Chapter Text
Before all Universes were born…
“Here the old philosopher, his coat is torn, he does a web of logic spin.
Shivering with cold he buttons up his torn and ragged gown,
Turns up the collar round his neck, presses his cotton ear-plugs down;
Dried up and twisted as he is, of no importance does he stand
And yet he holds the universe within the ambit of his hand;
Within the confine of his brain the future and the past unite
And with his science he lays bare the secrets of eternal night.
As Atlas was of old declared to bear the sky upon his back,
So does our philosopher the world within a cipher tack.
The moon looks in and sheds its beams a pile of ancient books upon,
He sets his mind to roving back across a thousand ages gone
Into the time where things began, when being and not being still
Did not exist to plague man’s mind, and there was neither life nor will,
When there was nothing that was hid, yet all things darkly hidden were,
When self-contained was uncontained and all was slumber everywhere.
Was there a heavenly abyss? Or yet unfathomable sea?
There was no mind to contemplate an uncreated mystery.
Then was the darkness all so black as seas that roll deep in the earth,
As black as blinded mortal eye, and no man yet had come to birth,
The shadow of the still unmade did not its silver threads unfold,
And over an unending peace unbroken empty silence rolled!...
Then something small in chaos stirred... the very first and primal cause.
And God the Father married space and placed upon confusion laws.
That moving something, small and light, less than a bubble of sea spray,
Established through the universe eternal and unquestionable sway...
And from that hour the timeless mists draw back their dark and hanging folds.
And law in earth and sun and moon essential form and order moulds.
After that day in endless swarms countless flying worlds have come
Out of the soundless depth of space, each drawn towards its unknown home,
Have come in shining colonies rising from out infinity,
Attracted to the universe by strange and restless urge to be,
while we, inheritors of space, the children of this world of awe,
Are raising witless heaps of sand upon our little earthy floor;
Microscopic nations rise with warrior and king and seer,
Throughout the years our fortunes wax, until we have forgotten fear.
We, flies, that for a single day buzz in a measured world and small,
Suspended in the midst of time, careless and forgetting all
That this frail world in which we trust is only flung momentarily
between the darkness that is past and all the darkness yet to be.
Just as the motes of dust enjoy their kingdom in the lamplight’s ray,
Thousands specks that are no more when once that beam has passed away
So, in the midst of endless night, we have our little time to spend,
Our moment snatched from chaos, which did not yet come to an end.
But when our beam at last goes out, our world will suddenly disperse
Amidst the dark that ever hangs around this whirling universe.“
Excerpt from the classic poem Satire I, by Mihai Eminescu, 1881; Translated by Corneliu M. Popescu, 1978
LOVED
“Father”… her unspoken words echoed through the vast Plane of Connected Consciousness. Language was of no use, yet the sound made by the ideas rising from her incorporeal persona erupted into space like thoughts within a dream.
Motes of blue light travelled fast towards her, whirling into fractals, bouncing backwards at the arrival.
“Yes, my daughter,” King Alfor replied promptly, as he manifested his presence in her vicinity.
“Have you ever been on the other side?” She brushed her palm across the amorphous crystal wall, which was emanating violet embers from within and beyond.
“No,” he lowered his head. “Let’s go back and rejoin the others,” he gently encouraged her.
She reluctantly broke contact with the inscrutable wall and followed him. There was a mystic force driving her to that place that divided the astral plane ad infinitum, and she promised herself she would revisit.
“Allura,” Queen Melenor greeted her in a glowing garden of juniberries and otherworldly luxuriant plants. Fireflies crossed their paths in a fairy-like dance.
The Queen was radiating fulfillment. Her daughter was reunited with her family. Her husband was back with her, after Allura restored all realities, and freed King Alfor from the prison inside Honerva’s mind, where he’d been trapped for thousands of deca-phoebs. The blissfulness she felt emanated all around her and it blessed the space surrounding her with an aura of iridescence.
A few other spiritual forms passed by them in the edenic garden, their inner laughs reverberating through intricate branches of mystical trees and azalthea bushes.
“You are home here. With all your ancestors, forefathers, leaders, Great Sages, Alchemists. We embrace you, we embrace each other. We are One Connected Consciousness.”
The Queen’s hand curled around Allura’s, while King Alfor and other Altean royalties joined them in a circle of energy. She was Loved.
A roaring sound enveloped the white skies. Suddenly, as everyone looked up, the outline of the Great White Lion formed above them. A majestic creature that transcended time, space, Universes, created and uncreated realities and beyond-realities.
The thundering voice of the Guardian spread like a meteorite shower across the infinity of the Connected Plane, landing upon all the eternal resting places of consciousnesses.
“Look, it’s the White Lion,” Empress Honerva stood up and pointed toward the vast whiteness. Emperor Zarkon looked towards the Lion in awe. He had the honor of being delivered into this higher plane by the lion, as had every soul since the inception of all existence. He was the Guardian of the Sacred Knowledge, the Gatekeeper of all Houses of Consciousness , and the One who would ferry the dead into the afterlife.
Lotor folded his hands in a prayer-like pose. It was the physical manifestation of this Lion that he had fought at Oriande, and lost to. That ancient lion inside the white hole had been, for eons, the mirror reflection of This Great Guardian. Until Honerva destroyed the mirror, and along with it, the entire Oriande portal that could link the physical realm to the metaphysical one. That was the price his mother paid, to bring her son back from the rift.
He smiled, but only inside himself. He had passed the Oriande test, but not at Oriande. He passed it at the crossroads between his life and his death; inside his beloved Sincline, the majestic work of art forged by his intelligence and Allura’s selflessness.
What Honerva did not anticipate was that her only son would reject her. He preferred to die rather than serve her abominable, heinous plan. He tried to fight her powers, to resist her; he tried to connect with Allura in her dreams, through the Dark Entity, the last standing little friend left that could help him; he partially succeeded; but he was too weak from the rift, and too unprepared as an alchemist. So, he did what someone at the gates of his destiny does, when the Justice Balance of all decisions is swinging right in the middle, with equal chances of tipping either way, just like his Galran and Altean lineages. He gave up his life so that the witch could not gain his spiritual powers, like she had done with the Paladins of Old. This way, he offered Allura a better chance to defeat Honerva. And in return, the Lion bestowed upon him the mark of the Wise. A mark that is not seen, but known among the Sages. A mark that is not spoken, but is eternal and beyond mortality.
Lotor looked down, and saw tendrils of colorful celestial verdure shapeshifting around his feet. It reminded him of the deca-phoebs he had spent inside the rift, where decaying matter was of no importance, but where the thoughts about her and the regrets of his actions twined around his consciousness like ivy vines around the Sincline. Unfortunately, apart from his higher thoughts, all that had been left in his still pulsing molecules was an eternally wrathful, boiling mistrust, seared in Quintessence overload; a mistrust grown during thousands of deca-phoebs of living in the shadows as a banished pariah, spied on and hunted around by none others than his own parents, abandoned by his own generals, misunderstood by the very people that he saved from extinction, and finally pushed over the cliff by Allura’s own knife-twisting rejection. Adrift from his true self, his corrupt robeast corporeal state manifested horridly when Honerva pulled his remains from the rift.
He was glad he departed that physical cage of madness.
Where was she now? His mother spoke dearly of her, and his soul cried when he heard that she had to sacrifice herself, too. She was now a part of the Connected Consciousness, as well. Then why couldn’t he feel her? Why didn’t they connect like everyone else around him? His question bounced into the realm of thoughts but no one would give him an answer. A cosmic shrug kept him isolated, in a sea of connectivity.
Did she ever forgive him? Did she ever get a chance to find out the truth? The truth about him, about… everything? Honerva did not have these kinds of answers. All she knew was that the princess helped her regain her own memories and find the last sliver of empathy inside herself. She encouraged her to honor her son, who “may have been misguided, but ultimately wanted to preserve life.” If she said so, then why were they not able to feel each other’s presence? Why? Why?… This obsessively repeating simple question kept bouncing inside him, like that red unicellular entity used to, when he was learning how to control it, in his teenage years.
The only place where he found a glimmer of a hope for an answer was this valley, where the Plane was pierced by an oddly looking, uneven, semi-opaque quartz wall that seemed to extend vertically and horizontally, beyond sight. There, he had witnessed cerulean blue flickers glowing from beyond it, and the wall seemed to emanate a refreshing energy. There, only there, he could feel almost … alive, like if…
“Son, take my hand,” Honerva softly invited Lotor into the circle of connectedness. His father’s energy pulled him up from his thoughts. For a while, whatever “while” meant in the timeless continuum, at least he would be recharged.
NEBULOUS
“Pidge, look at this!”
“Grrr… Alright, Chip… What have you got this time?” Pidge glanced at him with droopy eyes. What in the name of Atlas did Chip want from her? Could’t everyone just leave her alone? She really was not in the mood for interruptions at that moment. Or never.
How did she even have the energy and enthusiasm to create this Beezer-inspired mechanical sentient friend? It seems like it happened forever ago. One year after Allura died, Chip experienced his first moments of consciousness.
Now, Chip was already 4 years old. Where did time fly? He turned four a few days after their annual paladin reunion. Or, whatever was left of the paladins, since Keith didn’t bother to show up, sending just a lame excuse, and Lance stayed quiet in a corner, watching Hunk and Shiro exchange short sentences about how war stuff was going around the galaxy.
Maybe Keith had been right all along, when he said “Are we even really friends? Is there anything holding us together besides some messed-up series of coincidences?”
“I think the Allura nebula has changed its shape!” Chip exclaimed enthusiastically, moving away from the telescope inside the stellar mini-observatory.
“You must be seeing double, I should check your visual analyzer,” Pidge sighed in disbelief, barely making a gesture to move from her desk.
“Mister Geppetto, I’m telling you, Allura has moved, and there is something, quite blurry, but there is something else behind her silhouette,” Chip persisted, pushing her sensitive button.
“I told you not to call me Geppetto!!!” she unleashed towards him with big white eyes, irises lost in animation, mouth frothing in rage.
He buried his head in his shoulders and dodged away from the path of her wrath.
“Mmmright… let me take a look,” Pidge passed by him, clenching her fists and turning on her heels towards the telescope.
Quite too many minutes have passed since she took to the telescope. Pidge’s quantified response time is usually much shorter. She’s still there though, buried into the eyepiece. Her breath rate has increased a bit, too. But he’ll wait as long as necessary. He doesn’t want to interrupt her again and start another avalanche of uncalled-for emotions.
“Pull up the last scans of this sector,” she finally uttered a sentence.
“Aye aye, sir.”
Above the workbench, the holo-projector lit up the last recorded 3-D Garrison Synoptic Survey scans of that distant corner of the Universe.
Chip swiped a few scans to notice any difference. Pidge uploaded the one she was just looking at, while Chip created an animated slide show of the evolution of the nebula.
“She moved. She definitely moved,” Chip declared with conviction.
“Let me see,” Pidge rushed back from the telescope, to see the motion chart. “Hmmm,” her fist was rubbing against her chin with feverish curiosity. “So it’s not a fetal position anymore, she’s kinda’ like standing up now.”
“But look at the giant molecular cloud behind her. It’s becoming sort of a coherent form, too.”
“I know… but I still can’t decipher what that is, it’s like a wall of frosted glass in between her and whatever is behind. It’s like something… or someone… blurred out the background. I wish we could use a more powerful telescope. Or just wormhole there and figure it out at close range.”
“You know that’s not possible with all the wars going on. We can barely hold our planet together,” said a bummed Chip.
“But I can apply my Un-Blur tool from the Bezitron image processor to sharpen the image and see what might show up!” Pidge’s flicker in her eyes suddenly lit up.
“Good thinking. Worth a shot!”
Her fingers typed in feverishly at her desk computer, as Chip manipulated the holo-files with cinematic dexterity worthy of a 24th century android. As the computer processed the complex 3-D image, reshuffling layers upon layers of data, Pidge reverted to her cynic self:
“You do realize this is just a crazy stupid fantasy, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, who in the Universe would believe us when we’ll tell them about my ‘fabulous’ discovery of a new nebula, which we superstitiously called ‘Allura’, because we think it looks like her? Who has time for this quiznack when the galaxies are in shambles? Not to mention… the nebula formed billions of years ago, so the fact that I only detected it five years ago - when Allura died - means zip. Simple coincidence. It’s like we’re professing Astrology, not Astronomy.”
“But it looks so much like Allura…” Chip begged for a resolve.
“Because you want it to. It’s called Apophenia Bias, you dumb-dumb,” Pidge knocked on Chip’s shiny metal forehead with a wicked look in her eyes.
“You know, according to my calculations, time has no meaning in that Connected Consciousness place you told me about,” Chip counteracted, retracting his head from Pidge’s shrewd knuckles. “So wherever she is, because you convinced me that she is somewhere, it’s a place completely out of any of the known parameters we are bound to. The people in that realm could be building new constellations just like we play with legos, as far as we know.”
“You never cease to amaze me, Chip. I sometimes wonder who you take after,” Pidge smiled all-knowingly, while he returned her smile with his own metallic display of cheerfulness.
Pidge was smiling! A rarity these days.
“Bing!” the computer announced the finish of the un-blurring process.
“Let’s see…” Pidge squinted, while Chip put his arm over her shoulder in excited expectation.
The image contained peta-bytes of computational data, and the holo-projection was taking a bit longer than normal. But as layers of pixels settled into the dark space above her desk, more and more colors started shining out their beauty.
The bright bluish-white Allura was taking center stage, the white stellar dust forming her voluminous hair curls. Behind her, more and more clear purple and white strands of molecular emissions formed a shape that started to unravel, bit by bit, iteration after iteration, from bottom to top, like a 3-D printer generated artwork. A shape that was way too familiar.
A purple-gray frock coat blowing its goth split-tail in the cosmic wind, and a silver unfurl of hair locks framing a sharply defined profile… who could that be?
If she had still worn her glasses, by now she would have thrown them across the desk in a victorious gesture. Instead, she looked back at her own reflection in the glasses now hanging on Chip’s cute nose, as they both exclaimed with renewed aspiration:
“Lotor!!!”
THE DESCENT
“It is impossible to go past the great wall, Allura...”
King Alfor was resting on a beautifully sculpted bench, forged from a glowing ore of some sort. Allura was back from her trip to the Sacred place of the Sages. With every travel, she would get more enlightened, more powerful.
Yet her powers would stop at that wall. What was it that kept bringing her there?
“But why would you want to go there, anyway? You have everything here, an eternity of happiness. You have us. You are reunited with all your ancestors. The entire Altean planet civilization is here. And the Sages guide us everywhere. I cannot see a better place than here, my daughter.”
The way he put it, he made sense. But then why was she feeling incomplete? That unbearable happiness felt empty after a while, and she needed more and more connected embraces to fill the hole.
“I feel as it is.. calling to me. I can’t explain it. Do you know what this means?” her eyebrows furrowed into a desperate expression.
“I do not have an answer for this mystery, I am sorry…”
“Then I shall search for answers from the S…”
A group of tall Altean figures manifested themselves instantaneously in her vicinity. The Great Sages of Oriande surrounded Allura in a flower-like shape, channeling their energies towards her.
“We can only give you that which is in our powers,” one very tall figure wearing a golden tiara advanced towards her. “What you are asking for is beyond us.”
“Then whom shall I ask to speak with?” Allura’s bold demand surprised the wise alchemists of Oriande.
“We shall summon the White Lion, Princess.” As they lifted their hands to the space above, the roaring beast appeared as fast as the trail of a thought.
A fountain of light surrounded her. Allura rose above everyone else, floating in an ethereal breeze of flickers, carried away on the Lion’s back, above the luminescent plane. A fearless Goddess, she was ascending towards the place of All Origins, where the Great Lifegivers bestowed their gifts upon all worthy Universes. Only the brave Ones ever accessed this higher sphere.
In a fraction of no measurable time, she was atop a blush pink cloud, looking down at the infinity spreading in all directions.
“A missing piece is calling within you,” a voice coming from all around responded to her yet unformulated question.
“Forgive my audacity, Great Lifegivers. I come with a humble resolve to find answers. What is it that I am missing?” she begged for even the smallest indication.
“Before filling the void within, one must descend and atone for past fallacies. This road is not without risks.”
“I will do what I must,” she replied with no hesitation.
“Always brave, Princess.
Your resilience has proven worthy of our hearing. Not many are allowed this path, but few shall follow it, for the sake of a destiny they were meant to pursue.”
“Destiny?…” Allura’s voice gonged like a giant cathedral bell.
The vastness below her zoomed in at dizzying speed, and she found herself again near that same translucent wall.
“Allura, please reconsider,” Queen Melenor was, again, standing beside her.
“I must, mother.”
“Your journey ended when you departed the physical realm. You have a new aim and meaning here, with us. The path you have chosen is perilous,” the Queen graciously touched Allura’s hand.
“Mother, you have waited for father to come back to you for an eternity. Together, you are complete. I’m afraid I don’t take after your forbearance…
I must do what must be done. You, of all, should understand that…” she raised her eyes to meet her mother’s. Tear pearls bloomed in the corners of her eyes.
The Queen closed her eyes for a moment, absorbing her emotions. A shudder traveled through her silhouette. Allura deserved more, and she could not give her that which she was asking for.
“Until we meet again, my daughter…” Melenor nodded, kissed her forehead and released her.
She whispered a last sentence that rippled around her, before silence settled in:
“May the Great Lifegivers guide you.”
She looked down at the trail that seemed to have no end.
The wall was to her left.
Lotor kneeled in front of the White Lion. An unexpected visit, waking him up from his reverie.
The Lion surprised him with a less than ceremonial push on his chest, almost knocking him to the ground.
“What have I done to upset you, Great Guardian?” Lotor followed his Altean instincts this time, keeping a humble pose.
The Lion paced around the kneeled prince, and stopped behind him. His nose bumped Lotor’s back with a sudden strike. He fell facedown, hitting the ground with the nimble resolve of an obedient ragdoll.
This was new. The Lion was supposed to protect the inhabitants of the great Plane. What in the name of the Ancients was he doing?
A slow growl into the nape of his neck sent shivers up his Galtean spirit. Fight or flight instincts woke up inside him. He rolled up to face his opponent, but the lion’s mouth opened wide and a thundering roar pinned him down.
That was too much! Had he still possessed his sword, right then and there, he would have slayed the Lion, just like the first time.
Instead, Lotor deferred to avoidance tactics. He jumped away from the Lion’s path, trying to understand what he wanted from him.
Maybe he was punished?
After all, this sadness within him had no place in this realm. Will he be banished, just like he had been in the other life? What kind of curse would follow him even beyond his grave?
“I demand an answer!” he yelled back at the creature.
The Lion screeched back at him, and unleashed his powers again.
“Still!” Lotor pressed his palm against the air between them, trying to use his own abilities, as a recent recipient of the Sages’ blessings. To no avail. There was something inside the Lion that was beyond what he had seen before.
“Aargh!” Lotor screamed as the Lion grabbed his thin waist in his mouth, throwing him across the vast plain. Dizzy from the fall, he didn’t even have a chance to get up, when the Guardian came back with a renewed attack, throwing him again in a certain direction, like a cat toying with a mouse. Maybe he needed to pass the Agotian Trials again? What was he, a child?
“Alright, I’ll go. I’ll go!!” Lotor got up with an angry stance. Did his mark of the Wise just turn into a mark of the Fool for some unknown reason?
“Don’t push me again!” he careened towards the direction imposed by the impatient Lion. It seemed he was too slow, though. The creature asked for a faster pace.
“You know, Guardian… Why don’t you just take me there, since you’re so eager?” a very vexed Lotor turned around and planted his Galran claws into the lion’s thick fur, with the intention to try to ride him.
A milli-tick. That’s all it took. The Lion deposited the Prince onto the ragged trail, overlooking a dimly lit valley.
The wall was to his right.
The blue light glimmered through the amorphous quartz wall, trickling down along the path at a steady pace. His pupils dwindled into tiny purple diamonds. He steadied back up on his feet and rushed to catch up with the wayfaring light.
The path down was very narrow and steep, but it followed the wall closely. The vertical structure seemed to bury itself deep into the ground, piercing the vast Plane like a luxite blade implanted in a living chest.
Although there were no suns or moons or any sky for all that he knew, it started to look like dusk was falling. A twilight flicker was spending its last beams through the intricate edenic tree branches that were guarding the path along the wall.
The more he walked, the more he realized that darkness also pulled in a deafening silence, like a curtain falling over an empty theater stage. He felt the slow but steady severance from each and every thread of linked consciousness. All the voices that he had been able hear at his own will, all the calls from near and far, one by one, dissipated in the lights left behind.
All he was able see now was the faint twinkling blue light moving along on the other side of the frosted wall, beaconing his bumpy trail, revealing the roots emerging from the ground like Olkarion tree-beast claws.
He could hear himself and nothing more.
Down, down, into the deepest, darkest abyss.
She wanted to keep going, but her legs would carry her no more. How long had it been since she had started her descent? Time had no importance, but the measure of her fatigue pressed her into a hard stop. She leaned forward with her hands on her knees and took a few deep cosmic breaths.
The disconnect from her collectivity felt eery. The darkness was growing heavier, slowly pressing her consciousness towards implosion. Thoughts left to themselves were snaking around, pulling off the cap of a forgotten chest of suppressed emotions.
One by one, feelings she thought she had contained started emerging, bringing painful memories back.
“He’s a murderer, just like his father!”
“He’s been lying to us the whole time!”
“You know nothing about what you speak…”
“No!” she raised her right palm, while still bending forward to catch her breath. “Please, make it stop…!”
“Let’s grab Lotor and get out of here!”
“No, we can’t. We have to leave now.”
“We must try.”
“Pidge is right. We stay in here much longer and Voltron is done for.”
“But we can’t just leave him.”
“Allura, we gotta go now!”
“Lotor’s made his choice. Let’s get out of here, Allura.”
“No, I can’t. Please. Make it stop. Make it stop!!” she pressed her palms into her ears, trying to fend off guilt ghosts lurching through her head.
She sprinted down the dark trail, attempting to run away from herself. How did she bury everything so deep?
Her foot got caught in a root, and her fall turned from trying to graciously land on her four to curling into a ball and rolling down the steep path at break-neck speed. Her vision faded into a spiraling vortex of purple embers, and a scream of desperation pierced the Valley. “Paladins, help!”
The descent accelerated exponentially. It seemed that time was beginning to have a meaning again, by the measure of a tiny spinning gear, lost to gravity down a dark trail. Eventually, a rocky formation protruding out of the wall caught her turbulent fall, and she stopped with a loud groan.
She kept her squat position for a while, sobbing with her head on her knees. Everything hurt, except there was no corporeal pain. Just pain. Metaphysical pain.
Eventually, she decided to open her eyes. Next to her, the purple incandescence coming from the wall seemed to have gotten stronger. Lost in her thoughts along the trail, she had forgotten about her surroundings. That ultraviolet wavelength had been the only source of light and her companion all this… time.
Something about that color was familiar.
And for a while, she watched it pulsate through the cloudy layers of quartz, as it stood still, waiting around. Focusing on it increased her curiosity. She touched the wall and felt an almost musical humming, emanating from within.
“It is good to see you, Princess.”
“Ah!” she retracted her hand, as the memory pierced through her like a spear.
“How, how did you get in here?”
She looked back at the beaming wall with large pupils. “Oh, Lifegivers, be merciful!”
“I thought you’d be happy to see me.”
“What are you doing here? I demand to know!”
“You?? What are you doing here?” she gasped for air.
“Answer me!” she knocked the wall with a full-force fist.
“It’s you, isn’t it? It was you all along!” her ragged voice sounded more and more affected, while his portraits flash-flooded her memories. The wall thrummed all the way through, down into the pitch-dark Valley.
Bittersweet images vroomed in front of her eyes, switching back and forth between melancholy and shock:
- he, looking at her with a lingering gaze;
- the Sincline, pummeling hard on Voltron’s chest, at the battle of Oriande;
- his hand, gently touching hers;
- their final clash, inside the rift;
- his head turning towards her, with a suave smile…
“No…” All the unspoken regrets that smoldered inside her during that slow and painful travel to Earth, after losing her castle, all of them came back to her with renewed flames.
“Please, Allura. We’ve come too far together.”
“You and I hold the ancient knowledge of our Altean culture.”
“There’s still more to come. Join me. We’re on the same side.”
“No, we’re not!”
The infinite quartz wall she was reclining against reminded her with a deep, bone-chilling hum resonating into the lonely dark place, what it meant to be on the other side. She shook her head a few times, trying to fend off an invisible fog surrounding her head.
“Who are you to question my tactics?”
She stood up, with a decided stance.
“I’m Princess Allura. And I’m not going to be afraid to use my powers. Whatever will be, will be. This is it. I choose to seek truth inside this darkness.”
She started walking again, at a composed pace.
“Ha ha ha, follow me!”
His light pursued her on the parallel trail.
So it’s been her, all this time. And she just started moving again.
He almost lost her guiding light; almost lost himself to the darkness, when she darted down at frightening speed. What was that about?
“You betrayed and used me!”
“Aargh, but I didn’t, Allura! Oh, Ancients, guide me…” he tramped over the rocky path with determination, feeling her blue light get brighter and brighter inside the wall.
“You’re more like Zarkon than I could’ve ever imagined!”
“Stop, no!” his head felt like imploding.
“Once I wipe out Voltron, I’m going to start a new Altea. An Altea that will never know of Princess Allura or King Alfor.”
“Oh Sages, behold, what was I thinking? There’s no taking back,” he loathed himself.
The more he walked, the more he realized the reason why Allura’s blue light was getting brighter: the wall was actually becoming thinner and more translucent, like the tip of a finely crafted Galra blade.
Unfortunately, the memories also precipitated, hindering their descent.
“I’m ready to wipe the Universe clean of all my enemies!”
“Please, make it stop…” they both implored the Lifegivers to ease their pain.
“You enslaved countless Alteans! Harnessed their life source for your own personal gain. How many innocent lives did you destroy?”
“Allura, I —“
The glimpse of his silhouette was becoming evident through the thinning wall, catching her attention through the corner of her left eye. She slowed down, as the weight of the memories was dragging her backwards, like an overfilled rucksack.
“How many?”
The pain behind this two-word question - which had persisted in his consciousness all the way through his last breath - was bursting into a new flame. He leaned onto the wall, looking straight at the loosely defined humanoid shape visible through the quartz crystals.
“It’s true. Many Alteans perished in my quest to unlock the mysteries of Quintessence. But I protected thousands more, and I rescued their culture. Our culture.”
She moved away from the wall, and slowly dragged herself a few more steps down.
“They were martyrs to a noble cause. I sacrificed a few to preserve the future for millions.”
He walked down a few more feet, as well.
“Allura, you must understand I’ve given everything I have to plumb the depths of King Alfor’s knowledge, to unlock the mysteries of Oriande.”
They could now see each other almost clearly. Head, shoulders, body, arms, legs.
“We were meant to be together. My feelings for you are true. And I know you have feelings for me as well...”
… giant luxite blades twisted in their hearts like bayards in a lion’s control panel.
Her hands went up to her face, and she leaned her head forward in a lamenting gesture.
“Allura…” his voice semi-penetrated the thin glass wall, startling her. A real voice, a real sound… Or was she just imagining it?
A few more steps down… and the wall transitioned to a crystal clear glass. His palm reached the thin film barrier between them. She was standing right in front of him, covering her face with her hands.
Once again, almost whispered: “Allura…”
A couple of fingers parted, leaving one eye exposed. She blinked.
He smiled.
Somehow, her rucksack weight lightened up a bit.
The ticks started flowing. Time was spinning its gears again.
“Please… Allu — ”
Doboshes passed, during which she kept her face half-shied away from him. What was she thinking?
“Alright,” she slowly moved her hands away from her burning cheeks, exposing glowing Altean marks and a wondrous, ethereal beauty.
“We’re here… Now what?” she hardened her expression, keeping a circumspect stance.
“There must be a way to cross over to the other side,” he moved his hands around the sleek wall, trying to use his magic powers. But the hands would not respond to his intentions.
“Let me try…” she felt the surface of the wall, testing her own powers. To no avail.
“Let’s try to put our palms together, like this,” he mirrored her opposite palm on the window.
The closest they’ve been in so long… Face to face, separated by a thin, yet impenetrable wall.
Their eyes locked. For the sake of Ancients…
“Lotor, I —“
“We should —“
“Maybe —“
“I meant to say —“
“What?…”
Suddenly, with the corners of their eyes, they caught sight of a new source of light, coming from only a few feet away from them, further down the path and into the wall.
An alcove of some sort appeared inside the wall, like a bubble that formed within the clear glass, resting in the mid-section of the barrier. It almost looked like an Altean regeneration pod.
As they moved in closer, the lights inside the alcove grew brighter, shining upon a figure sitting atop a blue pilot chair.
“Blue!” she gasped, recalling the chair inside the Blue Lion cockpit.
Startled by her voice, the individual sitting on the chair winced out of his dormant state. He had spiky teal-blue hair, and two long hair strands ran down in front of each ear, framing a human face. His elongated, narrow eyes suddenly opened two cobalt blue irises.
“That’s me,” the man groaned in visible pain.
“Who are —” Lotor started to speak.
The young man closed his eyes and muttered:
“Like she said. My name is Blue. Jesse Blue.”