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There was a sense of calm factuality once one accepted one's own death. An undeniable fact that things had played out the way they did, one did what one had done, and there we were. Death. At last.
There was this idea of how everything would end. Some bright light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe darkness after that. Maybe something after that, whatever faith promised?
He used to be a man of strong faith. Glimpsing at the true nature of the universe had shaken that, but still he held onto the romantic idea that there maybe was something more. One of those places not even the wizards knew about, where the brothers and friends that had fallen at his side would be granted the honour they had earned.
What his own personal imagination however did not include, was This .
The Hootsman was dead.
He knew that with unshakable certainty.
And he didn't mean, he was dead in the future sense, no, he was dead right now! As in, he had died. Positively torn to atoms by the very heart that had extended his life to over a millenia. Fin, Finito, Kaboom. He had blown himself up, he had felt the enormous amount of energy built up the very fraction of a second before he had died. Spreading out from inside of him, ripping him apart in a last grandiose pulse, killing at least a few million people.
No. That wasn't true. He felt it to be more. A lot more. Billions of people had died. Not in terror or fear, they had just stopped living from one moment to the other.
And so had he.
But why, (for hoots sake) why was he able to even think that?
Then again, was he?
He wasn't anything. But everywhere. He felt nothing because he had no body. And he felt everything because he was ... Something. A strange power was all around him and within him where he wasn't and yet was. It felt ancient. Like peering into the mind of something that was so far beyond his understanding that he couldn't even really see it. It felt mighty and powerful, glorious even, beating within him harder and stronger with every moment he could think.
It didn't want him to die. Why?
There was no answer.
He felt time. For the first time in his long life he actually really could feel time. Not as an abstract, a sense or idea - but an actual graspable entity right before his eyes (though he didn't see), all around him, dragging him along.
It was rushing, cascading around him, droning, blasting, deafening. And yet, despite its all consuming presence it felt horribly fragile. It felt like it would burst and tear if he reached out. If only he could - but he wasn't here, nor there. He was something, but nothing.
Maybe, this was how wizards understood time to be? How horrid that would be. This fragile thing right before him - maybe they were right trying to protect it.
He thought about Angus. It felt almost like he was here with him. But Angus wasn't dead. But then again, was he?
He thought of Earth.
And a violent snap tore through everything he was.
Suddenly he gasped, stumbled, crashed on the ground, his entire body was set aflame by pain as every nerve and sense was violently assaulted by merely existing. He drew a breath and his lungs hurt, he looked around but was blinded, where he touched the ground it felt like he was pressing his skin into a million needles.
The sky was wrong, a deep sulfuric yellow, the ground was dark, he couldn't breath, a blinding pain tore his chest apart. He stared at his hand and he didn't know what he saw - his body was flickering and he could see the mechanics and veins below his skin, they seemed to glow, but not like any wizard's magic would. This magic was bright like spring and cold like winter. He didn’t even know what that meant. Then he saw his fingers dissolved before his very eyes.
It did not hurt. If anything, the intense pain from before vanished with every atom of himself disappearing into the air. Another horrible snap tore through reality, and he felt it rip apart with a thousand colours in his mind.
And then he was nothing again.
He had been dead. But now he wasn't even that anymore. Something had dragged him back into ...life? Existence? Nothing of that rang true.
But he wasn't dead. He had to accept that.
He thought of Earth.
Then he violently crashed into the ground again. Once more his body was aching in agony and he shouted in frustration. The air was thick and tasted like thunder. The grass below him was wet and a screeching rung in his ears.
This time he was more. He was here, for a moment he really existed again. Not enough to get a true sense of where he was, but enough to be sure that he was.
It wasn't right. He didn't understand. He laughed.
And then he was torn away again.
And was nothing again.
And he thought of earth.
And then he was nothing.
Then earth.
Nothing.
Earth.
Time.
Nothing.
Home.
A breath.
Cold biting but wonderfully fresh air flooded his artificial lungs, they expanded and it hurt, but like a drowning man he gasped for another breath.
A blinding light rendered the world around him into nothing but white. It was freezing cold and yet he felt a hint of warmth from the light.
A firm draft carried a howling sound and upset his hair and beard.
And he felt his heart.
He reached for his chest, laying his hand above the pulsing star within him. He felt its warmth. The heat within his body. And that slow and steady pulse.
It was there.
He was here. He existed. He was alive.
He did not understand how and why, but he had gotten used to that particular sensation a long time ago. A side effect of surrounding oneself with wizards. It had to be something magical, that much he understood.
Eventually he sat up. First now he noticed water dripping from his body and realized he had been laying in a small puddle. It wasn't raining but the brightness around finally started to make sense. It was melted snow he sat in, and all around him was ice.
He sensed the cold biting into his wet skin, but his heart kept pulsing slow and calm as always, effortlessly keeping his body warm - despite the fact that he was stark naked and the world around him frozen to the core.
He stood up. Staring at the distant and blinding horizon all around him.
He turned. And turned again. Nothing but snow and ice as far the eye could see. Frowning he glanced up into the sky.
"The… fuck was that?"