Dedicated to Ferahgo
Epilogue: Recoil
My Doppelganger, of course, was right. Jake was stronger than he knew, and his strength would give "The One" power greater than even the Ellimist or Crayak's if it could be captured. But not in the way he thought…not if my plan worked.
We'd competed in our own tame ways for millennia, not the "games" like Crayak delighted in, but simple races to superiority. Having a third equal complicated things, of course, but it claimed "neutrality", assigning The One and myself to arbitrary sides it equated with Crayak and the Ellimist, respectfully.
Not that that was entirely inaccurate. Crayak delighted in The One's prowess for individual annihilation, and The One owed Crayak an infinite debt. Before Crayak's intervention, it had been an individual interchangeable for either of its siblings, a body without a soul.
As had I.
The three of us were created biologically at the will of the Ellimist before he had truly become Ellimist, as well as a conglomeration of minds that he would absorb to gain his power. Mentally, however, we had no being until much later. As far as I can tell, the Ellimist had feared that he would be no better than his predecessor, and so abandoned fragments of long-dead minds that coalesced into Crayak.
To his credit, he was not always as bent on destruction as portrayed. In fact, he had quite a creative and playful streak, one that still manifests itself. He saw our bodies, unconscious to our existence, and imbued us with life, a mutual life that would always hang in the balance between the two extremes of life and death.
The One was the most ambitious of us, but worked slowly enough to remain undetected. It then abruptly (in cosmic terms) struck, absorbing all into its reality. The same principle that had formulated Crayak and the Ellimist was at work: The One was simply that.
Our mutual sibling delighted in labeling the "good" and "evil", and subjecting both to visions of futures that would never come to pass. Although it claimed to favor neither side, its actions hurt everyone, and so in that respect it seemed to ally closer with The One.
I didn't mind, though. I, in fact, encouraged their growth. I'd passively let them push me out of real space as Crayak had done to the Ellimist, then beyond Z-Space to where I could only observe them, The One especially, gain strength.
Because if he was successful, if some way or another, in the acquisition of the human called Jake, I would likewise increase in power for an infinitesimal interval. Had Crayak overlooked that? I couldn't be sure. But in an existence where thought and conversation are the only possibilities, I'd made my guess.
If everything worked out, I would be able to act for that one moment, unleashing the entire antithesis of The One's power upon the Ellimist and Crayak. I'd never be able to stop their game, but I could retrieve the minds they had added to their bloated own. The One's I would be unable to touch, but they would be freed if their corporal bodies were destroyed.
And my prizes? The newly-liberated minds with no forms to return to?
I would set them free in my playground, a level of existence I'm surprised that had never been mathematically substantiated. Scientists throughout the universe knew of the existence of anti-space. The Ellimist interfered in the cases of anti-time.
So why had no one inferred that timelines, the paths of beings that lived and died and loved and killed, would have their own opposites?