Chapter 273

  Wards of Eternity (IV)

Cain keeled over, toppling down onto his knees, darkness swarming his daunted gaze. The world within and without tumbled and tossed, silence like ineffable winds glazing over his tender frame. He felt like a shaking leaf in a storm, a solitary gust away from being ripped and torn asunder. There was little in the way of words and thoughts that he could conjure; inside his mind, only concepts, abstracts and fleeting, surged.

Unrelenting booms of seeming infinity continued to echo against the walls of his thoughts, tearing through any word he would conjure up, beating him down repeatedly. How long had it been? There were no words, no concepts, no notions. There was no meaning, no truth, and no lie. There was only eternity and its wards, like gateways to newfound realizations, gatekeeping realities from the unprepared.

He was the latter yet he walked through the gates, the arched behemoths that swarmed a looping tunnel of timeless infinity. One cycle represented a rise and fall of a civilization. Two cycles represented the fleeting conscience of the fallen civilization as it began to seep into ashes and indistinguishable molecules, returning to the nature. Three cycles meant the whole forgetfulness of everything. Four cycles a planetary step forward toward its own silent death. Five cycles a star’s glistening glow, the flash in the pan during which it lights up the entire cosmos, outshining the shine and proudly signaling its death. Six cycles stood for the darkening, the ghastly afterlife of the burn. Seven cycles... the death. Eight cycles... nine cycles... innumerable cycles...

He shook as his eyes shot open, his lips parting while his innards got flushed out. Unable to stop vomiting, acidic sensation burned through his throat, causing tears to swell in his eyes. Yet, when they fell, they were red like blood. Shimmering. Thick.

Silence permeated his mind and his soul, eternal, never-ending; all felt heavy, as though he wore a sheen of lead. He was unable to move a single muscle of his own will as the whole body moved on instinct. As it ran out of innards to pour out, in the midst of thin fluids, red of blood began to mingle until it was the dominant one.

“Fuckin’... fuck...” he garbled a few words out, forcing his eyes open. He was terrified of the dark of the closed eyes. That bleak, unending, unfeeling, cold, and utterly destructive abyss... was gone. He found himself back on the silver-coated platform, rings of fire roaring above him like wings of a seraph. Rolling over on his back, his innards finally calmed, though his throat still burned. Everything was fleeting, and yet here he was, everafter, still breathing.

A silhouette of shadows emerged abruptly from the seeming nowhere, looming over him, edgeless. Though it lacked any features, Cain could swear he saw it smile as it extended an arm-like tendril over toward him. Nonetheless, Cain didn’t have nearly enough strength to even blink, let alone move his entire arm.

“You look beaten,” the voice spoke. “But not defeated.”

“... fuck you, kindly,” Cain replied, the look in his eyes mortified. “And fuck you further.”

“...” the formless form sat next to him, ‘looking’ up toward the rings. “You’ve seen it, ‘aven’t you?”

“...”

“That is what everyone fights for,” it said. “Never quite grasping the futility of it all. Do you know how long it took me to understand it myself?”

“...”

“Until here, until the supposed peak,” the figure said. “All my life, my eyes were coated in the same rosemary sheen. That somewhere, somewhere out there, beyond the lay of the void’s curtain... a grander, greater, more fulfilling purpose awaited. There’s nothing, however. There never was. Never will be.”

“Nothing’s fucking terrifying,” Cain mumbling, cold beginning to seep into his soul. Just then, however, he felt a sudden surge of warmth that dispelled it all, seemingly a breath that brought him back to life.

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“... all the same, that eternal nothing, just like you and me, has a purpose of its own. The difference is... we get to choose ours. You’ve endured Cyclic Eternity, Cain Gregory. No matter what I tell you, it will be many lifetimes before you fully understand the weight of the today’s events. Far more than your thievery and far more than anything else uniquely yours... today’s events will define your future beyond description.”

“... is it true?” Cain asked. “The Cycles, I mean.”

“Someplace, sometime, someway,” the figure replied coyly, taking a brief pause before continuing. “Every species’ greatest sin is entirely outside their control. When I was a babe, stars were giant gods controlling my fate. Distant, galactic discs their battlefields, quasars remnants of powerful spells... those blinding flashes, we seen ‘em often. And every time, we bent our backs and kneaded our knees into the dirt, apraying. Praying their cosmic differences do not erase us. Until... until they did. Cycles... cycles are a whole lot like time, Cain Gregory,” the figure added. “Relative.”

“One day, if I ever get motivated enough, when I reach whatever and wherever you are, I will kick your ass,” Cain said. “You shouldn’t have let me go into that place.”

“You had to go there.”

“No”, Cain wanted to shake his head but was unable to. “That place is for the... ah, hell, fuckin’ psychos. Those fucks that crown themselves big-shots and single-handedly conquer a Tower.”

“Ah, if only there were a mirror there...”

“Fuck you,” Cain said. “Anyway, you promised me a peak.”

“Ah, I did, didn’t I?” the figure chuckled strangely. “Are you that eager to see it?”

“Nah, I’m just that eager to get the fuck outta this place. I’ll need months just to recover mentally.”

“... it took me Four Cycles,” the figure said suddenly. “Granted, I was nineteen and was not a thief. Still.”

“No, no, I’m all out of sympathy. Today, anyway. Come on, hurry up. I wanna go back and see ‘em again. It’s been... forever. Shit. I can’t believe I can actually say that now and genuinely mean it.”

“Ha ha ha...”

“There’s something majorly wrong with me,” Cain said suddenly. “Isn’t there?”

“Nothing in particular, Cain Gregory,” the figure replied. “Gaze, now, at something that nobody understands. Not even the grand, ol’ me.”

“Well, you certainly are old...”

“Hush...”

**

Two months had passed altogether, and despite the largely lackadaisical attitudes on the surface, most began to worry. Though they ventured away from the gathering spots for the trials, Emma was well aware that nobody had actually taken one ever since they reunited, but she said nothing. Unlike them, however, she wasn’t particularly worried. She had well enough faith to endure many more months. After all, she endured years previously, always hoping.

She didn’t try to reassure the others-- it was pointless, after all. Everyone dealt with anxieties in their own little ways, tiny rituals that go a long way to define a person by their habits and traditions.

Yesterday, everyone except for her dispersed. Though they said they were going to scout out the trials, she was almost absolutely certain they went to look for him or at least any signs of him.

“Eh? Am I early?” her lips curled up into a smile rather quickly as she heard the familiar voice. Looking sideways, she noted the confused expression and the same-old nonchalant attitude.

“About two months late,” she replied. “Everyone went to look for your weak-ass.”

“Wow, really? Holy shit... it’s only been two months, huh?” Emma frowned at the words, tilting her head. “Nothing, nothing. Just the trial. The bitch bent the time and I literally had to maintain elemental equilibrium for a fuckin’ eternity.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation, you don’t seem any different.”

“Eh? Really? Like, I don’t seem any more sagacious? Wizened-up?”

“Nah, I’m pretty sure you’ve reached your peak a long while ago,” she joked as he sat down by her side, kissing her gently.

“Well, honestly, that’d just be fucking depressing,” Cain joked back.

“Tell me about it. I keep hoping you’ll finally begin aging like a wine. But as the years passed, I just sort of accepted you’re more like a... balding head.”

“A... a what?”

“You know,” she said. “Inevitable, persistent, and depressingly effective at killing people’s self-esteem.”

“That made so little sense it almost felt as though you played back a recording of something I said,” he said, smiling lightly. “It was... horrifying.” Emma’s smiled flamed out as Cain lowered his head. She grasped it and gently laid it on her shoulder, caressing his hair with her fingers. “God, I really hate this fuckin’ place sometimes.”

“If it’s any consolation, Senna failed her trial completely,” Emma said. “So, y’know, that’s like three months of material for you to make fun of her.”

“Wow, really? She failed? Damn, it was either the hardest trial on the entire floor or so woefully antithetical to everything she represents it was like what white hole is to a black hole. Aah,” sighing, he lowered his head further and laid it down onto her lap. “I’mma take a quick nap while the others come back. Em’.”

“Yea?”

“I love you.”

“... love you to, C’. And don’t worry. If you truly spent an eternity elsewhere, now, at least, one with me won’t seem so bad, eh?”

“You ought to change your middle name to ‘silver lining’...”

“Ha ha ha, I just might... I just... might.”