If Only

Epilogue

In a distant time, in a place far away Maxus looked behind himself and saw there nearly a million Cyphons in full armor shining in their star's vibrant radiance. He saw men impassioned and prepared to give anything to take back what was theirs and prevent their foretold doom, to reclaim their fate.

His words could not aptly describe the terror he had seen yet they were enough to drive Grelorius and his people into nearly delirious fear, and subsequent anger, fiery and eternal driven towards the humans that had laid waste to their own Earthly seas and awakened what they had once called Ludrermior, the essence of dark destruction indefinite, foretold by Branith Orail himself along with the Eretrio Ildus.

All efforts were made and a war of wrath was prepared. Those of the depths came with determination driven by necessity, lingering terror, and unshakable courage to drive it away. They emerged dripping and glowing with it mingled with sacred waters from the sea on the lost coastline beside Aenandria. They came in armor, with weapons of the war they had been fighting for years. They came with unmatched courage that could have only been brought on by unmatched fear. They prepared siege engines within days. They met kin they had long been away from. They held cannons in their arms that spewed pure energy into the dark. The Cyphons marched across the steppe lands, Laicetus beside them. They marched for days without rest, across lands the humans believed uncrossable. They marched and sang songs beside the howling of the Laicetus and lupisors. They prepared a foolproof strategy. They would control the tunnels while taking the slopes. Walls would be climbed and reduced to rubble. Ships would follow leaving trails in the skies, cutting through leviathans. They would take back the palace and capital and the war would be theirs. The tides would decisively turn to their side.

At the end of the plain, Maxus looked up at Irulin while the greatest army the Cyphons had ever assembled marched into battle in front of him and left his sight for he saw no more.

He fell to his knees gazing at the city skirting the sky with sunlight illuminating its perfectly sculpted structures. He began to wait for the Cyphons to return to announce victory. He waited for hours and hours but they would not come and no sign of an end was brought. Until a small escort of men rode towards him. In that distant land, he finally exhaled too soon. The sands swirled heavier, obscuring his vision.

There was no way the humans would have withstood the Cyphon horde.

They would have taken back their homeland on that fateful day.

If only the bird had flown. If only the bombs had fallen on coordinates given by the distracted man, he would not be seeing what tumbled forward before him as their fates shifted and blurred.

Now, it was not his kin coming towards him. He could only make out human shapes. The humans traveled on becoming larger, once an impossibility brought on by fate. They came from nothing, out of the swirling dust, breaking his mind's eye, shattering it apart to destitution. If only his imagination had not been so wild. Slight deviations brought the true present to what it was, beyond the imagined, infinite timelines in his mind. He suddenly realized that it was not simply his imagination. He saw it all clearer than most of his life. He saw countless possibilities, so many roads deviating, yet each countless choice had brought him here, each countless instance of chance, each decision by the Ilan-Ild, that which brings the fate upon us.

After a time of waiting, he finally realized that all he had seen had occurred, not here, not now, but where? In his own mind or beyond, did it matter? The visions seemed far too real, they took the form of every foresight he had ever had that had come to be. But in so many ways the visions were so much more. It seemed he had peered into something else entirely, stepped into somewhere distant to our comprehension and evidence, yet directly beside our forms. He could see Ophilius' shifting shape approaching beside him, sliding in and out of our reality, with victory in his eyes. Maxus could not help but see only the humans now and tears flowed at the loss.

Maxus had once managed to escape. He knew the way down the plateau to the steppe but no farther. Ophilius had never revealed to him the entrance to the caves and he dared not face the Laicetus of the waterless plains. He searched futilely for it but after so long he could only wait upon his knees for the end to come. But so much had transpired since, so far away from his comprehension.

The invaders surrounded him and he gazed at the horizon, imagining the times yet to be, if only it were possible that any of these fates could be found, yet he saw only nothingness ahead. If only time had not gone down the path he now walked the only path that could be because it was the only path that was. Perhaps there was a way to find oneself on a path not chosen, the imagined road, a path of his mind, a chain beside our own, yet diverged from it, one where everything he had known and loved would be restored. He held on and hoped, yet the emptiness, the feeling that time passed is immovable by any force, held him.

He could not help but hope. If only the bird had flown. If only.