“Yes, my love, my princess, Aria. Free her!” the prince cried.
Again the beast took in the prince’s words and remained silent. Again its head swayed from side to side, high above the prince. Its great eyes seemed thoughtful now.
The light from the prince’s stone further darkened and anxiety and anger took his chest. During the countless nights he had spent alone he often thought out how this moment would play and always, as he drifted to sleep, his waking the beast had equated freeing Aria. Not once did he entertain the idea that the beast might not know what he talked about.
“WorldMight!” he bellowed, “In your dreams, my princess is trapped in your dreams!”
The beast reeled back when the prince’s words hit it. Its mouth opened threateningly and out of nowhere bloodcurdling weathered statues flashed in the prince’s mind.
“In my dreams?” the beast rumbled.
Its voice was like thunder now and the sparks conveyed a fearsome anger to the prince’s bosom. The WorldMigth stepped forward, its talons ripping the rock floor like paper as it raised its feet. Rocks crashed loudly to the ground behind it and the dust that had settled rose again. It brought its head close to the prince, its muzzle a mere foot away from his face, their respective coats of flames so close that they might touch. The prince was livid. Had he come so far, escaped the Night on so many occasions, only to be devoured by the one he had sought to awake all along? The beast inched closer and their flames touched and became one.
What happened next was lost to the prince. When their flames became one the WorldMight instantaneously knew all that the prince was. All his memories, thoughts, and feelings, down to the deepest and most secret of his inner workings, became limpid knowledge to it. And the same happened to the prince in regard of the WorldMight. But the prince’s mind could not possibly absorb, let alone comprehend, the enormity of what the WorldMight was. And so, to protect itself, it simply shut down. That moment did not happen for the prince. One moment the WorldMight was drawing close and the next it was seamlessly retreating.
“In my dreams,” the beast repeated and through its sparks the prince knew that somehow its anger had morphed into sorrow; a sorrow that seeped deep into him until his throat tightened into a throbbing fist and tears forced their way to his eyes.
“I do not cry,” the prince caught himself thinking, and there was a great deal of weariness and sadness to those words.
“There was a girl, a princess in my dreams,” the WorldMight went on.
Behind the prince’s newly blossomed sadness a primordial emptiness bloomed.
“But no more are my dreams,” the beast continued.
Light hopelessly gushed out of his stone now and from the disheveled folds of his depths the emptiness surged forward. And riding its unruly crest like a drunken knight was the sadness of a thousand lives, condensed into an overgrown, rancid fist that shot toward the surface of his being like a fiery arrow.
“For I am awake,” the WorldMight finished.
The fist pierced through the prince and in its tow the ravaging emptiness engulfed him. He convulsed, his back arched like a great bow and a silent scream escaped him. The WorldMight let out another languid exhalation that brushed over him, warm and humid. The stone at his neck cracked and shattered. Its light died out as the name of his love was torn from his throat in a broken metallic spurt that fell around him in a mangled spray.
Aria
One last word filled with all the sadness that erupted mercilessly in him. One last word that radiated around his contorted form in a pale arc of light. Then, as the very ties of life were devoured by the rabid emptiness, like a fine sand sculpture, the prince dissolved backward into a thin trail of dust that rode the WorldMight’s breath until he was no more.
Epilogue
For a moment the beast ponders the disappeared form of the prince. His struggles and hopes moved it, but only to the extent of its presence in that particular realm, in that particular collection of layers; for the WorldMight has many minds that exist in many planes. It is many and much, contradictory things as well. But that is how it always was.
It snorts loudly now as it sets its massive head back down onto the cave floor. Dust rises and then settles down in the lonesome light of the small oil lamp. Before long, the beast returns to its slumber. It returns to its dreams of things infinite and grand beyond comprehension, because most things, in truth, are not meant for the mind.
It dreams again. And in its mind-of-dreams two singular trails of dust swirl about each other. They spiral around one another timidly, slowly inching closer with every rotation. One could think that they are hesitating. But maybe they are simply savoring a moment eons in the making.
That particular dream is warm and pleasant and the WorldMight sighs lengthily as it retreats ever deeper into sleep.
The trails whirl playfully, rising and falling as one and much is shared in their circumvolutions.
In the vast mind of the beast two voices echo in unison.
“My love,” they whisper to one another.
“My love, at last.”
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The WorldMight Page 42