The Last Human IV - 66 - The God Who Was There

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Poire did not touch the ground. There was no ground to touch. The remnant universe had changed according to Poire’s will. He had atomized and recombined all the matter—all of it—into a new form.

Sweeping currents of dust snaked through vast fields of asteroids. Seas of floating stones clicked and cracked against each other in their endless orbiting dance. 

As Poire drifted through, the field parted to reveal a vast and complicated structure. An ever-shifting sphere, brimming with prismatic Light. It was made of countless columns and innumerable spindles and geometric thorns that slid ceaselessly over each other so that the whole structure seemed to be swallowing itself even as its insides poured out.

Poire had spent Eons perfecting the Crown’s design. His new engine only had to work once … but it had to work. Inside, a pale Scar blazed. Its brightness made it difficult to see this universe. But Poire no longer needed sight. He could feel every stone, for they were made of him, and he, of them. Every movement was his movement. Every drop of energy was his energy.

Poire closed his eyes, and took a calming breath. It wasn’t that he needed the oxygen, but he found the old techniques still focused him after all these years.

A shadow flickered from the Scar, and Poire opened his eyes. She was nothing more than a black speck amidst all that Light. So small. So wonderful. And it made him sad, for what he was about to do to her. 

Then, he spoke. “It wouldn’t have worked, you know.”

Khadam didn’t believe him, at first. And this delighted Poire, because he had watched her life from a distance, so many times, that he had forgotten what it was like to really speak with someone.

When he told her to send the Ark into the Scar, she answered. “Are you insane?”

“I will open the Way.”

“You’ve seen everything,” she said. “Then you know how this ends.” 

She wanted it to be true. She wanted to know that he knew. But Poire could only laugh, because he had never done this before. “I don’t know at all.” 

Khadam didn’t believe it was him. She was dying, and she thought she was losing her grip on reality. But even in the dark confusion, she cared about him. 

“I’m sorry. For everything that happened to you.”

He loved her, then, in a way he had never loved her before. Poire’s heart ached. It made what he was about to do hurt so much more. 

With a great exhalation, Poire ushered his Light through the narrow slit of his Scar. Focusing on that black speck, he forced Khadam’s diseased matter to grow, to rip from her body and unfold into wings of living obsidian. He tried to distract her from the pain.

“It wants to live, Khadam. Tell it how. Use it.”

It was not enough. The Dam was intact, holding the Scar in stasis. Sensing their prize had finally lost, the Sovereign’s machines streamed toward the Ark.

Thus, he would prove Anu right. The Destroyer would return to his home.

Poire touched the Scar. It burned in ways he had not imagined. The Dam tore at his flesh, ripping it apart molecule by molecule. Absorbing him. Is this how Anu felt? He wondered. He could not cross. Not yet.

But he could sense her. The Disease made her shine brighter than anything else on that side. She was so close, and so close to death. So, Poire pressed himself against the Scar, burning his own flesh that he might feel hers. Exhaling his life through the Scar, through the void, and into her.

The spines on her back were flooded with Light, and they grew, and they multiplied, and Khadam’s body began to split apart. And she laughed. Poire could feel the cracks running down her calcified spine, even as her wings spread wide, and carved the Dam into pieces. Oh, how she laughed, as her bones cracked and her body was eaten by that glittering death. 

Unfettered, the Scar blazed, as if to shine all its glory on the last moments of the only other human in all existence.

And she listened. “Is that you?” she asked. “Is that really you?” 

“Khadam,” Poire said, smiling, with tears in his eyes. “I am here.” 

And then, there was a touch. The ghost of a touch. Through Anu’s dying matter—the Disease—Poire felt Khadam. Felt her flesh, ragged and torn. Warm, and soft. Alive.

Their first touch. Their last.

Poire wished he could stay in this moment for a thousand lifetimes. Oh, how he wished. But the universe never waits. The Sovereign’s vast armadas were descending upon the dam, and Khadam was screaming at the xenos to fly into the Scar.

The Dam broke. And he could no longer see her. Only the Ark, and the billions of ships of the Sovereign Swarm.

With an open palm, Poire touched the Scar.

Light, brighter than any sun, erupted as the ancient wound in the void began to split open. A firestorm of Light sent countless bolts of Light spearing through the fractured pieces of the Dam. The tide of the Sovereign’s vast fleets begin to turn. Heavy cruisers and long battleships, slow and lumbering, ignited their repulsors as they tried to flee from the Scar unchained. Waves of drones peeled back, scrambling and scraping against each other in their rush to escape the surge of Light. 

Futile.

Torrents of Light to leap from the Scar, strobing through swathes of the armada. Where the Light touched, armored hulls became obsidian glass. Structural welding turned to dust, and carriers and heavy cruisers began to burst under their own weight. Flocks of drones died, screaming across the void, and their momentum turned them into kinetic projectiles that smashed against their sibling ships. 

But this was only the beginning. The Herald was about to make his return.

***

The Scar was a yawning infinity, and Yarsi’s mind rebelled at the sight. It felt like her sense of reality was being pulled out from her eyes. Yet she could not tear her eyes away from the view. 

Landscapes rose and fell like waves in an ocean of endlessly-complex fractals. Distant horizons flickered and melted toward her and away from her at the same time. Impossible dimensions folded into being, and showed her things that could not be. 

Then, she saw the Scar begin to open.

Celestial lacerations opened at the edges of the Scar, splitting space for thousands of miles above and below. Flashes of alien radiance cast brilliant shadows across the distant Moon and the Earth’s polluted atmosphere. And, like the petals of a great, black rose, the Dam’s platforms tumbled apart, and were obliterated by the Light.

The remains of the Sovereign’s armada turned to flee toward the Earth or the Moon or out into the stars. Yet the Scar would not let them go. Heavenly rays speared across the void, arcing across hundreds of thousands of miles, carving jagged lines through the scattered armada. Where they touched, metal turned to dust.

Yarsi thought of running, too. But it was too late. On faith, she had obeyed Khadam’s command. Did it matter? Yarsi’s mind began to spiral. Would anything have mattered?

A roar of gasps erupted inside the Bridge. Something was happening in the Scar. The xenos covered their faces, as if the very sight of the Scar caused them excruciating pain. But Yarsi held her gaze. She wanted to know. She needed to know. 

The infinite horizons of the Scar surged together, twisting themselves into new shapes. Yarsi whimpered. Her mind felt like it would burst. The Ark showered her with warnings about her organic body. She held her gaze. The threshold of the Scar shifted as something heavy rose up from the distant center. Whatever it was, it caused the rays of Light to pull back into the Scar, until a searing, stuttering web of Light covered the Scar from end to end. 

The Scar gave a heartbeat lurch. A wave rippled out, and caught the swarms of drones and machine ships, both the dead and the living. In the split moment before it smashed against the Ark, Yarsi inverted her generators, turning her light into a thin sheen of skin that Covered the Ark. A scream erupted from her lassertane body and it carried across the Bridge.

Vaguely, she felt a flutter, as one xeno rushed to her side. The impression of a golden beak, and golden eyes, and Ryke’s worried voice pouring into her auditory sensors. “Yarsi?”

But while the Swarm was caught and thrown, the wave simply rolled through the Ark, and the Ark held its course. 

“Yarsi, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

But of course, Ryke couldn’t see the future. Not even Yarsi could, anymore.

The Scar lurched again. A fissure burst in the jittering web of Light, and the Moon cracked into three great pieces. A black, glittering crust already formed along the craters and edges. 

“Oh, gods.” 

Beyond the Moon, great pits formed in the clouds, and the white atmosphere of the Earth began to boil away, revealing fresh, massive holes on the planet’s surface. Turning black. The planet’s crust crumbled into itself, revealing miles of machinery and glowing oceans of magma, which, too, were already hardening into black crystal.

Here, then, was the beginning of the end of all things. Even Ryke knew it.

“Oh, most merciful makers. Oh, Gods of heavens and earths. Guide us through death and light. Show us the way to our Savior Divine. Oh, most merciful makers…”

Now, the Sun began to dim. Black bands, horizontal striations, wrapped around the Sun, and shadows spread across its corona. Immense and slow, the bands widened.

This, then, was the moment that Emorynn had deleted from her memories. This was the end that the First Prophet had seen, and had decided that no one else should see. She had let Yarsi believe there was a path to salvation.

And all these years, Yarsi had clung to hope. But no one would survive this. No one, and nothing. Did it ever matter?

Ryke’s prayer stopped. Desperately, she turned to Yarsi. “He’s coming, isn’t he?” Ryke whispered, “Isn’t he coming?” 

All these years, Yarsi had clung to hope. Ryke deserved to hope a little longer.

“He,” Yarsi’s voice thrummed from the Ark’s speakers, “Will open the Way.”

And as the Scar lurched again, Yarsi shoved the Ark’s energy—all of it—out through the generators. The spearhead ship glowed. 

But though Yarsi was embedded into the Ark, she was not a machine. The strain on the Ark took her beyond the limits of her flesh. Every system screamed at her. First, her low level functions began to falter. Then, even the support modules keeping her organic body alive flickered and died. Her body gasped. Whimpered. It felt like fire was burning at her insides, but she held the shield of Light firm. 

The Sun was a black stain on the fabric of the void. And the distant stars began to dim as even their photons were devoured by the Scar’s Light. The threshold of the Scar rippled, sending out wave after crashing wave across the solar system. Each time, it stole Light from the Ark’s shield. 

Yarsi’s body thrashed in her metal throne. But she held the shield. Even as Yarsi’s mind was ripped from her body, she held. The last thing I’ll ever do. She would give them more time to hope—even if she would never know whether hope made a difference.

Yarsi of the Ark tried to smile, but her body no longer responded. Still, she pretended she was. Smiling was how she always wanted to die.

The metal tomb opened, and Yarsi could hear, with her own ears, the whispered prayers of her avian friend. Praying for hope.

***

Poire drifted forward. 

The tails of his robe were arrayed in a splendorous circle. Thousands of miles of geometric tiles, twisting like fabric, reached to the edges of his Scar, and embedded themselves in the very outer edge.

He pulled himself into the Scar. 

And, for the first time in a very long time, Poire went home.

***

A web of Light shivered across the Scar. 

And then, the web was outshone by a new brilliance. It emerged from the Scar like a sun returns from an eclipse. At first, the brilliant object was little more than a sliver of painful radiance. 

Then, it resolved into something much greater. 

Tails of a grand, prismatic robe stretched to the edges of the Scar, so that he seemed to be suspended at its center. His shining form was both hard to gaze upon, and impossible to look away from. Until everything began to burn with his Light. The last remains of the dam disintegrated. Then, the remains of the Swarm. Then, the broken moon crumbled and became ash. The Earth darkened, soon after.

But, shielded by a sheen of iridescent color, the Ark approached the god. Compared to the ship, he was tiny, and magnificent in his power.

Poire opened his arms.

Every Scar that had ever been carved into this universe flooded with Light. And the Dams broke. The Historians, those old xenos long forgotten by their makers, were extinguished in an instant. The worlds nearest to the Dams, some full of primordial life, some flourishing with primitive civilizations, evaporated. 

Every machine the Sovereign had ever created turned to dust.

And the universe was filled with Light. And the universe was nothing, but the Light.

And the first Scar folded back on itself, dragging Poire back to his Crown in his remnant universe. Ten great, glowing strands extended from his fingertips, barely touching the Ark as he dragged it with him.

The Crown’s eternal gyrations slowed. For a brief moment, they stopped. And then, began to move in the opposite direction, gathering speed. 

***

The Ark shook, and the smell of burning metal filled the air. Its protective sphere rippled dangerously, so thin now that Ryke could see outside. But what she saw made her never want to see again. Her mind screamed. She didn’t know if her voice screamed, too. 

***

Please, Poire prayed to himself. Please let this work. Cracks had already begun to form in that thin sheen surrounding the Ark. If the shield broke, a single touch would destroy them all. Please open.

A tear appeared in the void. Thin, and narrow. Almost surgical. It burned a deep, furious blue.

A Scar to a new universe. One that Anu had been to, and to which Poire would never go.

And Poire shepherded the Ark through. 

***

“Yarsi,” Ryke held the dead girl. She spoke to her, even though she knew the girl couldn’t hear her. “Look. Look what you did.”

The Queen held the girl’s face against her chest, rocking her back and forth. “Look what you gave us.”

The Ark’s screens showed the universe outside. 

Bolts of geometric lightning still licked at the Ark, trying to cling to the hull as it drifted away from the Scar. Ahead, there was only the darkness of the void. And the endless, glittering stars of an untouched universe. Waiting for new life.

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