An End of Gods & Dust: Act IX

“Man thinks he can become God. But infinitely greater than that is the fact that God thought of becoming human.”

- John C. Lennox, 2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity

The apostle kept to her oaths, and the last of humanity fled into the black storm.

Time became immaterial to the trio as they traveled, for the storm raged without rest, hiding away the sun, moons and stars. Navigation came down to recognizing landmarks they happened to stumble upon in their blind march through the dunes and sand-blasted cliffs. Kokuo became infinitely grateful for Karra’s impeccable memory.

Karra became their selfless guardian in those unknown days of wandering. She’d be the first to sacrifice her portion of water when Leto came close to collapse from heat exhaustion, and the first to give up shelter when a tiny overhang was all they could find. She was first to rise, last to fall asleep, and constantly on the alert for vulturkin and daemons.

After the first week - give or take a few days - Kokuo was sure Karra would burn out, but she remained steadfast as any apostle, surpassing mortal limits that Kokuo had once thought applied to her.

He hadn't asked about her mysterious powers again.

One night, after Kokuo had fallen asleep, he was awoken by a gentle tugging on his head scarf. 

Opening his eyes, he saw something truly rare. A soft, hopeful smile on Karra’s sand-caked face.

“Come, Kokuo. You can see the stars at last.”

Kokuo’s eyes blinked rapidly, realizing he couldn’t hear the howling of the wind, or feel flecks of sand, glass, and organic matter chaffing his skin. 

With a grunt, he rose, keeping his head bent as he crawled out of the shallow overhang they had found for temporary shelter. Leto slept deeply inside, his cloak wrapped tight around him.

Once outside, Kokuo unwrapped his head scarf and let his mouth fall open at the glittering beauty above them.

Thousands - no - millions of stars spread across the sky like a child’s splattered painting. The moons were new, still in synced shadow - a phenomena that occurred every three months - so the stars lit up the night sky without rival. And it was glorious.

“I’d almost forgotten what this looked like,” Kokuo admitted, letting out a quiet laugh.

Karra’s smile widened. “When I saw the dust clouds part, I knew I had to wake you up. This is a rare blessing from the gods.”

Kokuo looked behind him at the overhang where Leto still slept. “We should wake him up too. He would love this.”

“No,” Karra said, her smile vanishing. “His body needs rest.”

“We all need our rest, but a starry sky would help his morale. Just let me -”

Karra grabbed his arm before he could step away. “Kokuo, he’s been touched by the dust.”

Kokuo froze, his arm burning where she held him. “What? But we’ve only been out here for a week, maybe…”

Karra pulled Kokuo closer, grabbing his other arm and holding him there. “We haven’t been able to keep time properly. I’m afraid it’s been longer than either of us think. And the storm has been very active since we left…I noticed cracking skin on his arm a while back. Then, the other day when we stopped to rest, I saw it had spread to the top of his shoulder when he took off his cloak.”

Dread - deep and true - speared into Kokuo’s gut. His head lowered, and moisture gathered in his eyes. He closed them, hoping to stop the flow in its tracks.

“How…how long do you think he has left?”

Karra breathed in deep before replying. “Days, if he’s lucky.”

Kokuo opened his eyes to see a sparkling tear drop fall, leaving a darkened spot in the sand. He looked up, finding the right side of Karra’s face was wet from a single tear streak. 

“You’re right,” she said, her voice shaking. “We should wake him up.”

And that’s how the trio found themselves sitting together in the dunes, looking up at a diamond-encrusted sky, sharing the happy memories of their past lives since ground into dust.

When the sun rose, Kokuo could see just how far the cracks had spread on Leto’s body.

The left side of his face - jaw, cheek and eye-socket - was grayed out and cracking. The blood vessels in his left eye had blown out, turning the white of his eye crimson. When he moved to stand, he could barely hold his weight with his left arm.

“I’ll be joining Selene soon, won’t I?” He said it so quietly, Kokuo almost didn’t catch it. “Do you think she’d be disappointed if she saw me this soon?”

Kokuo took up his other arm, offering support. “No, Leto. No one could have predicted this.”

Leto nodded his gratitude, wincing as his skin stretched. “The storm is closing in again, isn’t it? Blasted thing can’t give us more than one night of peace.”

Kokuo looked to the horizon where it had darkened menacingly, stretching for miles into the sky. The stars were long gone. 

Karra had moved back inside the overhang, gathering up their supplies to prepare for another day of hiking the dunes.

“It will be upon us soon,” Karra said as she returned, two packs strung across her back and a third held out to Kokuo. “You tell us when to stop, Leto. We go at your pace today. Even if we were to run, the storm would still catch up to us by midday.”

Leto let out a short huff, as close as he could get to laughter without hurting himself. “Thank you, Karra. You…you have done so much, and I fear I will not live long enough to return the favor.”

Karra turned away as Kokuo adjusted his pack straps around his shoulders. “You needn’t worry,” she said. “Your smiling face last night was more than enough to mend even a god’s despair for a time.”

Together they pushed forward, keeping pace with Leto’s weak but determined steps. As Karra predicted, the black dust was upon them before the sun had even peaked in the clear sky, cutting tiny slices into their skin and clothes.

Leto kept a steady pace for a long time, longer than Kokuo expected. Their first stop was beneath a copse of dead trees, their thick trunks blocking some of the hazardous wind. 

They each sipped their water and chewed on bars of tough, dried herbs and lizard meat they had made at their old cavernous home.

Once they were done, Karra once more took up her pack and Leto’s, and Kokuo carried his own. Kokuo turned to help Leto to his feet, only to pause when the young man attempted to get up on his own.

When Leto pushed down on the ground with his arms, however, his left arm trembled, shook, and then collapsed, exploding into a fine black dust. 

Kokuo gasped, kneeling and catching a shocked and shaking Leto before he could fall onto his side. 

“Karra!” Kokuo shouted. He quickly pulled back Leto’s left sleeve to find his limb completely missing and the stump at his shoulder quickly crumbling.

Leto let out a shaky laugh, his whole body trembling now. He grasped Kokuo’s shoulder with his remaining arm, steadying himself. “I - I thought it would hurt more, but it’s actually kinda nice. The burning sensation is gone now.”

Karra’s presence fell over them both. “Leto…”

“No, no. No tears for me, now,” Leto chided, his voice becoming rougher and more broken as the cracks spread across his throat. The left side of his face was beginning to cave in, like a hole was opening up beneath a pile of sand.

Kokuo held Leto tightly, horrified at the feeling of the young man’s skin moving and shifting beneath his hold. 

“Tell me…tell me it was worth it,” Leto rasped. “Tell me…this life had meaning.”

Even here in his last moments with death before him, there was no fear in his bloodshot eyes. Only regret.

“Every life has meaning, Leto.” Kokuo kept his voice as steady as he could, his tears as light as a feather as Leto’s form continued to shrink and crumble. “Especially one as brave as yours.”

Leto smiled one last time, his eyes closing as the rest of his skin greyed, cracked, and sunk until he was nothing more than hardened lumps of sand and dust in the impression of a once living body.

Kokuo breathed in deep, relaxing his arms until the crumbled remains of his friend joined the sand beneath them. 

He waited for the break, for the sanity in his chest to fracture. He waited for the tears - which did flow - but did not drown him. He thought, with this death, all his hope for a future would be turned to dust. And yet…and yet he remained there, kneeling in the sand, and with a steady exhale, he looked up to the last living member of his makeshift tribe. 

Karra’s sky blue eyes were clouded by heavy rain clouds, the strength and steadiness of her shoulders caving into her neck. She was shrinking into herself right before Kokuo’s eyes. All that stubborn defiance and confidence stuffed out. 

Slowly, Kokuo stood, standing between her and the pile of black dust behind him. He reached out, carefully and kindly taking her frozen, sand-caked hands into his, encircling them in his fingers.

“Karra.”

She did not look at him.

“Karra, I’m here.”

She flinched.

Kokuo squeezed her hands, wanting to inject this fragile hope he still had into her bones. “We still have each other. We can find another home. Maybe there are more survivors out there and we just haven’t come across them yet.”

“No, Kokuo,” she said, still looking at the ground, the storm quieting around them. “You are the last human.”

At this declaration, she finally looked up into his eyes, and once more Kokuo was faced with the darkness at the end of all things.

“Karra?”

Karra tore her hands from his and took a step back. And another. And another. With every step the storm around them calmed, the wind becoming gentler as she got further away from him, until the blue sky above was once more clear.

Black tears slid down her sun-tanned cheeks like thick mud, and her body shook with grief, or perhaps rage. Slowly, the sand and dirt around her feet began to lift and coalesce into a small torrent of black dust, obscuring her form from Kokuo’s sight.

“Karra!” Kokuo shouted her name, alarmed at her power manifesting itself again in such a way. He could not lose her here too.

Then, the whirlwind of black dust shrunk and formed into a dense black sphere, Karra’s body nowhere to be seen. It spun so fast it was blurring before Kokuo’s eyes, and from within a light began to pulse to the rhythm of a foreign heartbeat.

A bright flash blinded Kokuo, followed by the loudest sound he had ever heard that punctured through his bones and flesh, the shockwave of it flinging him onto his back.

It felt like several minutes until Kokuo could see or hear again. Everything came back to him slowly, as if he’d had too much wine, or had been out in the sun for too long. He awkwardly hauled himself up from the sand, his eyes finally focusing on what was before him.

He was standing in the eye of the black storm, a wall of ever shifting debris and bodily remains flying around him. The sky was dimmed, but a beam of sunlight still shone through the opening at the top of the storm.

He turned around then to where the sphere had been, and found himself in the shadow of a towering figure.

Where Karra’s body had vanished now stood a woman who was several feet taller than Kokuo. Her skin was as pale as bone, with dark, blackened cracks randomly breaking through otherwise pristine skin. Within the cracks, Kokuo could swear he saw stars dance.

Her dress was both familiar and not. It was something a typical, high ranking Aeonopolis senator may wear, but the ends of every layered piece of fabric was tattered and in constant motion, as if a gentle breeze was stirring them. While most of the color was black, other layers shone in gold and red and purple.

Gold bands hung onto her pale arms, fingers and wrists, with more encircling her legs and ankles, with a few rings on her bare toes. Atop her head, a golden circlet held a burning gem - like a forge had been shoved inside a diamond.

Rising above her shoulders, a pair of magnificent and terrible raven feathered wings rustled in the storm’s current.

And there, in those void eyes, the long black, braided hair, the serious, determined tilt at the corners of her mouth. Kokuo recognized the shape of the familiar within the unfamiliar.

“Karra…is that - ?”

“That is not my name.” The woman’s voice was massive, commanding. It left no space for other sounds to be heard. “I am Einya, and you, Kokuo, will tell me how Chaos should end this world.”

Want to catch up? You can start here with Act I:

Author's Note:

Kenosis -

• Late Greek kenōsis, from Greek, action of emptying, from kenoun to purge, empty, from kenos empty.

• The relinquishment of divine attributes by Jesus Christ in becoming human.

Thank you for reading An End of Gods and Dust this far! If you have enjoyed this story, please consider subscribing, leaving a tip, or sharing this story with others! One act remains, and I hope you all will enjoy the conclusion to this tale!