POV: wayne
Summary
Wayne floats. Floats high, in the dark, with what is unmistakably the planet itself beneath him — a sphere, as everyone always said it was, much to his disappointment. He'd hoped for a doughnut. He leans forward and feels he ought to fall and does not, which is woozy and unsteady in a familiar way. Whatever death is, it turns out to be a great deal like being drunk. He could, he thinks, get a whole holy book out of that.
A figure floats beside him — vast, robed in shifting colour, expanding into the dark on all sides, but at its core the bald kindly Terrisman he already knows. *Hey, God,* Wayne says. *How's, um, creation. Time and space. Things.* *Good,* Harmony answers. *Because of you.* Wayne makes sure of the next thing: he isn't going to be stuck as a ghost, is he? No. He was Invested when he died, so he will persist a little while, then pass into the Beyond. *Good, good,* says Wayne, comfortably. He has already done the part he was afraid would hurt.
He stares down at the planet and the size of it. Harmony starts a gentle little speech about how a person might feel small in the face of so much, and how that is —. *And I saved the whole damn thing!* Wayne grins. Harmony pauses, allows it, then notes that there was some help from Marasi and Waxillium. Harmony gestures away from the world: a red haze is funnelling outward into the dark, vanishing into the distance. Wayne feels an angry, begrudging respect coming off it. Autonomy has pulled her hand off this world. Her avatar was beaten; Marasi was quick to collapse the portal up from below; Harmony thinks she overextended trying to bring him down quickly, and that the Set's collapse is an enormous setback for her. For now. He admits to being *nervous,* not afraid — he can see pieces moving in the cosmere, aligning, pointed at this world. The Basin is not free of their influence. But it has, thanks to Wayne, time to prepare.
Wayne is mostly basking. He has, he repeats, saved the whole rusting world; he is plainly the best constable the planet has ever produced. Harmony starts, very politely, to point out that Vin and Elend and certain others weren't constables, so the comparison —. Wayne runs right over him. Wax never saved the whole world. Most of the rest of the octant constabulary couldn't save a free-beer coupon if he hand-delivered it. As for that long-legged kandra; that, he tells the unbothered air, is what is meant by *eat it.*
He feels something then — a stretching, a being-pulled-somewhere warm. Harmony tells him, gently, that he has a single last question if he wants one. Mortals sometimes do, before they go. Wayne ponders. He starts to ask about MeLaan's parting compliment. Harmony cuts him off by quoting Ranette at him — the rule about not spoiling perfectly good moments with that kind of question. *Right, right,* Wayne concedes, and considers harder. He decides not to spend his question on the safety of Wax and the others — Harmony has promised, Harmony will deliver, and Wayne is not going to be tricked into wasting the question on something already settled. He has, he tells God, a better one.
He points at Harmony and asks whether what he just did was, in fact, the largest single blast ever produced by a person on this world.
Harmony raises an eyebrow — that is the last question of his mortal life? — and answers in the spirit of the occasion. Most things that could conceivably rival it, like the detonations of the Ashmounts, are acts of God and exempt. So he declares it: yes, Wayne has produced the largest explosion by a mortal in this world's history. Wayne grins. Tell Steris in particular, he says — she has been complaining about the things he blows up for years; this time he saved her hide by doing it; and the punchline that will properly break her is that he made the explosion *smaller* and it was still the biggest there ever was.
The stretching gets stronger. He reaches out a hand. Harmony — smiling — shakes it. He had a feeling, Wayne tells him with a wink, that God would have a bit of a glow on him. Then the warm pulling takes him — out of place and out of time, out into wind and stars and the rest of the long endlessness beyond.