It was a strange feeling. Charlie had expected to stop being aware, to dissolve and leave all of the pain behind. Hell he even dared to hope that there was something beyond death, someplace after life he could meet Sabrina and their child.

But there was simply nothing.

It wasn't black. It wasn't white. It was truly nothing. Yet in this nothingness Charlie remained.

He remembered his wife. He still remembered the knife entering his skull, he remembered all of the pain he went through and the grasp of existence that still clung to him.

It was quickly fading though. That warmth that the sun had provided was dwindling, the pain that rocked his being was simply gone and even the simple ability to feel time passing was slowly fading.

Had it been there in the first place? It was getting harder to remember. Each moment felt like an eternity and an eternity felt like a moment.

Then, something changed. It was almost imperceptible at first, but when you've lived through an eternity feeling nothing, even that minuscule sensation was a shocking event.

At first it was a gentle warmth that suffused his being. Then a boundless energy filled his mind, allowing him the freedom to think and perceive once more. His memories then came back and with them, Charlie returned too.

Like a new born babe, he instinctually tried to use his hands and felt himself move. He had arms again?

Charlie looked down and saw a body. Not quite his body, but a body made of light. The sight of this body allowed Charlie to realise that his sight had returned. The nothingness that had enveloped him earlier was cast aside. There was perceivable darkness now and in it, he was the source of light.

Then there was another.

It brought warmth and comfort to Charlie, no matter their distance. At least he wasn't alone anymore.

He couldn't tell when his heart started aching, but he wanted to be near it. He didn't want to be by himself anymore, so distanced in this vast darkness.

Charlie felt something respond, not in a way he could put into words, but he felt it respond. The hope, deep in his heart, felt validated when he saw the light grow. He knew it could feel the mysterious pull, their connection.

Their bond quickly grew and the certainty in Charlies heart solidified. The light grew larger and larger with each passing moment - He knew that they would be together soon.

As it kept growing, Charlies own light started to pale in comparison, until there was nothing left. Charlie and the light had become one - snuffing out the darkness.

He felt comfortable and free once more. His body of light gained legs and in an attempt at testing them out, he felt that he could turn himself around. He could feel that his body had turned but he couldn't see any difference, the light was everywhere now.

Charlie didn't know how much time had passed since he became one with the light but there was a change. The light felt somehow, different. It suddenly felt a lot more physical and confined, like walls that were closing in.

Charlie started feeling a little bit claustrophobic and a seed of worry wormed its way into his heart. Until now he wasn't given reason to feel a shred of fear or doubt, but something wrong was occurring.

That feeling simmered away and eventually boiled into full fear when he saw one of the walls peel back. It reminded him too much of when he was a child, staring at his walls that had paint flaking away.

A murky light of black and green peeked through the edges - It felt threatening and piercing.

Tentacles made of that light slithered their way from behind the wall, filling this world of light with its corruption. They writhed and wriggled their way looking to fill every nook and cranny, draining the light from the white world and slowly took on a beautiful golden white.

Until, one of those golden white tentacles found Charlie.

It paused for a moment, flinching back just a touch. Then it came back down and felt Charlie again, this time staying. Its touch was vile.

It felt perverted, wrong and dangerous. Charlie couldn't explain why he was so terrified, but he knew he had to get away.

But he was powerless to their advances.

The golden tentacles shot at Charlie quickly covering his entire being. He didn't feel pain but instead the tentacles brought revolting levels of disgust to Charlie. He felt like his soul was being ripped of its innocence.

The disgusting sensation didn't last long though. Once the final tentacle landed on Charlie his vision and mind faded to nothing.

Once Charlie realised he was awake again, the entire view had changed.

An ocean of blue light so vast and so grand that it seemed to go on forever. An ocean that ebbed and flowed through this inky blackness. It shimmered as if light was pouring down from the most beautiful sunrise, but there was nothing above.

He saw the ocean stretch from one side of his vision to another, but he couldn't make out where it ended or one began. It truly looked infinite.

Though the more he looked at it, the bigger it kept getting. He couldn't feel himself moving so he wasn't sure, but maybe he was being pulled in.

It didn't scare him this time though. The black and green light felt like a distant nightmare to him now that he was back in the warmth of this light.

The speed at which the ocean grew was quickly apparent to Charlie, as before he even knew it he was below the oceans surface. Though now that he was closer, he realised it wasn't one single body of water, but an incredible amount of these blue marbles that seemed to contain the stars themselves.

The most incredible revelation, though, was not what the ocean was made of. Instead the beautiful shimmer that Charlie saw was a creature of some sort standing atop these beautiful marbles.

Creatures. Some of the marbles had one, some had multiple but they all looked different. Every time he looked at one of these creatures he felt a powerful pressure fill him. It felt uncomfortable and even painful to focus on these beings of awe for too long.

He was forced to look away many times as his body whizzed past billions of marbles. It seemed that he was traversing in a single direction and was nothing more than a passenger.

That was until he saw it. Something that didn't hurt to look at but scared him nonetheless. In the distance he saw a new colour in this world of gold and blue.

An entity with three appendages that looked like spider legs, dark and pointed. It was standing atop one of these blue marbles - The stars and swirls inside this one seeming so much more lustrous than the rest. Its upper body was a mass of horrific red flesh riddled with the an uncountable amount of teeth, of eyes and mouths twisted in horrific expressions.

It had two arms on its torso, almost looking human in stature. The head that floated just above the shoulders was also vaguely human. Yet it couldn't be.

It was a skull, broken and torn open. From within Charlie could see an eye peeking out. It radiated black and blue light as it darted around. Atop the skull sat a bleeding crown made of that same red flesh.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

The entity before him screamed danger, everything about it was wrong and threatening. The creatures he shot past earlier felt warmer, felt safer and so much more inviting no matter the discomfort. This thing... Whatever it was, it was going to consume him.

Charlie wasn't afraid of dying anymore, but he was afraid of that. He had no idea what it could do, but there was no escape. He was in its direct path and he had no control over his direction.

The knife-like legs of the entity skittered across the blue marble. Charlie couldn't see what it was doing, but it had moved behind it now, out of view.

He didn't have to wait long though, the speed at which he was traveling now quickly brought that unholy being back into view.

It was breaking apart one of the golden creatures and shoving it into its billions of ravenous mouths. It was feeding.

It was revolting in ways that Charlie couldn't describe. There was no blood, no viscera or anything to disgust him, but the sight of the creature feeding filled him with an unholy repulsion.

After it had finished its grisly task, the entity turned. The blue eye in its skull locked on to Charlie and all warmth drained out of his body. Reality and time froze for a brief moment.

It's body twisted and turned in ways that felt unnatural to his eyes, quickly moving in his direction. The scale of this entity was beyond the simple mind of Charlie.

This sudden approach only made Charlie even more terrified. The size of this entity was not something a mortal mind was supposed to comprehend. The sheer scale of it threatened Charlie’s mind, but it wouldn’t break. Something was preventing Charlie from losing consciousness, straining his mind to its painful limit. If he were to die here, he would prefer to never comprehend how.

The entity in one moment was equivalent in size of the titanic marbles and the next he stood before him. Charlie couldn't blink so there was no way he would have missed it, but the alien entity appeared as if he had always been there.

The entity didn't speak, instead all of the mouths on its body opened and screamed in unison. The voices of billions assaulted his mind and with them came a flow of understanding.

I am interested.

A fleshy appendage dislodged itself from its middle and grasped Charlie. An immense pressure assaulted Charlies soul but he didn't feel any pain. It was scary but at the same time didn't feel like there was any malice behind it.

The pressure lessened allowing Charlie to look down, to see this being holding him from up close. The flesh had surrounded his entire body of light, and it was slowly sinking in.

It should have been scary. It should have been absolutely terrifying, but Charlie couldn't bring himself to be afraid.

The cacophony of screams had slowly turned quieter. The voices overlapped so quickly that it was impossible to make out any one sound, the noise dissolving into static.

The intent that flowed in didn't make any sense to Charlie, he was unable to comprehend what was being said to him.

'I... I don't understand,' he thought.

Strings of information shot through Charlie’s head. Things he had never seen, and symbols he couldn’t understand. Charlies soul was being suffused with an intricate weave made of the same symbols and took on a tinge of the murky red colour that the entity possessed.

The new light faded from view as the information reached its climax in Charlies mind.

The information was so foreign to him, so alien. He couldn't understand anything that was shoved into him. It felt like he could see the information but it was in a different language, he just couldn't translate any of it.

As he was just coming to grips with everything that just happened, Charlie looked at the entity before him. Something had changed about it. No, something changed in himself.

A thought bubbled out from within, something was unlocked in his mind, as understanding came.

Axxatal.

He was before Axxatal.

As soon as the realisation set in, Charlie was launched sideways at mind bending speeds. The marbles whizzed past him so quickly they blurred. Soon the the colours blended together and he felt that he was traveling through a tunnel.

Charlie fought back against the forces bearing down on him and moved his head upwards to look at where he was going. He couldn’t measure how long he traveled or how far he had come, but he felt something foreboding in the distance.

The tunnel of light had faded as Charlie left the warm embrace of the sparkling ocean and in that blackness he saw it - A crack. It was darker than the void that held the ocean, impossibly so. It felt like it sucked everything in its vicinity, destroying light itself.

He was afraid, of course, but there just wasn't anything he could do. He couldn't fight the force that propelled him closer and closer. He could barely keep his head up to even see his destination.

Charlie’s mind had given up trying to rationalise and understand the amount of impossibilities he had already seen. He just simply accepted his fate since...

The darkness was upon him.

---------

It was like breaking through the surface of an icy river. Charlie gasped for air but found himself not even able to breathe. Slowly calming down, he realised that there was never any air and that he was fine.

The other end of the crack was like staring into a mirror. He could see the same rapidly approaching infinite ocean. Not quite a blur or a whizz of colours, but he was going to reach it soon.

There were fields upon fields of these creatures in all directions. Each one was as mind bending as Axxatal itself. The sight of entities with many limbs, golden colours and geometry that didn’t make sense brought a familiar discomfort.

These creatures seemed to at least be somewhat different to the ones he had just seen. They all had what looked like a crown atop their forms, formed from lustrous metal that shone in colours of silver and gold.

Spheres made of eyes, bodies made of wings and shapes he couldn't name littered the horizon. There were even entities that never stopped moving, turning perpetually inwards or outwards.

There was a perceptible hum in the ocean. Not a vibration or sound, but closer to a feeling. Like there was power in this space.

The creatures that stood atop the beautiful starry marbles seemed to pull some emotion out of him. Was it awe? Did he revere them? It was strange, whatever it was.

Charlies speed was decreasing. It was unnoticeable at first, but now he was able to make out the vast bodies of light within the marbles. He was able to slowly take in just how tiny he was compared to these things, and just how far away he really was from anything..

He was really slow now and on a very clear trajectory with one of these marbles. This one had three of those golden and crowned creatures atop it. All with vastly different figures.

He wasn't able to really take in the form of any other creature before the one closest reached out. A body made of swirling gasses and light, of runes that filled Charlies head. He could tell that they were linked somehow but was at a loss for what it could mean.

His mind hummed with that same power. He couldn't pull his eyes away anymore, quickly falling into a trance-like state. It had Charlie locked in it’s sights, that much even Charlie could feel.

Some of the symbols and geometry made of light broke off the main body, and made it's way to surround Charlie. The closer it got, the more it resembled some sort of appendage.

The golden appendage clamped down and put immense pressure on his being. It wasn't painful but it was deeply uncomfortable, like it was diving deep. In search of something.

He hated that perverted sensation, it was doing something incomprehensible to Charlie and he hated every passing second. The discomfort was turning to pain when a power stirred within him, igniting.

There was an unmistakable hunger growing inside him. It started so gentle, reminding him that his stomach exists, but now it was screaming at him to feed. To gorge on anything.

Something finally clicked in Charlies mind. The hunger overwhelmed him and forced his body move against his will. The grabbed the golden appendages with all he had and forced them into his mouth.

The teeth sunk deep into the golden flesh. There was no resistance, the flesh ripping and parting for him as he bit deeper.

The feeling of devouring this thing brought such pleasure. Oh it felt so, so good to eat this thing.

The entities appendages crumbled under Charlies teeth and were quickly pulled away. Its main body shone in a myriad of flashing lights before it swung at Charlie. That same light that was inside of Charlie, now protected him from the titanic swing of the creature.

The hit connected but instead of disappearing into nothingness, he dove down into the marble. There was no pain, or even discomfort. A surprise for sure, but a thankful one.

On his flight down, the marble approached at a marvelous speed before he broke through the shell. Inside he saw a sight just as incredible. There were an uncountable number of planets and stars that filled this blue marble.

The further he flew inward the more he realised that he was less significant than the bugs that he killed in passing back in his previous life. In the grand scope of everything he has seen, he is insignificant beyond compare.

A new feeling shook him throughout his journey. The flesh made of runes and golden light were slowly sinking into his body, and with it came a lot of pain. Though once it was completed, something else unlocked in his mind.

Images of a wispy landscape, something so strange but so intimately familiar, flowed out from his mind and overtook his vision. In the sky he could make out some text made of formless clouds.

{Epitaph}

[No Strings On Me] We await your birth.

When Charlie finished reading what was written, he failed to understand what he was seeing. Was this his memory? Did this belong to that golden creature? It made little sense.

He then was pulled out of his stupor by a rapidly approaching gem of beauty. It reminded him of the one time he saw a picture that had survived back in his world. It was called The Pale Blue Dot and it showed a beautiful planet filled with blues and whites.

He knew that the picture was of their own planet and was even able to find a bit of information about it. It was hard since he couldn't read, but he found enough surviving pages of pictures to piece it together.

The gem before him shined even brighter than even the Pale Blue Dot. Shades of deep blue, lilac and vast swathes of green covered this planet.

In his rapid approach he realised that there were more features he could make out. There were deep gouges in the earth that seemed to break up the land like ugly scars and mountain ridges that reached the sky.

Though he wasn't given much more time to admire the beauty. The closer he got to the planet, the more his thoughts became muddled. His vision was the first to go and shortly after his mind fizzled out.

Ah, it's quiet.