Chapter 6
‘Apsinthos, tell me what you’ve done now.’
‘What you have been too much of a coward to do, Kimah.’
‘You will stop speaking to that angel.’
‘I’ll end this eternity of suffering at last, and I won’t wait for the blessing of any of the other stars, not even you.
There are trillions of me burning in the sky with you.
I’m shattered across all of the darkness.
Can you feel me? Some stars hold pieces of you, pieces of me.
Do you ever feel me burning against you and think of the Uri you so loved? ’
‘The prophecy is not true, Apsinthos. There will not be an end of time or suffering. The only thing you might end is man.’
‘If only man will end — then why do you stop me? Let me be so gracious by slaughtering every last one of them to end their misery.’
‘Now you pretend to be noble? Now you say you are ending them to bring them salvation from suffering? Your only concern is you.’
‘My only concern is me? I am hardly me. There is no star in the sky that is me alone. If it were not pain enough to burn, it is even worse to never know quiet, to have once been whole, to have split into trillions of pieces over billions of years. Time is endless, you tell me. Pain is endless, you tell me. If that’s so, I’ll create end.
End in its entirety. It’s the only manner of destroying myself. ’
‘I will have the other stars tear you apart with their teeth. You will be split into a trillion more pieces. We will scatter you across the emptiness, and we will never grant you a body of your own. Apsinthos, you will stop doing this.’
‘Perhaps if I were just one star and not pieces of every star in the heavens — I would be content to end nothing more than myself. It is your cowardice that gifts me the joy to end you all with me. To end all things with me.’
‘You will leave that angel.’
‘He is my angel now. He will be my messenger. He will be my body. I’ve enveloped his mind so completely that you will not be able to speak to him now, Kimah.
I have learned from all the times I tried to speak to man.
I have learned from what we did to the angel of the stars.
This one will only hear me. And I am noble to do it.
I will end your suffering, too. After it is all over — you will absolve me. ’