Everything was once again a swirl of lights and possibilities, but I saw nothing. I looked back at the shrinking window that led to Nexus, the very winds of creation burned my eyes until they shut. I just shot forward. Faster. Faster! And then…
I dropped and skidded in the grass. My armour tilled the dirt. Native air filled my lungs. I stretched out my fingers. Nothing but verdant blades around me. The portal, vast and brittle, loomed above me. Scorch marks still remained where the explosive had struck it. Beyond that, cave walls climbed up some ways until they formed a ragged frame for the twilight sky. Far above, a gleaming aurora of thousands of colours burned - I had to presume it was a result of Nexus' collapse.
For some time, nothing could move me, in body or in feeling. My mind was stuck processing one long death march of a thought: could I not just stay there until the grass rose up and swallowed me? It seemed preferable to the uncertain trek ahead of me. The journey to break the fate I had made for myself.
But, eventually, even oblivion loses its appeal, so some part of me forced strength into my limbs. My muscles ached. My eyeline rose, allowing more and more items into my field of view. Corpses of thugs lay unrecovered around the cave.
Slowly, I turned, and a path back up and out became visible. Something crunched as my boot pressed down. A white funeral mask had snapped in two.
"Glibby's master…" I thought. "Perhaps I should pursue that line of attack. Brit already hates the Ape… but do I tell him who he's working for?"
I had to be delicate as a harpist. One wrong strum of my fingers and I could set things shuddering into discordance, no better and perhaps a lot worse than they already were. I was a serpent trying to wind around the stem of a delicate flower without strangling it.
"Cossack of course comes to rule this Gaian kingdom. Is this advantageous or a distraction?"
Light crept down from the cave-mouth. The incline became steeper. The walls rockier. Narrower. Sharper.
"And this Brotherhood. Chrone looked at me so strangely. Are they friend or foe? Both? They merit close attention. An early destruction, if necessary."
A rock split my palm, and a jolt of pain caused me to trip. My armour rattled as I pulled myself back up. The crimson wept from the heart of my right hand, then ran down the diamond plates on my arm. I realised how battered and different my armour would be. How could I explain this?
"I cannot possibly say what has happened to me. They would think me mad. Or could I? Can I not just tell them our new purpose? That our new enemy is fate itself?"
Yes. Yes, I could. My mind was made. I came to the mouth of the cave, burning with purpose. The valley re-entered my sight for the first time in far too long, and immediately my eyes crept over to the cave we used as a camp.
And there, at the cave mouth, I saw Small's shock of blond hair. The assassin kept guard over our shelter. Smoke rose up past him, and I saw Bokane tending to the campfire as the ever-hulking Mini stooped to turn a spit. The scent of pork enticed me even from there.
A mad grin spread across my face as my stratagem coalesced. I would go down there, and regardless of what they thought at first, I would convince them I spoke the truth. A speech to end all speeches. I would tell Astro what I had done, what I would come to do, and I would convince him to help me stop it all.
We would locate this Silhouette, and we would dismantle his network. Find Chrone and his Brotherhood and enlist them. Seduce the Gaians and have their nation at our disposal. And, at the appointed time, we would venture out to that mine in Acrisius, knock down the doors, and fight our way into Nexus with an army at our backs. The Tower would crumble. The Entity would be slain. And when my own fool self arrived, I would confront him, and inform him of his grand and glorious purpose. To take up the Book. To guard young Helix and all other forlorn. To build the Ashen Kingdom eternal!
I raised my hands in euphoria, imagining the end of this glorious tirade. It all seemed so clear to me, until:
"Where have you been?"
I froze. All my grand schemes imploded.
"You've been missing for a week! Aaron's worried sick. Cossack too, but I think he's more afraid we'll kick him out of the group if you're not around to vouch for him."
He laughed. Against my wishes, my body turned until, over my shoulder I could see him: Astro, young as the day I left.
"Only a week?" I croaked.
The sun caught in his black hair, causing a strip down the middle to shine white. He had a snarky grin plastered across his face, betraying his relief but also failing to disguise his concern about where I'd actually been. His presence impelled me to turn full, and I almost fell as I did so. Suddenly the drop into the valley looked much steeper, and gravity all the fiercer.
"By the mods, look at you," he gestured to hole Freak had punched in my breastplate. "What happened to the obsidian stuff? I couldn't get you out of it last I saw you."
I swallowed. My lungs tightened as I recalled the Entity's victory over me. With the Book I had stood no chance. Even as King in Ash I had not been strong enough. Only Shadow had ever been its equal. As the Other Steve had once told me, the Entity had crushed many armies before our arrival. Without Shadow, what chance could any army led by me ever stand?
"I got robbed," I managed, removing some of the cracks from my voice.
"Oh…" he frowned. "I'm so sorry."
He came forward and put a hand on my shoulder. In a brief twitch of the fingers, he squeezed the vain delusion from me. The King in Ash had failed. There could be no return for him.
"Don't be," I scoffed, "My own stupid fault. I wanted to show people I was still important, and it just made me easily ambushed."
Crystalline tears ran down my cheeks. I hadn't even noticed my eyes start to water. I raised a hand to my face and Astro folded me into his grasp. I clung to him desperately.
Some time passed. We broke apart. Astro smiled at me. I forced a smile back.
"Strange this?" he tried.
"Hm?"
He gestured at the symphony of colour overhead.
"The aurora, never heard of those in the Vanilla Craft."
I deflected: "Well, we're not quite there yet."
He lit up a tad.
"Ah, actually!"
He pulled out a stack of papers from his robes.
"Our visas are all sorted. We've even got a job offer," Astro said encouragingly.
"H-have we?"
"The Emperor of the Realm of Seven Kingdoms, a man called Dominus, approached me. He wants you to govern some land he's come into possession of. Seems like a great opportunity."
I racked my brains. The Realm had been scarcely mentioned. Dominus even less so. Only brief half-whispers in the Shelter about them which suggested… What, exactly? A disgrace? A fallen friend? A defeated enemy? Secret had let slip something about an attack on the Citadel? Surely not that Citadel? However, all that hardly mattered, really.
"Actually Astro," I sighed. "Take it if you wish, but I think I'm retiring."
Astro's eyes flared with surprise. I recalled the anger, disgust, contempt that would one day fill them when he witnessed my betrayal of Helix. How moved he had been by the slim hope of my success. A meagre parody of closure I had foisted upon him.
"You're entirely certain?"
I was. The world needed no more of Kay Mandy's vaulting ambition. Of his attempts to guard his own good reputation long after he had already destroyed it. Instead, I would banish him to some quiet place and tell him to wait until Astro, or Aaron or Cossack or any of them at all truly needed his aid.
"Yes," I said with finality. "In my absence, I've become rather captivated with the idea of farming. So, I shall do that. A necessary tedium after all the excitement I've had lately."
Astro chuckled warily.
"We'll see how long that lasts. Come on, that pork smells pretty great, but I know just the recipe to make it perfect."
All of them had gathered around the campfire now, waving and joking. Aaron, Secret, Cossack, Bokane, Mini, Brit and Gracey. The family to whom I would devote my life.
"Don't you dare ruin another dinner," I teased.
I punched him on the shoulder, and we set off down the hill. My friends' laughter seemed to grow dimmer as I got closer, and as the sun inched closer and closer to the horizon, the brilliant, hopeful rays of the aurora became harder and harder to make out. Yet the campfire glowed like a hearth, and there was some reassurance in that.