Misbegotten Memories

Chapter 302

His recent advancement had softened the substance of his realm aperture.  His current desperation lent him manic strength.  The hostile resonance surrounding him was a stark contrast that brought his insight into focus like never before.  Everything combined into a perfect crucible for him to attempt the impossible.

His insight could never fit in so small a region as his realm.  That was fine, though.  He didn’t need to capture everything, only the essentials.  If he could degrade miasma into chaos, that would be enough.  Then he could use his domain to draw the chaos into cosmic energy to fuel his efforts at survival.

The question of whether prolonging his life within the gullet of a miasmic Dragon was desirable went aggressively unanswered.  Faced with his end, Hector did not intend to go willingly.  He would fight for every extra moment.  Not to spite the Dragon.  No.  Spite wasn’t his way.  He would fight for his existence because he was a warrior.  He had been ever since he took up the mission to save Earth.  Having a goal greater than his own personal benefit had awakened a hunger for meaning in him.  He had spent a lot of time since then fighting for the noblest of purposes:  other people.

He’d done it often in the abstract, battling for the sake of humanity as a whole.  At the end, though, he’d been quite direct.  Hector didn’t want to die, but he could not regret turning the Dragon away from his friends.  If the multiverse was doomed to fall, at least he could be proud of his last act as a free man.  And if a Xian’s insight could function at all within a realm, Hector might even persist long enough to be the last living human in existence.  Maybe extending his life for years or decades if he was lucky.  Hopefully his continued existence would give the damn Dragon a case of heartburn.

The general shape of one corner of his insight overlaid itself onto his realm aperture.  It was the portion related to the fragility of hatred and the related topological mapping.  Hector paused, surveying what he had begun.  It wasn’t wrong.  Of course not.  His insight was a glimpse into ultimate reality and could never be wrong.  But the way he’d isolated a tiny portion of it… it wasn’t wrong, but it wasn’t quite right either.

Hector almost moved forward with the design he’d begun.  His present circumstances were dire and hope nonexistent.  But if this endeavor was worth doing at all then it was worth doing right.  And whether or not there was the metaphysical space to hold it, he would represent his full insight.  It was not just a glimpse he’d stolen of a higher existence, it was a representation of the best parts of himself.  The parts he’d inherited and the parts he’d built himself.

In that moment, the barriers in his mind were down, letting him perceive himself without any of the usual mental defenses.  He’d never been a bad man.  Just a selfish and unreasonably stubborn one.  He didn’t intentionally hurt other people, only failed to consider the weight of his actions on those closest to him.  He saw exactly who he’d been without any shame.

Because that wasn’t who he was anymore.  His growth had not been fast or easy or without missteps, but it happened.  He’d naively tried to change his nature using moral exercises.  Through a combination of persistent effort and life experience, he’d somehow succeeded.

And a lot of that was due to the brother he could never meet.  Volithur’s flaws and failures had taught him so much.  If Volithur died broken and full of self-loathing, then at least those lessons allowed Hector to die nobly and proud.  His life and his death had meaning.  He thought his mother and father would approve of who he became.  Was there any better endorsement for a man?  The fact that he’d had the possibility of a level ten advancement stolen from him didn’t even matter in comparison to that honor.

Such was the emotional panorama he painted over the entire surface of his realm.  It encapsulated the most essential pieces.  Then came the more esoteric understandings of transformations and topologies.  And those fit surprisingly well onto the tapestry he’d created.  Like they’d always belonged there.

Hector lost himself in the creative endeavor.  His last act as a free man had been to sacrifice himself for friends.  His last act as a condemned man might as well be to make the most meaningful work of art he’d ever witnessed.  It was his truth made manifest.

Even before he finished, his nascent realm began to tingle with traces of a greater power.

Resonance.

He’d long since stopped thinking about his circumstances.  His aura struggled to hold the crushing pressure at bay, slowly collapsing closer.  His body sustained itself on his dwindling cosmic energy reserves.  But none of that mattered because his mind was fully occupied with the joy of expressing his deepest truths.

It wasn’t until his efforts concluded that he began to understand just what he had accomplished.  His creation was magnificent, incorporating his entire insight with clever tricks to eliminate repetition and compress meaning.

Even in an inactive state, it held such sheer power.

For the first time since he’d experienced the horror of humanity’s most feared predator, Hector felt the stirrings of hope.  This thing he’d made within himself….

His realm promised that everything made of miasma was as nothing before him.

No.  Not nothing.  Everything made of miasma was a resource to be seized for his own benefit.  It was an undeniable truth.  He just had to inform reality how things were going to be.

Hector pushed the full might of his will into his realm, feeling the force project through it onto the universe about him.  Existence itself quivered.

And then he struck with his domain.  Not at the flesh of the Dragon encapsulating him.  He went deeper.  His domain pierced through the body aperture to directly target the beast’s soul and he wrenched it in a familiar motion.  Just like when the tail of a Prince Rupert’s Drop was broken, the Dragon’s soul shattered into a million pieces.

***

Falling.

Hector’s mind was jumbled as he flickered between conscious and not.  His soul ached.  Not a bad ache, he understood immediately.  The other kind.  He’d advanced.

So much for reaching the peak of his level in every aperture.

He attempted to use his domain to arrest his fall but found himself unable to focus long enough to do more than idly note that he was in trouble.  The reason for his state was obvious.  He wasn’t just suffering from advancing to level nine.  That would have been bad enough.  No.  He was being stuffed full of cosmic energy at impossible rates through his apertures.  The turbulent cosmic energy that had revived his consciousness also prevented coherent thought.  Its concentrations were easily a hundred times denser than on Tian.

Hector’s eyes struggled to focus.  He needed to stop his momentum before he hit ground.  Unless he could survive a fall at terminal velocity with his body enhancement?  He didn’t know.  Especially not on a world with so much legal energy.  It felt like gravity and sudden stops might be unusually hazardous to him on this world.

Instead of the danger sharpening his concentration, Hector found himself fading away again.

This was going to be a problem.  The only reason he was conscious at this moment was the massive amounts of energy rushing into him.  Soon, he’d be asleep for a good long while.  Not a great condition to land in.

Each subsequent return to consciousness became shorter and less cogent.

***

He jerked awake, feeling warmth around him.  His naked body had been swaddled in a silvery emergency blanket.  Beeps and whirs filled the space around him.  A uniformed man came into view.

“You’re safe, sir.  We’re on our way to Cruiser Erin.”

The words reached him, but there was no understanding.

His mind browned out once more, for longer this time.

***

“Prepare for singularity travel in five minutes.”

He came back to bright lights in his face as he was carried belly-up by four men, one on each corner of a stretcher.  He recognized the sterile metal corridors of a Jinn vessel around him.  The soldiers placed him onto a table within a conference room.  Hector let himself relax back onto the surface, hoping he was safe now.  His mind kept slipping, returning to the big fall from the sky.

Then a woman's voice came from all around.  “I was convinced to be a part of this mission based on its merits alone.  The survival of humanity is worth whatever personal price I must pay.  But when offered the gift of first addressing you by your future title, I could not refuse such a profound honor.”

As Hector slid away from the waking world, her final words followed him down into oblivion.

“Hail to thee, Lord Dragonbane.”