Music for today:
(Extremely highly encouraged to listen on loop while reading)
Ben Berkenbosch - Interstellar (Day One Cover)
https://youtu.be/yXhsGzRMOnI
Chapter 502
Mid Afternoon - Late Summer : Year ??? : Unnamed Mountain | Northern Main Continent
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What is a memory..? The raw emotions, feelings, and senses carved into the mind, or the reconstruction of the scene, itself?
"~You have far a far greater mission. I know it.~" Hearing Hera's voice so clearly in that vision, I asked myself that question endlessly. "~Don't let yourself fall short of the stars because you distracted yourself with me...~" I felt anger and turmoil—carved into me from millennia past.
But was that what I felt watching it? "Hera..." Or what I felt in that moment? "I've already been to the stars... I walked through them for an eternity... The only reason I am here is because I found the one thing I was searching through them for..."
Was it the regrets I had hoped to forget coming back to haunt me.. or merely my mind reliving the anger I felt in that moment...
...Anger toward her misplaced mercy.. and my inability to say anything about it. "If that is what you truly wish, I'll try to respect it..." Watching it back, I.. couldn't tell... "Just know.. even if it's your greatest desire, I will never touch the stars again..."
Despite not knowing how.. I knew her decision was wrong... I felt it in the air...
But in the end, I just.. didn't know enough to say anything... Feeling the atmosphere tighten, I simply prayed that I could find another way out—that I could find an alternative solution to whatever the problem was... *snap-Vwoom*
But watching that memory back, seeing everything through Hera's eyes, and finally being exposed to the truth...
...It felt like an old, rusted blade lodged in my chest was being twisted.
"~You only exist because I needed him to hear you say yes.~" From the beginning, Delphi had been making a gamble of her own.
Unlike me, who wouldn't use my divinity to ensure fate followed a specific path for another dozen millennia, Delphi had been threading needles since long before I was even born... She foresaw my arrival millions of years ago.. and in that shadow, she saw a solution to a disaster I still wasn't ready to fathom...
Just as my gut screamed, behind the all-loving front she let me see, she was fighting a war all alone.. and she was losing...
I was her hope—her salvation...
And yet, just when one of the final puzzle pieces was going to be set down.. Hera chose defiance.. and sealed off that future... "~I will soon lose the strength to hold together this final fragment.. and you will rot for an eternity knowing it was you're fault.~"
The moment Hera made that decision.. that one, singular destination Delphi had found within the infinite web of fate.. vanished...
There was no other glimmer of salvation within her foresight... No matter how she tried to steer fate, there was no other destination she could guide the world toward that held hope.
So.. she took her hands off the helm...
Seeing me as the embodiment of impossibility, she gave me everything she had—every drop of power and guidance she could bestow—simply in hopes that I could find a future she couldn't.. and steer fate toward it.
-All those years after Hera's death... All those nudges to make me take my impossible gamble...- From the moment Hera had sealed her fate, Delphi had given me the helm...
"~I can only pray Vasilias succeeds in the gamble he is yet to take.. and finds a solution I cannot...~"
I would bestow Hera flesh.. make her live through a life of war, pain, loss, and regret.. and leave her to rot for millennia before healing her just to subject her to it all again.. merely out of the hope I could find a branch of fate she couldn't...
And yet, in the end.. even after succeeding in my gamble, made only by sacrificing everything I had at the greatest heights of my power.. her foresight was ahead of mine... -She.. knew I was going to see this...-
And at last, I was out of steam... I was at the limit of my foresight, leagues behind my past self, and with a burden greater than any other on my shoulder, was told to walk into the fog of fate blind...
*Woom* Feeling something grip me as the vision faded—trying to pull me back to reality—I resisted, wanting to let Delphi's words ring a little longer.. hoping.. begging to hear something beneath it all.
But in the end, even the echo faded...
All until... *snap* Through the faint connection I could feel with my physical body, my senses vanished.
In that breath, my physical body died.
...Yet my soul did not flinch.
I remained standing.. and listening. Waiting for something to reach me.
Until.. a whisper beneath the silence... "~You...~"
Expanding my senses, the void around me grew—Hera's faint, panicking presence appearing as a small glow before the burial aquifer appeared with a bright shine—intensifying as the water deepened and.. across a small channel leading beneath the city, I finally saw it.
...A fragment.. of 'her'...
Of Delphi... "~...You're hopeless...~"
That voice was.. from the past... Not spoken so much as recorded for me to one day hear.
I already knew it... That tiny, broken fragment of a presence wasn't her...
But deeper down I questioned if it was all that was left... "~I'm.. sorry...~" I spoke without thinking—without caring whether she'd hear me through time...
But in that breath, I felt something wrap around me.. a memory of the reassuring cradle of her presence...
And I broke...
I wept...
Everything I had done.. everything I had gambled and sacrificed.. was meaningless.
Delphi.. the being I travelled the stars to find.. to fall in love with.. was gone...
"~There.. isn't another solution.. is there...~" My soul quaked and quivered.. weeping in that expanse of nothingness as memories of her warm embrace held me...
And that fragment.. that message left by Delphi stayed silent...
Despite knowing what I was saying... Despite hearing me from the countless millennia past...
She said nothing.
"~You saw.. everything...~" From my first arrival.. to futures well beyond my end...
There was no other escape.. and feeling her fragment tighten as I asked her just confirmed it.
"~Vasilias...~" By the time she spoke again, her words landed in my soul like dull, rusted daggers. "~There is always the possibility I merely could not see it...~"
I clenched.. trying helplessly to hold onto myself as my mind wavered.
"~There is always a possibility that I missed something... Such distant foresight is bound to miss a small branch of fate...~"
"~And yet you still knew this moment would come... You knew fate wouldn't stray from the path it has taken...~"
"~I just...~" She paused... "~I trusted you would take yourself here...~" Her words lingered...
But they fell dull. "~It was luck...~" Unable to continue to look at her, my gaze fell. "~And I no longer have the strength to look ahead like I once did...~"
"~I know...~" Her voice fell in suit. "~But perhaps it is for the best.~"
I tensed.
"~Perhaps stepping without certainty will set you on a path we cannot see...~"
"~But.. is it worth stepping forward in the first place..?~" Clenching my soul, I broke past the filters life had granted me to mutter, "~What if I-~"
"~Tried to travel to the past?~" Her voice nearly broke with a helpless weep. "~You know that's not possible...~"
"~I'd find a-~"
"~No. You wouldn't...~"
My quivering intensified.. my grip of the string connecting me to reality loosening. "~Then.. what do I do..?~"
But.. she couldn't answer. "~You must figure that out, yourself...~" The more she spoke—the more she hinted at anything—the more fate would steer toward the destinations she had seen. "~You are the only one that can find the right path... I only ask that you understand.. it's not what I wanted either...~"
Hearing her voice lose its energy, and fade.. my very being faintly fractured.
I understood, yet hated every bit of it.
I wanted to let go.. to release my attachment to reality and float toward that fragment.. to return to her embrace once and for all...
But she wasn't there... -That.. isn't her...- All it was, was a faded fragment... -Perhaps one of many...- And letting go of my flesh would only destroy what little chance of finding a solution we had left.
-Fate has infinite possibilities...- Just because there was no escape in the fragment of fate she saw, didn't mean there wasn't another exit. -I just.. need to find the path she didn't...-
I was blind, about to walk across a chasm where failure was a realistic inevitability.
But somehow.. I didn't let go. -If it was truly impossible.. she wouldn't have left this for me to see...-
If it was truly fruitless, she wouldn't have made me take the gamble in the first place...
As I should have in the past... -I just.. need to trust my gut...-
To do whatever felt right regardless of what reason told me.. and never stop stepping forward...
No matter how dark the fog became...
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