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Then I turn to Keita, squeeze his hand. “I love you.” I can’t see his face anymore, nor Britta’s, nor Belcalis’s, nor any of the others, who are now all shimmering white figures in the distance, despite the fact that I’m not in the combat state. “I love all of you. Always have, from the moment we met in the Warthu Bera.”
“I love you too, Deka,” Keita’s voice is a faraway whisper, and it’s laden with sorrow.
As is Britta’s. “Yer not alone, Deka,” she whispers, her voice fading into the distance too. “No matter wha happens, ye are us, an’ we are ye. Always have been. Always will be. Take that with ye as ye go.”
You are us, and we are you. The thought wraps itself around me as the world dims, a reaffirmation. Everything is one, as it has always been. It’s just as the Being told me, as Myter and even Anok said. Everything is one.
Darkness creeps in, a slow and shivering cold.
But it doesn’t bother me. Nothing does as I move upward, my spirit rising toward the light. I can see my friends below, shaking my unmoving body. Crying as if their hearts have broken.
“DEKA. DEKA!” Britta screams, but I no longer heed her.
Instead, I turn toward the box, the one that’s been slowly opening while everyone was distracted. A light is emerging from it. A thousand colors, all hues I’ve never before seen, each one threaded with sounds: Birds’ wings. Waves crashing. Black holes singing their most mournful laments. All of it together forming a name. My name. The one I could not utter when I was in my body, clothed in flesh. Limited by the cage that was mortality.
I reach for it. Reach for my name, singing high into the sky.
And the universe slams into me.
A star whizzes by. Another million. Billions. I am the expanse now, the ever-watchful eye. I remain as I am, awed witness as planets form and die, as galaxies crash into each other, creating new ones—new life. Gods are formed, immeasurable glowing infants sent by the Divine Hand to watch over each world. I see myself as I was in the beginning, the Singular, a glowing mass intertwined with the ones who would come to name themselves the gods of Maiwuri and the gods of Otera—the Gilded Ones, the Idugu, the Maiwurians—all of us woven together, the world that is Kamabai forming inside us, just as we form inside it. All of us inextricably linked—one organism and yet separate beings.
But somewhere along the way, a few of the others—the Gilded Ones and the Idugu—stopped seeing that. Turned so far toward what they thought was humanity, they removed themselves from the natural order, and in doing so, destroyed everything they were meant to be, everything they already were. I watch as the white and green of corruption creeps through them, infecting our pantheon, spreading until our siblings in Maiwuri seal us off, splitting the world in half. But I remain nearby, a silent witness. A hopeful mirror that never managed to reflect to the others what it should have.
And now?
The thought moves through me, a reverberance across universes.
Now I look across Otera, my gaze orienting on that which is closest: Etzli, body filled with fear as she gazes up at me, seeing the wonder, the magnificence, of what I am. That fear coils through her, a sickly white–tinged purple, cliffs crumbling and falling upon themselves.
She is still in the body of my mortal mother, the abomination of it so obscene, curdled gray twists me with displeasure.
Etzli seems to sense my anger, because she casts about desperately from where she’s trapped under the claw of the ebiki queen. “You do not like the sight of me in this body?” she says, a wheedling, nearly human sound. “I will remove myself.”
She shifts, and within moments, she has abandoned her vessel of flesh.
The Etzli I remember floats in front of me once more, a glowing brown silhouette threaded with vines. Once, she was responsible for looking after growing things, but gone are the trees, the mountains and fields that once formed her being. Now all that remains is a mass of serpentine vines, each one withered, as her spirit has become.
She prostrates herself in front of me, so profanely human a gesture, another shiver of displeasure prickles over me, winking out the stars in nearby galaxies.
She’s about to beg for her life.
You do not have to do this, she pleads. We can be allies. You said you didn’t want to be alone. Don’t you want to be part of a pantheon once more? My sisters and I, we can be with you, help you shape Otera in your image. That is what you wish, is it not?
I orient myself closer, shaking the nebulas that form around the human equivalent of my head in refusal. I wish to serve the realm I was placed in. I wish to protect the natural order, to help those I serve understand the divine within themselves. That is our purpose.
The very words bring clarity. All those years of searching, of trying to understand. And yet the answer was always inside me. Just as it was always inside everyone. All of us are part of the natural order, all of us are part of the divine—every person, every thing, part of the great wheel that is the universe, that is the glory of life and yet Not Life.
Purposes can change, Etzli argues. We tried to aid the Oterans, to show them that which they could not see. We even birthed children for that purpose, but all of them were blind. Mortality blinds you. Even a drop of it is enough to sever you from greater understanding.
And yet you fell prey to such fallacies too, I remark.
As will you. Etzli is angry now, and her frustration sparks around her in burnt-orange tones. You think you know all because you are renewed. But you know nothing, you understand nothing.
I consider her words.
I know pain, I tell her. I know what it is to suffer, to push back against a fate you cannot see. I know what it is to be human. I know what it is to be alaki. I know what it is to be your Nuru. And soon, I will know what it is to be your Angoro.
My words only deepen her anger, a volcano of rage, but it does not shake through the cosmos as it would have. Etzli is muted. Nearly human now—as are her sisters, as are the Idugu. All of them fallen so far. The sadness of this thought causes a nearby lake to turn to ice. I breathe it back to its normal temperature, reawakening the fish caught in the onslaught.
