In the Realm of the Midnight Gardener
Chapter 10: The Realm

It was at the edge of eventide where he waited, standing in that withered, dusky place. The sky was a uniform iron mist on every side; the landscape was nothing but darkest shade. Nothing came, and nothing went. It was unreachable, forsaken and unknown. Even the gods knew not how to tread here.

Silence, emptiness, and him alone.

He stood watching, waiting, but the silence and the emptiness loomed on every side. Nowhere he turned was marked with any difference from anywhere else. He did not bother with squinting or searching. There was nothing to find, to see, to relieve the unceasing shadow and gloom.

And then the gloom spoke.

“Whoever you are, you’ve found me,” the gloom said. It was watching him without eyes.

“Where are you?” he asked. He was afraid and alone. “Where am I?”

“The same place,” it replied. “Nowhere, nihility. If there was ever truly a creation, this is where it is not, where it has never been nor never will. The immaculate root, the quenched and emptied source, the crumbling bough cannot reach here.”

“I don’t understand,” he said, his face contorting. “I can’t stay here. I need to go back.” He was dispersing, subsuming into the mist and the gray. He could feel it.

“Alpha to omega,” it said. “To alpha to omega, to alpha to omega, again and again. Alpha to omega. Creation to destruction. Birth to death. The span between alpha and omega weaves the living byway of the Garden Path. Alpha to omega, again, again, again, again.”

Life to death, echoed in his graying mind. Life to death, life to death.

“The beginning to the end,” The voice called. “The beginning to the end.”

“So what is this?” he cried. “What is this place if not between the beginning to the end?””

Silence.

“What is it?” he said again, then screamed it. “What is this?!”

The gloom finally answered. “The place between the end and the beginning.”

His mind raced to make sense of this, then he laughed hopelessly. “There is no such place.”

“Precisely,” the gloom said. “And you’ve found it, and in doing so, found me.”

Before him, the caliginous soil writhed and twined, shifted and merged. It rose up in a viscous bole which soared to a thousand meters high. Branches sported and splayed from the trunk into untold sprigs, an infinitude of unfurling fronds. Constellations of buds burst and splayed into monochromatic leaves and flowers, filling his vision as it grew across the span of the sky and horizon.

A lambent eye gazed into him from the trunk’s centre. “They lead you to that place, knowing I would be here. Knowing I was trapped beyond the veil.”

The eye’s intensity dilated, and he was unable to break its devouring gaze.

“The things from the angles of time,” the eye and the gloom said. “The corpse dwellers brought you, lured you. They seek to use what you would steal for them to unleash it, to break the shackles which hold it back.”

“I’m so cold,” he mumbled, his body diffusing into the sombre brume.

“Alpha to omega,” the gloom and the eye explained. “These cannot last here.” One of the great branches lowered over him, plaiting into a distended, nine-fingered limb. It pressed him down gently, until he lay prone upon the pitch black earth. Like liquid, the inky soil poured over him, submerging his arms, his legs, his torso and neck, until only his face was exposed.

“Time to go,” the gloom ordered. “No place for alpha and omega here. No place.” The limb pressed further, and he was too cold and weak to resist. The blackness, creeping up to his mouth, his nose. The blackness, the gloom and the dilated phosphorescent eye boring into him. “Beware the corpse dwellers. Do not let them break its shackles, set it free.”

He could not scream. The blackness poured over him, and he was gone.

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