Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Fiction
vr 3.00
2008-02-16
"Aguila" by Abraxas | 2005-03-02
Chapter Four
It was the start of the fall season when the story reached the village that groups of invading Mutant hordes were ravaging the far countryside. Jackalman did not waste time; almost as soon as he heard the tale and recognized it to be true he and his son readied and equipped themselves for the inevitable retreat into the wilderness. The time and day was chosen for the escape and when it arrived it came long and blustery with the tempest of a storm. The morning was spent packing supplies into makeshift sacks all the while the skies were cloudy gray – roaring with thunder, flashing with lightning – and the temple was unutterably blue – trickling with rain seeping through the cracks. They ate together in the afternoon – nuts and fruits for the canine, carrion for the boy. The evening was uneasy but rapt, calm but anxious – the last few hours of life within the ruins were passed in utter and total silence. From the first to the last, there was scarcely a word spoken between the two, so total was their absolute mastery of each other’s moods.
As the sun was setting in the western sky, Jackalman and Koha’ stood before the windows of the vast, underground chamber – it was unusually dark, almost as dark as the rest of the temple. For long, agonizing moments they stared down the void – at the cliff’s side and its white, pallid rocks, its pockets of shrubs and brushes. They gazed across the forest – at the jungle’s massive, imposing form that lay beyond, canopied by mists and fogs.
And just when it seemed the day would not end, it did. The fading glimmer of daylight yielded to the glowing sparkle of midnight skies; the final memory of happiness they shared together in that home ebbed and died away.
“It’s like a reflection from another world, another time,” Jackalman uttered – almost without thought – as he scanned the visage: the electric stars, the ebonic sky.
“Was it real or was it imagined?” Koha’ asked though his tone was more solemn, less inquisitive. He did not cry; he rubbed his face into his father’s arm and sighed.
The Plunderian let the boy sleep on his mat while he himself took a light, airy nap snuggled between two pillars. He did not cuddle with his son as he usually did, as he normally did every night. It was uncanny the mystery of the child; it was shocking, disturbing the way he always knew what was going on in his mind and it bothered him so much so that he could not bare to sleep nearby out of the fear he might invade his dreams.
Just what did Koha’ know and when did he know it? There were volumes of history about the past – their pasts – that were left unspoken between them. Yet, thinking about it, he realized that he did not tell the boy why they were leaving. He told him the Mutants were dangerous; he did not tell him the reasons – someway, somehow the child possessed the ability to understand by tacit intuition, not just without words, without explanation.
Jackalman wondered if it could be another aspect of that predatory urge inherited from Aguila. Wild, the instincts to nest, to migrate, to hunt by watching, studying, the behavior was well-defined and clear – caged, who knew what those natural, inbred drives would be twisted and perverted into? By the pits, who knew how long those traits were brewing throughout the course of Third Earth’s billion-year history? Growing and evolving, refining itself for generations.
Just how sharp and keen were Koha’s senses?
Indeed it was a light and airy nap that ended almost as soon as it began – although it felt as if it could have been an hour. Refreshed, the Mutant awoke his son and as wordlessly as they worked that day that night they trekked out of the ruins and away from the village that was their home for what could have been six years.
* * * * * * * * * *
For the next several weeks the two trekked about the wilderness, their silence punctuated every now and then by a few words, a few fragments. What was going on in Koha’s head, Jackalman did not know: he only watched for into his son’s world he could not penetrate. He watched him stalk, he watched him kill; against his protest he watched him climb trees for its eggs, scale rises for its views.
But unlike the four-year-old’s uncontainable zeal then, the ten-year-old’s disciplined calm now was not want to worry his father, jump in his face, on his back, tug him here and there to show him what he just discovered about the world. And, for his own part, the canine missed the fun he and the boy used to share yet he, too, was different: he did not feel uneasy or anxious, instead he was beginning to feel alright, for the first time in a long time he was beginning to feel at peace with himself and his world.
Jackalman and Koha’ spent years together, hiking across the wilderness, foraging through the jungle just to survive from day to day. The time they passed living in that village – in that temple – was much longer in duration and more taxing on the Plunderian’s spirit: its monotony, its yawning periods of domestic tranquility were simply exhausting. Free, again, at last, he kept his mind busy and suppressed the feelings, ill and depressing, working just under the surface.
But if he thought even for a moment he would be totally free, then by ever-gradual degrees he realized he was very much mistaken.
The nightmares stopped. The voice could not be heard from his son, from elsewhere, anywhere. And the images of that night faded as the work of time and memory obscured their power, their intensity. Yes, he was relieved by one set of horror but those maladies were simply replaced by other terrors infinitely worse.
It was not just Koha’s mind that perplexed Jackalman; it was his body, too, with its ever-changing form and feature. When he was born he was like his father, resembling his physical shape more or less. Even up close he would have passed for total Mutant. The only traits that would have alerted the careful eye of non-Plunderian heritage were the weird, odd parallel bands, the stripes that formed along the base of his fur. But as the boy grew he noticed a metamorphoses that could not be explained by the onset of adolescence. It started with his mane: once it was like his own, now in its shabby haggardness it took on a suggestion, an air of Aguila. It was matted, two inches thick more or less and tapered off with a soft, gently crest that pointed out of the back of his head where the hair was the thickest. It continued with the rest of his fur becoming more and more featherlike, its color faded from brown to cream while at the same time those onyx bands emboldened. It finished with his eyes: their electric irises, shimmering with an eerie, black patina, were evermore dominated by the wholesomely ebonic character akin to his mother’s.
Before him, day by day, the child was mutating into an avian-like creature.
Yet it was not that unnatural transformation that took his breath away, it was that uneasy development that like the metamorphosis was subtle and indistinct at first. For as they wandered the Mutant only possessed a vague idea of where to go – the rumors that sent them into exile placed the invading hordes advancing out of the east, his general idea was to go west. But from one day to the next he did not have any particular course in mind: all of the maps of Third Earth the Plunderian army obtained were very poor and inaccurate and, besides, he could not refer to them at that moment. Rivers, mountains and other, landmark features were his guides and that was how he noticed. It came as a shock out of the blue when it dawned on him, when he realized it was the boy who was leading them. The trips up the trees, the stalking, the roaming, it seemed there was an ulterior motive for in the most tactful and effective way possible he was suggesting the path to take and it was no ordinary path –
Sitting by the campfire, as Koha’ slept across his lap, as the boy dreamt Jackalman stroked his mane. Examining his profile, he studied the nascent symmetries, the emerging lapses breaking through the familiar terrain that was his son’s profile.
“What’s going on in there?” the canine asked, half-whisper, half-aloud as he fondled the boy’s ear. “What do you remember, Kohaku? What do you remember?”
It was his son, his own son, who was leading him –
“What is it, daddy” the child asked, blinking his deep-black eyes – was he awake, was he always awake, did he really, ever sleep?
“Just wondering aloud, boy,” Jackalman said, arching his head up to face the sky. Framed by the jagged crowns of trees swaying in the autumnal air were clusters of stars as distant as they were unnumbered. The orbs all looked the same – he was not an astronomer only an avid sky-watcher – but he knew among the eternity of stars one of them was home. One of them. He smiled, wondering, thinking about how to speak of his origins to his son. And how utterly unfair it was that the boy would never know – never see – where a part of him came from. All of the legends and epics of Plundarr, the knowledge, the history, they would just be tales that in time would be forgotten.
“What it might have been if your mother were here?” he paused and exhaled: “Aguila, Aguila,” and the name merely passed his lips – for the first time in ages – and like a magician’s incantation he saw that mirage, as fleeting as it was tantalizing, that image of her limp, lifeless body falling through his arms, her face unnaturally white, her eyes agape and painted by a stunned expression as if she had been killed not by a blow but by a shock. He saw her fall and fade into oblivion – then a sort of unnatural quiet befell the world and he looked again but it was only his son in his lap. And, catching his breath, he wondered indeed if she ever left. “It’s just – this isn’t the way it should have been. We loved each other, boy and when she died I should have died right then and there. I should have joined her – but if I had you wouldn’t be here right now,” smiled at the child. “You’d have followed your sibling.”
He never wanted to tell Koha’ the sad, awful truth that there had been another egg – another one of him – but as the boy was wont to raid nests, did he not notice that birds laid more than one egg? Did he not just know as he just knew so much already?
And then Koha’, with a smile across his face set aglow by the firelight, reached up and rubbed the jackal’s chin – the action so fluid, so exotic, only one other person’s movements in the universe, dead or alive, equaled it.
“I forgive you, daddy, I love you,” he said, letting his arm down, over his chest.
“I love you, too,” he replied, more exhausted by the conversation than by the hike through the woods.
Pulling his father’s ear to his lips, he added: “And she loves you, too –”
But the child’s words were obscured by the bristle of the trees, the roar of the fire pit as the wind teased its flames.
* * * * * * * * * *
Through flowered valleys, through barren ranges; across endless forests, into arid deserts – little by little Jackalman found himself venturing onto familiar grounds he thought he would not see again. At first he was simply uneasy but at the end – as the path’s true course became undeniable – he was beset by shock, perpetual and mushrooming. Behind the veil of trees must lurk the Thundercats. Beyond the shroud of wilderness ought to be the Amazonians. And everywhere throughout waited that power never-living, never-dying. But was it only the memories of his foes that haunted his steps?
For where there should have been activity – even scant traces of activity – there was nothing. No winding tracks of the Thunder Tank’s treads. No smoldering fires of the Warrior Maiden’s villages. Neither crashed nor broken specimens of Sky Cutters littering the jungle. It seemed they were gone, all of them were gone and by their vacancy – in the twelve years since he last roamed about that territory – Nature reclaimed those parts of Third Earth carved up by the actors of the great, Mutant struggle.
Out of a grove, into a lake whose rocky coast was carpeted by muddy stems of cat’s tails interrupted here and there by gnawed skeletons of fallen logs. There the two were met face to face with a glossy, black cliff wet with the spray of falling water – the cliff was tall, narrow, its crest was obscured by a wispy, airy fog. It would be a simple climb: simple for the boy – who was already an experienced, adept climber – simple for the man – what was now able to use all of his hands. Together they scaled the precipice, its loosened slabs, its coarse rocks and its leafy, green foliage growing between the cracks – one of which was larger, deeper than the others but aside from a pause to look they did not explore it.
At the top, at the crown of the stonework they were met by a wide, gentle mound of pebbles that appeared to form a makeshift dam – a few steps into the fog and the pebbles gave way to the gravel of the banks of a creek – the creek –
The canine did not speak about it – it just seemed too unreal to be believable. His son looked at him for a moment almost sheepishly, almost defiantly; holding his father’s hand he led the way, blazing a path into which they walked the length of the creek going against its currents, the stream dragging against their feet. The water was icy cold but it did not rise above their shins and it did not bother them in any way other than to curb their speed. All around them the view of the world within the fog’s misty haze twisted, swirled, suggesting wild, disconnected motions, eerie interplays between shadows and darkness and bizarre gradations of colors gray and dull.
The two reached a log, withered and thin, that slanted into the river – there they sat to lunch on the nuts and berries they picked along the way. It was the last of the fresh food and they ate it slowly. As they rested Koha’ kept his eyes always looking forward, toward a spot along the Zephyia whose interest he understood. Jackalman avoided that area out of fear, terrified of what the boy might be seeing there, horrified by the knowledge that as soon as the last bite was taken the child wanted to take them there.
“Why do you want me to go there, boy?” the Plunderian wondered. “What do you want me to see there, Kohaku? Do you think you know it better than I?”
And then, without another word, the boy stood and pointed into the fog, thrusting his finger in and out excited at the prospect of the hike. And the man, without a second thought, looked at where his son was indicating and saw the misty haze lifting and the ground rising – literally rising – as an old, makeshift trail cutting through the wilderness was ever so gradually, ever so deliberately coming into view.
Jackalman’s heart skipped a beat as the boy took his hand – never before was such a simple, innocent act the source of such an inscrutable, foreboding dread, it was as if he were being led into his own execution.
Just how many hours passed as they trekked up the mountainside, he did not want to know. It seemed like an eternity – and that was enough – although, paradoxically, the hours passed like minutes, the minutes passed like seconds. But no, no – it was only illusion, only agony prolonging the quickening tempo of time. All throughout he kept his eyes low to the ground as if he were ashamed as his son led him like a child all of the way, all of the way from one end to the other. And as he hiked he sunk into a weird, out of body state and for a while he wondered if there were no hand, no fingers clutching his for there was no real warmth within his warmth. Indeed, it felt as if air passed through his grip though his fist was merely semi-clutched. Yet with a shake of the head, a flutter of eyelids the effect vanished – he saw, again, Koha’s hand, ever-whitening, fitting perfectly into his fist.
With another blink, another illusion lifted for it was at that moment, at that very moment that the fog vanished – not only from the land but from his eyes as well. Jackalman looked skyward – the Mutant almost fell, almost fainted – at the sight arising, stone by stone, out of the whirlpool of time and space. How could it be, how did he know? But, then, did he not suspect it, did he not realize it? He almost named it days, weeks, months, years ago. And was it not Koha’s aim all along to bring him home? Yes, yes – his boy brought him home for there beyond the jagged crest of the hill were the ramparts and battlements of Castle Plundarr.
* * * * * * * * * *
Reaching the summit, the two discovered a scene they did not expect. Koha’ was puzzled, disoriented – it was as if he knew all about the castle’s history but was dumbfounded as to the rot and decay of its current state. Jackalman, too, was disturbed but for an altogether different reason: it was the immediate realization that the castle had been defeated and abandoned. Its moat was drained, its gates were smashed; its stony, brick masonry was cracked and burnt, its towers either collapsed into massive piles of rock and mortar or stood by the slight tether, swaying to and fro in the wind. Wrecked Sky Cutters were strewn throughout the vast portion of the visible wasteland, monuments of a final battle that took place right then and there and did not go in the Mutants’ favor.
The shock the canine felt before abated and as he wondered about the nature of the marauding hordes invading the northern country he smiled, he laughed – for a dozen years he was running in fear of nothing. And then he sighed: running in fear of nothing, a perfect metaphor for his life. Slythe’s command must have broken down; the Mutants’ collective decadence must have ensured their destruction. But what other truths lay within, yet to be discovered?
“What is it, daddy?” the boy asked as he played by the remains of a transport. Maybe it was just the way it was destroyed in battle, but its looks appeared so out of the ordinary, so new that he could not help but wonder if it was not among one of Vultureman’s last inventions.
“Nothing,” the man said, crouching by the mangled debris. “Let’s go.”
Now it was Jackalman who took the lead, guiding his son through an impromptu tour of the fortress.
Into the front gates; the wooden panels lay limp on their sides, scorched by a thick, heavy substance that had been sprayed molten upon their surfaces. Into the body of the keep – a smell of moist, acrid dust clung to the air while the ground was a cesspool of sandy, rusty-brown soil unable to support even a blade of grass – the fallen structures within formed piles of rubble many feet tall. But every now and then something was left still standing, still coherent enough to be recognized and one by one he pointed the sites out to the boy.
There – the dungeons, their shackles that once held troves of slaves were now free and dangling. There – the mess hall, its red carpet torn and burnt, its tables and chairs gone, used to reinforce other, less secure portions of the fortress. There – Vultureman’s lab, ransacked by who or what unknown. And there – Slythe’s command center, the most well-protected, most secret corner of keep, a ruined hovel of twisted steel and shattered concrete. It was like a sandcastle after the tides; its imposing weight and stature from before existed only in memory and seeing it again, for the first time, even the memories, scattered and blurred in his mind, did not match up to the reality exposed all around him.
But there – he held his breath – there was something like a nightmare let loose upon the world. There were the steps. There was the door. There was Aguila’s tower – by forces beyond imagination it survived. It was doomed to collapse – shaky, rickety, a crack, wide and deep, coiled about its shaft – but for the moment it existed.
As Koha’ explored the fallen ruins nearby, Jackalman walked across the would-be lawn of wind-swept debris. He approached the door – the wooden door – was it just a lifetime ago that two reptilian guards kept watch by that door? The guards Vultureman paid off that night he met Aguila? The guards he bribed to let him see her? The guards who ratted him out to Slythe as soon as his funds were spent and dry? How the passage of time erased the foreboding, dreading feelings he felt every time he approached those guards; those steely-eyed lizards haunted only the past now.
He had done more than outmaneuver Slythe, he had outlived him and at last he returned, not the exile but the master of Castle Plundarr.
He touched the door; its rough, charred texture stung and pricked his fingertips. It was thick and though it was damaged it was tough. He smashed his body against it, again and again, ramming it with his shoulders, grabbing onto the edges of its frame and pushing his feet into those spaces where neither lock nor hinge would have been to weaken the planks. He worked at the door, frantic even desperate – unafraid that his force might spurn the tower’s collapse – until at last, at long last the planks broke and the door fell to pieces.
Beyond, though it was still daylight, it was as black as pitch, as if a cavern waited on the other side of the threshold.
“Come with me,” the Plunderian implored, turning back to his son, his hand outstretched. “Come.”
“Do you want to do this?” Koha’ asked, looking unsure, almost saddened by the prospect.
“Come, for once in my life, boy, I’m not afraid.”
“I love you,” he said, hugging his father tightly, a tear streaming down his eye. “Remember that, daddy. Just remember that.”
“Don’t be afraid, don’t cry.”
“It’s not for me,” he insisted, straightening up. Yet a defeated look seemed to burden the youth’s shoulders. “I guess – I guess it had to be this way, didn’t it?”
“I don’t understand this – not all of this – but I know you’re a good boy, Kohaku,” Jackalman said, tearing up, too, “and I’ve always been so proud of you.” He hugged tightly, endlessly. “You’ve never been afraid and even now –”
Within, the body of the tower reeked with a musk akin to the odor of rain mixed with dust. The atmosphere was dense but it was not complete shadow and darkness because of the crack that twisted along the sides of the shaft there was always a slant of white, bright light at just about every turn. But the rift was wide enough to slip through and unstable enough to be shaky – even the steps attached to the edges of the fissure appeared to be on the very verge of collapse. And then, as the sun was setting and the ambiance was dimming, the Mutant feared that if they did not act fast a disaster of one sort of another might befall them. It did not help that the passage was cramped, making the encounters with the rent a little too close and more than a bit terrifying.
One, two, three, four turns – was the tower really, ever that tall? – and they found themselves nearing the zenith of their trek. The boy was ahead and the man was behind though never more than a few steps apart. And there, a few feet above the two stood the last door – the door to Aguila –
Jackalman froze, paralyzed not by fear but by memory. Caught in the grip of that apoplexy – as the last rays of sun washed over his face, his eyes – he watched helplessly as Koha’ touched the door. With but a brush of his fingertips it creaked outward into the keep. It revealed shadowy traces and dark glimpses of the interior behind it, the chamber aglow in the reddening, dying embers of the daylight. The boy crossed the threshold and paused to look back at his father – his expression was obscured by the swelling of the night yet it appeared that his features were painted by a grimace of sadness and happiness beyond the power of language to describe – and, without another word, he turned back and jolted into the void.
“Koha’! Wait for me! Wait! Kohaku, it could be dangerous!”
Jackalman shouted; standing just two steps away from the doorway, in the semi-darkness the visage took on an air of horror the like of which he could not have expected. The door seemed to grow infinitely large as if it were built for a giant – even the spiral corridor in which he stood appeared to expand. Or was it, he thought as he struggled to catch his breath, or was it he who shrunk? The uneasy, unsettled effect was compounded by the creaking of the door opening – opening – opening revealing what amounted to be a façade of oblivion.
“Koha’!” he shouted again into the void – in a moment the hazy, murky vision took shape but within he saw no shadows moving across the walls, he heard no sounds echoing about the chamber – indeed, to his call there was no answer, not even a whisper.
He crawled, he labored, he stepped into the tower room. It was as if traversing a force field, every moment aggravating his strength, zapping his energy. And when he was inside, he was sprawled on all-fours as if beaten, breathless and tired.
Was it the lifeless darkness, the stale air? Was it the unkempt dust, the encrusted spider webs? What was he so afraid of? What was it?
“Koha’, be careful,” he yelped, exhausted. Though he tried to shout only a whisper passed out of his lips. “Kohaku, where are you?”
He looked about the keep, crazily, haggardly, taking in the fragments vistas emerging into view.
“Can it be?” Somehow, someway, as the veil of terror lifted, a normalcy settled and a strength returned – and he arose, shakily, uneasily, but he arose. Yet, the terror of it remained. It was not something within the chamber – not anymore – not then, not there. it was not the space of it, but the time of it that terrified him for all the while it was the past that haunted him. It was that night, that dreadful, terrible night.
“Can it be?” he asked himself, aloud, as he walked over the flooring – the planks burnt, loose and in a few parts here and there even missing. “Am I back?”
He inspected the surroundings, his head lanky atop his neck. Drooping from the ceiling – that arched and domed – scattered about the floor – that sagged dangerously as he treaded from place to place – were wispy bunches of cobwebs torn by the unfettered wind, withered by the collected dust. The windows were unblocked, their shutters crumpled and shattered; the central ring of pillars were molded and rotted, vermin scrambled upon their weathered faces as he walked by them.
“Koha’!” Over what buttress, in what nook, under what rubble lurked his boy?
He approached the focal object in the room – the bed. The nest, broken and scattered, amid the evening view attained a slight and subtle radiance. Walking into the space between two pillars he shrieked at the feel of something cold and sharp stab his feet. He staggered aback, the floor ever creaky, ever saggy, its planks sliding freely. He looked and saw the collar, Aguila’s collar.
He reached down and picked up the restraint, its links, corroded and rusted, chimed dully as they unfurled. He brought it to his eyes, noticing how its disintegrating, rough surface pricked his fur, how it left a brackish, reddish residue along his flesh.
Again he inspected the chamber – and gasped at what the new vantage point in which he found himself revealed, for against the substance of the pillars were the remains of the eggs Slythe smashed in his fit of jealous rage.
“No! No! It can’t be, how can it be? She laid two eggs in the nest – and I saved one!”
But there were two sets of broken eggs scattered about the pillars.
“Kohaku! It wasn’t like that –”
The shock triggered the flash – instantly his mind was transported and he saw, as if in third person, the events of that night unfold.
“We can escape together – be with me, Aguila, be near me,” he implored – but the words did not come from him, they came from the image of him, the memory of him long suppressed. He saw himself clutch Aguila’s arm – they were facing the door, sounds loud and violent were coming from behind it – shocked, he saw himself clutch Aguila’s arm and spun her –
“I didn’t mean it! You know I didn’t mean it!” he cried as he remembered – he remembered what he did not ever even suspect.
Watching her fall through his arms, he wanted to kiss her, to hold her and whisper into her ear – but how could he bear it, seeing the ultimate truth revealed before his mind’s eye.
“Aguila, forgive me! I forgot the slack –”
But was it the Jackalman of the past, the Jackalman of the future those words – he could not tell as the linearity of time crumbled under the weight of the realization.
He let the chain and collar drop and tumble about the sliding planks of the floor –
“No!” he held her body, one moment warm, one moment cold, lifeless and limp – he held her so gently, so lightly in his arms as she slipped away. “No! I’ll follow you – wait for me!”
He remembered – he wanted to kill himself but he lost his nerve. And Slythe – informed by the treacherous guards – bolted into the room. Enraged, the reptile tore up the nest all the while the lizards held him down. Ripping apart the straw mattress he exposed the eggs – the eggs Aguila was hiding from his ravenous lips – and in a fit destroyed both. Mortified beyond description at the carnage that ensued, Jackalman freed himself from the grips of the two guards and lunged into Slythe. They scuffled, ripping and tearing into each other but realizing there was no hope of revenge, he jumped out of the window, calling for Aguila to take him away.
“I wanted to die, but I didn’t die. I didn’t fall to my death, I landed on a roof. I scrambled onto the battlements and I tried to jump again but I – I – I got away. How – I couldn’t understand how – I got away but I shouldn’t have. I lived but I shouldn’t have. Why did I live, Aguila? Without you, without a purpose, why?”
Suddenly the scattered fragments of the nest were aglow.
“Kohaku,” he stammered, falling to his knees, looking at his hands. “Was it real or imagined? Where did one world end and another begin? But I know I spent twelve years away from this place – I know – but, could it have been, all of that time, could it have been just illusion? Did I never leave? Was I always here?”
“Kohaku!” he sobbed. Rubbing his eyes he imagined he saw his son. He reached for it but as he wiped his eyes the figure that may or may not have been there evaporated as did the glow from the nest. The wind from the windows scattered its straw as it died its last death and with that the power that transformed the tower room expired with a final breath.
* * * * * * * * * *
Starlight shone through the windows while currents of air rose through the gaps along the floor.
Jackalman sat between two of the twelve pillars, his hands around his neck as he looked won, always forever down. He wanted to believe it was real – because he wanted to end it. If it was a universe without Koha’ – and without even the possibility of Aguila – he did not have a reason to live and did not want to go on.
But how did it come to this? It was not supposed to be this way –
“I guess – I guess it had to be this way, didn’t it?”
The world was crashing down all around him into the yawning blackness of the void. Even the tower shook, its floor boards sliding, tumbling off of their supports. Everything, everywhere was succumbing to the decay – rotting and withering – falling headlong through oblivion. And as he sat there, he wondered if he could not imagine it all away – or – conjure up another existence with Aguila and Kohaku in it. Maybe it too would not be real, but did it matter as long as it simply felt real? And even if it only lasted a microsecond as he plunged into doom, as long as it seemed like a lifetime, was that not a proper substitute for reality? In a world where there were universes within universes, even in a nutshell could he not count himself a king of infinite space?
While the chamber trembled and the ceiling caved and the columns tumbled and the floor shook, Jackalman stood and stepped forward onto a plank that gave way and snapped. Falling into the abyss, he did not fear – how could a world end if it never existed, who could die having never been lived? – it was not a death that awaited but a rebirth, a new kind of life....
END
Submit a Reivew