The Quiet After the Storm

The world that Vaelith had once known had been reduced to noise and rage. The ether screamed. It howled through Vaelith's skull like a collapsing cathedral, every column of thought shattering, every doubt turned against him. He had always imagined he could master it, ride its currents, command its chaos — but now it was devouring him.

And he could hardly bring himself to care.

What was the point of the world, anyway? What was the point of himself, for that matter? Vaelith now knew that the end was near. Life, pain, terror, freedom, all just words. He had ascended past such concepts. The ether embraced him in its chaotic arms. Soon he, too, would be one with it. Only this Joey, the one Elorae had always believed in, stood in his way.

"You think you can rebuild an entire world? It's already gone! You hopeless worm, you are nothing in a sea of nothing. Look at you—all these girls clinging to you like faithless disciples. What are you even going to tell them when you fade away?"

And then Joey spoke. But not to Vaelith. He could feel the rage building even more at the rejection of the attention he deserved. No, Joey turned to Elorae, ignoring Vaelith entirely.

"Um… actually..."

The words were gentle. Almost clumsy. But in the stillness that followed, the truth of them rang through the world like the sound of a key sliding into the lock of creation.

"You didn't give Vaelith a seed of doubt like he asked. You tricked him. You gave him a seed of faith. That faith made him just like you — immune to the ether. And from him, the immunity spread to every person in your world, inoculating the world to the ether. That was enough to eliminate the ether - it is gone and your world has already started to heal. You didn't doom the world, Elorae. You saved it."

For a second there was nothing. And then there was light. Not a blinding light, but a cleansing one.

Vaelith's body arched. His vision filled with white fire. The ether, his old ally, fled from his veins like poison expelled from a wound. His heart convulsed once, then again, as light pressed outward from within, reshaping him. Skin shimmered. Hair lengthened. The low, cracked ruin of his voice lifted into something clear and melodic. The hard lines of his face softened.

All around him the world seemed to grow as he lost height. Then he lost his balance as his chest exploded outward into sizable breasts. Even his clothes were not immune, reshaping themselves to barely cover his new body.

For one staggering moment, he caught sight of himself reflected in shine on the marble floor — and froze.

Elorae stared back.

Not an illusion. Not a disguise. The same eyes. The same hair. Even the faint scar on the collarbone that Elorae had once received as a child — it was there.

Horror flared through him — her — for an instant. The instinct to fight it, to hold on to the old self. But the harder she clung, the less she could find of the person she had been. The doubt that had once animated her every breath had simply… gone.

She could breathe again.

And the world breathed with her.

All around the throne room, colour poured back into existence, filling a world that they had not inhabited in living memory. Marble gleamed white. The banners flushed red and gold. Outside the windows, the air shimmered with rainbows where sunlight passed through mist. It was as if the world itself had been holding its breath, waiting for this moment.

Vaelith staggered backwards, fighting to keep from falling to her knees. Her hair — Elorae's hair — fell around her shoulders. She pressed her hand to her now sizable chest and felt the heartbeat hidden there, trying to calm herself down.

It's alive again.

Memories came rushing back.

The cold speeches. The decrees. The blasphemous certainty that only destruction could cleanse. Her old life, the life before Elorae had saved her with her trickery, had been terrible.

She remembered it all — and felt only confusion. How could she ever have believed those things? How could she ever have thought the world's ruin was salvation? Why had she striven so hard to lead, to control everything? Every goal, every priority that she had held before she had been so wonderfully transformed was a perversion of what life should be.

Tears streamed down her cheeks, unbidden and pure. She laughed through them, a sound both strange and beautiful in her new voice.

And then she saw him.

Joey, radiant and still, a pillar of impossible grace.

For too long, Vaelith had believed Elorae to be mentally ill, that what she believed about Joey were delusions, things that needed to be cured, or at least buried. How she had been so wrong. When Elorae had so brilliantly used Vaelith as the inoculation against the ether, she had also shared her very being with Vaelith. With that came a dose of wisdom and insight that Vaelith had never been privy to. But now she could see it.

All of it.

Joey Granger. Vaelith's true love. Vaelith's messiah. She believed in him. She always would.

Without thinking, Vaelith's legs closed the gap between herself and Joey. For a second she stared into his perfect eyes, and then her arms were wrapped around him, as her lips met his for the first time.

But as much as the kiss was wonderful, Vaelith knew that it wasn't enough.

Leaving one arm around the back of Joey's neck, she took her other hand and slid it down his front, past his stomach, and inside his pants.

There.

Heaven.

She had never before touched Joey's penis, but she knew that it was what her hands were created for. And not just her hands. While her mouth was occupied feeling Joey's tongue with her own, she knew very well that it, too was perfectly crafted for Joey's penis. As what was heating up inside her shorts. Vaelith was Joey's woman, and that made the universe right.

"Ahem," from somewhere a million miles away, Elorae cleared her throat, "I hope you two remember that you're not alone in here."

Joey gently put his arms on Vaelith's shoulders and pushed her away. Her lips and her hand both felt empty, but she kept her eyes closed for a moment, savouring the sensations, cherishing the memories.

"Can't really blame a girl for trying," one of the taller women who had come with Joey said, elbowing Elorae in the ribs. "We've been with Joey this whole trip. She's just seeing him for the first time."

"Your world is truly beautiful," the older woman piped in. "Thank you for bringing us here. I could never have believed that something like this could even exist."

"I don't even know how to process everything you've shown us," said a blonde woman with darker skin and a slight slant to her eyes.

Elorae hadn't warned Vaelith that she would be bringing women when she returned from Joey's world. So many women! But it made sense. A man like Joey couldn't possibly just have one woman in love with him. He was incredible. Vaelith would understand if every woman in the world fell in love with Joey Granger. How could she blame them? Vaelith herself was intensely infatuated, and she had only seen him for the first time a few minutes earlier.

But these women wouldn't be from their world. They were from Joey's. Each was looking around, amazed at what they were seeing. Vaelith had known that Elorae was powerful, but the level of power needed to bring this many people with her from another world was incredible. No wonder she had been able to trick Vaelith so well.

"But how do we get home?" Joey asked, his breathing now calmed after their brief but intense make-out session.

"I have the power, silly," Elorae reminded him, doing what Vaelith wished she could do, giving him a squeeze from behind. "But if you want, since it's not very... pleasant to travel between worlds, maybe you and I could find a way to use your power to make a new way to traverse the worlds, something that might be a bit more convenient for us in case we want to... visit."

"What do you mean visit?" Joey asked with a wink and a grin.

"Oh, I think you know what I mean, mister." she said, cupping her man's face and bringing her lips to his.

And then Elorae and Joey kissed. Vaelith's heart leapt at the sight, her own face, borrowed from the beautiful Elorae, kissing the most perfect man in creation. It took significant willpower to not join them.

Vaelith felt something inside her break open and pour out, like a floodgate long held shut. It wasn't jealousy. It wasn't regret. It was devotion. Not worship born of fear, as she once perversely demanded from her followers, but love born of awe.

These two lovers had saved her. Saved everything.

Having spent the majority of her life until then working toward upheaval, chaos, and destruction, all Vaelith wanted to do moving forward was create, serve, and devote her life to these two. It was a blessing to be near Joey Granger, but to also be with Elorae, the saviour of the world, was a boon beyond comprehension. If she could serve them for a thousand years it wouldn't be enough.

She looked out the window at the beautiful blue sky, a sight that she had never seen until days earlier when Elorae had enacted her plan. The ether was gone. The throne room, once a monument to doubt, shone like the morning sun. Elorae and Joey continued their kissing, their hands finding one another in the light. Vaelith watched, smiling softly. For the first time, she felt no hunger to possess, no impulse to rule — only the deep, unshakable peace of knowing her purpose.

They saved the world, she thought. And saved me in the process. It's only fair that I give them my life in return.