Too Late To Go Back To Sleep

Glitch stood alone, in the face of hundreds of foes, and her only regret was that it had taken her this long to do this. She’d spent so long willing to force others to fight beside her, so long trying to see Animus Vox’s vision through, and now the lives that had been lost would never be able to be restored. This was her penance.

And with no witnesses, she stopped bothering to maintain her mask. The veil shifted away, and the carefully crafted, almost doll like features shifted. She blinked, with all four eyes, and breathed in deep. “One can only blame their problems on the world for so long.” Then she surged across the battlefield. The air twisted around her, vibrating in beat with her heart, singing her song loud and triumphant. Her hand collided with the first Abomination, and she released a burst of power through him. A deafening boom accompanied the strike, and she could see their internal organs spray out their back, becoming substantially less internal.

Glitch had held back so long, so afraid of hurting or scaring people around her. She was not elegant, not in the way that her song was meant to be. She was a force of nature, a fact she’d spent years and years denying. Her song was screamed, not sung. An Abomination attacked her from behind, and she answered it with a fistful of silence, grabbing its face and crushing it, along with crushing its soul with magic.

She remembered long conversations with old friends in her home plane about their role in this world. She remembered them taking pride in the small things they were gods of, of groves, streams, summer days. None of them understood the weight she bore. If she went a hundred years without touching foot on Gaolwud again, it would be too soon.

Glitch danced through the Abomination horde, ripping and tearing and blasting, until she reached the heart of it, and her intended foe. And the second she was in sight of him, Sesilius clapped, and ended the spectacle. Tears formed in reality, boxing the two of them in, keeping the Abominations outside.

“It’s nice to see this side of you,” Sesilius said, voice dripping like oil. “Thank you for finally being honest. I’ve found that many of the people harshest on monsters are those who secretly see themselves as ones.”

“I am no monster,” Glitch spat.

“And neither are they, and neither am I.”

Glitch shook her head. “It is irrelevant whether you are monsters, what matters is that you are unharmonious. You defy, and defile, Animus Vox.”

“And you serve it?” Sesilius laughed. “You don’t even know what it is. This song could be an eldritch horror, puppeting you on strings, and you would still obey it regardless.”

“It is the multiverse herself speaking.”

“It is a case of collective tinnitus!” Sesilius roared. “If the multiverse had a song to sing, I would’ve heard it, while begging for help. If the multiverse had designs, had a plan, then everything that I have seen in my life is an unimaginable cruelty. We must imagine the multiverse apathetic, because the alternative is that it is hateful.”

She couldn’t respond to that. “I am not here to debate you. If you were looking to talk, you could’ve approached me under different circumstances.”

“You never asked why I came here. Aren’t you curious?”

“No.”

“There’s that monstrousness again.”

“Consider me as apathetic, or as cruel, as you imagine the multiverse to be. I know what I am.”

“As do I.” Sesilius slowly tilted his head, eye staying locked on her. “Standing here, near you, is all I needed to read through your thoughts and memories. Everything you’ve left behind, and tried to forget. Home. Your abandoned post. Not a scary monster, just a nice sprite. Lonely, and full of self hatred.”

She lashed out, filling their cage with a cacophony of overlapping roars that reverberated for miles.

The evacuation ship was nothing like the spaceship that Remi had rode to Olten. It was big and slow. Rather than being locked in individual rooms, they were free to walk around, and even stare out of massive windows towards the planet. He’d started to do so before they even took off. By the time they reached the edge of space surrounding the planet, he’d had plenty of time to dwell on everything. And he certainly was dwelling; replaying every moment from the past week where things had relied on him. His first conversation with Glitch, when she told him how special she believed he was.

She clearly believed that, until the very end. Even once he proved he wasn’t a planeswalker, she still thought he was special. Outside the window, a swarm of space jellies flew by the ship, as if the planet itself was giving them a send off. Wishing them well on their journey. And far down below, the world was coming to an end, with all of the allies the AOSE had built over the past ten years meeting a violent demise.

He remembered wanting to go home, in the middle of battle. But he didn’t want that anymore. He couldn’t. He felt tears streaming down his cheeks as he pressed his hand up to the window, and stared at the planet in the distance. In his pocket was a small hunk of Slyten, almost totally drained of its energy, but he could feel its draw back to the world.

Remi ran to the airlock, hit the emergency override, and stepped through. Alarms were going off in the background, but he couldn’t bring himself to give a single shit. He pulled a suit on, opened up the door to the outside, and leapt.

And then he was flying down, faster than he’d ever thought possible, towards Olten, his telekinesis assisting gravity in pulling him towards the ground. Individual dots started to grow, until he could see a battle, with Glitch in the middle of it. A wall of black force. Sesilius. A horde of Abominations.

Destiny.

Remi landed directly on top of Sesilius, driving both of them into the ground, crashing through into a cave system below the battlefield. “Sorry, I felt like dropping in,” he said, the quip finally providing itself to him like a real action hero. In a fluid motion, he grabbed the Planeswalker with his mind, and flung him across the cave, smashing through some of the crystalline formations that stuck out of the ground, letting him collapse in a dazed pile on the opposite side.

“Remi?” Glitch’s voice came from above him.

“Play to our strengths. You take on the horde, I’ll take him on.” Remi said, confident in a way he’d never felt before. It was like he was living out a dream, a Slyten vision he’d seen a thousand times, without realizing what it actually was.

Sesilius rose and his torn robe and fractured mask started to reveal more of what he looked like underneath. Gaunt, ashen skin made of twisting shadows, glowing eyes, and a mouth that looked drawn on. He didn’t look like a superhuman monster, he looked fragile. Remi drew upon the crystal in his pocket, draining the last little bit of energy it had, and launched himself across towards Sesilius.

However, he no longer had the element of surprise, and the Planeswalker quickly proved how important that had been. A wall of horrid black energy spun into being in between them, and as Remi flew through it, he could feel it tearing at his skin, even through his telekinetic shield. By the time Remi reached him, his force was dulled enough that Sesilius was simply staggered. Still, it gave Remi a window to punch him, his fist catching Sesilius’ chin with a satisfying crunch, accompanied by a burst of telekinesis for the follow through. That one managed to send him flying.

“I figured out what was special about me, Sesilius.” Remi cracked his neck. “Turns out I’m just really good at kicking your ass.”

Once again, Sesilius stood up, and this time there was something in his eyes that Remi couldn’t place. “You were one of the first humans I learned about when I came here, and spoke to Jasper. He led me to believe that you, and your people, were very different from the humans I’d grown to know and detest,” Sesilius said, and Remi felt his gut begin to twist. “In my world, they keep us locked away. Forgotten. Unable to show ourselves. Even if we don’t pose them any threat. We are kept around as convenient weapons.” Sesilius snapped a finger, and skeletons began to rise from the ground, a small army to stop Remi’s advance. “I will find a way to free my people, no matter how many of yours I have to kill.”

Well, at least he was honest. Remi approached cautiously, nimbly sidestepping attacks, and crushing skeletons with his mind. But he could feel himself slowing down, the attrition beginning to set in. He had enough for maybe one last blow of the caliber that he needed to knock Sesilius out. He bent his knees, and then leapt, crossing the distance between the two points in a moment.

And Sesilius caught him by the throat. Suddenly, Remi’s mind flashed to Kan’s death, how much it looked like this. “I needed to wait for the Slyten to exit your system,” Sesilius said patiently, “because the way it suppresses your emotions, your fear, your willingness to flee, would otherwise ruin my point.” He squeezed, and Remi could feel his windpipe threatening to cave in. “I thought you were special too. I wish I hadn’t been disappointed.”

Sesilius reached over with his other hand, and tapped a single talon against Remi’s helmet, cracking it. Behind him, a portal opened up, and he casually threw Remi through it. Then, Remi was floating. The crack began to spiderweb as the vacuum of space took its toll. On his left was Olten, a beautiful planet that he’d never felt further away from. On his right was the sun. Even if he had any Slyten left, he wouldn’t be able to get back in time. Remi’s heart beat faster, and faster, as he realized that this was actually the end of the line. He was actually going to die.

The sun was brighter than he’d ever seen before. He turned to face it, and thought about Jasper staring into his eyes. But in the silence of space, there was something about it that sounded almost like it was humming. He took a breath, what might be his last, and closed his eyes, and listened. The sun was singing. As if it was alive. As if it was part of Animus Vox. As if it was begging him to stay alive. Remi reached out, and felt its heat through his suit. He clenched his fist around it, as if it was just another hunk of Slyten, and breathed out.

Reality burst into flames around him. Remi started to scream, initially in fear, or in pain, but he could hear the pitch shifting. It began a scream of anger, then of triumph. And then he was falling again, from the top of Olten’s atmosphere, the planet unwilling to let him go. No, it wasn’t that. He wasn’t willing to let it go. He’d done this. He fell once more, and ripped at his space suit, tearing off his helmet, and taking in the fresh air around him. And then he stopped, hovering in the air, his telekinetic powers pulsing like they never had before.

This time, there was no Slyten. There was only him. Something had changed within him. Something was not the same. Glitch needed him still, and now he was sure he could do everything she’d ever hoped he was capable of. Remi flew towards the battlefield, flying solo and flying free.

Characters

 * Sesilius
 * Glitch
 * Remi Amber