Epilogue

Epilogue 3.25

---Em---

     I pace back and forth inside the mausoleum. The solemn stone walls mock me; they revel in my increasing anxiety. It's quickly becoming claustrophobic in here. There are seven of us crammed inside this already cramped chamber. Six marble coffins leans against the walls, three of them empty, three of them housing semi-decomposed strix corpses. The odour of decay alone is enough to suffocate a mammoth.

     "I need air," I announce to no one in particular. Ace, Liluye, Gail, and Martha are all asleep. Crawford and Melody seem to have zoned out, lost in thought. Whatever. There's a ladder on the wall opposite me that leads up to the roof. I climb up the ladder, pushing loose a couple of bricks in the ceiling so that I can make my way onto the rooftop.

     The air out here is sweltering. The lava continues to stream down the slope of the island, surrounding the mausoleum. We're stuck here until it stops flowing, and even then, we've got to wait for it to cool. According to Martha, that process could take weeks or even months. Our only hope is if one of those freak wind storms passes over the island, cooling the molten rock. I squint off into the distance, but the smoke is too thick for me to make out any recognizable cloud formations.

     What does it matter anyway? Eloise is out there somewhere, stranded just like we are. If Colby finds her, he'll tear open the nearest rip and shove her through. And, knowing our luck, we'll starve to death waiting out the eruption. Maybe we'll resort to cannibalism—I had a really close shave with becoming dinner one time when we got stranded out in zombie town hunting a draugr. Gail put an end to that. If she hadn't intervened, I'd have died long ago.

     And Comma. How many times has she saved my skin? I'm pathetic. Worse than pathetic—I'm a pathetic person who pretends to have his act together. Somehow, I ended up in charge of this group of survivors. But I'm the weakest of them all.

     Melody places a hand on my shoulder, startling me. I have no idea how long she's been up here. I certainly didn't hear her climbing up the ladder. Must've spaced out.

     "Maybe Comma was right," I say, for no particular reason. Melody's just another lost soul, drifting aimlessly through this chaotic multiverse. I've got no reason to unload all my worries on her. We barely know each other. And chances are we won't know each other for much longer.

     "Right about what?" Melody asks.

     "My soul," I say, fixated on the orange and yellow glow of the lava under the night sky. One of the great mysteries of the multiverse: how can something so beautiful be so lethal? "I'm useless without the piece of my soul that was taken from me. I used to be able to slay gods. Now?" I feel the lump where the side of Colby's boot collided with my head. "I really got my ass handed to me back there."

     Melody sighs, resting her head on my shoulder. Her blank stare represents our prospects for survival: there's nothing to see up ahead. "Believe it or not, I can relate."

     I gawk at her. "You literally carried two people—correction, one person and one half-cyborg—uphill for like a mile or something. At the same time. What are you, some sort of superhuman?"

     "Nope. Just a normal gal. Nothing special about me."

     "Fine. Don't tell me then."

     "I'm being honest," she says, sitting up straight. "What I did was nothing special. Not where I come from, anyway. Don't underestimate humankind. We all have the power to do incredible things. It's there, buried deep within our souls. Most people just never learn how to access that power. But some of us do." She reaches down at her hip and grabs her deactivated beam sword. "This is a weapon forged for us... soul plyers. In my village back home, we'd get one of these as a coming-of-age present. If you could channel your soul into the blade, it meant that you were reader to learn how to ply."