Chapter 23 (Fin of Finnelgamin)

As soon as I entered that V-scape, a message popped up to greet me from the only person I’ve met there, Ledeon. As it had been upwards of a year since I'd last been in contact with him, it was a surprise.

“Wow,” he said in the message. “You haven’t been on at all since I met you. I take it you didn’t like the Dark World?” A prompt popped up to reply, but I hesitated. When my eyes focused on the reply prompt, a text box popped open. It was speech recognition in the highest of forms.

“I did,” I said, to myself in the middle of the town to compose a reply. “I was just dealing with a lot at home. A friend just had a baby, and this might be the last time I’m ever in this place. Honestly, I don’t even know what I’m doing here.”

“Huh,” he replied. I expected more, but he didn’t send anything else until I was half of the way to the next town. With the green filter, the gray environment looked desolate, but beautiful. “Send me your location. I’ll show you the coolest parts of this V-scape before you go.” A prompt popped up asking to share my location with Ledeon. I shrugged and approved.

He appeared on the horizon, on a flying, glowing, monstrous wolf so bright that I had to take off my verete headband. I was taken by surprise, but rather than speak, Ledeon reached out his hand to help me up onto the fluffy beast. The golden fur shimmered in the light coming from the skin beneath. It felt so pleasant and warm.

“It’s called a Daywolf,” he said, as we ascended into the dark. “Not a lot of people have one. It’s only for people who have been with this V-scape from the very start, like me. There is one place in particular I want to show you that might change your mind about leaving this place forever.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, as the Daywolf ran in the sky over towns and cities below. “I don’t think I’ll change my mind.”

“How come?” He asked.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I said with a laugh. “Let’s just say I’ll be off-world.”

“Heading to the Moon? Ledeon asked. “Well, I’m on Mars, so that’s like a hop-skip and a jump away. Besides, link goes as far as Neptune now. I hear they might be sending settler teams there soon.” I laughed at my own mistake.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I forgot it’s no longer 2017. I have such a terrible sense of time.” Any normal human would think I’m crazy at that statement, but Ledeon said nothing for a little while. The daywolf stopped in the middle of nowhere.

“So you’re one of them,” he said and stood up on the furry back. “Look up and put your filter on. This place is called the Sky Coral. It’s really hard to get here on foot since the surrounding ground is riddled with poisonous thorn vines.” I looked up to find a marbled sky of swirling green, white, gray, and black, churning in a circular manner.

“What did you mean by ‘one of them’?” I asked.

“A Zaxi, a star,” he said.

“Ar- Are you one, too?”

“Nah, man,” Ledeon said, looking back at me. “I’m a Tisyros. I eat stars.” I recoiled at his declaration only to realize I was hovering in the sky. With no support, I fell off the lighted beast.

The ground was pretty far away and it would only reset me to the last checkpoint at death, but the glowing wolf dropped with me. Ledeon’s hand reached out from the yellow glow, but I hesitated.

“I just told you I’m on Mars, man!” he shouted over the rush of air in my ears. “We’re not enemies here, Finn! Not that I’m a very normal Tisyros anyway! Grab on already!” I clutched onto his hand as the Daywolf ascended.

“Do you really eat stars?” I asked, when we leveled off. The Sky Coral was far above now, almost faded into the gray of the sky when looking through the filter.

“I’ve consumed one before,” he said. “It was a friend of mine and it was to free her from slavery. The ‘eating’ of stars is a bit exaggerated about my kind. One Tisyros can ABSORB one Zaxi, but never consume it whole. It’s true we feed off the energy, but keeping a whole star inside kills us in the end. You said you were heading off-world, right?” I hesitated, but his explanation made Tisyros sound weak pitted against a full Zaxient being.

“Yeah, off-Earth,” I said. “Probably beyond the solar system. Eventually, I want to go beyond the cluster, see what all the Zaxi are afraid of out there. I knew Garavand are said to be out there, the eternal dark, but someone has to explore further. Ledeon smiled.

“That’s a good plan,” he said. “If you get a chance, stop by Mars. I promise I won’t eat you. By the time you get out there beyond the cluster, I’m likely to be dead. Unlike Zaxi, Tisyros live six years per a human thousand, and I’m already almost fourteen.”

“I’ll be sure to come see you,” I replied. “Might be a few more hundreds of years of training though. My son and I are still working on containment so we can travel out there. We’re both barely three-hundred years old.”

“That’s like babies,” Ledeon said, looking a bit too hungry.

“Well, I was a human once,” I said.

“A human turned Zaxi?” Ledeon asked. “The future sounds interesting. I might have to join you for a short time.” We talked a bit more underneath the Sky Coral about things he encountered in the game, and some of his life.

Ledeon had a son he couldn’t see too often, and one very elusive father. I told him about Doc, Ernie, Agi, and Fiona. By the end, he was as much in the loop as everyone else. I left the V-scape planning to visit him on Mars after leaving Earth behind. It was a step toward space, a goal on the way beyond. It wasn’t until sixty years later that I saw Ledeon again, though I could have spent time with him on link. It turned out that Ernie aged out of his old body, becoming a full Garavand in the process. Doc created a body for him to contain his displeasing form. Like a Zaxi, he wore a human skin containing his compressed body.

As a family, we proceeded into the stars, among the cluster, parting ways with Doc at last. His search for Compound X, the original one, was set to begin a few enids later. We visited Ledeon along the way, donning portable skin cloaks that had no human substance, only appearance. He lived by himself, entertained by women of Mars on occasion to feed his needs. Though unsuitable for Filigare, we witnessed as he plucked a core of energy from within a woman’s naked chest. Before I left, I allowed him a taste of my energy and was happy to receive feedback that I tasted almost human. This prompted a wild night of scattering between Fiona, Ledeon, and me, a sort of starlit triangle that all left satisfied, though I missed all the flavors of Euphoria Eggs in my old skin. Ledeon saw us off-Mars and pointed out where his friend ventured, the freed Zaxi named Olivia. As we had no direction in mind, we ventured there first.

Only a few hundred years into our travels, the Earth was just a blue dot among others, and yet I could find it anytime in the surroundings. Zaxi specters could be used in a row to zoom in considerable distances, but Fiona issued a warning that I might see my past self as we traveled several times faster than light. When the blue dot grew faint, and the specters failed to zoom close enough, we could at last release the dimming of our energies. Our triple glow lit a corner of the cluster for which we received messages of happiness from the surrounding stars.

“Way to glow!” I felt a pulse convey from one aquamarine star in the vicinity. To them, we were still babies. Any glow we did was an achievement. I sent back bursts of thanks with the help of my specters. Though we practiced human shapes when forming in space, Fiona and Fil altered to look like orbs for ease of containment. I remained the shape of a human figure, as that was the last link to what I once was.

During our trip, I was introduced to Fiona’s parental cluster. They conveyed that I was too young, but delighted in a grandson, showering Filigare with praise. His pulses of embarrassment only went as far as Fiona and I. It was nice to see a community among our cluster that humans also possessed. Fiona had to teach me how to communicate with my light. At times along the way, we stopped over to enter an asteroid and release ourselves to rest for a moment. More often than not, the bit of rock hiding us from sight, disintegrated in the process. That method was also how we met a Zaxi of three enids named Kep. Red Glow.

“Oh, if you want to see some cool things,” she said. I’ve learned to read gender in time, though many stars were a dead split between the two very human concepts. “There is a Rukesh node just a few thousandth that way. So many species live there, and coexist somehow. I got the best mutual release there with a gal in celestial skin. As for your question, sorry, I don’t know Olivia, but if her energy is white, she should be easy to locate. Not many of us are so pure anymore. I bet she was created by all Silvers.”

“Silvers?” I asked. It was no longer language that we spoke, but my memory converted it to speech. I wondered what the Silvers meant to Kep.

“It goes: Evers, Golds, Silvers, Bronzes, Colors,” Kep listed. “They’re the classes of our kind. We’re the lowest since our energies express actual emotion. They say that Evers don’t even have visible light in their spectrum, they just glow invisible energy. I’ve never met one, and I hope I don’t. The first three are like nobles, and Bronzes are second-in-command, but I bet you’re probably too young to bother with the classes yet. Sorry to bring it up. Anyway, I’m off toward that purple star. We’ve been talking, and he wanted to have a bit of me inside him. I just can’t resist a good fuck. Must be my red energy at play.” Kep reminded me of a time that I was human and how much fun it was to spend effort to achieve release.

A part of me wanted to wake up in that cabin in the woods again, have my life go another direction, until I was old, gray, and senile, yelling at a being in the sky, my god, the creator of my fortune and pain. I laughed at the thought. Perhaps some part of me already lived that life. It felt too vivid to be just a dream. A pulse of concern from Fiona interrupted my thoughts. I pulsated joy again and smiled on my star body. I had a family and freedom, not to mention a somewhat-eternity to live this way. I was happy this was the path I went down.

Before I took on the darkness beyond the cluster, we flew around the very universe I could only marvel at from the small rock whence I came. No matter my origin, I was now a part of the cluster of stars in the emptiness of the mysterious nothing. If only the real world had something just like the visor in the V-scape I still remembered. That technology would take darkness and ask it to step aside, exposing what truly awaited out there.

“Oh, you mean Verete,” Fiona once said. “It’s a mineral found on many planets. It crystallizes to form a solid that makes it possible to see in the dark. It’s not more powerful than our specters though.”

Before my journey came to an end, three enids passed. Fiona found her corner to bring light to and Filigare went off to explore on his own. Worried for his sake, I followed him for a time, masking my energy output, but when he encountered a Zaxi friend and shared energy with her, I felt that I was no longer needed. There was nothing more for me to do. I stopped by Fiona, and had a lot of sex over a few thousand years. She had her purpose in life and could create more life at any time.

Was it human of me to seek the unknown? I wanted to know the limits of this new life. Was there even a being that could destroy me? I wanted to know more about the Garavand, and Earth was already too far. Even getting to the edge of the cluster could take enids of travel, but I craved it.

Along the way, I communicated with stars who guarded the external bounds of the cluster. Each gave me refuge and enjoyed sharing releases. They awaited matter dumps from the dimension of Dorostomos, new land that would form into planets that Zaxi could bring to life with their light. They kept everyone safe by being the last stars on the edge, a comforting thought of security in the vast dark. They begged me not to go further, yet I went. Soon beyond their vicinity, their messages stopped coming, and I flew further into the dark. I dared not look behind me as the light of the Zaxi guards faded out. How would I know which way to go?

When I did manage to brave a look back, the whole cluster was just that, a gathering of dots at the highest zoom of all my specters strained to the brink. At no zoom, the whole part was only a faded gray dot on the endless nothing. The counting of time passing escaped me, but the last time I was near my kind I just got past my tenth Enid. I had lived a billion years. The sudden realization of darkness burst fear into me, and out of me. I had to open myself to all the energy within and cast a light into this corner. A memory pushed its way out of my human childhood. They were my mother’s words.

“Do you fear what’s out there, hiding in the dark, beyond where your eyes can see?” she asked. It was the dead of night, I sat at the window of a train speeding to parts unknown. The heavy metal car rattled in the dark of rails with nothing beyond the glass surface. I looked at the shifting shapes before replying.

“No,” I said in the memory.

“How come?” She asked me. I only stared off beyond the train for a minute.

“Everything deserves a kind first thought,” I said. “Don’t you think?” She only smiled without words and put her arms around me in a hug. I could still remember that warmth millions of years beyond that one moment in time.

Everything deserves a kind first thought. Such a simple notion. I released all of my energy to light this dark, and what I saw there, was not for the faint of heart.

 

 

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