The boat's combustion engine had long since surrendered. Shulk had repaired the fickle thing twice, had wasted the spare parts in his bag to modulate the fuel cells, and had even rewired the catalyst to accept the unrefined ether crystals in his pockets as a fuel replacement. His efforts had earned him an approximate three days before the combustion engine had taken its revenge for his tinkering with a last cough until it fell silent. No amount of repair work would fix the machine now.
Shulk tried with the set of rows stored underneath a spare tarpaulin and shoved the boat forward for an unmeasured amount of time before he gave up on that too.
The strong winds subsided, and only a soft breeze stirred the water to pull the boat farther. In what direction, Shulk could no longer tell. He crossed the boundaries of Thanorlis' maps, and the waters around and below no longer had names, the currents ancient or younger than an hour, who could say. Without fuel consumption to measure the hours against, he lost his sense of place and time. The ocean sparkled in all directions like a ginormous ether depot no Homs had dared to mine. And at night, stars blinked between the clouds he did not recognise, and the firmament grew a little more foreign each time he looked up.
His provisions ran thin. Shulk forced himself to ration the water in the metal canister tugged away at the stern and busied himself with simple construction formulas to forget his thirst for an hour or two. When the last drop fell from the canister into his mug, he cracked open the engine for the coolant stored inside. The Indoline used water for this function. Perfect. The couple litres would by no means last him forever, but after mixing them with the minerals in the food supplements he had packed and letting the cocktail sit for half a day, the water was drinkable.
Still the boat bobbed on the gentle waves forward. Nothing else moved and nothing else lived in this water desert; dunes upon dunes of salt and surf and nothing. Silence enwrapped Shulk, sometimes for so long that he started talking to himself to make sure he hadn't gone deaf. The tugging in his chest told him he was going the right way, or maybe he had reached the first delirious stages of dehydration and merely wanted to believe he was going anywhere at all.
The waves shrunk until the surface merely frizzed; the ocean became shallower. Or maybe Shulk was imagining that too.
He lay on his back and stared into the vast blue of the sky. Hunger and thirst turned every task into a chore, so he had resolved to preserve energy by moving as little as possible. The water sloshed under the boat's hull and lulled him to sleep. His eyelids were heavy.
He dreamed of Fiora. And in his dreams, she was alive.
Shulk fastened the last nut on the hilt of the new Monado. The extension to the hilt was no mere aesthetic knick-knack. Rather, the extra piece of metal provided a counter weight to the heavy blade. When Shulk raised the sword now, it lay perfectly balanced in his hand, and the ether circuits throbbed against his palm like a steady heartbeat.
With a smile, he ran his fingers along the curves of red steel. The Monado Replica EX. Or Monado REX for short. Of course, the other replicas he had wielded had protected him in many battles, Vanea had created true masterpieces of engineering, and no one could find a fault in the arrangement of parts and ether circuits. But the REX was Shulk's own achievement. He had chosen the parts, he had worked and reworked the design on countless blueprints, and he knew each nick and bolt better than the back of his palm. After all the frustrated evenings where he had hurled exhaust pipes into a corner of his laboratory or had glared at the half-finished mess of tubes and gears with the intention to burn it all, finally the end result hugged his palm.
To him, the Monado REX was the incarnation of perfection.
"Are you still at work?"
Shulk turned from the workbench of his laboratory towards the entrance where, alongside a flood of starlight, Fiora had entered. The soft orange of Colony 9's streetlamps painted her face in wonderful hues, both familiar and rare like a perfect sunrise. Months had passed since she had awoken in her real body, but then and again, the simple sight of her bare arms sparked a warmth in Shulk he failed to explain.
"It's finished," he said and waved Fiora forward.
She hopped past the other stray engineering projects Shulk had neglected in the past days and wrapped her arms around his neck from behind. He swayed under her swing, and they both chuckled.
"It's beautiful," Fiora said with a look at the Monado REX. A little hesitant, she reached over his shoulder to stroke the bridge of the blade. "Ready for a field test, don't you think?"
"Maybe tomorrow."
"You just don't want to train with me, do you?" Fiora gave an exaggerated sigh. "Fine, then I have to find another excuse to drag you out of here. I want to show you something."
Shulk began sorting the spare amps and gears into their respective boxes underneath the workbench "I should clean up first…"
"Your work won't be running away. But I just might." Fiora raised a brow and waited for a response.
With only the slightest tinge of remorse, Shulk placed the Monado REX on its stand. But when Fiora grabbed his hand to drag him out of the lab and into the night, even that tinge faded. A few couples strolled across the commercial district further down the street, and their hushed voices mingled with the gentle murmur of the ocean as it sloshed against the foundations of Colony 9.
But Fiora bothered with neither the market stalls nor the beach, and instead turned around the corner into the side alley adjourning Shulk's lab. Between a mountain of half-forgotten crates and marbles a group of children had used for their games stood the ladder Fiora had "borrowed" from Dunban two months ago. The worn-out steps led to the lab's even roof. And up there, Fiora chased Shulk.
The roof terrace was its own kind of unfinished engineering project. Pots with chewy radish and cute parsnip leaned left, right, and centre in a tangle Shulk couldn't make sense of. Standing amidst the sensory maelstrom of thyme and rosemary, the scenery matched even the finest plantation. Fiora had laid out her vegetable garden on top of the lab with the explanation that the roof offered the best conditions for sunbathed growth. The shrivelled leaves of her ice cabbages told a different story, but Shulk would be the last to complain.
Fiora sat down on an empty spot between bushes with sweet wasabi and patted the ground next to her. Shulk followed the invitation. But even after letting his eyes drift across the garden, he could not make out what Fiora wanted to show him.
"The plants look good," he said. "Will you have the next harvest soon?"
"Yeah, yeah, and I cannot wait to annoy my brother by cooking wasabi porridge for one week straight. Maybe you could all join, at least for one evening. Just something fun to free our heads."
"A good idea. With the Monado REX finished, I don't have any pressing projects. Should I ask the others tomorrow?"
"No, it's nothing urgent. I still have to refine the recipe anyway." Fiora plucked a few basil leaves.
The sounds of Colony 9 drifted through the garden like a faint lullaby and they both listened. A comforting silence nestled in the night between them, the silence of a bond that needed no explanations. Fiora's shoulder was warm next to Shulk's.
"Did you notice how absentminded Melia has been?" Fiora asked then.
Shulk nodded. "It's because of Alcamoth. You can almost see it from down here."
"Strange that this part of the Bionis also came to this world when so many other places didn't. And to top it all off, now the capital is hovering in the clouds."
"I don't get it either. My wish caused so much disorder, I don't even know where to begin fixing it. I will talk to Melia tomorrow. But she's not the reason you brought me up here, right?"
Fiora grinned. "Not exactly."
She leaned back, but the hard roof offered her little comfort. After an awkward pause, she placed her head on Shulk's upper legs instead. The gleam of uncounted stars reflected in her eyes.
"That's the reason," she said.
Shulk craned his neck. Above stretched the world to infinity. So many lights glistered there to fend off the darkness, each one engaged in a timeless battle for the sake of a handful of Homs, High Entia, and Nopon down here. Some stars burned bright enough to extinguish the flames of their neighbours, others glittered in constellations to paint fantastical creatures on this dark canvas, places not yet seen and stories not yet told. The moon of this world hung amidst the spectacle and looked down at Shulk like a benevolent eye.
He shuddered.
"They're different," Fiora said. "The stars."
Shulk tilted his head. But he had the feeling he couldn't see what she was seeing. "They don't look too different from here, but I guess it's true."
"I shouldn't be surprised you can't tell the difference if you only bury your head between your engines." Fiora chuckled. She spread her arms to hug the entirety of the world. "There's so much to discover. This world no longer ends at the shores of Colony 9."
"But will the places beyond the ocean be half as great as Colony 9?"
"No, probably not. But you never know until you try." Fiora held up her hand as if to catch the light, steal every last star, and slide them into her pockets. "I didn't think it possible. But now I can dig through the sand of a far-away beach with my own fingers. I can shake hands with foreign people and feel the touch not just through some electrical impulses. I can go to all these unknown places on my own legs. It's nice… just the idea of it."
"Fiora…"
"But what about you? Will you never get tired of the same old cluster of machines you call a laboratory?" She caught Shulk's gaze for a moment, grazed his arm, before her smile once again belonged to the firmament above.
A few houses further lived all the people who mattered to him, the people who had travelled all across the old world with him; in some of their windows, an ether lamp glowed. He would only have to walk up to their doors and knock to feel assured. The journey he had made and the battles he had fought had paid off. It had been worth the try. Because right here, in a moment beyond past and future, Fiora leaned against him. He felt her head on his legs. The hairs on his arm where she had touched him stood up and defended the spreading warmth against the chill of the waterfront. Shulk reached out and took her hand, finding the gentle groves and lines and hillsides abundant with the same warmth.
"I don't need to be anywhere else," he said. The gleam of uncounted stars reflected in Fiora's eyes. "I'm home."
In his dreams, Fiora was alive.
Shulk reached out, but her hand was slipping away. The stars and the roof and all of Colony 9 faded into white. Its fingers stretched around them like mist. The ray of the red stone around Fiora's neck grew dimmer. At last, the white swallowed her, and she was gone.
Shulk opened his eyes to the blinding beams of the sun. He could still feel her warmth, somewhere just beyond his reach. A last breath on his fingertips.
"I miss you."
The waves answered. They heaved the boat up and down, gentle as a cradle, cold as a coffin.
Shulk had no tears. Only a sickening, dehydrated emptiness. To his own surprise, his hands didn't tremble when he ran them across the Monado REX+ next to him. The cool metal under his fingertips possessed too many convincing nicks and bumps to stem from an illusion.
Fiora was gone. But Shulk was still here, holding himself above water in this strange world. For what purpose… he could hardly remember.
He dragged himself to the railing. Even these few centimetres burned in his sore muscles until his throat screamed for the mercy of water. Plenty of water sloshed underneath the boat's belly. But if it had bubbled on the other end of the world, it would have been no less helpful. When Shulk dropped his arm into the waves, the miniscule salt crystals crunched under his fingernails. A desert of water as far as the eye could see and as far as the boat might go.
In the canister tugged away at the stern, he had enough water and protein supplements for one more day. One more day in this desert. And then? Then Shulk would have finally run out of time, and past and future would blend into one until they ceased to exist. A steady decay and a slow death worthy of this cursed world.
Maybe, rather than to bear the hunger and the thirst for longer and struggle without going anywhere, he should cast himself overboard and drown. That should take him back to the dream and back to Fiora, right?
After all, Shulk had already died once, in the frozen halls of Harict Chapel on Valak Mountain. Zanza's influence had dragged him along for a while, like a puppet on his twisted strings. But Shulk had cut these strings, and Zanza was dead. Why not finish the job and kill the last remnants of this god? Throw himself into the depths below and be done with this awful world he had wished into existence, this world hellbent on taking everything until his hands held onto nothing but a fading past and a broken future.
Why not end it here?
A rumble went through the boat and roused Shulk out of his gloom. His heartbeat quickened as if the sudden breach of the monotony gave it the strength to fight against his death wish with all its might. A part of him, no matter how small, still wanted to live. A voice, soft and half-submerged but there nonetheless, still wanted to defy Zanza and cling to the person that was Shulk. Shulk, this frail construction of memories, powered by a wish still burning and a question yet unanswered.
He leaned over the railing.
Something moved underwater. A ginormous something if it affected the currents all the way at the surface. A shadow pushed through the ocean, less than fifty meters away. It grew, parted the water with wing-like flippers on its way to the surface until the dark spot spanned farther than Shulk could see.
Then it broke through. In a cloud of foam and water drops, the creature shot out of the ocean and took flight. It was larger, way larger than Shulk had anticipated, its colossal body created a tsunami that rocked his brittle boat, but despite its mass, the creature moved its fins and glid through the sky with the same ease it had glid through water.
Shulk blinked through the rainsquall the creature had thrown into the air. He could not believe his eyes.
The creature that had emerged from the ocean was a Telethia.
But that should not be possible. Telethia consumed ether, their entire metabolism depended on the absorption of pure ether particles. Teelan had discovered this years ago. This world with its reduced ether concentration should never provide a grown Telethia with habitable conditions to sustain itself, much less grow. And yet, against the odds and the rules of logic, this Telethia dwarfed all specimen Shulk had seen three times over.
It had evolved. Not over the course of millennia but within a short twelve years, the Telethia had adapted to its surroundings. A rough grey shell had grown to cover the Telethia's once green, almost transparent skin, and thorns like mountain ranges protruded from its body. And if Shulk had to make a guess, it would grow larger still until it became a moving island roaming through sea and sky alike. No, not an island. A small Bionis.
A Titan.
The Telethia belled, and the sound reverberated in Shulk's gut. If Teelan could see this…
With a grace that defied its mass, the Telethia dove under the surface only to emerge once again in a burst of sea water. A gush hit Shulk in the face, and the boat almost capsized, but he couldn't stop laughing.
At least one Telethia had survived. Despite the ether shortages, despite the Fogbeasts, despite the rising sea levels and the impending collapse of the Bionis' Shoulder, this creature was thriving.
Shulk reached out in a futile attempt to place a hand against the Telethia's encrusted skin. Of course, with his tiny arms he could never hope to span the hundred-meter distance. But it didn't matter. The salty water ran down his forehead, and his boat trembled with each flap of a wing the Telethia used to displace air and water.
It was real. And oh, so beautiful.
The minimal current carried the boat in the same direction as the Telethia was headed, and Shulk observed each of its movements, enraptured by the sight. So much awe filled him that his face hurt from smiling so much. Was the wonder of evolution or the hope of a future in this world or the mere existence of life at a moment where death had filled his thoughts – was any of these emotions responsible for his giddiness? Little did it matter. Shulk could not have imagined a more magnificent light at the end of the darkness.
And then more Telethia appeared. Some had short snouts, and with their round bellies and stubby wings seemed to emulate Nopon. Others had given up on flight all together and parted water instead of air with their wings.
Shulk in his tiny vessel drifted along with them. He pinched himself every other moment to verify he had not fallen into a dehydrated coma. But the dream continued until after sunset, and still the Telethia roared nearby. Their pale skin shone in the faint starlight, and when they soared out of the water, each droplet shimmered like the trees of Satorl Marsh.
And then, after the night had passed its peak and neared morning, a new light source illuminated the horizon, a blue sparkle that outlined the clouds gathered there.
Shulk stood up and rushed to the boat's hem. A slender shadow that widened near the top peeled out of the cloudbanks. From there the glow originated like uncounted blue light amps attached to a tower of unmeasurable height.
Without a doubt. Shulk had found the tall construction from the painting at the Indoline sanctum. In a few hours, he could place his hands against the surface and work out what kind of material made up a construction this massive, larger even than Mechonis.
Shulk's journey was nearing its end. The aching that had pulled him this far increased tenfold, hijacked his senses until it burned him from the inside. The faces of two people he didn't know assaulted him without the need to close his eyes.
Yes, this was the place. The place where Shulk would change the future one last time.
He took up the paddle and set course for the tall construction.
21/08/22: Fun fact: One of the working titles I had in mind for this story at first was "Heavens Divide", after the song with the same name from Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. If you are looking for a vocal track to accompany this fic, look no further.
Not-so-fun fact: When I wrote this story last November, I was at my lowest physical and mental point. I can't say whether writing this helped me keep going or made everything worse, but sometimes I believed this little project was the only thing left for me. I think you can see my state from back then reflected a little too well in this chapter. When I said I wrote this for myself, I meant it. And well, it's still crazy to remind myself that people can and are now reading this. What I mean to say is, "thanks" to everyone who made it this far. Even though I had doubts at first, I like to think that posting this story is making it easier for me to move on from that particular chapter.