Dragon Aster Trilogy

39: OUT OF BOUNDS



Sybl opened her eyes to the rays of sunlight piercing through her lids. Before she could open them all the way, she had already started to cry.

“His blood is the water.

His anger, storms of fire.

His wings are the mountains.

His breath whispers through the chasms.”

Sybl looked for the source of the familiar psi as she sat up. It could have only been Daath’s. He had brought her to Aster, so he might be here again on Earth. But it was him who handed her to Vanir as well, so it didn’t make any sense.

She was drenched in water and covered in mud; as if something had dragged her across the bank from the pond. Sybl was right back to where she had started; at the back of her old foster home. But the woods were a dead silent.

The still pond was heavily layered in green algae. But that wasn’t what held her attention, as she lifted her eyes to the cougar on the other side of it. The glowing brightness of its green eyes betrayed its appearance as any normal animal of Earth.

It stood up on all fours, then walked over the pond to the center of it. The ripples it made killed and sunk the algae. Then it sat down and simply stared quietly at its reflection, tilting its head to the side as if to listen to the sound of falling death. Then Daath began to speak to her psi again,

“His dreams fortify life.

His nightmares channel death.

His waking brings absolution.

He is the darkness from where all emerge.

He is the darkness from which only light can escape.”

Daath’s green eyes looked to her then. “Fayless, he is the void of space that will reclaim it all.”

When the pluma spoke, there was no denying that it was him, only wingless. She could see now how his cougar-like appearance was handy. But under his newly grown brown fur, that was as puffy as new cub’s, was a devil of flesh woven solely from the pain and death of others. His whole being was thrown back in Time to before she was so much as ever born.

The part of him that Sybl had healed three hundred years ago into Damek was now lost deep within Aragmoth. The part of his soul that was reborn as Nafury. Lost forever. Or maybe it was here, where Hino quietly held his victory.

“When we go forward in Time, we learn. When we go back, we remember. But when we are lost in-between it all, we forget. When our memories stop moving, then are thawed afterwards, they shatter just like fallen ice. Everywhere and nowhere. We can lose all of what makes us who we are. It is not Hino who holds the soul Asteria gave me. It is Aragmoth who holds it. Should he release it, I will return.”

“So what you’re saying is it was all for nothing? Your memories as Nafury—as Damek for that matter? The world doesn’t go on oblivious of those who just disappear or die.”

“Wishes send you forward, regret sends you back in Time. If I am to avoid falling victim to the Aeger again, I must continue forward. I am not a puppet to be had by those who would stumble on the shattered pieces of my memories. My life as Nafury was made into such a puppet, as was yours. I am a Death Cael; one promised to Asteria. I am not bound to the festra that stands a chance at saving the other Eminor, I was its master. Now you are destined to have it. If I am to have a chance at regaining what Asteria gave me in the past, I must find the future she wishes for. It is her call that summons my being more than anything now. You will not feel regret in my leaving.”

Sybl staggered mid-yell at him. She could lie, but he would feel every inch of it. The truth was that she didn’t miss him. Not only had the Aeger freed him of his past, it had also destroyed all his connections to her. What she remembered of him was not from her own memories of experience. She was different now. He was an Awl. He was from Earth and a time before the Bible. He was a soldier that served war, only to closer serve death. In taking the lives and souls of others, he was able to exist. “Send me back to Aster.”

“Is that what you want?”

“Yes. I can’t stay here. I hate this place. I don’t belong here.”

Daath looked around, trying to pinpoint what caused her to hate the place so.

“There is nothing for me here. No wishes. Just regret.”

“Then this is my good-bye to you.”

“Where are you going?”

“This realm and Aster both give me heavy regret. So I will go to where it no longer exists. I will return to where she waits for me.” Daath turned his head around and flared his teeth, before biting into his thigh. It sent a couple of lines of blood streaming down his leg and into the water. What didn’t touch the water, began to flow up his back, until it grew like a tree on him. The skin of his wings and then his feathers from his ice-cold blood formed together. “There is a Heaven for each of us, and I will pray alongside Asteria that you find yours.”

Sybl looked at the dark pool of water, then watched as he sprung off it and into the air in a single ripple. Then in a prism of rays split and cast from his unholy wings against the sun, he was gone.

She waded into the dark water, terrified enough to shiver. If this Rift landed her on the bottom of the ocean of Aster, she would be dead from the pressure in moments. All she had to go on was a shaky trust from the Awl she just freed. One that wasn’t so much as a demon anymore to relate on any level of humanity, for there was nothing left of his soul that loved her. She didn’t know if she could find it in Aragmoth. She didn’t so much as know if she truly wanted to.