Chapter 25?

Aiden struggled to rise, falling again and again as he tried to get away from the wreck.

He was tired, simply that and nothing else. His legs refused to move, feeling more like heavy logs than his own appendages, yet still, he crawled. Oros offered its help as the snake dragged him further than his own limbs.

It kept hissing, its forked tongue tasting the air urgently.

“Don’t worry,” Aiden muttered, “I hear them as well.”

Far off, closing in on their location were the sounds of motors. “They’re coming to investigate, no doubt.”

And he sighed, “Hide somewhere Oros.”

The serpent complied, hiding underneath an abandoned car frame. Aiden followed it, crawling next to it and propping himself to lean against the same frame.

He breathed, trying to keep his breath steady as sounds came closer.

“Goddamnit,” he muttered. “Why couldn’t everything be impossible? If it were impossible, I can rest, I can sleep, but there is still a path.”

He glanced at the body of Johnjohnjohnjohn, finally killed by a combination of venom, overheating, and debris. How he had cut off his own arm to avoid certain defeat.

And he glanced at his own stump of a right hand.

“There is still a path, so I have to keep walking it, no matter how tired I am.”

“Colorful,” Aiden murmured, Oros’ body slowly turned dark as strange plants covered the serpent’s body. Tattoos soon covered Aiden’s own body, initially in a variety of colours, until the creatures saw their environment, shifting the colours of their skin to camouflage him.

Just as they came.

Five goblins, riding on the scooters that were not contrived. Arriving onto the scene of a dead hobgoblin, the opponent unknown and missing.

“Mala mala?” one of them asked before another, presumably the leader, spoke.

“I’ll know,” it said in clear English. From his hidden perspective, Aiden saw it reach into its pockets, and take out a deck of cards.

It drew one card and slashed Johnjohnjohnjohn’s throat with it.

“King Nothing.”

The card slipped out of its hand and into the cut on the hobgoblin’s throat. The corpse writhed, and from the cut crawled out something. Spindly fingers, hard and golden, they reached out of Johnjohnjohnjohn’s corpse, exposing a thin, robotic arm of gold and copper, glinting in the sun. They reached out, impossibly long from the body it came from. Until it revealed something, a large body, appearing grotesquely fat despite being made of gears and pipes of gold and copper. The thing floated, its long arms double the length of the rest of its body, and though it was of metal, its legs appeared vestigial and withered. The head bore a crown, broken and inlaid with shattered diamonds that spoke of old wealth broken with time.

It was the face that gave Aiden pause, feminine, beautiful. But it was an impossible beauty of a statue wrought from marble jade, contrasting with its grotesque metallic body.

“Queen of Diamonds,” the leader continued. “Serve under me as you were meant to.”

And behind the goblin flashed something, a king more grotesque than the queen, with a crown of broken diamonds, shattered clubs, torn hearts and bloodied spades.

The Queen of Diamonds took position above the corpse, splaying out its spindly, needle-like fingers wide. Then the body moved. Jerking with inhuman motion, the body rose with every twitch of those fingers, puppeteered like a marionette as the Queen disappeared from view.

“Walk towards the one who you fought.”

And the puppet corpse turned directly to face Aiden and walked. Pushing aside the other goblins as it moved slowly but surely to him.

“Goddamnit,” he muttered.

The camouflage disappeared, and to the shock of the goblins, a humanoid figure appeared sat against a car frame. Guns were raised, but the leader goblin raised a hand and stilled them.

By reabsorbing his tattoos, Aiden returned his spent Hume, thus, the only Hume he’s lost throughout the battle were the numerous creations he couldn’t retrieve. The cone-shaped creature which had delivered a lethal venom, buried under the weight of debris, and the golden frog, forgotten somewhere.

Hume wise, Aiden was still relatively topped up.

That was it.

He didn’t have the strength to move his arms, for Hume was not energy. He couldn’t stand or run, for the weight of his body was too great. There wasn’t anything conveniently animal-shaped around him. Oros could carry him, but it couldn’t outrun them.

Checkmate.

He was in the same position, no strength, no tricks.

‘Is this it?’

He wanted to close his eyes and die, but something in his heart stirred.

“Are you still in there, Johnjohnjohnjohn?”

His voice rang out, seemingly without its owner’s intent.

The leader goblin narrowed its eyes. “Stop.”

And the corpse stopped.

That was all it was.

A puppetted corpse, with nothing left inside.

Even a hobgoblin was alive.

And he felt then, something was wrong.

Johnjohnjohnjohn’s last attack should’ve killed him.

Johnjohnjohnjohn sacrificed his arm to get off that final attack.

‘Johnjohnjohnjohn is the one who killed me.’

Aiden knew he survived through no skill of his own, save the strength of his legs. He had been cornered by superior cunning, by superior skill, by superior strength.

And now he lived and died by luck.

He felt something then.

Something he didn’t know he still had.

Dissatisfaction at his own death.

Beside him, Oros hissed, tongue flickering in ager.

“You should’ve tried to revive him,” Aiden muttered, “if it was him, I wouldn’t have cared, I would have laid down and died.”

Suddenly, his body lurched, and the goblins flinched. Jerkily, Aiden’s body rose, as if controlled by someone not used to the body.

Or the mode of control.

When the tattoos were still on his skin, Aiden still had a degree of control over it. Controlling their fangs or their skin, or using their ears and eyes like an extension to his body.

Through this, he moved his body, using tattoos of other bipedal creatures to force himself to rise despite the lack of strength in his body. Moving muscles that were only two dimensional.

“Because he killed me back there, he is the only one who deserves to end me here.”

He jerkily took a step forward towards them.

“If you want to kill me, come and earn it.”

The goblin leader looked at him, measured him, and it snarled.

“You will join me one way or another.”

And it raised its hand, “Shoot it until it’s dead but make sure the corpse is intact. You peons might not be able to turn a corpse, but I can.”

“Dakka dakka!”

They’ve given up trying to take him alive to convert into a hobgoblin, instead, using the leader’s ability to puppet his corpse.

The four goblins raised their guns and at that moment Aiden knew his bravado was pointless.

Given his legs, he was likely using either a terrestrial bird of the Casuariidae family or an extinct great ape, thus the proportions to his actual body were wrong. It moved joints in the wrong spots and had the incorrect lengths. Not to mention this was the first time he even attempted such a feat of delicate control without his own body’s strength to correct. He could not achieve the level of speed needed to dodge this attack.

He could gamble on the goblins being few enough in number that their bullets no longer had the same punch, but he didn’t know how many there were in total. He had killed seven, but there were at least twenty if a hobgoblin was present. This close, those bullets would still damage him when he was in a state where he didn’t want to be regenerating. And his legs would most certainly be a weak spot.

Aiden could try to fight, but he would most certainly die in the attempt. In fact, the only reason why the goblins haven’t fired yet was because they were trying to figure out where to shoot to preserve the body.

‘What did Isaac call that thing when you ran out of Hume?’

He glanced at Oros.

“Sorry about this. I just realised I didn’t want to die like this.”

The snake simply seemed to sigh.

He turned back, his eyes distant as if looking at something far away. “You’ve been haunting me like a bastard, so I’ll grant your wish.”

Aiden fell to the ground, kneeling, after all, his body couldn’t host more things while it was already occupied.

“I don’t know your name, but I think I will call you Axis given your ability.”

And his face was covered in grey and infinite mouths. Each opening and closing, ravenously biting at the air despite like wild unchained dogs hungering for flesh and blood despite only being tattoos. Beneath Aiden, the ground bloomed. Dozens, hundreds, uncountable numbers of grey arms. Each grabbing the other to form an eldritch weave, moving out together like a wave, they spread out with him at its centre, opening up like an eldritch flower of nothing but arms, covering the floor.

Oros body turned black, covered in strange plants as it always had when he spent Hume, until the black reached its head. Then slowly, and surely, Oros crumbled, cracking and breaking as the white snake became dust, and with it, Aiden’s own body began to crumble.

The goblins fired their bullets, but they were too late. The bullets spun through the air in the direction towards Aiden,

But not travelling any distance, instead, appearing to have stopped the moment they left the barrel.

At that moment, Aiden forgot the peacefulness of death.

Lu dreamt of ocean waves.

Of walking on a pale sandy beach, beside a black ocean that lapped gently against the shore. Every step, he made a footprint on the sand, walking in a circle around the imaginary island.

He walked and walked like it was a dream. Not sure why he walked, only that he was.

As Lu walked, he saw something in front of him, someone who looked like him, only younger, ravaged by stress and pain all the same but not with the same time as he. The young teenager was also walking around the island, only in the opposite direction as he, and now they met here, after a long and different journey.

Both stopped, facing each other.

“Hello Aiden Bu,” he said.

“Hello Aiden Lu,” he answered.

“Do you want to walk with me?” Lu asked.

“Sure,” Bu answered, and he changed direction, following Lu.

They walked together, silent for a while. Leaving footprints on the sand, before Lu asked, “Are you ok?”

Bu glanced up at the back he was following, “I’m not sure, I wasn’t ever sure, but now? I think I wasn’t.”

Bu stopped, looking down at the sand beneath his feet, “At some point, I stopped trying, everything I did felt pointless, eating became hard, I didn’t do it because I was hungry… but because…”

“Your stomach told you to,” Lu finished, stopping in his tracks as well. “You continued to do things like drinking water, like eating food, like going to work, not because you wanted to, but because that was what you always did, so it was familiar, it was the same. To even breathe became an exercise, a chore, but you continued to do it because it was your body’s habit-”

“Not your will,” Bu finished.

Lu turned and looked back at Bu. Such different worlds, such different circumstances, the same hollow eyes.

Bu continued to speak, “One day, I don’t know which, but one day, I stopped trying to make things work. Instead, I hoped for a miracle solution, one that’ll instantly solve all my problems, instead of trying, instead of grasping for a better future, I hoped a better future would reach me.”

“Then I came,” Lu answered.

“Then you came,” Bu agreed.

“Was I your miracle solution?” Lu asked.

Bu smiled, “No, you were not.”

Lu smiled as well, “I guess I was never good enough.”

“Not because of that, no,” Bu corrected, “because you were never my solution.”

Lu raised an eyebrow.

“You are different from me because I gave up in the end. I couldn’t continue anymore, but you still are, no matter how much it hurts, no matter how much you tire, no matter how much of yourself you have to carve up.”

“I’m just doing this because I have nothing else.”

“But you are still doing it,” Bu pointed, “Why?”

Lu was silent, his eyes distant as if looking somewhere far away.

“I want to see what a happy life looks like,” he answered while looking at the sea. “I’ve been like this for so long, I don’t remember- no, that is wrong, I never learned in the first place, how to be happy, how to love, how to laugh with friends or a family that loved you. I saw a glimpse, and I realise it was something I wanted. Something I want to achieve.”

“I follow creeds, rules, morality, not because I believe them, but because I hope that good men would lead good lives,” he continued. “So I suppose my answer is the same, I want to learn, so that I can remember without ever forgetting, what a good life looks like.”

He turned and looked towards where Bu had stood, but Bu wasn’t there, he was never there. The footsteps Bu left behind had ended when they met.

Aiden had been walking alone this whole time.

“You were just a memory,” Aiden murmured. “The real you died long ago.”

The waters continued to rise, lapping against the shore, every time they receded, they came back even higher. Until Aiden watched the waters wash away a single footstep.

In the panic of evacuation, a sheaf of papers was lost, scattered in the winds, they were the government documents Aiden had signed, and they would never be found again.

The water came back, a second footstep was lost to the tide.

The apartment became dirty and dilapidated as if no one had cleaned it or lived in it for some time. Perhaps no one ever lived in them.

And the waters kept rising, washing away more footsteps.

A crow sped through the sky, urgently trying to deliver a message until he faltered, confused. He came to a strange realisation.

“I am born of paper, yet who folded me?”

Aiden came to a simple realisation as the footsteps he left behind were all slowly washed away.

Hume was not energy. It was a measure. An attempt to quantify existence itself. The Hume he held in his own body was not all of his Hume. Every footstep he made, every action he did, they all left behind a mark. A mark that was Hume itself.

And he drew upon that now, when his own body had exhausted itself of the Hume it carried.

All the Hume, the effect he had on existence itself was being taken and moulded into something new.

An eldritch corpse flower, born from horror and peace. To wreak blind havoc as Aiden’s own body crumbled away and was forgotten.

“So I die leaving the world a worse place for it,” he murmured, as finally, all the footsteps he left behind were washed away.

(Not necessarily.) A voice spoke.

Aiden looked around, trying to find the source.

(You are looking in the wrong place, Aiden Lu Bu.)

And he looked towards the sea, seeing the figure that stood there.

It was a humanoid figure of light build, male, he figured. With a body as if carved out of black marble, dressed like a rider or cavalier from times almost medieval, with a musketeer hat adorning the head. But… he was strange, like a statue it stood, yet Aiden saw on one hand details lovingly carved out, whirls of fingerprints, callouses from years holding onto a rein, and the other was blocky with only a thumb, as if someone had stopped carving halfway. Similarly, some parts of its clothing were carved out with lifelike and realistic detail, as if was truly made of cloth instead of stone, while the rest of the body was blocky and unfinished, only put in the shape of a man rather than the details that encompassed one.

Likewise, its face was blank, a block of material never carved out. A painting never finished, a book never edited, it was a statue never finished. Who’s maker had never finished their work.

“Who are you?”

The statue answered, and it spoke the strength of the waves themselves. (I am the one who remembers the washed footprints.)

“In less cryptic terms?”

(I am the one who greets many.)

“Even less cryptic?”

(I am the one who will ride.)

He raised an eyebrow, that was a pointless path of inquiry then. “Why are you here?”

The statue spoke, (It is said, that at the moment of their death, people reveal their true selves.

Yet, it is not mentioned that people die two deaths. The first, when their body fails, when their mind goes, when what is them is no longer them.)

“And the second?”

(The second happens the last time a person is remembered, their image mourned, their name spoken. When the second death occurs, I appear.)

Aiden glanced to the side, at the seas washing away all the footprints he left behind.

“So I have died my second death?”

(You have died your second death.) The statue confirmed. (Yet, unlike many, you have died both deaths at the same time, and so, I am granted an opportunity to observe.)

“Observe what exactly?”

(Your true self.)

He answered, and the sea rumbled.

(What is the answer a person gives when both their body and life have come to naught? What is the Truth they speak?

Do they shout in defiance?

Do they resign to peace?

Or do they try to bargain with Death itself?

That is a Defining Moment, what a person does when faced with both Deaths.)

“Is that who you are?!” Aiden yelled, the sea so loud it almost drowned out his voice. “Are you Death?”

(No.) The statue answered.

(I am the last who forgets, and when Last Dawn falls, I will be complete and I will ride to greet the Final Dusk. I am the Aborted God.

But you?

You are Aiden Lu Bu, a thrice born soul, on this island of dreams you have glimpsed Truth and you did not lie.)

And the sea itself was drowned out by a single voice, echoed and screamed and whispered. Aiden didn’t recognise it at first, but he heard the words, he heard the words he had spoken but moments earlier. The seas returned, but this time, they returned the footsteps, every single footstep that Aiden had left behind.

(Only once in a lifetime can someone defy Death so. The next day I greet you, the seas will claim you along with the footsteps you left behind.)

“But that day is not today,” Aiden repeated.

He didn’t know how many moments had passed, only that he was whole, Oros was wrapped around his right arm, right underneath the stump, and he was kneeling. All around him, the earth and concrete rose up in hundreds of carved hands, rising and blooming like a beautiful flower.

He touched the ground beneath him, now covered in a stony grey, “Whatever you were, you are strong enough to morph the ground rather than require something fit your shape. That is impressive indeed.”

“But now? I think I have the strength to control you.”

And it all stopped, as Aiden reabsorbed the Invader.

He remembered what it was, he remembered the fear, he remembered something. What he felt when he resigned his life to save Jun.

He had felt peace, a feeling of peace brought about by the fact that even if he died, it was in service of a good purpose. A fitting way to end his horrid life.

Oros pushed something into his hand, the last thing in his backpack.

“You are like me and Johnjohnjohnjohn, reborn to fulfil a purpose, but you will not develop free will, you will never become anything more than what you are made, unlike Ranpo, you will remain a Tool.”

At that moment, he forgot the peace he felt. He forgot the contentment he resigned himself as he faced death for the first time in this world.

And the tattoos flowed off his arm and onto the cleaver with a broken blade. The metal warped as the tattoo was condensed and forced to fit a shape. The entire tool became grey and stone-like. Rows of teeth covered the cleaver’s edge, except at the centre around the dent. Numerous eyes opened on the flat, unblinking and unseeing. Its hilt warped to appear like numerous arms were wrapped around it in a swirling weave.

Barbaric and grotesque, Aiden held the butcher’s tool with his last remaining hand. Still kneeling within that half bloomed flower, he smiled a vicious smile.

“What are you doing?!” the lead goblin yelled, “Shoot him!”

And the goblins did, the bullets flying true over the half-bloomed flower. Almost reaching him, before they stopped, less than a meagre metre away from Aiden’s body.

The bullets continued to spin in the air, yet no matter what happened, they did not travel any distance towards him.

“That is a good power,” Aiden murmured with a vicious smile.

He tried to rise, but fell, his smile leaving his lips as he remembered, he was still out of stamina. His body was still starved.

Then a black shadow flew overhead, and Aiden recognised Ranpo.