Now that I focus, I realize there’s a strong current of magic flowing around me. I tap into it gratefully and set to work on my wounds, patching up the holes burned in my flesh.

As I’m sealing the last of the gashes, Raz looks around at the dead land, then says, “Did you ever plan to have children?”

The question throws me and I squint at him. “I hadn’t given it much thought. Probably not. It’s hard to bring up a child when you’re busy battling demons.”

“The Old Creatures can’t reproduce,” Raz says. “It didn’t matter in the original universe, since we were immortal. That changed when the Kah-Gash fractured. Now every creature ages. We are captives of time and the price of our captivity is death.”

As Raz speaks, I stand and stretch. My stomach rumbles. I’m ravenous and thirsty, but there’s nothing to eat or drink, so I do my best to ignore the cries of my deprived body and focus on the Old Creature’s lecture.

“We accepted our mortality,” Raz continues, “but the Demonata craved a return to the way things were. They wanted to live forever. So they set about thwarting the hold of death.”

“How?” I frown.

“As long as the new universes exist, death will claim us all,” Raz says. “But if those universes are eradicated… if the Kah-Gash is reassembled and the old laws are reestablished…”

I start to tremble. “Beranabus said the Kah-Gash could destroy a universe. But you’re saying it could destroy both?”

“Yes. The Kah-Gash could draw everything back through time to the moment of the Big Bang, eliminate all that that has happened since, and restore the original universe.”

“What would happen to us?” I gasp.

“You would have never existed,” Raz says. “Time would be reversed. All the creatures and planets of the new universes would be wiped out. Only the Old Creatures and the Demonata would survive.”

“Why wouldn’t you be killed too?”

“We think we would be protected, as we were when the Kah-Gash exploded. If we are correct, even the new Demonata—the spawn of the original beasts—would be spared, since they carry the genes of their parents.”

“Then why not us?” I ask hollowly.

“You are not our offspring,” Raz says sadly. “New life was created when this universe was born. We have guided many species and helped souls develop. But you are not ours.

“We must go,” Raz says abruptly. “You need to eat, so we will move on.” He sets to work on the tiny patches of light in the air around us.

“What world of wonders are we heading for now?” I ask.

“We’re not going to a world,” Raz says. “We are going to a spaceship.”

I wanted to be an astronaut when I was younger, walk on the moon, fly around in a rocket, zap aliens with a laser gun, teleport across galaxies. I’ve done a lot more than that in the years since, boldly going places where no man would ever want to go. Still, that love of spacemen and rockets remains, and when Raz tells me we’re heading for a spaceship, I fill with excitement. But when we slide through the window, it’s into a large room of concrete walls, boxes stacked neatly to the sides, fluorescent lights overhead. There’s a small garden in the middle of the room.

“This isn’t a spaceship,” I grumble. “Spaceships are made of metal, full of stuff like…” I stop, realizing how ridiculous that sounds. Spaceships in movies and comics might be like that. But in the real world, built by beings of another planet, why should they be?

“Precisely,” Raz says. “This is a massive craft designed to navigate the vastness of space. It is the size of a city, home to two million creatures. They fled their dying planet long ago and have sailed among the stars ever since.

“Now eat.”

“Eat what?” I ask, looking around.

“Anything,” Raz says. “The crates are packed with nutritious substances. And there are bottles of liquid in those.” He points at the boxes to my left.

“Won’t anyone mind?” I ask nervously, not wanting to get on the wrong side of short-tempered aliens.

“These are excess supplies. Nobody will notice.”

I shuffle over to the crates and lift off the lid of the nearest box. There are large plastic bottles inside. The liquid in them is an unpleasant green color. The stench, when I snap the top off, is vile.

“Are you sure this is safe?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“Why aren’t you drinking any?”

“I don’t need it.”

Skeptical, I raise the bottle and take a sip. It’s disgusting! I spit it out and grimace, then reluctantly drain a mouthful and swish it around. The taste doesn’t improve, but after half a minute of swishing, I gulp, then lower the bottle and wait to be sick. When nothing happens, I drink some more, then look for something to sink my teeth into. The food is as unappealing as the liquid, but it fills me up. When my stomach can hold no more, I wipe my lips with a hand and glance at Raz.

“Done?” he asks.

“Done,” I confirm.

“Are you ready to go on a quick tour?”

“Can I?” I ask eagerly.

“I know you want to. I can disguise us to look like natives.”

“Great! Let’s do it.”

Leaving the storeroom, we walk down a long corridor, then take an elevator to an upper level. It looks remarkably like the elevators on Earth.

“You shouldn’t be surprised,” Raz says. “We sowed the seeds of intelligence among most of the universe’s beings, and the rest were assisted by those we first helped. There are many similarities between species.”

The elevator comes to a halt and the doors slide open. I step out into a noisy street that could be any of Earth’s busier cities. Buildings like ours, vehicles that look like cars, streetlamps and power cables. The only difference is that instead of a sky, there’s another level overhead. Otherwise it’s unnervingly familiar.

The same can’t be said for the people. They have no human traits. Long tendrils instead of arms and legs. Their faces, which are in the middle of their bodies, have several gloopy eyes set in a semi-circle around a small, toothless mouth. No ears or nose. Each is a mix of colors. They’re slimy, dripping freely as they pass. Smaller creatures feast on the mucus, an army of insect-like slime-eaters who gobble it up, keeping the paths clean.

I stare for a long time at the aliens, then glance at Raz and myself and frown. “We don’t look any different. I thought you were going to disguise us.”

“I haven’t altered our bodies,” Raz says. “I’m affecting the visual sensors of those around us, so that to their eyes we appear as they do. Yes,” he adds with a grin before I can say anything, “that is pretty cool.”

We wander down the street. I peer in windows as we pass, and even enter a few of the buildings, trying to figure out what the stores are selling, what the creatures are doing, what the buildings are for. Raz whispers in my ear as we wind our way down the street, then turn into another, and another, exploring.

“When the Kah-Gash split, the pieces of its soul shot off ahead of the blast, traveling faster than light or any of the other forces unleashed by the explosion. They darted in and out of the new universes, passing from one to the other as they flew farther apart.

“Eventually they slowed and drifted. Sometimes they floated across realms like cosmic butterflies. Other times they disappeared from one part of a universe and popped up on the opposite side in the blink of an eye.

“The patches of light you have seen since birth are physical remnants of the Kah-Gash. There were barriers of energy and magic between the squares of the original universe. When the Kah-Gash exploded, the barriers shattered, but their fragments were used to stitch the fabric of the new universes together. It took us a long time to realize that, since we cannot see them.”