Vari's Choices

by Laura Jo Phillips

  “Yes, we’re here, Miraku,” Declan said, kneeling down in front of her. He reached toward her, surprised when she launched herself at him, her arms wrapping tightly around his neck, her body shivering and shaking against his.

  Jay and Kai moved close and the three of them soothed her with soft words and gentle caresses until she calmed. Finally she let out a big sigh and lifted her head from Declan’s shoulder so she could see all three of them.

  “How are you here?”

  “The Eternal Pack.”

  “You saw them?” she asked, her eyes wide.

  “No, we did not,” Declan replied. “Pandora told us that they wanted to send us into your mind, so that we could be here with you.”

  “I must be in bad shape,” she said. “What happened?”

  “You don’t know?” She shook her head, then winced.

  “My head hurts. And I’m scared.” Her eyes widened again as her body started to tremble. “Where am I? Do the Doftles have me?”

  “You are safe on a medi-cot in the infirmary aboard the Bihotza,” Declan said quickly. She relaxed a little, but not completely.

  “Whatever is wrong with me, it has something to do with the Doftles.”

  “Yes, it does. One of them offered you his knowledge and you accepted it. Unfortunately, it’s a bit too much for your brain to process. The Eternal Pack is helping, but they need more time, and your fear was growing so much that it began to threaten your life.”

  “You must think I’m such a coward,” she said, dropping her eyes.

  “You?” he asked in surprise. “A coward?” Jay and Kai chuckled softly. “Being afraid does not make you a coward,” Declan said, tapping her lightly on the chin.

  She sighed, then rested her forehead against his shoulder. “What now?”

  “Now we stay here with you for as long as we can, and keep you company.”

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said with a shuddering sigh.

  Kai brushed his fingers through her hair. “May I ask you a question?”

  She turned her head enough to look into Kai’s eyes while still resting against Declan’s shoulder. “Of course.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “Why’d I do what?”

  “Why did you accept the Doftle’s knowledge after he warned you that it would be dangerous?”

  “When Rodnil offered me all that he knew, I understood it was the key to everything. Without it, I won’t be able to stop the Chaos.”

  “Chaos? Do you mean the chaos caused by the Xanti?”

  “Yes, I do,” she said the words on a sigh. Her eyes closed for a long moment, and a silent tear slipped down her cheek before she opened them again. “The Eternal Pack has granted their permission for me to tell you what I couldn't tell you before. But they give it because you’re meant to be my Rami. I don't know if you want that, though, or if you’ll want it after you hear what I have to say.”

  “Vari,” Declan said, “did you mean what you said, in Control, after you released the Doftle?”

  She lifted her head and looked him in the eyes. “I meant what I said, and what I couldn’t say, but hoped you’d understand. Yes, I wish to give us another chance and yes, I love you. All three of you. I always have, even when I was too young to understand what I felt, or what it meant.”

  Declan leaned his forehead against hers for a moment. “Thank you,” he whispered. Then he raised his head. “We love you, and that’s forever. We will always love you, we will always want you, and there is nothing on this plane or the next that can change that.”

  “I don't want to change it. I want you to be mine for all time, just as I want to be yours. But whether or not that’s possible remains to be seen.”

  “We love each other,” Kai said. “That’s all that matters. We’ll figure out the rest as we go.”

  “Kai is right,” Declan said. “But I’d still like to know what you mean, and why you needed permission from the Eternal Pack to tell us your secrets.”

  She studied each of them for a long moment, her expression solemn. “Knowledge is a powerful thing, and not always in a good way. Think carefully please, before you agree to learn what cannot be un-learned.”

  “We appreciate the warning,” Declan said. “But we are on this path with you, and we will not leave it. We would share in this burden that you carry.”

  Vari laid her hand on his cheek and looked into his eyes. Whatever she was looking for, she seemed to find.

  “It’s all about choices, really,” she said, releasing Declan and standing up. They rose to stand before her. “It’s always about choices. Those we make, those others make. The ebb and flow of life is, in so many ways, powered by choices.”

  She turned and began walking through the darkness and they followed. After just a few steps the darkness ahead began to lighten. A few steps more and they found themselves standing on a low rise covered in thick blue grass, under a pale lavender sky. Below them a strange blurriness appeared. It started small, but quickly grew and stretched before dividing itself into three separate figures.

  “What if Aunt Lari hadn’t gone out the garden gate that day to check on Tiny?” Vari asked while the shapes developed into three women that they all recognized, though Vari had never met one of them.

  Lariah Dracon, heavily pregnant, sat on the grass, her expression tense and worried. Saige Taylor, not yet Lobo, knelt beside Riata, an Alverian Empath Healer.

  “What if Darlene had stopped to wonder why Leo wanted Aunt Lari and my mother in the first place?” Vari continued, her gaze fixed on the women below. “What if the Eternal Pack hadn’t given my mother Heart Sight, making her their first Chosen in six thousand years? What if Riata hadn’t bequeathed her healing power to my mother before she passed to the next plane? So many choices made by so many people, all culminating in one, irrevocable moment.”

  They watched as a tall, blond haired man with skin that glittered in the sunlight suddenly materialized a few yards from the women. Saige turned away from Riata, already too late to avoid being shot by the Xanti’s weapon. Lariah did a partial shift into her dracon alter-form and breathed flames at the Xanti.

  When the flames stopped the Xanti was unharmed and furious. He raised his weapon again, this time aiming it at Lariah. Just as he squeezed the trigger he was shoved back by an invisible hand of Air. The weapon discharged, hitting Saige instead of Lariah, and the tableau below them froze.

  “This entire event set so much into motion. The war against the Xanti, Riata becoming Mom’s spirit guide, the nightmare Darlene suffered for an entire year before Summer freed her, the discovery of the Brethren and their eventual downfall. All of that and so much more.

  “But that one, single moment, right there, when that Xanti accidentally shot my mother the second time, was cataclysmic. And yet, with everything else that was happening, no one noticed. Not my parents. Not the Dracons. Not even the Eternal Pack. Of course, no one knew about the Chaos caused by the Xanti until much later, and by then it was far too late.”

  “Too late for what?” Declan asked.

  “Too late to change that which was never meant to be,” she said, gesturing to the scene below them. “When that Xanti aimed his weapon the second time and was knocked back by Air from Uncle Garen, the shot was meant to graze Aunt Lari. The wound would have been slight, and would’ve healed within moments.

  “Instead, the shot hit my mother, which set off a chain of events that irrevocably altered the course of the future by tossing it straight into the path of Chaos.”

  “I don’t understand,” Kai said. “Your mother was completely healed from that wound. Wasn’t she?”

  “No, she wasn’t healed,” Vari replied, shaking her head slowly. “My fathers arrived moments after Mom was shot, but she was dying and Riata, the only one with enough healing power to save her, was dead. They were forced to begin the conversion process right then and there. My sisters and I were conceived a few hours later, during the soul-link triad.<
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  “As the primary fetus, I absorbed almost all of the strange mix of power that flowed through my mother unnoticed by her, or anyone else. Power that no one recognized or even sensed because it resembled nothing that had ever existed before.”

  “What power?” Declan asked.

  “The Chaos of the Xanti’s direct contact with my mother not just once, but twice. The healing power given to her by Riata, the most powerful Alverian Empath Healer who ever lived. The power of the Heart Sight bestowed by the Eternal Pack. The immense power of the soul-link triad. Some residual power left over from the Eternal Pack’s choosing, and their recent healing of an illness Mom had. Even some of Prince Garen's power from when he put Mom into a deep sleep for one stage of the soul-linking was thrown into the mix.” Vari shrugged. “The melding of so much power from such disparate sources couldn’t help but have unexpected and unforeseen results.”

  A chill trickled down Declan’s spine. He exchanged quick looks with his brothers and knew they shared his fear. For a moment he was trapped between not wanting to know the answer to the question on the tip of his tongue, and needing to know the answer more than he needed his next breath. He clenched his fists at his sides and asked. “What were the results, Vari?”

  “A child with psychic abilities so powerful that she was forced, at the age of four, to live apart from all she knew and loved for the sake of her sanity and her life. A child who could move too fast, strike too hard, and jump too high to make any sense for her physical size and strength. A child who could pick up new languages and dialects with ease, and absorb the intricacies of humanoid and non-humanoid cultures with little to no effort. Among other things.” Vari paused and took a deep breath. “Most importantly of all, a child infused with something that can never be duplicated by accident or design."

  "Which is?" Kai asked.

  "The Eternal Pack calls it Armonia. The anti-chaos."

  "You carry this power within you?"

  "Not exactly. Armonia is part of me, a result of the powers I absorbed while I grew and developed in my mother’s womb. It’s not something I can wield, like telepathy. It’s in my flesh and bone.”

  “Have you always known this about yourself?” Declan asked.

  “No. I always knew I was different of course. How many children begin reading at the age of two, without having been taught? How many four year olds can read the minds of everyone she sees? Psychic abilities are normal for female Klanaren, so no one thought much about it. My intelligence was surprising only because my sisters didn’t share it, but it certainly wasn’t seen as something to be concerned about. No one suspected the full extent of the differences within me until I was five.”

  “What happened?” Jay asked.

  “Something that very nearly destroyed my mind. The Eternal Pack had come to my mother’s aid before, but that was the first time she actually called on them for help. When they didn’t answer, she assumed they either couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do anything.

  “But the Eternal Pack hadn’t ignored my mother’s plea. They were just a bit preoccupied with trying to understand what they’d found the moment they reached for me with their power.”

  “What did they find?” Kai asked.

  “The Armonia, but they had no idea what it was at the time. All they knew was that I was different in ways that were unlike anything they’d ever encountered in all the thousands of years of their existence. They needed to understand those differences before they could risk trying to change anything, so they withdrew.

  “It took time for them to delve into the past and find what they’d missed, which was all that I just told you. While they were contemplating the meaning of it all, and whether or not it would be safe to use their magic on me, my time was running out.

  “The last thing they wanted to do was alter what had already been set into motion by interacting with me directly. Their power is such that it wouldn’t have taken much more than a touch of their magic, or a word or two from them directly for that to happen, and things were muddled enough. But my mind was on the verge of breaking and I needed help desperately. So they got creative.”

  “Pandora,” Kai said.

  “Yes, Pandora.” Vari smiled. “I don’t know the details, and most of what I do know I’m sworn to keep to myself. I can tell you that she agreed to accept a bare touch of power from the Eternal Pack, with a tiny bit of my essence thrown in.”

  “So that explains her preference for black and white stripes,” Kai said with a smile.

  Vari laughed. “If you plan to mention the word stripes in her presence, I ask that you give me fair warning first.”

  “I can only hope that I’m not that foolish,” Kai said. “But if I’m wrong, I promise to warn you ahead of time.”

  Vari shook her head at him. “Anyway, the result is that Pandora is connected to me, and to them, which allows her to pass messages between us. She acts as my guide, too, letting me know when to steer clear of events that are tainted by Chaos.

  “Eventually, as I got older and stronger, the Eternal Pack was able to see the Armonia for what it was. When they began to understand how utterly powerful it was, and how much its power increased each year of my life, it worried them a great deal.”

  “Yes, I can see why.” Jay said. “All things require balance. There can be no light without darkness, no love without hate, no good without evil. No anti-chaos without chaos.”

  Vari nodded. “In time they were able to see bits and pieces of things to come. Rather, things that could come. They used what they learned to try to prepare me by telling Pandora what skills I needed to learn, and knowledge I needed to have. She shared that information with me, my parents, and the Dracons. That’s why I know so many languages and cultures, and why I studied xeno-psychology.”

  “But you don’t know why you needed to learn those things?” Jay asked.

  “No, I don’t. Here’s what I do know. Either myself or the anti-chaos I’m made of, has a destiny. If that destiny isn’t met, or if I fail in whatever it is I’m supposed to do, it will mean the end of the Thousand Worlds, and all who live here.”

  “Zerua gainetik,” Declan whispered. “That’s a large burden to place on the shoulders of one person.”

  Vari sighed regretfully. “I spent several years blaming the Eternal Pack for everything. My telepathy. My isolation. My loneliness. Then I blamed the Creators, and then Fate. I think I even blamed my sisters at one point. Then I went full circle and blamed the Eternal Pack for forcing me toward a destiny of their choosing.

  “It was wrong of me, but I was a child then. A very lonely, unhappy, confused, and sometimes angry child who just wanted to be like every other child.

  “But I’m not a child anymore, and I understand now that none of this was planned, or even meant to be. In fact, what happened to me before my birth was an extremely lucky break for the Thousand Worlds. Otherwise, there’d be absolutely nothing and no one who could stop what’s coming.”

  “Why not?” Jay asked.

  “I don’t know why, Jay. I just know it’s true.”

  “I guess it’s time to ask the big question,” Declan said. Vari nodded knowingly, and waited.

  “What, or who, threatens the Thousand Worlds?”

  “The Doftles.”

  “I think we all knew that was coming,” Jay said with a heavy sigh.

  “Strictly speaking, it’s the Chaos created by the Xanti that’s behind it all,” Vari amended. “The Doftles are merely the tool being used. Unfortunately for the Thousand Worlds, they’re an extremely effective tool.”

  They all stood staring at the scene below them for a few moments. Then Vari waved one hand and it vanished as though it had never been. “So, that’s what I am,” she said. “A combination of other people’s decisions and choices both good and bad, freak events, strange powers, and a destiny that makes me responsible for the lives of billions.”

  “That’s not who you are, Vari,” Declan said. “Those things are aspects
of your reality and must be accepted and understood, but they don’t make you who you are.”

  Vari smiled at him, then leaned her head against his shoulder. After a few minutes she bolted upright. “I just realized something.”

  “What’s that?” Declan asked.

  “According to Doc and the Tigrens, the pain I get when I come into contact with other people is caused by my brain attempting to absorb the information in the other person’s brain, while rejecting it at the same time.”

  “Yes, Pandora explained that to us,” Jay said, nodding slowly. “You think the purpose for that was so you could absorb the Doftle’s mind.”

  “Yes, I do,”

  Declan started to say something, then stopped and closed his mouth without uttering a sound.

  “What is it?” Vari asked.

  “I was just wondering why you had to suffer for so many years with an ability you only needed once,” he said. “Then I realized that without those years and all the times your brain had to deal with the onslaught of information it didn’t want, just attempting to absorb the Doftle’s mind would probably have killed you outright.”

  “If that’s true, why am I unconscious now with the Eternal Pack messing around in my brain?”

  “Maybe all those years of practice were just enough to keep you from dying instantly. Keeping the information is, obviously, a different matter.”

  “Either way, I’m lucky they can help me at all. How long have I been out?”

  “About twenty hours when we came here to join you,” Jay said.

  “That reminds me,” Declan said. “We have a confession to make to you.” He frowned. “On second thought, we should probably wait until you awaken and are feeling better.”

  Vari felt the sudden tension in all three of them. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “Whatever it is, it’s upsetting all three of you and that’s not good. So let’s hear it.”

  “We’re here to help you, Vari, not burden you with our guilty consciences,” Declan said. “We will put your needs before our own.”

  “In that case, what I need most right now is for you to tell me what’s got you all wound so tightly all of a sudden. If you don’t tell me, I’ll just get more and more worried and stressed over it.”