The fates having watched countless Chronomancers come and go did nothing, for they had also seen countless Shadow Lord’s rise and fall.

Aria with a cry of defiance concentrated the power of all her temporal energies into her feet.

“Game over,” the Darkness hissed as it enveloped the Chronomancer in a field of absolute darkness.

A proverbial cocoon.

“Your tomb is filled. Your fate is sealed. You now have my permission to die.” It told her as the web of darkness solidified and turned black with intent.

A small murmuring vibrated from within the coffin of darkness. Before it could be made known. Aria jumped up and started running around. First frantically, then coming to a sudden halt.

She began to feel the forces of life beneath her feet. She lacked vision but she could sense “hot” and “cold” zones where life was negated thus she was able to avoid and ward off the Shadow Lord’s attacks.

“You are delaying the inevitable.” Said the Shadow Lord growing irritated.

The murmuring from within the cocoon of darkness grew in intensity.

Finally, even the evil Shadow Lord grew curious and opened a micro-hole in the darkness to allow Aria to speak.

“Game over!” She told the darkness, laughing hysterically between words.

“If you concentrate your energy away from your feet you will be immobilized in an instant.” It reminded her.

She had not forgotten this fact.

“ I surrender,” said Aria with another laughing fit.

She was talking out into space and not to the Shadow Lord.

When Aria had been trapped in the Shadow Lord's darkness she knew it could be either a tomb or a cocoon, an opening for a new beginning or another dead end.

That’s when she remembered the Tree-Being’s last words to her: “the future is uncertain.”

And that was when she finally realized something that she had not seen all this time, neither as a young elfling nor in her awakened state as a Chronomancer.

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She had told the Tree-Being she wanted to see the future in the Crystal Pool and it had replied to her “the future is uncertain.”

In other words, she could have stayed home and never have gone on her journey in the first place!

The future she had initially witnessed in the waters and wanted to prepare for was uncertain! All that time and energy spent in apprehension over something that may or may not have come.

The darkness and the many battles to come were but one timeline which never materialized.

“I surrender!” She now said more resolutely and calmly to the universe.

Aria had unintentionally become a famed Chronomancer – the stuff of legend– and yet there still existed a timeline where she tripped and lay exposed to the Dark Lord as had just happened.

Aria was beginning to accept what she had not seen at the beginning of her journey: her basic powerlessness!

No one could change fate, not because they lacked the godly power to do so, but because the fates were always changing.

Karma was another form or manifestation. A reflection of the Divine or Spiritual Mirror and as long one was always giving their attention to the reflection they were still dreaming.

Chasing one dream after another.

Freedom began when we stopped reacting to things and start acting out of a stream of conscious volition (mental stream) or stopped acting altogether and sunk back into ourselves.

Releasing our attention from chasing a dream leads to releasing our attention from attention itself. Then "consciousness" is left or that which generates consciousness and even that is not absolute.

The daily demands of the body might place continual requests on you but the experience of the absolute or the central unity of the world persists.

“The law of cause and effect exists for this body I’m housed in,” she mumbled, “but I am not the sensory limit imposed by my body and its cerebral organ.” Aria spoke without knowing what she said.

A light began to glow from within Aria’s chest and the cocoon of absolute darkness began to dissolve until it fell to the floor like jelly.

The Shadow Lord was stunned and irate all at once. For nothing in the manifested universe could dissolve absolute darkness except pure light. In a fit of rage and desperation, it placed it decided to kamikaze both of them out of existence with a sheer wave of darkness Aria could not surely stop.

“Goodbye … ‘old friend’." Aria said with quiet repose.

Channeling the inner light emanating from her innermost being she began to weave portal after portal of karmic destiny, temporal energy was gathering on a cosmic scale!

She was even able to pause-in-time the absolute darkness of the Shadow Lord and the dark entity altogether during its final cataclysmic attack.

"You've seen my people fall across a thousand timelines?" She expressed in calm rage.

"Then I'll create a thousand more timelines where we triumph!"

“You fool!!” The motionless Shadow Lord murmured.

“You will trap us both!" It went on. "You cannot create more time out of nothing without having to live it out first!"

As suddenly as it showed, did Aria as suddenly thrust her hands forward unleashing a supernova of pure chronomantic energy in the processes.

“I know.”

The Shadow Lord roared in silent fury as it was caught in the temporal maelstrom.

A blinding light eclipsed them both.

Rifts in time and space opened all around them, revealing glimpses of alternate realities yet to be lived as they were pulled into the time whirlpool.

Aria would lose all consciousness of her identity and the Shadow Lord would be relegated to a fragment of unformed energy.

The reel of destiny had come to a close with this one elfen being and was now being violently respun!