Kanin Fyre: Chapter 46 - Epilogue

[1 Week Prior]

The remnant tears through our void.

We scream, silently, in our own mind, as our essence is hooked by the remnant, clawing at our mind and dragging us in. We fight, we try to rip ourself away, even as we start to fall through the portal.

But it’s like trying to breathe underwater. It’s like trying to claw your way out of quicksand. It’s like nothing we’ve ever felt, or ever want to feel again.

Noli disappears into the portal. Most of us has passed through, too. But our void feels like a fish on a line. We’re being painfully reeled back.

Yet, we fight. We pull. We throw everything we have into the battle. And as we strain, as we stretch ourself apart, we feel something inside us rip.

Pain sears through us. It burns through our essence, and no matter how much we fight, how desperately we writhe and strain to get away, the pain only gets worse, tearing through our soul.

No—tearing us away from our soul. We scream as agony threatens to consume us, and we lose all sense of our surroundings as we’re swallowed by darkness.

#

We don’t pass out, exactly. We’re not able to. But for a time, we lose our sense of self, just existing as desperate feelings, too pained to try to think or move. But gradually, even against the still lingering burn that permeates our existence, we begin to collect our thoughts.

Panic wells up within us as we take in our surroundings. It’s like being Between all over again. There’s nothing around us, no light, no matter, no…

Time. There is a sense of time in this place, so it can’t be the Between. This briefly quells some of our panic—until we try to move and find we can’t. A constricting pressure pushes at us from all sides, and the more we try to fight against it, the stronger it squeezes. Fear causes us to lash out, and the invisible force constricts around us painfully tight, locking us in place, preventing even the smallest flinch. Our panic dissolves into fear and despair. We’re completely immobilized. Entirely helpless.

After a time, the pressure gradually recedes, and once it’s gone, we don’t attempt to test it again. We need to settle down. We need to figure out what’s happening. We try to reach out to Echo, but we can’t find her. Strange. Usually there’s interference from Ink’s void, but we can at least sense her there, just out of reach. But that doesn’t concern us too much—we can just separate and try again.

As I try to pull away from Ink, something feels terribly wrong. With Ink’s mind receding from my own, I become aware of… holes in myself. Enormous gaps in my memories, in my feelings, in my identity. A sickly horror rises within me, and the further Ink pulls away, the frailer I feel. Like I’m perforated. A pane of shattered glass—and Ink is the only thing holding me together.

It senses my alarm and quickly pulls me back into its fold, its mind filling all the gaps within my own. The sensation is disturbing now that I know those holes are there, but I feel more stable with Ink to ground me, less likely to crumble at the slightest breeze.

What happened to us?

We can remember bits and pieces, but not nearly as much as we should.

There are so many gaps in my memory, I feel like Swiss cheese—and more holes than cheese. But Ink has its own set of memories, and while it’s not significantly more than me, it’s something.

We begin to sort through our minds, stitching memories and feelings and emotions together like a patchwork quilt. Sometimes I can fill in gaps for Ink, though more often, it’s Ink who is filling in the gaps for me. But even after we finish sorting through our minds, meshing our understanding of events, we know there’s so much more we’re supposed to be able to remember. We desperately try to reach into these silent, dark patches where our memories should be, but we find only an empty void. The irony of that summons tired, faint amusement within us.

But our reconstructed understanding of events is worrying.

The Travelers. We were trying to escape. From where? Right—the Heavens. There was something to do with Noli. God, we hope she’s okay. Our last memory is of Lorata throwing an object at us. What was it? A small, black marble.

We can’t remember the significance of that until we dive further back into our memories and dig up the word.

A refiner. She struck us with one of the refiners. We tried to make it through the portal before it could consume us, but…

Well. It’s pretty clear we failed.

Dull resignation settles in our void. We’ve been caught. Worse still, trapped in a refiner. Is there any chance we can find a way out? Any chance one of the gods will let us out? There were two that were helping us, we think. What were their names? We can’t remember—those memories are gone.

Perhaps most disturbingly: Are we find out what the gods do with these refiners before we get a chance at freedom?

There’s no way to know any of those answers. We think about Noli, and desperately hope that she made it out. We think about… the harpy. What was her name? It’s not in our memories. But we know she was a Traveler like us, and that she was kind, and that she put everything at risk for the sake of others. We hope she made it back, too.

And Zyneth. We have memories of him, but they’re all broken. Snapshots. Fragments of a scene. But even those small handful of tattered memories contain the way we felt about him, and his absence aches like a physical pain within us.

We never told him we love him. Or had we, and that’s just another memory that’s gone?

For a time, we can feel ourself teetering on the edge of despair. It would be so easy to wallow in this self-pity. In fact, we want to. Given the circumstances, a bit of brooding feels rather earned.

But we can’t give up yet, no matter how hopeless this situation may feel. At least we’re not alone. They say two heads are better than one, and hey, maybe they didn’t mean the circumstance Ink and I find ourself in, but at least we can be here to keep each other from spiraling.

Specifically, I think I’m needed to keep Ink from spiraling. It’s still on the brink of panic, thrown back to the times it was trapped in my Inventory. And now I definitely can understand some of the claustrophobic fear. But we’re not the same entity that was stuffed in that Inventory a year ago. Now there’s both of us. And now, we have a lot better understanding of our void than we did back then.

So we rein ourself back in. Taking our fear and pain, we compress it, forge it, harness it, until it turns into anger. We embrace this flame of defiance, and let it permeate our being.

No. We aren’t going to just lie down and take this. If we want to get back to Noli and Zyneth, then we’ll need to find a way out of here—no matter how impossible that may seem. Tentatively pressing our void at our surroundings, we feel for any cracks—any weaknesses—in our prison. There’s nothing for us to latch onto at first glance, but we’ve got time, and we’re still weak from whatever damage the refiner did to us.

But we’ve only just begun to look. We can bide our time and recover our strength. Void is our element, after all; they can’t keep us imprisoned by our own affinity. We’ll put everything we’ve learned over the past year to use, and when the time is right, we’ll find a way to break free.

We cradle that seed of fire, let it nurture our determination. We won’t let this beat us. We won’t let go of this resolve.

But for now, all we can do is wait while we recover our strength.

So we do.

We watch, and we listen, and we learn, and we wait.

And wait…

…And wait…

End

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Author's Note: Aaaaand that's it! I hope you all enjoyed Kanin Fyre. Kanin and Fyre will be back in Book 5: Kanin Fodder. Which will also be the book where we finally meet Zyneth's family! Woooo

I haven't started writing Book 5 yet, even though I have a very solid outline for what will take place. I'd like to spend some time working on Wild Fyre first. I think the point where I have about written up to the end of this book in Wild Fyre is where I will start to write Kanin again, as I found I've liked bouncing back and forth between the two books when both characters are present and sharing scenes, so I can make sure both characters sufficiently receive the spotlight. That means, perhaps, I'll take the month of October off from Kanin as I work on Fyre (and Nye) and then start posting Book 5 of Kanin again in November.

As always, thank you all for reading! I'm so happy you guys have followed me on this journey, and I look forward to continuing it to its end!