Chapter 125: Ch163. Sickness - 18 (Dark questions, overwhelming answers...)
"The Nests... Are they connected to... Earth?"
The woman before Kurt nodded.
As the minutes passed, as they talked, or rather, as Kurt heard his mother’s voice coming from the mouth of that body, identical to his mother’s, talking about other worlds, the beginning of the universe, and everything else...
It was as if the shape in front of Kurt was losing the deep meaning it had a few minutes before.
It was as if the person in front of Kurt no longer looked like his mother, but rather, just a person who gained much more vast knowledge than Kurt’s.
Nothing more than that.
Upon seeing the woman’s head nod in front of him, Kurt pinched his chin with his index finger and thumb, as if he was scratching a beard that wasn’t there.
"Are you trying to tell me that the Nests were a plan hatched by Kha’Ur from the beginning? That he wanted to get here somehow?"
The woman’s lips twisted downward, ever so slightly.
"Not exactly." She said. "As I said before, Kha’Ur’s plan was being devised little by little, as his children conquered new worlds, and he found himself increasingly in need of a host strong enough to support his power, without his body was destroyed."
"But then... Why the Nests? Why Earth?"
"Because twins have a strange connection with each other. Have you ever heard of that?"
Kurt had already studied that subject at school.
About how twin brothers had the strange ability to feel, or even detect, each other’s changing emotions.
Sometimes, some even managed to transcend the barrier of distance, managing to perceive and even discover when their brother or sister was in danger.
Even though we are miles away from each other...
"Kha’Ur and I share that same connection." She said. "And that’s why, when he realized that his children were capable of storing and channeling all that energy to create portals that led to other places in the cosmos...
He realized that he might be able to return here, and perhaps, recover what had once been taken from him.
But all his attempts to get closer were unsuccessful.
And it took him a long time to understand why."
Kurt had already given up trying to ponder the reasons and logic behind those vastly deeper creatures.
So even though the gears in his brain were turning frantically, with all the pieces of the puzzle falling into place for the first time in what felt like ages, he simply resigned himself to letting the woman, no more like his mother, telling the story and answering the questions that had already been asked.
At one point or another in history.
"...The reason was that he didn’t have a body to move through the portals, or, as you call them nowadays, the Bubbles, since any body he took was almost immediately destroyed by his own power.
Then he had an idea, and even though putting it into practice was risky, it was worth it, if he could have just the slightest chance of getting to me."
As the story seemed to be reaching its climax, Kurt felt compelled to ask why Kha’Ur felt such a need to return to the Essentium, but he held back, knowing that, even if eventually, the answer would come. .
In the right moment.
"Then, he separated into two entities. One larger, vaster, carrying a vast portion of his original power.
The other, however, despite still containing a significant amount of his power, was incorporeal... I believe that this part is what humans call a ’soul’, and that, having separated from Kha’s original physical body ’Ur, not carrying so much power, and not having a physical form, was able to break the invisible rule of the Bubbles, and cross to Earth."
"To be close to you, finally..." Kurt said, unable to contain the astonishment that took over his emotions.
"Not only that, child..." The woman said, her tone taking on a darkness thicker than the shadows Kurt was immersed in during [SHADOW TRAVEL]. "The girl named Evellyn must have told you how, after the arrival of Kha’Ur, the world began to vibrate at dissonant frequencies, which reflected back at her and separated into countless echoes, and how time in these echoes is completely disconnected, and It doesn’t follow a logical line, right?"
Kurt felt a shiver go up his spine at that question.
Fearing the answer that would come, maybe even because he already imagined that there could be some relationship between what was happening there and the answer, Kurt just nodded.
"We are not on your home world." The woman replied. "And, as strange as it may seem, we’re not ’only’ in your head either."
At that moment, it was as if a huge question mark lit up over Kurt’s head.
"We are in a world within a world." The woman explained. "And even this mental world gains shape and tangibility when it comes from the only point in common between all the echoes of reality that exist out there..."
The shiver down Kurt’s spine intensified.
There, everything made all the sense that Kurt had been looking for all those years.
Ever since he died for the first time and was supposedly gifted by the Essentium with that power that Kurt had been using all the way until now, he had been looking for answers to countless questions.
What was the system?
Why did the system seem to want to kill him?
Where did the Nests come from?
What were they for?
Where did his power come from?
And, for the first time in all those years, even though Kurt understood perfectly, once and for all, the implications of the questions and the answer he had just arrived at...
Kurt Blake didn’t want to know.
But still, Kurt felt his lips moving even if he didn’t want to.
As if your brain was not capable of obeying your heart, and that primal and absolute desire to escape was worthless in the face of the overwhelming power of the naked and raw truth.
"I am the common point among all echoes..."
"And it is you that Kha’Ur has been seeking, all these ages..."
