the other way. Standing at a distance, in a huddled group of Felicians, was the young Xironi from the past. She was in her grandfather’s arms, asking questions about her parents and looking confused.
It had taken a long time for her to grasp the concept that her parents were dead…
Xironi tried to ignore her past self, and gazed instead at the subspace storm, wondering what Carda was trying to do. How could one young man stop a multi-dimensional storm all by himself?
Suddenly, the golden threads thickened and tightened, and the storm rebounded in on itself, the black pillar shrinking suddenly to a fine black line. The sky seemed to compress around it, and she saw trees and earth being sucked into the implosion—the storm was taking as much with it as it could.
At last, the darkness laced over with golden light, then abruptly vanished into nothing. The atmosphere displacement sucked a funnel of dust and debris high into the air, whence it drifted back to earth like confetti.
The storm was gone. But there was no sign of Carda.
Xironi felt hot tears well up and begin coursing down her face. Overcome, she sank to her knees. “Carda… you’re not coming back…” she sobbed. “You promised you’d come back for me…”
