Beyond that point lay all Blaze had left of her prior life; the memories of their last adventure and the strife that had come before it. Every bright moment they'd clutched from the dark now lay a reality away. Now she was alone in the dark.
For the first time since she'd arrived, Blaze tried to move. Something familiar drifted into the cat's vision. A hand, gloved with white flare, attached to a wrist and arm obscured by purple fabric. Blaze no longer found herself staring out into the nothingness of this empty reality, but down at a phantasmal likeness of her body within that void. It was a view she must have glanced a billion times and so she plainly knew things weren't the same. The colour of her body had washed away, leaving an almost sepia hue in its place.
No, this was no body. This was a soul.
Blaze tried to rub her fingers together but felt no contact of flesh. She cast her hand into the void, there was no brush of wind or resistance of air. So annihilated was her sense of touch that the cat could not feel her teeth click together nor her tongue behind them.
"Silver!" Her voice still rang true, but it vanished without echo into the void.
Of course she'd called out his name, but he could not be here. He should not come here. In doing what she had, she'd spared him that fate. They'd brought their promise to fruition and so the cost had been paid.
The feline's eyes lingered on her hands, she hadn't expected things to manifest like this. When she had absorbed Iblis, burning agony had swept through her, for a moment fully paralysing her, and yet it had passed quickly. In the wake of that monster entering her soul had come a rush of heat; it'd felt as though the fire in her soul that she'd once struggled to quell would now burn on endlessly. She'd managed to turn to Silver without straining, say her final goodbyes, and cast her soul from her body as if it was casual. It'd taken no more than a thought, not even a word, that was how powerful she had been in that moment.
Now neither pain nor power was present, only the void. She'd expected Iblis to burst free from her or writhe within her soul until the monster tore it apart. Blaze supposed there was only one way to confirm the sealing had been complete.
The cat clawed her right hand and reached out in front of herself, focusing at the centre point of her palm. With no more than the slightest push of her will, fire spilled from the cat's hand like some distorted tendril blindly writhing into the dark. She watched as the trail swished and danced through the air, moving freely without cost to her. Colour had returned to her hand with its casting and soon she watched brightness creep past her shoulder. Her clothes seemed darker than she recalled, magenta fluff clung to her wrist rather than white.
A roar tore the cat's attention from her frame, the first unexpected sound she'd heard in the void! When Blaze looked to the flames she'd been casting in front of her, she found that they'd stretched and spun so many times on themselves as to take on the appearance of an endless red snake. A burning red snake with eyes of green, now charging headlong towards her with its jaws wide!
Blaze closed her hand, cutting off flame's the source in an instant. The serpent began to vanish from its tail end; darkness claimed the entirety of the monster faster than it had been conjured. Despite that truth, the jaws of the demon vanished just before they could snap down on her. Again, Blaze was left in the dark.
This was set to be her eternity; this void would be her afterlife. Now even the powers she had long loathed had been taken from her, there was truly nothing for her here. This was what she'd earned after fighting for so long. Then again, for all their work, she and Silver had never really expected any reward.
That thought wasn't quite true, though to call what they'd longed for a reward would be inaccurate.
What they'd longed for had lain right in front of them in those last days, Blaze's mind flicked back to finding him at the docks. The cat could envision it in her mind's eye; he had been too distracted by thoughts of failure and their mission to notice. The sea spanning out in front of them, more water than they'd ever seen, stretching beneath a blue sky littered with fluffy white clouds and a sun shining above. Perfect peace.
That view, what must have been so mundane to the people of the past, had looked so beautiful to her. It was views like that which they had longed for; those that they'd read about in history books. Blaze had known deep down that saving the world wouldn't truly return such vistas, but they were a source of shared longing. Still, at least she could picture that view in her mind's eye now. She could practically hear the sound water, the splashing of waves beneath her feet.
The cat's soul blinked and her eyes were drawn downwards once more. Instead of the dark that had permeated all, endless sea now spanned beneath her! A glance to the horizon proved a second truth; Blaze watched as a golden sun rose from the ocean and the skies above the water went from black to blue. In that time, staring bewildered, the cat's outstretched arms stole in her attention.
Magenta still clung at her wrists; her body still had colour. Though the fire was gone, the energy hadn't fully dissipated! Blaze stared at the blue beneath her, watching the water ripple and shift, before looking to the sky above. She couldn't touch it, she couldn't feel it, but Blaze was certain it was real. How was that possible?
They had called Iblis the eternal sun, it had been whispered in rumour that a country had created it as some sort of limitless source of energy. The beast had consistently reemerged no matter how many times they'd defeated it. With all she'd felt in the wake of absorbing that monster, was it truly limitless energy incarnate? Was its power without limit now letting her change this reality?
No, energy alone couldn't do this. Fire burned all it destroyed and touched, yet she had just thought water into existence. Iblis was inherently destructive, it had torn civilisation apart and devastated life for over two hundred years. There was no way its power could be used to create a sea. It had blocked out the blue sky, not allowed the sun to shine. There had to be something else at work...
The Chaos Emeralds! They were good luck charms, capable of causing the impossible. She'd harnessed them to leave her body and reality itself; was their energy now a part of her soul, just as Iblis was? If they could make wishes come true, one's true desire, then could she now do the same? With Iblis now alighting her soul, a source of endless energy, could she still harness that power?
Blaze focused on the sea beneath her and again cast her mind back, now thinking to where she'd first arrived in the past. The sand of a beach near the ocean; islands dotting the horizon. Creatures of sizes great and small, all present in the water and throughout the air. Plants cast and growing across the ground. Trees with ripe fruit.
Islands didn't rise from the sea nor flicker into being, it was as if they had always been there. Blaze didn't even blink, she simply found herself on the shore of a sand covered beach like she had been before with endless islands on the horizon. As she looked about herself it became clear that plants were growing inland, ranging from tall palm trees to grasses and shrubs. Seagull cries sounded overhead; not chicks but fully grown. Again, as if they had always existed.
Blaze went to look at the sand again, bewildered, only to notice a change. Though she was positioned correctly, her shoes were not touching the ground. She had no feet. From beneath her knee downwards, the cat's body had completely vanished. There was no pain but then again, it wasn't as though she'd felt any sensation whatsoever since she'd arrived here. What the change did suggest to Blaze was that these efforts were finite. Was there even any point in what she was doing?
Silver might come looking for her. The two Chaos Emeralds had landed at his feet; he'd travelled through time before, moving between dimensions seemed more than possible. If this place was to be their reward, the ideal world they'd longed for, what more would they have wanted? She'd seen so much during her brief time in the past; she could fill this blank dimension with so much more!
Snowy mountaintops and lush jungles. Deep caves and verdant grasslands. Weather from wind to rain to cloudless days and more. Ancient buildings, Silver had mentioned a temple in a desert, could she manifest the likes of those? Had she made them now with no more than a thought? Could she make whatever she longed for? Something as ludicrous as a garden in the sky? This was all impossible, so why would there be any limits?
What about people? If she could make plants and animals, was there any reason she couldn't make others? There would be greater potential for strife in the world but also room for kindness, for life to truly thrive!
Blaze turned back only to find homes had manifested on the beach; made of dark wood, like the ones she'd seen on the beach. With those homes came sound, both near and far, of people chattering and moving and going about the mundane and peaceful daily lives Blaze had so scarcely glanced and primarily read of. She turned her attention back to the sea just in time to watch a boat sail by, just like the type she'd viewed on the dock while speaking with Silver.
It was only now, having made so much, that Blaze dared to look down to herself once more. She no longer had legs nor even a lower torso. So much of her soul had vanished, the cat couldn't tell if her arms were all that remained or if her head was still fully shouldered above them. If she fully vanished, what would happen to Iblis? Would it be free to freely destroy all she had just created?
An idea sparked in Blaze's mind, drawing on another parallel from the past. There were seven Chaos Emeralds and a Master Emerald with control over them all. Their energy could be depleted but it was not finite; they were a source of limitless energy, just like Iblis!
Blaze reached out with her arms and began to focus, imagining the forms of seven shining multicoloured stones capable of having their energy harnessed and channelled. Then, calling upon her cursed flames, Blaze allowed her hands to ignite. The roar sounded once again, but this time she was in control. It was a scream of panic rather than a cry of defiance!
White light again claimed Blaze's vision, a flash of energy that slowly gave way to a rainbow of new light. Her hands were no longer reaching out, it seemed she'd spent the last glimmers of her soul on this effort. Seven gleaming emeralds, each a different colour, floated around a central conduit. The pyrokinetic had never seen the so called Master Emerald, so an estimated alternate had been created. Near the end of their travels through the past, Silver had mentioned a sceptre in which Mephiles had been sealed. In a similar vein, Blaze had manifested a long staff with gems implanted on a crook at its top. Iblis had been torn to pieces, these were all that remained of the monster.
The seven stones and singular sceptre hurtled toward the islands, launched in accordance with a final push of Blaze's will. Her vision blurred, before fading. This time darkness didn't consume her vision but nothingness; the complete absence of light and dark. This was the end.
No, she wasn't fully spent, there was something left! The cat's arms no longer stretched out before her, nor could she feel to know how much of her body remained, nor even see the world she'd made, but her mind remained. Her will in this reality wasn't fully gone!
She had the strength for one last wish, one final act.
This world would need a defender; be it from Iblis breaking free from the stones or someone else trying to harness its energy. There was no point in creating this world and filling it with life only for it to be destroyed. Someone had to stand against the inevitable devastation that claimed all worlds.
The past they'd visited had a hero, though they had tried to kill him. What if this place had someone to match that role, someone vigilant and powerful enough to push back the dark? Their life would be hard, they'd surely struggle, but fighting was a necessity to maintain the planet's beauty.
Blaze supposed she'd been fighting to make such a planet for her entire life. To spend her last will setting someone to defend such a space, putting the last sliver of her soul into that effort, seemed only right. This world's creator envisioned a guardian, set to watch over the land and guard the sealed Iblis. The family line of that person would lead to one whose soul was lit with flames; arising when the world was set to be claimed by strife, almost destined to grapple with impossible odds. Hopefully others would come to help them...
Perhaps, if time and space aligned, Silver and that new soul would someday meet...