Part Forty Two: Loose Ends

	When the scroll had finished its work, Caleb suddenly found himself to be back in the castle again. Before him was the same massive stone door that had needed him to input all of those keys just a short while before, the otherworldly gateway still suspended and billowing its way merrily in front of him. All of the bile and distaste that it had produced in him before once again boiled back up to the surface, now being mixed with the gunslinger's present feelings of both defeat and regret. He may not have had things go his way, but he would be damned if he was going to let this abomination continue to pervert the border between the living and the dead. It just seemed wrong somehow, as if something inside of himself was now being forced to cry out for order and proper universal delineation.

	Caleb then felt a different kind of feeling build inside of him, his feet suddenly rising slowly from the ground as his arms outstretched wide on either side of him. Ancient and powerful magics he did not know he could control or even understand began to be set forth from him, holding together and binding the portal between the two worlds closed as if the work were being done by the force of two massive restraining hands crushing in the centre of a tube. When this processes was finally finished nothing remained but a long and perilous drop in the room where the gateway once lay, and Caleb was once again placed gently back on his feet as the magics within him subsided. He had just gone through two strange and powerful experiences, and did not really know what to make of either of them.

	The old gunslinger stopped to take a moment to examine himself, and found to his surprise that he was in fact no longer quite as old anymore. His once gnarled hands were now made smooth, his decayed and desiccated remains given new form and texture by the scroll's regenerative effect. His eyes still glowed red with the fire of the bloodlust; there were some things that death had not been responsible for taking from him. Even with all that being accepted though, he was still far more human now than he had been for a very long time. It really was a strange way for the gunfighter to end his long and perilous journey. Caleb had set off in the hope of bringing his comrades and his lover back to him, but had ended up bringing back himself instead.

	The castle was empty now. Johnny had evidently finished what Caleb had started, leaving the gunfighter alone with the dead. He no longer needed to count himself as being among their number. Outside lay the mighty and perilous mountains where monsters like the now free gargoyles roamed; he no longer needed to throw his lot in with them as well. No matter his faults, no matter the terrors he was still going to inflict, no matter how much he was still tempted to revel in his inhumanity, the gunslinger's life had been given back to him. He was still human, and as long as he still had that, he could persevere, and find a way to give what he found back to others. Even if it meant taking the life of hundreds just to grant it to his chosen few, he would find a way.

	Having come back to the castle entrance, the same song returned to the gunfighters lip's. "Don't the sun look angry through the trees. Don't the trees look like crucified thieves. Don't you feel like desperadoes under the eaves, heaven help the one who leaves. Still waking up in the mornings with shaking hands." Looking around, he realized that a new dawn had in fact arrived during all of the time he had spent inside, bright orange light becoming just visible over the tree line. "Don't the sun look angry at me" he added, staring down the morn. He did not need its approval. He could still take care of himself. Caleb then set off to return back to the boat docks where his adventure had begun, ready to resume his dark journey afresh.

Hamish Paul Wilson
December 21, 2014