Darkness.
I lie afloat in its interminable abyss, where the inflamed wreckage of my past drifts without purpose in a timeless space of calmness – an infinite sea of impregnable black.
My qualms – and the revulsive memories of my anguish- melt away into heavenly insignificance. My nightmare is over.
So, this is what real peace feels like. I would gladly sleep here for eternity, in a place where no soul shall ever find me; however, the soft brilliance nestled in my right palm, with its lucent cords laced around my fingers, brings me back to my main priority, preventing my focus from wandering into nowhere.
He is still holding my hand even when our bodies are no more.
We have been through many trials and errors together. And I shall remember all of them, even if they were painful. I don't want to forget him and lose my memories to amnesia again, to then relive every single event, not knowing anything. His cords unravel themselves. He then ascends from my hand and hovers over to my chest, shining against my soul. I hug him close and smile down at him once more.
He is the sole light of my eternal void, but why hasn't the darkness swallowed his spirit yet?
Is it because of my resolve, perhaps?
If that is truly the case, then I hope it stays passive and observant, for now.
Then a flat one-dimensional crimson ray shoots out from the thick tenebrosity and scans from the top of my head down to my bare toes. The beam is emitted from a bright, glaring circle amidst the stygian dimension, one which closely resembles Enjin's optic. A hulking, bipedal figure partially emerges from the elemental thicket, making its crimson optic its only distinguishing and conspicuous feature. I recognise that Oculus lens.
It's Azokin's.
"State your purpose – and promptly for your sake." He commands. Alarmed by his appearance, if he's here, then I am stranded in the very same void that swallowed Vonplex.
He must at least be able to sense the elements within me.
Or did he mistake me for someone else? After all, not everyone can simply survive this conscious abyss. At the moment, he either seems genuinely unsure of who I truly am – or he is playing into ignorance.
I wonder how long he has been roaming around in the dark for? And from the looks of it, he doesn't seem to have found his father yet.
Good - because that falls in my favour.
"You are Enjin's younger brother, right?" A dumb and rhetorical question, I know, but I must ask.
"How do you know that name?" He inquires calmly with a degree of suspicion. I glide over to the alosium giant and bring his brother's soul forth from my chest - towards him.
"Listen – I don't have time to answer your questions. Your brother is very weak right now, and you need to take him back to the collective." Azokin tilts his optic, facing it downwards, and broadens his ray into a three-dimensional spotlight. His gargantuan crystalline hand crawls out from the darkness and opens his palm underneath the cone of red light.
I suppose this is goodbye, my friend.
The former overseer's soul hovers over and settles in his brother's palm. Azokin glowers at Enjin's condition - and realisation hits him.
"Detestable. Unforgivable. I demand to know who did this to him!" He has the right to know the truth, but I can't place the blame entirely on V-syvious and Vonplex. I must take responsibility for my actions, too - past and future. My first incarnation never asked to be pursued by an overseer. He bested Enjin and took full advantage of his prize. The former overseer did what he believed was for the greater good of the cosmos - a price which he paid for severely. It doesn't matter what I looked like or who I was in which timeline. Every identity belongs to me. They all come from the same soul.
It is time to confess my sins.
"I did it." He stares at me with a dumbfounded delay. He is speechless.
"I am to blame." The instant that those words were spoken into the void, an inner elemental current surged between us, and forces us apart - acting as a divider as though it knew what was about to unfold. The dark current enshrouds us both so that we are no longer able to perceive one another. Clouding the visibility of his heated oculus lens.
"Coward!" He bellows as streaks of hot red shoot aimlessly through the wall of jet black. The further he acts and resists against the divider, the more impenetrable it becomes. We are beyond each other's hearing range now. I sincerely hope they do find a way back to the collective safely – or whatever remains of it.
Encountering Azokin in that precise moment after death was no coincidence.
The darkness around me moves. I'm not alone. Something else is here with me as well.
"Show yourself!" I shout into the darkness. Two separate pairs of onyx eyes reveal themselves to me through the dark – callous and esoteric. I catch a dull gleam of long, and needle-thin, crooked teeth erected from their black gums.
These creatures, or whatever they are, share many parallels with the moray eel – contributed by the equivalent of deep-sea gigantism of the marine life in the Hadal zone on Earth.
They slither towards me simultaneously, inching their faces closer to mine.
Analysing me.
"Do not fret. The overseer shall find his way back." She assures me with her sly intonation.
"He always does – just like his mother." The other one cackles. His manner of speech is just as sly and dubious as hers.
"We have to admit, though, we do find your relationship with those two souls most curious." She grins sinisterly. Are they testing me?
"Who – and what are you exactly?"
"My name is Quern, and this is my twin brother, Scorn. We are the Sethora. We guard and serve the highest chain of command in the void."
"And the highest chain of command would be?" I already know who it is, but I want confirmation. I want to prod them a little. I want to know what they know. For example, do they know anything at all in regards to my situation and why I'm here?
"Why do you inquire, when you, yourself, know the answer?" Scorn asked.
"Do not be too harsh on them, brother – our dear fallen one is expecting them."
"Wait – you know where Vonplex is?" I can't believe I just blurted that out. Real smooth, Alex. I groan in response to my own indiscretion, so much for not making myself sound obvious. Both of the sethora snicker at my reaction. Quern lowers her body and slopes her back, gesturing to me to get on. She must know where he slumbers.
Is this truly my afterlife?
I know my body is gone, and yet oddly enough, I do not feel any remorse – just acceptance.
I used to picture the afterlife as either an eternal paradise of clouds – a golden kingdom - or an underworld of flames where malevolent souls burn for eternity. But the very thought of myself ending up in the void of space itself and meeting a pair of gargantuan cosmic moray eels never crossed my mind, not even for a second. Not even as a joke or just as a stretch of the imagination.
In all honesty, I would be lying if I said I missed my former life. It was boring and lifeless for the most part until I had that fateful dream. Back then, I did all I could that was humanly possible in my circumstances. My experiences in life had taught me what it felt like to be utterly helpless and have no power at all - to then regain my power once more - my inner truth.
My life as a human being has taught me what it means to have lived and not just exist - because life is what you make of it.
Quern and Scorn dive headfirst into the bottomless recesses. Descending deeper and deeper into total darkness. The void is a perfect exemplar of eternity and emptiness. There is literally no beginning or end to his abyss.
"The void has been actively protecting our creator ever since he became comatose – including the inhabitance – hence us. His creations. Everything that surrounds us is an extension of his divine power. The element knows whom to aid - to redirect – and to extinguish. It knows whom to trust."
Illuminated far beneath us is a pale, horned figure drifting afloat and alone in the black.
Vonplex.
We continue our descent. Advancing closer. His stature becomes ten times the size of V-syvious. The Sethora swim nearer and encircle his motionless form, like a pair of bull sharks.
I leap off Quern's back; then glide down to his idle side and hover adjacent to his shoulder of black thorns. When you see him for yourself in person, it's hard not to compare your own stature to his epic proportions. His size alone would overshadow the likes of Goriagoth and the overseers.
He is a being capable of destroying a world – a creature that has secluded himself within the void. I shouldn't be surprised at the sheer sight of his enormity. He did belong to the first trinity once upon a time; it's only natural he would be this size, given the amount of power he wields. Everything is in accordance with his evolutionary design.
Quern and Scorn observe my movements, with their large black eyes absent of pupils.
"Did he specify why he wanted me here?" I asked them.
"No. He did not tell us the reason." Quern replied.
For everything I have done and tolerated, there was always a reason.
Always.
I can see his wound scarring over his chest in real celestial time. Finalising the healing process. Has he really been asleep for an eon? Sillhaine did mention it would take him that length of time for him to recover properly from such a grave injury. That drop of information suggests Ira had spent that duration of time trying to bring Vonplex back, failure after failure.
The word dedication would be an understatement to use to describe Ira's miraculous feat. No wonder it was torturous and maddening for him.
I move closer and trace the healed extent of his scar with my light ethereal fingertips. Watching the remainder of his injury finally seal itself.
His eyes open.
I snatch my hand back immediately and move away as he gradually rises to his feet, with both of his arms outstretched. The Sethora do not approach him - respecting his space.
I stare down at my hand in confusion. Why does shit always happen to me whenever I touch something?
Or was he pretending to be asleep just so he could mess with me?
He slouches forward. His arms fall and dangle by his sides. He yawns and proceeds to stretch his limbs. Straightening his posture.
"With all of the animosity and politics of the outside – I preferred the ironic pleasure of being awakened by myself." He chortles in glee and then looks down at me.
"Because the only person I trust." I begin.
"Is myself." He finishes.
"But I really didn't do anything."
"On the contrary, when you touched my scar, you gave me the extra vitality that was needed for me to properly rouse from my slumber on time. A final exchange of passive energy was transferred from one soul to another. Just a little nudge, or as far as human analogies go, you were my alarm clock." He clarified with an artful playfulness.
"Although Azokin is my son, his true mission was not tasked by Sillhaine, but by me instead. Fate took an unexpected turn for him. And for good reason, too. If he had discovered my whereabouts first, you three would never have met. And so our poor Enjin wouldn't have been taken into his beloved brother's care; thus, his very essence would have eventually diminished in your arms. Azokin would have tried to finish what his mother failed to accomplish due to his own bias; however, opinions are prone to change. Especially when internal conflict begins to seep in and fester within one's soul."
"There's always a reason," I murmur. There is no such thing as a coincidence.
"Of course. Why wouldn't there be?" He smirked.
"We made a promise to him after all."
The promise we made. Of course, he remembers it.
How could I forget?
"How do you know for sure they will make it back to the collective in one piece?"
"Your compassion is touching, and yet wasted on them. You shouldn't fill yourself with such worrisome and trivial thoughts. The void will redirect them out, that I can assure you."
My concern for them isn't trivial! But despite that, I bite my tongue and keep calm. I mustn't let my emotions get the best of me. This isn't the place to try to bite someone's head off.
I still need to clarify a few things with him first.
"I have another question."
"Was our pain necessary? Yes. It was." He interjects.
"Do not forget, Alex, that I, too, once felt the same emotions you are having right now. After suffering for so long with those memories, I eventually had an epiphany."
"An epiphany?"
"Yes."
"What happened?"
"I realised that all of my amendments and mistakes I've made had contributed towards the person I had become. Instead of choosing to undo what happened to me, I decided to try and learn to cope with it. I wanted to move forward without the shackles of my trauma, as opposed to living in the past. The future is where we belong, Alex. We are not our misery, because we are so much more than that. We will rise above the rest and become the unthinkable." He exclaimed.
"If it weren't for my intervention, you and V-syvious would never have been born."
"But look at the atrocities we've made. Wouldn't it have been better if we didn't exist?"
"As you just said, there is a reason for everything. If I had never existed, our universal architect would have commenced the great reset to prevent Ira from reaching the core of creation."
"Don't you think I already know that?" I snap. He just keeps saying the same old shit over and over again. I'm sick of hearing it.
"Sometimes personal sacrifices are required to play a grander role in the universal scheme of things. The higher you aim, the more you risk, the more you gain, the more you lose. If you could foresee every possible outcome in every scenario, what would you do?"
"I'm not sure I follow."
"All you need to know is that our existence is vital. Never forget that – ever." Then, with a flick of his wrist and a subsequent crack, a portal of abysmal ink opens.
"Death is but an ending phase to a cycle which preludes the rebirth of a new one. Our journey is eternal, whereas our ambitions and opinions are impermanent throughout."
I glide over and peer into the upstanding pool of whirling black liquid.
"I don't know whether to punch you or thank you," I admit openly, without so much as looking at him. He cackles, which catches me off guard. His laughter, it felt genuine. Authentic. Real.
It's like mine but with a touch of obnoxiousness and lunacy. I smirk to myself. It feels unorthodox, yet oddly heartening; so much so, I don't quite understand it myself. I feel like a contradiction. I've never had a heart-to-heart conversation with myself before, well, certainly not like this or on a basic level. This is something I could never have imagined outside of my broken faith.