“Eric,” Clem admonished him. “There are more important things to—”
“It’s okay,” I said. Eric had his priorities, and I had mine. There was no point in trying to change either of our minds about which was more important. We were together again. That was what mattered. “This won’t hurt. Much.”
Eric steeled himself for the surgery on his thread of fate. He clenched his jaw and narrowed his eyes in anticipation of pain that never came. When I slapped him on the shoulder and told him he was done, he blinked once and raised one eyebrow suspiciously.
“I felt a little vertigo,” he said. “That was it?”
“That was it,” I said. “I thought you were going to cry. Big baby.”
The vision broke apart around us, bit by bit. The destiny that Eric had held onto so ferociously unraveled. Now that he was no longer connected to the Grand Design, Eric’s fate faded away like a dream. The pain I saw in his eyes was very real, though, and I waited for him to yell at me or lash out. He’d had everything he’d ever wanted, and he’d thrown it away to help me.
“I won’t forget this,” I said to Eric.
“Neither will I,” he responded. “I bet Abi won’t, either.”
A moment ago our friend had been in perfect health, and his strength had saved us from my mother. Now, he lay still in the cradle my serpents formed around him. His eyes were sunken deep in their sockets, and his breath came shallow and rasped in his throat. The stumps of his legs, sealed with jinsei, no longer bled, but that was scant consolation for what he’d lost.
“I’ll fix it,” I promised them all. “Somehow, someway, I’ll fix all of this.”
The shadows and webs that had infested the tunnel had faded away along with Eric’s vision. The erratic flashing lights became a solid pale glow that lit the path ahead for us. We followed it until it opened into a wide, windswept plateau. Hot air raised sweat on my brow, and flames leaped up over the stony edge before us. A bridge of silver jinsei spanned a chasm a hundred yards wide. Its far end was anchored on another plateau, beyond which was an enormous cathedral with spires that stabbed at the sky.
“The Umbral Forge,” Eric said. “That’s it, right?”
“That is definitely it,” Clem said. “Come on. I have to see this.”
She ran ahead of us, practically skipping she was so excited. Her footsteps rang like chimes as she crossed the bridge. Eric and I walked side by side, slower and more sedate.
“Can you feel that?” he asked. “Her excitement?”
“I do,” I said. “It’s the bond we share. If you try hard, you can hear their thoughts, too.”
“I don’t think I’ll do that,” Eric said. “Seems rude.”
It was, so I nodded in agreement. Tying the threads of fate together brought us much closer to one another than I’d expected. I’d need to look at some way to undo it before long, or we’d all end up going crazy. There was only so much togetherness one person could tolerate, even amongst the best of friends. At that moment, though, I appreciated it, and basked in Clem’s pure joy and Eric’s confidence. Abi hung at the edge of our circle, quiet and stoic in his pain.
The Forge seemed to grow as we approached it. By the time we’d crossed the bridge, I couldn’t take in even a fraction of its massive size. What I’d thought were spires turned out to be chimneys thrust toward a sky strewn with blazing meteors and moons that were far too close for us to still be on Earth. The oppressive heat had lessened, too, though flames jumped from cracks in the ground all around us. I’d expected the stench of sulfur or the rich tang of hot iron on the breeze, but instead the wind smelled of nothing at all.
“Give me a hand over here,” Clem called. She’d already reached the pair of massive doors at the cathedral’s front. “Come on!”
Eric and I chuckled and hurried to catch up to her. Standing before the building I saw that the ornamentations were pipes and heavy fittings, gears and valves, like the guts of some enormous engine turned inside out. Clem had hold of a loop of black iron that served as a handle on the left door, and I grabbed hold of the right. We threw our backs into it, and together we wrenched them open to reveal the Forge’s interior.
It’d seemed titanic on the outside, but the inside was vaster than I could possibly have imagined. A wide walkway arched over a black abyss filled with the white fire of stars. Strange planets in every color of the rainbow floated above us, massive spheres shackled to tracks that encircled the walkway we traveled across. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before and more than I’d imagined possible. The Forge held worlds, not just those that existed, but those that could exist, in endless permutations. It was the heart of reality, and it was so overwhelming that for a moment the three of us stood motionless, paralyzed by its enormity.
“When do you think the last time someone saw this was?” Clem asked.
The air we breathed was so pure it shocked me. It was as if I’d spent my entire life breathing toxic aspects without realizing it. I never wanted to leave. I just wanted to stay where I was and watch all the possibilities turn around me.
“Eons,” I whispered. “Maybe longer.”
We didn’t know who’d last used the Umbral Forge. It could’ve been a dragon, not a human. For that matter, maybe it was something older and stranger than anything we’d ever encountered. Whoever, whatever, it was had set in motion a chain of events that echoed through eternity until it carried us here, to this very moment, when the cycle would begin anew.
We crossed the bridge, taking
