B 3 C 40: EVERYONE DIES IN THE END
She asks, "When was the last time you got that serviced, or even looked at at all?" I half expect she's making a joke at my expense, but her question was made while gesturing towards the dagger in its sheath on my belt on the floor.
I glance towards the object Taylynn is asking about, my dagger. It takes me a moment to think of it, but I have to have had it for nearly fifty years now without getting it looked at.
I answer, "I uh, I don't think ever. It's supposed to be a sort of damascus steel alloy with some kind of secret ore that makes it a composite that stays basically sharp forever. It hasn't gotten too dinged up in five decades of use."
Tay shakes her head, clicking her tongue, "Basically sharp isn't good enough for what you're heading off to do. In the corner is my saddlebag, you'll see a dagger in a bone sheathe with alchemical symbols on it, grab it, keep it. Then toss me a clean blouse from the bags, would you?"
Taylynn then chides, teasing, "We got a bit sweatier than I expected to be honest. At least after how old you told me you were."
I feel my cheek hit the stone floor just now after I passed out, so I’ve likely only been unconscious for a few seconds. Everyone other than Mat is still in the process of turning towards me, or moving towards me, to check on me. That’s further evidence I haven’t been out for very long. As I struggle to my feet, doing a feeble push-up, Luni and Teuila each hook an arm under one of my arms and Lil bounds beneath me, squishing down to fit then un-squishing to help straighten me upwards. I shake my head and shake my arms free so that I can embrace Lil. I drop to my knees to hold my oldest buddy close.
I start, “Lil, I’ve missed you so much. What has even been going on? Did TQ somehow have you rerouting the ley lines? Do you know anything else of what we need to do to activate the shield?”
Lil responds, “Shield? I dunno buddy, TQ just said that everyone would die if I didn’t do this, and you seemed to trust them, so I did it. I figured a couple lonely months is a small price to pay if there was even a chance it was the truth, right?”
I nod, stifling a chuckle and a sob, “Yeah, yeah, definitely buddy, definitely. My Heart. The world is in utter chaos, bugs everywhere, spawn points are going crazy, the four gods are all awake at this point. Tenny is hovering over the Miracle Oak on the Elysium Ascent, Maka-Akari is going to accept her help to reach the Maelstrom for the convergence any day now, possibly sooner. I know she agreed to buy us time, but I don’t know how patient she is.”
Lil asks, “Should I know those names Pal o’ mine o’?”
I adopt a wry smile, shaking my head as I ever so slightly roll my eyes, “No, no I suppose not. The God of Fire was Lord Deckard Agni. I talked to him shortly after I left you guys with Dehlia. The Sky Goddess is Lady Tenith Grayl. The Earth Goddess is Lady Maka-Akari. You already know Leviathan, he’s all too happy to wipe us all out.”
Lil bounds against me, squeezing against my chest, wrapping their tail about my torso, “Sounds like pretty serious stuff Reggie. Dire things and all that. Is there any chance I can fry Mat when we do whatever we’re here to do with him here?”
I grimace in chagrin, “I um, I’m not going to give you an answer to that. We’ve got the six book owners here. I’m hoping that the books can help us solve the energy problem to start the shield.”
Lil nods along, “Mhm, mhm, and after that, then can I kill him?”
I chide, “Lil! I mean, it’s not like I don’t harbor similar feelings. I already killed him once, and it didn’t make me feel any better.”
Mat asks, “Do I get a say in this?”
The rest of us respond, “No.” He puts his hands up and takes a step back at the vehemence of our shared response.
Lil grumbles, “He hurt so many people, killed so many people. Dehlia was gone for a long time because of him. Ugh, grr. Whatever, let’s just do the book thing, yeah?”
TQ seems to materialize out of thin air, “Not quite so hasty my little draconic friend. You will indeed be able to accomplish what you’ve come here for, by simultaneously reading the last page in each of your books.”
I gulp. The last page? But that would mean, at the very least, we would know when we die. Or worse, it would mean that us reading the final page is the final page, because that’s when we die.
TQ nods towards me, “I can guess the thoughts going through your heads. There is indeed finality to this course of action. You have at most two days to take it. Any later, and there won’t be anyone to save. In fact, the longer you take to decide, the more likely fewer and fewer of your allies and loved ones survive at all.”
I glance around at the assembled people in a bit of a panic. If TQ is saying we’re going to die to start the shield, is everyone here willing to do that? My breathing grows difficult as I pant for air. My pulse races. I’ve been willing to die for my family time and time again, and even assumed I was already finished several times in my life. It’s not just my family this time either, it’s our extended family, our allies, friends, even innocent strangers.
Mat glares daggers at Luni, “Did you know it was going to come to this? Is that why you agreed I would go free after this part?”
Luni avoids eye contact as she mutters, “I didn’t know it would be this, not like this. I don’t know everything.”
Mat spits acid in a vitriolic reply, “Yeah, sure, ‘Sis.’ You still going to hold your threat over my head? What if I want to walk out of here right now?”
Luni’s eyes brim with tears, her downward gaze causes the tears to drop directly upon the floor, turning the dust to mud, “I wouldn’t stop you, but I can’t say what the others will do.”
Lil snarls, “I will kill him if he tries to back out of this. Maybe burning him won’t work right now, so I’ll just tear him to shreds. Don’t think I forgot about the spear, or the time I came back from my core.”
Mat throws his hands up once again, “Relax, it was just a hypothetical.”
TQ interrupts, "I believe you have a powerful soul that could possibly take the place of one of you. I'm not saying I'm certain it would work, but it could save one of you. I assume Reggie would be the one carrying it."
I look around at the assembled. The only one I can imagine taking that offer would be Mat. For the rest of us, going on without one another would be an unending hell til the end of our days. If we could even literally live without one another, due to our various physical, mental, and emotional links.
Mat catches my gaze, "Hey, don't look at me like that, I am not going to be the sole survivor that goes back to our family with the news of the rest biting it. Screw that. I already can't ever look them in their faces again. Look, everything sucks, but I'm doing this for my babies. I mean my, awe screw it, yeah, my babies."
I look at Lucky who just barks happily and spins around once, looking at me with a derpy canine grin, his tongue hanging out. I think that also meant no, he's happy to do this with us. He's amazingly intelligent, but much like Luna, can't communicate in ways I normally understand. My heart aches as I think about leaving behind poor lonely Luna, and hoping Linti makes it into the barrier with her last run. Maybe that’s why Luni’s message said we’d never see Linti again if she stayed with us to fight. She’d be trapped outside the barrier, and maybe the convergence would erase even her soul, if there is an afterlife. I suppose, yeah, it could be a long time until we see each other that way, waiting for Linti to live out her life before she reaches the afterlife. But then there’s the thing that Luni said recently, about us being able to maybe make it back a week after the convergence or so. That doesn’t seem feasible, unless we’re reborn somehow, at some point. Maybe Luni was just wrong? I trust her, but that doesn’t mean she has to know everything or get everything right. She probably wasn’t lying in any case. If she’s wrong though, that means. That means.
Oh gods, I'll never see any of them again. I try not to gasp or pant or hyperventilate. I'm struggling to maintain even breathing so that I don't break down in tears. Maybe Linti will train with and roughhouse with Luna, just, just imagine the future that everyone eventually has together, the future we will buy them. They'll get a chance to move on, live their lives full of as much love as possible. Maybe we'll hatch from new eggs someday like Oli and Penina?
TQ shakes their head, somehow reading my thoughts. Well, crap.
Trying to redirect my thoughts, I hazard a guess, “This powerful soul, would you mean the unhatchable Roc Phoenix Egg?”
TQ nods, “That sounds like what it might be, yes. The various wills that make up my being, from all the timelines have never made it any farther than this, so I didn’t know what it was. I know that even if you succeed, I will discorporate soon. All the wills that make up my consciousness will scatter, released into whatever there may be for an afterlife, if there is one.”
I frown, “You’ll die too? Is there anyone who isn’t going to die in this mess?”
Teuila sets a hand upon my shoulder, “Our family.”
Luni likewise sets a hand against my cheek, “Linti and the cats. Everyone at the Miracle Oak.”
I suck down a deep, ragged breath, “That’s, that’s good at least. Wait, we never got around to evacuating all the beavers, or finding the renegade contingent of critterfolk, or, or Neighbor-san.”
TQ’s expression is unreadable as they ask, “Would you delay, to seek them out, with the two days you have left? Knowing that every passing moment risks everyone else?”
The question lands like a jab to my gut. I’ve always said, my family’s safety is my top priority, full stop. Luni and Teuila nod along with my train of thoughts. Lil just frowns and growls at Mat.
I ask aloud, “Do we even risk fighting our way out to be able to say goodbye?”
TQ answers, “It will be all that much harder to return, as you’ve said, spawn points are going crazy, and will continue to go crazier yet still.”
I groan as I facepalm. I continue to press though, “Lu, the message TQ gave me from you was that we would never see Linti again if she stayed with us, probably in this final battle I’m assuming. But you said in the second option, we see her again after a very long time. But we’re going to die here, all of us are agreed, right? There’s no other option, is there?”
Luni bites her trembling lower lip, her gaze flits about nervously as she answers, “I, I don’t know. I didn’t know this would be like this. There’s, there has to be more. I don’t know if there are any other options though.”
Something about Luni’s reply seems off, but I’ll always trust her. I look towards Teuila who stands stoically with her arms crossed.
Te roughly jokes, “What, you think I’m going to chicken out from a little death? When it’s our family on the line? When Hunter might be on the line? Lin is, I mean we were. It’s, words, you know. At least like this, the big god beast things will reset all these crazy spawns and stuff, right?”
I ponder Teuila’s question, “I, I think that’s right. They said they were going to leave the land completely bare, and that spawn points wouldn’t even start to form again for a long time, if I remember correctly. If the shield works, the only survivors will be everyone at the Miracle Oak.”
That’s right, originally we were going to activate the shield in the hopes that by Maka-Akari’s hints, that it might save our families from the effects of the convergence. But now there’s a second reason to do it, to buy the settlement time until the convergence happens, so that everyone there doesn’t die to endless waves of hostile creatures.
TQ adds, “If you’re thinking there are only two reasons to do this, there is another. Surely you’ve seen it, Reggie? The Ley Lines, they’re weak, feeble, diseased. This world, this cosmos, this reality, all of it relies on those. They have never reached a critical point to spur an endless chain reaction. This is how to ignite that chain reaction.”
TQ questions me quietly, “Do you understand the candle metaphor yet?”
I squint perplexedly at TQ. Lord Agni referred to the mortal’s time in this realm as a candle that still had time left on it to burn, but there was mention of a candle once somewhere else. I don’t quite remember where it was, so I shake my head.
TQ clicks their tongue, “Pity. Well, just know that your souls are energy. Think of them like, well, an accelerant that’s always lit, as hot as phosphorous or something, and consider the Ley Lines thermite or some such. Or perhaps think of them as fissibile material, and the Ley Lines a nearly empty reactor. Do you get it? By spending enough souls, enough powerful enough souls, you can get the reaction to be self sustaining.”
I nod along quietly. It makes sense. Sort of.
I glance around with worried curiosity in my eyes, “So, the cosmos. There really weren’t stars in the sky until recently? They couldn’t be generated because the energy wasn’t propagating? But then why did they start being created if the energy was still finite?”
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TQ shrugs, unhelpfully. They’re hiding something, but it’s not something vital to what we need to do. It’s just a curiosity I’d like sated at some point. Well, not like there will be any points in the future to seek answers to my curiosities.
Teuila approaches TQ with hostility and malice, sensing the same thing I discerned about TQ hiding something. Te swings her fist and it passes through TQ harmlessly. TQ had mentioned before that it took effort for them to even be corporeal. TQ shrugs and walks through Teuila, unphased by her outburst, literally.
TQ casually states, “The process of reading, digesting, and enacting the final pages will take several hours. It will be grueling. I recommend you do what you can while you can. If you’re already decided, I suppose even if you aren’t, there’s nothing more tethering me to our world, I’ll likely be fading soon. Thank you again, for working so hard to fulfill so many wishes, of so many beings. All of you.”
TQ, a being that encompasses several wills, or maybe souls, saunters away through a wall. We’ll likely never see them again. I mean, we’ll obviously never see them again, we’re about to die. I check my inventory for anything useful I could leave behind in the hopes that someday it could prove useful to someone who finds it. Almost everything is soulbound at this point, frustratingly.
I ask, “So, do we risk trying to rescue and evacuate the beavers? Or finding Neighbor-San? Or, or anyone else?”
Teuila looks away, shame playing across her face. I can sense the guilt she feels at not wanting to risk our family for the possibility of finding others to save. Luni similarly avoids my gaze. Mat however meets my gaze sternly, disapprovingly. He only wants to save the Mana twins, more or less.
Teuila takes my hand and mumbles, “Hey, um, Spooterbutt. I, I know I don’t say the words often. But, but you know, right? Especially now, you have to know, right?”
I nod as I lean in to kiss Teuila softly on the lips once before I rest my forehead on hers. Lil leaps between our torsos and squishes into a shared hug. Luni drives the toes of one of her boots into the ground and rotates that leg side to side shyly.
I frown as I call out to her, “Lu, are you waiting for an invitation? Come over here. This might be the last time I get to say I love you. I don’t know if there’s an afterlife.”
I swear Luni mutters something under her breath, but I can’t make it out. Still, she relents and joins our group hug. Just then, Lucky’s Hunter form bowls over our entire group hug and he begins lapping at our faces with his enormous tongue. We all laughingly try to shove his face away, and Lil even resumes their secondary form to help shove Lucky off of us. I’m not sure it’s even fair to call that form a Lilagnewt form anymore.
As Teuila and Lil roughhouse with Lucky for a moment, Luni and I take a few precious seconds to kiss. We stare sadly into each other’s eyes. It feels like we were only just reunited. Luni pulls me into accelerated thinkspace, but the acceleration isn’t as strong as it once was. We sit atop our hill, in the shade of our telepathic tree and just hold hands in silence.
Luni breaks the silence just as I’m about to speak, “I’m sorry. There’s, I’m sorry. I know, I know that you, I mean. You suspect. I can’t, um. I don’t know how things go, or why things seem to be going this way. I swear. But I’m certain this has to work, you got us here, My Hero. You’ve got this, and I love you, always have, and always will.”
I chuckle wrly, “Always won’t be much longer this time. Eh Lu? I love you too though. You’ve always been such an endearing sweetheart. I remember when you were so shy that you would stutter when talking to anyone other than Lil. I didn’t even know romance could be a thing in our world, let alone in the future between us. Heck, I thought humans were a figment of my imagination, and they were my only source of romantic knowledge. I do love you though. It seems like, in some form or another, I always have. Technically, I’ve loved you since before I even spawned, because I kinda messed up and sent a copy of myself back several decades.”
Luni seems excited when I mention I’ve loved her since before I spawned, but then raises a brow as her face screws up slightly, “Wait, you what? But. What do you remember from doing that?”
I chuckle, chagrined, “I um, I had a panic attack just as I started it, so, um, I might be the cause of my own panic disorder? Maybe?”
Luni presses me further, “Nothing else? Not even…? Wait, um, no. No um, no past before you spawned? You, um, yeah you once mentioned that Elder Rinnia said you were a soul at the Miracle Oak before you were you, right?”
Did I say that to Luni? Or was she there when Elder Rinnia told me? I can’t remember. Well, she’s had plenty of time to hear that from someone at this point. I shake my head in response to her questions though. Our mental avatars squeeze tightly against one another as our telepathic getaway becomes unstable. It seems like even this is falling apart as our world enters a chaotic apocalypse.
When we come back to reality a few minutes after we’d retreated into accelerated thinkspace, Lil notices us first and rushes over to us. Lil wraps me up in their wings and tugs me close with one forelimb. I hug my oldest friend as tears stream down my cheeks.
I gulp as I try to say something, anything, “Lil, I. I. Glp. I. I love you. You saved me. You gave me heart and courage. You are the reason we ever found a family, that we ever found the people we fell in love with. You’re the reason for all of the best things in our lives.”
Lil playfully butts their forehead to mine, “Awe shucks pal. I love you too. But, right back at you, ya know? I’d just be some bored little spheriform lizard wishing to grow up into a big strong dragon one day, hopping around Fire Biome, eating bugs, if it weren’t for you. Oh hey! I got my duplicates working pretty good now, wanna see?”
I sniffle as I chuckle and nod. Lil summons their umbral duplicates from their inventory, and has them face off against one another in a wrestling match. It’s really impressive, it’s almost as if they’re autonomous at this point.
Lil continues, “Lucky and I couldn’t do all the digging alone, we needed some help, and thanks to you, that help was just sitting in my inventory. Lucky break, huh?”
I snort with laughter for a moment, unsure if Lil did that intentionally. I raise an eyebrow at their pun, and Lil looks into my eyes with a confused expression on their face. I guess it wasn’t intentional after all.
So, I respond, “Seems that way buddy, seems that way. It’s odd that us sharing skills, and yours bugging out, ended up leading to that. I had to put you into my inventory and then the duplicates and just, who would have thought that that’s how that would culminate?”
Lil shrugs, “I’unno buddy, but um. Thanks anyway. It was a swell ride. We got a lot longer than most. You know? All that time in thinkspace.”
I nod in agreement. Lil, Luni, Teuila and I have all had decades, if not centuries of idyllic time passed in thinkspace. I approach Teuila who appears uncharacteristically shy at the moment. I clasp her hands and gaze questioningly into her eyes. She nods, so the two of us make our way towards the tome pedestals two rooms away. As much as we love each other, there’s really nothing more we can say. As much as we want to cherish every second we have left, every second we spend is time that things could go wrong, time that risks our family.
Hopefully Linti and the Nagas make it into the barrier before we activate it. Hopefully Spice and Teodora can get the secondary construction done quickly enough that they can activate and deactivate small sections of the shield as needed, or cause it to be permeable from one direction and solid from the other on a whim. Obviously that won’t be happening now, or even today, but in the coming weeks, during or after the apocalypse, it would be nice if they had all the possible functionality at their disposal.
Lucky is the first to follow us, so I pause a moment to hug his enormous head. I ruffle the fur atop his head and play with his mane for a bit, all the while he’s trying to bowl me over to lick me again, but I hold my ground. Teuila laughs and pulls me away from Lucky so that we can inspect the pedestals.
Luni carries what we need to finish setting the pedestals up with the appropriate tomes. She’ll be along any instant now. I can’t imagine she wants to spend much time in private with Mat right before the end. Lil arrives shortly after Teuila and I make it to the pedestals, though Lil seems a bit out of it. It’s almost like Lil is on auto-pilot.
I start, “Teuila, Lil, Lucky, you’re all so important to me. I’d do this in a heartbeat for any of you, if I could find a way, I’d do this instead of you, I–”
Te interrupts, “Bup, nuh uh, none of that. Me and my dorky little dragbutt over here would do the same, aint that right Lil?”
Lil seems to snap to reality, then nods emphatically, adding, “Sure thing! Rej isn’t the only one that wants the rest of us safe. We all wish we could be the only ones leaving, so that the others could go on. But you know what? I’m glad it’s all of us at once. Wish I got to say goodbye to Dehl though. At least Mat is going down with us.”
Lil sounds so bloodthirsty about Mat, but I can’t exactly blame them. The Nagas were the first reptilian people we found that weren’t out to kill us, well, sort of. I’m sure Lil felt some kinship with them, especially with Dehlia. There’s no forgiving Mat for something like that, even if we didn’t personally know many Nagas. I am a bit surprised to hear Lil say they’re glad it’s all of us at once, but I understand the sentiment behind it.
Luni skips into the room, seeming more upbeat than I’d expect. She checks all of the pedestals and places all the tomes in the correct order. Telepathically she sends me a wink, which is ever-so mildly disquieting. That makes me think there’s definitely something she’s hiding. Why even bother with secrecy moments before our demise? Oh well, maybe she’s just being cutesy, trying to keep her emotions aloft to go out on a high note.
I run a finger around the edge of my tome, inspecting it. The word ‘gals’ flows into my mind, oddly enough. I take that as a cue to look at the gals of my inner circle that are here, the two women I’ve been in love with the longest in our current timeline, maybe in all timelines. Te’s hair is an absolute mess, even after having been hit with the soap stone repeatedly during and after battling, though I guess a spiky side-swept undercut doesn’t really change much if any patch of hair is out of place. Luni’s bob and her bangs are somehow relatively perfect. Hm, hairstyles, why am I thinking about hairstyles? Why does thinking about them seem familiar?
Teuila adopts her most human appearing form, and Luni follows suit. The contrast between their outfits like this is almost hilarious. Teuila’s gorgeous chocolate and cherry dress, and Luni’s dragon kigurumi couldn’t be more different. Lil surprises all of us by adopting a very androgynous humanoid reptilian form, unclothed, but still. Oh, clothes for Lil.
I mumble, “Um, that’s pretty neat Lil, it looks great on you. Te and I got this from a boss fight, it doesn’t seem to work like other magic items, but I think it would fit your Lilagnewt form. It’s some kind of stormy belt or harness, and it’s absolutely giant, and heavy. Here you go buddy, I uh, I guess like, happy birthday for missing your birthday.”
Lil responds while laughing, “Hehe, a present? Well you don’t have to twist my arm to get me to accept it, even at a time like this! Thanks Reggie, thanks Te, both of you, for um, thinking of me, even while we were apart. I missed you both, and you especially Lu. I love you so much. I’m a bit jealous that Reggie got to reunite with you earlier than me. Thanks for the thinkspace time though.”
I raise an eyebrow, Lu clarifies, “I was trying to focus on getting as strong of an acceleration as I could for thinkspace with Lil, that’s what took me a few minutes to catch up.”
Oh, that’s probably also why she was so happy when she arrived, she must have spent a couple of days with Lil if she was able to get thinkspace acceleration up to normal levels.
I start opening my tome, and one by one the others follow suit. There are wistful gazes, hateful gazes, gazes galore exchanged before we begin reading our final pages. It’s odd, the words on the final pages seem meaningless at the moment, yet I can feel time being stolen, passing more quickly than I want, racing towards our final moments. I fight to pry my gaze away momentarily, making certain I have the correct book. I do, but it looks like all of the others are struggling with the same theft of time. It’s almost as if the books are draining our futures from us. Maybe they’re doing exactly that. Teodora offhandedly joked that we would need over a decade of future energy compressed down into the here and now to activate the shield.
Actually, the ley lines that swirl as a mass of colorful energy surrounding us already seem slightly stronger. Okay, that’s all the sign I need that this is the right course of action. I resume reading my tome, even willing myself to speed further headlong towards the finality of it all. I read faster and push harder in order to catch up to the others that hadn’t broken away from their tomes at all. Finally, I can read the last word in my tome, the word is ‘world.’
I look up from my book, and the others look up from theirs as well, slightly surprised we’re still alive, but then the feeling hits. We’re each gripped by an invisible force, a force tethered to the tomes and pedestals. The force digs into us, leeching something away. It doesn’t take long to realize that it is life force, or perhaps the force is leeching our souls themselves.
As our life forces drain, hopefully saving our world, and loved ones, I look back and I can’t say it was a bad life. I’ve done things I regret, sure. There’s more I’d like to do, always. But here we are at the end of all things, sacrificing ourselves and hoping that it puts a stop to the destruction of the Miracle Oak by the four gods’ convergence. Even if it doesn’t, hopefully the energy we release to propagate and perpetuate our world’s existence will activate the shield on their sanctuary. It’s our only hope. It feels like a pretty good hope at least.
My oldest companion slumps and begins to derez first, their polygons are sucked towards the pedestal by way of the open tome. I don’t think I can bear to watch. I’m tempted to retreat into my mindscape, but then again, these are the last moments I will ever see my companions in all of existence. I can’t waste them. Lil offers no complaints as they begin to die again, it’s not their first time after all.
Lucky howls and begins to derez next. His polygons similarly float towards the pedestal with his tome. In a way, Lucky is my son with Luni. He’s a life that we went through a convoluted process together to create. Luni sends an image of her mental avatar blushing and nodding, but then blowing a raspberry in response to my thought. Even in the end she’s one of the most adorable beings in existence. I feel bad that in some ways we created Lucky with his eventual sacrifice in mind.
Luni shrieks in pain and begins to derez next. I can’t bear it, I almost break off and reset time to stop us from performing this sacrifice. I’m so in love with her, as much as I am with Teuila. Teuila is sobbing next to me, and barely preventing herself from telling me to do it. Te doesn’t want her Lu to suffer any more than I do.
Mataalii grunts, trying to put on a brave face as his polygons are slowly stripped away. Even after all this time, I’m still conflicted. I started to hate him, I really did. I couldn’t even comprehend that he might be able to be saved some day. I understand why I had to instruct Luni to let things play out this way, but having to kill my own brother, and seeing him resurrected was just, ugh. And now, to see him dying again, partially at my request?
The fact that I’m next, and Teuila has to witness it breaks my heart. Lil was My-Heart, their vanishing first feels like that’s the only reason that I can even persist. It feels like my actual heart disappeared with Lil, so that there’s nothing left to break or ache. Teuila will bear witness to my death, we still don’t know if it will be gruesome or if I will derez. My-Anchor left, so my sanity is barely here, or else I might still be able to seriously contemplate resetting time. Now I feel the pull. Blood drains from every pore on my body as it’s sucked towards the tome on my pedestal. This is it, the final goodbye. I can’t even tell if those are my tears, or just fluids being sucked from my eyes. As every shred, fiber, and atom of my being is sucked away from me, the pain is beyond imagining, yet I only care that my beloved inner circle had to suffer this, that my beloved Teuila has yet to still suffer this.
I guess I hope there’s an afterlife. I mean, there’re gods right? I manage one last sigh at my foolhardy hope as everything fades to black. The last sound I ever hear being Teuila’s wail of anguish, the last sight being Teuila’s hand reaching for mine as I reach towards her one last time.
Hm, the final goodbye isn’t so bad, the darkness is cool, but soothing. It almost feels like moving quickly in Teuila’s arms. Similar to her ability to travel at speeds too fast to comprehend while guarded against undesirable effects by ancillary powers. I did always enjoy that feeling. I suppose I could endure this for eternity. Wait, why’s the darkness awash in diamonds that sparkle like galaxies?
Oh, maybe it’s one last terror-induced out of body experience. There’s my body. I guess I died a gruesome death instead of derezzing after all. Wait. That’s not the body of Reggie Shellcracker. But somehow I know, definitively, that that corpse belongs to me. Why is Lil inspecting that corpse? How is Lil inspecting that corpse? How is Lil even there to inspect a corpse? Lucky joins in by sniffing it. Luni sits near it, she weeps several tears, kisses her fingertips and touches them to the body’s face. Mata appears nearby, distraught. What’s going on? The temple looks slightly different. It’s not quite right, it’s not the temple I know.
This can’t be right. Can it? If we’re in a different temple, we might not even be on the same planet anymore. That means we’re not in Can’Z’aas anymore.
Suddenly sensations of sound and touch return. Teuila’s hand is the first thing I feel as we seemingly arrive in a brand new world.