Wrapping Up

In a week, it'll be exactly a year since A.S. started this blog. I could've waited till then, but I think fifty-one weeks is an acceptable end time. Just because I don't know where it goes from here.

Frank Jenkins met with me one last time after he got out of the hospital. I suppose he exclusively wants to be called Iron Mask now. His old life, when he was an actor on Earth-20181, is behind him. Now he's leaving again to patch holes in the Multiverse--going where he's needed. But he did leave me with a few images that he passed onto me mentally

He is not a Gaud. But he has trained himself in certain psychic arts, I guess, and that's why he and I could communicate.

The first thing he passed on was a little disturbing. Not helped by the fact that it was facilitated by DMT. I didn't take any, but I felt his trip secondhand as he shared it.

It was of a few days ago, on Earth-Alpha. We had the lasting impression that we were somewhere dark and secret. In a voiceover, he told me this was the Tomb of Ska, in Astaroth, Vermont. This had been where Edward Tamaron lost his original body. And we watched as his most recent body--Marcel's--materialized in the Tomb.

I guess maybe Ska and the Tarasque were similar creatures in some way. The same magics that kept Ska in the Tomb also immediately began to act on Tamaron. He tried to fight back, but it was no use, and he slowly began to turn to stone...

We felt his last thoughts as he froze in time. He cursed three things: 1) he cursed me for burning him with Ifrit magic; 2) he cursed the Zom, possibly to curse the fuschium for "betraying" him; and 3) he cursed the wounds Derek gave him, slicing off his wings and carving that "X" into his backside. 

And those curses broke down as he screamed them. Curse the burns, curse the Zom, curse the X. Burns, Zom, X. Burnzomix. Burnzomix.

Then we understood his destiny.

Then we slipped over a slot, to Earth-Beta. Where someone very much akin to A.S. had something horrible happen to him, in a story that hasn't been published yet. (Another splinter A.S., Frank reminded me, lived on Earth-20181, and was the director that Frank once acted for. His story hasn't been told yet either.) Earth-Beta was caught in the Syzygy between Earth-Alpha and Earth-Gamma caused by our story. The Syzygy energies leeched into the soil, and changed the world. There was a deafening pulse of power that a single universe just couldn't take. It had to split, or give birth...

Earth-Beta-2 was born.

But still the energies cascaded down, and not even this new Earth could contain it all. It split again. Earth-Beta-3 came into being, and the power still didn't stop. But it did stop with Earth-Beta-4.

There were certain symmetries that arose as a result of this Syzygy. It wasn't identical to our world. Derek and I were never born, for example. But A.S. and Jacob were. And I can't say what happened to them now. Or what happened on the other worlds. But new stories arose from our one, even as, at some point--they inevitably looked back to their beginning, and regarded us, too...

We broke off, then, and went back to just talking. Discussing the final wrap-ups. The scars--Derek has his, on his face and chest from wind guy. A.S. will always have lines all over his body. But at least the fuschium gave him his writing hand back. A bittersweet ending. He joked to me that he would've screamed if it'd been his left, but through sheer will he kept his right. Garry and I are pretty okay. Just some trauma in the head.

We're not looking forward to what comes next, when Gaudium and its God comes for us. But that will be later.

I mentioned the fuschium. Well. After getting out of the hospital, I went out to the woods, and whispered one last request to it. "I wish you would destroy yourself and leave no trace." And it did--shattering, with the shard being sucked into themselves, vanishing forever. It's better that way. Our world was never meant to have stories like this. I couldn't leave the temptation for myself and I doubt any of the others would feel differently. And I couldn't just leave it in the wild--too many assholes to chance upon it, and activate it with a stray thought. I guess it was also a fuck-you to the Shiqquwts, who brought Tamaron to our Earth in the first place.

We debated what exactly the whole Paradise Earth thing meant. Frank's theory was that Paradise Earths are worlds that are immune to big stories in some ways. I mean, yeah, we still had terrors and dramas galore. There must be some sort of "prime pattern" that establishes a routine timeline for most universes. Despite being inoculated against "big stories," we still had World Wars and Crusades and all the infinitesimal ups and downs of the lives of the billions of people who have lived all throughout our history. But there are even larger things. Crises. Alien invasions. Time travel and magic and monsters. We were supposed to never get those, until Tamaron siphoned away the energy and changed our timeline. (The Multiverse is so ridiculous that it needs barriers to stop this stuff from coming in. Mindwarping horror and unimaginable adventure is something that's passively transmitted. It takes action to keep things "normal." I don't know what to say about that.)

Presumably there are other Paradise Earths. You may live on one (though if your world's like what ours used to be, Paradise is probably little more than a mistranslation). Or maybe your fantastic new fiction hasn't happened yet.

And what's happened to us, in the wake of all this?

Well, I already said that I'm scared of what happens next. So are the others, trust me. But our bond is stronger than ever. We came out as brothers, as a family that can never be torn apart. Even if a lot of our togetherness is trembling from the nightmares this has all left us with. I don't know who to thank that I'm not alone, even if it means my loved ones suffering with me. Misery does love company, after all. But it's more than that. We always grew up together, but I feel like now we have truly "grown up" together. You'll notice we weren't the kids we were at the start of all this. In-jokes have faded. Worlds have passed away. I just hope we haven't gotten old before our time.

Maybe we need another story, to assure us that it's all going to be okay.

And the barriers separating the universes are weaker than they've ever been. So I think I have a new beginning, here, at the ending.

And I can hear a new song playing.