6 Epilogue: Stargazer

12.02.2022

Stay here...

There was the freezing cold.

There was the burning heat.

And there was the Stargazer, lost in space.

Drifting, away from everything and everyone. The universe was beautiful around him. Distant stars were flickering in the darkness, whispering tales as old as time itself. The closest, the star of this liveless system, was a bright light before him – he felt its heat, the radiation. A pleasant sensation that was giving a little comfort to his numb mind. The very comfort that was the root of the tale that had once created the title he had been given – he wasn’t the first to carry it, and he wouldn’t be the last. Once the title had referred to a part that lost their purpose – now only those, too unstable to have one, carried it.

But the experience of stargazing was still a sensation all wizards shared and a temptation to manage. The temptation to watch what only they could see, to lose themselves in the beautiful sight of the universes they were made to watch over. A show of light and wonder far beyond human comprehension, speaking to them in a language humans would never understand.

But the whisper of the stars was distant now. All that shimmering and glittering wonder around him couldn’t take away the lightless void within him.

He was alone. For the first time in a thousand years he was truly alone. He had been so afraid of it. Fearing what it would do to him should he ever lose all his other parts again. And yet, in his desperation and anger, the risk had seemed more bearable than staying.

But nothing had happened. The damage was already done. He was just alone now.

With no place to go.

Stay here...

He curled up, his knees pressed against his chest as his body turned away from the star and the freezing cold touched the skin of his face again. It was pleasant. In the vacuum of space, with his eternal heart powering his body which at the same time kept absorbing the star’s heat, his body temperature very slowly but steadily rose as he wasn’t able to bleed off the excess heat as efficiently as under an atmosphere. It didn’t really matter. It just made his thoughts slower. And that wasn’t that bad. Thinking seemed like a burden.

Maybe he would die out here. But once he was dead, they would know and he would be rebuilt. He would wake up in the cold of Mezchinhar again, the Wizard at his side.

There was no sound coming from his lips as a shuddering gasp forced itself up his throat at the idea to just return. But he gasped at nothing but the vacuum of space, and so he was silent.

He had been scared. Then there had been the void.

He had been desperate. Then the void.

Then frustrated. Then void.

Angry. Void.

He didn’t even know whom he was angry at anymore. Zenozarax, for forcing his hand? The circle, allowing all this to happen? The others, for doing what he had done? Or himself, the Part he was, for panicking…

Slowly his mind drifted into the void again, eternal darkness embraced him. Feelings of desperation and frustration tickled anew on his consciousness, feelings that the Hermit must have known too well. He had always understood him the best. But that was what his purpose had been. To gaze into the void. If only it would have worked.

Now with what happened, with the new clarity of what transpired within the tunnels, the memories lost to him seemed so close now. As he was lost in the darkness he felt like he could almost reach for them, almost see them. If only he would look right...

But there was only darkness.

Stay here...

He saw again when he felt the intense heat of the star on his face again. It’s blinding beauty just enough to tear him back into reality. The comforting warmth burning on his already heated skin made him shudder as he remembered the cold world the Warrior had been thrown into.

The horrible sight of its corrupted sun.

And between the frustration, helplessness and even anger, a sense of purpose grew.

I can’t stay...

Because he would die. Maybe when he would drift off – not only in his mind, but in this galaxy too, and a star would swallow him. Maybe a cloud of asteroids would tear him apart. No matter how unlikely, if he stayed here, he would stay forever, and so his death would be inevitable.

He knew he had to fix this.

But how exactly he could not tell.

He just knew he had to make things right, now that he made them worse than ever before for himself.

...I have to go.

The silence that answered him was deafening.

The magic in his fingers started to glow as he embraced the last warm rays of starlight and he braced himself for the cold to come.

Then a portal sprung up into existence around him, bridging a point between two universes with a radiant sparkle of colourful light.

When the portal closed it left only a faint glimmer behind.

And the Stargazer had returned to darkness.

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