He stood on the edge of what one might call nothingness. The Veil. It moved of its own will against the lights of the lanterns that were there to keep it at bay. It smoldered for reasons unknown to most. It screeched and screamed in a chorus of distant pain, of memories in which they were stuck. They too had their dreams, their desires. They too loved life and those who made life worth living. They too suffered, yet their suffering had never come to an end.
Who was the fool who claimed they could kill a god? Who was the fool who brought them here? Who was the fool who led them to die for nothing?
He stood at the edge of it, at the entrance of the abyss, of oblivion manifested into physical reality. He contemplated, for the last time, the question of utmost importance to a man courting death: If he died today, would he regret it?
He took a deep breath, steadied himself, and pondered the question and its implications. There was nothing else he could do but this. If he wanted to be… whole… There would be just this. How did he even get here? What had he done to deserve to be here, to stand here, to contemplate such things as if it were his destiny to simply walk in?
For a moment, he imagined rain. What would it feel like on him, what would it feel like on his skin, and what would it sound like?
Tap, tap, tap, tap… Time moved on without fault. Things happened; days, weeks, months, and years go past. One barely notices it as it happens. Moments just go by without a fault in the order in which they happen, but soon, one can’t tell what happened first, which thing was before the other, was this, or that? The next or the previous? Tap, tap, tap, tap… You can’t do anything about it. You can freeze it. You can’t stop it. It just goes on and on.
Then one day, you realize that more time has gone by than you had hoped. You’re older now than you were then, and you wish you were not who you have become. You wish you were someone else—someone you had been thousands of days ago.
“How did it happen? How did it all just slip away? How did I get here? How did we get here?”
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Everything went well. Perhaps that was the issue. There were no great difficulties with the little shop they had bought together. Within the first few days, they obtained the deed to the shop. Soon after, they returned to the Forum, this time only to apply for a permit. It had taken about a week before they got permission to open their shop, even though it was somewhat unclear what they wanted to sell and what services they wished to provide.
For several months, while they built their business, Kanrel lived with Y’Kraun and his family. There hadn’t been much to begin with, and soon there was even less. But it wasn’t Kanrel’s style to complain about such things; after all, this was what he was used to. In fact, he was used to having even less. It was quite clear that the years he had spent in the Academy of the Heavenly had provided him with the patience needed to have so little. All in all, he had grown into a man who didn’t really care where or when he slept, for as long as he was allowed to sleep at some point.
Y’Kraun was gracious enough to feed him, offer him shelter, and give him work.
After receiving the permit to practice business, it took about a month before they had furnished the shop and turned one of the smaller rooms into a bedroom that Kanrel could use as his home. This same room served as storage and as the place where the three could gather, converse, and relax when life gave them a chance to do so. This meant that he seldom had any time alone—truly alone. It was much different from his time at the Sanctuary. There was no one who wanted him gone. No one tried to kill him or isolate him from others—not even he tried to do so. But there were certainly days when he longed for solitude—to sit, write, and think without someone standing behind him or sitting beside him, interrupting his thoughts with concerns like, “How will we pay rent this month?” or “Shouldn’t we do this instead of that?” Essentially, they were almost always matters related to the business. There was not that much time for idle thought, nor questions about the future that he had envisioned for himself, nor the quest that he had set upon, nor the past that he had lived and the mistakes that he had committed. Life came in the way of some aspects of personal growth.
Perhaps this was good. Perhaps not.
At first, they did everything and all that they could—teaching the Darshi language to those who were curious, setting up meetings with Kanrel for them, and even selling books written in either the Darshi languages or the Atheian language, whichever preferred, to those who wanted to own them. Such books were about a wide variety of topics, some about the cultures found above, others about the life that could be found there, what humans were like, or what kind of world could be found there. These maps, depicting the world above, were not entirely precise, as Kanrel had not seen a map of it in a long time. Still, he remembered the most important landmarks: the great mountains, the rivers, and the largest cities, most of which were coastal. His map outlined the world’s shape and even marked locations shrouded in myth, such as the desert born from the lust of the Wildkin and the mountains where the Darshi gods, the Angels, were said to dwell.
It went on like this for perhaps a year or so. Their shop became a place that was somewhat known among the scholarly circles, and its location was quite convenient because of this; the location of the Grand Library wasn’t too far away, and there were some old students of Gor, who were excited to see what the professor had been up to. The world above was a great point of interest, as it was considered to be something almost mythical by many. A place of old stories and legends, it was a utopia to some, and some thought of it as nothing more than the place of their forefathers, a place they had been forced to abdicate. A lost home now populated by the strange, hairy creatures that were the Darshi.
But there were many other things that Kanrel could do that he could teach Gor and Y’Kraun as well. Healing and the so-called Medical Magic that he had learned as a student under Professor Forsvarn all those years ago. Something that he hadn’t practiced much in years, but something that he could easily pick up again, and by this point refine. Of course, Gor and Y’Kraun didn’t have the beds that were used at the Academic Hospital, so they weren’t able to practice this skill that much.
It was a different view to the medicine that the Atheians practiced; both, of course, used magic and there were many skilled healers, but the lack of simulations was something that was denied to them. They simply hadn’t crafted such a device. There were many similarities between these two different systems, and the knowledge of different diseases and medical issues, in general, was about the same that could be found above.
It was something that Kanrel wanted to pivot their business toward, to either practice medicine and serve as a healer or doctor for the Atheians that lived in the City of Last Light, or to be there to bring great innovation with the simulations and other devices that could help push the skills of many practitioners of medicine further. Yet both endeavors were impossible for him to achieve.
To become a doctor, he would have to study in the Grand Library—not for just days or months, but for years. It was a waste of time to go learn something that he mostly already knew, but he would have to do it either way, or he would be denied the permit to practice medicine, be it magical or not, within the City of Last Light as well as the Atheian society. One needed a permit for even this. Of course, one was allowed to heal small wounds of anyone if they had the skill to do so, but to have a practice, which then would be in fact a business, was very different.
Creating devices for simulations, like those used in the Academic Hospital of the Academy of the Heavenly, was even more impossible than becoming a doctor… He didn’t have nearly enough knowledge of devices, even after spending multiple months studying literature about them. He would have to spend, possibly, another year or even more within the Sanctuary to learn such a skill. There was only so much that he could figure out by simply playing around with a random device like a lantern. Besides, he had no idea how the device that allowed for simulations really worked. It would be like trying to build something you had seen only a few times, but this something was so complicated that you could only build what it looked like but clearly without the mechanisms and such that allowed the intent for which the thing was built to serve.
Simply put, he could build a bed—one could lie on it—but he lacked the knowledge to generate the necessary “code” for simulations. Thus, their endeavor was a useless one, and quickly it remained as only a passing thought of what they could do and nothing else.
And so, they solidified the focus of their business: the world above. After all, they had the only “expert” for such things. And so, much of Kanrel’s time was spent writing about the world above, mostly in his own language, so that Gor could translate it into Atheian; this helped Gor’s mastery of the Darshi language as well as his studies.
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Y’Kraun, instead, served as the “handler” for both of them. He handled everything else so that the two could focus on their work instead of worrying about other matters. He made sure that they paid taxes and rent; he made sure that there would be appointments and lectures that Kanrel and Gor could hold about the world above; he made sure that everything ran smoothly, even if it took years before he learned the necessary skills to do just that. Yet, of the three, he was perhaps the most motivated to succeed. Not because he was the most skilled, but because he had far more to lose than the other two combined.
He had his wife, his daughter, and soon a son as well. A boy they named L’ek’ral, “Light Above.” A new addition to their family, and much to Kanrel’s dismay, he was not named after him.
In moments like these, you want to believe that everything is all right, that you belong exactly where you are. You want to believe that life will get better, that everything and all will be worth it. You want to believe, from the very bottom of your heart, that this won’t be a waste of time. And not really for the sake of yourself but for the sake of that little gray thing wrapped in a bundle of cloth.
And so, years passed. The children grew older. Their business prospered as much as it could, though it had its limitations; there was only so much they could offer. With it being pointed toward scholarly circles, there really weren’t that many customers, but these customers, because of the place they had in this society, were quite wealthy, and thus the services and the books that they sold matched this demographic or wealth bracket.
Gor remained a single man, upholding his vow to make knowledge his only true lover, as would any true scholar. He didn’t need anything else. He had friends, and he could live vicariously through Y’Kraun and U’Ran’Ui; he was the goofy uncle to their children, the one who had more questions to ask than answers to give. Through all of this, he was perhaps the most content with his life. Finally, he was allowed to do what he most wanted to do. He drank his wine—this passion of his, and he lived well.
Kanrel wished he could be proud of Gor and the others, to smile sincerely and say their passion compensated for his own lack of it. But he could not.
Gor was happy, Y’Kraun was happy, U’Ran’Ui was happy, L’enu’m was happy, and L’ek’ral was happy. They were all happy; they lived their lives to the fullest that they could. Yet… Kanrel was on the outside of it all; even when he lived, he suffered, he worked and was part of those happy moments with them. He tried to live vicariously through his friends and their emotions, their happiness, but it could never quite reach him. He dearly loved them, of course, but what he had become, a priest so long ago, remained the rule of law within his mind and how he was allowed and how he could experience emotions, such as happiness.
Such an emotion didn’t exist for him. Instead, there was a lack of it. There was no love; there was just the longing for this emotion. He yearned to feel this happiness; he yearned to taste this wine of theirs, this passion that they all shared and lived through. In these dreams they lived, he felt like an outsider to them. He tried to believe that he belonged, but he did not. He wondered if he could find his place within this strange world, but he could not. Even when he had lived years among them, he remained an outsider, as a curiosity and nothing more to most. He hadn’t made new friends, really. Only those who were curious about him as something exotic and strange. As a source of knowledge about the things that were above. An outsider he was, and he remained one.
Not just because they held him at arm’s length, but because he couldn’t connect. Perhaps, not because he was different, a different species altogether, but because of what he had given to have the power he has now. His vow to bear the suffering of others kept him a stranger, an outsider, and perhaps an outcast among these people so different from him. It had been so even when he had lived above.
Of course, later, he would realize that there was much that he would miss, but he wouldn’t be able to feel the good things; he could only feel the hollow lack, the disgust he had for himself and what he had become. He was in constant pain; his mind was never truly at ease. And he could distract himself only so much, but each morning he would awake from another nightmare, another vision forced upon him by what could only be the Veil.
The shadows, the voices, the visions, the pictures—everything and all that had ever happened. It beckons; it calls for you. It was the voice that had called him to take entrance, to enter the ruins, that had led him through the labyrinth that was the temple that was found below, it was the same voice, the strange desire that demanded him to descend even further, it was the call Boran Walden wrote about in his journal; that made Kanrel step on the narrow stairs that lead into the darkness, that lead him on that platform suspended above the darkness below—the void that had its own call.
The mirror stood there and a reflection of himself, holding on to a cat and nothing more—a child who knew what it meant to smile, but despair lingered in those eyes, in that reflection of himself, that past who he had been. A different memory of who he could’ve been. A mirror that had shattered; a mirror that he had entered… All this because of its demands, of the voice that whispered and demanded and yelled within his mind, “Enter!” And so he had had to enter. A mistake. This one and so many more before and later on. So many mistakes that one comes to regret. There was so much regret. There was only regret.
During the years he spent in the company of his friends, he saw so many nightmares. Different and new, but they all held similarities. Either there would be a god or a butterfly, the perpetrator or the victim. Masses slaughtered in mere moments, the laughing of a tyrant with promises of more pain, of more slaughter, of more which one could only describe as absolute evil without even a singular point of confusion of what it could be, for there was nothing good about it, none could claim that such acts could produce anything good for anyone else except the demon that had sentenced all of them to death through suffering.
The guilt of an Angel who walked the ashen streets of a ruined city, his gaze always placed at his feet, his golden wings dragged along with him, cleaning away his steps but leaving behind a mark of his wings. Empty were the eyes of an angel; guilty were the words of a god as he burned another butterfly, as he scorched another living thing in the wake of a city once great and prosperous.
Indeed, who was the fool to think that they could kill a god? And who was the fool, who thought that they could be any better than the god he had killed… Who were the fools who thought that they could build a city free from the crimes of their past? Who were the fools that gave up on the said city, only to burn it, only to slaughter the last of their kin? Only to leave behind more things to regret. Only they are to be blamed for it. For everything that did happen. There is no one else to blame.
And at times, during and after each nightmare, Kanrel would wonder if he was to be blamed for it as well. Was he the cause of it all? Weren’t he Ignar, even if for just a moment…
Years go by, first just a few and soon almost a decade. And Kanrel lay in his bed; he was left to wonder about it and if it had been worth it. If he had been content. If it all had been a waste of time? He remembered fairly well the conversation he, Gor, and Y’Kraun had before they decided to form their own business.
Y’Kraun had mentioned dreams; he had wished to chase after his own dreams but to also give an option, a place, and a chance for Gor and Kanrel to chase their own dreams. He had mentioned the many excuses most would have. He had mentioned the things that placed themselves as an obstacle before those dreams.
Kanrel had such dreams. He had a dream of becoming what he once was. He wanted to shed away this shadow of his; to become a human once more, to feel that he did not lack, to find the ability to feel what being content meant, or what lust felt, or what love truly felt like. There was so much he wanted to feel. He wished to enter the Veil, to go past this obstacle that placed itself before him. He wished to enter it, even when it might as well mean death. Even if it could mean the end of all things. Even if it were the place where his dreams would wither and die away.
But he felt that it would be better than this. Even here, even among friends and people he loved, he still felt the lack of things. And this lack made this experience; these years feel like a waste; they made this situation, this bed, this room, this shop, this business, and even his friends feel like an obstacle…
Here he was. Years. He had wasted years.
And why? Because there was always something they ought to do. Be it helping a friend, doing complicated work, writing another collection of Atheian history to remember later, or reading one such codex. Another book about the world above, another lecture to hold, another student to teach, another month of rent to pay, another mouth to feed… someone else’s dream to live…
Had these years truly been a waste? He wondered, and he wanted to question this thought, all of these thoughts that he had. But he had just one conclusion. One reality. One realization: It felt like a waste because he lacked the ability to appreciate it now. He wouldn’t be able to know if these were the so-called “good times” of his life. Not now. Not ever, if he weren’t able to reverse the Ritual, the descent down the stairs; the descent into that oblivion that all priests of the Priesthood had to gaze into, to fall down into, to embrace as if it were their only lover…
There was something he ought to do, and he knew it. He had kept his promise to Gor. This was enough. He had other promises that he needed to uphold. Promises that he had made to himself years ago.
“Find a way home.
Find within the ability to dream again.
Forgive yourself, or find someone who can forgive you.
Find again what it felt to love—not the despair of it, not the loneliness of it, but the happiness of it, the warmth of it.
Try to live, not for yesterday or for tomorrow, but for today; not in the regret of past deeds or the worry of those to come, but in the present. There will be time to regret and worry either way.”
A list that he had made for himself. Promises that he had pondered about for so long but not made enough effort to achieve. And to achieve these almost mad dreams of his, he had to leave behind what he had here. He had to desert his friends. He had to leave this city, he had to leave these lands, he had to enter darkness, the eye oblivion once more, to find his way back home, to find his long-lost ability to truly dream, to forgive himself or to find someone who could forgive him, to find again what it meant to love, and not just its despair… To find how to live without the all-encompassing regret of yesterday and the worries of tomorrow; to find a way to live just in today and not live in a past that presented itself as the current.
Years he had spent here. For years he had tried. Years he had felt regret and guilt. Years he had suffered and wasted. It was enough. This was enough.