Chapter 72
It began, as always, with the desert.
Dunes as high as mountains rolled out across the horizon, scraping the sky as if to catch all the stars. Oases sparkled within valleys. The sand was warm beneath his feet. Soft, as if he were bouncing off pillows.
The desert sighed, and he turned to see that the sky had darkened in the west. Night approached, suddenly and then all at once.
Strange beasts stalked through the terrain, their dark muzzles flecked with blood. Shadows grew where oases once lounged. They cut down the dunes with a strange, vicious hunger, but he felt no fear. Shadows, and even the beasts of the night, were a part of the desert.
The wind kissed his cheek, as if nudging him to look. In the north, he saw three figures. A man and two girls. A father and his daughters.
Shadows pooled around them, the sand around them oddly slick and wet. It was only when he peered closer that he noticed it was soaked with blood too.
A great blaze flared before them all, red and blue and gold and every color imaginable.
In the inferno, he saw the faces of people he did not recognize but had the unshakable feeling that he had known long ago.
He saw the world as it began. With a spark, a roar.
He saw how it died. And he saw it repeat, again and again.
The inferno grew taller, but the shadows did not draw back.
They leapt into the blaze, and it bucked, hissing.
Suddenly, a daughter fell. The other cried.
The old man fell to his knees, but the deal was done, the sacrifice complete.
The blaze morphed, and he saw the colors seep away until something dark and terrible and horribly other appeared before them.
It reached, and he knew then of fear.
The abyss was deep and endless. It stretched before him, around him, past him, into the unknown future.
He traveled mindlessly. There was no one beside him in this long, terrible deep.
And the weight of that realization eventually overwhelmed him.
He sank, the fabric of the abyss indenting around his knees.
The long dark stared back at him, and he could bear it no more. He bowed his head, closed his eyes.
It was then that he knew of loneliness.
They came slowly, like flits of sunlight through a net, brushing his consciousness.
The memories of her.
Her leaning into his hand, his thumb against her cheek. Her standing on a dune, her shoulders outlined by the sun. Her brown eyes bright with fervor, with fire.
Stay with me. Fight with me.
Deep within, the darkness hissed. Deep within, he felt its fear.
Her frowning at him, eyebrows furrowed in annoyance. Her crying into his shoulder, her tears soaking the fabric, her sobs ripping through his chest.
In the distance, the fabric of the long dark rippled. Shadows ebbed. Spots began to appear in light patches of grey.
Her kissing him, her lips sweet as honey. Her laughing at him, her voice like a song from another life, lived in the shoes of another man.
The darkness growled, resisting. It sucked him in, dragged him back. Her laughter sounded, but it was too faint, she too far. What was the point?
I’ll find you.
His voice rang through the abyss, and the memory of fire, of a promise rendered, rammed back against the dark.
You’d better.
You’d better.
You’d better.
A promise. He had promised her.
He moved forward. The darkness sucked at his limbs, alarmed, but he remembered her. Her laughter, her voice, her anger and desperation and fear.
Her love.
All the best memories were of her.
And he knew her face, even in the darkness of death.
The shadows dripped down from the sky, as if a hand was peeling back the facade. Her voice pulled him, tugged him. He latched on, like a starving traveler stumbling through the dark, and followed until he saw a light in the great abyss and reached for it.
It was then that he knew of hope.