A shadow loomed over our war.

I had long thought we were alone in our ability to stand outside the stream of time and pull on the threads of the universe. But I knew nothing of the evil that threatened to transform our chess game into a three-way, all-out war.

Crayak had come to this galaxy, chased out of another by a force greater than he. Greater than me.

That force called itself The One.

In many ways he was like Father. For milennia he did not show itself, and I wondered if he was just an echo from my past that Crayak forged to haunt my present.

But The One was real, and it soon became clear that he was not a creature of Crayak's.

Unlike Crayak, The One didn't want to cleanse the galaxy of all forms of life. He wanted to absorb all life forms into himself. He assimilated the bodies and tortured the minds of countless beings as they became a part of him, living on as corrupted and diabolical versions of their former selves.

The most frightening thing was that The One had a power far greater than Father ever had. While Father was condemned to solitude on a single planet, The One was more powerful than any force in the galaxy. While Father killed his victims, The One kept them alive, imprisoning their minds in eternal torment. He had absorbed countless races and beings, and its only desire was for more victims, more minds to consume.

He cared nothing for the game or its rules. At every moment he threatened to make open war, to rip and destroy the foundations of space and time in a cataclysm that would cause the universe to collapse.

But The One waited in the background as Crayak and I played out our game. The One was more powerful than either of us separately, but he feared a truce between Crayak and me. So he intentionally prolonged our game, sabotaging the efforts of whichever player seemed to be ahead at the time. As we played, The One continued to assimilate more and more bodies and species into himself, growing in power and strength. He provoked and distorted our game pieces to suit his whims, always preparing for the day when they would become a part of him.

In his endless search for more beings to control, he saw one of the human children. He saw the amazing potential in this human, saw his strengths and weaknesses. The One wanted to absorb him, despite the fact that he was a major chess piece in the game.

The One tormented his mind more fully than Crayak or I ever had. He called to him, grabbed his space-time line, changed his destiny to cross paths with The One. Bound by the rules of the game, all I could do was watch.

But I saw something. There was something about this human that both The One and Crayak had not considered. Something they hadn't understood, and dismissed as unimportant.

Something...

The One waited like a vulture overhead, ready at any moment to absorb the loser and crush the winner of the game. He would then be free to enslave the universe - a universe forever enslaved under his command.

Neither Crayak nor I could defeat him alone. An alliance between us was impossible.

How could he lose?

******

"Jake!" Cassie screamed.

I leapt impossibly high, jumping over the waves of Hork-Bajir trying to gut me, gut the tiger. But I was too fast for them.

Suddenly, coming towards my face! A rat!

It scratched at my eyes with small, sharp claws. I swung a mighty paw, but David was too fast for me, darting away.

Close, she was so close! Ten feet!

The Howler hit me in the side. Didn't even know it was there. But, couldn't stop. Had to help Cassie. Had to...

"KEEEEEEEeeeee-row!" Like a lightning bolt inside my head! I fell, and clawed hands reached for me.

A burning pain at my ear! A Yeerk, forcing its way inside. Nooooo!

Flash! I demorphed, human again, all my scars gone.

But all my enemies were lying dead, hundreds of them, piled high in grotesque positions. Their lifeless eyes stared coldly at me.

They could never demorph.

"Cassie!"

I went to her, sobbing, crawling away from all the death and pain. Away, to Cassie. Nothing else mattered, if Cassie was okay.

But she only smiled cruelly, raising a Dracon beam, pointing it at me. At me.

NO! It couldn't be!

"Cassie!" I pleaded. "It's me! Cassie!"

"You're dead, Jake," she said.

She was still laughing when she pulled the trigger.

FLASH!

"Captain, to the bridge!"

Menderash's voice pulled me back from another restless sleep. Another nightmare.

I knew the past was gone. It was over. Nothing could change what I had done.

Nothing could change...

The seventeen thousand Yeerks. Rachel. Tom. The auxiliary Animorphs. The innocent Hork-Bajir and humans, even the Taxxons. All dead, by my command.

"What is it?" I asked.

"That was my question," Marco muttered.

"Ship approaching in normal space, Captain. They've hailed us. Standard inquiry: our point of origin and destination."

"Okay," I said. "Answer them..."

To the Blade ship, Santorelli said, "There is no empire, Efflit-One-Three-One-Eight. The empire is finished..."

The Blade ship was surrounded by an ominous feeling. Like this was meant to be, like something had started that couldn't be stopped. Like we were destined to be here.

The Controller nodded. "You will place yourself under the command of The One?" he asked... "I command this ship, but I serve at the pleasure of The One Who Is Many. The One Who Is All...I will invoke his presence."

The screen glowed to life with a brightness that covered the entire front of the ship. In the searing light, the alien showed himself to us, his face morphing from machine to elf to the face of Ax.

"Save your tricks for this Yeerk fool," The One said. "I see the truth. I see all. Step into view, Jake the Yeerk-Killer. I know you are there, I feel your mind."

Like a twisted, dark version of the Ellimist. Like Crayak, only less controlled and more maniacal.

The One was the voice I had heard. The presence that had twisted my dreams into nightmares about the future. Where my past haunted me forever. Where Earth had fallen to the Yeerks. Where Cassie was cold and ruthless. Where my best friend was a Controller, a slave...

Where Rachel still fought, no matter her pain, her past.

No matter how evil The One was, it couldn't twist Rachel to anything. She was too strong. She was beautiful, faithful, and true to herself. She trusted me, even when I wasn't trusting myself.

She was the hero that I never was.

War destroyed her, I told myself. But she only did what she knew she had to do. She went after Tom because it had to be done.

To fight an evil, you must become evil. We fought for our world so that it would be saved for others. But it would never be saved for us.

"I'm here," I said calmly.

In that shifting alien face were every corruption, every evil, and such power that it seemed impossible it could be present in just the narrow confines of the onrushing Blade ship. It had to be destroyed.

"Can we shoot?" I asked, knowing the answer.

"His Dracon cannon have longer range and greater power," Menderash reported grimly. "And his defensive fields have been enhanced. I doubt our cannon can penetrate them."

"Thought so," I said. "But we're faster."

"Yes."

"Okay." I took a deep breath. I looked at Tobias. At Marco. "What was it, Marco? 'Crazy, reckless, ruthless decisions'?"

They were waiting for my command, one last time.

I looked at the Blade ship. I looked at The One.

For all my mistakes, all my failures. For all the people who had died because of my choices.

For Rachel.

"Full emergency power to the engines," I said. "Ram the Blade ship."

******

It was coming like a tidal wave, powerful and unstoppable. After so much time, after so many battles, after an endless struggle, I could feel it in the very fabric of space-time. So could Crayak.

The end was coming.

For the first time, he was unsure. He was nervous. He was afraid.

"He will not do it," Crayak boomed. "It is impossible."

I said nothing. Crayak exploded.

"You bent the rules!" Crayak shouted, as a vast red light filled my vision. "You manipulated him!"

"I did not interfere," I said.

We watched as the two ships met in space. The One was there.

"Liar!" Crayak reached out to strike me directly. But he was shaken, and his power was weakening. I easily blocked his blow.

"You lose, Crayak."

"No!" he shouted. "No!"

"You brought it upon yourself," I said, calm now that we both saw what must be. "You refused to believe."

"No!" But the red light was dimmed and fading. He turned to me, his old enemy, for the last time. "You knew all along what he would do!"

"No. I only hoped, Crayak. I played the game."

The game was ending. My time here was done.

Well, Toomin, you've come a long way from Ket, I thought to myself. I had seen my world destroyed, seen a billion lives' worth of death and destruction, and had fought for millenia against an evil too great for mortal minds to understand. But I could still hope.

Crayak was all but destroyed. His power vanquished, his dark light gone, he said finally, "This is the end, Ellimist. But there is still the Time Matrix," he said. "There is still power and corruption. And death will overcome you, even without me to help."

"It is the end," I agreed. "But after every end is a beginning. And as long as there is life, there is hope."

For so long, the fate and destiny of the universe had rested on the intricate balance of the triumvirate of great powers, the only three entities that had the ability to alter the infinitely complicated fourth dimension of time.

The Ellimist. The last of his kind. A dreamer of a peaceful universe, a place of endless art. A being of light and love.

But every light has its shadow, and the brightest hope has the darkest shadow of despair. Crayak was an unholy meld of creature and machine. Life augmented by terrible power. He thrived on terrible precision.

And thus a terrible war was waged between the two great powers, overseen only by The One. The One was indifferent to the meaningless clash of the titans. It cared not of the outcome, for it would simply integrate the victor to further strengthen its own conglomerate self. The One had even gone so far as to chase Crayak into a forced conflict with the Ellimist. It was Crayak's sole fear.

Aximili the Andalite recognized the significance that humans would play. For it was to be, that had not Jake Berenson been the leader of the Animorphs, that the Andalites would have won the war against the Yeerks after time enough.

But they would lose the greater battle.

The One was inherently all-encompassing, lacking any sense of individuality.

Crayak's ultimate goal was to become ruler of minions. Crayak could not tolerate him. The Ellimist's ultimate goal was to have peace and harmony, a world of art and uniqueness. The Ellimist could not tolerate him.

Crayak failed. For it attempted to destroy the easier prey, the Ellimist, before taking on the main task.

The Ellimist succeeded. For he knew that only by the destruction of The One would come the banishment of Crayak forever.

In an instant, with his sacrifice, Jake saved the universe. Sacrifice for another, together with the might of love, embodied in one act; so the bond of the human spirit flowed through Jake Berenson.

The One could not stand sacrifice, he who thrived on evilness and self-preservation. It saw that while Rachel would win the battle, the war would be lost. But it did not know that in her death, she would become a part of the Animorphs' souls, a part of Jake, forever.

Crayak could not stand love. Its actions were all the time known by The One and some of their goals were parallel. Crayak attempted and failed to use Rachel as a pawn to destroy Jake, the future hero of the universe, and ironically it was Rachel, through Jake, that saved all.

For both The One and Crayak had visions of a static world where rule was subjugated and all lived without individuality or as slaves. Neither would be possible if their minions knew of love, empathy, understanding. And neither near-omnipotent being could understand those things. Thus their downfall came through Jake.

And as the Ellimist said so long ago of the humans, they were indeed capable of understanding.

Without physical forms, The One and Crayak thrived on illusion, control, and evil. They were destroyed by the reality of friendship.

The Ellimist now was the sole possessor of the knowledge, out of all beings, of the importance of a single change, a single person. Jake chose to live with the burden of slaughtering thousands of living beings. With this sacrifice he substantially weakened Crayak and The One. With the purposeful sacrifice of his own life in favor of one he loved, he utterly obliterated them.

And in an instant, the Ellimist found himself without equal. He could choose to be monarch of the galaxies, unrivaled ruler of all. He could choose to enslave and command and destroy. He could choose the Yeerk way of conquering or The One's method of melding into shapeless unity or Crayak's way of fear.

Instead, the figure smiled.

The Ellimist knew his time as a chessmaster was over. There was time, perhaps, for one last change.

But how could he meddle again, knowing how infinitely complicated the universe was?

Without peer, he pondered the thoughts, viewing the continuum of space time as a work of art. So many swirls of lives, melding and affecting the others, forming a unification of unimaginable complexity.

The human race had been the only possibility of saving the galaxies. Their infinite adaptibility coupled with their diverse personalities formed a combination unmatched by any other species. Each human, each Animorph, was chosen to represent a part of the human spirit. Even Rachel, who had not been chosen, but was destined to become an Animorph nonetheless, as she had the unbridled ferocity of a warrior, a trait the Ellimist had overlooked. Thus, as they were part of every human, they never really died. The Ellimist was merely preserving what was already contained in every heart. And in this dimension, at least, they would not perish from this war of the triad. Not for saving the galaxy.

The sacrifice had been made, the Ellimist said to himself: they were merely receiving their just reward.

Watching over the final remaining sub-temporally grounded Animorph, the Ellimist, the last of his kind, made his final change, just a slight push, and vanished for the final time, never to meddle again.

As he disappeared, a quiet voice could be heard throughout the galaxies, a truth not defiled with evil heart nor enslaving spirit, the voice of the Ellimist.

"I win."