Disclaimer: I do not own the Power Rangers, they belong to their respective copyright owners and are used here without permission. No money is being made from this fic.
Authors Note: This is an alternate universe with an alternate time line.
Change in the Celestial Guard
In the Beginning, there had been The One. And it was from The One that the Universe had been born. It had been a random event that had triggered the explosion of energy that formed the foundation of existence. In the wake of the energy The One created The Celestials, beings that were charged with the task of following the energy and bringing some sort of order to the chaos of creation.
The Celestials did as they were bidden, using their incredible powers to nudge the formation of the Universe to follow some sort of logic. To start with they tinkered just enough that beings like themselves could find the environment comfortable. Their work passed at an uncontrolled rate. Sometimes they would spend years performing a task that required only minutes while at other times they would complete complex transformations that should have required centuries in a matter of seconds. Time had no real meaning to them allowing them to rapidly catch up with the expanding universe.
The history of the Universe was defined as ages. With each age that passed there came change. The Celestials worked tirelessly as each age passed, rarely allowing themselves to be distracted by the events playing out around them. As they descended through the dimensional planes that had formed naturally in the wake of the explosion, they gave shape and structure to each layer. As they moved onward, the changes they made were bigger in order to make those spaces habitable for what they sensed were increasingly inferior beings; the further they moved away from the origin point of the Universe the less advanced the life forms seemed to be.
And then following the defeat and imprisonment of The Dark One, The One ordered the erection of barriers between the many layers of existence. As a result The One's own domain was sealed from the lesser beings by a wall of golden energy, preventing access to The One outside of his domain. While the most advanced beings took a heavy shock from the sudden lack of The One's presence, the less advanced races showed hardly any evidence that there something had changed.
As time passed the most came to accept the new boundaries and contented themselves with the comfort of their new homes. The higher beings that possessed the knowledge and ability to alter their environment created dimensional buffers containing vast amounts of random energy to keep those outside from breaching their dominions. Although no barrier could keep the Celestials from entering any part of the universe they had helped create.
As each plane of reality locked itself away from those beneath, the Celestials found that the life forms they encountered were growing even more primitive and that the work they needed to created living worlds was increasingly more involved. The newer dimensions required more matter and less energy to sustain growth, which was fortunate because they could sense that the energy available to them was diminishing as a result of the higher dimensions blocking the flow.
And so, the Celestials reached a point after which they would stop descending through the dimensions and would instead concentrate their efforts on crafting a physical universe. They created stars, planets and even shaped the first races of the cosmos. They made the first races as close to those in the higher dimensions as they could. And then gave them the tools to partially shape and change the cosmos to their own vision. And the first thing the newly formed races agreed they would do with their combined knowledge and resources was to make their Universe a more logical place.
The Celestials took samples of the races that emerged on the planets that they had created. They accelerated their evolution, seeking those that showed signs of potential. And when they found those they believed capable, they recruited more of their kind and brought them together to work with representatives of other worlds. They gifted their chosen the knowledge to control and modify the universe around them and the technology to make those changes possible. With a combined efforts the Celestials' chosen tools they were able to rewrite reality and define a baseline of rules from which the Universe would function. Through the application of those laws of physics they made the forces that control existence constant and predictable.
And once their collective work was completed, the individuals were returned to their worlds where they would change their societies to reach the potential the Celestials had found. Although lacking the lacking the technology they had been given for the completion of their task, they retained the knowledge of how to recreate such works that would be passed down until their race reached a level of technology capable of building such tools. The Celestials saw it as a contest to determine which of their chosen worlds would be first to unlock the potential they had shown, and which would be lost along the way.
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At the beginning of the universe, the Celestials had been created to nurture the fledgling universe into something that would be able to grow and sustain itself. Over countless years they had moved down through the planes of existence crafting each dimensional level as they did so. They had used their powers to nudge the various energies and elements at hand to shape each level into an environment that could sustain the beings they wished to thrive there. And as time passed, they found that many of those that had been birthed in such environments required little intervention once they were established.
That changed when The One cut himself off from the rest of the universe and then the higher levels decided to close themselves off from the younger planes that the Celestials had yet to shape. Life within the lower dimensions needed more structure than those that stood above them. And it seemed that there were so many barriers between them and The One that their longevity was considerably shortened.
In order to give the life forms in the lower dimension an environment in which they could survive, the Celestials were forced to limit their creativity. They made the structures of the universe simpler, which had the side effect of limiting its growth. To get around that problem the Celestials created a pattern of worlds, stars and galaxies, which they then repeated over and over again.
They had not anticipated any problems with their solution, but they soon found that when left to its own devices, the cosmos tried to shrink back into itself with the pattern merging back into a single copy. Unwilling to see their work go to waste, the Celestials agreed to break the universe apart, separating each repetition of their pattern with and placing a void between them to act as a cushion. Walls similar to those raised by the beings of the upper dimensions were placed around each of the duplicate patterns. But before they closed the barriers, the Celestials realised that they would need to make changes to the way they performed their task.
A new generation of celestial beings were required to monitor and guide the many copies of their predecessors' grand design. So, they created them. First came the Watchers or "The Eyes of the One" as the Celestial preferred to call them. They were given the task to simply observe and investigate but not intervene with events. And while they memorised everything they saw; they enjoyed a link with The One that allowed him to see his servants at work through their eyes.
Next the Monitors, each charged with guarding their own little copy of the pattern and making certain the barriers between them remained intact. The Monitors were not supposed to intervene in events even when alerted to danger by the Watchers. They were there to summon the Celestials should matter require intervention.
And finally, they created the Builders or the "Hands of the One" as the Celestials preferred to think of them. The Builders were charged with taking over the Celestials' original duties of growing their own part of the universe and making it as unique and wondrous as the parts that had been created before the higher planes had sealed themselves away.
The Builders subdivided their labour, creating new workers to carry out the many tasks required to build a universe. And as they got to work, the Celestials of old realised that their purpose was almost at an end. They were obsolete, which led to the question of what to do next?
Some chose to remain in their role, overseeing the creatures they had created to perform their duty. Others chose to return to their creator. While some retired from their life's work and decided instead to study what had become of their creations. In some cases, they even attempted to make improvements or when confronted with something they believed had gone completely wrong: destroyed it.
And then there were those that simply accepted that their time of usefulness was at an end and sought ways to fill the void in the existence before the inevitable end. Some left the lower dimension and set up their own territory, although returning to play with their previous creations was not unusual. Others preferred to wander the void space created when they had split the universe. There they played their own games to quell their boredom.
Existence had changed and the single universe had become multiple universes. But as long as those living inside the barriers never noticed, then no harm was done. The final act of the Celestials was to make certain that those residing in the higher dimensions could not invade the physical universe. Since the so-called higher beings had closed themselves off from the lower realms, so the Celestials placed a similar lock on the over side of the barrier. This meant that to move between the levels of existence required the agreement of someone on both sides of the barrier. It was an action that many would come to regret.
In times to come scientists and experts would estimate the time that it had taken to reach this point. They would never be able to truly calculate such a thing. Despite the supposed passing of billions of years, time was not constant enough to accurately record how long had passed between each of the key events that had led to the birth of the cosmos. However, some bards would speak the truth when they told of how things had changed throughout the ages...
"Before the beginning, all existence was united in the darkness of the void. For there was nothing else.
In the First Age, there came The One and through him the universe was made. In the Second Age, the universe grew and evolved. Life emerged and the struggle between Good and Evil began. At its conclusiong The Dark One was imrpisoned in the depths of exitence and the Avatar of Light had been forever changed. In the Third Age, The One decreed that the layers of existence be divided and removed himself from actively shaping creation. At his command his servants did as they were told, sealing The One away from his subjects until he chose to drop the barriers and walk amongst them once more. In the Fourth, the remnants of the Dark Army warred with each other for the position once held by the Dark one and the former followers of Paladin found a new home. As the higher beings embraced the changes in existence, the mortal realm was given to an alliance of races to watch over it. It was their duty to protect it and nurture its people as they developed. At the end of the Fourth Age, those members of the First Alliance stood proudly as they congratulated themselves on a job well done before setting out to explore their work. And during the coming of the Fifth Age... the universe broke apart."
End of Part
