THE LAST.

“Here. This will do,” Baru said. We’d barely set foot off the ship, but time was short.

“As good a place as any to watch the skies fall,” Alteas murmured. They dug into their pack and drew forth a silver cube. It glinted in the failing sunlight, flashing distorted reflections of their light-blue skin.

“Do you really think this will work?” I asked, feeling foolish. Whether it worked or not, none of us would be here to know about it.

“It will work. Their patterns are inevitable. A thousand planets, all processed the exact same way.” Baru had produced his own souvenir, a near-black cylinder decorated with thin, golden symbols. He laid it carefully on the ground and began to dig, his broad, brown-scaled arms making short work of the grass and soft dirt.

“Yes, but I mean… this idea that there will be anybody who comes after?”

“Not for a good while. Their efficacy is… total,” Baru said.

“But time will pass, and life will return. Just as it always has,” Alteas added. They set up a few metres away and, instead of digging, unfolded a strange metal apparatus, their hands a blur of rapid weaving and dainty flicks.

The skies were a pleasant blue, cloudless, and the meadow where we landed was dull yet peaceful. Pale, green grass spread as far as the eye could see, decorated by seas of delicate, white-yellow flowers. So, this was Earth. Apparently, it was a diverse planet, with deserts and seas, forests and poles, and a thousand natural wonders, even after its condemning.

It would have been nice to see them.

“You’d better get started, Zoel,” Baru barked, already shoulder deep in the ground, but my limbs were leaden. We had been running for so long.

“Remember your commitment,” Alteas cautioned, their melodic voice floating in the light breeze. “We are nearly fulfilled.”

Still, I hesitated. It was different for them. The losses of their worlds were fresh; recent wounds within a decade of relentless lacerations. Earth had been lost for centuries, and it might have been decades since someone set foot here… I just wanted to feel this moment. I guess it was fitting that the last human would return just in time to bear witness to the end of all things.

****

We called our pursuers Mortis Fertor, a phrase from a language as dead as our people. Any further attempt at description would be pointless, for they took many forms, and there was no counter to their menace. Alteas’ people, The Athenir, called them The End, while Baru’s Thorgar used a series of ever-evolving expletives. There was a time, once, where we thought we could stop them. Humans, Athenir, Thorgar, the three great races, had stood together, pitting millennia of technology and evolution against this evil. And we had lost.

Then we ran. There were thousands of us at first, and we kept in touch through secret relays, meetings and intel-drops. But time passed, and all were lost, and now it was just Baru, Alteas and I. Somewhere along the way, we learned how to manipulate the patterns of the Mortis Fertor to our advantage and stay a half-step ahead. I couldn’t tell you how long we’d kept this up, propelled by motivations I still don’t understand. Maybe it was just fear.

But they always found us in the end.

As time went on, our windows of solace grew smaller. They were learning.

****

The wind had picked up, blowing colourless strands of hair across my eyes. Grey at only twenty-six. Bearing witness to the cessation of life in the galaxy will do that to you.

“We could keep running.” The winds tugged the words from my throat.

“We could,” Alteas said. “The cloaks on the ship still work, and fuel is no issue. But where would we go?”

“I don’t know. Away. Maybe they’ll… give up.”

Baru scoffed, “Even if they did, then what? After all that’s happened, you’d live on, with only us for company? With our task accomplished, it would be mere days before we finish their job for them.”

“We could go it alone. Like, our own ways,” I stammered.

“And what a fate that would be, alone in a dead universe,” Alteas said, stepping towards me. They laid a hand on my shoulder, and warmth spread through the right side of my body. The damned Athenir and their tele-thermal powers. But even this warmth was short-lived. A single tear formed in the corner of my eye.

****

I’d spent years hoping they would stop. That, satiated, they would take mercy, turn around, and flee back to the depthless void from whence they’d come. After all, what was the purpose of these entities that brought an end to all they touched? We had always believed life was a miracle, and its very occurrence proved that all existence had a point. Because if there was no point, why would we have evolved in the first place?

Then the Mortis Fertor came, and shattered these glass illusions. Their quest to annihilate all life was harrowing enough, but in time it gave birth to a far more terrifying consequence. The destruction of meaning.

But they didn’t care about Baru’s cylinders, Alteas’s podiums, or my… my items, all the things that would serve as the final legacies of our species. Whatever transcendental tier of evolution the Mortis Fertor had reached, they’d forgotten all about something as trivial as sentimentality. And therein lay our final defiance: planting these seeds so that one day something, or someone, might stumble upon our refuse and have a chance to understand that we were here once, and we mattered.

The Mortis Fertor were perfect in pursuit of their purpose, but they couldn’t stay here forever. Just as they’d once come from some other, unknowable realm, eventually, they’d have to move on. Only then, we reasoned, could hope return. However long that might take.

****

“Come on Zoel, enough dithering. Time is short.”

I still hadn’t prepared my offering. In truth, I didn’t feel like I was at all ready to die. I’d spent my whole life--if you could call it that--dancing with death. Yet now the time had come, I was still terrified.

I took a few steps, gazing over the once-calm meadow that now swayed anxiously in the growing winds. Still a beautiful place. A perfect place. It had been so long since I had seen something so green.

“How did it come to this?”

Baru stomped up beside me and spoke in the gentlest voice he could manage. “We never thought we’d lose. And then when we did, we thought we’d have more time. A fallacy as old as sentience itself.” It was unlike him to be so poignant.

Alteas joined us. Their expression was sombre yet peaceful, and as usual, I marvelled at the complexity of facial muscles that conveyed so many concurrent emotions. “Death comes for us all, that much has always been true. As does extinction. But to be the last of all things…”

“A curse indeed. But really, what difference will it make to us… you know, after?” Baru returned to his usual posturing. And why shouldn’t he? The alternative was accepting the reality of our situation.

The skies darkened and the winds erupted into a gale. Many of the pretty little flowers were ripped from the ground, petals torn from their stems and crumpled into nothing.

They had come.

“How did they find us so quickly?” I gasped, fumbling at my pack. Ready or not, the choice was now out of my hands. I had to achieve my purpose.

“You know how it is. Life, it sticks out like beacons in the night, no matter how many skies we put between us,” Baru said grimly.

“This is several percentiles quicker than we’ve ever been found, even with their recent trends,” Alteas mused. “Do you think… they were waiting?”

“But they cannot feel…How could they know…” Baru trailed off, the truth obvious.

“They cannot feel. But they can simulate and predict to the same ends. Think about it: the last green planet, and humanity’s first. The perfect place to end it all. It explains, in a way, why it hadn’t been processed before we landed,” Alteas said.

“They saved it for us.”

I darted back to the improvised memorial site and set to work on the stasis chamber. Unlike my companions, my item would degrade swiftly if not kept in suspended animation. I thought for a moment, could I squeeze myself into it? The Mortis Fertor wouldn’t be able to detect me; maybe I could crawl in and wait for an eternity until some new race found a way to bring me out?

I’d still be the last of my kind.

The stasis chamber was ready. Tenderly, I lowered my legacy inside of it, feeling like I was parting with my very soul. It was so beautiful.

I returned to my companions. I’m not sure if I’d call them friends, despite how long we’d been together. I think we all felt the same pain when we looked upon one another--a reminder that we were only forced together by tragedy and would always be different to each other. And yet… we’d evaded death itself for longer than anyone else. We’d agreed to face the end on our own terms, and on the same terms. I wrapped my hand around one of Baru’s broad, scaly fingers, and rested the other on Alteas’s forearm.

****

Time slows. They take the form of a dark cloud; a horizon-spanning storm, a surge of black and grey. They consume the ship first, and as it dissolves to mist, a new panic sets in. There is truly no escape now. They spread across the meadow, shrivelling the strands of grass. You hear them scream as their lives are torn away. Inexorably, it draws nearer, and the Earth grows ever darker.

Your last moments are nigh; the cold conclusion to a life you never really got to live.

****

We all tensed as the Mortis Fertor approached the offering site. Everything they touched so far had been eradicated and consumed; even the blistering winds had been swallowed by their horrific presence. The air was sucked out of our lungs, we couldn’t speak, and haplessly we watched as the darkness reached our final offerings… and passed right over them. They were safe.

****

Calm washes over me as I realise, after a lifetime of destruction, we have made something. I smile as the darkness swallows me, knowing that our creations will survive evermore.

****

∞∞∞∞.

****

Akeisha was running late. Using her diminutive size to her advantage, she dashed, shuffled and slid through the crowds as fast as she could, unperturbed by the sweat in her joints and heat on her skin. Around her, a great city blurred by; but not a single element of this continent-spanning marvel was of any interest to her today. No, there was just one humble space she needed to reach, nestled right at its core. The sizable crowd gathered in the commune might have put a halt to someone larger, or less determined, but Akeisha shouldered her way through like a gentle, fleet wisp, until she was in eyeshot of the great podium.

Alongside the collection of officials on the stage, braying and gesticulating to the crowd, rested three strange items. The first was a large black cylinder, decorated with strange, golden lettering. The second, a silver cube, infused with minerals never seen anywhere else in the universe in its current state. Akeisha couldn’t see the other item from here, though she knew what it was. Everybody knew what it was.

For so long, translating the inscriptions on these devices had been impossible. But then, more such tomes and totems began to pop up around the galaxy. With every piece catalogued, greater understanding had developed, until they reached a point where today, the meanings of these esoteric artefacts would be shared with them all.

Eventually, the crowd moved just enough for Akeisha to see the third object: a humbly decorated book, light in colour, with dark lettering on the top. Great screens flickered to life, projecting its image to all in the square. A signal for all to quieten, for the name of this piece was about to be revealed. Anticipatory silence spread through the onlookers, and Akeisha stared in awe at the screen. A few more seconds passed, and finally, the translation was displayed for all to see.

“We were here.”

--------------------------------

Edited by Maelstrom and Moonshadow.

All writing featured is original content created without the use of generative AI or language learning models. This author expressly prohibits this publication to be used in any way, shape or form to train artificial intelligence technologies or language learning models.

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THE LAST.

THE VOID.