The Needs of the Many

by Christina McMullen

  That they were now breaking that bond, bringing about an end to the largest threat to life in the galaxy, and righting all the wrongs that intentional or not, had been performed, gave her a sense of peace unlike anything she’d felt before.

  It was Ellie’s own will that broke down the Kyroibi, subconsciously breaking it down into its base elements. She felt a slight nudge from Rhymallian and she nudged back, affirming that the Kyroibi was no more. Julian’s Abstractive Root was restored and ready to be returned to its rightful owner. The extraction was painless. In fact, it was more of a relief as the burden of thousands of years’ worth of secrets were suddenly lifted from her shoulders. Ellie felt as if she was floating in a comfortable void for only a moment before even the nothing disappeared.

  Chapter 21

  A cataclysmic rending tore through the calm, followed by a wall of sound so discordant it very well might have been a physical manifestation. The aftershock jarred Julian out of his trance. He sat up, confused, and quite disturbed. He could have sworn he’d heard a piercing scream echoing through the darkness just a moment before, but all was still.

  Too still.

  By his calculations, which he’d checked and double checked to perfection, the collision with the Star of Eidyn should have vaporized the planet instantly. But as he raised himself to sitting and looked around the archive, he saw nothing amiss. The bright balls of light holding the records hovered around him as it had when he set his plan in motion. The walls showed nary a crack.

  And yet, something had change. Something inside himself was different. Julian could not pinpoint the cause, but the feeling was indescribable and so very overwhelming. Impossibly, it was even more powerful than the torrent of emotions that had come to life when El’iadrylline took dominion over the Kyroibi.

  And with that thought came the truth. Sudden, jarring, and more terrible than he could have ever imagined.

  The bond was gone.

  The Kyroibi was missing.

  Ellie was no longer with him.

  In a panic, Julian jumped to his feet, and immediately collapsed to his knees in horror as his eyes fell upon the scene before him. Rhymallian looked up, his face twisted in conflicted emotion as he locked eyes with his child. In his arms, Ellie’s body lay limp and broken, like a puppet with its strings severed. Her diodes dull and gray.

  “No,” Julian whispered, stumbling forward on legs that refused to work properly. “No, not Ellie. Father, what’s happened?”

  “She made you whole.” Rhymallian’s words came out in a choked and guilt ridden whisper. “She gave back that which I took from you in my bid to stop the misguided path of my contemporaries. Within her, she had the ability to do what I would have thought impossible. Your Abstractive Root has been restored. The Kyroibi is no more.”

  “But what of the Limitless Battalion?”

  “Pacified,” Rhymallian said, gracing Ellie’s lightless face with a sad smile. “It was a gamble. One she took without hesitation, but it worked. The spark which kept the battalion at the ready has been snuffed. When Ia’na Eidyn is no more, so too shall the Limitless Battalion pass into history. Peace, true peace, will be restored.”

  “But at what price?” Julian cried, unable to keep the anguish of his heart from overflowing and consuming him as his eyes remained fixed on Ellie’s still form. “What has happened to her? When you say the Kyroibi is no more… You claim I’m… I just can’t…”

  It was all too much. Julian put his hands to his face, unsurprised to feel the steady stream of tears as his heart seemed to almost drown under their weight. The anomalously physical ache he’d only recently come to understand as heartbreak seemed now amplified.

  “My sacrifice has been undone,” Rhymallian again explained, slowly, keeping a watchful eye on his grieving son as he gently placed Ellie back on the dais and carefully arranged her limp and lifeless limbs. “Because of her father’s desperation, El’iadrylline had a control over the Kyroibi that none before her possessed.”

  “That is why I have been able to feel. Even before she took dominion. Her benevolence was stronger than her desire to rule.”

  “And remains so even now.” Rhymallian smiled down on her, tracing the pattern of darkened diodes along the side of her face. “Her will was strong. Stronger than I ever thought possible. Your immortality is no more. She has allowed that which I denied you. Of course, she wanted to stop the battalion, but just as much, she wanted to see you live, Julian. Truly live, and love, and experience life as you should have.”

  “But what is life without her?” Julian asked, stumbling forward until he knelt alongside the dais. He placed his hand over hers, heart breaking as their diodes aligned, yet no energy passed through the severed link. And yet, there was some energy. Faint and sickly, but it was there. He lifted his eyes sharply. “She is still alive?"

  “She is neither dead nor alive, but she is incomplete,” Rhymallian explained. “Her own Abstractive Root has been fractured. Somewhere, somehow, El’iadrylline has lost a piece of herself, but for the life of me, I cannot extrapolate what happened or where it has gone. But know this, Julian, without it, she cannot survive for long.”

  Julian’s heart seemed to collapse in on itself. Without Ellie, he was fractured and incomplete. If there was any hope for her survival, he had to take it. There were scholars he knew of, back on T’al Eidyn. Scholars who studied abstraction. Surely one of them would have the knowledge required to make her whole once again.

  But as he frantically tried to calculate the fastest route back to the Ghowrn system, Julian was struck with the incongruous reality of the situation. He had only sent El’iadryov away earlier in the same day. Once he’d set in motion the destabilization of the orbit, it was but a few hours more before the planet would perish in collision with the star. The only way Ellie could have arrived was if she had reason to fly out at least two days before, but that too was impossible. Just prior to falling into his trance, he felt her presence reaching out to him. It was no easier to ignore than all the other times she’d done so, but that did not change the fact that he could feel the distance between them. And at that time, it had been nearly the span of the galaxy.

  “Where is her ship?”

  Rhymallian gave Julian a confused look.

  “Surely you must be able to see as I do. El’iadrylline is of the Transcendent. It is all that tethers her here.”

  “Surely she did not travel unassisted from the Ghowrn system.”

  “Is that so difficult to believe?” Rhymallian asked. “You know now what I have kept from you. What I sought to keep from my own tether. What we accomplished, we kept our people from knowing. Kyroibi. Forbidden knowledge. Forbidden because quantification is nigh impossible. Are you not aware that you are as much a Transcendent as El’iadrylline?”

  “Impossible, Father,” Julian said with growing agitation. “Did you believe removing my abstraction made me a god? Because believe me, right now I am anything but invulnerable.”

  He held back a sigh as he placed a hand on Ellie’s cheek. The cold, lightless diodes held no spark of the life force of the woman he loved.

  “I am powerless and afraid,” he said as a tear slipped down his cheek. “All that I’ve done, I’ve done to save her. To save life in the galaxy, yes, but I cannot fathom an existence without her in it.”

  “Julian, you were willing to sacrifice your own existence to save her life. Can you not understand El’iadrylline’s will is as strong? You wished to spare her, but by giving your life, you created an emptiness in her that would temper, but never heal. In following you here, she gave back what I had no business asking. You are again whole.”

  “Yet she is not.”

  “No, but she will be. Upon ascension, the missing piece of her root shall follow, unless she has created a tether to this realm as I have. Do you not see?” Rhymallian took Julian’s hand in his. In the other he lifted Ellie’s, drawing them together. “Life continues. The battalion no longer looms as an ever
present threat. Peace will be restored. You have done so much more than you set out to do. Both of you.”

  “From forth the fatal loins of these two foes, a pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life,” Julian spat the quote with bitterness. He’d found an obtuse comfort in the works of Shakespeare during his brief time on Earth. It pained him to think the one story he found least rational and utterly avoidable would become the narrative of his own life’s final ending.

  “Not so fast there, emo Romeo. Ain’t no one dying if I can help it.”

  Julian turned fast, nearly tripping over his own limbs in shock, unable to believe his ears. Or for that matter, his eyes as he gazed upon the human who stood just inside the doorway.

  “Bethany? But how? Whatever are you doing here?”

  Bethany narrowed her eyes at Julian before they landed on Ellie’s still form.

  “This ain’t the time for questions,” she said in a clipped tone as she brought a small leaden box from her pocket. “I was supposed to deliver this to the temple keeper on T’al Eidyn.”

  She placed the box in Julian’s hand, but placed hers over it as he reached to unlatch it.

  “Wait,” she said, giving him a hard stare. “I want to be far from here when you open that. Last time that box opened I was blown away by an anger, the likes of which I ain’t never felt before and believe me when I say I have had some angry days. Not only that, but I’m pretty sure that’s the whole reason I’m here.”

  “This is the missing piece of Ellie’s abstraction,” Julian said, understanding finally the excruciating pain in his heart. “You knew this?”

  “I can’t say as if I actually knew anything, but all of the sudden, I had this vision and I could tell Ellie was in trouble. I know this sounds weird, but I felt like she was telling me what I needed to do. Next thing I know, I’m snatching up that box and suddenly I’m here.”

  “You phase pulsed?”

  “If that’s what you call it,” Bethany said with a bland expression. “But I suspect that ain’t the thing to worry about right now. So work your space magic and let’s put Humpty Dumpty back together again.”

  “Were it that easy.”

  Both heads turned to Rhymallian, who stood off to the side, a length of iridescent material draped between his hands.

  “Isn’t it?” Julian asked, a note of panic in his voice. “You took from me my abstraction, molded it into something else entirely which became part of her. You then removed from her that which was mine and gave it back. If this containment unit holds the part of her abstraction that keeps her from waking, shouldn’t it be a simple matter compared to all that came before?”

  “From a practitioner’s standpoint, yes. The procedure, while not routine, is most certainly simplistic. But the procedure is valueless if the host is unwilling to accept the fracture.”

  “What do you mean? You haven’t even tried.”

  Rhymallian held his hands up, the shimmering cloth still between them, making the gesture seem odd.

  “I have not, you are correct. And I am not saying I will not make every attempt to coax El’iadrylline to accept that which has fractured, but I have heard what Bethany Bomar of Earth said and I know what she felt. What that grounding stone holds is no more than that which El’iadrylline has pushed from her abstraction herself.”

  “Well we’re just going to have to push back harder than her, then, aren’t we?”

  “While I appreciate the offer and your enthusiasm, Bethany Bomar, I am afraid brute force will be ineffective in returning a fractured abstraction. The first thing we need is to bring her back to us, and I’m afraid she is resisting,” Rhymallian explained.

  “Back from where?” Julian asked, though as he took a step back closer to Ellie’s body, he was certain that not only did he know, but also that he didn’t want to know.

  “The realm of the ascended, I imagine,” Rhymallian answered, stating exactly what Julian didn’t want to hear.

  “Does that mean hope is already lost?” he asked, his mouth betraying his heart yet again.

  “Hope is never lost, my child. We are only rendered temporarily shortsighted. Remember, El’iadrylline is capable of that which only a few have ever attempted.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A return journey,” Rhymallian said with a wink. “Now go, both of you. You need not leave the archive, but I would prefer room to work if I am going to coax young El’iadrylline into accepting that which she must come to terms with as part of herself.”

  “I understand,” Julian said, taking one last moment to run his thumb down her cold, rigid cheek before moving to join Bethany on the far side of the room.

  Chapter 22

  Ellie opened her eyes, but quickly shut them against the brilliant and relentless light surrounding her. At least, she tried. She found the physical act of shutting her eyes impossible. She tried instead to lift a shielding hand against the impossibly harsh light and discovered this to be an equally impossible task.

  It was then that she realized she was without physical form. Worse perhaps, when she tried to call out, she quickly discovered she was voiceless as well. Panic swelled, incomprehensibly. How and from where her terrified emotions manifested, she could not fathom, but she didn’t like this feeling of complete nothingness. A sickness gripped her. No control. No power. Yet she could feel.

  “Peace, child. You are one with the light,” a voice rang out, seemingly from everywhere at once. “Allow yourself to feel and all will be well.”

  Ellie stilled and tried to call out, but panic still edged her mind, so her thoughts were scattered.

  Help! What’s happened to me? What am I supposed to feel besides worry and dread? Why can’t I speak?

  Her racing mind tried to call out, over and over, but it was of little use.

  “Your essence is used to having a tangible manifestation. You will come through if you allow yourself to feel,” the voice replied, repeating again, “Allow yourself to feel.”

  “I don’t even know what that means,” she said and cringed. Even though she was only projecting thoughts with her mind, it still sounded like a whine.

  “There is no knowing, child. Clear your head. Feel yourself becoming one with the light. Only then can you master action.”

  Ellie wanted to scream out in frustration, but she did as told. She took a deep breath. That is, she envisioned herself taking a deep breath.

  Foolish, she thought, but with a start, she felt something. Real or imagined, she could have sworn she felt her lungs expand with the breath. She then tried to close her eyes. Again, she felt the sensation of lids fluttering down, even if the brilliant void did not lessen in intensity. Drawing up her hands, she placed them over her eyes. She felt the faintest hint of fingertips against her face, but as before, the light remained.

  All at once, she was whole.

  It was as the voice had said. Insubstantial still, but in control of her essence. She opened her eyes and withdrew her hands. The void seemed less empty, if just as bright.

  “Welcome to acceptance, El’iadrylline. Let go of your lingering doubt and see with more than living eyes just what you’ve become.”

  From the nothing, a brilliant and familiar form took shape.

  “Pouns?” Ellie asked, feeling foolish for a moment, until the creature nuzzled her cupped palm, sending her a rush of calm and familiar comfort. “You are Pouns!” she said with excitement.

  “We take form of a manifestation which you would find agreeable. The luk is a special creature. More so than those who take their companionship will ever know. The luk were here before our kind began planting the seeds of civilization. Pure beings of light. To use their form for communication is an honor we do not take for granted.”

  Realization dawned.

  “You’re the Iriani,” Ellie said. “You are the givers of life. Are you also the Transcendent?”

  “Are we indeed?” The face of the luk seemed to smile at her. “Can we be the ethereal beings
of benevolence, able to span space and time in ways that defy logic? Can anyone?”

  “I would think you know more than I,” Ellie replied, slightly confused and a little embarrassed by the seemingly mocking tone.

  “Is anything truly unquantifiable?” the being asked. Its mouth was most certainly set with a wide grin this time. “You have seen things, El’iadrylline. Things your people would look upon and deny. I say this to you, child of Eidyn and daughter of distant worlds, that your acceptance of what you have seen and experienced is unique to you. Would an Earthling look upon life outside their small and remote world and believe their eyes? Would a child of a homogenous race such as the Eidyssic look upon Earth, with its myriad of cultures and beliefs, and believe they were seeing an equally homogenous basin of life?”

  “Well, yes, of course they would,” Ellie answered automatically, but even as she spoke, seeds of doubt sprang up within her mind. Would they? Could they?

  In its primitive state, Earth had believers in all manner of unexplained, but was there not a measure of doubt? Wasn’t the whole of science founded on the questioning of that which was previously considered inexplicable? And conversely, despite proof, were there not those who shunned the obvious and tangible because it ran in opposition of their baseless yet fiercely held convictions?

  The Eidyssic, of course, were far and away more logical than the humans of Earth. They had no need to make assumptions about extraterrestrial life as they had a hand, for better or worse, in shaping the stars. And yet, were there not unquantifiable concepts among the Eidyssic? Items yet in theoretical stages that were not universally accepted. Was she not now that which was regarded as most controversial among her people?

  As if sensing her thought process, the luk bowed its head.

  “You are beginning to understand.”

  As pleased as that made her, another thought found its way to the forefront of Ellie’s mind, causing the brief moment of joy to flee.

  “Am I here because I’ve died?”

  “No. Not even beings of light and energy can conquer death,” the luk said with a hint of impressed amusement. “Yours is the unique position of one who has traveled to the realm of the ascended and retained enough spark of life to return with tales to tell. But return you have not. You remain here, among the sowers, because you are hiding from that which you do not wish to accept.”