29 ~ March night, Epilogue

Body and mind were still exhausted when an atom of consciousness returned to her.

Everything had returned to cold and dark.

She could only hear her breath, everything else remaining silent as death.

It felt like awakening inside a grave.

She could not move, her body oppressed under the pressure from accumulated earth and dirt covering her up to her head.

Her breathing was unsteady and gritty. Her mind still too was damaged and unable to think properly.

She was simply between panic and abandon, trying to move her limbs that didn’t respond, being stuck in the ground.

She was freezing and debating herself, without raising her voice however. Only breathing quietly.

She eventually dislocated one of her shoulders, trying to pull her arm free. The surge of pain didn’t manage to stop her, nor did it made her moan.

Cold sweat and tears were rising and flowing, but she clenched her teeth and kept trying to free herself with everything she could give.

Slowly, the dirt around her was being softened, shaken and shoved beside. She managed to bring her other hand to herself, and began to scratch aside the dirt and pebbles burying her body.

She could only hear her hand scratching away the clay and stones in that dark, along with her regular sighs.

She kept her teeth clenched because of the pain pulsating in her other arm, and now everywhere in her paralysed body. She couldn’t see a thing.

After a long and painful work, her hand trembling and her fingers numb, she managed to move her torso a little. Without thinking, she tried to put her shoulder back in, but missed. Another surge of pain brought more tears, but she did not complain.

She replaced herself more carefully, holding her breath. Her shoulder felt like a blaze in her body. She moved in a shock, and brought her arm back together, albeit with every nerve inside her body screaming agony to her.

She thought she fainted for a moment and she might have. She sighed again with a less regular flow to her breathing.

She could soon move her arm normally again.

She scrubbed her puffy and drained eyes with her free hand, and began to free her other arm better.

After a while, she couldn’t feel her left hand anymore. She had to bring it against her belly to warm it up a little, to get some sensations back. It was a pause. While her overall temperature seemed to stabilise a little warmer, she managed to think over a little about her situation.

She was unclear about what exactly occurred before. She wasn’t sure about anything. She couldn’t remember how nor when she ended in such a place and under this mountain of rubbles. She felt lost, barely remembering who she was.

But she was clear about one thing somehow. That thin feeling, like a breathing from above reaching her face.

She knew also she was most likely alone, deep down there.

In her mind, there was no doubt about it. There was no other soul left but hers down in this place.

She was completely lost.

And while she wasn’t really confident that some hope remained for her, she still tried to dig her way out of there. She was blowing air onto her cold fingers, and feeling their nerves again. Her face she could touch also felt numb and cold.

As long as there wouldn’t be any definitive answer, she would try to escape, at the very least from this grave.

She could recall pieces of the past, unsteady and fragmented. The colosseo. The endless prison with only a thin stream of air from above, and the fundamental lack of answers about it...

How weird was that? In the real world, even humans could live by instincts, this knowledge of how things work deeply carved into everything living. Everything alive would have the most basic understanding of how it should behave in regard to its surrounding world. How things should simply but overall work and exist together.

But down there, even the instincts were at a loss. Down inside this dream, even the basic intuitions weren’t meaningful nor helping. Except the one to live further perhaps.

But for them to be down there, felt like being fishes unfortunately being washed too far inland and away from the shores.

They should never have been there. Even though nothing was clearly stopping them, even though humans were the species able to conquer any environment and mystery.

That place was too different and alien to logic itself.

That tunnel might have normal look, but everything about it was queer and ominous.

Perhaps because it was akin to a bridge between two worlds that should never have seen each other.

It was a construct defying natural order, and everything logical humanity knew or believed into.

Rather than a proof that some magic could exist, it appeared as an incredible ziggurat that had been forsaken by every god at the dawn of time.

More than a proof, it looked like a bizarre construction to play gods. A gloomy temple where what could never be, might finally come true. A place where the dead had a chance to come to life.

A place where dreams going against reality might manage to bypass its usual rules... At what cost though?

She was coughing, now able to move both her arms, and began to dig her legs out.

That place was the ruins of an ancient dream. An artefact without a name, without any remaining legend to describe it in the twentieth century. Something people might stumble on without realising what power and history it might have had, or only from the faintest testimonies of a daiûa, hundreds of years ago. These were distant ruins, maybe never built from anything really alive.

Though she wasn’t truly sure that it had the power to bring dreams into reality; it might not have the full power to do so. However she had seen and experienced for herself that it was at least able to let some light from the other side, reaching places it shouldn’t.

And while it may not be much truthfully, it was bizarre enough to make strange faiths rise, and such events occur...

Because they had a glimpse of reality, and its rules, fading away, insanely huges ambitions rose. Probably from both that side, and the other reflection as well...

And although no wish had seemingly been granted in her time, that odd thing stuck between reality and the nil before the end, it crystallised such potential, and such wills.

Every whispers from the walls might be the memory of someone who attempted it, before becoming a part of it.

So many minds might have tried to use it...

She grinned in pain, and sighed again, trying to pull herself out in vain. She was imagining such an epic for that hole in the dark now. The truth was that tale which could have span millennia of legends had no record left in history. Such a thing to be didn’t exist really.

The powers able to bypass some truth of reality were delusions.

The only thing that did happen, was some faint light and sensation of reality reaching them in faint breeze. That was all they had really felt. The colosseo itself was probably also a mere dream and nothing like a forgotten ziggurat and artefact.

A mere dream.

She was crawling in the slight crevice where she had managed to pull herself into, away from the rubbles burying her.

She was crawling painfully between rocks, mud and stones. She was scratching and crawling sideways her way out from her deep grave.

Something they invented theories over theories on, to rationalise it, to explain it to their challenged sanity. They tried to understand it, as much as they hoped they could use it. But all that, absolutely everything about that, was a poor building of assumptions in the end.

Because nothing was like it, but a dream from someone above them. There was nothing to prove all what they concluded or thought they knew.

And the only way for it all to make sense logically, was that all of it had been merely a dream.

Reality would never change because of simple dreams.

Her hands pierced the las layer of dirt, pushing more pebbles away from her way out. She felt a different temperature in the air. She pulled herself through, unable to see anything at first.

Her head was still filled with uncontrolled thoughts, trying to make sense out of everything coming back to her.

In the end, with more humility she resigned to admit that she simply couldn’t understand what had happened.

She couldn’t get that place. She couldn’t make sense of her adventure down there...

She admitted with another sigh that she had probably been too full of herself since the beginning.

The only truth was, that all along, all the way, she had never been sure about what was really happening. It was painful.

When the air felt a little cleaner, she reopened her eyes to the darkness. She could barely see a thing, and in a way it had been that way all along.

She didn’t know where she was. She had a fair feeling she was still around the colosseo, but she couldn’t tell.

And between dream or reality, she never really knew.

Above her now, she could hear some slight whispers from the wind. Streams of air in their endless cycles.

And as she began to move forward, in her uneasy steps across jagged rubbles, she thought back to herself the only truth she did handle.

She just never knew... Nothing had been real. Everything had been meaningless.

That sentiment of abandon was turning to sorrow for her. Everything had been pointless...

Around her, as her hands and feet could touch, lied ruins. Building mountains of rubbles and broken rocks and dust were all around her. These ruins were going up until they drew somewhat back, the lines of circular wall from the colosseo again...

~

She stood there, between the piles of rubbles and dirt that climbed along the walls that had crumbled. It all was broken and collapsed until everything melted into each other unevenly. She couldn’t tell where the rubbish and bits began and where the colosseo ended down there.

But she could recognise that empty structure appearing as a tower surrounding her, heavy above and around her.

She could raise her dirty face to that clear sky in the darkness again. That painful sensation of distant fissure of freedom far above her remained.

There was a little mist above the ground, floating silently around. Holes between collapsed columns and dirt were as many darker stains in her field of vision.

She sighed again. She recalled to herself once more the only thing true she really knew.

She tried to keep it in mind rather than to begin imagining things anew.

She didn’t know nor understood anything. Nothing.

Except that she was now back in that awful place, at the bottom of a well... For a reason she prevented herself from guessing this time, she was back down there.

Inside the cold colosseo now in ruins.

Inside the endless and awfully empty nightmare.

~

She felt sadder and lonelier than she ever were. Alone inside that place again. That place where the light had been stolen.

That place where the walls were made of solidified voices in the dark, that could still sublimate into thoughts and sounds reaching your head, driving you insane...

That place where the cold rain of another world had lasted for all eternity.

The burial ground of them all, and probably countless others faded to history, including the Wolfram train, and all their older memories.

She made her way across without joy, and little will.

But soon walking toward a rather clear opening, to enter the cave inside the wall, she reached the corridors again.

That was all she could do there, and she had unclear low but mixed feelings about feeling these damp or dusty corridors once more around her.

Although, the walls had turned silent for now. It was as if an uncontrollable voice inside her head was now gone. It made her feel less insane, but more lonely...

It was as if another soul, a little candlelight she had been used too, had been blown extinct.

She reached a room with an altar at the end of the corridor.

It was one of the four altars in the level of the colosseo ground level. She recognised it.

So she wasn’t above nor below. It was this ground again.

It was appearing as dead and empty as everything else, but she now noticed a little thing on the altar.

In the dust, a finger had drawn a shape she recognised as a wing. One of the four wings her mind connected, between memories and lingering figments of whispers.

How sad could that be... The will behind these and their philosophy behind each one, all of it was now stained with sorrow.

She closed her eyes, trying her best to keep her emotions in check. That time of hopeful impulses had been long over. With a silence along her mind, she proceeded to the stairs, and began slowly to climb the levels, one by one.

She felt she might already be behind the end of times, seeing how everything was now so still...

She made her ways through the unwavering ruins, keeping her steadiness in what felt like a pilgrimage through a starless night.

~

She passed the level fifty like a long stairway in the dark. Not much had changed. She passed the level forty-nine without looking aside. She passed the tools closet level with chalk marks on the walls. The marks had dimmed, and others had been drawn. Odd shapes, from children or insanity. She moved on without thinking about it. She passed the forty-seventh level with a similar closet, but with construction tools inside. It hadn’t changed much all this time. She reached the level where she was feeling uneasy about the void and dark, with its long corridors and empty rooms without light. The walls, or rather the past, echoed this phobia strongly within her flesh. She made it through, shivering but whole. She then passed by the forty-fifth level, the planetarium, with the gigantic iron Earth, and then Atlas holding the sky. It looked as painful as before... She passed the forty-fourth level with the immense yet mostly empty warehouses. No ghost was calling out to her anymore in there. She passed the forty-third level, being one queerly long corridor. She went through the churches of the forty-second level, and everything stood dead quiet and calm again. No god, nor demon; no priest nor prophet coming so far. She passed the forty-first level with crimson carpets recalling of the train, and its changing rooms turned later into personal rooms. She passed the fortieth level with its eight pagan temples, where they once had built a mobile roof meant to raise like a balloon inside the colosseo. Most balconies had crumbled down into rubbles, as did some other walls, but she continued making her way a little absent of herself. Nothing of their work and struggles had been left to see. All that remained were the architectural skeleton and ruins. It was all lost with the rest. She passed the thirty-ninth level, with its living quarters and long hallway. The doors were abandoned open, with no one living nor dead left behind. She passed the thirty-eighth level, the labyrinth of hours gone. She passed the true labyrinth then after. Some marks from the past still indicated the way through the maze, an undying cold mist lingering in the area. The air felt heavy all along the way, but she kept pushing herself further through it, resigned but determined.

She passed the cardinalis level, with its rooms filled with geography books and items, sorted by cardinal area. She passed the level thirty-five and its mighty weaponry. The arsenal lying there remained untouched as if asleep. It was a museum at night. Or rather one armoury for these armies made of clay she had faintly heard off. These were to protect someone important through an eternal night... She passed through the thirty-fourth level and its indoor garden. All had withered and rotten. She passed the odd level thirty-three, being divided in two dissociated sides. The first one where she passed, had nothing but two rooms with old Oceanian statues. The other part across the colosseo only linked to the floor below oddly, and held a temple with a monumental statue of Shiva, hidden there. They used to call this level with its name. Thankfully the collapsed walls hadn’t stopped her progression. She passed through the solar temple from the thirty-second level, with its large and curved mosaics tilling, depicting on ground and ceiling the sun in the sky. She had seen things change in these places, but now all was still, quiet and dark. There was no clear glow, but she could still proceed along slowly without a light. Around the colosseo, without calling it light, there was still enough visibility for her to proceed with her eyes open through most places. The corners were lost to her sight, but she could keep making her way through this surreal landscape. She passed the thirty-first level with its straightforward corridors running away for about a hundred metres. She passed silently the thirtieth floor with its odd blocks and alcoves. She passed the library from the twenty-ninth level. It was a painful sensation of being surrounded by mounds of mould, everything this place once held now turned to undefined mush. The smells were greasy and almost of alcohol form all the rot. She passed through the second library which had turned even worse in decay. She passed the twenty-seventh level with its fountains and streams all around, albeit now dried and stained with lime. She passed the dormitory akin to military barracks from the twenty-sixth level. She passed the twenty-fifth level and its manor looking architecture. She passed the queer and immense cafeteria from the twenty-fourth level. The air was awfully heavy in there. It felt to her as if an army had been around and just vanished before she stepped in. She passed the twenty-second level, smelling of old dry but fragrant woods. She passed the twenty-first level, looking like another abandoned building from a previous century. She went across the floor of the paper sheets, with its attics covered with abandoned and scattered paper sheets, slowly turning to mush like dead leaves. She passed the twentieth level and its chemistry laboratory. Schematics of phthalates were noticeable on old boards. She passed the nineteenth level, with its other laboratories, from older times, with alembics along a main corridor. It was the level of Jâbir Ibn Hayyâm a wall whispered to her. An older master to Roger Bacon perhaps. She moved forward, letting the foreign thoughts float away without paying any mind. She proceeded through the ensuing laboratories on the eighteenth level. This one whispered to her it had been in honour to Bakr Mohammad Ibn Zakariya al Razi. Their names were written in varied scriptures and alphabets she couldn’t all read. She didn’t know them, but whispers passing through the walls kept some distant ties to them. She left it wall and passed the Persian and Arabic libraries of the seventeenth level. She passed across the even bigger alchemical laboratory of the sixteenth level. That one was more recent. She passed the fifteenth level and its other rooms of geography and other world orb. She passed the fourteenth storage floor, with its lingering fragrances of multitudes of teas from all over the world. She passed the thirteenth level with its large washrooms. The smells of water and lime were still slightly off. She passed the twelfth level and its wardrobes, some still holding clothing. More impressive were the kind of galleries des glaces running along the sides of the colosseo. She was just a shade passing through, but even the faintest of glows were reflected and gleaming countless times. She passed the odd eleventh level with what she could only describe as library for shoes. Rows of shelves with open display cases or boxes, holding all imaginable kind of shoes, boots and sandals. She didn’t slow down to even look at what still hanged around her feet and pressed forward, not letting herself be distracted. She passed the tenth level and its many offices, leading one into another. She passed the ninth level basement, with scattered goods and furniture, abandoned there as in a landfill. She passed the eight level, with its long cryptic corridors showcasing stone statues and even gargoyles along the side walls. She passed the seventh level and its heavily loaded cellars. She passed the rich Persian looking room on the sixth level. It was looking like a collector’s room, from someone passionate with central Asian history. She passed the blue fountain cellars of the fifth level, puzzled. She passed the empty and blend basement looking fourth level quickly. She passed the workshops of the rather small third level. She passed the rooms and suites from the second level, with mould covering all the decay.

She reached the water church, on the first underground level. Her steps reached the end with every stone dry. Parts of the ceiling had collapsed into new architecture of this partially natural and partially built cave.

The whole place was still between ruins and might. The pool was open as a large hole above the ever so deep colosseo. Wind could be heard twirling around the heavy metallic pieces of the open basin.

The pool was open to the darkness below, inviting... The edge of that damaged construct appeared like a maw to her. A wide hole leading back to the bottom of the place, strangely appealing, because as much as it was hell, it was a known and familiar one.

She was but the shadow of her past self she realised, as she gazed at the abyss.

She felt too exhausted mentally to properly think anymore. The endless silence had crushed her persona over time more thoroughly than the voices whispers had eroded her mind.

The walls kept re-enacting their memories in endless albeit fading echoes, but the silence surrounding them was only their death being reminded.

Pluto might have coalesced until something unlikely crystallised in this place, under pressure but mostly time.

Time had eroded her will, memories and mind. Another fall would likely dissolve what was left down to nothing again.

Feeling tired, she made a step closer to the edge. The slight thrill of contemplating the end was now the only thing keeping her exhausted mind aware or awake. She stood over the edge and slowly walked around it, looking down at the strange jail and death before her feet. She had only absolute darkness before her, swallowing slowly but surely everything. Deep down, she knew she should be lying below.

She knew these ruins she couldn’t understand were still there... Yet somehow, so was she.

Would she fall, she would suffer the torment of climbing the place over again, her mind and humanity continuing to erode. And then, she might do it again. And again, until nothing remained.

She was about to accept with a twisted melancholia her Sisyphistic fate. She was about to abandon and feel once more as if life was escaping her body.

This last thrill of building something around her from her own sublimating blood would soon be all there was left.

She was slowly embracing to give up all unnamed remaining hope, what was left of sanity. Anything about salvation.

As she was losing it all around this well, by mere chance perhaps, at some point a different glow reached her and caught her remaining attention.

A new light appeared to come and begin glowing, casting a shadow at her feet. Her eyes opened wider at the realization of this, her heart bouncing in her chest.

She turned slowly over to discover what she hadn’t been able to see directly before.

Now that she had seen it cast a shadow, she could actually see it, what that glow might be.

She might have walked for a century in this place without noticing it. She felt more lonely than she ever could be. She was feeling even more hopeless now facing this different nothingness. She had been for so long.

But the closer she walked toward it, the brighter it became.

The gate was open before her. It had seemingly appeared in front of the stairways. One flight of stairs was going down, from which she came, and another was heading up apparently.

In front of them, now a strange glow could finally be seen. It was strong on the eyes once you knew it was there and straight staring at it. But it cast no shades nor light around it directly, and vanished from your sight when you looked elsewhere. As if this hollow actually was casting no light.

But it did, only for her. She was the only shape casting a shadow around these ruins. Perhaps this glow was only an illusion born in her dying mind.

But the sight was clean and bright. Now she could recognize the shapes and size of a double door. They looked like her home doors leading to the garden outside.

A bright light was wavering around there, making that doorframe. It looked like sky, with clouds carrying rain passing along its structure. There was strong sunlight behind.

The wavering clouds making the wood of the doors were carrying white, shades of grey, teal, turquoise and blue, carrying a slightly fresh air.

And as she stood there a little agape, all she could think about was how lonely she felt.

How painfully hopeless she had been. For so long she couldn’t state...

She always had. Even before she died...

And now she was there. Before the end, and before the impossible gate. Before the choice to make, as time stood as still and quiet as ever before.

No gods nor anyone was guarding this tunnel, and she was still more alone than ever.

All what was left for her, was to make her choice, in painful freedom.

The choice between the ending abyss of nothingness, or going back weirdly toward the world she had left.

Scarlett stood there in shock and worry for hours, unable to choose.

Standing before the dream of someone else, and facing her own darkness. She could only feel her own despair and hopelessness filling the air and walls. She could only hear what was left of her own mind trying to answer.

And as she stood there utterly alone, she tried her best to find what her right decision could be, facing both possible exits toward the end.

~

She waited. She waited for someone to show up, or something else to happen. A god, an angel or a demon should have come her way. Even someone else unable to pass on from the abyss could have come. But no one else was left whole enough to climb this high.

Everything else had eventually dismembered to fuse with the walls possibly.

Nothing changed, for as long as she waited.

Nothing came to guide nor restrain her liberty.

As she stepped closer, she could feel the warmth of the air, the true warmth as she barely even remembered it. When she was getting her hands close to the strange door, she could feel reality wriggling and flowing behind.

And she could begin to hear the voice of time, the sweet music of wind behind. True sound, along with everything else, was only a few steps away...

She was free to go. Either way, it seemed as if her choice would not have any consequences at all.

But for her, and only her...

She would have imagined such a place to be heavily guarded and looked after... Either by enlightened men, or by gods themselves... And somehow, it was sad to find the place as empty as if the world behind had already ended and there was no point to guard it anymore.

But it didn’t appear that way, when she was brushing the light with her fingertips.

It didn’t look biblical nor Egyptian at all. She had expected gods with animal heads, angels or even demons, to at least stand guard there. She expected that there would have been at least, at the very least one thing or person, to guard that door from trespassing...

There were no warnings or deterrence carved along the walls.

Maybe there were simply gone. But like the rest of that world, while it gave some impression of being very old, it did not really looked like it had been truly inhabited or even built by human hands at some point. Maybe that place had always been empty, and was a kind of escape tunnel outside anything’s awareness. Maybe this place was really a hole in the wall, a mostly unknown tunnel between realities that would let anything coming this way and this far simply go unchecked...

Scarlett sat against the stairs, glancing at the door now from behind. It looked the same, even from that perspective. The vision of the door was the same from whichever angle she looked at it, as if rotating as she walked around. It looked the same, just like the hole... As if that was also looking at her in some warped perspective of things.

She wondered for a moment if maybe the others already went outside. But she doubted it.

She was alone, and the others were gone, no light remaining downstairs. They were gone, but likely not through that door... She had the feeling that they had fallen again and did not escape.

No one else would come. Maybe never.

She had brought her left hand to the glowing surface, as her right shoulder was still hurting her.

Her hand went through without a hurt. It felt incredibly vivid, with a rainbow of sensations as if her hand through the door was being regenerated instantly, and sending waves of tickles and fuzzy signals through the rest of her ghastly body. She felt the nerves regenerate and the skin materialising. The weight of atoms feeling there again.

Pulling her hand back, it felt as if it was returning to dust and vapours. It was terrifying and exhilarating...

Even though she wasn’t quite sure anymore about who or what she was, she might just go through.

To see the sun more. To age.

And eventually to die again...

But she had a chance to see the world again. A chance to live once more, despite everything she knew and went through.

And at some point through time and patience, it had ceased looking like a trickery.

Everything she could perceive when getting closer to that door was telling her it was real.

Maybe she didn’t need someone or something to live for.

And in the end, even if it would be only for a short instant spent outside these walls before burning and falling, perhaps it was worth the try. Was it not?

Scarlett gradually was rebuilding her mind and gathering her courage. She stood up.

Whether she was but a dream, or the true ghost of her past self, was in the end not hers to know.

As she walked closer toward that dim and queer light, she could feel the warmth growing against her.

She could feel a heart beating anew within her. It was faint, but closer under the light from outside, it was reappearing.

Scarlett took another deep breath, gazing at her hand where fuzzy sensations still vibrated from the experience of touching that lightless fire. She looked behind her for a last time, seeing nothing in the darkness. She thought the light had blinded her so there was nothing left to see anymore, but there had never been really any light to begin with.

She pushed her left hand again in front of her. The terrifying and pleasant feelings came again, as she felt her skin and flesh being materialised through. She felt her heart pouncing inside as she had a way out starting to merge.

She made her last step through, holding her breath. Her brain felt confused through the collection of conflicting sensations.

Even if it would only be for a short instant, it was worth it for her.

Even if it was only for herself, alone.

Scarlett disappeared behind the door, and the place fell silent.

It stood there, for ever.

There was no one left to prove that this place did exist, making it as if it then also disappeared.

It was now lost like another buried tomb, forgotten so possibly forever.

Unless someday, once upon a distant time, another soul would try to dream again.

~