Elspeth - Reforged

Elspeth looks down at her own hands. They, too, are opalescent in the light of this place. A curious sensation prickles along her shoulder blades; a glittering feather falls from nowhere to float before her. "Just so," says her mother. "You've done so well to get here, but there's one last step to take. You first must leave your old self behind."

"Is that why you brought me here?" she asks.

"You came here of your own volition. When presented with the impossible, you made a choice where others balked. You rewrote fate. Part of you knew it was time to awaken. The consequences of that choice are unfolding—and we are just ahead of its author, waiting for your chance to join the tale."

***

"You're certain?" the woman asks.

Elspeth nods. Her body feels strange, as if every nerve is alight at once. "This is the right thing to do."

"So it is. I cannot fight this threat alongside you, much as I wish I could. But I can forge you into what you were always meant to be."

Elspeth looks down at her hand, forming itself anew from the ether of this place. Here are her nails, here are her calluses, here are the lines of her palm. Fortune tellers said they could read fate in those lines. She wonders if any of them knew where she'd end up. "I'm afraid," Elspeth says. Once more it simply slips out of her. She didn't even know she was afraid until she spoke—but she is. There's a numbness creeping into the back of her mind. She thinks of Daxos, of Theros, of the home she once imagined. It all seems like a pleasant dream.

The woman embraces her.

"Fear is always the last thing to leave," the woman says. "You've slain it time and time again. Do not falter now, Elspeth."

It is the last thing she hears before Serra fades away.

What an odd sensation it is to be reborn—to feel yourself being stripped away and changed. The wings on her back are heavy as plate mail, yet she cannot remember a time she was ever without them. This body of hers is different—and yet it is as it has always been. She is Elspeth, and she is not.

There is no more room for indecision. The Multiverse hangs in the balance.

All her life she has been asleep. It's time to wake up, time to become what she was always meant to be.

Jin-Gitaxias raises his claws.

Elspeth's sword is there to meet them.

***

MARCH OF THE MACHINE | EPISODE 6: THE LAST TO LEAVE