Deathstalker 08 - Deathstalker Coda

the time streams from which Hazel had called her other selves, during the Great Rebellion. Other time streams, where he had not died and Hazel had never become a monster. They tempted him with the possibilities of comfort, but he continued on his chosen path. He knew his duty. And anyway, only one Hazel had ever really mattered to him.
    Finally the distance between the two of them began to narrow. She was slowing, and he was catching up. He slowed his dance, and the galaxy expanded around him as he sank back into it, focusing in on one specific location. He ran through enlarging star systems, pirouetting through the hearts of roaring suns and out the other side, unharmed. He was changing, just as Hazel had. He could feel the extent of her change in the presence only just ahead of him, indications that she was becoming something else, something other . Something he no longer recognized. He fought to catch up with her, but somehow he never could. Perhaps because she was driven by insanity and obsession, and he was still sane, if only for the moment. He knew he couldn’t see the things he was seeing, do the things he was doing, and remain unchanged. He had to fight to keep from feeling overwhelmed just by the sheer scale of what he was attempting. It wasn’t that long ago for him that he’d been just another tired and burned-out warrior, fighting a hopeless battle in the back streets of Mistport.
    He reached out stubbornly with his mind, trying to force a contact with the presence ahead of him, but although he touched . . . something, he couldn’t make her hear him, no matter how loudly he called her name, and his. She had gone on ahead of him, on a journey and process he could barely comprehend, and for all the meteoric speed of his dance he was being left behind. But something came back to him from that fleeting touch of minds—a single memory, of the last hour of Hazel’s life, in which she had still been merely human.
    After she left Shub, the metal world the AIs made to house their consciousnesses, Hazel d’Ark went to Haden, home of the Madness Maze. She thought she would need more power from the Maze, in order to travel back through time. She materialized outside the Madness Maze, like a child come home seeking the approval of a parent, but the Maze ignored her. She called out to it, but the Maze refused her. She couldn’t see or find an entrance anywhere. She couldn’t even see her reflection in the shining cold surfaces of the outer Maze, and that disturbed her, on some deep and primal level. She screamed abuse at the Maze, and tried to force her way in, attacking it with all her power, focused through a mind already half mad with grief and horror, and she tore power from the Maze, wrenching it out, raw and potent, by the sheer force of her disturbed will. She was crying, tears running jerkily down her cheeks, though she was past feeling them. She was leaving Humanity behind, through her own will, even as she acted for the most human of reasons. Power burned within her, and like the phoenix she emerged shining brightly from the ashes of her old self.
    And so she let go of time and plunged back into the past, beginning the long journey that would make her into the Terror.
    Owen digested the memory as he slowed and slowed his progress, and finally dropped back into space and time at the exact location Hazel had chosen before him. He wondered what he’d find, and why she’d stopped here, of all possible places.

    In the beginning was the First Empire. It was wild and glorious. It didn’t last.
    Owen materialized in open space, hanging in high orbit above the blue and gray planet that in his time had been called Golgotha. He knew that, in the same way he knew that he had traveled back almost a thousand years. The stars had stopped wheeling around him, and now sparkled solemnly in place. He should have felt exhausted, like the first time he’d traveled in time, pursued by the Recreated, but instead he felt . . . exhilarated. He looked around him, grinning widely, surrounded by the icy vacuum of space, which had no power over him. He felt entirely relaxed and comfortable, even though he didn’t feel any need to breathe. It seemed he was beginning his own changes. He checked the pulse in his wrist, and was relieved to find that at least it was still there.
    Golgotha turned slowly beneath him, but it looked very different now. Against the blue and gray of its surface, huge magnificent cities blazed