"Sacre?"
We will not talk about the devastation, the ravaged land and ruined sky, the darkness and chaos that threatens to envelop them, once peripheral to their vision and now encompassing, incorporating, inescapable. We will not talk about the cackling demon, the valiant gods, the portal that beckons like a hand in the sky. We will not discuss the screams, the cries, the wails of widows and children that echoes through the night, heavy with misery and raw, treacherous pain. We know all of this already - just as she knows, as she stands, as she watches, that the world as they know it has come to an end.
Helovia is dying, its denizens fleeing, its body convulsing uselessly in death throes. Like antibodies they throw themselves upon the invader, but the force of their valiance is useless against this virus, this superbug - Kaos is quick to strike them down, to suppress the immune system of the land they call home until it is nothing, until all they can do is cave, incorporate, integrate, and succumb to the sheer magnitude of their destruction, if only they want to live.
Still, some fight back- and that is what we will talk about here, because one of them, one of them, one of them charges into war, and takes the Fire Dancer's heart with him.
"Sacre... "
He is there for a moment, a beautiful moment - he is beside her, and she is safe, she knows she can survive this, because they are together. Relief floods her, and she reaches for him, smiling despite the carnage, safe despite her flaws. Her sins are nothing, her faults, the girls who stand huddled at her flanks - there will be time for that, time for confessions and forgiveness, time for all of it, once they are through the portal. They will be together, they will be safe, they will find solace in each other-
"-Sacre-"
But then he's gone. Her valiant knight, her stalwart hero, her lover, her friend- she reaches for him and he slips away, so brave, so determined, so stupid, so cruel. "Wait!-" she cries, but she is already too late. She watches with wide, onyx eyes as he charges the assailant who threatens their home, and the image is seared into her mind, carved in her retinas, retained forever - because for a moment he is there, brave and bold and splendid and beloved, the father of her child, the keeper of her heart -
- and in the next moment he is gone.
"SACRE!"
Her voice is hoarse from crying - how long has she been sobbing, her body convulsing, pain and anguish sinking into her bones? Her cheeks are saturated, her eyes burn- she takes a step, fury and grief choking her, reaching from her throat like hands, body alight with embers and rage. She is ready to charge, to assault the defiler who snuffed out her heart, to throw herself hopelessly upon Kaos and die alongside her lover.
It is only Savera's familiar, bleating cry that holds the girl back.
She stands with her twins, immobilized, her soul tearing, a great black crack growing in her stomach that she knows will never heal. We have to go, her brother whispers, his own pain visceral and potent, his agony a mirror to hers- Have to save babies, and she knows he's right, but she's useless, broken, shattered and devastated. What is the point? Why not stay here, rather than condemn her children to a life of pain, an existence plagued by agony and death? Wouldn't it be better to let them go now, to stop them before they grow into her - angry, damaged, destroyed?
Savera cries again, and Neaera joins her, and the girl snaps back. She is still crying, but the fire that refuses to snuff out rises back inside her chest -
"Move! Go!" she snaps at the fillies, nipping sharply at their flanks, black eyes blazing as she herds them toward the portal. Desperately she searches for Amaris, for Mortimer, praying what's left of her family will make it through- but right now she doesn't have time to care about her pain, the people she wants to survive, the loved ones she has lost. She doesn't exist anymore. She can't.
Existing will destroy her, and she has to stay alive- for them.
She pushes her girls through the portal- and then, with one last look at the place she was born, with a final clench of her shattered heart, follows them through.
|
.svg/2000px-Google_Chrome_icon_(2011).svg.png){kind=icon}
⇒
[SWP] The beginning of the end :: the ending.
