Faith Multiplied

Elorae could feel it for the first time in her life. The ether, the doubt, fighting to get into her mind. It was like an itch behind her ear in a spot she could never reach, whispering, enticing her to let go of things she knew to be true. Was this how the rest of the world felt all the time? No wonder there was such turmoil!

Never before had she been exposed to the ether. Her whole life the immunity that her unfailing faith in Joey had kept her from its touch. But now, in a world almost completely overrun by its power, even her faith was being bombarded.

It was ironic that now, finally, after all these years, she had found Joey, only to have her first true crisis of faith. There he was, at her fingertips. The man she loved. The man she believed in. The man she planned on giving herself to for the rest of her life. She had crossed into the netherworld of the ether to rescue him. She had crossed universes to find him. She could touch him, see him, smell him, but still the seed of doubt that had so empowered the ether attempted to worm into her mind.

Is that really Joey?

How would you know?

What could he do to help, anyway?

It pained her to hear such nonsense in her own voice. Her entire life she'd heard things like that from others; her parents, her friends, her lovers, all had dismissed her beliefs. She'd been called crazy, or worse, more times than she could remember. But now she'd found him. And now she'd have to confront the very doubt that had lived in everyone else.

"And you—little fool. You gave me the seed that made all this possible. The only thing you ever built was failure." Vaelith, still on his venomous tirade, had turned on her. The words would have been easy to dismiss in the past, but now that the ether was assaulting her so powerfully, it was difficult to ignore. She winced as if physically pained. She could see tendrils of fog coming from the madman. Whatever it was that she had done to bring Joey back had pushed almost all the ether from the room, but Vaelith was still saturated in it.

Joey seemed to sense her struggle and moved toward Vaelith. Elorae and the rest of the women followed, matching him step for step. Their lives were built around him, so leaving him now, in his moment of need, was unthinkable. With each step colour seemed to blossom in the room. It brought tears to her eyes, imagining her own world looking bright and vivid like Joey's. It defied even her wildest dreams.

Vaelith screamed. "You can't—!"

Joey stopped in front of him. The distance between them was only a few feet now. It seemed to Elorae that Joey's very presence was driving the ether wild. She stared at Vaelith, at the throne, and it looked like a maelstrom of chaos. No longer was it whispering at her, but it was screaming at her every doubt she'd never had, every question she had easily ignored. She glanced from side-to-side and saw that all the women were struggling, holding on to Joey for dear life.

"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?"

She could barely hold on anymore. Elorae felt her legs begin to shake. If something didn't change soon, she would be lost, just as Joey had been lost.

Joey tilted his head and began to rub the back of his neck.

"Um... actually..." and then he turned, not to Vaelith, but to Elorae herself, his glorious eyes locked onto her own, and spoke. "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."

There was a brief moment where Elorae looked at Joey, her true love, and was confused. The words he had said sounded wrong somehow, as if they contradicted something that she knew deep in her heart. But try as she may, the knowledge of what that wrongness was, what the source of the contradiction could be, was completely lost on her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw light roll over the world, over the women next to her, over the walls, the throne, over Vaelith.

She stared at her former lover, the one who had tried to bring ruin to this world, the one she had tricked so well. Elorae had a hard time focusing on him. There was something strange about how he looked, as if he wasn't solid somehow. She squinted, concentrating, and watched as large breasts quickly bloomed out of the madman's chest. His clothes shortened, tightened, until they were similar to what Elorae herself was wearing. She could barely make out his legs become smooth, his lips puff up, his hair grow long.

Blinking, Elorae shook her head. What exactly was she seeing? She stared again at Vaelith and things became clearer. No, of course there were no strange transformations happening. All of that had happened days earlier, back when she had tricked the would-be dictator. One side effect of her seed of faith, one she hadn't realized, was that patient zero, Vaelith herself, would have taken on so much of Elorae's own characteristics. She felt like could still make out a bit of Vaelith's visage when she looked hard enough, but for the most part it was like she was looking in the mirror.

Her eyes drifted away from her new sister, who was smiling and walking up to Joey, giving him a warm welcoming kiss. The throne room, once a dreary, beige, austere environment was already exploding with colour. Reports from around the world had echoed the same effect. Colour, once long lost, a thing of legend, myth, had returned once the ether fled. Elorae was glad for her time in Joey's world, a trip not informed by desperation, but by celebration. She knew she had saved her world, that it would soon heal, and she needed to discover what was lost so that she could lead her people into a new, joyous age. It was a long-shot to find a world like Joey's, one that had never experienced the cataclysms her own world had. It was an even better fortune to find her destiny, Joey, there.

She looked back at Joey. The kissing between him and Vaelith had intensified, the young woman having snaked one hand around his neck, the other down the front of Joey's pants. She couldn't blame her. Vaelith was, after all, just like her, and when her lips met Joey's, Elorae could hardly contain herself.

Through the emotional tether that held Elorae firmly to Joey's own heart, his own urges, she was starting to feel the heat of their interaction. Unless she said something, soon the two would be on the could mosaic tiles of the floor rolling around naked, and very quickly Elorae herself would be joining them.

"Ahem," she cleared her throat, "I hope you two remember that you're not alone in here."

Joey held Vaelith back, panting. Vaelith's eyes remained closed for a moment, as if the memory of kissing Joey was almost as good as kissing him. It was, Elorae reminded herself.

"Can't really blame a girl for trying," Juniper 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," Donna 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," Aynsley said, her voice quiet, in awe.

Elorae grinned at the women, this sorority of affection she found orbiting Joey in his own world. They had been so caring when she met them, so understanding. When she saw that she was practically made for Joey, but that she wouldn't try to get between him and them, they had welcomed her with open arms.

"We don't fight over him," Bianca had told her, pulling her aside. "We support each other."

It was a good strategy. A man like Joey could never be with just one woman. Even there in her own world, where only two people knew about Joey, both of them were utterly and completely devoted to the man. Sure, one of them was a man herself just a few days earlier, but none of that mattered. Elorae needed to remember to not be selfish. Joey would make the decisions about who he would be with. It wasn't Elorae's place to question his wisdom.

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

"I have the power, silly," Elorae reminded him, 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 by the way he kissed her back, she was pretty sure that she was right.