A Song for Winter: Nexus Point

    William’s new illusionary disguise amulet flared to life as he stepped out of the portal. Magic crawled across William’s clothes covering his armor and weapons in the guise of a black t-shirt and blue jeans. The t-shirt had some sort of design on it but he couldn’t read it in the dark room surrounded by a crowd of people. As William tried to push his way through the crowd lights from overhead flared to light and danced across the gathered crowd who started cheering. Several explosions of smoke and sparks lit up some sort of stage that instantly drew William’s attention.

 

    “Ladies, gentlemen, those in between, and those who aren’t either please give a loud applause for Archdruid Violet Lyons on the guitar,” a voice that appeared to be coming from all around commanded. Lights lit up a lioness that looked exactly like Violet started playing the guitar that sounded all around the massive room of cheering people. “On the bass give it up for Julia Stormchild the Valkyrie,” the voice continued as another light lit up a lynx that looked exactly like William’s dead wife playing the bass guitar. At this point, William began to panic a lot as these lookalikes confused and infuriated him as he began to believe it was all some sort of cruel joke.

 

    “You love to hate them give it up for The Scion on drums and The Necromancer on the keyboard,” the voice commanded as the instruments joined the song and lights lit up doubles of William’s enemies. Anger filled William to the brink as he began violently pushing his way toward the stage. Before he could reach the stage a loud explosion sounded with smoke, flames, and showers of sparks. “I am William Drackonas and we are Odin’s Bastard,” an exact duplicate of William announced as he stepped through the smoke and fire as the duplicate started singing. Instantly William was entranced in the lyrics of the songs as they seemed to mimic details of his life with slight alterations here and there. As the performance began to draw to an end a large bull in a security shirt handed William a piece of paper. 

 

“I know you’re probably confused right now and trust me I understand. Follow the person who handed you this note and I will explain everything after the show.”

-You

 

Not seeing much of an alternative William followed the bull to a lit room with a couch, some chairs, and a table full of food. Unsure what to expect he deactivated the illusionary disguise amulet and drew his witch knife as he readied for whatever was about to walk through the door. After several minutes William’s duplicate walked through the door with his hands up.

 

“Hi, this is probably quite jarring but there is more than one of you, well us,” the duplicate William explained as William searched him for weapons.

 

“How is any of this possible,” William demanded as he was satisfied that his duplicate was unarmed, “how is Julia alive? Why is Violet here? Why are you playing music with The Scion and The Necromancer? And who are you?”

 

Taking a seat the duplicate explained the concept of the multiverse and how there are countless versions of him across time and space. The version in front of him is the version that had never had anything seriously terrible happen to him. His parents were alive, married, and happy, he never had to seek vengeance, his sister who was his drummer had a great relationship with him, and no one was trying to kill him. In this world, Violet and Julia were with an adopted child that they loved to spoil. This William wasn’t married and was a bisexual who had a healthy dating life.

 

“Two things happened to me that I never expected,” the duplicate William explained, “the first was having a world-famous band that I started in my garage with my two best friends, my older sister, and her weird friend. The second was becoming the Nexus William. Every one of us ends meeting me at some point because this is the nexus point of the multiverse.”

 

Confused William asked a plethora of questions which the Nexus William answered with ease. This was nowhere near the first time this had happened so he had had plenty of practice by this point. Nexus William explained that there was Williams that succeeded in their mission and those that eventually failed. There was a William that had his soul split into a wolf and a fox, a William that mastered all the forms of magic before ascending to be a demigod, a William that worked as a killer for hire with a demon sealed in his left arm, and yet another William that ended up becoming the greatest warrior of all time before destroying his world’s access to the powers of magic. After meeting the multiversal duplicates their stories would echo across the void to Nexus William in the form of song lyrics. Hours passed as the questions kept flying but eventually, a portal opened up in the room.

 

“I give every one of us the same advice and those that choose to take it usually succeed,” Nexus William explained as he handed William a bag full of Odin’s Bastard merchandise. William stepped through the portal as his duplicate’s words echoed in his ears. Words that didn’t make sense at first but eventually made sense to him in the end.

 

“Forgive your enemies.”

“Forgive your enemies.”

“Forgive your enemies.”