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What makes up a man? Is it flesh and bones— is it memory and soul? He is both and neither: he is a reflection tainted in blood and an impossibility that breaks the Law. This is how the Hanging Judge finds him, a body broken like glass lingering in a sea of fallen trees. The Inquisitor beholds him and Bachelor Daniil Dankovsky stands again.
The dust has settled, the skies are clear, and Daniil hears the falling rain as Karminsky moves closer. Alea iacta est. He who crossed the rubicon of time has become unaligned; an impossibility made of reflections can shatter but raindrops can not. As such, as an imperfect reflection, Daniil walks, steps mirrored to Karminsky’s, left landing heavier than the right, quiet even against the ash and wood. They meet in the middle, a stillness settling between them as if it was the final day of the plague; perhaps only a miracle, or the death of one, can cause this much destruction.
“You have succeeded Dankovsky.”
It is the first thing Karminsky says, tone even and strangely sincere. Though both of them pursue impossibilities, one pins them against wood, gently but still only preserving only a corpse, while the other prefers observation, a researcher who despises sacrifices. Omnes eodem cogimur. Two separate ideals of romanticism but all under the same umbrella.
In a sense, Karminsky is right. In another, it feels like mockery.
“You too have succeeded.”
Fitting how the only thing he could find as a suitable reply was a mirror of Karminsky’s words. Daniil didn’t want Karminsky to have been the one to find him; though his eyes are ever looking towards the future, the bonds of the past and present still shackle his hollow chest. The iron heart pinned on the jacket burns in Daniil’s vision, a reminder that despite everything— all of their similarities, loves, ideals, and being men forcibly cast in marble— they could never be long term friends, an inquisitor high above and the lowly dreamer who by happenstance became a miracle.
As an inquisitor, Karminsky sees through his facade of plainness, the lacking candor that permeates every part of Daniil Dankovsky that remained a person. As a friend, though neither would ever acknowledge such a thing being a possibility—yet, it is always yet, for the future is uncertain and they are both dreamers to the core— Karminsky didn’t know how to preserve a living version of Dankovsky when he is so set on dying. This is why a meeting that should have happened long ago has been delayed until now; it would’ve been easy for him to have shattered Dankovsky’s mind in one motion, for him to pin his body to the walls and glaze upon it longingly, but something unnamable made him desire a person, not a body.
“Thanatica still stands and you have defeated death. Is this not a perfect ending for you, Dankovsky?”
Daniil pauses, thinks, and contemplates. The entire farce surrounding the Polyhedron was a false victory over death. People conflated his goals; he desired not immortality but the end of the inevitability of death. It should be a choice as to when to die, not an unstoppable force that takes you when you don’t want to let go. Simon Cain obtained immortality but accepted death, relished in it as a form of cleansing. Stuck as Simon Cain’s heir, he lost in every sense of his goals. He could neither grant his experiences to humanity— whether the Polyhedron still stood or not, it wouldn’t have mattered when it only allowed children and idealists who held dreams as sacred as children did in— nor give himself a final resting point.
At first he didn’t understand what he had become. He had understood that within their current circumstances, Thanatica would never tame death. He had wished to grant humanity the stars, to let them see and understand what he had. Daniil Dankovsky was a prideful man, not concerned with trampling on both sets of the Law if it led to his life’s goal. But there’s always been an internal understanding in him. He knew his flaws, could weaponise it if it came down to it— he had an understanding of himself that, in another life, would’ve made him a great inquisitor. Thus he knew he was a dreamer, a romantic idealist in the truest sense, no matter how grounded in principles and science he projected and was perceived as.
What they don’t tell you about idealists is that they have a high tendency to kill themselves, whether their ambitions succeed or must be buried in the ground. Daniil Dankovsky is no different, always clinging to a bullet that would set him free. He had thought with the Polyhedron destroyed, despite having glazed upon the world in truth and seen its every reflection, he would be anchored in time again, far from the immortality that made Simon Cain a monster and a saviour. Instead now his soul shackled to a body that could’ve made a vaccine for the sand pest.
Given he has nothing to lose but time, he will be sincere.
“No, I have failed. Vita incerta, mors certissima. Nothing has changed except I. This is not a miracle that can save humanity, only the lingering effects of a man who sought to become God. I have become neither a man nor a god, just the reflection of Simon Cain.”
“If you were truly just a reflection of Simon Cain, you would have stayed in the Town-on-Gorkon. You are still Bachelor Daniil Dankovsky, founder of Thanatica, fighter against death. Vita summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam. It did not stop you before. It can’t stop you now.”
A pause. An understanding.
“You are not here to eliminate me.”
Karminsky could tell him that he gave his protection to Thanatica as Dankovsky chased other miracles. After all, if Thanatica was destroyed, a part of Daniil Dankovsky would forever be lost and Karminsky wanted— loved— the version he beheld during the plague. But such sincerity can’t be spoken now— later, much later, in a similar stillness, they can be spoken unburdened. With truth barred, there is only the feeling of possession.
An ungloved hand touches a pieced together face. For a hand made of marble, it is surprisingly warm. For a face made of glass, it is surprisingly stable.
“A miracle that has already separated itself from humanity. You can either be eliminated or be controlled.”
They both know what was unspoken— be mine whilst yourself or a hollow shell.
Daniil leans into the hand and closes his eyes.
“Feci quod potui, faciant meliora potentes.”
The magpie enters the gilded cage willingly.