“I have never seen the sun and I shall never see the sun. My days draw to a close and my struggles are far from over. Victory lies beyond a horizon I can no longer reach. Those I would save will perish before our work is done and before the tomorrow we dream of can possibly arrive. And yet, I am satisfied. No one can carry the world themselves, and no one is meant to. I have carried the dreams of those who came before me, as mine will be carried by those who follow after. Though it take a lifetime to carry each stone, in some distant day the home we envision, one where we all are family, will open its doors. What people will see then will be no more than the outward manifestation of the truth I at last can feel in my bones.”

“Though homeless and bereft of light and hope, we are a family already. Blood from different rivers may flow in our veins, but I am kin to all those around me, and the unity we will someday discover is a unity we have forged with every kind word, every shared meal, and with every helping hand. None of it has been wasted.”

– A quote from Rogaz Teachelle as seen on the first plaque visitors to the Mt Gloria Historical Museum as presented with as they enter.

I’d escaped the darkness, but I couldn’t see a thing. That was mildly concerning. Hyperventilating is also a mild response. Shaking uncontrollably? Very mild, all things considered. Screaming at the top of my lungs? Somewhat less mild. Also not terribly dignified.

The laughter though?

Well, it was honest.

Unexpected.

Maybe a little out of place.

I was blind. I could feel that, but in a rush it hit me, harder than Vaingloth every could have, that I could feel!

The ground under my hands? Soft and rich with stone so hard I could squeeze them till I broke my fingers and they’d still be there.

Does that sound like a bad thing? No! I existed still! I had fingers! I could break parts of myself! 

I mean, demonstrably I had broken a rather significant part of myself, given that my eyes were very definitely not working.

But the rest of me?

I was still there! 

I spun around a few times and fell over onto my back, laughing the whole time. 

Genuine, joyous laughter.

Okay, there may have been a few mad giggles that crept in around the edges, sure, but Come On! 

I had jumped into the thing that killed the gods. Again. And I’d gotten out. AGAIN!

That was so ridiculous I couldn’t stop laughing even my abdomen starting to shriek from effort.

I’d survived.

I was alive.

I would see the world after Vaingloth.

I would see a world with Sola in it!

Okay, maybe not ‘see’. I needed to start adjusting my vocabulary there a bit.

The laughter, mad and otherwise, gradually released me and I sagged down into the embrace of soil that no one had ever walked on.

I was standing near the bottom of what had once been the ocean. Generally not a place the books I’d read suggested people went for casual strolls.

Books! Oh no. No, no, no.

Oh, that one hurt.

I couldn’t see. So I couldn’t read either.

Was it too late to dive back into the beast fragment and wrestle my vision back from it?

Yes. Oh missing stars above, yes it was much too late for that.

For as much as I wanted to rage, and bargain, and deny what had happened, I couldn’t escape the awareness of what I’d done.

I’d escaped the End of All Things. In part because I’d become the End of All Things, but that had really only let me communicate with the beast fragment, to the extent the beast fragment was able to form things like impressions and reaction and whatever passed for a thought in something which was emptiness incarnate.

What had really let me escape wasn’t the fact that when the beast fragment tried to dissolve me, it found it was dissolving itself. The shadow of its emptiness I carried mixed within me wasn’t exactly armor, more an acknowledgement that what I am is what it had been and what it was I could become. 

If that sounds like I don’t have a great handle on it, that’s exactly correct.

What I did have a handle on, for I-was-still-freaking-out-about-it values of ‘having a handle on it’, was what I’d communicated and what I’d left behind. That had been what saved me.

And it was what would have repercussions to come.

I couldn’t return to get my vision back. 

And I didn’t need it.

I tried to tell myself that, but I’m really bad at lying.

Not that I don’t do it, a lot, but I’m still bad at it.

In this case, the lie exposed a terrible, growing ache within me. I wanted nothing more than a small space, a new book, and to curl up and and pour myself into the pages until I lost all sense of the world around me.

And I would never get to do that again.

Which brought back the tears.

I could have cried out ‘why me’, but the truth was it ‘was me’ because I’d demanded it be me. Could I have had someone else carry out my plan? Sure. I’m sure almost anyone would have been willing to do everything I’d done, up to and including pitching themselves into the beast fragment to destroy Vaingloth.

Would any of them have survived? Probably not. The other Blessed might have worked some strange miracle. Maybe Zeph would have been fast enough to dash from at the last micro-instant. 

But probably not.

Was that why I’d insisted I be the one to do it?

It’d sound really heroic if I could answer ‘yes’ to that question wouldn’t it? Little, who was willing to give her life that others might live! 

Yuck. I had to make sure that idea never caught on. It was gross to think about people being that wrong about me.

Sure, I was happy Zeph and the others were okay, but I’d been the one to destroy Vaingloth because I had to know, I had to be there and I had to be absolutely certain. It wasn’t enough to believe he was dead and gone, I had to feel the bites that devoured him and taste his unmaking.

Did I deserve what had happened to me as a result?

No.

No one deserved anything Vaingloth did to them. It wasn’t right that I should suffer in order to bring him down. Someone else should have killed him ages ago. Or he should have been better from the start. Maybe somewhere, something had happened to set him on the course he wound up on and if only that could have been changed or fixed, he would have been a decent person. Maybe he could have been a good one even.

But he wasn’t. 

And I didn’t regret what I’d done.

I wasn’t thrilled to have lost my sight. And I still had so much anger inside me over what he’d done that even knowing he was dead and had suffered in dying hadn’t been able to assuage it.

I hadn’t been looking to give up my anger though. I’d been looking to prevent all the harm he would have done. To me. To everyone I knew. And to everyone I didn’t know. 

Could he have done good? Yes.

Was the world better off without him? Absolutely.

Was I better off without him? I would be. Even with what I had lost. I could feel things shifting in my heart. Old wounds aching that I’d had to bury so long ago. Old rage searching for anything else it could protect me from. Old fears echoing on and on, unable to believe that the world could suddenly be a better place.

That was the real tragedy of it though. For all his potential, the world was a better place without the man Vaingloth had chosen to be.

Not all tragedies are ones to shed tears over though. Sometimes the only thing to do is turn away and leave them behind. 

Which I saw it was time for me to do.

Was I blind? Sure. Could I still see though? Not like I had before. I’d been right about not emerging from the endless abyss as the person I’d been. What I’d lost I would always grieve, but grief wasn’t going to be the entirety of my life, or even the majority of it if I had any say in the matter.

The awareness I’d gained from my fusion with MB remained even if my natural sight was gone. I could still smell and feel and hear. No better than I could before, but in an empty wilderness it’s easy to pick out sounds when everything else it quiet as grave.

Also, Zeph’s not exactly ‘subtle’ when she moves at speed. The rolling boom that preceded her arrival told me I’d climbed up pretty far away from when I’d dropped into the abyss.

She wasn’t the first thing I heard though.

“Why!” Sola asked. “Why did you do that!”

“You’re back!” I shouted. I’d been walking away from the abyss, but I stumbled to my knees when I heard her.

“I was always here!” she shouted back at me.

I should have been concerned that my god seemed a bit annoyed with me. Perhaps upset even. 

I was not.

I could hear her again!

“I know, I know!” I said, and since my eyes didn’t need to bother with ‘seeing’ any more, they decided to go to town with their other function and pour a river of tears down my face.

Dignity is for people not experiencing divine oneness, and they can all just shut up.

“Why then! Why! We could have fought that thing!” Sola was still shouting, which, again, should have left me trembling, but I was too happy in that moment, too excited that my faith in her continued existence hadn’t just been self-delusion, to be anything but delirious with joy, even if I was due a divine smiting or two.

“No. No, I am never having you fight that again. Never. You never need to do that for us. You have done too much. You saved us. You saved me. No, you are never going to fight and you are NEVER going to be destroyed again!”

I might have screamed that last bit.

Aloud.

Which Zeph boomed close enough to hear.

“Listen to the Ratkin girl,” she said, leaving an implied threat at the end of her words which did not seem like something a servitor should be doing to her appointed god .

“You would turn on me too?” Sola asked, speaking from some place within the two of us.

“Oh we’re not turning from you,” I said. “We’re just not going to let you turn from yourself. You did your part. We get to do ours. That’s how this works.”

“I’m supposed to be the answer to your prayers. I’m supposed to guide you and shelter you. I am the light that reveals the new day, and the fire that brings life to the world. I should have been with you, to protect you, to burn your foes.”

“You were,” I said. “Hundreds of years ago, you were. You burned and you protected and thanks to that there was a world left for me to be born in. You’ve sacrificed everything you were for me and everyone else.”

“Not everything,” Sola grumbled.

“Enough. More than enough. More than you ever should have had to,” Zeph said.

“There was no choice. The world would have fallen and without the world, what would I be?” Sola asked. “All I am is in you and those who remain, those few I and the others could spare.”

“And that’s why I couldn’t bring you with me. That’s why I will never let you fight another battle. You’re a part of us, a part that’s been missing my whole life. A part the world needs more than any other. Nothing is going to take our new days from us, because nothing is going to take you from me.”

I hadn’t known gods could cry, but I suppose it could be hard for them to accept that they were loved too.