There was what felt like only a couple of days since Vic’s death and when he accepted what he had internally decided to call his Noble Quest of Epic Proportions, because why not? A super, god-alien, seemingly made up of fuzzy static that made his soul buzz, just both killed him and is also dragging him through the cosmos by his somehow still attached arm towards his new life.
Of course I’m gonna call it something stupid. Other than you, I’m going to be the only one who even knows I have a Task in the first place.
You are an odd being Victor. Judging by the story of you and your life, this is a highly irregular series of choices for you, typically your average response to large events with any sort of risk is to either shirk the duty or to relocate to avoid the ramifications of your actions. What changed?
Vic looked up at the Thing with annoyance and a little hurt, but it would be pretty stupid to claim the Thing was wrong about him. It being a cosmic god-thing probably comes with super in-depth character analysis powers or something ridiculous. He had to admit that the Thing was right in its description, he failed to take on the family restaurant back home, leaving his parents to close it down for good.
It wasn’t entirely his fault, he was more of a “numbers” guy and not a “run a burger joint in a midsized town” guy. They were pushing a lot and he had just got out of college, so he said screw it, and moved to Alaska with barely any money and little to no idea what to do when he crossed into the state. Vic just kept driving until he found a decent area and got a hotel until he got a job in that sporting goods store in the Anchorage area. He’d been there for a few years before he got destroyed by the Thing, heading back down to see the family for the obligatory holidays and birthdays, but it was always incredibly awkward and he felt that after letting them down it was just easier to stay away.
I figured that since I’m dead and moving to another life, fuck it. I’ll do better this time, not much else to it. Also don’t you dare analyze that bit. I'm already aware it's mostly false bravado and I don’t need whatever the hell you are, telling me that. There’s also no need to mention the ridiculous amounts of isekais I’ve consumed or how often I came back to reading The Chronicles of Narnia. We both know how this is definitely a dream come true in the most literal of senses. Now that I’ve admitted all that, it makes it my move and not yours, so now I don’t feel as bad. Eat me.
The Thing does not look at Vic’s soul form, but he could tell it was rolling its non-existent eyes. They had left the solar system as they were talking, their speed picking up exponentially, and Vic was excited to see if he would get to lightspeed. His arm no longer bothered him anymore after a couple of minutes of finagling or something from the Thing. There was a nice moment of quiet observation for the cosmos around them, when things got weird again on the visual front.
All the stars around them began to pulse and shift in color. The black of space began to move, morphing around them and undulating until like the shore of the sea as it flows over and pulls back from the stars. Vic thinks of the Tides then, wondering if it's as simple as the cycle of life. The tide coming in would be the arrival of new souls, and the tide receding the travel of souls away from their worlds, onto new lives. He also wonders why it's black instead of filled with colorful orbs as his soul appears. As he thinks on the nature of the Tides, their speed continues to increase more and more. Travelling along to his new life, he looks ahead and notices that the view in front of them starts to resemble a sort of swirling portal. The speed of the passing stars and the black moving by so quickly that it turns into a tunnel as they pass through, seemingly never ending to Vic’s senses.
Now that we are in the Warp, it will only be a matter of minutes before we get there. I must confess to allowing a misunderstanding to occur, you will not remember this passage when you arrive. Your soul should have been slowly remembering your past lives during the trip, letting it become its complete self. It's been known as a downside of the Mark, it basically acts as an anchor for your recent life. You will most likely retain the knowledge of the last go around, but it prevents your soul from consolidating, for lack of a better term, your previous experiences and allowing growth. We are required to erase the memories of this trip so that the knowledge of Us is kept out of the minds of the Lived. It tends to cause problems knowing We exist.
So, what? I just get reborn with the memories of a 28 year old man? That has to be the worst start ever! I don’t want to be conscious of my body’s lack of control as a baby! Or to know how to walk, but not be able for what? Months? What about the arm? I’m pretty sure that a baby with the arm of a 28 year old man with tattoos would be grounds for instant infanticide!
Do not be concerned, that's normally how the process works but you are correct in assuming that the Mark has sway on how your rebirth goes. You will not be reborn as an infant, but rather appear nearby civilization. The Mark is basically an anchor like We’ve said before, so it will use the body it was placed on as the template for the rebirth. In essence Your body will be an exact re-creation of the one you left behind, minus the maiming from the truck.
Oh thank God. That would’ve been a really shitty start. Probably literally too. It sucks that I won't remember this glorified road trip though. It's so beautiful to see the universe like this, the swirling mass of the stars and the black and what I'm assuming is the Tides, unless I grossly misunderstand what it is I'm looking at.
The Thing looks in his direction as they continue down the tunnel. It stares for a second at him, making Vic slightly worried. Did he see something he wasn't supposed to? Or is the Thing contemplating something? That static filled face providing no answers, Vic turns his attention forward again. He sees something at the end of the tunnel now, but it's still too far away for him to make out what it is. It reminds him of the “light at the end of the tunnel” phrase, and Vic wonders if it's related or a coincidence.
If Fate is real then I suppose coincidences are rare, if not impossible.
We have been ferrying souls for longer than you can think you know, and yet it's still a rare occurrence for Us to see more than one Marked per world. Currently among Us is roughly a thousand of you being sent to their next lives, and of them, only two others have been able to glean even the smallest connection to the Tides. The chance that the three of you come from the same world, at different times mind you, is infinitesimally small and yet here you are, Victor. We cannot help but be curious about why your world has such a high level of… enlightenment. We will be watching your journey with great interest Victor.
The world ahead of him grows slowly and at the pace they have been moving, the details of the world have become clearer. The geography is similar enough to earth that he feels like there is not too much difference, environmentally speaking. The only real question is what level of technology is the world at. He internally hopes for a world somewhat advanced, he’d even take an early 20th century if he was honest, but he had a sneaking suspicion that he was going to get some kind of medieval shitshow. Or even worse he could be sent to a tribal civilization. Definitely don’t want that.
We are getting awfully close now. The world looks bigger than Earth, and a lot more green. What is that gigantic white section in that ocean? I’ve never seen anything like it.
It is known as the Barricade Rift in your language and don’t worry, you will be able to speak and understand the local languages for the most part. The Mark will be doing the heavy lifting in regard to naturalizing you. It will also be what guides you towards your Task through various means. The Rift is a storm that is never-ending, by means that I will leave you to figure out. Don’t want to spoil the fun parts. Also the whole memory wipe thing still exists.
Vic feels a bit of apprehension at the mention of the memory wipe, but there's nothing he can do about it now. He’s already committed to moving on, plus all he needs to do is remind himself that, in probably a minute or two by the speed they’re approaching, it won't be his problem anymore. He’ll be popped into existence with no memory of how he got there, in an absolute panic after being hit by a semi in his boat, with no memory of the journey here. It's not lost on him either that he is getting isekai-ed after getting hit by a truck and he has to wonder how much of a sense of humor this Fate entity has.
What is Fate? Is it a being like yourself, or some kind of grand form of meta-universe governing protocol?
The being actually reached its hand up to its face as one does to try and soothe a headache.
Don't give me that. Look, I’m grasping at microscopic straws here and all I have to go on is the stupid sci-fi fantasy pulp I had read here. Plus if you tell me, I won’t remember anyway, so what's the harm huh?
You believe We know how the cosmos works and what Fate is, but we do not. Do you know what quantum theory is? No? One of the few similarities we have with the Lived is that We are not all knowing. We know of Fate but do not understand and can only make guesses based off of patterns we have been barely able to notice. All We know is that it is a real moving force for the Tides.
Vic was about to ask more, but there was a “pop” of pressure around them as they passed through what felt like a bubble membrane as they got closer to the planet. It takes up most of their vision now, the Rift showing much more detail now and Vic can make out what looks like a massive volcano on the continent to the left of it. He does notice one odd detail after taking in his new world.
What was that bubble thing we just went through?
It was the Barrier. It's a kind of firmament around the general area of the cosmos that the planet resides in. Think of it as a filter for the Tides, a mechanism to ensure that the right souls actually make it in and not any wayward beings. We cloak the souls in the cosmos and once the soul is past the barrier, it is set free to go on its way toward its next life.
The Thing stops them from travelling further toward the planet and begins growing more optically fuzzy appendages and setting them all over Vic’s soul, the whole time emitting a low noise that sounds like a mix between the tv static of when Vic grew up mixed with a deep bass horn section. It started to cause pain in Vic’s soul when he realized what the Thing was doing to him. It was morphing his soul back into his bodily shape as a glass blower would pull the shape into being. It was not as painful as Vic was thinking it would be, he thought it would be like when the Thing first showed itself. No, it felt more like stretching after a hard workout but all over his soul. Vic thought the arm was going to complicate things for his cosmic companion to reattach but then he realized that this was probably not its first time doing this and just waited for the process to be complete.
Your form is complete. Now it is time to continue down the path you have chosen. It was interesting to travel with you Victor, We hope you complete your Task to the satisfaction of Fate. We would offer to answer any more questions, but there is really not a ne-
“What about a request?” Vic was comfortable now that he had his whole body again and could freely move in the zero gravity of the either magically partitioned section of space or the extremely high atmosphere, he wasn’t sure yet. He had to keep pulling his hair back as it kept floating in his face after moving. “Do whatever you things are even take requests? Surely I’m not the first to ask.”
We typically never get to this point with any souls that feel the need to ask anything, but the Mark has definitely influenced this whole process. Speak your request and if it is within Our power and We are willing to accept, then it will be taken care of.
“Sick. Can you take me in as one of you guys after this go around? I want to see the Cosmos more and be able to remember it next time. Plus, I like the whole ‘agent of the universe’ thing you got going on and want in on it.” The Thing doesn’t move for a minute. Vic continues to flail around in zero gravity, trying to look serious while also trying to rotate back towards the Thing.
We are not sure. Usually the Lived ask for a return to the previous life if they even get to ask at all, but We are receptive to the idea. We think it best to reconvene after the Task is completed and in the meantime, We will look into what allowing this request would entail.
“Hell yeah, that's about what I was hoping for honestly. I don’t know if you’d be able to turn me into one of you, but the travels would be dope as hell. So with that halfway settled, what now?” Vic is now upside down looking back at the Thing. “Do I just get whooshed into a city? Maybe something kind of discreet like a back alley? Or what about on the outskirts of town and I get to learn the ways of the land from the rural citizens?” Vic is facing the Thing this time when he notices that it begins to fade away. “Hey! You’re just gonna leave me here?!”
A crescendo of white noise rises from a low roar out of nowhere around him as he feels his new body get pulled away. Vic shakes his arms and legs out as he remembers what MMA fighters do before getting in the ring. Not because he has any history of fighting and is used to doing so, but because he can’t come up with any other way to exert the nervous tension he feels building up inside him. He has no clue what is about to happen next and no idea how he is going to get down to the planet from so far away. “Please don’t make me come in like an asteroid. I hate heights and can’t imagine the landing would be soft.”
The white noise continues to rise and he sees another portal form ahead between him and the planet, it looks nothing like the portal they took to reach this world. The portal appears as a vague humanoid cutaway in the world around it and looks to be about the size of Vic, maybe a few inches taller, and made out of an opal-like substance. All the richest and deepest shades of the colors of the rainbow encapsulated by an almost misty white material backlit by some internal light that moves and dances as he looks at it from different angles. He is close enough to touch it when whatever force is pulling him stops.
So far the most beautiful thing he had seen up until this point was an extremely picturesque scene from the beach near his hometown of a sunset off the coast, with the wind flowing lazily by. There was nobody on that section of the beach, so it was peaceful sitting there just listening to the ocean push and pull on the beach, hearing the waves crash and roll into the shore but also run and slide back out when the water pulled away. The clouds were a thousand shades of red and orange and yellow as the sun set at the horizon. He remembered thinking then that he would probably see anything as cool and beautiful as that sunset. The Warp was a close second only because he felt it didn’t move him in any way other than to think it was cool as hell. For a minute he just stares at the portal in awe. Looking at it prickles every neuron in his newly formed brain, causing a cascade of curiosity to flood into him. Vic keeps moving his head to watch the fragmentary light move around and through the colors inside.
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He snaps back to awareness when he realizes that his hand is touching the edge of the portal. It's solid in the same way jello is, but the more he applies pressure, the more it resists. Fascinated, Vic grabs onto the “shoulder” of the portal and notices the thing can only be as thin as a sheet of paper, but rigid as a sheet of steel. The contrast between how gelatinous it feels but also how impossibly sturdy it appears to be throws him for a minute. As Vic is wondering what to do next and how to enter the portal, he notices his right arm. It's glowing. The tattoo is shimmering in the same light as the portal where the ink should be, all the sigils and lines showing one color or another. As he examines his arm he feels a subtle static feeling along where the tattoo sits. It feels like an infinitesimally small fraction of what he felt in the company of whatever the Thing was.
“Well if that isn’t an obvious sign, I don’t know what would be.” He reaches out with his Marked arm and places it center mass of the humanoid shaped portal. Vic feels a vacuum form inside his mind, all his memories feel as if they’re getting siphoned out down his veins and through his arm into the Mark. The feeling is only there for a minute before he loses consciousness and bodily, he falls through the portal causing it to vanish out of existence.
____________________________________________________________________________
There is a sort of peace found in not being in control. To see the actions, choices, and events around oneself either directly or indirectly influencing life’s next steps. To be able to separate oneself from the chaos of life and to observe, to study, to meditate. The Vic of a minute ago would have been aware of this thinking and, had he kept his memory, he might have been able to take a second and find that peace. To feel safe in the chaos of the world around him.
The Vic of right now, however, is currently screaming his lungs out curled up in a ball on the ground, bracing for impact from a vehicle that's been left a lifetime ago and at the other end of the cosmos. It takes Vic a long second to realize he hasn’t been hit yet and he eventually stops and very slowly moves his arms from his face, breathing heavily due to the panic. He opens his eyes and immediately gets blinded by the light, his unfocused eyes just blurring everything together into a vision of bright colors.
Fuck! What the fuck! What the hell is happening! Where's the truck? My boat? Where the fuck am I?
His breathing still hasn't calmed down, the completely unexpected lack of being dead starting a new bout of panic attack. Vic attempts to look again to take stock of his surroundings if he can. To try and understand what happened to him. How did he survive the accident? Where is the truck? These questions and many like them come to mind in rapid fire. He opens his eyes immediately when he hears a noise close by. It almost sounds like someone is talking. He slowly opens his eyes, one at a time this time, and rubs away the bleariness.
Looking around, the first thing Vic notices is that he isn’t on earth. The sky is a light shade of purple and there are two moons in the sky. If that wasn’t proof enough then he wouldn’t know what was. The sight of them doesn't even bother him at this point in his simmering panic, just another thing being added to the pile of insanity. The immediate area seems to be a rainforest with the same tropical heat and cacophony of animal noises, but the plants look nothing like he’s ever seen and he’s up high near their canopies. He turns his attention to the ground around him and stops. The ground around him is made up of a faded but polished grey stone with an area about twenty feet around with a bright white metal inlay in the form of concentric circles with sigils between the layers. “Is this a ritual circle? What the fuck is happening here? Where the fuck are my clothes?!” Vic is on all fours now, about to stand when he hears more of the noise from before. It is definitely speech, but it's different from anything he recognizes from earth.
“Hello?” Vic looks behind him where he thinks the voice is coming from and freezes. There behind him in the center of the circle is an enormous tree made entirely of crystal. It reminds him of the redwood cedars he drove through on his way out of California for its height but it looks much more like the tops of the trees around him, like if an oak tree started branching out much higher than typical and its branches being fewer. Vic looks back down at the base of the tree, seeing its crystalline structure dance in the light of day. The colors shift depending on the angle he looks at it going everywhere from greens to oranges to reds and blues. It reminds him of an opal he saw at a museum he went to in college although much larger and on a different planet. As he ponders at the tree, he hears movement behind it.
“Hello?” Vic starts to slowly step towards the tree when he sees a gnarled furry hand be placed almost reverently on the surface of the tree from somewhere behind it. Every memory of a horror movie flashes through him all at once and tells him he needs to run away and fast. Another garbled bout of speech reaches his ears but he feels as if he is catching some words here and there; “... awful screeching … Light Tree … done?” Vic stops again, no longer making to run away. Whatever person is behind that tree, might have answers and he was already understanding some of the words so it shouldn’t be too hard to communicate. “Hello? Who’s there? Whoever you are, I am friendly. Please don’t attack!” The hand moves down the tree as the arm becomes visible, a hairy and skinny arm of blotches of grey and white mixed in a coat of brown. The voice sounds off again as the person finally shows their face.
“What is … human … here? How … get … ” Vic stood there dumbfounded as the monster came out from behind the tree in full view, it was objectively the freakiest looking thing he had seen. It was the shape of a human with a long and lanky body but had the head of one of those ugly bats with the scrunched up faces. Its body was covered in some form of cloth with colors roughly the same as its fur but less aged and more vibrant. It wore no shoes and Vic noticed it had the feet of a hawk, talons and all. The monster watched him with interest as it moved to begin circling him, Vic keeping it in front of himself in case of an attack.
“Well? Who are you and how did you get here?” The speech was almost fluid that time with only a slight difficulty to understand with its accent. The voice had an oddly scratchy tone to it and Vic couldn’t tell if it was intentional or not.
“I asked you first! Who are you and where am I?!” The monster stops circling him when he finishes speaking, looking as if Vic just insulted it. With a colder tone now the monster presses Vic with questions “First? Is this a game to you, human? You truly must be lost then if you don’t know.” It starts moving towards him now, making Vic take a step backwards. “How did you get this far? Did your scavenger band make their way this deep in our territory? Are you just their scout? Do you take me for a fool, thinking an act like yours would be enough to grant leniency?” Every question made him step back further, but every time he did, so did the monster. At the last question his back was to the tree, touching with his bare skin. In the back of his mind he feels a low pulse but quickly dismisses it due to the monster.
The monster grew furious immediately when he touched it and moved to attack him with its now-clawed hand. “You dare defile the sacred Light!” Vic throws his arms in front of his face in guard, back pressed against the tree, and screams in reaction to the second life ending moment in the last hour.
Please! Somebody help! I’ll do anything, just let me live!
As his last thoughts race through his mind his right arm begins to glow with a light matching the tree and it burns with a wave of static. The wave travels up through his arm and out his back into the tree, causing an audible groan from the tree and its inner light to intensify to the point of blinding. The monster, just about to disembowel Vic, immediately jumps back and prostrates itself at the sight, beginning to mumble incoherently. The tree’s light begins to pulse in time with Vic’s arm which he now realizes is glowing the same color as the tree. As they synchronize, Vic feels the static again, as if his entire body was asleep and it builds and builds until it's all he can feel. The static brings pain as well as his head starts to fill with it and soon all he can think about is the pain of the energy building up in his head as he cries out, the monster entirely forgotten in his agony.
The pain comes to a peak when he tastes blood and feels as if his eyes are burnt out as he slumps over in exhaustion faceplanting into the ground at the tree. He tries to lift himself up but his arms don’t work, his body no longer responding to his commands, Vic thinks he’s paralyzed when tries to open his eyes and nothing happens.
Is this it? Am I really going to die by a rock tree?
His arm pulses and he hears a new voice from much closer this time, closer than the monster ever got. It had a quality to it he had never heard before, it sounded like multiple people were talking at the same time and only slightly out of sync and it had a crystalline clarity to it he couldn’t place but subconsciously he suspected the tree. “Will you accept our bond?” Vic was stunned for a second, he swore he could feel the voice this time. It sounded like he had an earbud in and was listening to someone talk directly into his brain. Not much louder than a whisper but uncomfortably close and unfamiliar.
What? Who’s there? Can you hear me?
The voice just repeated the question in the same tone, but he was sure this time that it was definitely coming from in his head. “Will you accept our bond?” He was now on the verge of a mental break. The events of the day would be enough to rattle anyone, from having a Semi truck fall at you, coming to on a for sure alien planet and then meeting said alien, to now having voices in his head while he lays paralyzed on the ground. Vic would be worried if he went through any of that without side effects on his mind.
This can’t be real. I’ve gone fucking mad, that’s it! I’ve completely lost it! Number one symptom of crazy is voices and I’m hearing VOICES!
“Do you accept our bond?”
WILL I GET MY BODY BACK IF I SAY YES?
“Do you accept our bond?”
Fuck! I accept! What insane bullshit is gonna happen next, hmm?! Will I get my body back?
“Bond has been accepted. Completion of fusion is imminent.”
At those words, the feeling of static comes back in full force inside his mind and shuts out all Vic’s awareness from the world around him. He can’t hear anything, feel anything, or smell anything, his sight already not working. The only thing left is the increasingly concerning static that he’s getting too familiar with. All he feels is the static flowing in and around him, passing through him causing less and less pain each pass. His body begins to feel the static less and less as it passes through him and when it feels as if a few days have passed, Vic feels a brush against his mind as if someone were trying to grab his attention.
“Fusion complete. Vessel is now bonded. Requisite information granted to Vessel.”
Vic jolted awake when it finished speaking in his mind. He takes in his surroundings and sees he is still on top of what he now recognises as a ziggurat overlooking the rainforest landscape. He looks sound for the monster that was in the process of attacking him but cannot see anything other than the tree. As Vic looks up at the tree he feels a sense of being observed somehow and he knows in his gut that it's coming from the tree. It is alive somehow and not in the way normal trees are alive. It's a sentient tree!
Not a sentient tree but a Vein. I will forgive your ignorance this time Victor.
Vic rushes to his feet in a panic at hearing the voice. Its not the same as before, much more muted and singular this time. He spins on his feet looking for where the voice came from but sees nothing but the edges of the circles.
“How many times am I going to get the shit scared out of me today? Where are you? Come out!”
I’m right here, Victor. Look at our arm. You were probably better off sitting while we talk.
When the voice mentions “our” arm, he looks down at his arms and stares dumbfounded at his right arm as he sees what it has become. Where his arm should be is an arm sized gem, cut to be an exact match for his now old arm tattoos and all. All the scars he got are there as small knicks in the gem and the tattoo is the color of the tree, an almost transcendent opaline color, the sigils glowing in the same internal light. The arm-gem is the same color as him but he is able to see completely through it for most of its length up until it gets to his elbow where it gets to be more and more opaque until it meets seamlessly with the rest of his natural body. There's not even any blood vessels anymore, or ligaments, or tendons, or muscle. As he gawks at it he tries to move his hand and fingers, finding it to be no different than before. His arm moves with his intent like before as if nothing happened to it, like it wasn't a crystal.
“My god! What the fuck happened to my arm!” he reaches out with his left hand and feels the crystal. It feels as glassy and smooth as one would expect a gem to feel and there is an unsettling warmth to it he notices that he would expect from a normal arm. One not made of crystal. That is also when he feels the pulse. It's not like on a normal arm where you would feel it at the inside of the elbow or at the wrist, but the whole thing pulses with his increasingly accelerated heart rate. He falls back on his ass and just stares at his arm in silence for a while, contemplating and trying to make sense of all that has happened.
I told you, you should have sat down for this. Take deep brea-
“Who the fuck are you?! What have you done to me?!”
Vic is glaring at his arm while he yells at the voice as if to center his ire. His mind is reeling from the sight of his arm and he can’t bring himself to do more than stare and wait for the voice’s response. He didn’t wait long.
I do not have a name yet, I was created when the bond was accepted. You accepted the bond and so you were rebuilt during the fusion between us. I would apologize, but it is not my fault. Please don’t put this on me. You need to bring your heart rate down, it’s getting dangerous and you might have a heart attack if you do not calm down.
As the voice was speaking , Vic was only half listening. He was trying to figure out where the voice was coming from. As far as he could tell it was coming from in his mind, but he felt like there was also a tangible connection to the tattoo on his arm as well. He didn’t know what to make of that and continued on listening to the voice before he spoke up.
“So, what? I’m half human and half alien magic crystal now? What the hell even is a bond? How can you expect me to calm down when I'm having the most insane day of my fucking life! Literally nothing has made sense at all! I was fishing! And now I’m god-knows where, talking to my sentient crystal arm, in front of a magic CRYSTAL TREE, on a fucking PYRAMID, in the jungle on a entirely DIFFERENT PLANET!”
All of Vic’s anger and fear fall away with the last breath of the rant and he falls to his back and turns away from his arm so as to give himself some space to breath and not spiral into bitter inept anger again.
“Don’t answer any of that yet, I just want quiet to think this over. Please.”
Vic lays on the stone of the pyramid and thinks about his parents and friends from back home, wondering if they know what happened. Do they even know he’s gone? How long has it been? He wishes he could go back. Everything that’s happened to him since the semi truck has been too much for him to handle, and he begins to feel tired after having a second to not panic. He looks up into the sky and watches as the sparse clouds pass through the purple-ish sky, up into the rings of the planet orbiting and catching the shadow of the planet off on one of the horizons. As he takes it all in a deep bone weary tiredness settles into him and he falls asleep under the alien sky.
I am sorry Victor, but there will be many more surprises in the future and you will need to toughen up for the task ahead.
