It was dead. The Envoy did not have the means to perceive the distinctive fumes of rot and decay that emanated from the carcass, but the blood falling from its insides, those walls from which the distinctive colour of flesh was fading and the very familiar sense of stillness made it clear. The Beast was dead. Rivers of blood were still flowing from its core. The Envoy was mildly surprised by the amount of that liquid Those That Died could hold inside.

The Envoy was getting accustomed to the feeling of surprise. Its development was recent, but marked a change in its scope of sensations, a change that almost constituted evidence of the passage of time. That first surprise came from the words of the Nomad, which started spouting its story as if that would prevent madness from engulfing It while eternally floating in its new cage, its new place in the Maven’s collection. The Nomad spoke of a “world” to which It belonged, and of a being that once stood and fell, a being that had quieted the “gods” and could potentially alter all of humanity at once. Many had tried to divert the flow of the Beast’s apparently chaotic will, and the Nomad had stopped its movement before every living being was destroyed in a so called “Cataclysm”.

The Envoy continued its voyage beyond the heart the Nomad had destroyed. Despite not having known or heard of Lavianga, It knew the throne of the mind was not in the heart. The brain of the Beast was also rotting, but it was still there, offering something that had stirred the Envoy’s curiosity. It raised its arms, as It knew, just as the Child of Decay, the method to devouring memory. The Envoy, the ever-giver of information, was about to be the receiver, to have the pleasure of being the asker instead of the answerer. The strings of images that constituted a thoughtless being’s mind enveloped the Envoy, and It drank, It drank as It had actually felt thirst.

As suspected, the memory of all life was contained in the fragments of the beast’s memory. Moments danced in front of the Envoy’s eyes Civilizations rose and fell, their gods were born and died. Humanity created and destroyed itself constantly. Doryani tried to unite them into a single being, Malachai tried to destroy them all, and to rise them again through corruption.

Something was inside Those That Died, something that united them and made life persist while individual forms passed. Some seemed to have called it corruption, and manipulated it in crystalline forms emerging from the Beast. Some called it Darkness, and understood it dictated the different expressions of their passing forms. Some called it the soul, even trying to make it reoccur in the same forms using something called Horns of Kulemak. But no one but the Envoy saw they were all names of the same entity. It was then when the Envoy saw life itself, in its formless nature.

The Envoy realized It was in front of anonther of its kind. A Still One, an Endless, yet it possessed the ability to change, to partially die, and thus, partially evolve. The stillness of the stars with the chaos of death. The silence and the scream, united in perfection. The only question the Envoy had ever made had been answered. It was clear, as It saw the ever moving form of that self-devouring and self-regenerating entity, how could something that died have stopped the Child of Decay, and how it would do more, perhaps filling one day the silence between the worlds.

The new feeling that arose in the Envoy as It bowed in front of that fellow Endless,the Self-devouring One, was so alien to It, that there was no doubt of the passage of time. It could identify a moment when It felt it, and a moment before when It did not.

It had felt fear.