Epilogue

Epilogue 3.27

---Em---

     I wake up on the cold, stone roof of the mausoleum after one of the worst nights of my existence. I'm freezing, yet my body is slick with sweat. My nose is heavily congested, my brain feels like somebody poked it repeatedly with an ice pick, and, to top it all off, I'm liable to upchuck any moment.

     The freezing is a good sign. There must've been a windstorm overnight. A dense layer of smoke obscures the sky, and the wind carries along a reeking cloud of sulfuric gas. Maybe that's where the nausea's coming from. But the once-flowing river of lava seems to have cooled. Ashes blanket the volcanic rock, like freshly fallen snow.

     Melody comes climbing up the ladder. She did this to me. Her magic was supposed to make me stronger, not cripple me with nausea and a splitting migraine. Then again, her magic was supposed to help me tap into the full potential of my soul. If doing so put me in such rough shape, what does that say about my soul?

     "Feeling better?"

     I shiver; we definitely got one of those freak windstorms last night. Yeah—it's all coming back to me now. I passed out from the pain after Melody stabbed me with her soul. When you put it that way, it sounds absurd. Anyway, she must've carried me back down the ladder into the mausoleum, because I remember waking up with one of those mummified corpses staring me in the face. Afterwards, I crawled back up here for some air. Must have conked out again.

     "I'm fine," I lie. The truth is, I feel like I drank a whole carton of expired milk, sliced open my skull with a rusty chainsaw, and then got run over by a garbage truck. "How are the others?"

     "All good to go," she says. "Just waiting on you."

     Staring up at the smoke-filled sky, I can just barely make out the hazy shimmer of this world's sun. My heart's racing, and whether that's a side effect of the magic Melody worked on me or just plain old anxiety is anyone's guess. "It's funny," I say. "It just feels like any other morning. But by the end of the day, we're either going to be dead or in paradise."

     "Or both," Melody points out.

     I nod. "Or both." Despite all the aching, I do feel strangely... perceptive. If I cross my eyes just the right way, I can see the individual particles that make up the smoke. And if I'm still, and I mean real still, I can feel the atoms vibrating within me and around me.

     And I've locked on to the rip. Question is, will I be able to open it? I never really understood exactly how my powers worked. Did I lose my powers because Selina stole the part of my soul that gave me them, or did losing a part of me just make me too weak to be able to perform the act of ripping? Whatever the case, I'm willing to dive into the mouth of that volcano and find out.

     Because Olivia's waiting on the other side of that rip.

     I take a deep breath. This is it. The final stretch. I rub my hands together. Nod. "Let's go scale a volcano."

---Crawford---

     The island village is virtually unrecognizable post-eruption. It's like somebody reskinned the entire playing field. Hobbling over the uneven surface of the hardened volcanic rock, I have a tough time imagining the fact that all of this was a flowing sea of lava less than twenty-four hours ago. Twenty-four hours. As if this world has the same night and day cycles as back home. Some things, I'll never get used to.