Chapter 28 - The River Runs Through It
She sat on the floor where she had fallen, breathing heavily in shock, the severed limb still in her hand. Looking around, she was amazed there was no blood anywhere, despite there being two corpses and one severed limb in the room. All wounds had been instantly cauterised by the heat generated by the power Alyssa and then the vortex exerted upon their surroundings. Standing up, she inspected the fatal wounds to Gaspar, and then to Spekkio. Looking over them summarily, she turned her head away, but something caught her eye. Slowly, the large round hole in Spekkio's body became smaller until it eventually sealed up. Staggering backwards, Destiny gasped as she connected with the wall. Something else was happening to the body, two small lumps were appearing near the top and an incision appeared near the bottom. Slowly, two more incisions appeared on the two lumps and opened up, revealing a pair of eyes. Finally, the lower incision opened:
"You can't kill what isn't living."
Getting to his feet, Spekkio rubbed the dust from his body.
"Wh... what? How are..."
Looking up at the shocked Destiny he spoke again, slightly hesitant this time, "Nu's don't live, we just exist, thus we cannot die of wounds. We are invincible you might say, but certainly not immortal. We do cease to exist at a certain point of our... unlife which is why we also procreate." Slowly, his eyes travelled down her body to the appendage clutched tightly in one hand. His eyes widened and he spun around to see Gaspar's corpse, eyes wide open with his hands clutching at the gaping hole in his chest. Falling to his knees before his comrade's fallen body, Spekkio's body shuddered as silent tears streamed down his face, the eternity of friendship now at a final, downtrodden end. Slowly, he stopped and without turning, his voice floated out to Destiny. "Could you give me a few moments... you might not want to see this."
Without so much as a nod, Destiny left the building and attempted to light up another cigarette, failing because of her shaking hands. In a pique of temper she snatched the cigarette from her mouth and threw it to the ground, stamping viciously on it, twisting her heel to tear it to shreds. Frustration boiled inside her head, knowing she had just stood by as Gaspar was killed, knowing there was nothing she could do to protect anyone else from the dark queen's power.
A vortex appeared to her right but she ignored it, still stamping at the cigarette carcass on the ground. Emerging from it was S'grath, tears streaming down her face as well. Slowly, she walked up to Destiny and took her into her arms, holding her tight against her rotund body as Destiny finally cracked, an explosion of desperation, fear and anguish leaving her soul in shreds as nothing would ever be safe or sacred anymore.
After a few minutes, Spekkio emerged from the building, his face stained with tears. "It's time. S'grath, take Destiny and I'll meet you there."
With a slight dip of the head, S'grath turned to Destiny again. "Come girl, it's time to travel. Things are happening beyond our control and you must act soon. We cannot put it off much longer... the final battle is coming soon. Come hell or highwater, we must make our stand soon or never at all."
Stifling the tears, Destiny nodded dumbly and prepared herself to be swallowed whole again...
She plunged through the pure white vortex, racing to the opening she saw below her. With a thud she impacted into the hard cobblestones of the end of time. Forcing herself to get up instead of just curling up and crying, she took in her surroundings and then she saw it. The door to the Atria of Time of was wide open and there was no sign of Marle and Lucca. As two vortexes appeared, one either side of her, Destiny was already running through the doorway.
"Wait!" cried out S'grath. "You can't do it alone! You need the others help in this..."
Looking around, Spekkio saw the other secret door open and then the magazine lying on the floor in front of the door, quickly realising what had happened. "Destiny, we can't help them... we have to get the others and then launch our attack. S'grath, gather the others... there's something I need to show Destiny."
As she nodded and the vortex swallowed her, Spekkio reached inside of himself and pulled out the remote, hitting the call button on it, he promptly pocketed it. Moments later, the Epoch mk. 2 arrived at the pier.
"Where are we going?"
"You'll see... this is an upgrade of the original Epoch, put together by Melchior and Belthasar for a very special purpose. Not only is it capable of flight to any period of time, but also capable of inter-stellar travel. This is what we're going to do, we're going into space so I can show you the truth of your Hand of Kronos."
Muted once again, Destiny followed Spekkio aboard the Epoch and into time again; the very air around them turning into fire as the red bird arced through the very matter of the universe into... space. The fiery air turned into a vacuum of nothingness. Spinning around in her seat, she saw the Hand of Kronos facility behind them.
"Won't their sensors pick us up?"
"No, multi-phasic shielding was built into the Epoch, designed specifically so that they wouldn't pick us up."
"Well... what is it I'm supposed to be seeing here?"
"Nothing, at the moment, we're not at the right angle."
Turning the ship around, Spekkio gently guided it around so it stared at the facility flat-on.
"Do you see it now?" he asked, gesturing at the facility.
Destiny stared at it intently, trying to work out what Spekkio wanted her to see. It had an outlandish shape; narrow at the bottom, widening out as it got higher with two wings stretching off either side before it dramatically thinned again for one smaller node at the top.
"Maybe if I backed it up a bit, you'd see it more clearly..."
As the Epoch slowly drifted away from the space station, she realised what she was looking at, the air catching in her throat she did. Before her was a giant Mammon Machine, an enlarged version of the generator that had thrived off of the immense power source that was Lavos back in 12,000BC and now it was in front of her, thriving off of something else instead...
