Chapter 7 - Epilogue

#Writing #BloodofSilenceSeries #DanceTillOurEnd #DTOE

"Your world has got you
Alone and silent
You can't fill a whole
With a billion empty souls

Your world will fail my love
It's far beyond repair
Your world will fail my love
It's already there

If you are alive you must run for your life
It's calm before the rage
Hostage in a cage
Your world will fail now
What will it take just to wake up this place
Bring you all to life"

-- Your World Will Fail, Les Friction

I felt the chill of cold, hard crystal beneath me. Slowly, I opened unfocused eyes--an old habit that I'd grown almost fond of--though this time I noticed the notable lack of those glimmering lights I was so used to.

Furrowing my brow, I propped myself up on my arms, moving to sit up right. Something wasn't right.

I lifted a hand, flexing my fingers as though I was alien to my own... And then it occurred to me what was missing.

Jolting up on my feet, I panicked as I felt myself up and down. Tangible, but no body to speak of, and my sight confirmed it. I was about as real as an unfinished creation--aether without physical form, a soul without a body.

I did not, however, recall discarding my physical form, nor any reason to do such a thing. In fact, I struggled to recall anything as my mind felt hazy and distant.

Confused, I took in my surroundings. Wherever this was, I was unable to see the Underworld from here. Naught but darkness surrounded the strange crystal platform, save for fourteen strange looking chairs, and a statue of...

"Ah, you're awake."

"Elidibus!" I spun around "What's going on?"

From a cloud of darkness came Lahabrea to his side. He regarded me with a somber expression, and I could tell it was one of pity, but was confused as to why.

"You're going to want to brace yourself," he said simply as he held out a hand for me to take.

He lead me through another portal, and I found myself in an open field. Children scurried at my feet, with naught but cloths and hides around their waists and chests.

I was taken aback at first as they ran straight through me. An older child chased after them, attempting to pry sticks from their hands as they tried to wack each other.

When I felt them run past, it was like a whisper on the wind. They were barely even there.

"They cannot see you," Elidibus explained. "They are unable to sense any of the aether around them, save but that which resides within."

"What?" I murmured.

I unfocused my eyes, and where my gifted sight usually made everything look bright and alive, it was now like looking through a shade. I rubbed them a few times, trying to see clearer, but it never happened.

The sight before me was one that was dull and blurry. The aether that made up the small human-like creatures' souls was barely equal to that of an insect, and I strained to see it at all without squinting.

I struggled to comprehend what I saw, remaining in a perpetual state of confusion.
Beside me, Lahabrea's teeth clenched in a mix of sadness and anger.

These things--these insects--baffled me. What were they? Where was Amaurot? Where was everyone we knew? Where was Cynthia?

The creatures flailed and fell. They fought and they fought, they dreamt and they cried, but they couldn't quite remember why. Everything they did was without reason, for their fleeting, ephemeral lives would end before they could accomplish anything of significance. They would barely outgrow the years of a babe, and would spend them all searching for what was missing.

Like insects, squashing them was a simple thing, done without much thought, for they were naught but a nuisance. They buzzed and fluttered about in your face, but that was all they did. Minor setbacks, minor annoyances... But luring them to their deaths was a simple thing.

I spent years searching, hoping that someone was out there--that it wasn't just us. Our once great city was naught but a pile of rubble, confined to the depths of the earth or the deepest of oceans, but still, I searched.

Civilisations sprung up as the creatures learnt how to exist in a world that was fundamentally against their nature.
They had been confused at first, staring at sticks and stones like alien concepts, but it was their children who would learn to create with their hands. They who were not so burdened by the shadows of the past would step into the light and move forward. They would forget, little by little over the course of the first couple hundred years, but they would move on. Such was the nature of these things we had come to call "mortals."

Lahabrea and Elidibus set out to restore the convocation, and I watched as they rose to their seats one by one--a fraction of their former strength. It was mildly comforting, being surrounded by friends, even if they were mere shades of those that once were.

It was never quite right, though, and I found myself consumed by a numbness each time I beheld the stars; each time we stood upon our seats. The fourteenth was always empty. The sun would rise each day to shepherd away the stars, but where once I welcomed its return, I found myself dreading its coming.

This fractured world was so bitterly lonely and cold, and I would put an end to it.
I suppose it would have been too much to ask for it to be easy.

"I can hear you scurrying, little mice."

From the bushes came two young girls--adolescents, if I had to guess--dressed in rags and pointing a spear at me. "E-explain yourself, masked man! A-and make it quick before I singe you!"

"Oooh, it uses magic. Well isn't that a surprise. I shall surely have to dust off my robes from your little singeing." I lent forward, taking a whiff of the air. "That stench," I hissed. "You most certainly reek of Her."

"Sister, you know you can't control your magic for more than a few seconds. Is this really a good idea?" The younger one whispered.

"Have no fear, Meni; worst comes to worst, just drown me in ice and knock me on the head!" She was a little too confident as she determinedly clenched her fist.

I stared at them unimpressed, and more than a little disappointed that that was all they could come up with. "Be a dear and point me in the direction of Hydaelyn's resident warrior, would you? I tire of these games."

"H-he want's to see papa?" one of them murmured.

"Oh wonderful, idiocy must run in the family."

"Emet-Selch," came the familiar voice behind me. "Cease your actions here, we've run into a problem with the Thirteenth."

In the weeks following the loss of the Thirteenth, my comrades focused their efforts on the initiation of the few they'd saved before the flood.

"Elidibus tasked you with overseeing the events of the Source, yes?"

"Yes sir!"

"Be at ease, boy; I have no penchant for mortal formalities. Raise your head."
"I am told you were one of the last to be rescued. What is it that bid you join us?"

I felt a familiar determination radiate from him, and I knew immediately that he was not here simply to save himself.

"I want to end the cycle of heroes once and for all. So that...so that she can live freely one day. I want to save her."

He looked like any other recruit. A black mask that covered his face, standard Ascian robes. There was something else, though...

"What's that around your neck?"

"Oh, this? She entrusted it to me before she..."

"You loved her?"

He nodded, holding out the necklace for me to inspect. "More than anything."

It was a strange, half-formed imitation, but I would have recognised it anywhere.

Urgently, I flipped it on its back to inspect the inscription. There was no doubt. "It can't be... Where did you get this?"

I had looked across multiple shards, in every nook and cranny, and I had never found her. But this... This necklace, as I well knew, could have been the possession of only one person.

Cynthia...

All these years I had wondered if I was to blame for her lack of reappearance, but it would seem she was, in fact, out there somewhere. Or had been, for the world this boy hailed from was dead and gone for the foreseeable future, and there was a very real possibility I would never get the chance to see her again.

Not that it mattered, I supposed. She was a sundered insect, like so many others. A mere whisper on the wind of what once was. I knew the one I loved was gone, but even still, a small part of me hoped.

Sometimes when I looked upon the stars--that amber stone clenched to my chest--I could hear her whisper.

"I'll find my way home like I always do. I promise."