Shattered World Shall Emerge // 74th Finale

The spear had come free of Asha's neck with a sickening wrench. For a moment the boy on the end of his weapon had looked like a limp flag, the streaks of red oozing from his flesh made out the pattern of Ripred's justice. Now, though, it was a broken thing that lay at his feet. Asha could form no words, and Ansgar had no wish to hear any. He stood above the boy, silent for the first time over the body of a fellow. No prayer was whispered, no offer of sanctuary or unburdening made. Asha would have to make his own way from here, neither he nor Ripred would help him. After all, he hadn't wanted the help.

Questioning Ripred, doubting him, denying him. That was not forgivable. Jenoah had done it, and he had died for it. Asha had done it and now he lay, less than human, on the barren rocky expanse. He had killed two people now, they had killed at least that many to get here he was sure. He had seen Jenoah kill Mordecai, he had taken that price from him in blood. Vendetta was perhaps a strong word for what he experienced, but not inaccurate. He stood now, alone on a sea of grey stone, knowing the end of the voyage was near. Hell did not last forever. He would be with Ripred or his family soon. Either ending would be its own reward.

The rat in his pocket clawed her way up to his shoulder, choosing to perch there in full view of everything for the night. When the anthem rose angry and malevolent in the sky they sat in silence and watched together. For once no words of prayer left his lips. He was so closely connected with Ripred now that he did not need to pray. Every thought, every action, every breath was dedicated to Ripred and to serving Ripred. The god did not need to hear something he already knew.

I am his servant, I am his hand of justice, and I will obey until my final days.

For all he knew that might be tomorrow.

The faces of the two district one tributes glared down from the sky. The disbelief that they had died seemed to hum through the arena. Somewhere, he knew his brother and mother had watched him dispatch a career using the strength Ripred had provided him. They would be proud, surely. His brother would understand, he knows the terrible things they must do to protect sanctity of Ripred. His mother, however, would she be frightened? The thought of his mother turning from him hurt worse than any blow he had suffered thus far.

- - - - - - - - - -

He and the rat woke to intense rain. They were soaked already, but the moment they woke they could see a path made in the weather. The plainness of human tampering was jarring and wrong, though he had known for some time that there was nothing natural in here. Ripred had not created this arena, the Capitol had. The god could only guide him through this place of death, either to the sky or to his family. He had done his duty, he had protected Ripred's name as much as he could. If he were to die today, he would go happily into the darkness for he knew Ripred would be on the other side.

They walked through the dry path, trying to shake off what water they could as they traveled. The rat shivered so badly that he had to pick her delicately off his shoulder and place her in his pocket. She felt like a cold wet lump, but eventually began to warm up and dry off as he kept moving. He fared little better, though he had managed to dry his weapons well enough. In his bag was a final jar of tar and he would use it. Today was the final day, he may as well pull out all the stops. He would not roll over and die, not to anyone. Ripred had shown him the courage to keep fighting, for he had come out on top so far. Even if today was the day he would finally fall, he would fight until the bitter end.

The fog wrapped itself around his legs, twining through them like a cat. Disgust creased his features at the thought but he kept walking forward. The rain was closing in behind him, a sure sign he was going the right direction. False signs of a human playing god though they were, that didn't mean he was allowed to disobey them. Had Ripred thought otherwise, he would have indicated so. No, he followed the path without incident, directly into the middle of knee-high fog.

He saw her clearly for a moment, silhouetted beautifully against the fog like some sort of lady of the lake. The recognition of who he was facing left him slow in coating his weapons with tar and lighting them with his last match. He tossed the used match onto the ground where it fell harmless, the fog having put it out on the way down.

"Do you still believe in that God of yours?" She was very still for the moment, just gazing at him. He noticed the glowing weapons in her hands and knew that she would not back down either. "Say hello to him for me." He didn't see the knife that she threw, not even after it had sunk into his flesh. The fire must have died in the air for he felt only piercing steel and no terrible burning. For a moment he must have blacked out, but a nip from the rat brought him around again before he could fall.

He stood in shock, trying to locate her. One half of the world was dark, the other so blindingly white that he wondered if he had already died and joined Ripred. That fast, Father? Is it over that fast? Except when he turned his head he saw her and knew that she could not have died too.

The smile he gave her was soft, and only the blood oozing from his ruined eye betrayed the fact that perhaps it was not genuine.

"I knew from the start Ripred had sent you to challenge me. Little did I know his exact plan." He held one knife up before his good eye, weighing it gently in his hand. "I had thought you were a temptress, but you are more than that." There would be a moment for him to attack. He could sense that moment approaching. The rat, in his pocket, felt it too. They would not give up, not any of them. "I have watched deaths and died with them. I have faced down two killers and killed them. Now I stand before a challenge..." He let his voice trail off, the smile falling from his face only then. "And I challenge you, Hyacinth. I challenge you with defeating me."

The time he spent talking was time he used to adjust to having only one eye. Ripred's help would be needed if he were to accurately strike at Hyacinth. He would not give up, he would fight until the end. For all the trials he had faced before he would not roll over now after only the first knife had been thrown.

"I am ready for you, Hyacinth."

Ripred, in place of my eye I ask for your guidance. Give me the ability to fight for my life, to defend myself against her. I am in need Father, perhaps more than ever before. I ask you, let me die honorably if I must die today.

I do not want to die a fool.

I do not want to die a sinner.

The flames on his knife flared like a dragon's breath, rearing red and angry against the silent steel. End over end the blade spun, feeding the flames with the rushing air rather than putting them out. In the breath before he had released, there had been a gentle whisper in his ear. Wait, it had said. There had been a pause, a moment. She had turned slightly and he had moved. Now. That was when he had thrown, that was when he had released the vicious fire and blade toward her turned back. Morality was beyond them now, he must take every advantage if he were to go home, if he were to rise above the challenge set before him.

Her scream split the muffled sounds of the fog like a gale. The sheets of rain falling around them in a great ring shuddered at the sound. In his pocket, the rat burrowed deeper. She did not like the sound of death, much as she knew it would come. Only Hyacinth wasn't dead yet, nor did she look like she would be anytime soon. She stood just breathing for a moment before growling at him like an angry cat. "I challenge you to die, can you do that for him? Just die, and leave me the fuck alone." He shook his head, the sickening feeling of the knife in his eye making him stop shortly after he began, not knowing if she could see him or not. He understood why she was saying this, asking him this, but she must know his answer already.

Standing straight, he readied to answer her and attack once more but she hadn't finished yet. If he must kill her, he would at least offer her the courtesy of listening to what she had to say. They had been allies, after all. He had, at one point, promised to protect her. Now, he was the only thing standing in her way. Funny how things could change. "If you can’t do that, then you can explain to my family why they deserve to suffer." He paused then, taking a moment to consider. Family was as important to him as it seemed to be to her, even if her family had cost her so much. He knew about the scars on her back, he knew about her sister who still haunted her. Even so, blood is thicker than water.

The knife landed in his arm without him even seeing it. She had aimed for his blind side and had struck well. He had to turn his head a long way in order to look at the knife. Groping for the handle, he yanked the blade from his flesh. The one left in his eye might be the only thing keeping him living, but that was no reason to let himself turn into a pin cushion. "I will not give up for you, Hyacinth. We must each overcome the challenge of the other, or die in the attempt." He tossed the bloody knife down so it stuck point-first into the dirt. "I promised to protect you, once." A fresh knife, one of his own, was in his hand. He was waiting for his moment again.

"I can not keep that promise any longer."

There was a small pang in his gut at his own words. A spike of regret that caused both he and the rat to flinch slightly. Guilt was not something he had expected. Ripred had set out this task for him and he would have to see it through, whatever came of it. He would not apologize, he could only do what he was bid.

I am the servant and he is the master.

His one-eyed vision made aiming especially difficult with a moving target. The fact that the knife flew over her shoulder, past her without doing a scratch, left his gut churning. Perhaps, in some strange way, he was still protecting her. Perhaps, after showing that he was not going to give up, he was simply not letting himself do anymore damage. If he kept this up for long enough she might be able to kill him. Did he want to die? Or rather, did he want her to live more than he wanted himself to?

The flames flared bright like a firefly in the fog, caressing her cheek almost lovingly as they passed. Ripred did not want her to live, it seemed, or perhaps he was ensuring that his most faithful servant would not die. Ripred, if it is my time I will gladly accept. Let me die if this is my moment, I can serve you as faithfully at your side as I can on this mortal plane. There was no answer from the god, there never was. In his pocket, the rat crawled up to peek her head out. The shared a look, a short one, before Hyacinth's voice called him away from his companion.

"I don’t care about your promises," she was as bitter as the day, filled with contradictions and contrasts. Most of her was obscured to his vision, be it by fog, shield, or blinded eye. He couldn't see her in the same way he had seen her until now. This was not the same person as the girl who had fought by his side before, as the one he had tried to protect. Even so, he knew she hadn't changed. No, Hyacinth Mortuus had evolved. He, if any of them, had changed. Ruined eye, opened eye, blinded eye. Suddenly Ripred's task didn't feel like something he could do. Not for lack of ability, but for lack of heart.

There was a rumbling under his feet as the earth convulsed. Hyacinth didn't appear to feel it, but perhaps that was because she hadn't just committed blasphemy. "But if you kill me, I want you to tell my family why your god hates them so much." He was growing dizzy from the rolling movement, knife shuddering in his left eye socket causing him pain and making more gore ooze down the side of his face. Before it had stopped, before he could move again, she had thrown her third knife. This time he saw it coming, barely, but he didn't move out of the way. He had been expecting pain, hoping for it, but none came. Looking down, he saw that the chainmail vest he had been wearing all this time had now gone and stopped the blow. A couple links had heated slightly in the short time the fire still licked at them, leaving a small scorch mark on his chest.

He looked up at her then, with his one good eye, face expressionless. As he went to speak he felt himself choking. Ripred was forbaying him to speak now, Ripred was the one making him grab his next knife and line up his aim. Give her a chance, please, give her a chance. Except the god wouldn't listen. Not this time.

In the moment before he threw he managed to choke out, "Ripred only hates losing."

He was beginning to see what his god really was, and he was terrified.

She was weakening now. Not in spirit, but in body. His attacks had wounded her severely and he could see the blood that ebbed from her took her life with it. Even so, she was still on her feet, still breathing, still out to kill him. Maybe, he hoped maybe she can live. Unspoken, unthought, the hope that maybe she could kill him after all coursed like poison through his veins. He had never been Ripred's puppet, not until now; each attack he had made, blow he had taken, wound he had healed, it had all been for Ripred and done of his own volition. Now, however, he could not control the arm that tossed the knife at her.

The blade screamed across her arm with a flicker of flames, or perhaps it was Hyacinth screaming, or perhaps it was Ripred's wrath that filled his ears. Hyacinth, somehow standing before him, was flickering and fading herself, but she seemed to cling to something he could not see and would not lay down and die. He admired that.

"So.. you worship a sore loser?" Her voice was hoarse, torn by the screaming and yelling. She was bitter to the end, though, and even in his haze of dissociation he still felt the stirring fire within him at her insult. For all he now feared the power of Ripred, for all he might have wanted Hyacinth to kill him, he was still the son of Ripred and his defender. A lifetime's worth of that knowledge sat rooted in his body, growing over his soul like a vine choking a tree, and would not let him stand by as she went to tear both into his flesh and into the name of the god he served.

"I thought Gods weren’t supposed to be weak." She attacked him again, but he barely felt the knife that ripped open his cheek or the flames that licked at his skin. A distant memory of the boy from eleven striking him with a knife along that same line came back to him. Had that all been just a week ago? Time was nearly impossible to judge here. These eight days felt both like eight weeks and yet only eight hours. At the beginning she had been by his side, fighting with him, striking at their joint foes together. Here, though, they now stood opposed and ready to bring death to the person they had fought beside not so long ago.

He remembered how she had left him in the middle of the night. Where he had found forgiveness within him for that at the time, he now found only spite. She had left him behind, after he had fought to protect her. Perhaps this was all part of her sin. Pride, in herself, in her name, in thinking she could make it on her own. He was here, Ripred was here, now to show her that she couldn't. "You are no better than Jenoah, than Asha, they who abandoned Ripred and spit on his name." He was toying with his last knife now, spinning it endlessly in his hand as the flames licked ever on over the blade. "You, like them, will never understand."

He didn't fight Ripred this time as the god drew back his arm and guided his aim. They would end this as they began it, together, Father and son, god and follower. As they had always planned, they would bring down those who sought to injure Ripred. "You are no expert on gods, do not pretend to be. Ripred is not weak. When you meet him in death you will learn." His voice was not his own anymore, his vocal chords were working of their own volition. "Temptress, challenge, fire spirit. You have done well, I admire your tenacity. In the end, though, all fires fall to ashes."

As one, god and boy let the knife fly.