The being in oil seemed taken aback by my question. Its hatred didn’t still. So I continued before it had a chance to speak, if it even could.

“The people who wronged you, all of your loved ones, and everyone else you never got to know. They aren’t the same people any more. They never will be. What are you going to do when you see them? When you see your gods reigning over another species, giving blessings that didn’t save you? Can you accept that?”

I stepped forward, feeling my upper arms immerse in the oil of the pod. This thing before me wasn’t the signaleech. Its oil couldn’t take from me. It was something different altogether; it borrowed the slyk’s form and nothing more. I grimaced as all the buildup I’d gathered from fighting the signaleech was swept away in the oil of this ancient hatred, and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to get through to it. It had hated for too long that everything about it had become hatred.

“The End wants to save you. To remember you.” I murmured, offering an open hand for the being in oil to press its eye to. “But you don’t want to be remembered. You’ve already been forgotten, haven’t you? Only you know what you were, and it wouldn’t feel right for anyone else to know your suffering. But you can give some of it away. Trust some people with your secrets. A few of them will understand.”

To my absolute surprise, the being in oil let out an electric reverberation that sounded like a whimpering sob and pressed its eye to my palm. I felt the cracks I’d made dig into my gauntlet. Electricity flowed through me, leaving only emptiness wherever it went. It was a strange feeling; a hunger that could never be sated, a curiosity that could only go unfulfilled, love that would never be returned.

Trust that had been shattered so many times that it couldn’t be rebuilt.

Untold voices pleading in cacophonic harmony for so many different unfulfilled desires. For ends that had already come to be reversed. A plea for life in the face of a future that only brought hollow ends.

The words came to my mind from somewhere beyond me. An invitation that could be refused, but that none ever had. I knew that speaking these words would bind me forevermore. That I wouldn’t just be The End’s chosen; I would be something more. Whatever its equivalent of an ‘employee’ was. Not just someone who benefited from The End, but someone who brought something valuable to the table as well.

I spoke without hesitance. “The End beckons you. The Ossuary opens its vault for your mind and memories, and offers nothing in exchange. Everything is earned, nothing is sacred, and all is remembered. A hand extended, a mind open to the fluid state of existence. As Sebastian Cormier Persephonia, I offer this to you.”

My fingers sunk deeper into the eye, shattering glass as my fingertips pressed on with strength that wasn’t mine. The hollow electricity doubled in intensity, a variable wave that shifted from absolute nothingness to a different sort of empty that I couldn’t fathom as long as I was alive. I felt this being’s existence entwined with my own, their past and future knit into the tapestry that was and would be my life. Their strength was mine. My strength was theirs. Our existences were a symbiotic relationship in which both of us stood to gain and lose everything.

The signaleech’s eye shattered under my fingers. The binding was complete. And somehow, for some reason, I was included in it. “The End accepts your submission.”

A network closed to me. Stars winked out as someone else took what I had seen, and I heard a soft, singular weeping coming from everywhere at once. It was grief, sadness, and most of all; relief. I turned to see a figure shrouded in the dying light of the control point. Their face was concealed and their body hunched over cradling their stomach, but I knew this was what I’d just offered eternity to on behalf of The End. I stepped closer, closing the gap in one stride that felt like it traveled galaxies of distance, and placed a comforting hand on a shuddering shoulder.

“I’m not going to pretend I know exactly what you’re feeling, but I know what it feels like to lose everything you’ve worked for. Not as much as you have, obviously. Take all the time you need to grieve; hell, take all of time to grieve if that’s what you want. But The End wants to remember your people.”

“I know.” The figure whispered, their voice the soft crackling of static and the clinking of tiny pebbles. “It’s just… we haven’t felt anything in so long. Everything forgot us. Our own gods scrambled to save what they could, but even then, we were lost. Everyone. All of us.”

The figure turned to look at me, and I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Its eyes took up half of its face, a lattice of tiny electric hexagons that had a rolling dark spot within them that seemed to be where it was focusing on. Its mouth was a perfectly cut straight line near the bottom of its jaw, surrounded by rocky mandibles that moved on their own volition and held the thing’s jaw shut. But the thing’s main feature was that it was completely made of oil, with only pieces of rocky chitin there to make a facsimile of armor. It wasn’t quite a bug-person as I would’ve thought it, but more what a human could’ve looked like if we’d evolved from dragonflies. And rocks. And oil. And electricity. And a few other bugs mixed in, minus the extra arms and wings and segmented body…

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Well, maybe I didn’t know how to describe the figure. But I knew confusion and grief when I saw it. “Will The End truly remember us? We don’t even know what The End is, but is it powerful enough to skim multiple millennia of history from just our memories?”

I didn’t know the answer to that. But I wasn’t about to let this poor thing know that. “It will. I was about to be forgotten myself, and probably dead if I had to guess, but The End saved me and gave me a new core to live with. And I think I just found out how I can start to pay it back for that.”

“With us.” The figure said in an agreement of millions of voices. “We will go to the Ossuary and wait for your return, envoy of The End.”

Envoy? That sounded a little better than chosen, but I still felt the need to correct them. But when I opened my mouth to talk, a sound that somehow carried an entire message pierced my mind and gave me different orders. They were from The End, and they carried with them a warning that improperly inducting this being into The Ossuary could end up with them being completely lost in the depths of a dead galaxy for centuries until The Ossuary could finally detect them.

That didn’t sound like something I’d wish on anyone but Tarel. I gulped and nodded to myself, then set to following the instructions The End had sent me. Step one: give the inductee a name and position befitting them.

I thought back to the Overseer, the Archivist, and the Custodian. I wondered if they were their names or their positions, and the answer was suddenly in my head. It was both, but the ‘the’ I’d been adding before their names weren’t actually part of their names. That was what made it an official title. So I was about to give this being before me a name and a job that they’d do until existence ended. That was a whole lot of responsibility for one person.

As I looked deep into the being’s compoundeyes, many thoughts skimmed across the surface of my mind that didn’t feel like my own. It felt like I was skimming a thousand books at the same time, not taking in any information from any of them except for the one piece that I would know I was looking for when I found it. I glimpsed this being’s entire history in a few short moments, but took in so little of it that I came away with a single confident name and nothing more.

“Mortician.” I decreed. “You will catalog the dead and prepare them for whatever lies beyond, while granting an ounce of comfort to those they leave behind. Burials on the Ossuary are a simple ceremony, and you will transform them into grand farewells.”

Mortician nodded. Good. They didn’t seem to hate their new name or job. Step one was complete, which left two steps to go. “Now that you have a new name, you need to connect to the Ossuary. I don’t know how we’re supposed to do that, but apparently you should now that The End named you.”

“Of course. We will send out a beacon the moment we are free.” Mortician said. “The Ossuary will know as soon as we leave this… hazard. What a strange word for a strange place.”

Okay. Everything seemed to be going alright so far, and only step three remained. “Finally, I need you to tell me what your species was called. Not the scientific name, or the official name, but what would your people have called themselves if asked? A name that encapsulates all of your history, even if it isn’t what your history books call you.”

“That is a strange request, considering that we already opened our mind to the Ossuary’s archives through you. But if we had to name our fallen people…” Mortician sighed. “We would call ourselves the Celrien.”

Something creaked open inside of me at the mention of that name. It meant nothing, and I knew as much, but simply hearing it and knowing who Mortician had come from felt heavy. Like someone had deposited a chunk of lead in my gut, and now I had to live with it. I smiled down at Mortician and gently rubbed its head above its huge eyes, feeling thick oil against my skin along with the smooth dryness of rock and fuzzy numbness of electricity.

Wait. Against my skin? Even though I was staring down at my hand that was very much covered in my gauntlet? How the fuck did that work?

It had to be more of The End’s work. I pulled up my interface and checked to see if I’d gotten anything new, but something about where I was made everything fuzzy and illegible. I shrugged and closed it, watching as Mortician rose to its feet and dusted off its knees. It looked at me expectantly, and the weight of my responsibility only now settled on me.

“Wait. If you have to get out of the hazard, that means I’m going to have to take you out of here. You’re going to have to meet Okeria and Keratily, and I don’t know how they’re going to react to…” I gestured at Mortician. “A humanoid slyk.”

Mortician nodded in eager understanding. “We too are not quite used to this form. We were far more colourful and soft before we were all wiped from existence.”

I looked Mortician deep in their eyes, and suddenly all my worries felt so tiny. “You know what, who the fuck cares what they think. The End wants you alive, and if I have to pull that card to get them not to kill you, then I think that’s a pretty damn good way to reveal the surprise.”

The smile I got in return almost made me confident in my decision.

Almost.