Chapter XL: Gobudo (Cont. VII)

Vigile, slightly frightened, nodded. He was beginning to worry about the success of the quest. At first, he thought these warriors who had bested him would have no problem with this weak and frail figure….but his stature did not truly symbolize the amount of power he had. His voice finally materialized, “What surprise do you expect, sir?”

“Some hinderance to our plan.” Baen sighed and drew his blade and his staff from within his cloak and turned towards the glowing aura that flickering along the horizon. “Out here in the far sands….how predictable you are. Foolish Watchers…twelve great minds can’t outsmart the ‘inferior’ one.” He sighed and shook his head, marching across the sands towards the flickering horizon. Vigile hesitantly followed, the hordes marching behind him. It was time for a difficult decision.

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Gobudo opened his eyes, feeling the ripple slowly spiralling around him. He lay in the center of the dark shadows, watching the world swirl around him and wave. What had he thought? He tried to remember where he was……had he thought of a place? An event? A time? Had that small orb had the power to hurl him through time and space? He slowly rose up, pushing himself up onto his knees and staring around. There was nothing here but shadow….constant darkness swirling. He could see motion within the blackness, but it seemed to have no definition, like air in the heat. His eyes glanced back and forth.

He had broke his eye-lock with Blackheart….and then what happened? Where had he gone? It was slowly coming back to him…the dizziness fading from his landing. He had felt the wave roll over him and thought of…..of what? And then he was hurled through the blue, stretched thinner than time itself, watching his entire life flicker back and forth along the scale…past his death and before his birth….every single event that had ever occurred in his life. Most of the pictures that did remain of what he had seen were with Blackheart involved…..at least his death had been worth it.

But wait….was he….dead? He glanced around and then realized where he was. He had thought of it as the flickering faded, as everyone watched him disappear with the shadows through….he had thought….now I go to Zyatos. Zyatos was the rather bleak afterlife of the Vasu warrior, where all those who had lived good lives would awake to find themselves in a world that they could create of their own accord and all those who had lived vile lives were punished, as all religions go. He smiled to himself….the Vasu were right! This was what the true religion was……or was it what one believed. And then Gobudo looked down and saw, amidst the black swirls, the hundreds of cloaks of incinerate dead. They had not lead good lives and had been punished. But they weren’t supposed to be here….only a Vasu could come through….unless….had this world he had believed in….had he created Zyatos?

Why not? After all, who really knew the full powers of thauma…even Thyrus was still grappling with the full effects. Gobudo shrugged his shoulders and thought hard. After a moment, the caves slowly began to fade into view, the black being pulled away like a curtain and revealing all his old Vasu friends….past and present….smiling and waving him back. Even Blackheart, slightly younger and less dirty and tired looking, stood smiling. Gobudo knew it was all fake…that none of it was as real as the world he remembered. And then he thought to himself again. He could change anything in this world….the look of a person….the shape of the land….the color…the thoughts of a person…….himself……..he had to be able to heal himself, for where were his wounds…..if he could do that then certainly he could…..

Gobudo closed his eyes and told himself that he didn’t know that this was fake…and when he opened his eyes…..he smiled and returned to the life that he had left so many years ago.