Jacques Dussault
Beyond Heart and Mind
The sun has set.
The sun has set, and with its setting the night is long, and cold, and dark.
Where he lies, beyond all sight and thought, Jacques Dussault rests.
Body battered, hair shortened and burned, eyes forever closed, he hears a voice speak to him within his dreamless slumber. It doesn’t say very much, because it knows him. It knows that he isn’t stirred by overdramatic speeches, by indulgent fanfare, by the sound of pomp and circumstance. It knows him... and it knows that for something as simple as the sound of tears, he would listen.
The voice is familiar.
Her voice is familiar.
For something as simple as four words, he would listen.
Four words that resonate with his very being.
“Do the right thing,” she says.
He remembers...
It had snowed that morning, so long ago.
Someone had come to knock on his door, and they had gone to explore. They'd... they'd ended up in a library, with half of a goddess, and a wraith, and his best friend, looking at the countless books. There had been so many of them, beyond all imagining, and he had passed them all to look at the comics of his childhood.
But now, in his memory, something changes.
He takes a different path; his fingers trace a dusty spine.
He takes it off the shelf, and opens it, and reads.
It is a dialogue between two people, old and young, and he hears it in that voice so familiar yet so far away that it cannot be placed.
Two voices intertwine, one questioning, one answering, in a chain that stretches without end.
What is the heart?
The bearer of life.
Something begins to stir.
Something he had long forgotten for all the time he had spent here, beyond the reach of the stars, listening to the silence of the void.
He turns another page.
What is life?
Waiting for death.
He frowns in displeasure, and at once he is alone. There is no library anymore, no memory, nothing. He starts, looking around in the dark for something, anything, but nothing calls. All that is left is the man, and the book, and yet...
Somehow he is not afraid.
He turns another page.
What is death?
The thief of man.
This book is depressing, but it's been so long - so long - since he has dreamed anything that he is loathe to put it down. As it is with all dreams, he can't remember when he fell asleep. That memory, too, has been consigned to the dark, a sleep from which he cannot rise.
But in the back of his brain, he remembers a voice screaming in rebellion, howling alongside the souls of millions of others.
He hears her voice again.
Do the right thing.
His fingers pause along the page, hesitant as they wait at the corners; but he turns the page because he is beginning to realize that he cannot stop.
Every dreamer must one day wake.
What is man?
A passing traveler.
Yes.
Nothing lasts forever.
He knew that, didn't he? Wasn't that why he, above anyone else, had met her? Had made a contract with-
"______"
"Do the right thing."
Who was he?
Why was he here?
What was he doing?
In the millennia, in the years without end that he had drifted here, he had never asked. He had slumbered without pause, without cease - he had been nothing more than a shadow on the wall of a cave. A phantom of better times.
A ghost, adrift from the 'real'.
In the distance he sees a light. It is small, and pale, nothing more than a point on some false horizon, but as he stares it begins to rise. He - his name, the fact that he had a name was so close to his tongue - turned the page again, and again, something driving him to get to the end, to continue the story-
What is a traveler?
A bearer of the past; the language of the lost.
It reverberates in his skull like an evening bell, and he puts a hand to his head out of habit more than anything. In this world, he feels no pain or sorrow, but-
Why had he winced?
Why did he tremble so?
Wasn't he supposed to be doing something?
Wasn't someone calling his name?
What is language?
The herald of the soul.
Do the right thing.
What is the soul?
A candle in the wind.
A candle?
He begins to shudder, and surely, light was spreading, burning golden as it left the darkness in its wake-
A spark long dormant is brought to kindle once more.
Was his flame so weak that it could never rise again?
Was his heart so broken that it could no longer be mended?
Didn't he - didn't I - didn't we promise her that our bond would last forever?
He speaks into that onrush of light, the advent of the dawn, the purging of the self-
The voice of his companion.
"I am-"
The sun has set.
And it is time for it to rise again.
An unbreakable bond, a trust that could never be unfulfilled, a faith that could not be shattered…
He carries it with him, into a new age.
Jacques Dussault
A New Dawn Rises
Final Battle
"Did you miss me?"
The world burns black and gold, and I laugh with it, the light of day lifting me to my feet. Even my horrid luck has to throw me a bone sometimes, right?
I open my eyes, and with the rising of the sun severed hair grows back, wounds disappear, and... I flex the fingers of my shattered arm, whole again.
It feels good.
"We don't need that world to crush you! WE WON'T LET YOU ALL DO AS YOU'D PLEASE! DIE, FOR THE SAKE OF EVERYTHING!"
"Sorry to crush your dreams, but I'm back for good."
Isn't that right?
"And I'm not leaving."
Naglfar doesn't exist anymore. I can feel its absence, but it doesn't matter - the light of the dawn is still at my back, carrying me forward. I take a step, feeling what it means to walk again, and then another, and another, settling into a rhythm.
I remember it all now.
Every memory of my friends, of my loved ones, of my family. The bad, the good, the ugly, the mundane - I remember everything, coming back in one burst like the waves of the sea.
I instinctively know that I won't be pulling out any black holes, won't be using the shadows of the universe, won't be ripping apart the fabric of the world to strike at the Devourer.
And that's fine.
Because I've got Hel, right?
And everyone else who's at my side, present or not, dead or alive.
Kenji.
Maiya.
Kusumi.
Gisela.
Tomoya.
Mina.
They're here, running with me, and...
I remember the truth that I saw in my dream, even now, in Hel's voice as she spoke to me.
Nothing lasts forever.
I'm not gonna be around until the end of days, ESPer or not, champion or not, hero or not, but hell, did that ever matter to begin with?
I've been so afraid of death for so long that, somewhere along the way, I forgot about it entirely. That's why Hel races by my side, the Queen of the Dead herself.
Maybe that's what you need, to face death.
To accept that it'll never go away.
A name comes into my head, a name I never, ever would have called before. I knew it wouldn't have listened. I knew it wouldn't have cared. But now... Hel laughs with me, of one mind, and I can't resist.
I shout into the heart of the world.
I call upon thee!
Azrael-
-Angel of Death!
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