Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 3

The Triumvirate

What happens when you die?
Kelly had asked that question on one or two occasions, just like everyone. In her youth her family had been devout in their religious practices, and though she had never been as pious as her mother or father, she always believed that there was soemthing after death, had liked the idea of god.

Then when the day came and Polaris began to give up her secrets, Kelly hadn't been sure what to think.

The architect? How much like a biblical god was he? Did he care about them, did he know about them, or was it the maker's job to take care of the world and care for its people? Did the makers even care? Were they simply a single drop in a great tide of life that the architect was too busy to care about?

So when Kazna's spear cut through her chest, passed between her ribs and pierced her heart, Kelly wasn't sure what to think.

As she lay dying on the steps of the UN capital she was awash with emotions.

Bitter sadness.

Frustration

Anger

All happening in the ticking of moments. Bitter sadness for the people she was laving behind, for her husband who now held her weeping, for Admiral Vir and the others she couldn't help, for the world she would be handing over to president Hunt. Frustration that she hadn't been allowed to continue her life, that she had been stopped just as her story was coming to it's peak, and finally anger that Kazna had taken all of this from her.

She knew she was dying.

And as blackness began to fade at the edges of her vision she wondered.

What was dying going to be like?

Turns out.

Dying is scary.

Your body fights with everything it has to avoid dying, the heart sputters and spasms, the brain sends a shot of adrenaline through the body, grasping for life even as the body fades. She could feel her heart giving out, though adrenaline numbed the pain. She felt the blackness encroaching on the edges of her vision and wished for.... What?

Acceptance

But no.

None came.

Kelly died filled with fear and apprehension and anger.

And then it was black.

Nothing

A pure void of darkness stretching on into infinity.

It took her some time to realize that she was still aware, a consciousness floating in a vast blackness, in an abyss of night. She tried moving, tried feeling something but there was nothing to feel, nothing to seem and then the panic gripped her. No, no this couldn't be it, there couldn't be nothing! There was the architect and the Makers, shouldn't she be with them, but where was this? What was this?

All around her was pure maddening black, horrific nothingness.

She tried to scream.

But found she had no mouth.

****

"You know I admire your resolve."

Kneeling on the dark glossy floor in an unknown blackness, Lord Celex lifted his head.

Kazna stood over him, her body swathed in shadow, her spiked black armor pulsing with competing tendrils of night. Her carapace was darker than it once had been, stained by her misdeeds and the darkness which she felt justified her actions.