Authors' Note: This story uses Ardil the Traveller's "A Single Wish" as its basis, taking that as occurring in the recent past, and Shadow having recovered only a short time before this story begins. We both hope you enjoy it!
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The Multiverse contains an infinite number of different 'realities', in which every conceivable possibility is played out. The existence of these many realities cannot be truly visualised in ordinary four-dimensional terms, for in such terms they are all in the same place, existing yet somehow not interfering with one another. There are more dimensions to space than those that humans can easily understand, and it is 'distance' in those other dimensions that separates the realities each from the other. Infinitely small, yet also infinitely vast, nothing can be contained within this 'distance' that is not - and yet there is something within the walls that separate the 'worlds'. It is formless; space and time have no meaning there. In almost all terms but one, it does not even exist. That one term is spirit, and that place is that which the Travellers would know as Waypoint. Yet there is more to this space, if such terms can be applied at all, than the Waypoint 'village'; for those who do not enter under the guidance of Those Who Walk the Worlds, it is a formless void, shaped by the thoughts of those who perceive it.
Due to the infinite nature of the Multiverse, all things must come to pass eventually, and have come to pass before, and shall do so again - for time, too, varies and shifts, where it has any effect at all. Thus, it must be that all enter the void, sooner or later - and remain there, timeless, forever. For although it can be left, since it is timeless, the time to leave does not yet come - a spirit there, once there, will remain unchanging forever. Although even there it is possible to change and grow under the illusion of time that most living creatures manufacture for themselves, each instant of that growth is preserved for an eternity that is but a heartbeat, a timeless forever.
And into this void, this formless, timeless, place that is not a place, have entered the spirits also of two great heroes - Sonic and Shadow, hedgehogs from a planet known to its inhabitants as Mobius. Hanging there in timeless darkness, but for the illusion of time they must create for themselves, the thoughts of both have turned to times past, to things that once were.
For Sonic, it is the robot named Hyper Metal Sonic that shapes his thoughts, those recollections that change the void around him into a replica of the things he had once seen. Again his memory brings him to repeat that sequence of events that led to the destruction of that robot, Metal - again, Metal commits his form to the lava; again, a part of Sonic's mind, his very heart, dies.
And as Sonic's recollections draw to their painful close, Shadow's memory begins to take control of the landscape... But the void, or perhaps those who rule it, or maybe simply the will of Shadow's heart, twist the fabric of that void to something else entirely - tipping Sonic and Shadow into a new reality...
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The Multiverse contains an infinite number of different 'realities', in which every conceivable possibility is played out. The existence of these many realities cannot be truly visualised in ordinary four-dimensional terms, for in such terms they are all in the same place, existing yet somehow not interfering with one another. There are more dimensions to space than those that humans can easily understand, and it is 'distance' in those other dimensions that separates the realities each from the other. Infinitely small, yet also infinitely vast, nothing can be contained within this 'distance' that is not - and yet there is something within the walls that separate the 'worlds'. It is formless; space and time have no meaning there. In almost all terms but one, it does not even exist. That one term is spirit, and that place is that which the Travellers would know as Waypoint. Yet there is more to this space, if such terms can be applied at all, than the Waypoint 'village'; for those who do not enter under the guidance of Those Who Walk the Worlds, it is a formless void, shaped by the thoughts of those who perceive it.
Due to the infinite nature of the Multiverse, all things must come to pass eventually, and have come to pass before, and shall do so again - for time, too, varies and shifts, where it has any effect at all. Thus, it must be that all enter the void, sooner or later - and remain there, timeless, forever. For although it can be left, since it is timeless, the time to leave does not yet come - a spirit there, once there, will remain unchanging forever. Although even there it is possible to change and grow under the illusion of time that most living creatures manufacture for themselves, each instant of that growth is preserved for an eternity that is but a heartbeat, a timeless forever.
And into this void, this formless, timeless, place that is not a place, have entered the spirits also of two great heroes - Sonic and Shadow, hedgehogs from a planet known to its inhabitants as Mobius. Hanging there in timeless darkness, but for the illusion of time they must create for themselves, the thoughts of both have turned to times past, to things that once were.
For Sonic, it is the robot named Hyper Metal Sonic that shapes his thoughts, those recollections that change the void around him into a replica of the things he had once seen. Again his memory brings him to repeat that sequence of events that led to the destruction of that robot, Metal - again, Metal commits his form to the lava; again, a part of Sonic's mind, his very heart, dies.
And as Sonic's recollections draw to their painful close, Shadow's memory begins to take control of the landscape... But the void, or perhaps those who rule it, or maybe simply the will of Shadow's heart, twist the fabric of that void to something else entirely - tipping Sonic and Shadow into a new reality...