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fictionalized2013-03-29 12:20 am
acperience) wrote in fictionalized2013-03-29 12:20 am
Entry tags:
fanfic; the last act
Title: The Last Act
Series: The Legend of the Legendary Heroes
Character(s): Various.
Warnings: Death and blood.
Summary: In the end, it was all too late.
Notes: AU-ish since I highly doubt this is actually how the series will end. Also, I am not nearly creative enough to think of scenarios for everyone, hence why some characters don't get scenes, whoops.
—
The Last Act
—
There must have been something he could’ve done to prevent this. If perhaps he’d killed Sion and Ryner back then, if he’d made a different move—that’s all Luke can think as he tightens his hold on the Latsel thread, as the only thing keeping the building from collapsing on them.
In the corner, Moe and Lach are huddled, clearly trying not to cry. Kneeling by them is Lear, murmuring what seem to be reassuring words to them, if his gentle—forced—smile is any indication. It doesn’t seem to be helping, to no one’s surprise. No matter how hard one tries, the gravity of their situation is evident to all of them. Being trapped like this and close to death is the least of their worries, though Luke supposes that there’s no point in even worrying anymore.
He must’ve done something wrong, if this is the final result of everything. With the cursed circle on his brain, he should’ve thought of a solution. He doesn’t want to consider the possibility that if even his mind couldn’t solve this, there was never an answer to begin with. There had to have been a solution, even if one he couldn’t find in time.
If there wasn’t an answer this time, there might never be one.
“There must be something I could do,” Milk says, crouching down near him, tears streaming from her eyes. She stands up, fists clenched. “Right, Luke? There has to be something I can do to stop this. I’m a Goddess, aren’t I? So—”
“Captain Milk,” he says softly, interrupting her. He’d reach out for her and put a hand on her shoulder and tell her that everything will be fine—but his hands are busy with trying to delay their deaths for as long as he can, and he knows that she doesn’t want to hear any more false reassurances.
And so, he gives her the truth.
“No. There’s nothing you can do.”
“But—”
He smiles sadly, and says what none of them want to hear but they all know—
“There’s nothing anyone can do anymore. This world is ending.”
—
“Hey, Claugh-senpai,” Calne muses, smiling mirthlessly. “Fiole would probably be pretty mad at us up in heaven, wouldn’t he?”
“Ah?” Claugh turns towards him, with red hair and matching red eyes—but a shade lighter than the blood splattered around them.
—And a shade lighter than the blood that trickles between Calne’s fingers, as it flows from the body he holds in his arms. His expression tight and his eyes possessing a certain sharpness that’s never suited him, he looks down at Eslina’s bleeding corpse, as he continues to smile.
(Really, he’s the worst, for being able to smile when the girl he loved just died.)
“Well, I mean, we couldn’t protect Eslina,” he says quietly, stroking the girl’s hair. “Wouldn’t he be mad at us, for letting his baby sister die?”
He glances at Claugh quickly enough to catch the other man’s shrug, his tenseness betraying his true feelings in spite of his nonchalant air. “Well, Fiole wasn’t really the kind of guy who would blame others for that.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he says, before pausing. “… Wow. Claugh-senpai being right—that’s a first.”
“Huh!? Are you trying to pick a fight?” Claugh holds up his fist—his black fist that marked him as the death god of Roland. It all seems like a joke now, to Calne, because compared to all this, Claugh is no death god.
Calne laughs—a laugh as mirthless as his smile. “No, let’s not. Not this time…”
Not this time.
—Even though they both know there will never be a ‘next time’.
—
From an outside perspective, it might look like a victory. The Goddesses on their end are dead, at the cost of using Glouvil again and countless dead. Those are small sacrifices to pay, though, considering the bloody path they’ve walked to get here (to get to nowhere in the end, it seems). No, the problem here isn’t a matter of the sacrifices made.
The issue at hand is the number of Goddesses across the world, with far too many for them to kill within the time limit hanging over the head, and the act of killing the gods still out of their reach. It’s as he said once before: they truly were born into the worst generation—the generation in which the world is reset yet again.
They fought and fought, and it all came down to this.
Nothing.
“Well, since this’ll be the last time we all see each other,” Sui says, leaning against Kuu, who’s holding onto him tightly and pretending that she isn’t. They’d all debated earlier the merits of knocking her unconscious, so that she wouldn’t have to see the end of everything, but her loud protest put a swift end to that. “We might as well share all our sordid secrets with each other, don’t you think?”
“Please,” Lize says. “I already know all of Riphal’s secrets.”
“What are you, my mom?” Riphal says, shooting him a glare.
“No, that would be Lir, wouldn’t it?”
Lir lets out a derisive snort at the same time that Kuu proclaims:
“You guys are weird.” She sighs. “It’s probably for the better that I never got to marry. My husband probably would’ve been as weird as you all.”
They all laugh lightly at that, before a heavy silence falls over them. It doesn’t take a genius (and Riphal has never pretended to be one) to know that they’re all thinking the same thing. Of Kuu’s future—of all their futures, that will never be. While Riphal has never truly expected to survive to the end, not long as he had to sacrifice his body to Glouvil, he never wanted things to end like this.
At the very least, he would’ve wished for his friends—his family—to make it. Ultimately, though, it seems that even that wish was too much to ask for.
And so, he finally breaks the silence. “… Guys, I’m so—”
Lir cuts him off. “Don’t apologize. This isn’t your fault.”
“He’s right,” Sui says, nodding. “We were all in this together. Any victory was shared between us, and if we lose… well, then we all lose together. You’re not alone in the responsibility.”
“In other words,” Lir says, “shut up and share a secret already.”
Riphal laughs, slapping Lir on the shoulder. “As if.”
He’s silent for a few moments, staring at the friends of his companions who stood by him all this time—who’ve never blamed him for anything, even though it’s all ended in failure like this. After sacrificing their friends and family, after killing and killing and killing—and in the end, it was all for nothing. They fought the most futile war in history and slaughtered millions in the name of a dream that never came to be.
In a way, they’re the greatest fools that ever lived, and he’s the one who dragged them down with him.
Honestly, he’s still not sure what he did to deserve friends like them. And yet, for all his regrets—
“I’m glad,” he says. They all look at him, surprise written all over his faces. He smiles back, glad not for the first time that he didn’t sacrifice his other eye, for if nothing else, he wanted to be able to see his friends again before he died.
“What? What I mean is…”
He laughs quietly, shrugging.
“If this really is the end, then I’m glad that at least I’m with you guys.”
—
He throws a Rule Fragment, watching as lights dance across the sky, wiping out as many Goddesses as it can.
It’s funny, he thinks, how beautiful destruction can be. If he were an artist, he might choose to wax poetry over that, but he’s a swindler and no artist, and so he doesn’t. Instead, he smiles wryly, as he prepares his next attack. In spite of his efforts, though, he knows that this is all pointless—and he always did hate doing pointless things, but somehow, sitting still doesn’t feel right.
“Ah, when did I become such a fool?” he says, his tone light, before he shrugs and invokes the next Rule Fragment, watching again as Goddesses die. He watches as they die, along with the number of humans the attack kills—some of them undoubtedly his allies, but it hardly matters to him. It was no concern to him before, and that’s hardly about to change now, of all times. Some would choose to be sentimental and have a change of heart when the world’s about to end; as for Vois, he can’t bring himself to care either way.
“Vois-sama isn’t foolish,” a voice says from behind him. His smile never faltering, Vois turns around.
“Well, even if I were, it’s not like anyone’s around to see me be foolish but you, Relca,” he says. “And you’re not going to tell anyone, are you? Though it’s not like there are people to tell.”
He turns around again, gazing at the corpses around them. “I miscalculated, though. In the end, I’ve lost. Ahh, my family would be so ashamed of me. I’ve failed the Fiurelle name! How horri—ble of me. Then again, they’re likely all dead by now, so it doesn’t matter.”
He glances at Relca, who stares at him with a sad expression. “Hey, Relca, it looks like we didn’t get to drink from the soup after all, huh?”
Her expression tightens as she looks away. “I… I would’ve at least wished for Vois-sama to be able to…”
“Oh, are you confessing to me?”
“…”
The redness in her face—and it really is funny, that she would even bother to be embarrassed under these circumstances—gives it away, though. Vois laughs, as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
“Well, if I’m being confessed to by a cute girl like Relca,” he says as he prepares his next attack, “I guess it’s not too bad of an end.”
—
“That was my kill, stupid brat!”
“No, it was mine! I think you need to get your eyes checked—and can’t you even call me by my name now?”
“Says the blind guy! And shut up!”
It’s almost ridiculous, Pia thinks, how utterly normal everything feels. If she were to close her eyes, she could imagine that they were up against soldiers and the grotesque forms of the Goddesses, that surrounding them is the average number of corpses and not more than the eye can see—that this is simply another one of Peria and Zohra’s fights, and not the last one that they’ll ever have. There’s a reason she’s not putting an end to their fight, after all. It’d be almost cruel to.
However, delusions are hardly becoming at this moment, and so Pia is all too aware of reality and the sight that’s befitting of what can only be called the end of the world. The landscape around them is bleak, devoid of any of the beauty that Pia loved and wished to possess of this world, as if it were hell on earth.
Or rather, almost devoid.
There’s still something ‘beautiful’ here—two of them, in fact.
Even when covered in blood and hiding the exhaustion that Pia can still pick up on, Zohra’s eyes are as fierce as they were when she first met him, over ten years ago. His passion as he casts Fuen, his pride and joy—and she can still remember how happy he was when he showed it off to her, after the effort he put into constructing it.
And Peria, with his blond hair and red cape flying from behind like flames as he moves, slicing through his opponent. In spite of their bickering, he moves soundlessly by Zohra, watching his back with eyes that can no longer see.
They’re her closest confidants, her right-hand men, her best friends, the people she loves. There’s no one else she’d rather be fighting with, right here and now, and no one else she’d rather die with.
“All right, all right, you two,” she says, clapping her hands together once the area is free of Goddesses. “Come here. Now.”
“Yes!” They rush over to her without a moment’s hesitation, which she can’t help but smile at. Once they reach her side, she gives them another order.
“Now, bend down. You’re both too tall.”
“… You’re not going to mess up my hair, are you?” Peria asks.
“Are you questioning me?”
“Eh—no!”
“Then do as I say.”
“All right…” Peria crouches down, though as a punishment for his hesitation, Pia goes to Zohra first, who’s already bent down. He’s a bit too low, though, as he’s practically bowing to her, and so she’s forced to lean down as well, as she gives him a kiss on the cheek.
“Ah—!”
“For Zohra, who betrayed a country for me,” Pia says, smiling as she straightens her back. Zohra’s face is almost as red as his uniform now, as a wide smile spreads across his face. She then turns to Peria, who can’t quite hide the anticipation in his face. She almost considers teasing him, just for that, but figures now isn’t the time for that.
And so, standing slightly on her tiptoes—for he’s still a bit too tall—she kisses his cheek as well.
“For Peria, who’s always stood by me ever since we were children.”
With one arm, she reaches over to Zohra, who’s now seething with jealousy, and wraps her other arm around Peria’s neck as she brings them both into a hug. She ruffles the spikes in Zohra’s hair with the hand by him, before ruffling Peria’s hair with her other hand, eliciting a sound of protest that she ignores.
Now, with the two people she trusts most in the world—there’s nothing left to do but wait.
—
Blood seeps from his wounds, dyeing the ground beneath him a deep red as he walks. Between the weight on his back, arms loosely hung across his shoulders, and the blood loss, he’s finding it increasingly difficult to take each step—and yet he continues. Everything is silent, save for the breathing of the girl he carries and the sound of his own breaths, heavy as he struggles to take in the air to give him some semblance of strength. With each breath, though, his chest hurts—a dull, throbbing pain—and the hazy feeling in his head grows.
Dimly, it occurs to him that he’s dying.
His vision blacks out for a moment, as his knees nearly collapse beneath him, but he manages to remain standing. Stepping over a fallen body, he treads into a pool of blood, further dirtying his shoes. He pays it no heed, however; he’s already stained in blood that will never come out. Either way, it’s impossible to avoid stepping into such pools, considering that blood covers the ground, creating a canvas of red that his own mixes in with. Corpses litter the area as well—of the Goddesses, of strangers, of allies, and of his family. A part of him wants so badly to cry, but his tears were spent a long time ago. Now, there’s nothing left but the hollow feeling of despair in his chest, tightening around his heart as he continues walking.
He coughs up blood, unable to cover his mouth with his hand, as both his arms are occupied with holding his unconscious companion on his back. Summoning up what little energy he has left, he all but drags his feet in his attempt to keep walking. Truth be told, he doesn’t know why he’s doing, when he already knows that he’ll find nothing.
This is already a city of the dead, and a world with little time remaining. There’s nothing left anymore.
In the end, they truly couldn’t accomplish anything.
Worthless.
He lets out a weak laugh, as finally his strength leaves him and he collapses onto his knees. He feels a mass of warmth—the only warmth left to him in this damn world—shift behind him, as his partner awakens.
“Tiir…?” Ene says, her groggy voice indicating her half-awake state. At that, Tiir turns his head slightly and smiles—a sad, broken smile that he’s glad that she can barely see, as he doesn’t have it in him to put more life into it.
“It’s all right,” he says, even though he knows it’s a lie (for what do virtues mean now?).
Surrounded by the dead—by broken promises and empty dreams—he knows that nothing is all right.
—
“Looks like this is it,” Ryner murmurs, leaning against the academy balcony, where Sion offered him his hand so many years ago. Not for the first time, he wonders if he could’ve changed things, if he’d taken his hand back then—if he’d changed sooner, if he might’ve been able to stop all of this.
“… Yeah,” Sion says, staring out at the landscape before him—the ruins of his country that he tried so hard to protect. “Looks like it.”
The land is painted red, in blood and in the glow the sunset casts. It’s the last sunset they’ll ever see, Ryner knows. The stench of death is heavy—one that’s all too familiar to him—in the air, though it’s just as well that they’ve gone past the point of hearing the people’s screams. That was by far the worst of it, having to hear the people they couldn’t save.
Ferris makes a non-committal noise. “Mmm.”
“We couldn’t do it.”
“Yeah.”
“Damn it,” Ryner says, though his voice lacks any real venom. He’s too tired, far too tired by this point. “This sucks. This seriously sucks.”
Sion lets out a weak laugh. “Somehow, I don’t think that quite covers it.”
“This seriously, seriously sucks.”
“For once, I feel obliged to agree with you,” Ferris says. Though her voice is calm, Ryner can feel the tension in her body and see the way she fiddles with the hilt of her sword.
She wanted to live.
So did Sion.
Even Ryner himself—who believed for so long that he should die—wanted to live. He wanted to see the world change. He wanted to create the world that Sion promised him, that he promised Tiir, that Lafra asked of him. A world where no one had to cry, a world where no one had to lose anyone, a world where everyone could just eat dango and take afternoon naps all the time—he wanted so badly to make that world a reality.
—And yet the world hands out that sorrow for no reason, laughing all the way.
It turned out to be an impossible dream, after all.
For this era, at least.
“… This is one hell of a torch we’re passing onto our next selves, huh?” he says, standing up. Ferris follows suit, as Sion smiles wryly.
The wishes of thousands of millions of past lives, the burden that’s been carried for countless millennia beyond human comprehension—that’s what they’re passing on. It was something they themselves could barely shoulder, and yet, selfishly—
“It is,” he agrees. “But it can’t be helped. This curse has to end sometime, even if not with us.”
—Selfishly, they have to keep asking this.
Save this world.
Don’t let it end in this despair.
Don’t suffer the same fate we did.
End this, once and for all—this play that the gods have written.
“… It really would’ve been nice,” Ryner mutters, “if it could’ve ended with us.”
But it didn’t, and so they have no choice but to pass the burden on.
With that, he feels a shift—with that, his existence begins to disappear. No, not just his, but Ferris and Sion’s as well.
Their lives are coming to an end. This world is set to disappear. To be reset and reborn, and so this curse will continue.
This curse that damned them each time before and yet again won over them.
“… This is really it, then.”
“Yeah,” Sion replies. “Until we meet again, at least.”
“And we will,” Ferris says. “If there’s a single upside to this curse, it’s that.”
“Right,” Ryner says, nodding. “In that case, I have something to say for the future Sion: when you look through your memories and see this, try not kill the next me, all right?”
Sion laughs, before shaking his head. “I suppose that’s an important message to leave.”
Ryner laughs back, before wiping away at the tears that start to form at his eyes. It’s not so bad, he thinks, to be able to die laughing and smiling like this, with his friends.
If nothing else, he’s not alone, and that’s more than he could have ever asked for.
“Then, see you two,” he says, holding up a hand in a wave. Ferris nods.
“See you.”
“Yeah. See you,” Sion says. “Until next time.”
Next time—
“Next time,” Ryner says, “We’ll definitely—”
But he never finishes, as their existences fade completely—and like that, the world disappears. Suddenly, and yet with far too much warning, as they stood and watched their dreams fall to pieces. As everyone suffered for too long but lived for too little, the world disappears.
It ends not with a bang or a whisper, but an unspoken promise.
Next time, we’ll definitely create the world we wanted to see.
Series: The Legend of the Legendary Heroes
Character(s): Various.
Warnings: Death and blood.
Summary: In the end, it was all too late.
Notes: AU-ish since I highly doubt this is actually how the series will end. Also, I am not nearly creative enough to think of scenarios for everyone, hence why some characters don't get scenes, whoops.
There must have been something he could’ve done to prevent this. If perhaps he’d killed Sion and Ryner back then, if he’d made a different move—that’s all Luke can think as he tightens his hold on the Latsel thread, as the only thing keeping the building from collapsing on them.
In the corner, Moe and Lach are huddled, clearly trying not to cry. Kneeling by them is Lear, murmuring what seem to be reassuring words to them, if his gentle—forced—smile is any indication. It doesn’t seem to be helping, to no one’s surprise. No matter how hard one tries, the gravity of their situation is evident to all of them. Being trapped like this and close to death is the least of their worries, though Luke supposes that there’s no point in even worrying anymore.
He must’ve done something wrong, if this is the final result of everything. With the cursed circle on his brain, he should’ve thought of a solution. He doesn’t want to consider the possibility that if even his mind couldn’t solve this, there was never an answer to begin with. There had to have been a solution, even if one he couldn’t find in time.
If there wasn’t an answer this time, there might never be one.
“There must be something I could do,” Milk says, crouching down near him, tears streaming from her eyes. She stands up, fists clenched. “Right, Luke? There has to be something I can do to stop this. I’m a Goddess, aren’t I? So—”
“Captain Milk,” he says softly, interrupting her. He’d reach out for her and put a hand on her shoulder and tell her that everything will be fine—but his hands are busy with trying to delay their deaths for as long as he can, and he knows that she doesn’t want to hear any more false reassurances.
And so, he gives her the truth.
“No. There’s nothing you can do.”
“But—”
He smiles sadly, and says what none of them want to hear but they all know—
“There’s nothing anyone can do anymore. This world is ending.”
“Hey, Claugh-senpai,” Calne muses, smiling mirthlessly. “Fiole would probably be pretty mad at us up in heaven, wouldn’t he?”
“Ah?” Claugh turns towards him, with red hair and matching red eyes—but a shade lighter than the blood splattered around them.
—And a shade lighter than the blood that trickles between Calne’s fingers, as it flows from the body he holds in his arms. His expression tight and his eyes possessing a certain sharpness that’s never suited him, he looks down at Eslina’s bleeding corpse, as he continues to smile.
(Really, he’s the worst, for being able to smile when the girl he loved just died.)
“Well, I mean, we couldn’t protect Eslina,” he says quietly, stroking the girl’s hair. “Wouldn’t he be mad at us, for letting his baby sister die?”
He glances at Claugh quickly enough to catch the other man’s shrug, his tenseness betraying his true feelings in spite of his nonchalant air. “Well, Fiole wasn’t really the kind of guy who would blame others for that.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he says, before pausing. “… Wow. Claugh-senpai being right—that’s a first.”
“Huh!? Are you trying to pick a fight?” Claugh holds up his fist—his black fist that marked him as the death god of Roland. It all seems like a joke now, to Calne, because compared to all this, Claugh is no death god.
Calne laughs—a laugh as mirthless as his smile. “No, let’s not. Not this time…”
Not this time.
—Even though they both know there will never be a ‘next time’.
From an outside perspective, it might look like a victory. The Goddesses on their end are dead, at the cost of using Glouvil again and countless dead. Those are small sacrifices to pay, though, considering the bloody path they’ve walked to get here (to get to nowhere in the end, it seems). No, the problem here isn’t a matter of the sacrifices made.
The issue at hand is the number of Goddesses across the world, with far too many for them to kill within the time limit hanging over the head, and the act of killing the gods still out of their reach. It’s as he said once before: they truly were born into the worst generation—the generation in which the world is reset yet again.
They fought and fought, and it all came down to this.
Nothing.
“Well, since this’ll be the last time we all see each other,” Sui says, leaning against Kuu, who’s holding onto him tightly and pretending that she isn’t. They’d all debated earlier the merits of knocking her unconscious, so that she wouldn’t have to see the end of everything, but her loud protest put a swift end to that. “We might as well share all our sordid secrets with each other, don’t you think?”
“Please,” Lize says. “I already know all of Riphal’s secrets.”
“What are you, my mom?” Riphal says, shooting him a glare.
“No, that would be Lir, wouldn’t it?”
Lir lets out a derisive snort at the same time that Kuu proclaims:
“You guys are weird.” She sighs. “It’s probably for the better that I never got to marry. My husband probably would’ve been as weird as you all.”
They all laugh lightly at that, before a heavy silence falls over them. It doesn’t take a genius (and Riphal has never pretended to be one) to know that they’re all thinking the same thing. Of Kuu’s future—of all their futures, that will never be. While Riphal has never truly expected to survive to the end, not long as he had to sacrifice his body to Glouvil, he never wanted things to end like this.
At the very least, he would’ve wished for his friends—his family—to make it. Ultimately, though, it seems that even that wish was too much to ask for.
And so, he finally breaks the silence. “… Guys, I’m so—”
Lir cuts him off. “Don’t apologize. This isn’t your fault.”
“He’s right,” Sui says, nodding. “We were all in this together. Any victory was shared between us, and if we lose… well, then we all lose together. You’re not alone in the responsibility.”
“In other words,” Lir says, “shut up and share a secret already.”
Riphal laughs, slapping Lir on the shoulder. “As if.”
He’s silent for a few moments, staring at the friends of his companions who stood by him all this time—who’ve never blamed him for anything, even though it’s all ended in failure like this. After sacrificing their friends and family, after killing and killing and killing—and in the end, it was all for nothing. They fought the most futile war in history and slaughtered millions in the name of a dream that never came to be.
In a way, they’re the greatest fools that ever lived, and he’s the one who dragged them down with him.
Honestly, he’s still not sure what he did to deserve friends like them. And yet, for all his regrets—
“I’m glad,” he says. They all look at him, surprise written all over his faces. He smiles back, glad not for the first time that he didn’t sacrifice his other eye, for if nothing else, he wanted to be able to see his friends again before he died.
“What? What I mean is…”
He laughs quietly, shrugging.
“If this really is the end, then I’m glad that at least I’m with you guys.”
He throws a Rule Fragment, watching as lights dance across the sky, wiping out as many Goddesses as it can.
It’s funny, he thinks, how beautiful destruction can be. If he were an artist, he might choose to wax poetry over that, but he’s a swindler and no artist, and so he doesn’t. Instead, he smiles wryly, as he prepares his next attack. In spite of his efforts, though, he knows that this is all pointless—and he always did hate doing pointless things, but somehow, sitting still doesn’t feel right.
“Ah, when did I become such a fool?” he says, his tone light, before he shrugs and invokes the next Rule Fragment, watching again as Goddesses die. He watches as they die, along with the number of humans the attack kills—some of them undoubtedly his allies, but it hardly matters to him. It was no concern to him before, and that’s hardly about to change now, of all times. Some would choose to be sentimental and have a change of heart when the world’s about to end; as for Vois, he can’t bring himself to care either way.
“Vois-sama isn’t foolish,” a voice says from behind him. His smile never faltering, Vois turns around.
“Well, even if I were, it’s not like anyone’s around to see me be foolish but you, Relca,” he says. “And you’re not going to tell anyone, are you? Though it’s not like there are people to tell.”
He turns around again, gazing at the corpses around them. “I miscalculated, though. In the end, I’ve lost. Ahh, my family would be so ashamed of me. I’ve failed the Fiurelle name! How horri—ble of me. Then again, they’re likely all dead by now, so it doesn’t matter.”
He glances at Relca, who stares at him with a sad expression. “Hey, Relca, it looks like we didn’t get to drink from the soup after all, huh?”
Her expression tightens as she looks away. “I… I would’ve at least wished for Vois-sama to be able to…”
“Oh, are you confessing to me?”
“…”
The redness in her face—and it really is funny, that she would even bother to be embarrassed under these circumstances—gives it away, though. Vois laughs, as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
“Well, if I’m being confessed to by a cute girl like Relca,” he says as he prepares his next attack, “I guess it’s not too bad of an end.”
“That was my kill, stupid brat!”
“No, it was mine! I think you need to get your eyes checked—and can’t you even call me by my name now?”
“Says the blind guy! And shut up!”
It’s almost ridiculous, Pia thinks, how utterly normal everything feels. If she were to close her eyes, she could imagine that they were up against soldiers and the grotesque forms of the Goddesses, that surrounding them is the average number of corpses and not more than the eye can see—that this is simply another one of Peria and Zohra’s fights, and not the last one that they’ll ever have. There’s a reason she’s not putting an end to their fight, after all. It’d be almost cruel to.
However, delusions are hardly becoming at this moment, and so Pia is all too aware of reality and the sight that’s befitting of what can only be called the end of the world. The landscape around them is bleak, devoid of any of the beauty that Pia loved and wished to possess of this world, as if it were hell on earth.
Or rather, almost devoid.
There’s still something ‘beautiful’ here—two of them, in fact.
Even when covered in blood and hiding the exhaustion that Pia can still pick up on, Zohra’s eyes are as fierce as they were when she first met him, over ten years ago. His passion as he casts Fuen, his pride and joy—and she can still remember how happy he was when he showed it off to her, after the effort he put into constructing it.
And Peria, with his blond hair and red cape flying from behind like flames as he moves, slicing through his opponent. In spite of their bickering, he moves soundlessly by Zohra, watching his back with eyes that can no longer see.
They’re her closest confidants, her right-hand men, her best friends, the people she loves. There’s no one else she’d rather be fighting with, right here and now, and no one else she’d rather die with.
“All right, all right, you two,” she says, clapping her hands together once the area is free of Goddesses. “Come here. Now.”
“Yes!” They rush over to her without a moment’s hesitation, which she can’t help but smile at. Once they reach her side, she gives them another order.
“Now, bend down. You’re both too tall.”
“… You’re not going to mess up my hair, are you?” Peria asks.
“Are you questioning me?”
“Eh—no!”
“Then do as I say.”
“All right…” Peria crouches down, though as a punishment for his hesitation, Pia goes to Zohra first, who’s already bent down. He’s a bit too low, though, as he’s practically bowing to her, and so she’s forced to lean down as well, as she gives him a kiss on the cheek.
“Ah—!”
“For Zohra, who betrayed a country for me,” Pia says, smiling as she straightens her back. Zohra’s face is almost as red as his uniform now, as a wide smile spreads across his face. She then turns to Peria, who can’t quite hide the anticipation in his face. She almost considers teasing him, just for that, but figures now isn’t the time for that.
And so, standing slightly on her tiptoes—for he’s still a bit too tall—she kisses his cheek as well.
“For Peria, who’s always stood by me ever since we were children.”
With one arm, she reaches over to Zohra, who’s now seething with jealousy, and wraps her other arm around Peria’s neck as she brings them both into a hug. She ruffles the spikes in Zohra’s hair with the hand by him, before ruffling Peria’s hair with her other hand, eliciting a sound of protest that she ignores.
Now, with the two people she trusts most in the world—there’s nothing left to do but wait.
Blood seeps from his wounds, dyeing the ground beneath him a deep red as he walks. Between the weight on his back, arms loosely hung across his shoulders, and the blood loss, he’s finding it increasingly difficult to take each step—and yet he continues. Everything is silent, save for the breathing of the girl he carries and the sound of his own breaths, heavy as he struggles to take in the air to give him some semblance of strength. With each breath, though, his chest hurts—a dull, throbbing pain—and the hazy feeling in his head grows.
Dimly, it occurs to him that he’s dying.
His vision blacks out for a moment, as his knees nearly collapse beneath him, but he manages to remain standing. Stepping over a fallen body, he treads into a pool of blood, further dirtying his shoes. He pays it no heed, however; he’s already stained in blood that will never come out. Either way, it’s impossible to avoid stepping into such pools, considering that blood covers the ground, creating a canvas of red that his own mixes in with. Corpses litter the area as well—of the Goddesses, of strangers, of allies, and of his family. A part of him wants so badly to cry, but his tears were spent a long time ago. Now, there’s nothing left but the hollow feeling of despair in his chest, tightening around his heart as he continues walking.
He coughs up blood, unable to cover his mouth with his hand, as both his arms are occupied with holding his unconscious companion on his back. Summoning up what little energy he has left, he all but drags his feet in his attempt to keep walking. Truth be told, he doesn’t know why he’s doing, when he already knows that he’ll find nothing.
This is already a city of the dead, and a world with little time remaining. There’s nothing left anymore.
In the end, they truly couldn’t accomplish anything.
Worthless.
He lets out a weak laugh, as finally his strength leaves him and he collapses onto his knees. He feels a mass of warmth—the only warmth left to him in this damn world—shift behind him, as his partner awakens.
“Tiir…?” Ene says, her groggy voice indicating her half-awake state. At that, Tiir turns his head slightly and smiles—a sad, broken smile that he’s glad that she can barely see, as he doesn’t have it in him to put more life into it.
“It’s all right,” he says, even though he knows it’s a lie (for what do virtues mean now?).
Surrounded by the dead—by broken promises and empty dreams—he knows that nothing is all right.
“Looks like this is it,” Ryner murmurs, leaning against the academy balcony, where Sion offered him his hand so many years ago. Not for the first time, he wonders if he could’ve changed things, if he’d taken his hand back then—if he’d changed sooner, if he might’ve been able to stop all of this.
“… Yeah,” Sion says, staring out at the landscape before him—the ruins of his country that he tried so hard to protect. “Looks like it.”
The land is painted red, in blood and in the glow the sunset casts. It’s the last sunset they’ll ever see, Ryner knows. The stench of death is heavy—one that’s all too familiar to him—in the air, though it’s just as well that they’ve gone past the point of hearing the people’s screams. That was by far the worst of it, having to hear the people they couldn’t save.
Ferris makes a non-committal noise. “Mmm.”
“We couldn’t do it.”
“Yeah.”
“Damn it,” Ryner says, though his voice lacks any real venom. He’s too tired, far too tired by this point. “This sucks. This seriously sucks.”
Sion lets out a weak laugh. “Somehow, I don’t think that quite covers it.”
“This seriously, seriously sucks.”
“For once, I feel obliged to agree with you,” Ferris says. Though her voice is calm, Ryner can feel the tension in her body and see the way she fiddles with the hilt of her sword.
She wanted to live.
So did Sion.
Even Ryner himself—who believed for so long that he should die—wanted to live. He wanted to see the world change. He wanted to create the world that Sion promised him, that he promised Tiir, that Lafra asked of him. A world where no one had to cry, a world where no one had to lose anyone, a world where everyone could just eat dango and take afternoon naps all the time—he wanted so badly to make that world a reality.
—And yet the world hands out that sorrow for no reason, laughing all the way.
It turned out to be an impossible dream, after all.
For this era, at least.
“… This is one hell of a torch we’re passing onto our next selves, huh?” he says, standing up. Ferris follows suit, as Sion smiles wryly.
The wishes of thousands of millions of past lives, the burden that’s been carried for countless millennia beyond human comprehension—that’s what they’re passing on. It was something they themselves could barely shoulder, and yet, selfishly—
“It is,” he agrees. “But it can’t be helped. This curse has to end sometime, even if not with us.”
—Selfishly, they have to keep asking this.
Save this world.
Don’t let it end in this despair.
Don’t suffer the same fate we did.
End this, once and for all—this play that the gods have written.
“… It really would’ve been nice,” Ryner mutters, “if it could’ve ended with us.”
But it didn’t, and so they have no choice but to pass the burden on.
With that, he feels a shift—with that, his existence begins to disappear. No, not just his, but Ferris and Sion’s as well.
Their lives are coming to an end. This world is set to disappear. To be reset and reborn, and so this curse will continue.
This curse that damned them each time before and yet again won over them.
“… This is really it, then.”
“Yeah,” Sion replies. “Until we meet again, at least.”
“And we will,” Ferris says. “If there’s a single upside to this curse, it’s that.”
“Right,” Ryner says, nodding. “In that case, I have something to say for the future Sion: when you look through your memories and see this, try not kill the next me, all right?”
Sion laughs, before shaking his head. “I suppose that’s an important message to leave.”
Ryner laughs back, before wiping away at the tears that start to form at his eyes. It’s not so bad, he thinks, to be able to die laughing and smiling like this, with his friends.
If nothing else, he’s not alone, and that’s more than he could have ever asked for.
“Then, see you two,” he says, holding up a hand in a wave. Ferris nods.
“See you.”
“Yeah. See you,” Sion says. “Until next time.”
Next time—
“Next time,” Ryner says, “We’ll definitely—”
But he never finishes, as their existences fade completely—and like that, the world disappears. Suddenly, and yet with far too much warning, as they stood and watched their dreams fall to pieces. As everyone suffered for too long but lived for too little, the world disappears.
It ends not with a bang or a whisper, but an unspoken promise.
Next time, we’ll definitely create the world we wanted to see.