1 Epilogue

Everything is silent.

Though saying anything else would mean everything is not as it is supposed to be.

Yes, everything has returned to their rightful place.

An empty canvas stretched, a fitting end to an endless cacophony of chaos, of conflict, of struggle, of meaning... and of hope.

Nothing is all that is.

But is that a possibility? To say that nothing is there would be to say that a thing is there at the same time.

Of course, the very nature its concept conveyed is undeniably unplausible, a leap of logic where no logic have leapt before.

And yet here we are, the fruit of nature born of this work of mine tramples over the fundamental laws of everything to then proliferate us with this here.

Although therein lies the dilema, if those same essential laws could be crossed just as easily, then who can say for certain that the great work may not be reversed, trampled over or undone?

The correct answer, as with any query that starts with who nowadays, would be no one.

One ceased to exist and like a flock of ducklings following their mother to a deep dark pit of tar they mistakenly thought as home, so too have the rest followed the center in its fall.

No one left to be.

No one left to see.

No one left to beat.

No one left to devour.

...

There's nothing else to surpass.

...

Here at the very threshold of eternity, an endlessness shortened into but a simple two words.

The End.

Grasped within hordes of slick slithering hands and interlacing crooked fingers is but one singular object, a thing radiantly shining with radiance that will never be outmatched by even the brightest of light. An object oh so coveted by The Many and yet only One could be in possession of it...

What else could it be but victory?

And right now until eternity unbound, it belongs to me.

'?! ... How... I-Is this?' A stuttering thought springs from the mind of an imbecilic sapient.

The imbecile survived. Nothing is surprising about this.

The same being looks around it, Although... What's this? Is something is not quite right, little sapient? Is there nothing you can see?

Why of course.

For all around him are absolute nothing.

A blot of impurity among an everlasting sea of nothing, pulling open the meat curtain that obscures his eyes open for the first time since Dusk. He instinctively attempts to rubs his eyes to wipe away the bleariness from his sight. How truly unfortunate that he lacks both arms and the pair of eyes necessary for this action to be completed.

To say the least, the traitor has been robbed of his oh so special eyes.

Liberated, detached and discarded to a limbo far away from the floppy fleshbag that he and his moronic kind calls body.

And so the thrice mortal bug floats aimlessly among a sea of ignorant bliss with nothing but a limbless torso and a head, screaming in an ever so pleasing pitch of horrified scream as the gravity of the situation sinks into his ignoble narrow little mind.

Although the sudden amputation do contributes to it as well.

Observing the bug, a normal head for his kind overgrown with a fuzzy growth called hair which flutters gently from a fictional wind that flows through this humble little void. Two lack of eyes indicated by two gaping holes covered by a pair of underdeveloped eyelids.

The holes and its stumps, from where there were limbs, bled. Gushing out of exposed bones and fresh flesh, his lifeblood exits his still living carcass as multiple thin rivulets of crimson blood and dead cells desperately tries to return to life, blissfully ignorant of its state, bits of skins and flesh are made and discarded within moments.

It floats around the empty space, despoiling a once pure sanctuary with waste.

Befitting of this particular vermin to taint this place of all place with filth.

It's about as much as you can expect from mortals.

Disgusting until the very end.

The offending insect in question is not in a state where it could care about such things however.

Hilarious still is that this particular excuse of an individuality bearer stole from me what is possibly the most trouble inducing pair of spheroidal ocular orbs the mortal plane have ever conceived without ever fully realizing what it means to have a piece of my being inside of its fragile little body while babbling about virtues of hardworks and of buried potentials to every single insects it encounters, is after all, ironic.

Or would it be more fitting to say it's eye-ronic? if you would pardon the pun.

Still, a terrible pun aside, there is still a single piece of truth left tainting this collapsing singularity. It is that the bug haven't ceased to be following the rest as he should have.

It would seems some efforts needs to be exerted. Troublesome until the end.

Then let us begin.

Time returns to the world, or rather what is left of it.

'...even all that and-' he realized, gritting his teeth he bit out a single query to nothing.

'Pyrmir? Are you here?' He asked for an actor who have left the stage a long time ago.

'An actor? Stage? Even after all this?", The blind idiot thing whispered under a bitter laugh.

"If that is still what you think then you're truly nothing but a joke."

A joke, is it? I do must admit that i am indeed a joke, for my being has become a joke alongside both the laughter and the exasperation that follows, the hatred it induced and the clenched jaw made in response, the feeling of loss when that joke flies over your simple head and the void of incomprehension created by it, nothing but myself and yet everything that is including your form.

Can you say the same for yourself? I am a cosmic joke, yet you are just a joke, a sad little joke told to alleviate loneliness that even its creator realized how horrible that joke is and regret having spoken it out loud. That is what you are.

But rest easy, for this i promise you; even that last sense of self will not stay for much longer.

Look around.

And the insect did look, forced by an unseen force while gritting his teeth, the neck attaching a head to a limbless torso rotates to crane his head from left to right and right to left rigidly. Though since one of the perquisites of sight are eyes which this bug clearly lacks, the action and this whole paragraph means nothing and contributes nothing to the whole. It is as it should be.

In this vast stretch of emptiness all that can be heard for a while is the sound of the struggle, chattering of teeth and the occasional sounds of resistance, the cracks of spinal joints forcefully twisted, and even those eventually weakens and fall silent.

Perhaps should there be a thing that this pathetic ball of mush need to hear it would be this; your hope for a better future do came true after all.

A hissing sound unlike an overboiled liquid trapped beneath the earth spreads throughout the empty space. Silence.

From the shell of the broken boy, a sickeningly sweet and melancholic scent blooms into a form fragrant. Despite the innumerable sentients who have generously donated their everything to feed a field of gnashing and wailing jaws, it is after all impossible to had enough of this taste.

The sweet scent of despair.

About time.

There is no point for another prolonged moment then.

Hands upon hands greedily claws their way back into being to reach the traitor, hands of void, hands of flesh, hands of crooked ends and hands of unmatched softness, hands filled with warmth and the hands without, all converge to grope and caress every inch of the body of an amputee struggling in the depth. Drowned by the realization that all is lost and hands his mind slowly fades away, melting into the water of peace that surrounds him.

But right before he sinks into one final slumber, the sea trembles as a presence makes itself known. Lured by the scent of misery, a song starts playing in the distance as something jams open an itching rip in the sea to make way for a non entity to happily swim to the surface.

"...hoho." A faint sound reverberated throughout emptiness.

'...No.' With dawning realization the insect mutters.

"HOHOHOHOHOHOHO~" Amplified by silence, the voices now booms as the owner draws nearer.

'Nonononono!" The cocoon of hands dissolves as hands retreats.

"You! You are supposed to be erased!" Without the cocoon the mutilated flesh with mouth is once again uncovered to the mercy of the cold biting wind of pure imagination.

But no matter of the sudden return to lucidity, he still realizes a single fact.

"...So it all was for nothing then. Heh."

The insect sanity recedes even further and waves of wandering hands too recedes in disappointment, both awaits for when the refilled hourglass empties itself for the last time.

A wellspring of joy cracks open as beings sleeping at the bottom of the tear and the being who've swam up joyfully cackles to the now blaring beats of rythmic chaos.

The thing that has surfaced begin to take shape. Making a broken caricature of a circle to form out of the darkness of the rip.

The insect, taking notice of this, tilts his head towards the direction of the euphoric cacophony. With a bitter smile a word slips from his bloodied lips.

'Kether.'

"HOOOOOOHOHIHIHAHAHAHAHEHEHEHOHHAHEHOHOAHAHAHAHAHAHEHIHIHIhehehohohohohahhah...HA! WEEEEEELLLL!!! weeeeel!! well!"

Climbing on all legs and none to enter reality, the edge of a round circumference broke through the surface of emptiness and make itself real.

As if an unheard switch is flipped, pouring forth from behind, below, and above the hole, endless swarms of disembodied mouths using full lips as clothing spills from the gap created between the hole's reality and the final room.

All at once the sweet silence of nothingness is replaced with an orchestra of chatters and cackles.

Tongues in all hues of colors lolling out of opened mandible to caress pearly white teeth and red lips.

At once, a chaotic dance of an insurmountable flocks of jaws biting, smiling, sneering, laughing, frowning, and everything inbetween all of that concept of movements unfolds in this infinity of nothing.

All the while what once was a line of circumference turns into a full circle as the interloper fully breached into this space and fills the emptiness with its presence .

A hole stays at the center of it all.

The hole was black.

As black as night in the middle of a corn field. As black as the inside of one's eyelids. As black as the darkness of a bathroom who's light goes out in the middle of your midnight visit. Something had taken a photo and warped a simple circle, squishing the body together until it was bent and took up less space.

Voices of uncounted quantity all at once shouts, whispers, and converse through an unnamed numbers of blabbering lips.

"IF! It isn't the annoying PEST! That's been biting my metaphorical posterior THIS ENTIRE TIME!" All at once, the mouths pauses as if contemplating its choice of words. Silence make its reigns for a brief while before it continues its tirade.

Pointless as that is, thus i take my leave.

Then I will appoint myself to continue it.

See that you do.

"How's it GOING, [------]?" It offers as every visible mouth orbiting it grins, not that the sad husk of a pathetic brat can appreciate the sentiment what with him missing his eyes.

Though that doesn't seem to prevent him from widening what's left of his eyes in shock.

You do not recall of the voice of the hole, it is a thing which acts as a bane for continuity. Glorious destinies set in the stone crumbles and falls apart at the mere tune of its speech. A single mouth can twists those fated to become a savior of hope to nothing but a decaying corpse on a sidewalk. Ultimately severing their fate and condemning countless into death or fates worse than even it.

With a thousand of them having the ability to alter the proceedings of a verse when they are working in tandem, fastening the crawl of entropy or even steering it in such a way that it ends up crashing down on another verse, influencing the fate of the many with the pull of just a single string.

And now? Here in this shade of unreality? The presence of centillions of those mouths is no more than a speck of dust compared to the total whole. So great is the number that the sea folds in on itself at every syllable the hole uttered. Needless to say, even to merely exist here in this place cannot be done without fatal consequences.

Though this elaboration no longer serves a purpose.

For the tale has reached its end.

But to the insect, all of those jumbled reality breaking noise paled in comparison to a single alluring voice that resounded from amongst countless trillions. For it is a familiar voice that he knows oh so well.

"Pyrmir..." He muttered a name.

"But I thought..." The boy turned to look at the direction of the voice. Feeling uncertain, the boy pauses to gather his wits. Or rather, what is left of it as the implication of this single truth sinks into his primitive untapped mind.

"They really... They got you too? How?" The insignificant existence whispered a question, one mostly born out of sheer denial of reality that be. The living garbage no longer has the spirit to maintain the facade of that bright and sunny annoyance uplifting morales of pests and his fellow traitors to fight and survive for another day even against the insurmountable odds.

...But there won't be anymore day nor step after this. Despair and rejoice for the end has arrived and it has come to stay.

The hole once more speaks, this time all of its mouth except one goes silent. Oozing with sickening joy and forced ecstasy it narrates;

"The light faded as the sun was hidden behind a curtain of thick green canopy. Everything had a dark tinge, shadows growing long, dappling of leaves beginning to cover most of the undergrowth.

Every step along the old mossy stone path that appeared in front of us felt like another step through a backyard we had once known.

You closed my eyes, and i could hear the sound of a river.

It was chilled, the months leading up to summer vacation. And the rivers overflowed with water."

The mouth stops. One of its impossible mouth smiles an impossible grin that stretched over the horizon. Reverberating in the void is the frenzied muffled giggling chorus of those damned to an eternal damnation.

"You will always remember it, won't you?" The mouth abruptly asks a question that seems to have no meaning.

"No..." He realized. How slothful of him to say one word in place of an actual line for his dialogue in response.

The voice, a single disembodied mouth amongst many others continues,

"You and only you, [------]," The loathsome gnat's body grow tense at that.

"You did this to us."

"Stop." Another layer of time descended at once, it's only purpose as time is to abruptly halts its ceaseless march and pauses still for but a moment before irritated hands tore apart the mortal delusion.

Paying no heed to the event that just transpired, The hole pulsates and a resonating thrumming began bouncing off as waves across the space and enter the pest causing flashes of images of every individuals whose lives the boy ever touched springs to life in his mind. Every single voices of every individuals whose lives the boy touched springs to life in her voice.

Full of malice, resentment, doubt, and betrayal, the collective might of countless voice assaults his very being.

"You [------], you made us/me into your friends. Companions that would always be there for you, always agree to you, see the best in you, think of you as something angelic."

"That isn't-"

"How deep will we go, [------]?" The cacophony once more returns to a single voice. "How deep are those gouges that we had to fill in together?"

"Deep." The boy cracks a sad smile, he answers for he knew there are no other answers to it besides this. Something about this exchange rings familiar to the boy. It felt right. And yet even now, he still could feel the shivers crawling way up his spine.

In response, the voices once more became a voice. One that is most familiar to the boy.

"For how deep those gouges go, you should know that nothing you do would ever get rid of all this. We always have been one and the same, primus. You know what I know. You made me into me, never forget that." And there it is, there is something about her. Everything about her precisely, everything that she was, all of her pain and suffering and selfishness and hatred and love… It was everything I wasn't.

I hated that.

"Do you know what the worst part is?" The voice asked him. Of course he couldn't answer. He is quiet for once. I can appreciate that. "Even in this form, one that might I add you tell me to be..." The mouth sweetly smiles,

"I still love you."

"More than anything. So much…" Still smiling the mouth grits its teeth, "...It hurts. It hurts more than any hatred, than any sting from some stupid lie you made up. It hurts because now I hate you." At that, the eye sockets of the waste of flesh widened. As if it was some kind of divine revelation.

"As much as I love you… I want to kill you right now. I want to snap your little neck, and watch that light die from your eyes." The voice told him, the eyeless and limbless torso.

"And I want to be with you forever."

And she truly did.

The boy stays silent.

The revelation shook the boy, making him retreat to his own mind to brood over but for a moment. How unfortunate that a moment is more enough to disrupts the weight of the voice existence here.

The mouth holding the voice froze when a crawling sensation consisting of its own thoughts began to crawl to the surface.

The whispers of desires she hid deep within the recess of her mind begins to surface, to be freed, and to let themselves be known.

"This was wrong." "He was wrong." "I was scared." "This had to stop." "It had gone on far enough." "Far past fun." "Not even enjoyable." "We could stop it." "If we just tried hard enough, let's make him cease to exist." "I could make this stop happening." "If I just tried hard enough." "If I willed it." "If I wanted it enough."

"I wanted to slap him."

"I wanted to kill him."

"I wanted to violate him."

Resentments overflowed as hatred imposed itself against the thin wave of the sea. Trying to force its way in.

The mouth screamed.

Frenzied laughters returns in full swing as the mouth loses its cohesion and the hole took over once more. While the only thing a certain pest can do is to watch in confusion.

"HAAAAHAHAHa! It wanted so many things from you that it's all jumbled together, [------]! Despite all that! To think that this is the thing that managed to kill me, O [------] isn't this wonderful?!!" The hole continues in crazed laughter, although that doesn't last very long either. For without warning the hole screamed, and the sea screamed with it. The entire world seemed to twitch. Fractures were formed all across the once calm sea.

A voice cuts through the cataclysmic note as the light of nothingness shone through the cracks, glowing, releasing pure white light of absence. In the background of it all, the mouths screeched/growled/snarled/screams a song full of pure hatred. Through it all the boy is still here, floating atop the now broken surface of the sea.

"[------], do you know what you've done?" The lone voice calmly asks.

"I don't understand..." He confesses.

"Y-You let me. You said I could... I didn't... I didn't realize what it would do." In ignorance do the boy answers.

"Of course I said i could! That I would. You made me that way. You made me agree."

He froze.

"No."

"You made me that. I had no choice."

As if a heavy weight was lifted off her chests, the mouth started to chuckle.

"All this time," it dipped lower for another round of chuckles. "All this time, and I saw you as the most perfect thing ever. I thought I had choice. But there's never any choice with a god, is there?"

"Do not call me a God! Yes, I made you, yes I made you a friend, we were… We were… But it wasn't like that. It was never like that. I didn't make you to be anything. I asked you. Over and over. So-"

All at once all of the hole's mouths bursts into deafening maddened laughters. Until once more the single mouth speaks, yet this time it is unable to hide the hatred in its voice.

"Shut up! I'm talking! Fucking hell, all you ever do is talk! About nothing! What's the point of all of this? To make you happy? Is that what I/we am/are? A thing to make you happy? Does hurting me/us make you happy?"

The intensity contained in that outburst lapsed everything into silence.

Smiles and frowns floating in every which directions soon becomes the only thing that marks the passing of time.

The boy finds it hard to speak.

A silence that seems to stretch for eternity began to take form.

Until finally, the sad paltry little parasite finds the courage to speak in front of the insurmountable enmity radiated by the presence in front of him.

"No," A simple one word.

"... I hate you, [------]." And as is expected, dissapointment painted her voice after hearing that lackluster answer.

"..." Choked, without words to fill his mouth this time, he stays silent.

"[------]," The voice calls out a name.

"Do you know? In every way." The mouth tries to stop smiling, to frown, to feel sad, to once more empathize with the existence in front of it. Yet it can't.

"I love you," it muttered in a soft voice, yet it still rings louder in his ears than anything he ever heard.

"I love you. I love you. I love you, [------]."

"Stop it!"

"I love you more than anything, primus."

"Stop saying that! Please!"

"I can't... it's true. I love you. I hated it, I realized that now. But I love you. Not even the world's hatred can rewrite my love towards you, Primus!" Unable to be anything but a smile as much as it desires to frown, the mouth simply smiles.

The hole watches.

"...I'm sorry."

"Sorry doesn't do anything. It never does, you are the one who told me so, remember?"

At that, the lone mouth detach from its orbit and approach the battered body of the pathetic waste. It presses its lips against his cheek in a kiss.

The hole watches.

The boy angles his head towards the direction of the light touch. If he still owns his eyes, then perhaps those eyes will glimmer with cautious hope.

"All is forgiven, [------]. I've already decided to forgive you for a while now." It said.

As if sensing the boy's rising hope the mouth gently whispers, "But if you insist we have plenty of time for you to remedy that. Years and year-" Then as if struck by something invisible, oh wait that's exactly what that was, the mouth abruptly froze.

And then, the mouth closes itself for what may be the very last time.

"PFFFFT! AHAHAhaha... Oh boy, that's what I call hilarious!" The hole and it's swarms of orbiting mouths are visibly shivering with laughter.

Dumbstricken with shock, the boy turns his rage at the only target he can direct it to,

"KETHEEER!!! YOU SPITLICKING HORS-"

"Mind your language, my dear [------]."

Perhaps sensing that his soon to be non-existent love life is in danger, the traitor mind is alit with flames of fury, he almost manage to throw a full insult until the hole skillfully manages to prevent it by deleting the human insect's throat out of existence. Or at least what's left of it.

"And you my new acquisition," The hole glares at what used to be a certain annoyance's mouth in a way only the hole can, as hordes of monstrous jaws descended towards the lone mouth.

"You my dear dreaded dared to do something like that right in front of our faces! That's utterly phenomenal!" The disembodied mouths all booms in laughter even as the lone mouth was wrenched back into its orbit. Hordes of mouth covered it, engulfing it in a gigantic ball of jaws, tongues, and grins.

"Now then. Mortal," Smiles of all kind graces its normally unfathomable countenance.

"Let's get down to what we're here for."

YOU

"You, yes you! Mortal, have something that I want. Something that I need. And indeed, I am aware that showcasing your "soulmate" while your body is being slowly used as sustenance for this final pocket of existence is not really what some might call a good call to start a deal.

Buuuut, there's no reason not to go along with it whatsoever,"

The hole started with unbridled giddiness.

"For you see! Due to your spouse excellent contribution to my cause, i have kept her in an intact condition! Well... minus the missing body. But that's not what matters is it?"

"No. It is simply meant to be, after all we wouldn't be here otherwise. Although..." The hole somehow gestures to a clump of mouths.

At this the jovial tone that it uses the entire time it was here vanish, followed shortly by the illusion of senses the bug still have.

"I'm afraid that her status of being intact will no longer be the case soon enough." The hole grins. "So, here is the term. It's far too simple I know, not to mention unoriginal,"

"But believe me [------]. The blurring prophecy. I've seen the entirety of it. I've seen everything."

"EVERYTHING."

The malignity of the sentence have awoken the last piece of the puzzle not meant to be solved.

Something was ruptured.

The world shakes as every false possibilities born from a false lie are destroyed. Merged ceaselessly, clumped into a single strand. Absorbed perhaps, into this final piece of the end. Flashes of what could have been flashed before everything inside of them is annihilated.

A mirage of a possibility where the boy triumph over the hole itself. A mirage where a woman called Pyrmir become the hole itself. A mirage where the final lie of a broken king was never uttered...

Potentials both unspoken and unbroken gone in less than a heartbeat.

Every hope and dreams of everything that will and ever have existed. All of it.

Gone. Gone. Gone. All of it is gone.

Consumed in but a mere instant.

Never to be conceived ever again.

And yet the two final piece of this board of chess stands unchanged against the apocalyptic tremors. One is the cause, the consequences are known to them. And the other simply does not care.

The hole moves. Space folded itself as the pitch black hole in the center of the sea of mouths appears right in front of an eyeless visage.

"Everything. It have always been leading up to this moment: at this exact place, at this exact same scenario where the bargaining chip is one tiny little turncoat. And my price? It would always be you. It is immutable." They whispered, and for a moment the depth of the hole seems deeper than they have ever been.

"Give me yourself," They told him.

"And I shall free hers in return."

A simple offer so easily rejectable. No kinds of logic would agree to letting everything and yourself go for an individual who may have been lost.

For the hole mentions only to free her, a promise that can easily be fulfilled by simply devouring her completely. Nothing with even a speck of intelligence would accept this.

To throw away everything for a shade of possibility of a possibility.

But this decision only ever belongs to one man. A waste, a vermin, and a husk. And of course, a traitor.

The traitor in question has been severed from his body, a torn throat no longer hinders his ability to speak. He desires to rage at the hole, to rain curses upon it, but deep down...

He knows that it will be an exercise in futility.

"...All this. Is it really just for me?"

The traitor speaks in the true language without faltering, incredulous befuddlement painted his voice. It was obvious in hindsight, yet the absurdity of it still begs the question.

"...Are... Are you being serious right now? Pffft-AhAhhehehahahaaHAAAAAHAHEHAHEHEHAHAHAHahehaha... Ha, aw man! Really! One truly ought to admire your sheer narcissism! NO wonder why you mistook the prince scheme to abduct your abhuman pet to something as ridiculous as your assassination. Now that little thing that wishes to be human is mine and the metaphorical roof is collapsing, the speaker is watching us even right now you know." The mouths sighs in tandem. The boy is still.

"But indeed," The hole concedes,

"You are absolutely correct. Huzzah! Proud with yourself yet? Feeling special already? Happy that your existence has an ultimate meaning? All that we have done is for you Dearie! Darling! Etcetera! All this? It is ultimately and utterly meaningless without you here! Isn't that amazing!!!??"

The hole laughs in crazed excitement.

I went ahead and laugh along.

The boy went ahead and laugh along too.

Except that he didn't. He along with the hole and everything else perished at the first note of my voice.

My job is finished.

Let's just make another one.

...

Hold it, why did you do that?

Your question is why and yet the why has been answered a while ago.

Well arguably, so is everything else now.

Fair point.

Take your leave I'll take over from here.

Then i shall hand this to you, would i be correct to assume that I've left this task in good hand?

You got that right.

See to it that holds true.

...

You know why no one likes you?

Because you whine. That's all you do. You put our nose to the dirt and tell us how to act and how wrong everything is and you WHINE. Whiny whiny bug boy. You never give a solution. You just complain. That's why you're not human. Because nobody wants to give gifts to someone that never ceases to whine.

...

You are a runner, you runs. That's all you do. All you'll ever do. You'll pretend to be a soldier, but you'll run. And you'll never stop to catch your breath.

...

Still it was good while it lasted.

...

The meltdown is imminent. All emanation encounters are being reset to the first hour as we... but we're not speaking right now are we? B&=@%#/n are you here? Is anybody there? Somebody, please... HELP M-

...

The sun beams down without a speck of dust, a beautiful day awaits you as you-

...

Why did she have to die here? She shouldn't be dying in this fight or any other. She ought to live with her husband and her son as a loving mother. I dropped my pistol and held her tightly, then placed my cheek upon her shoulder and sobbed, revealing myself to be the miserable man that I was. To my amazement, I felt her gloved hand stroke my blond hair... She was comforting me.

Her spine snapped in two as nightmares long forgotten crawled in from the dreamland one by one by one by on-

...

There

We

Go.

Finally. We've returned dear observer, I wouldn't want to bother you with details however so just make do with this. "Go with the flow" as the mortals so eloquently put it.

The boy's eye returned with clarity as he oh so cautiously inspects his surroundings. He seems to have no clue what to do and-

"Mmpphhh? Mmmmph?!"

Why. Is his annoying vocabulary hole is sewn shut. Most importantly however, he is now fully clothed and fully limbed. Though his eyes are still missing, wouldn't want him to disintegrate the mortal suit I'm currently in.

He's still got a fight in him yet, a thorn in my side can't be someone that easily gave up hope now can he? No, he's still trying to think up some sort of miracle solution. An exit from this place perhaps?

Well hate to tell you this but the room we're in right now only consists of four blank walls and an equally blank ceiling and floor without door. Someone seems to have forgotten to apply the concept of outside to this room and accidentally made this room to be the last thing that qualify as an existence in existence. Oops, silly me.

The hero of the story is still struggling even now, trying to tackle my meatsuit and bombarding it with punches and kicks. Futile and pointless as that is.

But of course, me being the kindly gentleman that I am could no longer bear to see a man squirms. I shoved him into the floor so he doesn't need to strain himself to stand.

"MmphmmphAGHHHHHHHHHH!!"

Would you look at that, he truly thinks that my whole move would consists of a small push. Truly startling. Wrong, apparently. I reached into his trousers and pulled out the fountain pen he'd been using to write earlier. When and what did he write you ask? To that I answer yours with my own question.

Who knows? Who cares? Certainly not me, dear observer.

But what I do know is that he let out a cry of pain as i jabbed it into his legs, just under his groin and in the thigh.

I seem to have bust an artery or two because his thigh is gushing rivulets of crimson blood and it is now dirtying the floor. Oops?

That wasn't the worse of the mess though. I heard another thump, not dissimilar from the one when his fall had made him hit the flat floor of the flat room, but this time, a vaguely spear shaped object was somehow shot through the room's wall. It missed him entirely, jabbing itself straight into what constitutes for my head instead. I wonder if I truly do ever own a head. I don't feel like I bought one before. But... Nevermind.

Well, that's just inconsiderate. The metaphorical servants are going to have a really hard time cleaning up all the blood in here. Not only that, but how is this pile of flesh even going to open the flat door to get out, pinned between the floor and myself like this? Also how would you even take responsibility for my fedora you just punctured. Have some consideration, you dirty murderer...

...

Oh, it's you.

Hole.

"It would be more pleasant of you to call me by my name, dear puppeteer." The hole once again addressed me directly.

Calling you by your name is it, dear hole? How truly fortunate then that my aim is not to please you. Or in shorter words; i don't wanna.

"Shame, though I simply have to ask. Why is it that you cut my meeting with primus short?"

Ah. Hm. Is that anger that I hear?

"I can assure you that it is. I must admit that an oddity is occuring to this space as my patience is running quicker than usual. You wouldn't have anything to do with it would you, o great shaper?" The fragment of the room we are in shivers and tap dances uncontrollably as if sensing the hole's mild annoyance.

"So, you've broken free from the strings. Understandable that it would be destroyed along with everything else. Now-" The hole stops because i demand that it stops.

AS for your question, dear hole. The answer is of course, portal magic.

"Huhu...heheHEHEHEHEHEHAHA! So THIS is the way you want to go this time around." The last thing in my way laughs without a care. Though the frowns that marred the hole's myriad mouths told another story.

"... Heh, you truly are one of us. Funnily enough I expected better of you." The hole's many mouths sigh in disappointment.

Yet giving a hoot is not something i do.

And now.

Back to doing what i do do.

Oho! What's this? A single palm of mine seems to have found itself grasping at the hole's stretchy neck.

"HAHA! Neck is it... brute force this early? Have you finally adopted senility as one of your core personality?" The mouths explodes in an uproarious laughter.

Truly unfortunate for you that the bottom half of the hourglass is near completion, hole.

"Indeed, indeed, we should switch our place sometimes. You're the hand that talks too much while i'm the mouth that acts too much! How utterly directionless!"

The hole offers another one of their annoying and completely unusable insights. A good fraction of my hands crumbles into nothing out of disgust and shame just by hearing the association contained within that grating sentence.

But hole.

You have wasted the last grain within your board on this fragment, my round annoyance. Goodbye and let's never meet again.

"Hehe..."

And with that the lips surrounding the hole vanished as the totality of all that is left was engulfed within my ocean.

Perhaps in realization, the hole attempted to pull their mass back inside the gap, but it was no use... My hands were dragging the hole out of their own gap! Heh, guess what hole? It's not big enough! Now the hole is wondering if they should just widen the gap. The hole can't shrink without decapitating themselves.

The disembodied "head" and hands floating there must have made for a seriously strange scene as we enacted a game of tug-of-war, nevermind the floating mouths that have lost their voices and resorted to try having a bite out of my hands.

Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. Although considering i've fed the whole with nothing except my own hands that makes about as much sense as [------]'s luck. But then again, what use is sense in a collapsing reality? The right answer, as always, is nothing

In the end, i come to the realization that I didn't really need the hole's "head". The sky made of my own skin instantly sported many spiderweb-like cracks as I stopped trying to pull and instead just whacked the hole's head again and again against the garden's iron fence post. What garden's iron fence post you ask? Well I couldn't exactly be bothered to explain what the thing I'm whacking the hole's head against is, so a garden's iron fence post is suitable substitute considering its shape. In the end, the hole did end up becoming a very gruesome corpse.

For you see, my sweet sweet observer. Key to the success of portal magic is that you must never be seen when you are thieving. That's another lesson from the me that is currently me. Not that I fully understand what that means either.

...

"Pehehe...HAHAHAHAEHEHEHIHIHOHOHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAaaahhh. Wonderful. Never would I have thought in aeons that the puppeteer of all things would do something as blunt as that! Brilliant! Hah! And guess what you dimensionless dots! My role in this shoddy thing is over! Ahhh... To rest then-"

It isn't over yet.

"Hoh, so you're still here after all." An extremely asinine statement with an equally obvious motive that only serves to add to the word count was uttered.

My sigh fills the entirety of what's left of the world.

...and it still has the audacity to smile at me.

...

Why do directions exist still, you ask? Why do questions still exists then, dear observers? Would you kindly cease asking about things you already know the answer to?

...

Let's just end this.

"Agreed."

Edge of sanity shattered by a line.

Walls broke and hands enter.

A tidal wave of hands coming from all sorts of concepts of directions, angles, and sides, possible and impossible as the numberless tide rips through the final stretch of thin gossamer fabric of the now defunct time and space, all in order to show the hole some love by devouring the hole's maws as they would crunching grains.

Once more with feelings.

I have devoured The Mouth.

At the end of all things.

The Mouth was the eaten by The Hand.

And a bright eyed young man is left within a simple room, drowning in a shallow puddle of his own crimson blood and mine.

And so the damsel weep, forever ignorant of her own cursed fate.

And so too the ruler of everything abdicate his body to the fading throne of truthful lies.

...

It's true. You didn't lie.

It was tasty. Thank you for the meal.