Chapter Eight

"You never said that this was going to happen."

Vyker turned toward Galadriel, feeling his heart squeeze painfully at the look of sadness and fear in his wife's eyes. She stood in the center of the room, seeming to avoid getting near their thrones or any of the doors, as though she was protecting herself by creating her own open space around her body. He had seen her do it before and though he didn't understand why she did it, he did what he could to respect her.

"I never said that what was going to happen?" he asked.

"You never said that he was going to be in danger like this."

"You knew what it meant when he became Protector, Galadriel. You knew it meant that it was going to be his responsibility to find the Key and to bring it safely back here."

"Yes," Galadriel said, her voice rising in intensity. "The Key. I knew that was his responsibility. I never thought that it meant he was going to get wrapped up in what Aegeus was doing or that he was going to be in as much danger as he is right now."

"We've been working with Aegeus for longer than he has," Vyker pointed out. "We've been assisting him and Martin since Mhavrych was a child. You can't expect that he wouldn't be a part of it when he got older."

"How can you be so dismissive about this?" Galadriel demanded. "How can you pretend like there's nothing happening, like it doesn't matter? Aren't you scared?"

"Of course, I'm scared," Vyker snapped. "Don't you think I spend every minute agonizing over what could happen to him when he's traveling? Don't you think that every day I'm waiting for someone to tell me he manipulated one of the streams wrong or that he interfered and caused something cataclysmic? He's my son, too, Galadriel."

"Then why do you seem like it doesn't bother you? You're acting like you don't think any of this is a problem."

"That's not how I'm acting," Vyker said. "I'm acting like there is nothing that I can do, because there isn't."

"But you're his father."

"I'm also the son of a man who did something extraordinary. I'm the son who went into the streams when I was never supposed to and tried to complete what my father started. I'm the son who thought that I had figured everything out and that I had made everything fine, only to realize later I was wrong. He's my child and I love him, but he's also a man. He's not doing anything that I didn't."

"It isn't your fault that you were wrong about the wall," Galadriel said. "Both of us thought that we had done everything that we needed to do. We thought that we had found all the stones and that was enough to seal the wall and keep the Universe safe. We didn't have any way of knowing about the Key or how important it was."

"Not knowing doesn't make it any better. All of existence is still at the same risk and Mhavrych is trying to fix that. We should have told him. I should be out there with him."

"No. You've done your duty. You put your life and everything else at risk to accomplish what you did. Now it's time for you to rule your people. The streams and portals are still protected for now. But if you leave again, it will only be a matter of time before the kingdom uncovers them and they all start traveling again. That's not what your father wanted and it's not what we want. It's too much. It's too dangerous."

"If I can't do it, we have to trust Mhavrych. He's found Rilex again. He will help him through."

"He won't speak to him," Galadriel said. "He holds so much anger. He feels betrayed by a man who he never met."

"He abandoned us," Vyker said, trying not to feel the pain and bitterness that always came through when he talked about his father's best friend. "He came back for such a short time, but then he left again. He could have stayed here. He could have returned home rather than going back to Earth. If he had done that, we would have found out about the Key sooner."

"You don't know that," Galadriel said. "He didn't even know about it. Your father died before he was able to tell him about it and he didn't write about it in his notes. Even if he had left Earth and come back here permanently, Rilex couldn't have helped you find out about the Key or supported Mhavrych through his early missions. You have to let go of that anger, Vyker. Both of you do. Remember how happy you were to see him when he first came back here with Jem and Angela. You forgave him then."

"I didn't know he was going to leave again."

"You have to let it go. He left because he knew that there was more that he needed to do."

"And yet you don't want your son to do what he knows that he needs to do."

"Because I don't understand why it has anything to do with Mhavrych. Why does it have to be him?"

"When Aegeus came here when Mhavrych was born, none of us knew anything about the Order. We didn't know about what was happening outside of our stream or about the Key. It's because of him that we learned about what my father did at the beginning of the war with the Travetori, the Valdicians."

"I refuse to call them that."

"But that's what they are," Vyker said. "When Valdin broke away from the rest, he created his own kind. They have been contorting and changing over the generations. Once they left this stream, they were no longer linked to their original kind. You know this as well as I do, Galadriel."

"No, Vyker. No, I don't know this as well as you do. This isn't my existence. This isn't my species. This isn't my history. I know you don't like to acknowledge that, but you have to. When you pretend that my past doesn't exist, it's like pretending I don't. You have to remember that I lived in a different time, in a different world, when I didn't know any of this had happened. I didn't grow up hearing the stories that you did. And you have never known what I did when I lived on Earth. That's why I can't understand why any of this has to do with Mhavrych. In my time, Uoria is still strong. Earth is still standing and there have been no invasions, no uprisings. Penthos is an empty planet that was the site of something horrific, but it was resolved. I don't understand why any of this is happening."

"That's what was happening when you were there," Vyker said. "It can change. It has changed."

"But what can any of that have to do with each other? On Earth people haven't even heard of the Valdicians. I don't understand how Aegeus and Martin could have discovered Ryan's experiments. I don't understand why they are trying to stop him rather than protecting the Key. Mhavrych is crossing time and space so much, putting himself at more risk every time, and I don't understand how any of it could have anything to do with each other. Can't he just get the Key and bring it back as he was supposed to do all along? Wouldn't that solve everything?"

"No, Galadriel. It isn't that simple. Just like you said, this isn't your time. This isn't your stream. You came from a place where everything was as it was and there was no other option. You can't fathom how these intertwine because you are used to things simply being what they are without any flexibility. I had hoped that eventually you would be here long enough that you would get used to my world, but no matter how long you are here, I don't think that you will ever really understand."

Vyker could see the pain in his wife's eyes and wished that he had been more careful with the way that he had said it. In the timeline of her life, she had been in the stream with him for longer than she had been on Earth, yet she was still so controlled by the way that her life progressed when she was there. Her obsession with the segment of the temple, or the HM-1313 wall, as she knew it, had been their first connection to one another, but sometimes he had to remind himself that she was very firmly living on Earth. It wasn't until she reached out to a man she knew as Rick, who was actually Rilex, the best friend of Vyker's father, that their lives really crossed and the possibility of something beyond the structured, strict forward motion of her life became a reality.

"Do you wish that I never came?" she asked, her voice shadowy.

Vyker took several strides toward her, wanting to touch her, to reassure her.

"Never," he said. "I would never wish that. You are everything to me, Galadriel. I can't exist without you. I don't want to exist without you. But that doesn't change that I see things differently than you do. I can see why these things are all connected."

"Then tell me. Show me why. Make me understand why people scattered across the Universe, the streams, and time can be so linked that my son has been driven to what he's doing."

"When we met I told you about the StarKillers. I explained that they could rise up and destroy the Universe just as they had been destroying streams. That is the Valdicians. They were far stronger then than they are now, but they are getting stronger. I told you that we had to preserve the temple to save the Universe. That's when I thought that it was only sealing the wall and that it was only the knowledge inside that they wanted. Now we know about the Key my father hid with the Order, I can see what he was doing, and I can see the devastation that happened because he died before he was able to tell anybody what he had done. He never intended that. He wanted someone to know. He thought that the war would end, and he would be able to go retrieve the Key and restore the temple completely. The time that has passed since then has caused extensive damage to the edges of the streams."

"What do you mean?"

"They're collapsing in on themselves. The Universe is dying. Unless it can be pieced back together and the damage that has been done can be fixed, there might not be anything that can be done."

"How can this all be on his shoulders? How can this all be his responsibility?"

"When you were carrying Mhavrych, I told you that Orion was created for him. You said that constellation is still there, even during your time on Earth."

"It is, " Galadriel confirmed. "It is one of the brightest and most beautiful in the night sky."

"The only reason that can be is that our son made such an incredible impact on the Universe that he could never be forgotten. If you can still see that constellation, Mhavrych is still protecting the Universe. Remember what his name means, Galadriel. Remember what Aegeus told us the day that he was born."

Vyker could see her eyes soften, the tender mist of emotion falling over them as she envisioned, just as he had, the night that their first child, their son, came into the world. They had been anticipating him with such excitement, looking forward to every detail about being parents. They couldn't wait to hold him in their arms, to look into his face, to see what he looked like. This child had been critical to the completion of what they saw as their mission, the goal that had brought them together. They had found the star stones that they needed to fill the gaps around the temple wall, but there was one missing, one in the center of the wall that needed to be found. That was when they realized that they had had it all along. The stone that he had used to create the star to connect to Galadriel when she was on Earth was actually in celebration of their child, and it was that stone that they found to be a true star stone, the stone that was missing from the wall.

They had shared that story with Aegeus when he arrived from Uoria, a stranger they weren't expecting from a species they didn't know. But he told them that he came on behalf of a secretive group created many years before, well before Vyker's birth, at the onset of the war with the darkened remnants of the species once known as the Travetori. Called the Order, these honored members of a species known as the Mikana had been chosen by Malan to be the guards and protectors of the Universe by holding the Key. They would hide this critical piece of the temple until Malan returned or the Chosen came to restore it. Their son's birth marked the birth of the Chosen and the future Protector. As Galadriel held him in her arms just moments after he came into the world, Aegeus came into the room and looked down at him, his expression as though he was looking beyond the newborn's face to the grandfather he had known decades before.

As he told the story of Malan risking his life, his kind, and everything he held precious in order to protect the Universe in the best way he knew how, Aegeus revealed a part of Vyker's father that was even more impressive and powerful than Vyker had ever known. This was so beyond the stones he had searched for. Malan had known that the stones were scattered and that the Valdicians were growing in number and in strength. Even if they were able to defeat those of them still on the Cassiopeian planet during the war, he knew there were more who had left, venturing into the portals to find the safety of the other streams. There they could nurture their strength and grow in their desire for dominance and control. It would take time to find the stones that would restore the temple. As long as the Key wasn't in the wall, though, he would never be able to gain the full power and strength of the knowledge in the temple.

Though this provided a new layer of protection, ensuring that the Valdicians weakened over time, it also meant that the temple was incredibly unstable. Malan knew he needed to work quickly to find the stones. Once they were in place, he could return to the Order and reclaim the Key. When Malan died, the Order continued to carry on their duty to protect the Key. The two streams meant that the Order had already been for thousands of years by the time that Mhavrych was born and Aegeus brought the heavy news that things had changed. The Order was tainted by corruption. The Valdicians were growing stronger under new guidance. Though he didn't say it, Vyker knew that Aegeus was bringing him the news that the Universe was collapsing. A dark lord was rising and would bring the dissolution of all existence. This new child represented hope. The Chosen could find the Key that had long since been lost, its very existence reduced to a legend as the Order expanded and their missions broadened and changed. The situation had become so severe that Aegeus had stopped telling his beloved wife what was happening and was shielding his own children. They didn't know about the origins of the Order or of the Kintani. They didn't know about the Chosen who had just been born, and hopefully would never have to because all would be alright. In that moment he rested his hand on the baby's head and Vyker's son opened his eyes for the first time.

The shooting stars in his eyes were so bright they nearly washed out the rest of the color and his expression was so serene it was as though he had already lived a hundred lifetimes. Aegeus looked at him for a few seconds longer and then gave him his name. Mhavrych. Miracle.