Lonely Hearts

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I would like to thank my beta, Akisu, for his help in this chapter.

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3rd March 2013, Sayre Manor

(Jasmine Sayre POV)

"You're right. I do need you. But what you've done showed me that I cannot trust you. You were supposed to be my rock, and yet you betrayed me. I cannot rely on you in the coming conflict. I am sorry."

"Please, my love," she protested. She must have realized where this is going.

I continued, "And yet, I don't have it in me to kill you. I really should; what you have done was unforgivable. But I won't." I pretended not to see her sag in relief, "you still need to be punished for what you have done. You will be exiled to the lands of Avalon. You will be confined to the castle, but you won't have access to the artifacts or the library. Should you take any malicious actions on the magical creatures inside, consider your life to be forfeit."

Selene was openly crying now, "Morrigan, please don't leave me there alone."

I ignore her, "Don't be mistaken, this is me being merciful. Goodbye, Selene."

Before she could reply, I opened a dimensional portal to Avalon behind her and telekinetically pushed her through. She should be at the castle now. After closing the portal, all I could feel was the oppressive silence that remained. With Selene gone, I have never felt so alone.

Honestly, even with my new disposition, things just didn't feel the same without Selene. It was odd; we had spent decades apart over the years, but it was never quite like this. It felt final in a way. Sure, we had our disagreements, and we even sometimes ended up coming to blows, but this was different, this was more.

I will never pretend to be a good person; I don't even know what a good person even is anymore. After living for a while, you just realize how narrow headed morals actually are in the long run. Good and Evil are human concepts created to make sense of the world around them. It's the foundation of society in general. Yet, I was sure that no matter my motivations, I wasn't a good person anymore. I haven't been in a very long time.

And Selene was neither. I knew that and accepted her. My wife had her moment of megalomania, of ambitions of conquest and power. She could be cruel, she could be violent, but she could also be kind, protective, brilliant, and generous. I could forgive many things. I am too old to worry about slights and insults. I can forgive grievances because I can understand how useless it is to keep a grudge in the long run. But what she's done, what she's committed was just too far. I had always known that she was ruthless and manipulative, but I had never thought that she would go so far as to betray me like this. I had trusted her completely, and she had broken that trust in the worst way possible.

What was done to me was something unprecedented. As a master of the mind arts, I am fully aware of the ethical issues that come with this mastery. I could alter someone's memories and perceptions. I could make them feel unbearable pain, and weave illusions over all their senses. Hell, I could easily mind control them, but what the mind arts couldn't do, was alter the way someone thinks. The way any sapient being thinks is developed over time, but it has a very strong connection to the soul as well. To fully alter someone's personality, their very selves, you need to change their souls as well as their minds, and that's what happened to me.

Yes, my mind was intact, but I was changed on a fundamental level. I was no longer human, yet I was not a celestial. The best way to say it would be that I am a hybrid with two sides constantly warring against each other. Whatever remained of my humanity was screaming out my emotions, my pain and suffering, but it was tempered by my celestial side that preferred cold logic over feelings.

The dichotomy was very disturbing, and I am constantly feeling as if I had two voices in my head that constantly contradicted each other. Yet, it was something that I needed to accept and learn to move forward, for my sake, and that of the universe as a whole.

It's been a few days since I banished Selene and yet, I still found myself wandering around the mansion, hoping that this was all a dream. Often, I just walked around and just started to feel the emptiness that Selene's exile left behind. For some reason, I felt guilty about what happened.

Despite everything that she had done, I still cared for her deeply. The thought of her being alone and confined in the castle was painful to me. But I knew that I couldn't let my feelings cloud my judgment. Selene needed to be punished for her actions, and my exile was the best course of action. It was also the most merciful. If anyone else, even Wanda, had done something like this, I would have killed them. Yes, I know that it was a horrible thing to say, but what Selene was done was unforgivable on so many levels.

Still, her punishment was to be banished to a realm of magic, with a castle that would cater to her every need. She just wouldn't have been able to steal any life force, since she can only do it to humans. Life force just had different frequencies for every being, and you can't absorb or generate another type of life force. It would be like getting a blood transfusion with the wrong blood type. Selene was lucky that her spell recognized life forces that are similar to hers, meaning that she could never absorb a life force that was incompatible with hers.

Even then, Selene's banishment was temporary. I will need her help in the fight against Entropy, and while I will not let her out for the Asgard mess that's coming, I can't afford to let her out in a fight where I'm already very disadvantaged.

Nevertheless, something did come from my new mindset. While I was now more apathetic, I could now take a detached look at my actions in the last few months and see if there was something wrong. I was never this rash, or impulsive and I needed to see why.

Looking back, I realized the irrationalness of the way I handled Rose's situation. I shouldn't have reacted this aggressively, no matter what my former sister said. She was grieving and angry, looking to blame anyone for her misfortune. But I used evocation of all things to banish her, something that I have rarely used in my lifetime, even then it was to deal with troublesome enemies after they were beaten. I didn't need to use such a wild branch of magic on my sister, and yet I did.

I didn't know if it was something Selene had done, that she found a way to enhance my emotions somehow. Because my rage was not natural on that day. To be honest, I haven't been a well-balanced individual ever since my pseudo-ascension and ritualistic incorporation of Ego's cosmic seedling. The way I handled the Court of Shadows was not wise. I should have just killed them all quickly and gotten it over with instead of playing with them and watching them get over their heads while being amused. I should have sensed the ritual, or at least the preparation stages of it, even if it was faint. And yet I didn't.

I did not know enough about cosmic energy to even pretend to know if this was a natural phenomenon, or if someone was actively manipulating me and my actions. Both prospects were very unsettling, but since I had no way of knowing, I tried to discard the idea from my head.

Funnily enough, there was a silver lining to this mess. My control over my cosmic energy had grown impressively. It now felt more instinctive to use cosmic energy than to transform it into magic and use it. It was more efficient, but I still found myself accidentally casting spells instead of using raw cosmic energy. I really need to research to subject more because while I do understand a few of its properties, I have no idea what the potential of cosmic energy truly is.

Back to the situation at hand, I needed to centre myself and forget about Selene for the time being. The convergence was nearing, and I needed to get ready. My bargain with Odin was very important for both of us. I needed to be at my best, not wallowing about my wife's betrayal.

I needed Thor and Loki to be ready as well. They had come a long way from the bickering siblings they arrived as, and I was confident that they had what it took to save their home and free Asgard from the hands of 'Those who sit above in Shadow'.

Speaking of the two princes, they did notice that I was different in many ways. I suppose they must have seen that something was wrong. I was colder and more clinical. They obviously realized that my wife was gone, just after I banished my own sister in front of them.

I did cancel their training for a couple of weeks after the Selene incident and I didn't even give them a reason. To be perfectly honest, I didn't feel like training the two princes with their countless issues and constant bickering with each other. I needed to centre myself and get a handle of the person I am becoming. While their antics are amusing and distracting, I wasn't in the mindset of enjoying myself. I had work to do.

Funnily enough, it was their bickering that helped train them the most. I barely had to do anything other than turn any training exercise into a competition, and they started acting like children trying their best to win. All I had to do was teach them for a couple of hours each day, start the competition and they would not stop training until the end of the day. I was then free of exploring my powers even further.

My experiments yielded very promising results. From what I could infer, cosmic energy was the base energy of the universe itself, which made it so flexible yet dense. I could theoretically transform it into any kind of energy that's local to the universe. I could turn it into electricity, use it to create magnetic fields, turn it into pure radiation, or even yet kinetic energy. However, it was potential energy that was the most flexible. I had the ability to imbue any object with energy, giving them attributes, and altering their purpose.

Of course, the psionic and transmutative uses of the powers are obvious, which are what I have been using my cosmic energy for in the past. I suppose even in my long life, I still had the inclination towards telepathy and telekinesis. We never forget our roots, I guess.

Unfortunately, I knew for a fact that I barely scratched the surface of what I could do. Celestials are often born with the knowledge of their powers programmed in their minds. And even then, they spent millions of years honing their skills. This really did show how much of a disappointment Ego really was. Sure, he created an entire planet, with a stable ecosystem, just to protect his brain, but with the firepower he had, he could have easily caused some serious damage. Honestly, I wasn't even winded after the fight, that's how bad he was. I was only beginning to explore my new abilities and for the first time in thousands of years, the road in front of me was mostly unknown.

Suddenly, I felt something click in my mind. Something was happening, but not to me, but to everything. It was odd. It was like the universe itself was misaligned for some reason. Immediately I realized what was going on and the implications that it had, "The convergence has begun. It's time."