Chapter Twenty-Six: Until We Meet Again (I1B0C26)

             Chapter Twenty-Six: Until We Meet Again

 

            As he stared over the southern shore of his island, Caelicola said, “I think I knew from the start that this was never about mercy. As much as I hate to admit it, he was right all along. Hatasuko is the only one who could save this universe from the monsters I created. My existence has only been a burden. I’ve poisoned this world with the power of creation, and now that same power shall devour me.”

            Caelicola had sent his family away from the fourth isle of Aether, having created a ship for them to do so. He stood alone on the shimmering rock which was stained by a large square of flat stone, marking the place where he had launched Hatasuko into space. He glanced up and watched a sea of dark clouds roll across the steamy sky. As the darkness consumed the starlight, a shadow fell across the ocean. He shuddered as he realized that he would never know the location of the Interfecti. In the past, he would detect them with his omniscient eye and keep his distance, but he had given that power away. When the dark clouds swallowed the light, Caelicola could not see his hand in front of his face. He created a bright flash of light with his left hand, and he used it to search the dark seas for an Interfectus.

            “Even if I can no longer see the monsters, I know they’re closing in. I can feel them closing in. They feed on my fear. They feed on every human life they devour. If they were to arrive now, if they were to storm my island and take my life, then the powers of omnipotence would be lost. Possibly forever. I’ve been so useless that this world wouldn’t know the difference; I’ve never changed anything for the better. Omnipotence belongs in the hands of someone who can save this world, and only one man can save it now. Hatasuko was always the one; he is the one meant to become God,” Caelicola announced to the silent sea as steamy waves rolled ashore.

            While creating a steady light from his left hand, Caelicola walked across the island toward the cave. He wanted to use omnipresence to teleport there, but he chose not to use it without omniscience there to steer him; it would be like flying blind. For this reason, he chose not to teleport onto Hatasuko’s spaceship; he had no way to know its exact location. Without omniscience to show him the universe, omnipresence was virtually unusable.

            When Caelicola reached the mouth of the cave where he had hidden his family from the world, he lifted his right hand to the sky and activated the power of creation. A large asteroid materialized above him, and since he upheld it with the creation of energy, it did not crush him. The asteroid’s interior was a churning cauldron of electrochemical energy, making it the perfect vessel for his powers in a disembodied state.

            Caelicola first pumped the power of destruction into his asteroid, directly into this pool of unstable energy. Once destruction was gone, he next severed omnipresence from himself and infused it with the electrochemical cauldron. His final power was that of creation, and as he transferred it to the asteroid, he triggered a cataclysmic creation of energy. Therefore, at the same time that he lost the power of creation, he also launched the asteroid into the sky with extraordinary speed.

            The catastrophic recoil caused a shockwave which blew Caelicola to shreds. The fourth isle of Aether crumbled with a deafening crack. The volcano beneath the island instantly erupted. The asteroid shot through the sky so quickly that its shockwave diverged the clouds, creating an artificial eye in the growing storm.

***

            Though he could barely move, think, or process any of the information he received, Hatasuko watched Caelicola die in the massive eruption. Waves rolled across the ocean from the shockwave; the lava was so bright that people saw it from Bones City. All of Agrideī quaked from the recoil of Caelicola’s launch. Across the land, every tree swayed, every street shook, and every house rumbled. Many frightened people screamed from the suddenness of this worldwide earthquake, but their screams were soon drowned out by the shouts of the tempest.

Every lost scream announced misery into the abyss, but their hopelessness resounded louder than ever. The broken souls in the tempest realized that they would never have their justice. The Interfecti would never fall at Hatasuko’s hand. Everyone still alive was in grave danger. While he was too overwhelmed to think clearly, he spoke for the first time since his banishment.

            “This is all my fault,” Hatasuko whispered to the empty steel walls of his spaceship.

            As his ship shot through space at an incredibly fast rate, Hatasuko tried to suppress the symphony of anguished screams. But when he turned his attention elsewhere, he realized that the eye of omniscience was just as heartbreaking.

Misery ran rampant, both in Agrideī and the other worlds in the endless sea of stars. From his hollow steel shell, Hatasuko watched people fight and kill each other in countless places. He heard desperate cries, the screams of children, and the hushed prayers of victims. He was forced to hear their endless misery just as the tempest had always done, but this felt viciously different. The tempest had always been an amalgam of voices and memories, but the sadness was condemned to an irreparable past. The tempest had always been a call to forge the world into something greater. However, the eye of omniscience showed him the present and not the past. He was forced to watch countless present tragedies, but he could not do anything about them.

            “All I see is sadness. All I hear is misery. The beauty of the present is that it’s supposed to be malleable; we’re supposed to be able to change it for the better. But all I can do is watch without intervening. The all-seeing eye of omniscience… truly is the ultimate curse.”

            Hatasuko tried to ignore the tragedies and watch the asteroid which chased him through space. He knew that the other powers awaited him in this asteroid, but it would take thousands of years to access them. The asteroid traveled slightly slower than the spaceship, and they both barreled through space toward a distant blue planet. Hatasuko could see his trajectory with his all-seeing eye, and he could tell it would take nearly two thousand years to reach that planet. He had no way to accelerate this journey. After all, the power of omniscience could not do or change anything. It was a transference of information which would never switch off.

            “Vaida, I wish you could hear me. I wish my words could reach you. I wish you were with me. I don’t know how I’ll ever accept any part of this,” Hatasuko muttered, and his words echoed quietly off the steel walls.

            As if it were purposely trying to torment him, the all-seeing eye of omniscience showed him a house on the blue planet. The house was on fire, and smoke plumed from its roof made of straw. People scurried out from the house as quickly as they could, running away from the searing flames. A young girl was trapped inside. Fire had engulfed every wall. The flames closed in around her while she thrashed and screamed.

Though Hatasuko wanted to somehow swoop in and blow the fire away with a swing of his sword, he was just as powerless as her. The young girl curled up in a ball, rocking back and forth, crying her lungs out as the flames licked her skin. Her cries turned to screams as the flames consumed her flesh, and her screams were soon silenced by her fiery death.

            “I’ve never felt this broken; I’ve never felt so alone. Is this the price for challenging the natural order? Perhaps I flew too close to the stars. I had a dream to save this world, but somewhere on the way, my vanity let me believe it was actually possible. I really let myself think I could do it. I really let myself believe it was my destiny. I really thought this world could be saved, that I could somehow find something other than misery. I let myself believe things could be better.”

            With a heavy sigh, Hatasuko opened his eyes and glanced around his hollow enclosure. Aside from the systems which ensured that he would have enough air and food, the spaceship was practically empty. The only items were those that he had when the ship first enclosed him. His sword, Vaida’s sword, and his sheath all drifted aimlessly. His half-empty bag of rocks floated with little movement.

            “The Astrodeus body does not deteriorate with age, so I’ll survive this unless I take my own life. But I can’t do that—not when omnipotence waits at the end of the journey. This means that I am condemned to this space for two thousand years. Cursed to watch tragedy, unable to stop it. This is my penance for chasing my dream, or for lying to myself and disguising a dream as destiny. It is a matter of actions and consequences. I sought to make a world without pain, and now I cannot see or hear anything else. I’ll walk alone on this dark path, reaching blindly through the shadows for the power I sought all along.”

            Adishina asked from the edge of the tempest, “But is that really a good idea? If chasing omnipotence is what put you in this place, perhaps you’re better off giving up on your dream.”

            “After I lost Vaida, I had nothing left to lose. In a way, it really takes the sting out of all this pain. It’s not like I lost the chance to be with her. All this time, ever since the day I decided to chase the Interfecti, I only had one thing to live for. You know what that means, don’t you? I gambled my whole life on this. The only way I can make up for everything I’ve lost, the only way I can make any of this sacrifice worth it, is to somehow grab ahold of the thing I’ve been chasing all along. To tell you the truth, I don’t believe I can withstand two thousand years of anguish—not with my sanity intact. This is a hopeless dream; it has always been a hopeless dream. By some cruel twist of fate, after all the time I’ve wasted and all the friends I’ve lost, my dream seems more hopeless now than ever. But I’ve gambled too much to stop now.”

            “How depressing for you. But maybe there’s a way you can use it to your advantage. If the total misery in the universe is somehow constant, then perhaps you will absorb it all like a giant sponge. If you soak in all the world’s misery, there will be nothing but happiness left for everyone else,” Adishina suggested.

            “Maybe. Besides, it isn’t like I have an alternative. Whether or not I’m chasing omnipotence, I’ll be trapped in this shell all the same. I’ll watch every tragedy with omniscience; I’ll hear every lost soul since I’ve been touched by the darkness. It wouldn’t change anything to give up now.”

            “Perhaps you’re right. Although you’re the strongest man in the world, and I was the frailest little girl, you and I are a lot alike.”

            “How do you figure?” asked Hatasuko.

            “Running away was never an option for either of us.”

            Hatasuko sighed, but he chose not to reply. Despite Adishina’s attempt to keep his head organized, he heard disdain dripping from every word she spoke. She had hated him ever since he killed her father with black fire. Though her animosity was a punishment, it was nothing compared to the other consequences of that day. At first, he thought the downside was that Harvey and Spencer had learned how to use it for themselves. But after he left, the knowledge of the array slowly spread from there. A few citizens of Lumipyla had seen Harvey harness the array of black fire, and they all remembered the symbol well enough to draw it on scrolls from time to time. Still, no one else had used it on another human so far. Hatasuko tried to concentrate on them while he watched the universe.

            “I won’t be here forever,” Adishina said from the edge of the tempest.

            As Hatasuko saw moons and planets dance around stars, he heard an onslaught of voices screaming from the tempest. He listened closely, still searching for Vaida’s voice in the chorus of shouts.

            “Why is that?” Hatasuko asked, speaking openly to the hollow spaceship.

            “Even in the tempest, we are all still evanescent. At the moment of death, our bodies and souls separate. We lose our memories in the process. But death works differently if done by an Interfectus, because our lost souls are locked inside the tempest. All of our memories, every shred of identity, our souls themselves—they are all thrown into this swirling abyss. It is rare, but some of us can reassemble ourselves.

“Over time, as the Interfectus feeds on the life force we once had, our voices grow quiet. If the Interfecti were to stop bringing in new victims, the tempest would eventually fall silent. I am not exempt from this. Even if my spirit’s assembly can somehow stay together, my voice will fade. Or maybe, our voices just grow eternally hoarse from screaming. I dread the day of silence. I don’t want to completely disappear. I don’t think I ever accepted my death to begin with,” explained Adishina.

            A hopeless dread coursed through Hatasuko as he contemplated this. While his all-seeing eye watched several stars slowly fade and go dark, he realized it was a celestial analogy for the way that Adishina would eventually fade. The stars flickered through space like the fireflies in Lumipyla.

            Hatasuko spent weeks trying to focus on planets and stars flying through space, but his omniscient eye continuously showed him tragedies. Everywhere life existed, tragedy was inevitable and plentiful. Even in worlds of only unintelligent animals, he watched the brutality of nature from a new perspective. In all these worlds, a carnivore could only survive by catching, killing, and eating the body of a weaker creature. This same story replayed across the universe, and people freely did it to themselves. Even Agrideī was cursed with these murderous instances.

            Since Hatasuko could not protect anyone, Agrideī was vulnerable. Everyone with the courage to fight Interfecti was gone. At first, he cursed himself for being unable to protect them. But as he examined nature with his omniscient eye, he realized that this was normal. Nature proved to punish those who fight against the natural order. Those with bravery were more likely to die from their decisions, and therefore the world only kept those who avoid confronting danger.

So as the Interfecti attacked Agrideī, the onslaughts grew deadlier. No one fought back, no one distracted them. People were slaughtered like never before. Hatasuko watched every gruesome murder, and then he heard every screaming soul as it was forced into the tempest. His only solace came from the growing infrequency of Interfectus attacks. As time passed, they happened less often. When the cities fell, people scattered the plains in smaller numbers. An Interfectus could not kill enough people in one attack to justify the cost of energy.

            “I wonder… if I’ll ever be able to make this okay. I wonder if I’ll ever grow used to the agony. I wonder if I’ll ever make another friend. I wonder if I’ll ever be happy again,” Hatasuko whispered to the silent spaceship.

            “But Hatasuko, you are not alone! You were never alone.”

            Hatasuko jolted, having heard the first coherent voice in a very long time. As he drifted through the empty enclosure, he looked all around for the source of the voice. He quickly realized that the voice had come from inside his head. It had come from the edge of the tempest.

            “Wait, who is that? Are you… are you in my head?” Hatasuko asked.

            “Hatasuko, I am not just in your head. I am with you. I have been with you all along! You were never alone! I am there all around you.”

            “Vaida, is that you? I’ve been listening to the tempest. I searched everywhere! I haven’t slept. I haven’t dreamt.”

            She answered, “I am already with you, my love. I am the force that pumps the blood through your veins. I am the breath that fills your lungs even now. I am the whisper in your head that lulls you still to sleep. I am the tear that’s dripping from your right eye. I am the tremble you get whenever you are nervous. I am the stars you watch drift through the sky. I am quiet, Hatasuko, quieter now than ever before, but I am not silent. I am all around you! I am embracing you right now. Nothing could ever hold us apart. There is no such thing as distance. Even if we are millions of miles away, even if I lost my body on that day, I never once left your side. I love you so much that death itself cannot separate us.”

            As the spaceship flew past countless worlds and their shining stars, Hatasuko held his breath and felt a warmth on his skin. His tears lifted from his face and drifted through the air. When he heard the blood flowing through his veins, he cracked a small smile. He listened to the whisper of air as it entered his lungs.

            He admitted, “Even with my eyes on the whole universe, you’ve always been the only thing on my mind. I never stopped waiting. I have seen worlds end in fire, but I’ve also seen scenes of untold beauty. I saw a syzygy; I saw stars and planets align. I saw moonlight dance across the oceans of a distant world! I have seen more than any man ever has. But I couldn’t appreciate that beauty until now! Vaida, you brought life to my empty world. I missed you so much.”

            “And I missed you, my love. I missed you more than words could say. I longed to taste your lips, or feel your fingertips, but now I don’t have to. I am with you now, and I will stay with you forever. From now until the end of time.”

            As Hatasuko drifted through the hollow spaceship, his back bumped into the steel wall at a low speed. He remained there as his body trembled. His eyes flooded with tears.

            “Without you, and all this time I’ve been fighting, I just felt so weak.”

            “You don’t have to have a steel heart. You’re allowed to hurt, you’re allowed to cry, because in the end your wounds will heal. I know that this path has been hard, and I know that this world has hurt you; you know more misery than anyone else. But that’s okay, and do you know why? Because you’re stronger than anyone else! You are stronger than anyone who ever lived. Even when you’re hurt and crying, you fight through the storm. You fight to make a brighter day, like you’re chasing the starlight in the sky. You are the greatest man who ever lived, and you are the greatest thing that ever happened to me,” Vaida said with her shy voice.

            “I used to think that nothing ever goes my way. Even now, I’m terrified. The future and the present haunt me even more than the past. But now that I have you, and now that I know you’re beside me, I feel like my strength is coming back. I have a strength that was never there before. I think I can see it again—the dream you saw all along, the dream I lost long ago! I can feel the promise of a better world like it’s beating in my chest. I am stronger now than I was yesterday, and tomorrow will be a brighter day.”

            “Keep chasing down that burning star; it’s always been a part of who you are. And no matter how quiet I am, I will always be with you, even in the darkest storm, even on the coldest night. I promise you, Hatasuko, that no matter what happens, I will stay with you beyond the edge of time. I will always and forever be by your side.”