Asim’s throat was slit, his body collapsing to the kitchen floor of the beloved farm he had shared with Khalid. Rene saw this, felt it happen all over again. He saw the horror and pain in Khalid’s eyes, the utter fear. 

Back and back. Watching the wonderful life they had made with each other, their perfect little existence together. Rene felt deep down inside that utter bliss and longing he’d had for Khalid in his first life, and it overwhelmed him. Despite the horrors he had witnessed before jumping back into this mad tempest of time travel and past lives, he was brought to that passionate devotion, that pure intensive love he had felt in his first life, a love matched only by that he had felt for Misha. 

Rene knew how close he had been to accepting immortality with Khalid in that first life. How different would things have been if Khalid’s family had not shown up that fateful day. The day that Khalid had proposed immortality to him. Would Khalid have been a better man, with the two of them together from that life on, or would he have eventually grown corrupt anyway, given powers far too strong and dangerous for any man?

Rene traveled further and further back through their happy little life, until he heard a sudden sound. Crying. Emory crying. He looked about desperately for her, but could not find her. 

“Emory!” He called. 

Suddenly, he was flipping through darkness again, like he had when he’d entered Aidan’s and Cody’s dreams. He was pitched out of the tempest, and straight onto the sandy floor of a very familiar temple. Aset’s temple. 

He looked up to a strange sight before him. The first thing he saw was Khalid and Asim kneeling on the floor, frozen in a moment, heads bowed to their goddess. Aset stood before them, in all her beauty and splendor, with her multi-color dress that seemed to ripple like water from some ethereal wind. She too was frozen in the moment, though her dress will moved about her. 

Off to her side were Emory and…Emory. Young and older both, stood next to Goddess Aset. Young Emory was crying, and once Rene had gotten his bearings, she came rushing over to him, throwing her arms around his shoulders as he sat on the ground, wrapping her tightly in an embrace. 

Rene squeezed his little girl so close and so tight, afraid to let go of her again. He looked up at Grown-up Emory, and could see the tears in her eyes as well. And something else. She was morphing back and forth from the form of herself to the form of Aset. She was merged with their Goddess once more. 

“Goddess…” Rene said as he slowly stood with Young-Emory in his arms, “Why have you brought us here?”

Grownup-Emory’s face morphed into Aset’s, and she looked at him with her dark and discerning eyes. 

“You’ve had such a long journey.” Said Aset. 

“Yes.” Rene muttered. He didn’t even know where to begin. 

“You want to ask me a question.” Said Aset. It was clear that she could read his mind. 

“A question.” Repeated Rene, uncertain for a moment. He then glanced at the frozen forms of Khalid and Asim. Of Khal and him. “How do I stop him?”

Aset smiled, walking around her own frozen form to kneel in front of Khalid. She continued to flutter between looking like Aset, and looking like Grownup-Emory. 

“What a scared little boy he was. Always so terrified of his father. You were his only solace. His escape from exquisite pain.” She reached out a hand and brushed it over Khalid’s face, then closed her eyes. 

Rene blinked, and suddenly, Aset was standing right in front of him. He fell back a step in awe and terror. 

“I want you to see.” Aset spoke, and her words vibrated through him as though he was made of them. “I want you to understand what it is that you’re asking of me.”

Rene winced as Aset reached out and touched his face. 

A sudden whirlwind of thoughts and memories flashed through his mind. Over 500 years, every single moment of a life. Khalid’s life. Rene remembered as though he were Khalid himself. He remembered being entombed for almost two centuries. He remembered slaying his family, children and all, for not freeing him from his stone prison. He remembered searching endlessly for Asim, crossing the whole of Earth to do so. Again and again. Drawn addictively, compulsively back to Asim no matter what. 

He watched Khalid’s pain at his perceived betrayals, the man’s mind stuck in the space of a scared child, afraid of losing everything good in his life. Willing to do whatever it took to keep that little candle of happiness alive. He saw every loved one of his that Khalid had ever killed. Colin, Ashlin, Ari, Paige, Katrina and the others, Misha…and the reasoning behind why Khalid did what he thought he had to do. 

He saw the handsome Maori man, Jarrah, that had held a small place in Khalid’s heart for several years while Khalid endeavored to put Asim behind him. Attempted to give him up like giving up cigarettes cold turkey. However, upon Jarrah’s death, Khalid had continued on his way to find Asim once again. 

Five-hundred years of searching and needing and wanting to be back with the man he loved the most. Five-hundred years of torture and horrors beyond any rational human imaginings. 

Rene found himself on his knees, his hands over his eyes. He could sense Young-Emory standing next to him, could hear her whimpering in confusion.

“What did you do to him?” Rene asked. 

“She tethered him to you.” Said Grownup-Emory. “She saw cruelty in him. A want for revenge, and she forced him to search you out for eternity, to be his moral compass. She felt that together, you would both be a force for good.”

“She thought wrong.” Said Rene, uncovering his eyes and looking into his Grownup-daughter’s face. 

“Even a Goddess can be fallible.” Aset spoke again, but not through Emory’s body. She had stepped out of Emory now, and stood beside her, her gaze cast down. She looked almost ashamed. 

“Did you tether me to him?” Rene asked, standing once more and taking Young Emory’s hand. 

“Not to the same extent.” Said Aset, looking at him now with her ethereal eyes. “I wanted you free to make your own decisions. To find your own path so that I could be certain you would stay pure in spirit.”

“She needed you free so you’d create me.” Said Grownup-Emory. “She set you on that path as well.”

Aset’s face darkened a bit, but she said nothing. 

“He’s too far gone.” Said Rene. “There’s nothing I can do to bring him back. He’d murder the whole world, given the chance. Surely you must see that.”

Aset frowned, looking contemplative. 

“Do you know why I saved you both? Why I gave you your abilities?” His Goddess asked. 

“So we’d make the world a better place. And so that I’d have Emory, to give you a body to walk around on Earth.” Said Rene, perhaps somewhat bitterly. 

Aset smiled, “I saved you both, because your mothers begged me to.”

A strange feeling swept over Rene, and he thought back to that night, as Asim, saying goodbye to his mother. Her calming and beautiful words for him. Her will that he have a better life, and that he and Khalid escape from that place. From their masters, and Khalid’s evil father. 

“Your mothers prayed so hard that evening, this evening-” Aset gestured around the temple, “that I drew you both straight to me. I kept you safe from the storm. I restored Khalid, who was moments away from joining his mother in the Duat. I saw the love that they had for you both, and I knew that it must dwell within you too. In your case, this proved to be true. In his case, unfortunately, the scars of his father’s abuse were too much. The need for revenge too great. The very gift he asked for gave me pause, but I had hoped, and I now realize that hope to have been in vain, that by tethering him to you, he would always seek out the good. In every life, goodness is what you chose, regardless of your circumstances. Goodness was stamped on your very soul. I wanted that for him. I needed that for him.”

“I’m not perfect. I hurt people in my lives. Scammed them. Killed them. Killed him,  repeatedly.” Said Rene. “Your little experiment was doomed to fail. I’m just as flawed as anyone else.”

“Even as a street urchin robbing rich women, you put your life on the line to protect others. Fighting in wars, you always protected the weak, the innocent. You fought for justice. You sought to take down evil. You saved Emory’s great-grandmother from a man you had considered a good friend because it was the right thing to do. You are not the cruel daemon you presume to be, even if you did shoot Khalid in the head and leave him to rot in the ocean. You always stood for justice, something I’ve endeavored to bring to the world. The reason I needed Emory.”

Rene looked at Grownup-Emory, who was being very quiet. She looked him in the eye, reached out a hand to touch his arm, and suddenly he saw flashes of memories and emotions. Of her life. Growing up in the original timeline where Khalid kept her safe until their Goddess arrived to claim her, after killing Ari and Rene. He saw the version of him that came after this life. A young man, born in Palestine, pulled from the rubble of a bombed hospital by Khalid and his slaves. The young man was kept far away from Emory as she grew up, but she knew about him as she caught thoughts and whispers from Khalid’s mind, her powers growing as she did. 

Then one day, after Khalid had been visited in a dream by Aset, he brought a 27-year-old Emory to Egypt. To the temple. There, Goddess Aset stepped forth from nothingness, and became one with Emory. The connection was painful on a level that Emory had never experienced before. Every atom in her body, every synapse in her mind, was on fire from the process of merging with a Goddess. 

Khalid left her there in that temple, and went home to attempt to court the Palestinian boy, Adeel, who was 20 now, and had no real clue about the man who had whisked him away to the United States, and seemed to care a great deal about him. 

But Emory had never agreed to the connection, which is why it was so agonizing. She had never wanted to be one with her Goddess, something Aset perhaps hadn’t fully anticipated. In fact, Emory had used her strength and glimpses into her Goddess’s mind to realize the folly of what Aset intended to do. Khalid had been an absolute failure. The world under him had turned to a dictatorship, run by a madman whose only concern was wiping out vast swaths of humanity, regardless of their innocence or cruelty. He didn’t stop at nukes. He bombed people across the world until production ground to a standstill across the planet, and billions died of starvation if they hadn’t already been blown to bits.

Aset had neglected to show Rene this part of Khalid’s life. A terrible oversight.

“She fought you.” Said Rene, looking proudly at his adult daughter, but speaking to Aset. “She saw what he really was, what you had created, and she fought against you. She visited me when I was buried, and since you’d already given me the gift of time-travel, I had an out. How hard she must have struggled to get away from you to help me. To change everything.”

Aset scoffed lightly, “She is incredibly headstrong. A trait she gets from her parents, I suppose.”

“But you saw.” Rene turned to look at Aset now. “You saw everything he did, everyone he killed, and you let it happen.”

“I had very little control until I was merged with Emory. At that point, I decided to grow a Phoenix from the ashes of humanity’s destruction. Let the new world flourish with a reminder of all that had been lost.”

“Billions.” Rene said quietly, squeezing Little Emory’s hand. “Billions of lives. Did you even care?”

“Of course I cared.” Aset said calmly. Dangerously. 

“But you decided it would be alright? To end so many innocent lives and just start over?” Rene asked. 

“Do not begin to feign that you have never had such thoughts.” Aset stated. “All of the world, and her resources limited, her wildlife sick, roads of black criss-crossing every natural habitat. Can you begin to imagine how beautiful it could be again, reset to her previous vibrance? No more fighting over resources. No more cruel leadership poisoning the Earth and her people.”

“I watched them die. In agony. In fear.” Said adult Emory. “I watched billions perish. Children. Mothers. Fathers. Old. Young. All swallowed in fire and famine. The pain pulsing through future generations.”

“To be human is to feel pain.” Said Aset.

“And how many of them were led by you into the Duat?” Asked Rene. “How many souls did you guard in that first timeline? Personally?”

“Millions.” Muttered Aset.

“And did they feed you? Give energy to you with their existence?” Asked Rene. 

“Of course they did.” Said Grownup-Emory, glaring at Aset. “She became stronger than she had been in millennia. But she didn’t anticipate some of that strength rubbing off on me.”

“Precious girl.” Said Aset, looking at Grownup-Emory with something like awe, “You always fought so hard against me. I feel as though you were my own daughter, and you could never be content in our connection.”

“I fought for what I believed in. That life is precious. A balance is precious. Who are we to decide who lives and who dies? The planet will heal herself, as she always does. Mankind will find a balance once more, or perish on their own. We do not get to decide their fate. I helped my father change the timeline twice so that we might have this moment to reason with you, to make you understand that the future can’t go forth as it is now.”

“You’ve made your point.” Said Aset.

“You’re so scared.” Said Grownup-Emory. “You’re terrified of being forgotten. Of humanity choosing other gods, other paths, until yours is no longer relevant. Until you fade away, eternally bound to the Duat. That is why you fought so hard to come back to Earth. But you cannot protect your people like the great mother, and allow them all to be wiped out mercilessly. Would you have allowed the same fate for your son? For Horus?”

Rene watched as a single tear ran down Aset’s face. 

“To live eternal, and then become irrelevant to those I have loved and cared for, you cannot possibly know this pain.” Said Aset. “But I see now, that you both have fought just as hard for each other as I did for my own son. That love transcends any fear. It will follow you for eternity.”

“Let us go. Let me go.” Begged Grownup-Emory. “Let humanity be. Let them make their own choices. Be content to protect them in the afterlife.”

“We can still do good.” Rene pointed out. “There’s still time to make things better, and spread the word of your love, Goddess Aset. Please don’t think that we mean to abandon you. My only wish is to stop him from creating a horrible future where billions must suffer, and to free my daughter. To let her live as she should have lived, finding her own path.”

Aset looked between Rene, Grownup- Emory, and the frozen form of Khalid. She appeared to contemplate what both of them had said. 

“You must understand, that for Khalid to be undone, for the tether to be broken, you must be undone as well, Rene. The only way that he can die eternally is if you die together, otherwise his spirit will claw its way back to the living world to find you as the tether is stronger now than it has ever been. He will destroy everything in his path to reach you. It’s a sacrifice that was intended from the moment I created the tether, the moment I gave him immortality and you rebirth. Had you never chosen immortality with him, then in 550 years from the moment of your connection, your gifts, I would have swept you both away to the Duat, and you would have remained eternally tethered there, for I felt you must always be connected. You had so much love for one another. But because you intend to destroy him, you must also destroy yourself, and the tether shall break finally, freeing you.”

Rene could feel Young-Emory squeezing his hand tighter. 

“Why can’t you free the tether?” Asked Young-Emory. 

Goddess Aset smiled sadly at her, “I’m afraid I put that decision in your father’s hands from the moment I created the tether, and have no way of removing it myself. It is his sacrifice, not mine.”

Rene’s heart was hammering as he took in everything she was saying. He would have to die to finally be free of Khalid, but everyone else would be safe too. He looked down at his daughter, who was beginning to cry. Rene got on his knees and held her arms as he looked at her. 

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, my darling, but I have to do this. I have to stop him. To put things right.”

“I don’t want you to go.” Said Emory, tears streaking her cheeks. “I don’t want to be without you, daddy!”

“I don’t want to be without you either, Em. But I am doing this for you. I break this connection, and Khalid won’t hurt our loved ones. He won’t destroy the world. You’ll get to grow up and have a normal life.” He looked to Aset, who nodded. “Everything will be alright.”

Rene hugged Emory close, squeezing her tightly to his body. Several thoughts occurred to him at once, and he broke the hug to stand and look at Aset.

“How do I destroy an immortal man?” Rene asked. 

“With the only substance that can kill every living thing.” Said Aset.

Rene was confused for a second, but Young-Emory suddenly piped up, “Lava!”

“The Mt. Hood Eruption.” Added Grownup-Emory.

“So, I go back to before the eruption, and take Khalid with me,” Rene said, glancing at frozen-Khalid on the floor. “Maybe we can find a way to save all those people who died.”

“They’re not the only ones you could save.” Said Grownup-Emory. 

Rene felt a rush, a sudden ray of hope in the strange darkness of his impending decision. 

He could save Misha. 

He could see his beloved husband again before…

Rene turned to Aset, “My Goddess, may I ask a favor of you. Some parchment, and something to write with. I want to do right by your blessing after all.”

Aset smiled.