"The door can sever fate," I said.
He brushed past me, down the hall. I had to trot to keep up.
"
We don't have time," he said. "Reports say Royalist armies are coming tomorrow."
"I don't think it can help you," I said. "
It is not a thing for war."
"
I'll be the judge of that," he said. "We need
all the help we can get."
"I'm afraid you won't find it here, Lord Starr. The door is for much more personal magic."
The house had been in my family for three generations. Before that, it was passed from one important family to another. It was never really about the house itself, but rather one particular door the building was built around. Currently it was
disguised as the front door, though access to it was not obvious to outsiders.
Lord Starr had done his research though. He knew exactly where he was going, though I was afraid he didn't truly know what he was getting himself into. It was well known that his people were collectors of the artifacts of Lin, and this door was one of them.
But what he expected to gain from access to it, I did not know.
"There we are," he said, stopping abruptly. "
This is it, isn't it?"
"Yes sir, but
it doesn't always work, and we've yet to figure out how to activate it consistently after all this time."
"That is not your concern," he said, removing a dark cloak from his pack.
He opened the door. There was nothing unusual beyond it. Only the outside of the house. He wrapped himself inside the cloak, leapt across the threshold. And vanished.
I never saw him again.
Starr was clutching the necklace around his neck. The wind was threatening to rip the cloak off his body, and he was forced to clutch that too. The necklace was getting warm, then searing hot. Starr was able to maintain his grip around it as
light leaked out from inside his fist.
At first he could see other stars in the sky but within minutes, the light from his necklace was so bright, it drowned out everything else. His cloak struggled to contain the energy around him, until Lin finally spoke to him.
"
Why are you here?" she asked.
Starr loosened his grip on his necklace, and could make out the rest of the stars once more.
"We are your descendants Lin, and
we need your help."
"Earthly matters no longer concern me," she said. "Look around you. You are merely one star among countless others.
Your fate is important only to you."
Lin brought Starr to her level, where he could see
all the galaxies that made up her form, where he could feel everything happening in worlds he had never dreamed about. It was overwhelming. And suddenly his world really did seem insignificant. The war, the deaths, the suffering,
it was all there, still there, and it was everywhere else too. But mixed into all that was everything else he had wanted for his home. Peace, joy, laughter. That was a part of everything he saw too.
Starr struggled to think straight. He could feel his mind beginning to dissipate, becoming One with Lin's point of view.
"Do you want to stop now?" Lin asked. "
Do you want to return to your former life?"
Starr hesitated. He knew
the correct answer was yes, but he had just experienced what he had always wanted. He would have to turn that all down to go back.
He struggled to hold on to his identity, everything that reminded him of who he was, and not the infinite identities that Lin had become.
"Yes, I have to go back," Starr finally said, though he wished he didn't have to. "I am still needed. And you are too Lin. Even if you refuse to help us, I won't abandon our people."
"
I'm not abandoning you," she said. "You can see you are and have always been, a part of everything, and you will be here again."
"Yes, I can see that," said Starr. "
Thank you. I'll be back again."
With that, Starr reassembled the cloak around his body and collapsed into his necklace.
There was a new door at his home now. One that appeared to have always been there.
One the building was built around.
He had access to so much power in his time with Lin, but there was
no way he could bring it all back with him. This door would have to do, an exit route for his people.
He sent messengers out with information about where they could go, and how
they could find escape. It wasn't going to be an easy trip though. But the dreams that lay beyond would surpass everything in their expected reality.