The Beginning
Across the vastness of the local spheroid’s massive-yet-tiny cross section. Dayne felt its eyes upon him. another one. another Dark One.
It was, wasn’t, always had been, and had never began to look at him. the sundering sense of temporal vertigo pulled taut his neurotechture— even bolstered by the tokui-ten as it was, it absolute certainty was a temporary state, eve for him— but though the gaze of eternity inverted fell upon him… unlike before he felt not an ounce of intent nor a smidgeon of certainty from the Dark One.
It so far away in space though space itself was a small variable to negotiate to both it and Dayne at this point. his resonance, slowly but surely aligned with its, as much as a baryonic creature could. and in alignment… it simply looked.
it’s statement was nothing and that meant everything. it simply saw. and Dayne saw it. Its gaze was intense, but he felt not the scything talons along his casual trail. it simply looked.
“It’s… still here.”
He murmured. Speaking felt silly. His biological vocal cords carried the last sounds a baryonic being would make in its cradle, and no ears would hear but those borne by the one that made the sounds. But he had been raised and taught that if he had something important to say, then it shouldn’t go unsaid. And he felt that the last thoughts he’d ever have shouldn’t go unspoken.
“I don’t know where it is…” It was a small comfort Dayne offered. Something can’t become nothing. It was here… He’d just put it somewhere else… In a different form. “but I remember it… so that means it’s not truly gone…”
“I don’t… Know if that matters, to you… And I don’t blame you if you hate me.” He said, his legs gave out underneath him, as he sank to his knees in his bubble of local space time. He took the impact hard, but he couldn’t find the wherewithal to care. What were legs, anyways? It’s not like he’d them much, soon enough… Though one last pass around the park— too much to ask.
“If you can hate… If it meant something to you… For what little worth words carry. I am sorry it had to be this way.” His lips pulled up into the world’s final smile. “It’s alright though. I won’t bother you— any of you— too much longer.” His sightless eyes gazed out into the infinite finality of the Dark Ones’ triumph.
The spacetime bubble around him protected him, and his certainty kept it in place. But it was a dense thing indeed, he made certain of that. Around him— around the last piece of the world that had birthed him and all he’d known— seconds spun to minutes, spun to hours, spun to days. Entire celestial ages began and died in a blink, and Dayne couldn’t hold back the world forever. But that was alright.
In the aether, the very fabric of the fundamental cosmic realm from which all existence wove and clove from began to morph and transfigure. like the embers of an oven, the stars of the universe, one by one, as baryonic fire banked, and dark matter embers bloomed. And he found… It was calm.
“I don’t hate you. And I didn’t hate it either… I think this quite nice…” He held the Dark One’s uncertain perceptually. “What you’ve done with the place. It’s quite peaceful… Such a shame though, eh?” He said, letting loose history’s last laugh. “The final sunset a mortal man will ever see, and the man left to watch it is blind.” And that was alright, too. The Universe did have a sense of sardonic serendipity from time to time. Rascally thing. “But that’s how these things go.” He let his physical eyes bathe in the ironlight for just a second more, and let them close.
Dayne didn’t know if the Dark One heard him. Or when, precisely the bubble failed. If the Dark One had killed him, or if he’d passed on to sleep and on from there. he’d ceased all at once, apropos of nothing. It didn’t matter to Dayne HOW it ended. Only that it did now.
And it had.