Epilogue ~ Aidan's POV

My tribe has forsaken me, he thought. Even his own voice inside his lonely mind sounded torn and empty.

They strung him up and buried him inside a trunk of the largest tree in the wildlands. If the Guiding Council had killed him then and there, he would have been better off.

But no.

They had rend his body in two. Had dragged his cursed wolf off his chest and stitched him back together in the most horrifying ways imaginable.

Sun tribespeople were life incarnate. The goddess had willed them into creation as means to nurture the rest of her creations. And he took that sacred responsibility to heart as the tribe’s chosen sun prince. But the Guiding Council had made the most horrifying favor. A request so vile no prince should be able to hear it in his lifetime, let alone carry it out. He had denied their request. Yet, they didn’t take no for an answer, taking the matter into their own hands and had stolen him away to the wildlands with arms and feet bound by treacherous sun tribe leather. There, in the heart of wildlands, they committed the most atrocious sin. The gall to imitate a divine’s hand in the course of a man’s fate. Vicious wolfish claws had swiped at him, made by the very warriors he taught and nurtured to their full actualized prowess. His hunters and warriors successfully killing him off.

A man should ever have to pass through dimensions twice in his lifetime: for birth and for death. That simple.

The god tribespeople were ambitious, thinking they could live without the blessings of divines. They thought to be gods themselves by willing life back into their plane by sheer willpower. But Aidan didn’t quite reach back to them. Their powers could only go through so much but it couldn’t quite bring him back from the dead.

For thousands of years, maybe more, he hadn’t quite counted, preferring to pass through his non-waking life listless and withdrawn from the reality of his world, wishing his past hadn’t happened at all. But it did. It plagued him.

His body was in complete health but stuck and rooted inside a damned tree, the very veins of his beating heart powering the entire wildlands. His royal life force dominating the roots of the whole island into submission, pushing it to grow, pulling them in for sustenance. He had to.

If the wildlands weren’t enough for eternal beasts to get sustenance from, then they will break free and wreak reckless havoc among innocent tribes who shouldn’t have to suffer under them predators. No. Even though, the unholy task grated at his spirit, at his soul, he had to do this. Countless tribespeople were counting on him for safety. However damned hard it was to do. No matter how lonely it was, being suspended in a dimension between life and death.

“There you are.” A voice coming from a man, unfamiliar. The weight of patience and sorrow laced his tone and Aidan couldn’t help looking up with his eyes, the damned tree binding his body in a relentless grip. He was surprised to see a man looking straight at him, amused. There were no signs of animal in this stranger, no madness. White opaque eyes, gray hair and pale skin. If death had a face, it would be like this strange man’s.

The sound out of Aidan’s throat was roughened from lengthy disuse. “Y-you can see me?”

“Of course.” A smirk quirked up his mouth. “You must be the sun prince. Life incarnate. Pride and blessing straight from the divines.”

A worm of unease snake through Aidan’s gut. The man had a calculating look about him. An inspiration behind his gaze that Aidan couldn’t trust. “What do you want?”

His shoulders deflated with a regretful sigh, “I thought I could leave and be released to an oblivion free of dredging existence. But I can’t. I realized too late that I have this chain in me. And I can’t let go. No matter how much I want to finally be torn free.”

“Chain?” Aidan had a slow time getting his head to wrap around the stranger’s words. No one has talked to him in years.

“I am nothing but a wandering spirit. My body lies motionless somewhere off over there.” He pointed at a direction that didn’t bring any meaning to Aidan’s head. “Torn limb from limb. My blood and guts nourishing the soil of this land.”

“You wander as a spirit.” He mimicked, more as request for validation because he figured parts of his body weren’t working right.

The stranger nodded in agreement. “I must be off to my orchard. For once, I get the chance to revel in my fruits. Have my peace. But I can’t. Not with this ball and chain.”

Aidan tried to swallow past his dry throat, licking his cracked lips. He was talking to someone. Not a word has he spoken in hundreds of years. “What is stopping you, then?”

“My tribespeople had a severe moment of crisis. And I made a critical decision to save as much as I can. Even a behagthi.” He chuckled.

The term rang empty in his head. It was familiar. He knew it to be in the first language. But it’s been so long since he thought in the ancient language that the stranger’s meaning didn’t quite reach him.

“I should have known better than to help a madness incarnate. Now I suffer here. I suffer to wander these lands that isn’t my own.”

“Necessusio.” I want to help. He started saying in the first language. Its meaning lost to him but he knew it needed to be said.

The stranger’s eyes wrinkled at the sides in his bemusement. “Do you even know who I am?”

Aidan wanted to know. But his mind couldn’t reach there. A state of grogginess consumed him from head to toe, his body slow to come alive. “Necessusio.” He repeated. The meaning slow to rise in his memory. He knew there were other words taught to him, more flourishing words he could use in the ways of stately diplomacy. But that was a long time ago. Now, he merely felt an emotion.

Empathy.

It was empathy. His heart going out for the stranger’s suffering. He knew all too well to wander listless around these lands, without any sort of power. And nobody should have had to suffer like he did. Nobody. In that moment, the teachings of endless elders rose up to him. A flame in his mind, sparking a livid headache that he tried to blink it off to no avail.

“Is it agreeable for me to help?” Aiden asked the stranger with a strain in his voice. “My life force gives power to these lands. Tell me how I can help.”

The stranger was surprised, followed by him getting overwhelmed by a wealth of shadows in his downcast gaze. “You will have to take my chain.”

Again, the meaning was lost to him. Nothing in the museum library even alluded at a particular chain for tribespeople. The concept too alien for him to wrap his head around. “What is your chain? Where is it?”

He shook his head, staring at the ground. “I can’t explain it well. It’s hard to form it into words.”

“I won’t be going nowhere. I’m stuck. Go on, then. I have eternity.”

A bark of laughter left the stranger. Irony in his tone. “No, you don’t.”

“No, I don’t.” he echoed in a dry, gloomy tone devoid of life. “I’m still here, though. I’ll always be here until the end of me comes. I’m here.”

The stranger glanced at a far-off direction, looking away. “Do you still want to go back to the living?”

A deep, hungry part of him responded quickly. Yes. He cleared his throat. “More than I can say.”

“I will give you this chain. My anchor to this universe with a strange-looking moon. It will help guide you back home in these endless, fathomless dimensions between worlds.”

Aidan searched the stranger’s eyes that had no dots of black pupils, just a sheen of white-opaque layer. “It sounds important. Are you sure you want to give it away?”

He sighed, nodding. This time, it was a wistful one filled with yearning and regret. “Have you ever hungered for someone? To quench a thirst only another can bring?”

He may have just woken up but he knew himself well. “I am Brumcia’s creation, made in her own image. Part animal, part madness. My insanity has caused me to hunger and thirst for another. More times than I can count.”

The stranger thought about it for a few moments. “It’s a good thing you’re a prince. Perhaps you will be able to resist it better than I ever did.”

When the stranger took a step forward towards him, doubts came creeping along his gut. “I don’t.. I’m not the same prince I used to be. I won’t know my limits if I ever came back to the living.”

The stranger came up to him. A resolute gaze meeting his. “With this anchor, you will find your way back to the living and I will finally be set free. But you must promise me one thing. Promise me. I want you to swear by it.”

Hope sparked fires in him. Flaming tongues of fire licked up his spine, “Say it and I will swear by it.”

“Back in the living, you can satisfy your hunger and quench your thirst however you like but you must promise me, swear by me, to never touch your anchor.”

“Why?” he whispered, licking his lips in anticipation. The sound of his heart racing like a drumming beat.

“Your anchor is wounded and fragile to the touch. You can guard, play games as she will be your ward. But under no circumstances will you touch her.”

With renewed strength, he budged under the constraints of a tree that imprisoned him. “What’s going to happen if I touched her?”

“She is at her weakest, most vulnerable. If you touch her, I fear she will break.”

“What is she? What sort of tribespeople could be able to become an anchor for someone like us whose spirits are beyond dimensions and past the living plane?”

“A child of divinity.”

Shock nearly stopped his lungs from functioning, “No.”

The stranger placed his palms on the imprisoning tree, and Aidan felt it wilting under his touch. “Swear it.”

His mind was racing. Shock jumpstarting the damned rotting thing to a racing speed of a hundred miles per hour. “A child of divinity.. it can’t be. Whose child is it?”

The long-suffering glance the stranger shot at him gave all the answer he needed. “By Brumcia.” Aidan cursed.

The irony was not lost on the stranger. “And Xiankere.”

“You dare say his name?”

“No use putting him off. He will come. And he will come for her.”

“Fuck. He’s way worse than Brumcia. A god-killer and a god-maker. We don’t need any more gods. We already have enough shit to deal with as it is. ”

“Which is why I need you to swear that you won’t break her. Her memories..” He frowned, trailing off.

“What?” he hissed, the damned old tree was slow to wilt and break down. The pace was getting him impatient by the second.

“Brumcia had implied that she made several attempts to make the perfect, most powerful daughter. But she had been going about it all wrong. All this time, what she needed was humanity. She needed her daughter to be born mortal.”

Aidan remembered mortals. He studied them in his museum library. Mortality was a rare state for severed ones. However, in the books it told they were real fully actualized creatures from another world. One whose hearts were made for the trappings of despair. He bit back a growl, “Brumcia will make her suffer?”

“All that and more. She will stop at nothing to make her daughter powerful enough to consume universes. One after the other. Already, I saw the mad goddess feed her an ancient eternal beast. And yet, not even the goddess herself knows her daughter had already fed on six eternal beasts beforehand.”

Aidan’s heart plummeted into a spiral. “A single life force of an eternal beast can power up a whole planet.”

“Exactly. If our mad goddess should come to know that her daughter already has the capacity to eat up eternal beasts then what is to stop her from forcing her daughter to take on the task of consuming a universe?”

“If the universes are gone, then Xiankere will have to come back. Make another.”

“There’s no stopping it.” Finally, the tree groaned and crackled into dust, falling apart over Aidan’s head and shoulders. “But I have a feeling we can delay it. Heck, even put a stop to it.”

A confused wrinkle from the released sun prince, “Heck?”

“You are life incarnate. The guiding sun. A towering height that tribespeople look up to for directions. You can teach her how to use her powers for good. Because, by Brumcia, the mad goddess will stop at nothing to tear her daughter apart to the point of insanity. You can’t let that happen. You must keep her lucid. Never let her break.”

“Is that all?” he said, pushing himself up to his feet.

“One more thing.” The stranger led him by the arm as they walked through a grove between slumbering trees, a fine mist of cold rain beginning to fall through. “Don’t let her nowhere near god tribespeople.”

He huffed in frustration. “How am I supposed to guide her powers if she can’t be around god tribespeople who actually do have powers?”

His jaw bunched up tight, “Vella Kiniste Mue. She is connected to an oracle from god tribe. His name is Me’ren, a liability. God tribespeople are closer to Brumcia more than anyone else. If Me’ren is inside her head, then there is every chance Brumcia will come to know what her daughter’s real capabilities are.”

“Don’t worry. I got this. I just have to talk to an old friend of mine. He won’t be able to say no to me. Rest easy, snow prince.”

“You remembered after all?”

“It was hard not to notice. Your wilting touch, your death-like form..” he waved a sweeping arm across his chest, bringing notice to the wide expanse of lake waters in front of them. “I’m guessing these waters will be your portal back to this orchard you speak of.”

He chuckled, “I expected nothing less of a sun prince. She will fare better with your guidance.”

Then, the strange snow prince disappeared as he sank his form underwater.

Aidan exhaled a shaky breath, finally free from the clutches of supporting an entire island off his shoulders. The thought of their galaxy coming to an end gave him peace. The promise of an absolute end had absolved the sun prince’s guilt. He just spent thousands of years spending his life to a degree of honor and integrity. For once, he would like to be free from the holds of responsibility. To run wild. To become no one, and nothing, and just become the simple man that he was always meant to be. He wasn’t going to trade his imprisonment for another chain of shackles. What a fool that snow prince was. Eternity must have done a number on his head because there was no way Aidan will spent the last of his days glued to an anchor, a madness chaos incarnate of Brumcia.

No.

For the past thousand years, he built up dreams and visions of what he would do if he were ever set free from his wildland bonds. And he will do just that.

No shame.

No guilt.

After all, Aidan had never sworn anything to that gullible snow prince.