Russ Howard - The Ultimate Helm

The fleet surrounded the smalljamrner without incident. It was a fleet of sidewheelers, all gnomish make, and two elven armadas, and she recognized the military bearing of the fleet's leader instantly.

Herphan Gomja, the giff who had befriended Teldin at the start of his quest, wept openly at news of the Cloakmaster's death. He and the ships under Vallus Leafbower's command had arrived too late to defend the Spelljammer, but Gomja saw new purpose in the deliverance of Cwelanas and the Spelljammer's progeny.

They stayed for a day in orbit around the Broken Sphere, and they marveled at the ebony crystalline wall that stretched before them, blotting out the horizon. The shell was perfectly intact, and it glowed as though with an inner life, energy flickering through the shell like thoughts: generating, regenerating, creating.

The Broken Sphere was no more, for it had been renewed.

The warriors aboard the smalljammer were offered posts on the ships of the gnomish-elven fleet. No one wanted to decide on anything just yet, preferring to stay with Cwelanas for this leg, the first leg, of her own quest throughout the spheres. This war was over, and each person had seen all too much of battle since the Cloakmaster's arrival. The mind flayer stayed with Cwelanas as well, and he studied the sphere while they lingered in orbit.

With the War for the Spelljammer over, the ships turned away from the sphere, the Spelljammer Sphere, as Estriss was calling it, and headed deeper into the flow.

Cwelanas found her friends outside, on the observation deck, staring behind them at the slowly receding black sphere. They turned at her approach. Djan put a hand on her shoulder. " Verenthestae," he said. "All is as it should be."

She nodded, wishing it were otherwise. They all watched the sphere in silence for a time, then the mind flayer looked up.

My observations are not complete, but I have discovered something interesting, he said.

Na'Shee baished back her hair and turned. CassaRoc leaned forward on the rail and tried to look farther into the flow, as though he were searching for something.

"What have you found?" Cwelanas asked.

Estriss gestured toward the Spelljammer Sphere. The sphere is somehow locked from entrance. We could not open portals to sail inside, even if we tried.

"I know," she said.

The mind flayer nodded. But there are thin parts in the crystal, where the shell is still forming. It is not opaque at those points.

"What is it, Estriss? What did you see?"

His eyes crinkled happily, as though he had witnessed all the wonders of the universe.

A new birth. A new beginning. A sun, Estriss said. I believe I saw a new sun.

The eternal blackness of cold, empty space, a void of nothingness, was momentarily dispelled. First an almost infinitesimal glimmer of light appeared where before there had been nothing, then an immeasurable expulsion of pure, blinding power ripped the contours of space and time and spewed energy-pebbles, trails, streams of raw power-across the black, eternal, timeless sea.

In the center of the explosion, a shape, a living thing, feeding off the fires of creation, began to coalesce inside the raw, swirling phlogiston.

It glowed from within, magic and energy pulsing like rivers of fire through the veins that had once been called warrens.

Creannon, the Spelljammer, sailed from the doorway its own death had created and spread its great wings into wild-space. The nova of its birth dissipated. The Spelljammer sang into a cold, sunless night that it had never before experienced in the forever light of the flow.

— The universe, the Spelljammer said, is ours.

— It is reborn.

The soul of Teldin marveled at the emptiness of this universe. Here the powers and the matter of the flow had been transformed into raw, untamed energy, and he could feel through the Spelljammer's senses that the universe was spread out before them like a blanket, unbounded as far as he could see. This universe seemed to be entirely wildspace: cold, empty, mostly devoid of life. Here suns burned in space while the planets around them slowly evolved, and rarely did the processes of life naturally occur. -This will change, the Cloakmaster said.

— Yes. Our destiny is to create. Life is all-important. -And the universe we have left behind… What of it?

— That is closed to us now. We must look forward, not behind.

— What of the Broken Sphere? What have we left behind? There was a pause. Then: — Here is but one of their possible futures…

Destiny appeared before them, a view of the Broken Sphere that seemed to envelop them as though they were there.

They watched. Seconds became years, then decades.

The sphere of phlogiston solidified to become a black crystalline wall that seemed to take up all of existence. Inside, the phlogiston swirled and condensed. The flaming shards that had been the Spelljammer's hull had embedded in the inside layer of the reforming sphere. There the latent magical energies imbued within the phlogiston merged with the Spelljammer's soul. The shards transformed into crystals, glowing with power. The memories of the Spelljammer became the stars that generations of as yet unborn humans would look up to and dream about, create myths around, make love under, and reach for.

The swirling phlogiston inside the sphere was a roiling firestorm. In time, the energies separated, and the forces of magic condensed the spinning balls of phlogiston into a glorious, brilliant sun and worlds-eighteen of them, perhaps more, perhaps less. The sphere would be reborn-not identical to Ouiyan, but in honor of the sacrifice the sphere had made millennia in the past.

— Its destiny, the Spelljammer sang, is unlike ours. It waits to write itself where our destiny is and always has been written for us.

A thousand years later, the worlds teemed with life. Eight-legged horses roamed the ocher plains of Thoris. The seas of Hedriana swam with orange fish that changed color with the hours of the day. On Elias, even the smallest field mice had the innate ability to summon magic. And on the recreated worlds that had once been Colurranur, BedevanSov, Ondora, Ladria, Asveleyn, and Resanel, life reappeared. Species that had been destroyed millennia ago were renewed, reshaped, on new worlds formed from the molecules of the old, and] they shared their worlds with new forms of life that celebrated 1 the variety of existence and the wonder of being. j

And into the animal kingdom came humanity, which brought with it fire. Humanoids brought with them intelligence and evolving languages. They brought myth and wonder, fear and awe. They told tales of legend, of how the night eats the sky, of how the gods look upon them from the eyes in the night. They learned the ways of magic, and they learned how to fly.

Humanity learned, and once again lived in peace. Like their forgotten forerunners, they lived peacefully with the other life forms of their worlds, learned how to speak with the beasts of the sea, how to respect life in all its forms, and how to play games of skill with the denizens of the trees…

… and every year, as they migrated from planet to planet, as they returned to teach humanity how to sing into the stars and imagine worlds and places undreamed of, swarms of reborn spaakiil, the last legacy of the Spelljammer, filled the skies.

— This is the future, the Spelljammer said, a future unwritten, merely shaped by the darkness of future past, one of millions of realities that have yet to unfold, waiting to take shape in the Sphere That Once Was. In a thousand years or so, when all this has come to pass-or has not-and perhaps the known spheres will have found peace, Ouiyan Reborn will once again be open for all vessels from all spheres. Here all may learn, orcs and humans, mind flayers and beholders. All may learn… together. Songs of joy will be sung throughout the spheres, the races will live and evolve together, and the Spelljammer will lead the fleets of war and death into a universe of eternal light. -And when they reach the stars? Teldin asked. -Then nothing will be impossible.