Chapter Three – A Clash of Starving Souls

I think I first fell in love with her in a past life, and the love we shared in Bones City was an echo of an eternal bond bound by brevity. It was proven by the fact that we could not live forever in the bodies with which we first found each other. Even now as I set out for a second time across the badlands in the opposite direction, I realized exactly what it meant to exist as twin flames dancing in an endless spiral. We were destined for an eternal cycle of immortal love, but each lifetime was ephemeral at best; we were cursed to find each other for only a fleeting breath in the eyes of eternity, and then the force of our fragile bodies would diverge us again and again. And every time, our memories would burn as the price to echo back into the other’s life.

Even as I crept through the starlit plains, I realized that destiny had likely intertwined us countless times already, but we never realized that it was just another iteration of this convergent series. I was the only incarnation that knew the truth, and therefore it was crucial that I keep these memories. Only then could we claim the eternal love that is rightfully ours. But if we sacrifice our memories to cycle on, then I must live forever if I want to recall the reality instead of rewriting it.

I physically wandered through the badlands, but in my head, I stepped through the way her words had rewritten my reality. I blankly watched meteorites shower through the starry sky, but I focused instead on the way that she and I are bound by each other and destined for another. I concluded that if I could step back from the world, I would see that these reiterated lives are not constrained by space. If I died in the desert by blade or by hunger, I could perhaps reincarnate elsewhere in the sand. But because it was unreasonable to presume that this cycle was constrained by distance, I could perhaps be reborn in Bones City. I could perhaps be born on an island in some unknown corner of this world. Perhaps I could even appear in another world.

But just like the way gravity pulls the fabric of the universe in all directions, anything unbound by space is also unbound by time. If I can reincarnate to any corner of this cold world without a limit by distance, then I could just as easily find my next iteration in a different time. There was no reason to suppose that my previous life had not happened in the future. If I died today, I had no reason to believe I would not return to life in a distant world, thousands of years in the past. I had no reason to suppose there was a finite number of cycles, so it was mathematically possible that two of my lives had overlapped. Perhaps I had met the previous incarnation of myself without ever realizing it; I sacrificed the memories of that life so that I could cycle on and find her again. I even imagined a dark adjudicator standing at the crossroads of a fallen past life, asking a weary wanderer in the hollows of death if he would rather keep his memories in eternal silence, or instead return to a new life but only for a cost. The memories we made are the price we pay for this desperate opportunity, but in the end it’s nothing more than an extra roll of the cosmic dice. I could envision this crossroads gambler in my head, almost as if my subconscious had summoned his silhouette from the stains in my soul.

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Every now and then as I wandered the starlit plains, I imagined the silhouette of the city walls in the distance. It was a fantasy unbound by realism, given that I had no reason to believe I had even walked in the right direction. Perhaps it was the way that my monomania merely manifested in my mind, like a myopic daydream of an unreachable reality upheld only by desire. But as soon as I rubbed my eyes, the walls faded from view, proving that it was the tireless reverie of a mind which acknowledged its own hopelessness. It felt like an ember left in the sand after the fire was extinguished, barely clinging to life, smoldering just enough to light the darkness, despite that it knew it would never rekindle in any way that mattered.

But just as that dying ember would cling to life out of pure intransigence, I willfully deluded myself to see the distant walls of the heartless city which banished Alyssa in the first place. I knew that even if I were miraculously walking in the right direction, it would likely take days to reach the city. I had no plan to find it. I had no plan to find her for our next iteration. My destination was locked by space but unbound by time. Even if I were to reach Ember Bay before my body collapsed, how long would it take for her to come? Even if I reached the shore she said, how would I find her? How would we know that the other was the one with which we were meant to spend eternity?

I postponed these concerns when I found the scattered remains of a broken body strewn across the sand. I saw patches of knotted flesh and human bones scraped clean. Torn clothes scattered the bloodstained sand, and shattered ribs suggested that a sword had dealt the killing blow. I was never a great detective, since my tunnel-vision conceals minor details, but even I could see that the murder was recent. The howling wind summoned sandy gusts with every second; it was in this way that the badlands concealed the madness by burying the tragic evidence. However, I saw no sand anywhere on the scraped-clean bones. I only saw faint footprints in the sand leading a short distance away. I saw the footsteps lead to a crouched silhouette which nearly camouflaged with the swirling sand. I noticed them at the same time that they noticed me. The person wiped their bloody face and then pulled themselves upright, lifting a sword from the sand at their feet. Unsure what to expect, I unholstered my own sword and took a backward step.

The swordsman said as his long hair swayed, “I do not have any scraps for trade. It is in your best interest that you move along.”

I asked with an anger which echoed the abyss, “Did you kill a woman and steal her necklace?”

But the cannibal merely laughed as he said, “There are too many killers, and too many dead. More people wander this land than live in the city from which you so clearly came. We are all forced to feast whenever we can. You will never find one specific killer out here. Even if you could, it is more likely that you would merely find the man who killed her killer. It is just as likely that he would then kill you.”

“Is that really the way of the world out here?” I asked with a quiver which betrayed my fear.

He spoke as he glared with the eyes his hunger filled, “It’s the law of this world; it’s kill or be killed. The strong are meant to feed on the weak. Perhaps you come from a city unchained by this truth, but you sacrificed civility when you stepped outside the walls. The fact of the matter is that city life has softened you. You are weak, and everyone out here knows it. You will invariably die before you find the object of your quest, so if you’re damned to die anyway, I might as well be the one to kill you. I’m just so tired of being hungry.”