Blade stood on the battlefield, his entire body shivering. All around him lay the dead. Thousands. Those that they had hoped to save. The weapon had fired and done its duty, but like all weapons, it had no ability to separate good from bad and so those in its path were now gone, their lives given in the name of vanquishing the Federation forever. It seemed to be so contrary, the way that the weapon had dealt out death. He had been standing very close to Lornia when she had become the weapon and deployed, but he was still alive. Those who had been much further away lay on the ground, their body scorched and burned away to almost nothingness.

Tara!

Had she survived? He staggered a few steps, his eyes searching all around him. Where was she? To his vast relief, he saw her and began to run toward her. All of the Revant siblings had also survived it seemed. Their mates had as well. He could see them all embracing each other and checking to make sure that none of their number had sustained serious injury.

Talon stared at him as they gathered in a little knot. The beings around them wept for their dead while cheering the fact that the Federation was gone, even if they did not quite understand what had happened to them.

Renall spoke first. His eyes were large and luminous, and a slight thread of blood ran from one ear. He spoke in a voice made thick by the dust and the stink of the air. “Drake?”

Blade’s heart ached. “Gone. I don’t know…”

He let the words trail off. He didn’t know where Drake had gone. He had seen Drake grasp Lornia tightly, and then they had both vanished from sight. All the things he should have said to his brother rose up in his mind, making regret a vital thing that clutched at his intestines and heart.

Tara held his hand. Her face was streaked with dirt and gore and a patch of her hair, a small round section right near her temple, had been burned away. Jenny had blood coming from her mouth, and Marik was tending to her. Margie and Jeval were close by, and Margie let out a pained scream that caused Blade to jump a little. He asked, “What is it? Is she all right?

Jeval looked at him. Weariness settled onto his face, but there was joy there as well. “She’s in labor. Our baby is on the way.”

Blade put his shoulder beneath Margie’s and lifted her with Jeval’s help. They all carried her toward the hospital where a stream of the injured was also headed.

Blade’s eyes went to the skies. Where was Drake? Had he survived whatever had just happened?

Would he ever know?

Tara’s hand found his again as they laid Margie down on the berth that was available and Marik bent to help her. Jenny, too wounded by her using the weapon within her to be of any help, lay on a small pallet on the floor while Jessica and Clare bent over her, doing their best to hold onto her hands while she cried out as the last bits of pain from loosing her darkness on the world took hold of her and racked her body.

Blade staggered backward, his face gray with fatigue and his heart heavy. He turned away and staggered toward a wall, his eyes streaming tears. Tara let him go, knowing that he was grieving not just for the actual losses, but for the loss of the brother he had never really gotten to know.

“You look like shit.”

The words jerked Blade around, and his mouth fell open. His eyes rounded. “Drake?”

It couldn’t be. The man before him was very old, stooped, and white of hair and wrinkled of face. He wore a simple wool tunic that hung about his body, and there was a scar above his right cheek, a deeply imbedded thing that closely matched the scar on Blade’s own cheek.

Drake said, “Yes, it’s me. Don’t ask how. I don’t know. Lornia did it somehow. But not yet, many years from now. Centuries from now. I’m dying, where I am, but that doesn’t matter because you’ve been gone for centuries already, so it had to be here and now.”

Blade whispered, “I’ve lost my mind.”

“No, you haven’t.” Drake’s gnarled fingers extended something. It hung in the air, winking and shining. Blade’s forehead wrinkled with confusion. “What is it?”

“The map and key to Tralam. Guard it well. War will not come again in your lifetime, which will be very long. But it will come, and when it does, you will be gone, and your children will be the new us, the warriors who stand against the darkness. They will need this then.”

Blade wanted to say no. Whatever that thing that Drake held was, he wanted no part of it. His throat was thick. “I shall never see you again, will I?”

“No.” Drake sighed. “But I promise you my life has been everything I could have wanted it to be. I wish I could have come later, after this part of it was over and after peace began and stayed for you. But time only allows this moment. Take it. But remember this: you cannot seek out Tralam, ever. If you do, you may change everything, and time and space are not forgiving of that.”

Blade reached for the map. His fingers closed around the hard shape of it. His eyes met Drake’s squarely. “I wish we had time to really be brothers.”

Drake’s smile softened the age on his face. “We are brothers. Don’t you ever forget it.”

Then he was gone.

Blade looked down at the thing in his hand. It was small, a tiny jewel. He held it up to the light, and his eyes widened once more as he saw, there within it, galaxies spinning away.

Peace.

It had come to Revant Two the old-fashioned way. It had been fought for and bought with blood. Jenny stood on a hilltop, looking at the city spread below her. Her hair, solid-gray now, waved in the strong wind blowing the familiar scent of the sea toward her nostrils. Marik, also much older now and finally beginning to show his age, spoke softly. “I can’t believe it. How big the city has become, I mean.”

She chuckled. “I was just thinking that.” She slanted him a loving glance. They’d been together for fifty years now. It had been so long since the Federation had vanished from the skies and yet it felt like only yesterday too.

Talon had taken the lands on the far side of the planet, near the dark-blue waters of the sea there. Renall still held the city they stood above. Jeval and Margie had a hunk of the interior under their leadership, and she and Marik held a large set of interior lands as well. People traveled from all over the universe to attend the school they had begun there, a school for those who had both natural healing abilities and those who wanted to learn to heal with science and medicines.

She added, “I bet that was a lot more than you and your brothers bargained for when you stopped the slaver ship that we were on.”

Marik roared laughter. “I’ll say.”

They began walking down the hill, both of them lost in their own thoughts. The universe was at peace, but always there was a planet at war with itself and its citizenry or systems fighting within themselves.

One day, peace would end.

But they had known it in their lifetimes, and for that they were grateful.

They hadn’t planned to visit that city soon, but they’d had to come now. Clare, Renall’s mate, had passed away the night before. She’d died doing what she loved best: sitting before a carder table and fleecing Renall of his credits while her children and grandchildren had looked on.

Tara was also gone now. She’d died the year before, and Blade had followed her into the long night that was death. Jenny believed he had simply died of a broken heart, and she was not the only one.

The Oracle had been born and sat in her small temple, always watching for a sign from the universe that war was on the way and helping to guide them all in their decisions. Margie had three other children, and Jenny and Marik, who had never had a child, doted on all the progeny of his brothers.

Peace.

Finally.

Jessica spoke. “There you are.”

The four of them stood looking at each other outside of Renall’s home. Jessica had aged, of course, and she’d softened a bit as well. She’d given Talon one child—a precocious youth who was not just a warrior and sky captain but a laughing thing with good looks that guaranteed that he would never worry about finding a mate.

They entered the house. Renall sat in the small parlor, his head bowed before the casket that held Clare’s body. Jeval and Margie sat nearby, their faces wearing mournful expressions.

Jenny swallowed hard as she looked down at her old friend’s face. Clare had saved her life many years ago; she’d kept her alive on a ship that had been taking all of them to a slaver planet. To see her lying there so still hurt Jenny’s heart.

Renall spoke. “Be quiet, please. Don’t scream.”

Jenny blinked. Don’t scream? Before she could really wonder why he had said such a thing, the Oracle appeared. In her hands, she held a spinning globe that spilled colors against the walls. Jeval asked, “What is that?”

The Oracle spoke quietly. “It’s the key to the doorways beyond this one. Not to other universes, but to the universes that exist as part of this one. Imagine, if you will, that we are here, and right beside us, just beyond where you can see, is another place where you also exist. Where this world exists, and in some of those universes, Revant Two is much like it is now, and in others of those parallel universes it is a much different place.”

Jenny shifted uneasily. Margie reached for her hand, and Jessica did too. The three women stood there, staring at their mates and the Oracle—and the glowing, twirling globe that balanced on her palms.

Renall said, “Blade brought it to me. He said Drake had returned that day, a very old Drake, and gave it to him.”

Talon stepped forward. “What does it mean?’

The Oracle said, “It means war has begun, but not here. Not yet. And it is up to us, your children, to stop it before it spreads here.”

Jenny stared at the thing. It was beautiful and so fragile. It pulsed and shone, spilling light along the walls of Renall’s parlor. Her heart sped up as she moved closer and looked within the globe to see universes and galaxies and stars all whirling and spinning and milky belts turning in on themselves. Worlds formed and fell as she watched.

The Oracle spoke. “War has begun, and the war now is not for our universe, but for every universe in every world. And our enemy is ancient. They know we possess the Orb, and they are coming for it. Look into the Orb, and you will see them.” They all crowded closer. Jenny’s lips parted in a soft moan as she saw beings unlike any she had ever known hurtling through space in ships that held weapons so lethal nothing could stand before them.

They were coming.

And they were bringing death with them.