His knees buckled. The weight of the shard as well as another man was dragging him down, not to mention being under fire from all angles. The Ura seemed intent on not letting him and Zulf leave alive. With the force they had been fighting suddenly unable to fight back, the Ura took the initiative.
The Ura closed in around the Kid. All of them readied their weapons, ready to kill both sources of their grief.
The Kid closed his eyes. He was so tired. He hurt everywhere. He didn't want to fight anymore.
"So you will just give up." A voice seemed to fill his mind. It echoed around him but only to him, a voice of infinite command and infinite pride, yet full of compassion and patience.
'I'm tired' the Kid responded
"You can rest later"
'It hurts'
"Wounds can be healed"
'I don't want to fight'
"Command otherwise"
'I want to stop'
"If you do, then all this would have been for nothing"
In a flash, the Kid saw the Bastion. He saw Rucks and Zia waiting. He felt Zulf on his shoulder. He saw every hardship he had endured. He felt every life he had taken. He watched the little baby pecker hatch. All this. All this sadness and joy. Friends, enemies, death, life. He felt purpose, drive, direction.
He saw his new friends smile.
He was not going to give that up.
The Kid rose to his feet and shone.
A light like the new day's sun cresting the horizon filled the snowy pathway. The Ura, who had been so certain they would end this, stepped back from their prey. The Kid stood there, Zulf held over his shoulder, the shard under his arm, all wounds and weakness gone and a sunburst of gold blazing on his forehead. Around him, the glowing golden light formed into an ethereal army at the Kid's back and upon his head sat a crown of pure sunlight. The air was filled with whispers of glory and praise, yet no one had said a word. The Ura watched him, fear and awe spreading through their ranks. They all listened when he said one word.
"Move"
Slowly, the Ura step back, lowering their weapons as the Kid walked by them. They all watched him pass, every pair of eyes reflecting back a different emotion. Many were afraid, others were in awe, but most importantly, they all held respect. Despite what each of them thought of him, he had come all this way, fought to the shard and was rescuing a man they knew had betrayed him.
It was that drive, that courage and that compassion that the Ura could yield to.
The ranks of warriors parted to let the Kid through, framing the path to his way out. The Kid made sure to look at the faces of those he passed. So many emotions could be seen in their eyes, it surprised the Kid somewhat to see not just negative ones. He made his way to the swirling vortex of wind that led to the Skyways. As the wind whipped his hair around, he turned to face the people who had watched him and, with an honest smile, said one last word.
"Thanks."
At the top of a building, unaware to either the Kid or any Ura, stood a figure cloaked in blue. The golden light she had seen shocked and disturbed her but not as much as the sight of a Solar Exalt in her bubble of reality. She was old enough to know what those monsters could do and what they could become, but she had not seen one since they had been vanquished and to say the new Dawn worried her would have been an understatement. What had been happening in Creation that a Solar would ever exalt again, let alone in this sanctuary in the Wyld?
She tried to remember when the last time she had had contact with any members of her kind. It had been years, long enough for the people of the continent sized reality to forget Creation even existed. Yet, even with her mind, she was having trouble remembering any of her kind besides the one she came here with, the one who had helped her establish order in the chaos of the Wyld. They had lead both mortal and god through the Wyld to new reality, becoming worshiped as gods themselves. She could remember some others coming to teach them about the then new accomplishment that had been moonsilver tattoos and both of them underwent the ritual, even though their minds and bodies were warped by the chaos they so hated. Ironic, considering how much Pyth had loved his order.
But now. Now that their order and reality had become so firm as to rival Creation itself, now that there were close to no traces of Wyld taint in the mortals she had watched grow, now that the war between Caelondia and the Ura was waning, this calamity happened and took most of the mortals, all of the gods and her peer with it. She was the last of these mortals' so-called gods left.
The woman removed her cloak and, in place of hair, a cobra's hood spread, the cobalt color augmented with intricate designs of silver and black. A sad, beautiful and otherworldly face looked to the heavens, the sky full of stars, and found hers. She knew it wasn't hers but she loved it all the same. She felt a soft light touch her face as the sky turned lighter. Micia, the mother of the small reality, wept for the loss of her millennium of building.
When the Kid touched down at the Bastion, he did so with more grace than he ever had. He had never not landed on his face after using the Skyway and, given what he had just been through, landing on his feet while being burdened and tired was a big accomplishment. Except that he wasn't burdened and he wasn't tired. He carefully set Zulf down, trying not to injure the man further. Zulf winced a little but, from what the Kid could tell, he seemed to just be asleep; passed out from his ordeal and injuries. The Kid would have to ask Zia later about patching the man up but first he had something to do.
He walked to the monument. Holding the shard out, he set it into the appropriate place and watched as the Bastion pulled it self together completely. The Kid sighed as it finished, the morning sun washing over the buildings and monuments and their small tents, lighting up his work, the product of his blood, sweat and tears, for everyone to see.
But no one was there.
A momentary jolt of panic shot through the Kid as he looked around for Zia and Rucks. He was about to run into every building, but a voice called out to him from the south end of the Bastion.
"You're back."
The Kid spun around to see Rucks leaning on his cane, a smile spread behind his white mustache. His smile faltered a bit as he caught sight of Zulf but he quickly turned his attention back to the Kid, proud smile back. Zia appeared a second later, coming up a set of stairs that the Kid had never noticed before. She smiled upon seeing him, but the smile was quickly shadowed by some other worry.
"Come on down with us" Rucks waved a hand to the stairs he and Zia came from. The Kid didn't move, a quick glance at Zulf betraying his worries. "Don't worry 'bout him, Kid." Rucks said as he began to walk back to the stairs "He'll be fine while we figure out what to do now."
With one last glance at the injured man, the Kid followed the two others down stairs. Zia offered another smile but it was unsure and full of worry and a little of something else the Kid thought was fear. Together, they descended the stairs to a place under the Bastion.
If the monument was like the heart of the Bastion, this place was the mind. It looked like a control room, not that the Kid had seen any before, but it did look similar to something he remembered as if from a forgotten dream. He shook those faded memories away and followed Rucks and Zia across a thin walkway to the center where a large console sat.
"You fixed the Bastion, Kid." Rucks started "I'm grateful for that. Felt I should at least finally say that. Sorry I didn' say it sooner" The older man placed a hand on the Kid's shoulder, a smile once again tugging at his lips. He turned back to the machine, "Now, we have two options. The Bastion was built the way it was for a reason. With all the cores back, we can start one of its major functions. We can go back to before the Calamity. We can undo everything that's happened and fix all this and forget it. And, with hope, we'll avoid this path again."
"Or we can leave!" Zia blurted out. The two men turned to her as she shuffled under the sudden attention "I-um, Ruck said that the Bastion was made to be used as an evacuation transport, something we could all use if something went wrong. If we use it to leave, we can go new places, start new lives, I don't know. It's just…"she clutched her harp guitar to her chest "I don't want to forget everything that's happened, everything that made me happy." Small tears began to well up in her eyes "If that makes me selfish, I don't know; I don't care."
The Kid felt a hand on his shoulder as Rucks walked up next to him "Thing is, we think you should choose what to do, seein' how you did all the hard work gettin' this place runnin'." The Kid looked at the man who had been his mentor since this whole thing began with a puzzled look. Rucks chuckled roughly "Take all the time you need." The Kid looked between his two companions and nodded before turning around and walking to the stairs. Just as he reached the first step, Zia muttered something, probably something she meant to keep to herself, but the Kid could hear it as clear as if she was standing next to him.
A tear escaped from her eye as she whispered "Any moment I'd want to live again, happened after the Calamity, not before"
The Kid reached the top of the stairs and glanced out across the horizon. It had changed so much, the mountains gone, the Wilds ripped and scattered and the Boundless Sea pouring down into whatever was below it. But for all the differences, he really couldn't see anything bad about it. He shook his head at that thought. Of course it was bad, thousands of people were dead, the world was ripped to pieces and who knew what would happen to them, even with the Bastion.
Even with those reasserted thoughts, the idea of going back to before all of it had happened never entered into his mind until Ruck had told him they could go back. And even if they did, none of them would remember, and if they didn't remember what would stop them from doing it all over again?
The Kid closed his eyes and sighed. He knew where Rucks and Zia stood on the matter, he understood why they decided to let him choose but he didn't know what the right choice was. Or if there even was one.
A soft peep and a light weight on his shoulder pulled the Kid out of his thoughts. Their little pecker watched him from his shoulder, tilting its head from side to side before pecking at his cheek. Whatever the Kid had been thinking was driven out by a single thought, 'We never named him.'
The pecker took off and flew back to the heart of the Bastion, taking the Kid's attention with it. The baby bird landed near to where Zulf lay, not recognizing the prone man; it had been born after he had left. Their little squirt was floating around Zulf, fussing over his injuries in its weird pseudo-language and attempting to drag a blanket over him. Their anklegator circled the group, not like the predator she was, but protective of this weird family she now had.
It broke the Kid's heart to think of taking that away.
He turned back to the horizon, the colors of the dawn glowing bright. A whole night was spent on this ordeal. Coming back had been easy, he hadn't been tired when he came back but this decision was taking all of the energy he had to even try to sort out. What should he do?
'What did he want to do?'
The thought struck his mind blank. What did he want? What did the world hold for him before? Not much, at least nothing he wanted anymore. What did it hold for him now? It held everything that gave him the strength to stand up in the Tazal Terminals. Friends and a home was all he needed, and he could honestly say it was all he wanted.
As the rays of the rising sun filled the sky, Zia's whispers echoed in his mind 'Any moment I'd want to live again, happened after the Calamity, not before.' The Kid looked unflinchingly at the dawn of the new day before taking a deep breath and walked back down the stairs. And when Zia and Rucks turned to hear his answer, the Kid very simply said two words.
"We leave."