"You’re not alone, you know," Elizabeth said, her voice quieter now, less the stranded queen and more the seasoned traveler. "The people I was calling for. Adam. Alex. Rebecca. They’re like you. Absolute Beings. Each of a different... aspect, I suppose. They’re powerful. Beyond anything you’ve probably imagined, even with what you just did."
rlin’s head tilted. A spark of sothing other than grief or weariness lit in his eyes. Curiosity.
"Adam is... well, he’s Adam. He doesn’t have a fancy title. He just is. And he rewrites rules. Alex is Existence. Rebecca is... complicated. But they’re my friends. In a manner of speaking." She took a step toward him. "I can help you et them. I can introduce you. But to do that, you have to get off this world. Back to my own reality, or at least to a crossroads where I can signal them."
rlin stared at her for a long mont. Then, the faintest hint of his old smirk returned. "Get you off this rock? That’s it?" He shrugged. "Piece of cake."
Morgana, who had been utterly silent, finally found her voice, though it was thin with awe. "rlin... you can traverse realities? That’s... that’s divine magic. That’s—"
"It’s just applied physics," rlin interrupted, his tone conversational again. "I’m the Absolute of Energy and Matter. That’s not just throwing fireballs or making walls. It’s the fundantal code of everything that is. Gravity, light, strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force... it’s all just different expressions of the sa thing. And if you understand the thing, you can... repurpose it."
He held up a hand, palm open. "A portal isn’t magic. It’s just a carefully managed stress fracture in spaceti, reinforced with a stable energy boundary to prevent catastrophic collapse. The energy for it is everywhere. In the air, in the ground, in us."
As he spoke, the space in front of him began to warp. It wasn’t a dramatic rip like the one Elizabeth fell from. It was a gentle, deliberate bending. The light folded in on itself, colors deepening into a vortex of purples and blues, swirling around a core of calm, silver light. A low hum filled the clearing, a sound more felt than heard. A perfect, stable oval of a portal hung in the air, its edges crackling with contained power.
rlin gestured to it like a proud artist. "There. That should connect to the dinsional signature you’re broadcasting. It’s tuned to you. It’ll take you ho."
Elizabeth’s eyes widened. She approached slowly, her sovereign senses reaching out. The structure of the portal was... immaculate. Flawless. It humd with a stability she’d rarely felt, even in bridges built by veteran cosmic engineers. This boy had just conjured it from nothing, with a thought.
"Are you sure?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. "Absolutely sure? A misfire in interdinsional travel doesn’t end well. You get scattered across probabilities."
rlin nodded. "Positive. The math checks out. Go on. Your friends are waiting."
Elizabeth looked from the portal to rlin’s face. He looked sincere. Tired, but sincere. She took a deep breath, nodded once, and stepped forward into the shimring light.
The sensation was smooth. No disorientation. She felt a gentle pull, a sense of transition...
And then she took a step forward out of... nothing. She was standing right behind Morgana, who was still staring, open-mouthed, at the portal hanging in the air.
Elizabeth blinked. She looked at the portal. She looked at her own feet. She looked at rlin, who was now grinning, a real, full grin that reached his eyes.
"You..." Elizabeth began, her regal composure finally snapping into pure irritation. "You little...! You ssed with the coordinates! Why? Was this a joke?"
"Nope," rlin said, popping the ’p’. The portal winked out of existence behind her. "I’m not letting you go just like that. You drop into my world, give the first interesting conversation I’ve had in years, tell there’s a whole club of people like out there, and think you can just say ’thanks for the lift’ and leave? Not a chance."
Before Elizabeth could unleash the full force of her royal displeasure, Morganna found her voice again, stronger this ti, directed at rlin with a desperate intensity.
"Why?" The word was a plea. "Why did you hide all of this? All these years? You could have... you could have ended the Dark Lord’s rise before it began! You could have saved the Silver Grove! My family! Why would you live as a... a farr when you have the power of a god?"
rlin’s grin faded. The tiredness flooded back, but now it was mixed with sothing darker. A deep, old sorrow.
He looked at Morgana, his eyes no longer those of a playful teen or a cosmic entity, but of soone who had carried a terrible secret for a very long ti.
"What do you think would have happened, Morgana?" he asked, his voice soft. "What do you think happens to a little boy, at the age of five, who realizes he can make his wooden toy horse actually gallop by rewriting the molecular bonds in the floor? Who, when he has a nightmare, accidentally turns his bedroom wall into crystal? Who, when he gets really, really angry that he can’t reach a cookie jar, unconsciously starts to unravel the atomic structure of the kitchen?"
He took a step toward her. "What happens to a child who, in a single tantrum, could un-spin the electrons in every atom in this village and reduce it all to inert dust? And who, because he’s five and scared of what he did, could just as easily pull all that dust back together, perfectly, like hitting ’undo’ on reality itself?"
The horror on Morgana’s face was his answer.
"That’s what I was," rlin said. "A toddler with the power to destroy and recreate the world before breakfast. My parents on this world... they saw it. Just glimpses. The fixed toys. The never-rotting food. The way nothing ever broke in our house. They knew I was different. They taught one thing above all else: control. Not to use it. To not use it. To pretend it wasn’t there. To be normal. Because if anyone else knew... they’d either worship , try to use , or try to kill in my sleep. And any of those would have been a disaster. Hiding wasn’t a choice, Morgana. It was the only way to keep everyone, including myself, safe."
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