“From the earth we were formed. While we walk upon its surface we imagine divisions between us which all fall away when we return to the earth’s embrace. Let us learn from those who have fallen here today, and work together to create a future where those who follow need not await the peace of the next life to know the prosperity equality can bring.”

– Words etched into the cornerstone of the Imperial Palace and attributed to a speech given at the founding of the Empire (apocryphal)

I held the Empire in the palm of my hands and its weight was unbelievable. 

That should have been a metaphorical statement but as I placed the Imperial crown on my head, it become staggeringly literal.

The Empress’s crown was magical but that didn’t matter. All of the enchantments which preserved its luster and all of the precoded effects built into it were little more than window dressing compared to the real value it held. Sure, I could have teleported anywhere in the Empire in the blink of an eye while wearing the crown, and cast a perfected Geas on any citizen, but I had no interest in claiming a sovereign’s right.

I wanted power.

Specifically, I wanted an access point to the power which held the Transcendent Realms in stasis. The Empress’s spell was a monumental thing, far too complex for me to even imagine taking apart. Fortunately, that wasn’t my job. As the realms changed and shifted, they were going to take care of demolishing it all on their own. What I had to do was make sure that they didn’t demolished the material world as well.

That was a lot to ask of anyone but I did have a couple of special cards to play.

The moment the crown touched my head and the bridge to the spell binding the Empire and the Transcendent Realms formed I was blasted across the cosmos.

That didn’t come as a surprise though.

I knew what I was plugging myself into, and I knew that it was impossibly far beyond my limits. I also knew someone whose limits it wasn’t beyond. Or two someones to be specific.

I couldn’t see the High Council chamber anymore – largely because I’d more or less exploded and so was a little short on anything resembling a body part – but that had the benefit of allowing me to focus on calling out for help.

The Clockwork Cosmos answered but not before my oldest ally appeared.

Without the constraints of a body, I felt the swirling force of the Dwellers in the Depths enwrap me without crushing me to goo. Together we swam and changed and though I was so small as to be an unnoticeable mote before them, still I felt them harmonizing with me.

In the ever shifting dream that we both shared and were I felt something new though, something I’d only barely dared to hope for.

They’d changed.

Not just the eternally transformation of shape and substance, but a far deeper evolution of their core essence.

And with them, the realm I hailed from, the origin of my being, was becoming something new.

We – where the realm ended and I began was a question without a realistic answer by that point – had been incapable of ever building on ourselves. We could be anything, changed endlessly, never the same from one moment to the next, and so we had always been perfectly free.

But we’d never been able to become more than we were.

Never been able to become someone.

To choose who we were.

Because everything had been transitory. No moment could ever constrain us, but so to could we never hold onto a moment, or return to what we’d once been with a greater understanding of it or ourselves.

That was true, wasn’t it?

No. 

I, small, infinitesimal spec that I was, had become something more, step-by-step, moment-by-moment as each piled on top of the other into days, and weeks, and years.

The Clockwork Cosmos understood.

The smaller cogs of seconds turning to drive larger cogs of minutes, and hours, and on, moving into the future one click at a time.

We, the Clockwork Cosmos and I, had followed a preset pattern, marching forwards within a strict set of rules. One turn of the smallest cog, and the simplest of days, pushing us the greater of our life to the next step, over and over without deviation as we met the expectation of those who surrounded us.

That was true, wasn’t it?

No.

I, the tiniest of cogs, turned of my own volition and according to my own desires, and though it often hurt, I did not shatter and twist into what those around me would have me be.

Through me, the two realms had found a point of connection and a hint towards what they could become.

And then I’d taught them how to create rifts of their own since I was far too small a current or a cog to allow them to commune on a meaningful scale.

Had the two realms proven to be anathema to each other? Had their contact been one of mutual annihilation? That would have been an absolutely reasonable concern. I couldn’t even swear in the moment I’d come to that mutual obliteration was off the table.

But I had faith.

I knew the two Transcendent Realms could become something more, because I’d touched them both and found myself in both and I knew I could stand before them as proof as what was possible.

In me, I believed, I hoped, I prayed, they could find the path forward which would free themselves and everyone else. I could be the template they needed for what could come next.

I was small and insignificant but the idea of me could be so much bigger.

Or at least that had been my plan.

What I’d failed to account for was that it might work well beyond my wildest dreams.

See, I’d thought with the two realms growing beyond their initial constraints, they’d be able to take over the role of the Eternal Ice spell and reshape themselves (thanks to my home realm) into a stable and adaptable structure (thanks to the Clockwork Cosmos) which could support the other Transcendent Realms, thereby freeing the Empress and those who’d cast the spell with her, thereby upending three centuries of the Great Houses growing unchecked like a cancer across the Empire. 

That the people of the Empire would also gain a local fighting force of next generation Clockwork Warriors powered seemed like enough to ensure that the madness I’d witnessed would at least change into a new form of madness, with the outside possibility that maybe we’d get it right this time.

I know, hopelessly optimistic on that last point, but I had some amazing people around me, so I thought it was at least worth leaving the door open for a miracle like that to occur.

What I’d failed to consider was that my home realm and the Clockwork Cosmos didn’t have any reason to stop with talking to each other once they knew how to open rifts to another realm.

It had been a monumental act of hubris to think I could talk to not one but two Infinities and have an impact on them. When the next realm reached out to me though, I saw the true scale of my foolishness.

The first was a realm of steel and stability, a close neighbor of the Clockwork Cosmos. It touched me through the steel I felt in the most unbending part of my spirit.

How do I become like they are?

No words were spoken to ask the question, and I had no ears to hear it with even if there had been, but I understood it all the same.

The problem was, I had no idea how to answer.

I’d never worn armor as a part of who I was.

I didn’t understand the realm that was pouring itself into me.

I can change and I can grow but as an endless expanse of steel tried to merge with me to discover how it could change to something even greater, I found my essence swelling and tearing and diluting until steel seemed like the only thing that I was, could be, or ever had been.

I fought it.

I struggled to remember who I was.

Who I’d chosen to be.

Who I wanted to become.

An avalanche of steel crashed onto me though, burying all of that.

And beyond the avalanche,out beyond the horizon of my imagination, I saw realm after realm after realm waiting to learn the secret I held.

The secret which was the only thing which would keep them from tearing themselves, each other, and the material world apart into a cloud of fundamental particles.

A secret I wasn’t going to be able to share with them because I wasn’t going to survive the realm of steel.

I’d doomed the world, and all I had left to hang onto was a kiss given to me by a woman who’d broken my heart before I fell in love with her.

“Don’t give up,” she’d said.

“Never.” I repeated, shouldering for the barest of instants the weight of steel that was crushing me out of existence.

It was one moment – absolutely nothing when placed against the eternities which surrounded me.

But it was enough.

“Looks like you could use a hand there?” Kelthas said, clad in a pristine version of the armor I’d watched him die in.

“Wha? Who? How?” I was the soul of eloquence there if I do say so myself.

“Let me take that for you first,” he said and with one hand, lifted the realm of steel off my soul.

Because of course he could.

It was the realm he understood.

And which understood him.

He shared the same connection with the realm his armor came from as I shared with the one where my transformation magics originated.

“Kelthas? How are you here?”

“Did you think I’d left?” he asked. “You know ghosts can stay around – I’ve talked to your sister. Did you think I didn’t have unfinished business after what they did to you?”

“What they did to me!? They killed you!”

“Well, yeah, that’s sort of required to become a ghost I guess,” he said. “I just felt bad that I’d left you all like that.”

“I….you…are you kidding? I killed a guy for what he did to you. Straight up ripped him to pieces! How is that not the wrong that kept you from finding rest?”

“Oh, I saw that. It was awesome!” Kelthas said. “Honestly, I could have gone to my rest right there if I’d wanted to. You avenged me just perfectly.”

“You’re not mad about that? Or disgusted?”

“No, not at all. I…I just wished you hadn’t had to do it,” he said, “because I could see how much it hurt you. I should have been there to protect you all. That was my whole job. It’s what my magic was for.”

“I can’t believe I’m about to argue with a ghost on what the purpose of his life was, but believe me when I say that even in the short time we knew each other, I don’t think any of us would have asked you to give your life for ours. You were our friend, and losing you sucked.”

“Yeah. Losing you all wasn’t great either,” he said. “On the upside though, I met some pretty incredible new friends here, and they helped me see that as long as we had a connection, I hadn’t really lost you at all.”

“And who might those new friends be?” I asked, unable to believe what I suspected to be true.

“Why the most incredible sister in this life or the next,” Trina said. “Oh, no, wait, that’s you.”

I screamed. Not in fear. Joy can do that to a person too.

My big sister was with me in what was still an impossible hour and with her was an army of the dead whose end stretched back into the mists of time.

Those who’d come before us had never really left and now, where I’d fallen hopelessly short, they stood beside us to ward off the end of the world and welcome in a new one.