Chapter 761 - A Fitting End

Zeke’s soul still hummed with fear, anger, and pain.  Yet, he ignored it all as he turned his attention back to the task he’d set out to accomplish.  The so-called Sun Goddess was still out there, and with every passing second, her escape grew increasingly more likely.  There was no more time for recovery or rumination.  If he wanted to catch her and put an end to an era, he needed to move.

So, without further delay, he pushed his brief brush with nothingness aside and searched the area for the appropriate thread.  It didn’t take him long to identify the one leading off into the distance, and within moments, he’d thrown himself across space in that direction. 

The thread described a circuitous route, either by design or because of what Zeke had done to the dragons.  Probably the latter.  After all, the sheer destruction he’d visited upon the area was enough to throw the whole solar system – perhaps even the entire galaxy – into chaos. 

Destroying a star would do that.

Of course, he hadn’t set out to do that.  It was just a side effect of doing something he didn’t fully understand.  But the fact that he’d wrought so much devastation without even trying was just a testament to how easily his power to manipulate the threads could go wrong. 

If he wasn’t careful, he could destroy entire universes.

Even if he took all appropriate care, everything could spiral out of his control, and in only an instant. 

With that in mind, he threw himself across the galaxy, weaving between celestial bodies like they weren’t even there.  Sure, he felt their gravitational pull, represented by the tension in the local threads, but he easily ignored those forces.  Instead, he remained steadfast in his task. 

Zeke passed planets and stars, black holes and other phenomena he could scarcely explain, much less describe.  They were all comprised of threads, and yet, they were something more as well.  The chase left him feeling incredibly small and inconsequential, and yet, he knew just how much power he wielded.

He knew how much damage he could do.

The chase did not end quickly.  Nor did the route follow a prescribed path.  Instead, it went on for months.  Then years.  Through it all, Zeke broke his mind into multiple pieces.  Some remained focused on the task, while others were occupied with his study of the threads. 

It was a strategy he’d developed during his previous bouts of study, and by that point, it was well-trained.  He could focus on multiple things at once, and with only a slight dip in his processing power.  That way, he didn’t feel as if he was wasting his time.  Rather, he could accomplish multiple goals at once. 

Otherwise, he might have abandoned the chase and hope to find Shar Maelaine when she inevitably resurfaced sometime in the future.  Zeke refused to accept that course of action.

So, on he went, flitting across space so quickly that he practically transcended time itself. 

And then, he saw her.

She saw him as well.  Her eyes widened, and she zoomed away.  Having nearly caught his prey, Zeke threw every ounce of his focus behind the simple task of chasing her down.  He pulled on the threads, gaining speed with every passing moment. 

That was when she sprang her first trap.

A wave of fire hotter than most stars filled all of space, sweeping across Zeke’s position before he could even see what was happening.  His body was incinerated in an instant, and even his soul thread was singed. Only barely, but that was enough to solidify the threat.

Zeke rebuilt his body, throwing himself across space with even more tenacity.  Three more times, he was forced to repeat his actions, and with every iteration of that flame wall, he grew even angrier.  Because of that distraction, he never even realized that Shar Maelaine was leading him into another, much more dangerous trap.

He hesitated to call it a black hole, though that was the first term that came to mind.  It pulled at him with such insistence that, even with all his strength, Zeke struggled to escape its power.  Shar Maelaine, floating just out of range, sent another wave of flame in his direction.  So caught, he couldn’t even begin to dodge.

It enveloped him, burning his body with extreme prejudice.  What’s more, when he tried to rebuild it, he found the reasoning behind her trap.  Even as bits of flesh were remade, the black hole – immense and with a gravitational pull that wouldn’t even allow light to escape – tore them away. 

He couldn’t remake himself quickly enough to outpace it.

Another wave of fire compounded the problem, and Zeke began to panic.  Right up until he shifted his focus away from the natural inclination to reform his body.  Instead, he concentrated on the black hole itself.  At its center was a collapsed star.  Zeke released his hold on the outside threads and let himself be swallowed. 

The second he – in the form of his soul thread – crossed the event horizon, he got to work.  Time and space wrenched into a million different directions, but Zeke homed in on a single, tightly woven bundle of metaphysical strings at the center of black hole.

He unraveled it.

Not all at once.  That was impossible.  Instead, he was forced to pick apart each individual thread, tearing other comprising strings away in order to weaken the overall structure.  Only after he’d compromised the larger threads could he pull them away. 

It took a subjective eternity.

But Zeke was nothing if not patient.  Spending thousands of years studying the threads gave a man – if he could even be considered such anymore – quite a persistent frame of mind. 

Gradually, Zeke unraveled the black hole until, at last, he managed to win free.  His actions were not without consequences, though.  The entire sector of space had grown unstable.  And he attempted to mend the damage in his wake.  The patch kept reality from sundering, but the implosion that came soon after was enough to collapse the entire galaxy.

Still, Zeke managed to escape.

But by that point, Shar Maelaine had once again fled.  Frustrated, Zeke sped along, following her trail.  Along the way, she attempted to set a multitude of other traps via celestial bodies.  Yet, with renewed focus, he managed to avoid them all.  And then, at last, he caught her. 

Not by going faster.  But rather, through his continued study of the threads.  At some point, he’d begun to wonder what separated her from the trail she left behind.  And as it turned out, the answer to that question was nothing.  All he had to do was grab hold of it and pull.

He did just that, halting her flight.

When Zeke came into view, she turned and sent a wave of fire in his direction.  Now that he’d endured others like it, he knew how to deal with that, though.  He picked the flames apart, and it withered away before it even reached him.  Meanwhile, he closed in on Shar Maelaine.

She panicked.

Fire spewed in every direction, and with the heat and force of an exploding star.  Yet, now that Zeke knew how to counter her attacks, he had no issues enduring whatever she could throw his way.

It felt like he was up against a child throwing a tantrum.

He closed, and when he finally reached her, he was greeted by a deafening scream that actually managed to surprise him.  It sent him tumbling backwards, but for only a moment.  Meanwhile, the Sun Goddess went in the other direction.  Not on purpose, either.  Instead, her path was entirely uncontrolled, and she ended up tumbling into a nearby planet, hitting with the force of a falling asteroid.

Zeke followed, inexorable and unstoppable.

Shar Maelaine tried to use the resulting dust cloud as cover for another escape, but Zeke had already taken her measure.  He landed next to the crater where she’d fallen and looked down at her.

When the dust cleared, she hadn’t moved.  She couldn’t.  Zeke’s grip on the threads was absolute, and she couldn’t even begin to break free.

  “You are impossible!  You should not exist!” she spat.

“And yet, I do,” he responded, leaping over the lip of the crater.  He landed only a few feet from her, only to be blasted by an intense wave of heat.  He tamped it down by plucking all the appropriate threads.  “Stop.  You know it won’t do any good.”

“Would you?” she demanded.  “Could you simply surrender?”

“Believe it or not, I did that once,” he answered, remembering his time in Hell.  Many of his experiences had begun to blur together, but one of the lessons he’d been forced to internalize had centered on accepting his fate.  In that instance, it had meant spending a subjective eternity being ripped apart by carrion birds.  But he knew he would never go down that road again.  Not because he was averse to surrender.  He was, but the reason he refused to do it was because he knew he didn’t have to.

For better or worse, he was stronger than everyone else.  That was what separated his fate from Shar Maelaine’s. 

“I watched that,” she admitted.  “Much of your time in Hell.  We all did.  We felt you coming, even if we didn’t take the threat that seriously.  Did you know that?”

“I didn’t.”

“Your coming was foretold long ago.  Often, I have wondered if it was a self-fulfilling prophecy.  The prophecy is why Oberon went searching.  Did he tell you that?”

“He did not,” Zeke admitted.  But Oberon hadn’t told him a lot of things.  That didn’t change what had happened. 

Shar Maelaine shook her head.  “He was an idiot,” she muttered.  “A broken man who so desired to make a difference that he threw what was left of his life away.”

“Some people would call it a life well spent.”

“Those people are idiots, too,” she responded.  

“Devoting yourself to a goal is –”

“The only goal that matters is power,” she interrupted.  Then, the Sun Goddess waved her hand, “Everything else is ephemeral.  Meaningless.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“Of course.”

“Even when I’m fighting for the fate of our reality?”

“Why bother?  For them?” she asked, once again gesturing vaguely.  “They live small lives devoid of any real meaning.  They’re here and gone in an instant.  Even the ones who fancy themselves lesser gods.  An oxymoron if ever there was.  The very label of god means supremacy.  One cannot be a lesser supremacy.  Only one of those words has any meaning, and it is not the second one.”

“What about you?  Do you think of yourself as less than a god?” Zeke asked.

“Of course not.  I reign supreme, even among my so-called equals.  You know that better than most.  It is why you targeted me last.”

“Compared to me, you are no better than those lesser gods you disdain so completely.”

“You are different.”

“They would say the same thing about you.”

She began to speak, but then shook her head.  “It’s all just semantics.  It means nothing more than your silly labels,” she said at last.  “No more than your vaunted purpose.  You are hellbent on sacrificing yourself to save a reality that neither wants nor acknowledges you.  And far be it from me to continue to stand in your way.”

She spread her arms.  “Do it.  I was growing tired of this existence anyway.  Perhaps I will be reborn as one of them.  A useless idiot, completely content in her ignorance.  I think that would be better.”

“You’re ready to die?”

“I am resigned to it.  I have been ever since I realized what you were.  What you represented.”

“What’s that?” Zeke asked.

“Do you not know?  Ask yourself what you are.  Ask yourself what you represent.  Are you a savior?  Or are you a villain?  I believe we both know the answer to that.  So, go ahead.  Kill me.  Destroy this reality with your hubris.  We both know it will never truly matter.”

Zeke narrowed his eyes. 

It was an unsatisfying end to the chase.  He wanted a fight that would shatter the heavens.  Not a peaceful surrender and an execution.  But in the end, he couldn’t change it.  So, he reached out and bored his way through Shar Maelaine’s threads until he reached the glowing bit of string that represented his soul.

“If it makes any difference, I take no pleasure in this,” he said.

“I know,” she answered, barely holding her body together.  “That is why I did it like this.”

Zeke flexed his will, tearing her soul thread to pieces, and her essence dissipated.  A moment later, the planet exploded from the built-up energy, but Zeke barely paid it any mind.  He simply took the damage, rebuilding his body once the danger had passed. 

But in his mind, he couldn’t forget her last bit of defiance.  She knew he wanted a battle, and she had withheld that from him. 

With a sigh, he opened a gate to the Crimson Tower, entirely unsatisfied with the end of his hunt.