Archon Meld

It sends me reeling into the depths in space, where in them emanate low hums of a vast loneliness. Yet as inertia is discarded in each field I pass by, I float, whisk away, I gracefully extend my arms.. and unfold into a celestial flower in the midst of gas giants and frozen dirt. I marvel at these spherical sculptures that are littered all over a murky desert. No footsteps of past travelers to be seen, as I have charted these regions as the first and only of my kind. I extend my vision beyond these satellites and unto the silken tapestry; the first in a billion years have these lights been intercepted by organic eyes.

Held suspended by the tendrils of my infinite wonder, hypnotized by the astonishing array of these bright spots that twinkle, I watch the slow sways and shuffles of the stars' dusty skirts in their billion year old masquerade.

And a voice, I hear, somewhere in deep space calling to me. Reaching through my chest and reining me by my heart strings, drawing me ten lifespans closer, past the newly birthed stars, and pulsars spinning in mad excitement. I glide past the 3rd dimension and traverse the galaxies in a surreal, ghostlike fashion--an observer from a bygone era, never changing, and only reiterating.

What time has passed in my own clock, had centuries gone in the burning images that surround me: the romance between binary stars as they conclude their fiery dance in an all consuming explosion, and the transition of alien species as they progress from one epoch to another. Rulers of clans rising to power, and citadels collapsing to civil war; expansion of knowledge and their educational system, and festive tributes to their gods and makers; Millions of years compressed into minute montages as they whir past me.

And then, a transition of scenery of distant worlds and civilizations.. the stars have waned out and a few more are burning the last few hours of their dust wicks. The spectrum shifts beyond the darkest of black, and I shiver against the hollow cold. I am at the edge of space, and the fringes of these regions fan out in sprays of ancient particles. Still, your voice resounds wherever I am led to, regardless of the region or star system I find myself in.

Somehow, I knew that my journey was coming to an end. A brief pause as time rewinds its analog clock, an interlude of me traveling through emptiness. A minute passes by, and I am reminded of how that equates to hundreds of years around me. What century am I in now?

And from a distance, I can make out a few rock formations. I drift forward, your voice shifts into song. The timbres ring in the pores and cavities of the rocks that float about, changing pitch and tempo as the rocks collapse and transform in fast-forward. A few minutes more until the wild shapeshifting slows down and the rocks achieve their final form.

A garden of asteroids, at the edge of nothingness, like the tall, imposing statues of angels that line cemetery gates. Inscribed on them are glyphs of a lost civilization, but a civilization known to have been ethereal, sublime, dimensionless. The invisible force that has led me here seems to have disappeared, and I see myself standing on a pool of liquid crystals. The rocks around seem to be arranged in a special order, a pattern that signifies ritual. Summoning. A portal at the edge of the void. Am I the deity you have called for? You raise your voice and you start to speak in an accent, a dialect that starts to become familiar. I start to tremble. The pool that soaks my feet starts to swirl and splash.

I have come to the conclusion, and your voice is so loud, I feel it scraping the inside the walls of my head. Pounding against the meat of my heart, against the flesh that is stretched across my bones. Echoing within my body cavities, strumming the nerves and blood vessels like a harp, pain erupting from all my limbs.

And then it stopped. The sacrifice has been made.

A searing rift tears into the otherwise devouring darkness, burning the edges of the invisible tapestry, and a being of light emerges.

You float serenely towards me, your bright eyes consuming me in a thousand year long hunger, and you spread your glowing wings, and envelop me with your existence. I can only watch, and let it take over me. I drop my gear, shed off my coat, release my visor, and brace myself for conclusion.

I feel myself slowly disappearing, as if being absorbed into your light, and we become one.