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Upgrading the Ellimist and Crayak?
- Thread starter Yukaphile
- Start date
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- Tags
- animorphs crayak the ellimist
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- 24,183
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What does Bruce Almighty have to do with this?
They're missing so much hax it's not funny, and I Ellimist is bound to space-time across timelines, which is at least 2-C, but still.
They're missing so much hax it's not funny, and I Ellimist is bound to space-time across timelines, which is at least 2-C, but still.
- 821
- 47
- Thread starter
- #3
Yeah, after he was stretched across Z-space, normal space, and crushed within a black hole. They're also implied to be higher-dimensional, when Elfangor saw the world as the Ellimist perceived it, and equated to how he had described dimensional tiering to Loren. The classic, one, two, three dimensions stuff.
- 24,183
- 3,938
Can you provide a quote please to him being higher dimensional?
- 821
- 47
- Thread starter
- #5
Lemme go hunt up the book quotes.
"So," she said after a while. "Why don't you want to use this Time Matrix thing?"
I waved my stalks forward and back in a gesture of uncertainty. <You can't just go messing around with time. They say it's insanely complicated. Sure, maybe I could go back, like Chapman said, and stomp out the first Yeerks who evolved. But who knows how many other things that might affect? Besides, to be honest, I guess I'm scared of the Ellimists.>
"The what?"
<Supposedly they're the race that built the Time Matrix. Thousands and thousands of years ago. They built it, and then, suddenly, as far as anyone can tell, they vanished. The entire species of Ellimists just vanished.>
"You think it was because they used the Time Matrix?"
<No one knows. Some people say the Ellimists still exist, but they've moved beyond the normal space-time dimensions we know. There are some who say the Ellimists are almost all-powerful.> I shrugged. <Of course, there are others who say they're gone forever. Or even that they never did exist. Now Andalite parents tell their children stories about the Ellimists.>
"Fairy tales."
<Are fairies magical beings in human mythology?>
"Not just fairies. We have elves and leprechauns and Santa Claus and hobbits and werewolves and vampires. . . . We even have aliens from outer space."
Despite myself, I laughed. <Yes, those outer space aliens are quite troublesome.>
"Doesn't the Time Matrix prove that these Ellimists are real?"
<Well . . . I don't know. But if Ellimists are real, if they really do live in dimensions beyond our own, then they have powers we could not imagine. Pretend . . . never mind.>
"No, tell me," Loren urged. "Unless you have something else to do."
<Okay, well, you know that space-time has ten dimensions. There are the normal dimensions of up/down, left/right, and forward/back. Then there is the fourth dimension, which is time. Then, there are six other dimensions, but they are curled up into themselves, so we don't see or feel them. All we feel are three space dimensions, plus time.>
Loren nodded her head. I wondered what this meant. But she didn't ask me to stop, so I went on.
<Imagine if, instead of three normal space dimensions, we only had two. Imagine we were flat, and we couldn't go up or down, just in the other two directions. Call us the Flatties. See?>
"Like if we lived on a piece of paper," Loren said.
<Exactly. It would be like we were drawings on a piece of paper. And if someone came along and drew a box around us, we could never get out. Because the lines of the box would be walls. But what if a three-dimensional person came along? A three-dimensional person could lift that Flattie right up out of that box. The Flattie wouldn't even know what was happening, because he's never gone up or down before. He doesn't even know up and down exist.>
"You're saying we're like the Flatties. Except we're in three dimensions, not just two. So we're like Cubies or something."
<Yes. So if some creature came along who existed in more dimensions than us, he'd be able to do things that would be impossible for us.>
"Ellimists. That's what they are?"
<Maybe. Like I say, no one knows. But someone built the Time Matrix. Someone real. Someone who isn't around anymore.>
"Whew."
<So maybe we could use the Time Matrix and pop in and out of time. Or maybe we'd disappear, like the Ellimists may have.>
"Or maybe we'd just make these Ellimists mad," Loren said.
<Exactly.>
The visser, though, still stood. Or at least floated.
<Well done, Andalite,> he said. <Thirty seconds left to activate this thing.>
<Go ahead, Yeerk,> I sneered. <Make your move.>
I saw the coldness in his eyes. Colder even than the freezing cold of space. I knew I had guessed right. He had intended to eliminate me. One slash of his Andalite tail to finish me off.
But I was prepared and he knew it. Which of us would win a tail fight in zero gravity? He didn't know, and neither did I. And there was no time left for mistakes.
How does one turn this thing on? I wondered, looking at the white globe half crammed into the hatchway. No visible instruments or control panels. Has to be direct mind-link using a physical interface.
Loren moved her lips as though speaking. But in the vacuum no sound could be heard. I saw through the plastic hood that her lips had turned blue. Her eyes were fluttering.
<Touch,> I said. <The Matrix responds to touch. I think if we touch and form a mental link, we can —>
The visser moved. Not to attack, but to press his hand against the Time Matrix. He was trying to gain control over it before I could!
I pressed my hand against the Matrix and searched desperately in my mind for a link.
What happened next is almost impossible to describe. And surely impossible for anyone to understand who has not experienced it himself.
As I touched the Time Matrix, and searched for it with my mind, the entire universe simply opened up. Opened up like a piece of fruit that has been exploded into its segments. But that's not telling a millionth of it.
Everything changed. Everything! The ship around me, the familiar Jahar, was suddenly not a vessel anymore, but an amazing array of fragments, each twisted inside out and outside in. Each piece was connected to every other piece in insane ways that no rational mind could make sense of.
And from each piece of the ship there stretched lines that curled and twirled through space, connecting back to the Taxxon world and back to the StarSword and back to a thousand other places, all somehow visible to me. I could see every place the ship had been. It was as if each of those places were right here and a billion miles away at once!
But all the lines of the ship were dim and dull compared to the spectacle of the living bodies around me. I saw the Andalite body of Alloran opened up and split apart, transparent, twisted so that every part could be seen from every angle at once. I saw the living, beating hearts! I saw the muscles of the tail. I saw the ways the eyes were attached to the brain, and not just from outside, but from inside.
And to my horror, I saw the Yeerk slug. It was wrapped around Alloran's brain, sinking into every wrinkle and crevice, sinking deep between the four segments. I could literally see the flow of thoughts and emotions. I saw inside the slug that was Visser Thirty-two. I saw the way the Yeerk mind drew memories from Alloran and sent back orders. I saw and felt the impotent rage of Alloran as he lay helpless in the Yeerk's grasp.
I know how impossible it is to really grasp this. But I saw in and through and around everything at once. I saw time lines stretching back from the Yeerk and back from Alloran. I saw their pasts. And I saw the horrible moment when those time lines became entwined, becoming one.
I could see Alloran's past in flashes of wild action and wild emotion. I saw the terrible moment when Alloran stood amidst battlefield slaughter on the Hork-Bajir home world. I saw the ground piled high with Hork-Bajir and Andalite dead.
And I saw the actual decision deep in Alloran's despairing brain, the decision to release the forbidden Quantum virus.
I felt his bitterness when even that evil measure failed, and the Hork-Bajir were lost to the Yeerks. I saw the retreat of the shattered, beaten Andalite force.
I was almost drowning from this assault of data. It was as if I had been plugged directly into every computer ever built and all of them were dumping information into my brain.
I even saw the time line of the black hole itself. I saw it form from the explosive moment of the universe's birth, and watched it condense and burn, bright as a huge star. I saw it die and collapse, digging a hole in space itself.
But then, amidst all the swarm of information, among all the insides and outsides, all the pasts and all the connections, I felt the will of Visser Thirty-two.
I felt him take hold of the Time Matrix. And I felt the Matrix respond, felt it turn to him. In the visser's Yeerk brain I saw the image of the Yeerk home world. He was forming it, clear and detailed.
I saw the awful pools where the Yeerks were born. I felt the Kandrona rays that beat down from the Yeerks' own strange sun.
He was directing the Time Matrix! Aiming it! Telling it to take him there, to the Yeerk home world!
NO!
I focused my will, and in the weird universe I inhabited, I saw my own living brain as it focused, concentrated, bringing more and more mental power to bear.
It was insane! I could watch my own brain work. Watch my own brain watching my own brain watching my own brain.
I had to take control of the Time Matrix. I had to fight, to resist the visser. I summoned up an image in my head. But it was a confused picture. I saw the part of the Andalite world where I had grown up. The trees, the grass, the sky. . . . But mixed in with that image were others. I saw them float up out of my own brain. I saw them skim by, three-dimensional pictures looking so flat and strange in this multidimensional universe.
I saw my own Andalite world, but mixed in with it were images of Earth — the pictures I had seen.
Somewhere far off, I realized I could see my own body beginning to freeze. Systems were shutting down. I could see inside fingers that were frozen stiff. I could see a tail that hung limp, all tension gone. My hearts were beating sluggishly.
I was watching my own body die. I was weakening. The visser, too, was hurt by the cold, but the Yeerk himself, down inside Alloran's head, was still alert and strong.
Slowly the balance shifted to him. The images were more and more of the Yeerk home world. His images were coming in over mine, like a tide. I was losing. I was failing as the cold shut down my body and reached tendrils into my mind.
And then . . . a new mind. Alien, but familiar in a way. I saw the Yeerk jerk in alarm and surprise. This new force, this new mind was strong. Stronger than he could have expected.
Loren!
I saw inside her and through her. I saw her thoughts. And I saw her push back the visser's own images. Not defeating him, but keeping him at bay.
I realized something else had changed. The black hole was further away now. The Jahar could still be seen, but it, too, was further away.
We were moving! The Time Matrix had been programmed, and we were moving through time.
The last memory I had, as the cold collapsed my consciousness, was of someone vast and incredible. A being like nothing I could have imagined. It saw me. It saw us all.
And it laughed.
I couldn't believe it. I had never been sure I believed in Ellimists. I still wondered if it was some kind of trick. He looked fully human. But of course, for a true Ellimist, such things are easy.
"Am I really an Ellimist?" the man asked, mocking. "Let's see. I know that Arbron still lives in the tunnels of the Living Hive. I know that you made a universe once, you and the human and the Yeerk called Visser Three."
I jerked in surprise. "Visser Three?"
"Yes, he's advanced quite far in the Yeerk hierarchy."
"He should be dead!"
"Should be dead? Do you really think you can play games with time itself? Do you think you can change things around to suit you and not make a mess of it? Are you so naive, Andalite, that you can't understand that time is a trillion, trillion, trillion strands, all woven and interwoven? That if you twist and break one strand it may have unforeseen effects in a thousand other places and times?"
"He's alive. The visser."
"Yes. He is alive. He still inhabits Alloran's body." The Ellimist focused gray human-seeming eyes on me. "He is a terrible enemy of your people."
I shook my head. "Humans are my people now."
"Like the human named Chapman? Is he one of your people?
"You. It was you. You brought him back here and erased his memory."
"I undid an error in the time-space continuum. Chapman plays a part in what is still to come."
"I don't care," I said harshly. "I don't care about wars in far-off space."
"Far off? Do you really think you are safe here, Elfangor? Do you assume the Yeerks will never come?"
I felt my throat clutching up. It happens to humans when they are upset or afraid. "Will they come here?"
"Elfangor, the first Yeerk advance scouts are in orbit above Earth right now."
I said nothing for a long time. I looked out of the window, expecting to see Loren's car pull up at any moment. But then I realized what a fool I was being. If the Ellimist didn't want us to be interrupted, we wouldn't be.
"There's nothing I can do," I said at last. "I tried my hand at being a hero. I failed."
"Failed? You kept the Time Matrix from falling into the hands of either side, Yeerk or Andalite. You saved the galaxy."
"I couldn't save Arbron. I helped destroy Alloran and deliver him to the Yeerks to create the abomination he became. I wasn't able to destroy that abomination. I was weak. I was foolish."
"You refused to slaughter defenseless prisoners. You refused to destroy yourself in order to win a battle. You are wise, for a primitive creature. But you also altered the course of time by using the Time Matrix. And that has created awful problems. For your people. For both your peoples. Your peoples need you."
I laughed. "No one needs me."
"You are not where and whe you should be, Elfangor."
"The galaxy will get along without me."
The Ellimist leaned forward and put his face close to mine. "No. It won't."
"What do you want from me?!" I yelled, suddenly enraged.
"We want nothing."
"Liar! Why are you here if you don't want anything?"
"We do not interfere in the affairs of other species."
"Then go away! Get out! Leave me alone!"
"We do not interfere. But sometimes we repair what has been shattered."
I froze. What stupid game was he playing? He wouldn't interfere, but he would? Which was it? What did he want?
"What do I want? Nothing. But I can tell you that you have twisted and distorted time. Things are not as they should be. Battles are lost that should have been won. What should be safe is now endangered."
"I can't go back," I pleaded. "I'm not an Andalite anymore. I'm human! I have a wife. I have a place here."
"All a product of your meddling," the Ellimist said. "The human girl Loren was meant to marry a human. You were meant to be a warrior. A great hero to your people. A mentor and guide to your brother."
"I have a brother? He was born? I knew my family was preparing —"
"In this broken time line, no. But you should. He has a job to do. And so does another person who you do not even know exists. Elfangor, without you, your people, both your peoples, will be slaves of the Yeerks."
I jumped back to my feet. "You're lying. Manipulating me. Using me."
"We don't use anyone. We don't interfere. But if you ask me to fix the mess you have made . . . to repair the time line so that you return to your destiny . . . that, and that alone, I can do."
I wanted to hit him. I wanted to throw up. I hated the galaxy and everything in it.
"There is a battle, Elfangor. A turning point. Visser Three is there. You are supposed to be there. Right now."
"I can't leave Loren."
"Listen to me, Elfangor. Visser Three will come to Earth one day. He remembers her. He remembers that she mocked him. Do you know what he will do to her? And will you be able to stop him, when he is surrounded by a thousand of his own troops?"
I felt warm liquid run down my cheeks. Tears. A human thing.
"And if I go back . . . if I ask you to repair the time line . . . will it save Earth? Will it save the Andalites? And my Loren?"
"No. Not by itself. But what is impossible now will become possible again."
I looked at the creature who posed as a human. The creature who had the power to make entire solar systems disappear. "What game are you playing, Ellimist?"
"Will you cross-examine me, Andalite? Or will you ask me to undo the mess you have made?"
"Loren . . . ?"
"Will never know you existed. But you will know. You will still have your memories."
I tried to smile, but it twisted cruelly on my lips. "You said something about a battle, Ellimist . . ."
"Come. I will carry you there. I will undo what was done, and repair the fabric of your fate, Elfangor."
Once, a long time before, I had explained to Loren what it must be like to see the universe as the Ellimists saw it. And now, as the Ellimist lifted me up out of the everyday world of three dimensions of space and one of time, I saw what he saw.
When I had used the Time Matrix I glimpsed the lines of time interwoven. But now I saw a thousand times more. It was beyond sight. Beyond sound. It was some new sense, some new awareness.
I could feel the lines of time flowing through me. I could see and taste and hear and touch and smell a billion possibilities, all flowing through me.
I saw the Ellimist himself, as he really was. An indescribable being of light and time and space. Huge, but without a place. Alone, but not the only one of his kind. I saw and understood the vast power that trailed the lines of time through his grasp. And yet, against the enormity of all that had ever been and all that would ever be, I saw his limits, too.
The Ellimist was mighty. But not all-powerful.
I saw a young Andalite who looked like I had once: so serious, so determined to prove himself. I heard his name in my mind: Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill.
Hello, little brother, I said silently.
I saw Arbron, still alive on the Taxxon world. I felt his Taxxon hunger. But I also felt his Andalite pride.
Hello, Arbron. 'You have become the hero I always wanted to be.
I saw Loren, and wrapped around her time line now was another human who would be her mate. I had been written out of her memory. It tore at my heart to realize that I was now a stranger to her.
And yet, I saw that some part of my own time line still intersected her own. I still touched her future in some way. My line and hers converged, and then from those two lines came a new line, just emerging, just beginning to grow.
<What does it mean?ÔÇ║ I asked the Ellimist.
YOU HAVE A SON, ELFANGOR.
In a flash I saw the truth. That's why Loren had gone to see her doctor. She would have come home and told me. We had a child!
<No! You can't take me away! I have a son!> I cried. <That changes everything! Don't take me away!>
YOU ARE AWAY, ELFANGOR-SIRINIAL-SHAMTUL. WHAT WAS BROKEN HAS BEEN REPAIRED. YOU ARE WHERE YOU MUST BE. THE CHILD WILL BE RAISED AS THE SON OF ANOTHER.
<But my son! What will happen to him? Will he still . . . exist?>
I saw the tiny line that was my son flow off through time. I saw pain and hardship and loneliness for him.
But then, like a distant nova, I saw a flash of light, far at the edge of a still-uncertain future. Across the galaxy my brother's line reached to join with my son's. And four other bright, shining time lines formed together with those two.
I knew I was watching something incredible and important. And I knew this union of six time lines, one Andalite and five human, was the entire point of the Ellimist's "noninterference."
<So, you don't interfere with the affairs of other species?> I asked him.
WAS THAT SARCASM, ELFANGOR? the Ellimist asked. And then he laughed a huge laugh that reverberated through all the tendrils of space and time.
<Is it all just a game for you?>
YES, the Ellimist said, all laughter silent now. BUT WE ARE NOT THE ONLY GREAT POWERS OF THE GALAXY. THERE IS ANOTHER. OLDER EVEN THAN WE. AND HE PLAYS A DARK GAME, ANDALITE. IT IS WITH HIM THAT WE PLAY. SO HOPE THAT WE WIN, ELFANGOR-SIRINIAL-SHAMTUL. HOPE THAT WE WIN.
I saw a battle ahead.
I saw my own body twisting and changing shape.
I opened my stalk eyes. Tested my Andalite tail.
And all at once, I was on the bridge of an Andalite fighter.
"So," she said after a while. "Why don't you want to use this Time Matrix thing?"
I waved my stalks forward and back in a gesture of uncertainty. <You can't just go messing around with time. They say it's insanely complicated. Sure, maybe I could go back, like Chapman said, and stomp out the first Yeerks who evolved. But who knows how many other things that might affect? Besides, to be honest, I guess I'm scared of the Ellimists.>
"The what?"
<Supposedly they're the race that built the Time Matrix. Thousands and thousands of years ago. They built it, and then, suddenly, as far as anyone can tell, they vanished. The entire species of Ellimists just vanished.>
"You think it was because they used the Time Matrix?"
<No one knows. Some people say the Ellimists still exist, but they've moved beyond the normal space-time dimensions we know. There are some who say the Ellimists are almost all-powerful.> I shrugged. <Of course, there are others who say they're gone forever. Or even that they never did exist. Now Andalite parents tell their children stories about the Ellimists.>
"Fairy tales."
<Are fairies magical beings in human mythology?>
"Not just fairies. We have elves and leprechauns and Santa Claus and hobbits and werewolves and vampires. . . . We even have aliens from outer space."
Despite myself, I laughed. <Yes, those outer space aliens are quite troublesome.>
"Doesn't the Time Matrix prove that these Ellimists are real?"
<Well . . . I don't know. But if Ellimists are real, if they really do live in dimensions beyond our own, then they have powers we could not imagine. Pretend . . . never mind.>
"No, tell me," Loren urged. "Unless you have something else to do."
<Okay, well, you know that space-time has ten dimensions. There are the normal dimensions of up/down, left/right, and forward/back. Then there is the fourth dimension, which is time. Then, there are six other dimensions, but they are curled up into themselves, so we don't see or feel them. All we feel are three space dimensions, plus time.>
Loren nodded her head. I wondered what this meant. But she didn't ask me to stop, so I went on.
<Imagine if, instead of three normal space dimensions, we only had two. Imagine we were flat, and we couldn't go up or down, just in the other two directions. Call us the Flatties. See?>
"Like if we lived on a piece of paper," Loren said.
<Exactly. It would be like we were drawings on a piece of paper. And if someone came along and drew a box around us, we could never get out. Because the lines of the box would be walls. But what if a three-dimensional person came along? A three-dimensional person could lift that Flattie right up out of that box. The Flattie wouldn't even know what was happening, because he's never gone up or down before. He doesn't even know up and down exist.>
"You're saying we're like the Flatties. Except we're in three dimensions, not just two. So we're like Cubies or something."
<Yes. So if some creature came along who existed in more dimensions than us, he'd be able to do things that would be impossible for us.>
"Ellimists. That's what they are?"
<Maybe. Like I say, no one knows. But someone built the Time Matrix. Someone real. Someone who isn't around anymore.>
"Whew."
<So maybe we could use the Time Matrix and pop in and out of time. Or maybe we'd disappear, like the Ellimists may have.>
"Or maybe we'd just make these Ellimists mad," Loren said.
<Exactly.>
The visser, though, still stood. Or at least floated.
<Well done, Andalite,> he said. <Thirty seconds left to activate this thing.>
<Go ahead, Yeerk,> I sneered. <Make your move.>
I saw the coldness in his eyes. Colder even than the freezing cold of space. I knew I had guessed right. He had intended to eliminate me. One slash of his Andalite tail to finish me off.
But I was prepared and he knew it. Which of us would win a tail fight in zero gravity? He didn't know, and neither did I. And there was no time left for mistakes.
How does one turn this thing on? I wondered, looking at the white globe half crammed into the hatchway. No visible instruments or control panels. Has to be direct mind-link using a physical interface.
Loren moved her lips as though speaking. But in the vacuum no sound could be heard. I saw through the plastic hood that her lips had turned blue. Her eyes were fluttering.
<Touch,> I said. <The Matrix responds to touch. I think if we touch and form a mental link, we can —>
The visser moved. Not to attack, but to press his hand against the Time Matrix. He was trying to gain control over it before I could!
I pressed my hand against the Matrix and searched desperately in my mind for a link.
What happened next is almost impossible to describe. And surely impossible for anyone to understand who has not experienced it himself.
As I touched the Time Matrix, and searched for it with my mind, the entire universe simply opened up. Opened up like a piece of fruit that has been exploded into its segments. But that's not telling a millionth of it.
Everything changed. Everything! The ship around me, the familiar Jahar, was suddenly not a vessel anymore, but an amazing array of fragments, each twisted inside out and outside in. Each piece was connected to every other piece in insane ways that no rational mind could make sense of.
And from each piece of the ship there stretched lines that curled and twirled through space, connecting back to the Taxxon world and back to the StarSword and back to a thousand other places, all somehow visible to me. I could see every place the ship had been. It was as if each of those places were right here and a billion miles away at once!
But all the lines of the ship were dim and dull compared to the spectacle of the living bodies around me. I saw the Andalite body of Alloran opened up and split apart, transparent, twisted so that every part could be seen from every angle at once. I saw the living, beating hearts! I saw the muscles of the tail. I saw the ways the eyes were attached to the brain, and not just from outside, but from inside.
And to my horror, I saw the Yeerk slug. It was wrapped around Alloran's brain, sinking into every wrinkle and crevice, sinking deep between the four segments. I could literally see the flow of thoughts and emotions. I saw inside the slug that was Visser Thirty-two. I saw the way the Yeerk mind drew memories from Alloran and sent back orders. I saw and felt the impotent rage of Alloran as he lay helpless in the Yeerk's grasp.
I know how impossible it is to really grasp this. But I saw in and through and around everything at once. I saw time lines stretching back from the Yeerk and back from Alloran. I saw their pasts. And I saw the horrible moment when those time lines became entwined, becoming one.
I could see Alloran's past in flashes of wild action and wild emotion. I saw the terrible moment when Alloran stood amidst battlefield slaughter on the Hork-Bajir home world. I saw the ground piled high with Hork-Bajir and Andalite dead.
And I saw the actual decision deep in Alloran's despairing brain, the decision to release the forbidden Quantum virus.
I felt his bitterness when even that evil measure failed, and the Hork-Bajir were lost to the Yeerks. I saw the retreat of the shattered, beaten Andalite force.
I was almost drowning from this assault of data. It was as if I had been plugged directly into every computer ever built and all of them were dumping information into my brain.
I even saw the time line of the black hole itself. I saw it form from the explosive moment of the universe's birth, and watched it condense and burn, bright as a huge star. I saw it die and collapse, digging a hole in space itself.
But then, amidst all the swarm of information, among all the insides and outsides, all the pasts and all the connections, I felt the will of Visser Thirty-two.
I felt him take hold of the Time Matrix. And I felt the Matrix respond, felt it turn to him. In the visser's Yeerk brain I saw the image of the Yeerk home world. He was forming it, clear and detailed.
I saw the awful pools where the Yeerks were born. I felt the Kandrona rays that beat down from the Yeerks' own strange sun.
He was directing the Time Matrix! Aiming it! Telling it to take him there, to the Yeerk home world!
NO!
I focused my will, and in the weird universe I inhabited, I saw my own living brain as it focused, concentrated, bringing more and more mental power to bear.
It was insane! I could watch my own brain work. Watch my own brain watching my own brain watching my own brain.
I had to take control of the Time Matrix. I had to fight, to resist the visser. I summoned up an image in my head. But it was a confused picture. I saw the part of the Andalite world where I had grown up. The trees, the grass, the sky. . . . But mixed in with that image were others. I saw them float up out of my own brain. I saw them skim by, three-dimensional pictures looking so flat and strange in this multidimensional universe.
I saw my own Andalite world, but mixed in with it were images of Earth — the pictures I had seen.
Somewhere far off, I realized I could see my own body beginning to freeze. Systems were shutting down. I could see inside fingers that were frozen stiff. I could see a tail that hung limp, all tension gone. My hearts were beating sluggishly.
I was watching my own body die. I was weakening. The visser, too, was hurt by the cold, but the Yeerk himself, down inside Alloran's head, was still alert and strong.
Slowly the balance shifted to him. The images were more and more of the Yeerk home world. His images were coming in over mine, like a tide. I was losing. I was failing as the cold shut down my body and reached tendrils into my mind.
And then . . . a new mind. Alien, but familiar in a way. I saw the Yeerk jerk in alarm and surprise. This new force, this new mind was strong. Stronger than he could have expected.
Loren!
I saw inside her and through her. I saw her thoughts. And I saw her push back the visser's own images. Not defeating him, but keeping him at bay.
I realized something else had changed. The black hole was further away now. The Jahar could still be seen, but it, too, was further away.
We were moving! The Time Matrix had been programmed, and we were moving through time.
The last memory I had, as the cold collapsed my consciousness, was of someone vast and incredible. A being like nothing I could have imagined. It saw me. It saw us all.
And it laughed.
I couldn't believe it. I had never been sure I believed in Ellimists. I still wondered if it was some kind of trick. He looked fully human. But of course, for a true Ellimist, such things are easy.
"Am I really an Ellimist?" the man asked, mocking. "Let's see. I know that Arbron still lives in the tunnels of the Living Hive. I know that you made a universe once, you and the human and the Yeerk called Visser Three."
I jerked in surprise. "Visser Three?"
"Yes, he's advanced quite far in the Yeerk hierarchy."
"He should be dead!"
"Should be dead? Do you really think you can play games with time itself? Do you think you can change things around to suit you and not make a mess of it? Are you so naive, Andalite, that you can't understand that time is a trillion, trillion, trillion strands, all woven and interwoven? That if you twist and break one strand it may have unforeseen effects in a thousand other places and times?"
"He's alive. The visser."
"Yes. He is alive. He still inhabits Alloran's body." The Ellimist focused gray human-seeming eyes on me. "He is a terrible enemy of your people."
I shook my head. "Humans are my people now."
"Like the human named Chapman? Is he one of your people?
"You. It was you. You brought him back here and erased his memory."
"I undid an error in the time-space continuum. Chapman plays a part in what is still to come."
"I don't care," I said harshly. "I don't care about wars in far-off space."
"Far off? Do you really think you are safe here, Elfangor? Do you assume the Yeerks will never come?"
I felt my throat clutching up. It happens to humans when they are upset or afraid. "Will they come here?"
"Elfangor, the first Yeerk advance scouts are in orbit above Earth right now."
I said nothing for a long time. I looked out of the window, expecting to see Loren's car pull up at any moment. But then I realized what a fool I was being. If the Ellimist didn't want us to be interrupted, we wouldn't be.
"There's nothing I can do," I said at last. "I tried my hand at being a hero. I failed."
"Failed? You kept the Time Matrix from falling into the hands of either side, Yeerk or Andalite. You saved the galaxy."
"I couldn't save Arbron. I helped destroy Alloran and deliver him to the Yeerks to create the abomination he became. I wasn't able to destroy that abomination. I was weak. I was foolish."
"You refused to slaughter defenseless prisoners. You refused to destroy yourself in order to win a battle. You are wise, for a primitive creature. But you also altered the course of time by using the Time Matrix. And that has created awful problems. For your people. For both your peoples. Your peoples need you."
I laughed. "No one needs me."
"You are not where and whe you should be, Elfangor."
"The galaxy will get along without me."
The Ellimist leaned forward and put his face close to mine. "No. It won't."
"What do you want from me?!" I yelled, suddenly enraged.
"We want nothing."
"Liar! Why are you here if you don't want anything?"
"We do not interfere in the affairs of other species."
"Then go away! Get out! Leave me alone!"
"We do not interfere. But sometimes we repair what has been shattered."
I froze. What stupid game was he playing? He wouldn't interfere, but he would? Which was it? What did he want?
"What do I want? Nothing. But I can tell you that you have twisted and distorted time. Things are not as they should be. Battles are lost that should have been won. What should be safe is now endangered."
"I can't go back," I pleaded. "I'm not an Andalite anymore. I'm human! I have a wife. I have a place here."
"All a product of your meddling," the Ellimist said. "The human girl Loren was meant to marry a human. You were meant to be a warrior. A great hero to your people. A mentor and guide to your brother."
"I have a brother? He was born? I knew my family was preparing —"
"In this broken time line, no. But you should. He has a job to do. And so does another person who you do not even know exists. Elfangor, without you, your people, both your peoples, will be slaves of the Yeerks."
I jumped back to my feet. "You're lying. Manipulating me. Using me."
"We don't use anyone. We don't interfere. But if you ask me to fix the mess you have made . . . to repair the time line so that you return to your destiny . . . that, and that alone, I can do."
I wanted to hit him. I wanted to throw up. I hated the galaxy and everything in it.
"There is a battle, Elfangor. A turning point. Visser Three is there. You are supposed to be there. Right now."
"I can't leave Loren."
"Listen to me, Elfangor. Visser Three will come to Earth one day. He remembers her. He remembers that she mocked him. Do you know what he will do to her? And will you be able to stop him, when he is surrounded by a thousand of his own troops?"
I felt warm liquid run down my cheeks. Tears. A human thing.
"And if I go back . . . if I ask you to repair the time line . . . will it save Earth? Will it save the Andalites? And my Loren?"
"No. Not by itself. But what is impossible now will become possible again."
I looked at the creature who posed as a human. The creature who had the power to make entire solar systems disappear. "What game are you playing, Ellimist?"
"Will you cross-examine me, Andalite? Or will you ask me to undo the mess you have made?"
"Loren . . . ?"
"Will never know you existed. But you will know. You will still have your memories."
I tried to smile, but it twisted cruelly on my lips. "You said something about a battle, Ellimist . . ."
"Come. I will carry you there. I will undo what was done, and repair the fabric of your fate, Elfangor."
Once, a long time before, I had explained to Loren what it must be like to see the universe as the Ellimists saw it. And now, as the Ellimist lifted me up out of the everyday world of three dimensions of space and one of time, I saw what he saw.
When I had used the Time Matrix I glimpsed the lines of time interwoven. But now I saw a thousand times more. It was beyond sight. Beyond sound. It was some new sense, some new awareness.
I could feel the lines of time flowing through me. I could see and taste and hear and touch and smell a billion possibilities, all flowing through me.
I saw the Ellimist himself, as he really was. An indescribable being of light and time and space. Huge, but without a place. Alone, but not the only one of his kind. I saw and understood the vast power that trailed the lines of time through his grasp. And yet, against the enormity of all that had ever been and all that would ever be, I saw his limits, too.
The Ellimist was mighty. But not all-powerful.
I saw a young Andalite who looked like I had once: so serious, so determined to prove himself. I heard his name in my mind: Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill.
Hello, little brother, I said silently.
I saw Arbron, still alive on the Taxxon world. I felt his Taxxon hunger. But I also felt his Andalite pride.
Hello, Arbron. 'You have become the hero I always wanted to be.
I saw Loren, and wrapped around her time line now was another human who would be her mate. I had been written out of her memory. It tore at my heart to realize that I was now a stranger to her.
And yet, I saw that some part of my own time line still intersected her own. I still touched her future in some way. My line and hers converged, and then from those two lines came a new line, just emerging, just beginning to grow.
<What does it mean?ÔÇ║ I asked the Ellimist.
YOU HAVE A SON, ELFANGOR.
In a flash I saw the truth. That's why Loren had gone to see her doctor. She would have come home and told me. We had a child!
<No! You can't take me away! I have a son!> I cried. <That changes everything! Don't take me away!>
YOU ARE AWAY, ELFANGOR-SIRINIAL-SHAMTUL. WHAT WAS BROKEN HAS BEEN REPAIRED. YOU ARE WHERE YOU MUST BE. THE CHILD WILL BE RAISED AS THE SON OF ANOTHER.
<But my son! What will happen to him? Will he still . . . exist?>
I saw the tiny line that was my son flow off through time. I saw pain and hardship and loneliness for him.
But then, like a distant nova, I saw a flash of light, far at the edge of a still-uncertain future. Across the galaxy my brother's line reached to join with my son's. And four other bright, shining time lines formed together with those two.
I knew I was watching something incredible and important. And I knew this union of six time lines, one Andalite and five human, was the entire point of the Ellimist's "noninterference."
<So, you don't interfere with the affairs of other species?> I asked him.
WAS THAT SARCASM, ELFANGOR? the Ellimist asked. And then he laughed a huge laugh that reverberated through all the tendrils of space and time.
<Is it all just a game for you?>
YES, the Ellimist said, all laughter silent now. BUT WE ARE NOT THE ONLY GREAT POWERS OF THE GALAXY. THERE IS ANOTHER. OLDER EVEN THAN WE. AND HE PLAYS A DARK GAME, ANDALITE. IT IS WITH HIM THAT WE PLAY. SO HOPE THAT WE WIN, ELFANGOR-SIRINIAL-SHAMTUL. HOPE THAT WE WIN.
I saw a battle ahead.
I saw my own body twisting and changing shape.
I opened my stalk eyes. Tested my Andalite tail.
And all at once, I was on the bridge of an Andalite fighter.
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Okay, that's ******* solid High 2-A
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He repairs a broken timeline, and the Time Matrix? His invention? Creates a composite pocket dimension mixed of Earth, the Andalite homeworld, and the Yeerk homeworld. He's far above the machine. The Drode confirms the Time Matrix is no threat to beings on his and Crayak's level.
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Wait a minute
<Okay, well, you know that space-time has ten dimensions. There are the normal dimensions of up/down, left/right, and forward/back. Then there is the fourth dimension, which is time. Then, there are six other dimensions, but they are curled up into themselves, so we don't see or feel them. All we feel are three space dimensions, plus time.>
Loren nodded her head. I wondered what this meant. But she didn't ask me to stop, so I went on.
<Imagine if, instead of three normal space dimensions, we only had two. Imagine we were flat, and we couldn't go up or down, just in the other two directions. Call us the Flatties. See?>
"Like if we lived on a piece of paper," Loren said.
<Exactly. It would be like we were drawings on a piece of paper. And if someone came along and drew a box around us, we could never get out. Because the lines of the box would be walls. But what if a three-dimensional person came along? A three-dimensional person could lift that Flattie right up out of that box. The Flattie wouldn't even know what was happening, because he's never gone up or down before. He doesn't even know up and down exist.>
"You're saying we're like the Flatties. Except we're in three dimensions, not just two. So we're like Cubies or something."
HOLY FUCKIBG SHIT
HIGH 1-C
<Okay, well, you know that space-time has ten dimensions. There are the normal dimensions of up/down, left/right, and forward/back. Then there is the fourth dimension, which is time. Then, there are six other dimensions, but they are curled up into themselves, so we don't see or feel them. All we feel are three space dimensions, plus time.>
Loren nodded her head. I wondered what this meant. But she didn't ask me to stop, so I went on.
<Imagine if, instead of three normal space dimensions, we only had two. Imagine we were flat, and we couldn't go up or down, just in the other two directions. Call us the Flatties. See?>
"Like if we lived on a piece of paper," Loren said.
<Exactly. It would be like we were drawings on a piece of paper. And if someone came along and drew a box around us, we could never get out. Because the lines of the box would be walls. But what if a three-dimensional person came along? A three-dimensional person could lift that Flattie right up out of that box. The Flattie wouldn't even know what was happening, because he's never gone up or down before. He doesn't even know up and down exist.>
"You're saying we're like the Flatties. Except we're in three dimensions, not just two. So we're like Cubies or something."
HOLY FUCKIBG SHIT
HIGH 1-C
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The Time Matrix, again which he invented, let the Animorphs travel all throughout many historical battles and even rewrite them as they pleased. It's not so much a time machine as a god machine that rewrites reality. And again, he's much higher. Hell, the Drode, a representative of Crayak, who is a being on par with the Ellimist, offered Jake a chance to never meet Elfangor. He said yes. And so they changed the timeline. The only reason it broke down is that Cassie is "sub-temporally grounded," meaning she was destined to break down artificial timelines that are not the true reality.
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The time matrix isn't impressive
What's impressive is the thing transcending 10-D
Or at the very least being 10-D
What's impressive is the thing transcending 10-D
Or at the very least being 10-D
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I laughed. "You want to help. You. Meaning Crayak."
"Yes, it is rather puzzling, isn't it?" the Drode mocked.
<Why would you help?> Ax asked.
"It's all part of a deal. My master, the great and glorious Crayak, and your friend, the simpering, meddling nitwit called the Ellimist, have a deal. Neither of them really approves of a mere Yeerk possessing the most powerful device in galactic history."
"In other words, this Time Matrix could endanger Crayak himself," Marco translated.
The Drode laughed. "Don't be a fool. Nothing threatens great Crayak. However . . . one doesn't want mere baboons blundering about with Time Matrices, does one? Who knows what harm they might do? Oh, sure, it's all fun and games when they end up starting genocidal wars or engendering race hatred —"
"Yeah, what's more fun than that?" Rachel said dryly.
"— but who knows what other damage a fool with such power may do?"
"Crayak could grab the Time Matrix himself," Jake said. "He has the power."
"Mmmm, well . . ." the Drode said.
Crayak and the Ellimist were to humans what humans are to ants. Nearly omnipotent creatures. One evil. One good.
Perhaps. We could never be entirely sure.
<The Rules,> Tobias said. <That's the problem. The rules of the game between Crayak and the Ellimist. Neither trusts the other with the Time Matrix. They don't need it themselves, but they might give it to their allies.>
The Drode put his hand to his ear. "Did I just hear a bird chirping?"
"You mentioned a deal," Marco said.
"Yes," the Drode said. "A deal. And here it is: The six of you will be allowed to follow the Time Matrix. The former Visser Four set off on his journey two days ago. You will be translated back to that point and then the quanta that make up your atoms will be . . . tuned. Yes, that's a good word for simple minds to comprehend. You'll be fine-tuned at the subatomic level to resonate with the movements of the Time Matrix as it travels through time. Your own memories and personalities will, of course, be buffered. Protected against changes."
<Resulting in what effect?> Ax demanded.
"Resulting in the effect that, like an echo, you will follow the Time Matrix. It plucks the chords of time and you reverberate." He stopped and shook his head in admiration of his own words. "Brilliantly explained, eh?"
"That's the deal?" Jake asked. "That's it?"
"There's something else, isn't there?" I asked the Drode.
The Drode laughed. "Oh, yes. There is something else, little Cassie. Cassie the killer with a conscience. Kill 'em, then cry over 'em. That's our Cassie."
"What's the something else?" I repeated, not letting the evil little creep see that his words had hit home.
"My master Crayak has demanded a price. A payment."
"A payment."
"Uh-huh," the Drode said in a parody of coyness.
"What?"
"One of you," the Drode said. "You can attempt to save your reality, put everything back where it belongs, end slavery, replace tyranny with democracy, millions of lives saved, let freedom ring, glory hallelujah in exchange . . . in exchange for one, single life."
"A life?" I asked.
"The life of one of you. That is my master Crayak's price: One of you must die."
Into the cave, Cassie.
All for what? For nothing. To delay the Yeerks, but never to win. And someday, to lose.
Was there no way out?
"There's always a way out, Jake the Mighty," a voice said. "My lord Crayak holds out his omnipotent hand to you, Jake the Yeerk Killer. Jake the Ellimist's tool."
I sat up. I knew the voice.
The Drode stood by my desk. It wasn't large. It perched forward like one of those small dinosaurs. It had mean, smart eyes in a humanoid head. It was wrinkled, dark green or purple maybe. So dark it was almost black. The mocking mouth was lined with green.
The Drode was Crayak's creature, his emissary, his tool. Crayak was . . . Crayak was evil. A power so vast, so complete that only the Ellimist could keep him in check. A balance of terror: evil and good checking each other, limiting each other, making deals that affected the survival of entire solar systems.
"Go away," I said to the Drode.
"But you called me."
"Go back to Crayak. Leave me alone."
The Drode smiled. He got up and moved closer. Closer till his face was only inches from my own.
"There is a way out," the Drode whispered. "Say the word and it never was, Jake. Say the word, Jake, and you never walked through the construction site. Say the word and you know nothing. No weight on your shoulders. Say the word."
"Go away," I said through gritted teeth.
"How long till your cousin Rachel loses her grip? You know the darkness is growing inside her. How long till Tobias dies, a bird, a bird! How can he ever be happy? How long till Marco is forced to destroy his own Controller mother? Will he survive that, do you think? How long, Jake, till you kill Tom? Then what dreams will come, Jake the Yeerk Killer?"
"Get out of here. Crawl back under your rock."
"It will happen, Jake. You know that. The cave. The day will come. You know what the cave is, Jake. You know what it means, that dark cave. You know that death is within. When she dies, when Cassie dies, it will be at your word, Jake."
I covered my face with my hands.
"My master Crayak offers you an escape. In his compassion Great Crayak has struck a deal with that meddling nitwit Ellimist. Crayak would free you, Jake. Crayak would free you all. All will be as it would have been if you had simply taken a different path home."
I saw that moment again. At the mall. Deciding whether to take the safe, well-lit, sensible way home. Or the route that would take us through the construction site, and to a meeting that would change everything.
Undo it. Undo it all. No more war. No more pain and fear and guilt?
"Just one word, Jake," the Drode whispered. "No . . . no, two, I think. One must not sacrifice good manners. Two words and it never was. Two words and you know nothing, have no power, no responsibility."
"What words?"
"One is Crayak. The other is please."
I wanted to say no.
I wanted to say no . . .
I wanted . . .
<Two . . . >
"Oh, all right, all right!" the disembodied voice cried. "Stop it, stop it."
A thing, an alien, I suppose, something, anyway, that looked an awful lot like a small dinosaur with the skin of a prune, appeared.
The Andalite stepped back from the controls, ready to shoot this latest enemy.
He fired. The energy beam traveled half the distance to the alien, then froze. Simply stopped.
"It was the girl, wasn't it?" the prune thing said, rolling its green-rimmed eyes upward. "She corrupted the time flow."
Now a second figure appeared. He could have been a little old man. If you ignored the fact that he was kind of bluish. And glowing. I had the sense that he was no such thing, but that was his appearance.
This creature, this old man, laughed. "It's not so easy, is it, Drode?"
"You cheated me, Ellimist," the Drode snapped. "We had a deal, a trade-off. You were allowed to meddle with the time line in the Falla Kadrat situation, and we, my master Crayak and I, were to be allowed to tempt this young jackal here." He stabbed a finger at me.
"I kept my bargain," the Ellimist said. "I have done nothing to bring about this result. The girl is an anomaly. She is sub-temporally grounded. You were careless."
"She's a freak of nature!" the Drode screamed.
The Ellimist nodded. "Yes. She is."
Marco said, "What is going on here?" He was no longer a gorilla. "I'm pretty sure I was dead, then I'm a gorilla."
"Oh, I see it now, I see it now," the Drode said, ignoring Marco, ignoring all of us. "Subtle as always, Ellimist. Your meddling came before, didn't it? How could we not have seen it? Elfangor's brother? His time-shifted son? This anomalous girl here? And the son of Visser One's host body? A group of six supposedly random humans that contains those four! You stacked the deck!"
"Did I?" The Ellimist laughed. "That would have been very clever of me."
The Drode spat in disgust. "You knew the girl was an anomaly. You knew she was sub-temporally grounded. And you knew that whatever time line I built, her presence would eventually destabilize it. She knew from the start that the time line had shifted. She felt it. I might as well have terminated this exercise then. I saw the sudden, inexplicable transportation of the mother, I thought, well, it's a glitch! The hands morphing to tiger. All the little breakdowns of logic and sequence. I still thought it might hold together."
Cassie said, "Is anyone going to tell us what is going on here?"
The Ellimist winked at her. And suddenly, alive, in the room with us, were Rachel and that kid Tobias.
"Does this feel more right, Cassie?" the Ellimist asked.
She nodded. "This is everyone. Only Tobias should be . . ."
As I watched in amazement, Tobias seemed to melt, to shift, to dwindle. In seconds there was a hawk where he had been.
"Most creatures live entirely within their time line," the Ellimist said. "Like a person trapped in a single room. They see only what is within those four walls. Others . . . like yourself, Cassie, can see beyond those walls. Can see other rooms, as though the walls were translucent. You felt the change. You sensed that things were not right. You could see, only dimly, but still you could see beyond. You could see what should be, where you belonged, and without consciously knowing it you were working to repair what had been torn apart. To reconstitute time as it should have been. You were a virus in the software. You degraded the subtle workings of the Drode's artificial time shunt."
"I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about," Cassie said.
"You were i this time line, but of another. That is an anomaly. An impossibility. One of the two time lines was doomed to fail. You grounded the true time line. And thus, this time line began to fall to pieces."
"Who are you two?" I demanded of the Ellimist and the Drode.
"He's an old cheat," the Drode snapped. "There are rules, Ellimist!"
"Yes. And I obeyed them. I allowed you to create this alternate time line. And in this time line these humans and this Andalite came very close to annihilating the Yeerk presence. You suspended the exercise. Not me. You can continue this time line, or allow these young ones to return to their own times."
The Drode's face was twisted with hatred. "Crayak will have him yet."
He was talking about me. I knew it suddenly. I knew who I was. I knew it all. I was myself once more. Leader of the Animorphs.
With that knowledge came a sledgehammer of guilt.
It was all my fault! I had weakened. I'd said yes to the Drode. I'd given in. Marco, Rachel, Cassie, Tobias, all dead — at least in this reality — because I had weakened and taken the Drode's offer.
"Perhaps, Drode. Perhaps Crayak will have him," the Ellimist said. "But, then again, perhaps he will have Crayak."
The Drode disappeared. The six of us, the Animorphs, stood there on the wrecked bridge of the Blade ship with the nearly all-powerful creature called the Ellimist.
"At least we'd have won in this time line," I said.
He shook his head. "Yes. But you all would have died. And millions of humans, too, before the victory."
"I gave in," I whispered. "I gave in."
"You have been strong for a long time," he said.
"He shouldn't have to be," Rachel erupted angrily. "None of us should have to. This is enough. This has gone on too long!"
Tobias said,
"Of course you wouldn't," Rachel growled.
I said, "Ellimist, is there anything better in our real time line? Will it happen any better, there? Will it, at least, ever end?"
The Ellimist looked at me. Just at me. Sadly, I thought. Pitying.
"It will end," he said. "It will end."
I wanted to ask him more. But I knew that was all I'd get.
"So, what happens now?" Cassie asked.
The Ellimist took her hand and held it affectionately. "What will happen now? Only you will ever recall so much as a dim memory of this time line."
Cassie nodded, as though she'd half expected him to say that. "But I'll say nothing about it. Tobias can't know that he might have become a voluntary Controller. And Jake can't know that he ever weakened enough to take the Drode's deal."
"You are wise," the Ellimist said.
"Yeah, and I sure don't want to know that I ever dated Marco," Rachel added.
"How do we get back?" I asked. "How do we —"
D A Y Z E R O
"Help me. I'm cold."
Another battle. Another horror.
Couldn't anything make it end? Was there no way out? Was I trapped, fighting, fighting till one by one my friends died or went nuts?
I lay on my bed. Stared up at the ceiling.
"Help me. Please. I'm cold."
Into the cave, Cassie.
All for what? For nothing. To delay the Yeerks, but never to win. And someday, to lose.
Was there no way out?
"There's always a way out, Jake the Mighty," a voice said. "My lord Crayak holds out his omnipotent hand to you, Jake the Yeerk Killer. Jake the Ellimist's tool."
I sat up. I knew the voice.
The Drode stood by my desk. It wasn't large. It perched forward like one of those small dinosaurs. It had mean, smart eyes in a humanoid head. It was wrinkled, dark green or purple maybe. So dark it was almost black. The mocking mouth was lined with green.
The Drode was Crayak's creature, his emissary, his tool. Crayak was . . . Crayak was evil. A power so vast, so complete that only the Ellimist could keep him in check. A balance of terror: evil and good checking each other, limiting each other, making deals that affected the survival of entire solar systems.
"Go away," I said to the Drode.
"But you called me."
"Go back to Crayak. Leave me alone."
The Drode smiled. He got up and moved closer. Closer till his face was only inches from my own.
"There is a way out," the Drode whispered. "Say the word and it never was, Jake. Say the word, Jake, and you never walked through the construction site. Say the word and you know nothing. No weight on your shoulders. Say the word."
"Go away," I said through gritted teeth.
"How long till your cousin Rachel loses her grip? You know the darkness is growing inside her. How long till Tobias dies, a bird, a bird! How can he ever be happy? How long till Marco is forced to destroy his own Controller mother? Will he survive that, do you think? How long, Jake, till you kill Tom? Then what dreams will come, Jake the Yeerk Killer?"
"Get out of here. Crawl back under your rock."
"It will happen, Jake. You know that. The cave. The day will come. You know what the cave is, Jake. You know what it means, that dark cave. You know that death is within. When she dies, when Cassie dies, it will be at your word, Jake."
I covered my face with my hands.
"My master Crayak offers you an escape. In his compassion Great Crayak has struck a deal with that meddling nitwit Ellimist. Crayak would free you, Jake. Crayak would free you all. All will be as it would have been if you had simply taken a different path home."
I saw that moment again. At the mall. Deciding whether to take the safe, well-lit, sensible way home. Or the route that would take us through the construction site, and to a meeting that would change everything.
Undo it. Undo it all. No more war. No more pain and fear and guilt?
"Just one word, Jake," the Drode whispered. "No . . . no, two, I think, one must not sacrifice good manners. Two words and it never was. Two words and you know nothing, have no power, no responsibility."
"What words?"
"One is Crayak. The other is please."
I wanted to say no.
I wanted to say no . . .
I wanted . . .
I opened my mouth to speak.
"Oh, forget it. Never mind," the Drode said angrily.
"Yes, it is rather puzzling, isn't it?" the Drode mocked.
<Why would you help?> Ax asked.
"It's all part of a deal. My master, the great and glorious Crayak, and your friend, the simpering, meddling nitwit called the Ellimist, have a deal. Neither of them really approves of a mere Yeerk possessing the most powerful device in galactic history."
"In other words, this Time Matrix could endanger Crayak himself," Marco translated.
The Drode laughed. "Don't be a fool. Nothing threatens great Crayak. However . . . one doesn't want mere baboons blundering about with Time Matrices, does one? Who knows what harm they might do? Oh, sure, it's all fun and games when they end up starting genocidal wars or engendering race hatred —"
"Yeah, what's more fun than that?" Rachel said dryly.
"— but who knows what other damage a fool with such power may do?"
"Crayak could grab the Time Matrix himself," Jake said. "He has the power."
"Mmmm, well . . ." the Drode said.
Crayak and the Ellimist were to humans what humans are to ants. Nearly omnipotent creatures. One evil. One good.
Perhaps. We could never be entirely sure.
<The Rules,> Tobias said. <That's the problem. The rules of the game between Crayak and the Ellimist. Neither trusts the other with the Time Matrix. They don't need it themselves, but they might give it to their allies.>
The Drode put his hand to his ear. "Did I just hear a bird chirping?"
"You mentioned a deal," Marco said.
"Yes," the Drode said. "A deal. And here it is: The six of you will be allowed to follow the Time Matrix. The former Visser Four set off on his journey two days ago. You will be translated back to that point and then the quanta that make up your atoms will be . . . tuned. Yes, that's a good word for simple minds to comprehend. You'll be fine-tuned at the subatomic level to resonate with the movements of the Time Matrix as it travels through time. Your own memories and personalities will, of course, be buffered. Protected against changes."
<Resulting in what effect?> Ax demanded.
"Resulting in the effect that, like an echo, you will follow the Time Matrix. It plucks the chords of time and you reverberate." He stopped and shook his head in admiration of his own words. "Brilliantly explained, eh?"
"That's the deal?" Jake asked. "That's it?"
"There's something else, isn't there?" I asked the Drode.
The Drode laughed. "Oh, yes. There is something else, little Cassie. Cassie the killer with a conscience. Kill 'em, then cry over 'em. That's our Cassie."
"What's the something else?" I repeated, not letting the evil little creep see that his words had hit home.
"My master Crayak has demanded a price. A payment."
"A payment."
"Uh-huh," the Drode said in a parody of coyness.
"What?"
"One of you," the Drode said. "You can attempt to save your reality, put everything back where it belongs, end slavery, replace tyranny with democracy, millions of lives saved, let freedom ring, glory hallelujah in exchange . . . in exchange for one, single life."
"A life?" I asked.
"The life of one of you. That is my master Crayak's price: One of you must die."
Into the cave, Cassie.
All for what? For nothing. To delay the Yeerks, but never to win. And someday, to lose.
Was there no way out?
"There's always a way out, Jake the Mighty," a voice said. "My lord Crayak holds out his omnipotent hand to you, Jake the Yeerk Killer. Jake the Ellimist's tool."
I sat up. I knew the voice.
The Drode stood by my desk. It wasn't large. It perched forward like one of those small dinosaurs. It had mean, smart eyes in a humanoid head. It was wrinkled, dark green or purple maybe. So dark it was almost black. The mocking mouth was lined with green.
The Drode was Crayak's creature, his emissary, his tool. Crayak was . . . Crayak was evil. A power so vast, so complete that only the Ellimist could keep him in check. A balance of terror: evil and good checking each other, limiting each other, making deals that affected the survival of entire solar systems.
"Go away," I said to the Drode.
"But you called me."
"Go back to Crayak. Leave me alone."
The Drode smiled. He got up and moved closer. Closer till his face was only inches from my own.
"There is a way out," the Drode whispered. "Say the word and it never was, Jake. Say the word, Jake, and you never walked through the construction site. Say the word and you know nothing. No weight on your shoulders. Say the word."
"Go away," I said through gritted teeth.
"How long till your cousin Rachel loses her grip? You know the darkness is growing inside her. How long till Tobias dies, a bird, a bird! How can he ever be happy? How long till Marco is forced to destroy his own Controller mother? Will he survive that, do you think? How long, Jake, till you kill Tom? Then what dreams will come, Jake the Yeerk Killer?"
"Get out of here. Crawl back under your rock."
"It will happen, Jake. You know that. The cave. The day will come. You know what the cave is, Jake. You know what it means, that dark cave. You know that death is within. When she dies, when Cassie dies, it will be at your word, Jake."
I covered my face with my hands.
"My master Crayak offers you an escape. In his compassion Great Crayak has struck a deal with that meddling nitwit Ellimist. Crayak would free you, Jake. Crayak would free you all. All will be as it would have been if you had simply taken a different path home."
I saw that moment again. At the mall. Deciding whether to take the safe, well-lit, sensible way home. Or the route that would take us through the construction site, and to a meeting that would change everything.
Undo it. Undo it all. No more war. No more pain and fear and guilt?
"Just one word, Jake," the Drode whispered. "No . . . no, two, I think. One must not sacrifice good manners. Two words and it never was. Two words and you know nothing, have no power, no responsibility."
"What words?"
"One is Crayak. The other is please."
I wanted to say no.
I wanted to say no . . .
I wanted . . .
<Two . . . >
"Oh, all right, all right!" the disembodied voice cried. "Stop it, stop it."
A thing, an alien, I suppose, something, anyway, that looked an awful lot like a small dinosaur with the skin of a prune, appeared.
The Andalite stepped back from the controls, ready to shoot this latest enemy.
He fired. The energy beam traveled half the distance to the alien, then froze. Simply stopped.
"It was the girl, wasn't it?" the prune thing said, rolling its green-rimmed eyes upward. "She corrupted the time flow."
Now a second figure appeared. He could have been a little old man. If you ignored the fact that he was kind of bluish. And glowing. I had the sense that he was no such thing, but that was his appearance.
This creature, this old man, laughed. "It's not so easy, is it, Drode?"
"You cheated me, Ellimist," the Drode snapped. "We had a deal, a trade-off. You were allowed to meddle with the time line in the Falla Kadrat situation, and we, my master Crayak and I, were to be allowed to tempt this young jackal here." He stabbed a finger at me.
"I kept my bargain," the Ellimist said. "I have done nothing to bring about this result. The girl is an anomaly. She is sub-temporally grounded. You were careless."
"She's a freak of nature!" the Drode screamed.
The Ellimist nodded. "Yes. She is."
Marco said, "What is going on here?" He was no longer a gorilla. "I'm pretty sure I was dead, then I'm a gorilla."
"Oh, I see it now, I see it now," the Drode said, ignoring Marco, ignoring all of us. "Subtle as always, Ellimist. Your meddling came before, didn't it? How could we not have seen it? Elfangor's brother? His time-shifted son? This anomalous girl here? And the son of Visser One's host body? A group of six supposedly random humans that contains those four! You stacked the deck!"
"Did I?" The Ellimist laughed. "That would have been very clever of me."
The Drode spat in disgust. "You knew the girl was an anomaly. You knew she was sub-temporally grounded. And you knew that whatever time line I built, her presence would eventually destabilize it. She knew from the start that the time line had shifted. She felt it. I might as well have terminated this exercise then. I saw the sudden, inexplicable transportation of the mother, I thought, well, it's a glitch! The hands morphing to tiger. All the little breakdowns of logic and sequence. I still thought it might hold together."
Cassie said, "Is anyone going to tell us what is going on here?"
The Ellimist winked at her. And suddenly, alive, in the room with us, were Rachel and that kid Tobias.
"Does this feel more right, Cassie?" the Ellimist asked.
She nodded. "This is everyone. Only Tobias should be . . ."
As I watched in amazement, Tobias seemed to melt, to shift, to dwindle. In seconds there was a hawk where he had been.
"Most creatures live entirely within their time line," the Ellimist said. "Like a person trapped in a single room. They see only what is within those four walls. Others . . . like yourself, Cassie, can see beyond those walls. Can see other rooms, as though the walls were translucent. You felt the change. You sensed that things were not right. You could see, only dimly, but still you could see beyond. You could see what should be, where you belonged, and without consciously knowing it you were working to repair what had been torn apart. To reconstitute time as it should have been. You were a virus in the software. You degraded the subtle workings of the Drode's artificial time shunt."
"I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about," Cassie said.
"You were i this time line, but of another. That is an anomaly. An impossibility. One of the two time lines was doomed to fail. You grounded the true time line. And thus, this time line began to fall to pieces."
"Who are you two?" I demanded of the Ellimist and the Drode.
"He's an old cheat," the Drode snapped. "There are rules, Ellimist!"
"Yes. And I obeyed them. I allowed you to create this alternate time line. And in this time line these humans and this Andalite came very close to annihilating the Yeerk presence. You suspended the exercise. Not me. You can continue this time line, or allow these young ones to return to their own times."
The Drode's face was twisted with hatred. "Crayak will have him yet."
He was talking about me. I knew it suddenly. I knew who I was. I knew it all. I was myself once more. Leader of the Animorphs.
With that knowledge came a sledgehammer of guilt.
It was all my fault! I had weakened. I'd said yes to the Drode. I'd given in. Marco, Rachel, Cassie, Tobias, all dead — at least in this reality — because I had weakened and taken the Drode's offer.
"Perhaps, Drode. Perhaps Crayak will have him," the Ellimist said. "But, then again, perhaps he will have Crayak."
The Drode disappeared. The six of us, the Animorphs, stood there on the wrecked bridge of the Blade ship with the nearly all-powerful creature called the Ellimist.
"At least we'd have won in this time line," I said.
He shook his head. "Yes. But you all would have died. And millions of humans, too, before the victory."
"I gave in," I whispered. "I gave in."
"You have been strong for a long time," he said.
"He shouldn't have to be," Rachel erupted angrily. "None of us should have to. This is enough. This has gone on too long!"
Tobias said,
"Of course you wouldn't," Rachel growled.
I said, "Ellimist, is there anything better in our real time line? Will it happen any better, there? Will it, at least, ever end?"
The Ellimist looked at me. Just at me. Sadly, I thought. Pitying.
"It will end," he said. "It will end."
I wanted to ask him more. But I knew that was all I'd get.
"So, what happens now?" Cassie asked.
The Ellimist took her hand and held it affectionately. "What will happen now? Only you will ever recall so much as a dim memory of this time line."
Cassie nodded, as though she'd half expected him to say that. "But I'll say nothing about it. Tobias can't know that he might have become a voluntary Controller. And Jake can't know that he ever weakened enough to take the Drode's deal."
"You are wise," the Ellimist said.
"Yeah, and I sure don't want to know that I ever dated Marco," Rachel added.
"How do we get back?" I asked. "How do we —"
D A Y Z E R O
"Help me. I'm cold."
Another battle. Another horror.
Couldn't anything make it end? Was there no way out? Was I trapped, fighting, fighting till one by one my friends died or went nuts?
I lay on my bed. Stared up at the ceiling.
"Help me. Please. I'm cold."
Into the cave, Cassie.
All for what? For nothing. To delay the Yeerks, but never to win. And someday, to lose.
Was there no way out?
"There's always a way out, Jake the Mighty," a voice said. "My lord Crayak holds out his omnipotent hand to you, Jake the Yeerk Killer. Jake the Ellimist's tool."
I sat up. I knew the voice.
The Drode stood by my desk. It wasn't large. It perched forward like one of those small dinosaurs. It had mean, smart eyes in a humanoid head. It was wrinkled, dark green or purple maybe. So dark it was almost black. The mocking mouth was lined with green.
The Drode was Crayak's creature, his emissary, his tool. Crayak was . . . Crayak was evil. A power so vast, so complete that only the Ellimist could keep him in check. A balance of terror: evil and good checking each other, limiting each other, making deals that affected the survival of entire solar systems.
"Go away," I said to the Drode.
"But you called me."
"Go back to Crayak. Leave me alone."
The Drode smiled. He got up and moved closer. Closer till his face was only inches from my own.
"There is a way out," the Drode whispered. "Say the word and it never was, Jake. Say the word, Jake, and you never walked through the construction site. Say the word and you know nothing. No weight on your shoulders. Say the word."
"Go away," I said through gritted teeth.
"How long till your cousin Rachel loses her grip? You know the darkness is growing inside her. How long till Tobias dies, a bird, a bird! How can he ever be happy? How long till Marco is forced to destroy his own Controller mother? Will he survive that, do you think? How long, Jake, till you kill Tom? Then what dreams will come, Jake the Yeerk Killer?"
"Get out of here. Crawl back under your rock."
"It will happen, Jake. You know that. The cave. The day will come. You know what the cave is, Jake. You know what it means, that dark cave. You know that death is within. When she dies, when Cassie dies, it will be at your word, Jake."
I covered my face with my hands.
"My master Crayak offers you an escape. In his compassion Great Crayak has struck a deal with that meddling nitwit Ellimist. Crayak would free you, Jake. Crayak would free you all. All will be as it would have been if you had simply taken a different path home."
I saw that moment again. At the mall. Deciding whether to take the safe, well-lit, sensible way home. Or the route that would take us through the construction site, and to a meeting that would change everything.
Undo it. Undo it all. No more war. No more pain and fear and guilt?
"Just one word, Jake," the Drode whispered. "No . . . no, two, I think, one must not sacrifice good manners. Two words and it never was. Two words and you know nothing, have no power, no responsibility."
"What words?"
"One is Crayak. The other is please."
I wanted to say no.
I wanted to say no . . .
I wanted . . .
I opened my mouth to speak.
"Oh, forget it. Never mind," the Drode said angrily.
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And just before someone brings it up, the Andalites... are kind of like a Vulcan type society. I mean, not really. They're blue and purple alien centaurs. But the creators read a lot of Star Trek and name-drop it within the text, in addition to many other sci-fi and comic book franchises, and Ax and Elfangor are presented as the scientific advisor/alien weirdness expert. So when Elfangor talks about the known "ten dimensions of space and time" and how beings like the Ellimist or Crayak would be above them, you better believe it. They're reliable the way Spock is reliable. So that would peg the Ellimist, Crayak, and Drode at at least 10-D. At least.
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I agree with High 1-C
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High 1-C fra
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They're also missing a ton of hax
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Yes
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First, here's Ax's description of them.
"Tobias, what's going on?" I asked him.
"I don't know," he said. "I was flying . . . then suddenly, I was here. Like this."
<Time has stopped,> Ax said. <For everyone but us. I can feel it.>
"Something is very, very wrong," Cassie said darkly. "Is this some trick of Visser Three's?"
<This is not Yeerk technology, I can tell you that,> Ax said. <This is far beyond them. Far beyond us Andalites, as well.>
WHAT? HUMILITY? FROM AN ANDALITE?
"Yaaahhh!" Marco screamed.
The voice came from everywhere at once. And from nowhere. It wasn't a voice, not really. It wasn't even thought-speak. It was like an idea that simply popped into your head. The words exploded like bursting balloons inside your own thoughts.
I spun around, looking for the source, ready to fight if necessary.
NO, RACHEL. THERE IS NO THREAT.
"It knows your name!" Tobias hissed.
I glanced at Ax. He had gone rigid. He wasn't frozen like all the world around us, he was afraid. He was shaking.
AXIMILI-ESGARROUTH-ISTHILL HAS BEGUN TO GUESS WHAT I AM.
<Ellimist!> Ax said.
DO NOT BE AFRAID. I WILL APPEAR IN A PHYSICAL FORM YOU CAN UNDERSTAND.
The air directly in front of me . . . no, not in front, behind. Beside. Around. I can't explain it. The air just opened up. As if there were a door in nothingness. As if air were solid and . . . it is just impossible to explain.
The air opened. He appeared.
He was humanoid. Two arms, two legs, a head where a human head would be.
His skin was glowing blue, as if he were a lightbulb that had been painted over so that light still shone from him.
He seemed like an old man, but with a force of energy that was definitely not frail. His hair was long and white. His ears were swept up into points. His eyes were black holes that seemed to be full of stars.
"I am an Ellimist," he said, speaking with an actual voice, "as your Andalite friend guessed."
Ax was shaking so badly he looked like he might fall down.
"Be at peace, Andalite," the Ellimist said. "Look at your human friends. They do not fear me."
<They don't know what you are,> Ax managed to say.
The Ellimist smiled. "Neither do you. All you know are the fairy stories your people tell to children."
"Well, how about if someone tells us who and what you are?" I said. I was not in the best mood ever. It was extremely bizarre and unnerving to be surrounded by human-Controllers, Hork-Bajir, and Taxxons, in the very heart of the enemy's stronghold. They were all frozen, but that could change.
To be honest, I was scared. And when I'm scared, I get mad.
The Ellimist looked at me. "You cannot begin to understand what I am."
<They are all-powerful,> Ax said simply. <They can cross a million light-years in a single instant. They can make entire worlds disappear. They can stop time itself.>
"This one doesn't look all that powerful," Marco said skeptically.
<Don't be a fool,> Ax snapped. <That's not his body. He has no body. He is . . . everywhere at once. Inside your head. Inside this planet. Inside the fabric of space and time.>
In #26. The Attack, Ellimist moves the seven-member team a distance 500,000,000 light-years in an instant for their tournament. Days passed, and when the tournament was over, they returned to the exact spot the exact moment they left. The Ellimist also took a little girl's physical form. Here.
One of the kids stood up. I jumped about two feet in the air.
It was this girl named Beth. No one else moved. Just Beth. She smiled at me, at us, and I knew right away.
"Yes, it is I," Beth said.
"The Ellimist?" Cassie asked.
Beth nodded.
"Where's the big voice and the quick-change bodies and all?" Rachel demanded.
"I have chosen this form for a reason," the Ellimist said in the girl's voice. "I come today on a humble mission. I wanted a humble form. One that would not evoke feelings of dread or awe or reverence from you."
He spread Beth's hands wide, palms up. He moved away, and I saw that the real Beth was still frozen in her seat. The Ellimist had not taken her body, just her image.
After all, he wasn't a Yeerk.
The Ellimist calmly walked through several rows of chairs and the bodies in them. Simply passed through them like they were air. He stood in the space between the front row and the stage. Down by Tobias. Ax came up behind him, moving with the unnatural, liquid grace Andalites have when they are preparing to fight.
Crayak, when threatened, also killed his seven Howlers. Maybe not even killed. It's possible he could have erased them from ever existing, but in truth, it reminds me of the Hakai thing Beerus does. Their motions through space and time were erased, thus they came to a stop. Here.
I gave him a nod, took a deep breath, and slapped the probe onto the Howler's head.
<Time for an education,> I said.
The Howler glared at me with his dead blue eyes. He leaped up. He drew his Dracon beam weapon. He aimed it . . . nowhere.
He shuddered. He started again to aim the weapon. Then he shuddered again.
His eyes closed.
I stopped breathing.
Into the Howler's head flowed all the memories of my life. From vague, early images of my mother's face above my crib, to riding on my dad's back at some amusement park, to school, to friends, to all that had happened since we'd taken a shortcut through an abandoned construction site.
All that I remembered of my life was flowing into the Howler's brain. And the lives of Cassie and Rachel and Marco and Ax and Tobias. And even Guide. And the long, long memory of the android who called himself Erek.
All that we were emptied into that Howler's head. And from there would flow into the endless pool of collective Howler memory.
<Is it working?> Cassie wondered.
Suddenly, the Howler disappeared. He was simply gone.
The Dracon beams no longer burned against the walls of the room.
Erek stuck his head out through the door. "They're gone," he said.
Marco yanked the knife out of his stomach and began to demorph.
In the time it took him to pull it out, we went from that small Iskoort room to a very different place.
This further backs up what Ax had said, They could make whole worlds or solar systems vanish, just erase them from existence. Or send huge populations of people or only a tiny handful back across time or space, billions of years, or across huge distances, an instant, then back again. In fact, it's implied all the Ellimist cannot do is revive people from death. Lemme show you how the Ellimist perceives the universe.
I don't know how long I floated through this eerie, brilliant, wondrous landscape of pure energy and purest beauty. Time was for other creatures. Time's arrow did not carry me along with it.
I knew nothing of this. I was a mere creature, for all my multitudes, for all my powers, I was, after all, a mere mortal creature.
It was as if one of the primitive Andalites I'd known had suddenly been thrust into the command center of a starship. I was an ignorant savage. An extreme primitive.
But I knew this: As simple and primitive as I might be, I could literally touch and move the vibrating lines of space-time.
Was I grown extremely big? Or had I shrunk to submolecular size? Size meant nothing. There was no size in this place.
I lived, and that was all I knew. I was alive without form, alive without synapses to fire, without food to devour, without limbs to control. I saw without eyes and tasted without tongue and moved with no wings or pods or engines to move me.
This I knew.
And I knew one other thing as well, a lesson hard-learned from millennia of war: My foe would find me.
An absurdly rare event, a cosmic coincidence had fashioned me. The odds? The odds were billions to one, trillions to one, incalculable.
But those were odds of this thing happening once. The odds of it happening again were great. Crayak learned. Crayak watched. Once I revealed myself to him, once I acted in such a way as to show myself, Crayak would find the way to follow me here. And as I was unchanged in mind and morality, so he would be unchanged.
Carefully, frightened at last into true humility, I began to study this new environment. I found I could see into the real world, see the events and peoples who made up these space-time strands.
They seemed to rise and mature and age and fall in the blink of an eye, and as I watched and studied and learned I knew that hundreds of thousands and finally millions of years were passing in real space.
I saw Crayak out there, still at his evil work. I saw lines go dark, unravel, coil up into nothingness as he massacred planets. Billions of lives become nothingness.
I had planted a great deal of life, and my Pemalites still lived to spread more, but the tide was turning once more in Crayak's favor.
At last, knowing I had so much more still to learn, knowing my own deep inadequacy, I struck back.
Crayak entered a system of nine planets orbiting a medium yellow star. Two of the worlds, a red planet and a blue, were populated. The red planet was already doomed, its atmosphere was oozing away, and Crayak could do no real harm there.
But the blue planet teemed with life. The dominant species type were huge, brutish beasts in a fantastic array of forms. Giant, slow-moving plant eaters and violent, rapacious killers with tearing teeth and deadly talons. There was intelligence there, but no sentience, I could see it so clearly.
Not in the great, domineering brutes, but in a handful of small, swift, fur-bearing prey animals did the future of this world lie.
They had only to be left alone and in forty or sixty million years there would emerge a great people.
Crayak saw none of his, he saw only that there was life there. He aimed his weapons at the blue planet and fired, and I drew gently on the fabric of space-time and his weapons struck nothing. The planet was gone, halfway around its orbit.
He tried again, and each time I applied my crude but powerful countermeasures.
And then, in confusion, Crayak withdrew to consider.
I knew he would be with me soon.
He basically moves the strands of space and time and manipultes reality to obey his whim. Moved Earth halfway along its orbit to protect it. Then back again. And here's the scene where he perceives death.
I told the dying human, "Now you know who I am. What I am."
"Yeah, You were a kid. Like me in some ways, a kid who got in way too deep and couldn't get back out."
"A kid."
"You were trapped. You still are. I've been trapped."
"Yes," I said.
"Was I one of your game pieces? Were all six of us just game pieces?"
I considered that for a moment. Who is to say who is piece and who is player? How often had I wondered whether I myself was just a game piece in a still larger game whose players laughed at my pretensions?
"I did not cause you to be one of the six. You are . . . you were . . . a happy accident. An unwitting contribution from the human race to its own survival."
The human was silent. No begging, no pleading for life. At the end, acceptance came even to this strong, turbulent spirit.
"You said I could ask one more question."
"Yes."
"I can't ask if we win, I can't ask if it will all turn out okay."
"I don't know those answers."
"Okay, then answer this, Ellimist: Did I . . . did I make a difference? My life, and my . . . my death . . . was I worth it? Did my life really matter?"
"Yes. You were brave. You were strong. You were good. You mattered."
"Yeah. Okay, then. Okay, then."
A small strand of space-time went dark and coiled into nothingness.
Here is how the Ellimist describes his struggle with Crayak.
Stars, stars everywhere! Bright white points that burned with a steady light, and closer, so much closer, huge, sky-filling cauldrons of blazing hot gases.
His voice was in our heads now, reverberating through our bodies, huge and sad.
As I stood on nothing, floating on nothing, stars began to dim and die. It was like watching a charcoal fire go from blaze to hot coals to crumbling, gray dust.
<The result was something neither of us could tolerate. The battle we fought destroyed a tenth of the galaxy, millions of suns, millions of planets, a dozen sentient races.>
Before our eyes — or was it straight through our brains? — ran images, flashes of creatures in amazing shapes, in sizes and colors that made me want to laugh in sheer wonder. I saw monstrous mammals and tiny insects, species that lived in the sea and others that floated on air.
And one by one, they went as dark as their suns.
<A dozen sentient species, and more who would have achieved sentience, all destroyed, destroyed for nothing! But Crayak was damaged as well. The fabric of space-time, the software, as you humans would say, the software that runs the galaxy was damaged, twisted by the sudden explosion of our power.>
Once again I floated in that eerie n-dimensional space, the space beyond space where inside and outside were meaningless terms, where I saw the back as easily as the front, the heart of things as easily as the surface, the core of planets as easily as the crust.
I saw what seemed like threads, threads that could curl back inside themselves, disappear and reappear, twist and ravel and braid in insane complication.
<All Crayak's knowledge of space-time was now shattered. The few threads he had gathered to him were yanked from his grasp. Millions of years of effort wasted. We fell back, back from our test of wills, our war.>
I was in normal space again. With guts and cores and threads all back where they should be, twisted up and hidden beneath the surface of things.
<We knew then, Crayak and I, that we could never make war again. Not open war, at least. The conflict would have to be carried on by different means. No longer a savage battle. Now it must be a chess game. There would be rules. Limits.>
Floating across our field of vision, like distorted TV pictures, were flickering images of our own interactions with the Ellimist. The times he had played a role, though never a controlling one. When he had shown us that we could escape Earth and live on a sort of game preserve for endangered humans. And when he had used Tobias to help some Hork-Bajir escape to found a free colony.
And when he had twisted time to return Elfangor from his happy life, hiding as a human, to a world of struggle, pain, and ultimately death as an Andalite warrior.
Elfangor, who was Tobias's true father, and the one who had given us our powers.
Each time, we saw the Ellimist limiting his involvement, refusing to do a billionth of what he could do.
<Earth is part of our game, Crayak's and mine. He would have the Yeerks absorb humans and later be absorbed by some still more vicious species. But Earth is not the reason I have come to you now.>
The show was over. We were back in the auditorium, not that we'd ever really left, I suppose. And the Ellimist was a girl with braces again.
"For millions of years we have played our game," the Ellimist said. "And we have lived within the rules, more or less. But now war threatens again. There is an impasse. A species I will not let Crayak take. A species he will not let me save. This species occupies a unique location in space-time. It is a turning point, and if Crayak can annihilate them, his power will grow, his goal become much closer, his forces become more deadly than ever."
Also, Crayak gave Rachel his powers. Kind of like what Q did for Riker. In truth, Ellimist and Crayak remind me of Q. And again, we know Applegate and Grant watch Star Trek, and name-drop it numerous times within the text. They've also read Superman comics, Fantastic Four, among many others, so they're very familiar with classic sci-fi/superhero lore.
"Tobias, what's going on?" I asked him.
"I don't know," he said. "I was flying . . . then suddenly, I was here. Like this."
<Time has stopped,> Ax said. <For everyone but us. I can feel it.>
"Something is very, very wrong," Cassie said darkly. "Is this some trick of Visser Three's?"
<This is not Yeerk technology, I can tell you that,> Ax said. <This is far beyond them. Far beyond us Andalites, as well.>
WHAT? HUMILITY? FROM AN ANDALITE?
"Yaaahhh!" Marco screamed.
The voice came from everywhere at once. And from nowhere. It wasn't a voice, not really. It wasn't even thought-speak. It was like an idea that simply popped into your head. The words exploded like bursting balloons inside your own thoughts.
I spun around, looking for the source, ready to fight if necessary.
NO, RACHEL. THERE IS NO THREAT.
"It knows your name!" Tobias hissed.
I glanced at Ax. He had gone rigid. He wasn't frozen like all the world around us, he was afraid. He was shaking.
AXIMILI-ESGARROUTH-ISTHILL HAS BEGUN TO GUESS WHAT I AM.
<Ellimist!> Ax said.
DO NOT BE AFRAID. I WILL APPEAR IN A PHYSICAL FORM YOU CAN UNDERSTAND.
The air directly in front of me . . . no, not in front, behind. Beside. Around. I can't explain it. The air just opened up. As if there were a door in nothingness. As if air were solid and . . . it is just impossible to explain.
The air opened. He appeared.
He was humanoid. Two arms, two legs, a head where a human head would be.
His skin was glowing blue, as if he were a lightbulb that had been painted over so that light still shone from him.
He seemed like an old man, but with a force of energy that was definitely not frail. His hair was long and white. His ears were swept up into points. His eyes were black holes that seemed to be full of stars.
"I am an Ellimist," he said, speaking with an actual voice, "as your Andalite friend guessed."
Ax was shaking so badly he looked like he might fall down.
"Be at peace, Andalite," the Ellimist said. "Look at your human friends. They do not fear me."
<They don't know what you are,> Ax managed to say.
The Ellimist smiled. "Neither do you. All you know are the fairy stories your people tell to children."
"Well, how about if someone tells us who and what you are?" I said. I was not in the best mood ever. It was extremely bizarre and unnerving to be surrounded by human-Controllers, Hork-Bajir, and Taxxons, in the very heart of the enemy's stronghold. They were all frozen, but that could change.
To be honest, I was scared. And when I'm scared, I get mad.
The Ellimist looked at me. "You cannot begin to understand what I am."
<They are all-powerful,> Ax said simply. <They can cross a million light-years in a single instant. They can make entire worlds disappear. They can stop time itself.>
"This one doesn't look all that powerful," Marco said skeptically.
<Don't be a fool,> Ax snapped. <That's not his body. He has no body. He is . . . everywhere at once. Inside your head. Inside this planet. Inside the fabric of space and time.>
In #26. The Attack, Ellimist moves the seven-member team a distance 500,000,000 light-years in an instant for their tournament. Days passed, and when the tournament was over, they returned to the exact spot the exact moment they left. The Ellimist also took a little girl's physical form. Here.
One of the kids stood up. I jumped about two feet in the air.
It was this girl named Beth. No one else moved. Just Beth. She smiled at me, at us, and I knew right away.
"Yes, it is I," Beth said.
"The Ellimist?" Cassie asked.
Beth nodded.
"Where's the big voice and the quick-change bodies and all?" Rachel demanded.
"I have chosen this form for a reason," the Ellimist said in the girl's voice. "I come today on a humble mission. I wanted a humble form. One that would not evoke feelings of dread or awe or reverence from you."
He spread Beth's hands wide, palms up. He moved away, and I saw that the real Beth was still frozen in her seat. The Ellimist had not taken her body, just her image.
After all, he wasn't a Yeerk.
The Ellimist calmly walked through several rows of chairs and the bodies in them. Simply passed through them like they were air. He stood in the space between the front row and the stage. Down by Tobias. Ax came up behind him, moving with the unnatural, liquid grace Andalites have when they are preparing to fight.
Crayak, when threatened, also killed his seven Howlers. Maybe not even killed. It's possible he could have erased them from ever existing, but in truth, it reminds me of the Hakai thing Beerus does. Their motions through space and time were erased, thus they came to a stop. Here.
I gave him a nod, took a deep breath, and slapped the probe onto the Howler's head.
<Time for an education,> I said.
The Howler glared at me with his dead blue eyes. He leaped up. He drew his Dracon beam weapon. He aimed it . . . nowhere.
He shuddered. He started again to aim the weapon. Then he shuddered again.
His eyes closed.
I stopped breathing.
Into the Howler's head flowed all the memories of my life. From vague, early images of my mother's face above my crib, to riding on my dad's back at some amusement park, to school, to friends, to all that had happened since we'd taken a shortcut through an abandoned construction site.
All that I remembered of my life was flowing into the Howler's brain. And the lives of Cassie and Rachel and Marco and Ax and Tobias. And even Guide. And the long, long memory of the android who called himself Erek.
All that we were emptied into that Howler's head. And from there would flow into the endless pool of collective Howler memory.
<Is it working?> Cassie wondered.
Suddenly, the Howler disappeared. He was simply gone.
The Dracon beams no longer burned against the walls of the room.
Erek stuck his head out through the door. "They're gone," he said.
Marco yanked the knife out of his stomach and began to demorph.
In the time it took him to pull it out, we went from that small Iskoort room to a very different place.
This further backs up what Ax had said, They could make whole worlds or solar systems vanish, just erase them from existence. Or send huge populations of people or only a tiny handful back across time or space, billions of years, or across huge distances, an instant, then back again. In fact, it's implied all the Ellimist cannot do is revive people from death. Lemme show you how the Ellimist perceives the universe.
I don't know how long I floated through this eerie, brilliant, wondrous landscape of pure energy and purest beauty. Time was for other creatures. Time's arrow did not carry me along with it.
I knew nothing of this. I was a mere creature, for all my multitudes, for all my powers, I was, after all, a mere mortal creature.
It was as if one of the primitive Andalites I'd known had suddenly been thrust into the command center of a starship. I was an ignorant savage. An extreme primitive.
But I knew this: As simple and primitive as I might be, I could literally touch and move the vibrating lines of space-time.
Was I grown extremely big? Or had I shrunk to submolecular size? Size meant nothing. There was no size in this place.
I lived, and that was all I knew. I was alive without form, alive without synapses to fire, without food to devour, without limbs to control. I saw without eyes and tasted without tongue and moved with no wings or pods or engines to move me.
This I knew.
And I knew one other thing as well, a lesson hard-learned from millennia of war: My foe would find me.
An absurdly rare event, a cosmic coincidence had fashioned me. The odds? The odds were billions to one, trillions to one, incalculable.
But those were odds of this thing happening once. The odds of it happening again were great. Crayak learned. Crayak watched. Once I revealed myself to him, once I acted in such a way as to show myself, Crayak would find the way to follow me here. And as I was unchanged in mind and morality, so he would be unchanged.
Carefully, frightened at last into true humility, I began to study this new environment. I found I could see into the real world, see the events and peoples who made up these space-time strands.
They seemed to rise and mature and age and fall in the blink of an eye, and as I watched and studied and learned I knew that hundreds of thousands and finally millions of years were passing in real space.
I saw Crayak out there, still at his evil work. I saw lines go dark, unravel, coil up into nothingness as he massacred planets. Billions of lives become nothingness.
I had planted a great deal of life, and my Pemalites still lived to spread more, but the tide was turning once more in Crayak's favor.
At last, knowing I had so much more still to learn, knowing my own deep inadequacy, I struck back.
Crayak entered a system of nine planets orbiting a medium yellow star. Two of the worlds, a red planet and a blue, were populated. The red planet was already doomed, its atmosphere was oozing away, and Crayak could do no real harm there.
But the blue planet teemed with life. The dominant species type were huge, brutish beasts in a fantastic array of forms. Giant, slow-moving plant eaters and violent, rapacious killers with tearing teeth and deadly talons. There was intelligence there, but no sentience, I could see it so clearly.
Not in the great, domineering brutes, but in a handful of small, swift, fur-bearing prey animals did the future of this world lie.
They had only to be left alone and in forty or sixty million years there would emerge a great people.
Crayak saw none of his, he saw only that there was life there. He aimed his weapons at the blue planet and fired, and I drew gently on the fabric of space-time and his weapons struck nothing. The planet was gone, halfway around its orbit.
He tried again, and each time I applied my crude but powerful countermeasures.
And then, in confusion, Crayak withdrew to consider.
I knew he would be with me soon.
He basically moves the strands of space and time and manipultes reality to obey his whim. Moved Earth halfway along its orbit to protect it. Then back again. And here's the scene where he perceives death.
I told the dying human, "Now you know who I am. What I am."
"Yeah, You were a kid. Like me in some ways, a kid who got in way too deep and couldn't get back out."
"A kid."
"You were trapped. You still are. I've been trapped."
"Yes," I said.
"Was I one of your game pieces? Were all six of us just game pieces?"
I considered that for a moment. Who is to say who is piece and who is player? How often had I wondered whether I myself was just a game piece in a still larger game whose players laughed at my pretensions?
"I did not cause you to be one of the six. You are . . . you were . . . a happy accident. An unwitting contribution from the human race to its own survival."
The human was silent. No begging, no pleading for life. At the end, acceptance came even to this strong, turbulent spirit.
"You said I could ask one more question."
"Yes."
"I can't ask if we win, I can't ask if it will all turn out okay."
"I don't know those answers."
"Okay, then answer this, Ellimist: Did I . . . did I make a difference? My life, and my . . . my death . . . was I worth it? Did my life really matter?"
"Yes. You were brave. You were strong. You were good. You mattered."
"Yeah. Okay, then. Okay, then."
A small strand of space-time went dark and coiled into nothingness.
Here is how the Ellimist describes his struggle with Crayak.
Stars, stars everywhere! Bright white points that burned with a steady light, and closer, so much closer, huge, sky-filling cauldrons of blazing hot gases.
His voice was in our heads now, reverberating through our bodies, huge and sad.
As I stood on nothing, floating on nothing, stars began to dim and die. It was like watching a charcoal fire go from blaze to hot coals to crumbling, gray dust.
<The result was something neither of us could tolerate. The battle we fought destroyed a tenth of the galaxy, millions of suns, millions of planets, a dozen sentient races.>
Before our eyes — or was it straight through our brains? — ran images, flashes of creatures in amazing shapes, in sizes and colors that made me want to laugh in sheer wonder. I saw monstrous mammals and tiny insects, species that lived in the sea and others that floated on air.
And one by one, they went as dark as their suns.
<A dozen sentient species, and more who would have achieved sentience, all destroyed, destroyed for nothing! But Crayak was damaged as well. The fabric of space-time, the software, as you humans would say, the software that runs the galaxy was damaged, twisted by the sudden explosion of our power.>
Once again I floated in that eerie n-dimensional space, the space beyond space where inside and outside were meaningless terms, where I saw the back as easily as the front, the heart of things as easily as the surface, the core of planets as easily as the crust.
I saw what seemed like threads, threads that could curl back inside themselves, disappear and reappear, twist and ravel and braid in insane complication.
<All Crayak's knowledge of space-time was now shattered. The few threads he had gathered to him were yanked from his grasp. Millions of years of effort wasted. We fell back, back from our test of wills, our war.>
I was in normal space again. With guts and cores and threads all back where they should be, twisted up and hidden beneath the surface of things.
<We knew then, Crayak and I, that we could never make war again. Not open war, at least. The conflict would have to be carried on by different means. No longer a savage battle. Now it must be a chess game. There would be rules. Limits.>
Floating across our field of vision, like distorted TV pictures, were flickering images of our own interactions with the Ellimist. The times he had played a role, though never a controlling one. When he had shown us that we could escape Earth and live on a sort of game preserve for endangered humans. And when he had used Tobias to help some Hork-Bajir escape to found a free colony.
And when he had twisted time to return Elfangor from his happy life, hiding as a human, to a world of struggle, pain, and ultimately death as an Andalite warrior.
Elfangor, who was Tobias's true father, and the one who had given us our powers.
Each time, we saw the Ellimist limiting his involvement, refusing to do a billionth of what he could do.
<Earth is part of our game, Crayak's and mine. He would have the Yeerks absorb humans and later be absorbed by some still more vicious species. But Earth is not the reason I have come to you now.>
The show was over. We were back in the auditorium, not that we'd ever really left, I suppose. And the Ellimist was a girl with braces again.
"For millions of years we have played our game," the Ellimist said. "And we have lived within the rules, more or less. But now war threatens again. There is an impasse. A species I will not let Crayak take. A species he will not let me save. This species occupies a unique location in space-time. It is a turning point, and if Crayak can annihilate them, his power will grow, his goal become much closer, his forces become more deadly than ever."
Also, Crayak gave Rachel his powers. Kind of like what Q did for Riker. In truth, Ellimist and Crayak remind me of Q. And again, we know Applegate and Grant watch Star Trek, and name-drop it numerous times within the text. They've also read Superman comics, Fantastic Four, among many others, so they're very familiar with classic sci-fi/superhero lore.
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Ummm, can you please list what specific hax they should have and not just keep posting walls of text?
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Telekinesis.
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Okay. Can also assume other physical forms, so possibly shapeshifting. Intagibility, as you saw when he assumed Beth's form and just moved through a row of solid objects. Also, freezing time, definitely. Time Stop.
Is Time Manipulation on their profiles? If not, add it. Time Manipulation and Time Travel.
Keep Space-Time Manipulation. Remove Omniscience, though. The Ellimist doesn't know everything. But keep Omnipresence, sure. I'd also say to add Spatial Manipulation and Teleportation too. And Power Bestowal. I guess Power Nullification too since Rachel eventually lost her powers Crayak and Drode gave her.
Matter Manipulation. Reality Warping, of course. Telepathy.
On Q's profile Probability Manipulation is listed under being able to detect and change the trajectory of celestial bodies, so arguably this too.
I'm hesitant to say Void Manipulation, but then, it is described that they can basically retgone an entire personal timeline of history so that you and your ancestors never existed going back for entire eons. Would that count? I guess include Existence Erasure too.
He also forced the Animorphs' bodies, in roach form, to demorph back into their human selves. What would that be?
Just looked at Q's profile again, and another good candidate for hax would be Perception Manipulation, given that like Q, the Ellimist can appear as different things to different people.
I don't know, what do you all think?
One thing I can definitely say is that his age is eons old. More than a billion years. His species is Ketran, that evolved into something more. And he's male, or was in his original Ketran form.
Is Time Manipulation on their profiles? If not, add it. Time Manipulation and Time Travel.
Keep Space-Time Manipulation. Remove Omniscience, though. The Ellimist doesn't know everything. But keep Omnipresence, sure. I'd also say to add Spatial Manipulation and Teleportation too. And Power Bestowal. I guess Power Nullification too since Rachel eventually lost her powers Crayak and Drode gave her.
Matter Manipulation. Reality Warping, of course. Telepathy.
On Q's profile Probability Manipulation is listed under being able to detect and change the trajectory of celestial bodies, so arguably this too.
I'm hesitant to say Void Manipulation, but then, it is described that they can basically retgone an entire personal timeline of history so that you and your ancestors never existed going back for entire eons. Would that count? I guess include Existence Erasure too.
He also forced the Animorphs' bodies, in roach form, to demorph back into their human selves. What would that be?
Just looked at Q's profile again, and another good candidate for hax would be Perception Manipulation, given that like Q, the Ellimist can appear as different things to different people.
I don't know, what do you all think?
One thing I can definitely say is that his age is eons old. More than a billion years. His species is Ketran, that evolved into something more. And he's male, or was in his original Ketran form.
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These are some absolutely massive walls of text. Pretty much no neutral party is going to look over this as is considering that a small book is being written in this thread.
Try to shorten it up and be more concise in explaining what you think the character should have.
Try to shorten it up and be more concise in explaining what you think the character should have.
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The High 1-C looks legit, but the walls of text are getting kinda annoying
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Sorry... also, seems I made a mistake and forgot the Ellimist had been upgraded almost two years ago. Sorry, again. I guess I was just utterly flummoxed he was rated so low. And was relying on that more from memory than anything. It's like if Q was rated 3-A. You see?
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Though you can add Biological Manipulation too (under the forcing the roach bodies to demorph thing). That's really all I can think of right now.
So, we are good on this so far? High 1-C with a hax list of Space-Time Manipulation, Omnipresence, Shapeshifting, Intangibility, Time Manipulation, Time Travel, Time Stop, Spatial Manipulation, Matter Manipulation, Teleportation, Telepathy, Power Bestowal and Power Nullification, Reality Warping, Probability Manipulation, Void Manipulation, Existence Erasure, Biological Manipulation, Perception Manipulation, and then adding his gender as male, his race as Ketran, and his age as one billion years?
So, we are good on this so far? High 1-C with a hax list of Space-Time Manipulation, Omnipresence, Shapeshifting, Intangibility, Time Manipulation, Time Travel, Time Stop, Spatial Manipulation, Matter Manipulation, Teleportation, Telepathy, Power Bestowal and Power Nullification, Reality Warping, Probability Manipulation, Void Manipulation, Existence Erasure, Biological Manipulation, Perception Manipulation, and then adding his gender as male, his race as Ketran, and his age as one billion years?
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Yes, that seems all fine.
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Mhm
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I really want to see a more consice version so some experienced neutral members can look it over. Upgrades to Tier 1 are no small thing.
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I'm knowledgeable on the verse and he is correct. That being said, yes we do need more input.
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I mean, Elfangor and Ax are the scientific advisors/alien weirdness experts, and Elfangor basically confirms that there are ten known dimensions of time and space, and that any Ellimist or being on that level would be above it, or at least on that level, capable of manipulating said strands of time and space, and what he sees later on when the Ellimist whisks him away from his normal three dimensions doesn't contradict it. Also backed up in The Ellimist Chronicles.
If not upgrading to High 1-C, what about changing his gender to male, race to Ketran, his age to one billion years old (confirmed in #26. The Attack), and then just adding the various hax tricks I wrote up above? That's all demonstrable techniques he has shown through space-time manipulation.
If not upgrading to High 1-C, what about changing his gender to male, race to Ketran, his age to one billion years old (confirmed in #26. The Attack), and then just adding the various hax tricks I wrote up above? That's all demonstrable techniques he has shown through space-time manipulation.
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No this is legit 10-D to possibly 11-D
ApiesDeathbyLazors
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Well, you beat me to my next project and this looks pretty good (though I do agree with Assult), but I'm kinda stuck on the whole Cassie knocking out fake time-lines thing. WHAT!?!
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Well, do you agree with upgrading Ellimist to High 1-C? Assalt wasn't certain, he wanted other, neutral members to come in and gauge it for themselves first. Yeah, the thing with the Time Matrix is that it created a composite universe made up of the Andalite homeworld, Yeerk homeworld, and Earth, and at the edges were Z-space, which is arguably an infinite white void. It's the realm where ships burrow into in order to achieve superluminal velocity. And the Ellimist is above Z-space, above this pocket dimension, above the Time Matrix, able to fix broken timelines, and of course, is above the ten normal spatial and temporal dimensions Elfangor mentioned that make up the universe. The thing with Cassie breaking down timelines... did you read the passage? I don't wanna post excerpts anymore lest I enrage the mods, lol.
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Try messaging staff members.
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