Daeva: Black Diamond Chrysalis by Danielle Bolger (first ebook reader .txt) 📕

I closed my eyes hard and reopened them but all the while I felt the blue penetrate coldly inside. "Dorothy, why did you show me that image? Why show me... an end where Eric and I are both old?"

"Well because, Darling," She smiled knowingly. "It was the last time you would be capable of perceiving it."

"W...Why?" I stammered. "Why the last?"

She looked me up and down as if with pity. "The amount of worlds out there far exceed the stars in the sky but having said that, at certain points the outcome becomes finite. Time doesn't like to shift at a whim, it only selects certain moments to do it. Lots of moments, mind you, but not quite to the degree of infinity. So there are triggers that make it branch and involve everyone and everything into multiple seemingly endless realities. A quantity so vast it is similar to infinity, but just short, otherwise no world would be here. If it did branch to that extreme then creation would just fold back in on itself. So, with that fundamental lining the field we also know that our futures are finite. It's a large number but once you get closer to the divergence then that slims down and it narrows into a perceivable variance. Well now then, Abigail, do you understand why I showed you that timeline out of the kindness of my heart?"

"You say..." I uttered. "That futures end up being finite, so that means that the possibilities end at some point, at the point right before the split? So at that point, no matter what you do there can only be so many outcomes because... they all have to fall into the realm of possibility, right? So, when you live in a finite world then endless probability ends up being finite too? Like if you roll a dice you only have... six outcomes."

"That's right, after a certain action only so many reactions may occur. That means that as you get closer to the action you suddenly reveal all possible futures. So now can you understand why I took pity on someone so pathetically hopeless as you!?"

I gasped as realisation finally hit home and backed right up so that an icy spire became my cold wall.

Dorothy erupted with laughter, as if she simply could not help herself. But she did eventually sober, with a strain to be sure as that wide smile never completely fell. "Finally! You understand! You understand all the possible numbers that your dice can throw!"

"At any given point I have many futures..." I said thoughtfully. "But they're limited in their outcome. I throw a die there's six, if I toss a coin there's only two which means that all my futures can be mapped along those outcomes."

Dorothy, still with a mouth too wide, bobbed her head back and forth between her shining blue spires. "Get to the good part already!"

"The number of possibilities of any moment are finite, but there are so many that they would appear to be infinity, but they all have to end at some point, don't they? Considering that they all have to behave within the laws of possibility. That's why only six outcomes are possible with a die, why only two outcomes can come with a coin toss. There's lots of moments but there's not really that many possibilities. It only looks that way when you add the moments to the possibilities but in actuality..."

"Yes, yes!" Dorothy jutted in excitedly.

"You can see all the possibilities resulting from a moment. That means you can see every possible future..."

"It's more like a hundred for the future that I'm talking about for you but still they all have only two outcomes..."

"So one is where we get to have that long life together." I muttered as the chill of my surroundings finally entered my bones. "But the other is where it is cut off from this point."

"No," she corrected. "There are just two outcomes here but none lead to that life you just saw. That's why I showed you it, because it was the last time you would be capable of seeing a world where he exists in a future perspective."

"If... our life together isn't possible then... the two possibilities...?"

"Is down to just who will survive the night, you or him?" Dorothy erupted with laughter, as if she barely managed to quell it all that time.

It took me a moment to respond before hope shot through me. "It doesn't matter whatever outcome you've seen because I only know Eric as alive so that means any reality that has him in it can exist for me!"

"Fool!" She retorted immediately. "You can perceive him because you don't know him as dead, but as soon as you do there's no bringing him back because those timelines where he still exists will be shut to you forever. The observer can only see what they know to be truth."

"No!" I refuted. "I saw him as an old man, that makes it still possible - it's still a timeline that can exist!"

"Yeah you can see it, but nothing else." The blue spires seemed to subtly grow in size all around me. "What you saw has nothing to do with the timeline you exist in anymore. It's closed off from you - finito! It was something possible, a time back, along a line that didn't follow the daeva course. I saw it because I traced you through earlier lines and followed ones that existed if you had never been involved in any of this. I can only see images where the people involved exist in this world, which was why I couldn't show you your would-be family, because all lines in this world don't give rise to their being. But I showed you the end, where you lived a full life with your man and despite my generosity you raised a nasty tone with me." Enmity was thick in her voice.

"You followed a past time-line to reach the world where Eric and I lived together to an old age?" I asked even though I desperately wanted to flee, even if it was into nothingness. "None of the possibilities from this time-line reach that outcome?"

Dorothy, smiling, rolled her eyes. "Man, how many times do I have to tell you!? No, it's not possible because you, and or slash, Eric die at every possible timeline that spans from here! It's not two, it's not six like an easy dice cube, it's more like a hundred but I skimmed through them all. I mean, how can you not when you read skip to the end of story this juicy!?"

"Oh, God..." I murmured.

"God," Dorothy corrected, "doesn't exist. Here we only have Gaia, the bitch that destroys progress."

"Eric or me... One of us are destined to die today."

Bethanie

I passed through a strip of trees where upon emerging the other side two girls battled a massive black beast. The white face on top had its mouth wide open as if to scream and just then the ground beneath my feet quaked.

I ran forwards, past two golf buggies and a group of seven golfers unconscious by the teeing ground. With a long jump I leapt over a narrow river and five meters later landed straight into a large bunker. Sand whooshed into the air around me before I kicked back and lit my feet up with white fire again. A second later I was roaring as my claymore sliced into the golden floor like butter and a black skinny arm was cut away.

"Nice of you to finally join the party." Rebecca welcomed as she likewise hacked away at any smaller exposed limbs where they soon turned to crystals.

"Well you're just in time to lay the plan into action." Lara advised. "Bethanie, stay down here, Rebecca, it's time for you to fly."

As instructed I hacked left and right at the asura's exposed arms before falling back and narrowly dodging its big ones. I had a long blade, seven feet in length but the asura's limbs, especially the wide ones, could stretch twice that distance in just a fraction of a second. So it was up to me to hack at it and claim its attention. My long sword meant I could get at it with a bit of distance and using that space I could evade just before receiving a pummelling which paved the way for the other two.

Rebecca jumped, landed in the air and bounced higher still. She appeared to be climbing the sky, finding her footholds on nought but gaseous molecules, but in reality she was balancing atop a network of faint strings. Ascending she dashed between lines quickly, missing black hungry limbs jutting out from the higher levels. At one point, however, Rebecca missed her intended string, but down on the ground Lara caught sight of the misstep and with a delicate flick of her wrists the brunette shifted the positioning of the maze atop. A bare moment later Rebecca's foot found the almost invisible wire and reclaimed her composure before lifting off and flying higher.

At one point I lost my footing too as in a spot the sand rose up surprisingly higher and gobbled my black leather mary-jane shoe. Using aura to shoot from my foot I tore it free where under a black hand was exposed. I made to dash away but the hinder proved to delay me too long as a black spear pierced through my right shoulder. It had me in the air as the spike kept growing and with it pushing me backwards. Soon I was off the bunker and was almost instantly slammed down onto the green. I pulled myself to my feet and immediately started running back to the asura but it was too late, its attention was no longer divided as its renewed face of anger turned on Rebecca.

Ebony arms were shooting out through the upper levels Rebecca had reached but in a faint moment the quantity of them increased from ten to twenty. The black-haired girl had less places to go with the ten lines being quickly blocked by the vicious claws. Lara on the ground kept trying to reroute their positions in the hopes of giving the girl atop a reprieve, but the asura was onto the game, for it became evident that it had just become aware of the position of every line. It reached its arms out and with sharp sides cleaved through the strings. Five were broken at once and as they fell to the ground the limp wires shone white.

Jumping back into the pit I swung straight for the creature's belly and opened up a new crystalline mouth. Arms shot for me but I sidestepped these and re-energised the air with sand. More arms reached out, all forming spears within a moment, but all were thin, frail and far from invested in me. They were enough to keep me busy though as I sliced and dodged but all the while the real battle had relocated up into the air.

Out from the corner of my vision I saw Rebecca leaping from string to string, just staying ahead of the next volatile attack, and all the while retreating to