✧ Chapter 36 ✧

Their plan was simple but more so important in execution. The trees were metaphorical in this scenario. Like marks on a map, Eternika started to speed up faster and faster above the nearest wisteria trees that it could pinpoint. While their locations were randomized, the blades themselves were able to choose whichever direction was necessary to its advantage.

With Diamondion and Sapphirion deciding to split between five targets now moving separately from each other, Styra looked around only to see Flight and Hisa stuck in a stasis from under Sapphirion’s control. This meant he would have taken the Surreality Shard, leaving her friends vulnerable to being threatened. And that was before she could even do anything. The thought became more disturbing, knowing those two clunky guardians wouldn’t even budge to help. These were, of course, two elite Guardians Of The Omniverse that had beat her in different ways from the last time they fought.

Searching across the lands, she noticed Chelbie was nowhere to be found. The only one left in her view was Compass who was still waiting next to the ship as instructed. Which meant it was an open target. She took the chance to do her best to place a Kra Shield around them in that instant.

How was she going to convince Diamondion and Sapphirion to stop their destructive tendencies? Back then, the main reason why Amethion agreed with her was because they had sound commonalities with one another after she got the chance to admit that she wasn’t sure who she even was at the time. Plus, Amethion also doubted Prism because of the speculative way it was treating The Omniverse.

By contrast, Sapphirion had a dedicated loyalty to his Master and took everything Prism said as an unbreakable principle. He even dismissed what The Heptarion Commander would say at times where Amethion wasn’t acting according to his views. Diamondion also felt the same way, but she was playing on being emotionally heartbroken. To her, any signs of disservice to Prism’s cause was considered a fallacy.

The rambling in her head about those problems started to stress Styra out. However, this distracted her from focusing on Sapphirion who shot a strong yet unexpected gravitational wave that slammed her over near a large blue canyon in the distance. It was extremely steep and unusually deep at the cliff side, but at least she would have the high ground.

During what seemed hopeless for the most part, since neither Styra or Eternika could persuade them to really listen, Flight and Hisa were still struggling to break free from floating in midair. It was at that rate though that a special thing began to happen. The stasis grip getting tighter caused Flight’s irises to steadily flare orange without the shard in his grasp. An interesting twist of opportunity allowed him to reach for Hisa’s hand. As a result, the love between each other synchronized her body’s power level with his, charging the color of her irises with an ocean blue luminescence.

Together, the two broke out of the stasis hold and immediately tackled down Diamondion who was cutting off more of Eternika’s flight trajectories after catching on to what it was doing. Unfortunately for her, being teamed on sevenfold was the last thing she needed. Before long, stronger hits followed up against the queen until her staff became ineffective at blocking every attack.

All the while, Styra and Sapphirion were talking out their perspectives on the situation.

“Your days of unwarranted ideas are coming to an end Styra. We have dealt with enough to know what atrocities lie ahead. You make up a small percentage of that number fulfilled.”

“What end?”

“Excuse me?”

“You know how ironic that sounds? Considering you based your entire false narrative on misinformed myths. At least Amethion was the one asking questions.”

“How does that solve the issue at hand? The New Guardian is a chaotic force and will stop at nothing to destroy what we built.”

“I get that, but all of these assumptions are going too far. What led you to think that Eternika and I would have any part in this willingly? The entire thought of letting things go to chaos is the exact reason why my home got destroyed. That was traumatizing as it was already.”

“You destroyed it, didn’t you?”

“An asteroid did! Are you that unaware of what I went through?! I thought you were The Guardian Of Space! Do you realize how many times I blamed myself for not doing anything about it? I didn’t even understand that I was misleading myself.”

“And yet you still are.”

“Don’t skew my words here. See I get that you want to protect what you built. I did too. But none of this fighting between us is right. I met some of your family and they have missed you Sapphirion. The real you. Deep down, what I once saw as threats, turned out to have more of a heart than whoever left me there stranded. I lost count of the days after three thousand years…”

“So here you are trying to play me for empathy. Evoking your emotions to act as if you could manipulate me. You have worn out your welcome Judgment Warrior. If that is even what you are.”

Styra fell to the ground as her knees collapsed, facing the ground with bulging eyes. Sapphirion was about to drone on further before noticing a darkness cover over himself. Everyone else that had been doing something were caught in awe at this mystical silhouette in the sky.

The ginormous figure had three mouths and one yellow cyclops eyes attached to each of its three oval-shaped heads. Its necks extended into a burning golden brace which contained a round shadowy essence inside. From below, multiple dark tentacles hovered above ground.

It was Creperus, The Guardian Of Darkness.

Sapphirion, expecting this Alpha Guardian’s arrival, began to address the accomplishments he believed to have sustained at the current moment.

“Dark One, we have gotten The New Guardian to surrender. She is now—“

Creperus interrupted Sapphirion with a crackling voice that thundered across the clouds.

“Leave her to me.”

Stepping aside, Sapphrion eventually flew over a good distance while watching Creperus approach the girl. Styra stared up at the titanic entity that froze her mind into a state of shock from how massive it was.

“My condolences for the entry. I am Creperus, an Alpha Guardian on the highest lead and frontier of maintaining the fabric of your realities that are your home. I guard the confines of The Void that are underneath Prism’s reign.”

Diamondion was about to intervene and talk badly about Styra before having to witness one of Creperus’s tentacles strike down in front of her path. The stern expression that The Guardian Of Darkness gave unveiled that this glance was warning her not to come close. It continued on about its purpose for being there.

“As I was saying, there is a concern that I must bring to your attention. It affects the homes of many living creatures, including your own. We are well aware that something is attempting to disrupt our stability. You see Styra… Universes are starting to change. They are becoming infected with an anomaly. The reason this is dangerous spans beyond what we’ve known for years. I believe you have solid knowledge of what Chaosity is essentially if I’m not mistaken.”

“Yes, I do. The Lucid Light.”

Creperus touched the brace to show what was inside of it.

“This is The Eternal Light Of Darkness. As impossible as it may seem at first, the truth is that from this light the origins of darkness began. Reality is governed by what you feel, but history is present beyond one point of view, thus everything exists under an illusion of shadows. Time as you’ve known for so long, is structured to establish this order in variations. What we need you for is tied to it in this instance.”

“Are you saying I need to use The Eternal Light Of Darkness in order to stop Chaosity? I don’t know how to feel about that…”

“No. Instead we have an even bigger problem that must be resolved first. Our six guardians vanished out of thin air. They were called to join us, but haven’t shown up. Checking each of their domains, there were no signs of them located anywhere. Their Eternal Lights also went missing in the exact same manner. What this means is, we will have to forge alliances with your team.”

Styra’s eyes opened to the possibility of getting to know Diamondion and Sapphirion better so they would stop being mad at her all the time. She wasn’t sure if it would work, but she had to try.

Sapphirion didn’t like what he was hearing on the other hand.

“Dark One, if I may add my words of advice into this discussion, I would rather recommend that the remaining guardians we have left should take on the responsibility you requested without the girl’s involvement. Especially Omnikra.”

“The name is Eternika!” yelled the weapon as it started to get furious at the way Sapphirion was treating Styra.

Out of nowhere though, a tentacle gripped tightly around Sapphirion’s body and lifted him into the air.

“Are you questioning my authority, Sapphirion?

The Guardian Of Space trembled at the sight of being downplayed by someone as highly esteemed as Creperus.

“N-no D-d-dark One…”

After being placed back on the grassy field, he stared at Styra with resentment. At that point in the conversation, Flight interjected with Hisa following behind him. Their faces had this anxiety dissolving into the mystery of what they just experienced.

“Styra, something is going on with us. I was able to break out of the gravity hold. For some reason when I tried to grab Hisa’s hand, the power inside me must have shifted from me to her like some sort of electric connection. Do you know what happened?”

Comprehending what Flight asked was a difficult task in itself. She was going to tell him that she couldn’t process that answer well enough. That was, until Sapphirion jumped into the train of thought.

“Why are you asking an inexperienced child who knows nothing of it? Simply put, Surreality Shards are conductors to all entities with a mind. They are the most important components of keeping what is in your brain from ruining the structure we created. Unfortunately, it seems you humans have broken that barrier along with the anomaly at some point in time.”

Hisa was a bit more worried since she wasn’t sure what to do with having these kinds of things happen to her so suddenly.

“Are you saying we basically have something about each of us, like Styra, that makes us turn into this? Cause I don’t understand.”

“We as guardians have seen what happens to any creature that touches a Surreality Shard with their bare hands. In every single war, they died. You can imagine how much we have had to lose to win different worlds back under submission.”

While Hisa and Sapphirion were talking, Flight noticed something about the Eternal Light Of Darkness inside the brace. He did not see it coming, but the discovery was worth pointing out as he pulled his locket from inside his jumpsuit’s top left pocket and made silent comparisons with it.

“Wait… That symbol… My father gave me this locket and it has the exact same one. I never knew what it meant because he said he didn’t know.”

This concerned Creperus mostly because it meant that Flight was connected to a mysterious individual that could be hell-bent on finding The Eternal Light Of Darkness. Since Styra’s time disconnect affected her friends, their pasts were now also lost from the infinite collections of timelines before they were born. As a result, their previous lives were changing in a way that created its own form of coherency. In other words, it was rewriting their history randomly without permission.

“I think I see what we are up against. Chaosity, the unknown force is likely using the time disconnects to change up the stories of your lives. At least, that is my theory on the matter. This is concerning because normally, one life is connected to its own fate. What is happening now is beyond that of paradoxes that have affected entire universes. Do any of you know what a multiverse is?”

Styra was curious about the topic being mentioned, asking what The Dark One was referring to. She had, of course, never heard of one before in general.

“Across space and time, alternate universes have existed since the inception of creation itself. Time is infinite across these clusters of galaxies but they do not determine what alternate versions are created because they were predetermined. Timelines operate in this linear fashion where there is simply a beginning and an end. In the case of examples, it is like a red thread. Each thread connects to the overarching source or endpoint which you know as death.”

“I remember that now. I was flying with Eternika across billions of universes. That must have been the multiverse we resided in. They were like these colorful combinations of light but it seemed like they were each shaped differently on the inside. I don’t know if it counts but, I did see red light beams shoot past me multiple times. Are those the threads you are talking about?” asked Styra.

“Yes. As for the colorful combinations you mentioned, those are called Embbods. These creatures are essentially what you’ve been calling your universe for as long as it has been substantiated. They are known to fly around in these purple celestial membrane bubbles which keep them from destroying themselves. Unlike living beings in your world that live through your unique physical form, Embbods reside in these bubbles which protect their physical appearance for most of their lives.”

All of this information stunned both Styra, Flight, and Hisa. However, they had more questions that delved into the underlying workings of multiverses.

“What exactly do these creatures do daily? Why did Prism create them?” inquired Flight.

“I cannot say why The Master created what it did, but these creatures contain different versions of your lives. Their minds are also responsible for your existence. They don’t have eyes, rather they use their membranes to sense the insides of the multiverse they are contained in. As for how they feed, they rely on autocannibalism. The stars they form are fed through their mouths which are digested and used to form the outer layer bubble that surrounds them.”

“Hmm. What do their mouths look like?”

“I assume you have heard of black holes.”

“Oh yeah, those light vacuums in outer space.”

“The natural light they digest is processed and is sent towards the surface of the bubble by itself.”

As amazed as these three were by what they heard, Hisa’s memory began to click after reiterating the words “by itself” in her head. She immediately remembered something that had concerned her for a while. Getting a bit distracted after noticing that caused her to halt what was going on.

“Umm, I hate to break learning this much about such fascinating information but… Does anyone know where Chelbie went?”