Warning. This story is probably the darkest story I've ever written, and it does not have a happy ending. I wrote an author's note before the story, so you know I mean business, I never do this! Anyways, you've been warned.
Void
Blake had practiced and studied her Semblance as soon as she discovered it, honing it to the point that activating it was as second nature as blinking. It was perfect for her. Running away. Putting up a shield so someone else, something else felt the pain. It was cowardly, but it was also pragmatic. While her clone suffered a fatal attack, she would move behind her enemy and vanquish them.
It was perfect, and few enemies were skilled enough to avoid the simple trick for long.
Her Semblance was tied to her reflexes, making it a natural partner to her fighting style. She moved with it as easily as she walked, used it in perfect tandem with her skills in nearly every battle.
It was her greatest weapon, above even Gambol Shroud.
It was had been the key to saving Yang's life.
It had been the key to saving her own life, countless times.
So when the White Fang assassin aimed her gun at Blake's back, believing the raven-haired Faunus to be none the wiser, Blake flipped the mental switch and effortlessly dodged the attack.
Except that wasn't what happened.
Instead of watching her clone fall to the gunshot, she watched as her doppelganger formed in front of her. She bolted forward, and Blake's eyes had only a moment to widen in shock as a quick, searing pain cut through her shoulder. Her clone ran by her as a fog overtook Blake's mind. She stumbled for a moment, trying to keep her body standing, but it was becoming almost impossible to see.
She stared at her body, her fingers melting away in her confused gaze. Her arm almost seem to evaporate into nothing as she saw her copy out of the corner of her eye. The clone and the assassin were fighting, but her vision of them was perfectly pristine. It was not her vision that was distorted, rather it was her body that was fading away. She tried to scream out as darkness overtook her vision, pulling her into a cold, black pit...
She fell for barely a moment, having barely enough time to breathe, yet her breath felt like it had been stretched out for eternity. Her body hit the ground, landing on something equally hard and cold. She fell upon a downward slope, her vision a blur of black and white as she tumbled and fell. When she finally hit stable ground, she groaned in pain as her shoulder burned, stained in scarlet. Blood seeped from the wound as she stood on shaking, trembling legs.
Questions ran through her head as she looked at the strange, horrifying land she had fallen into. Where am I?! What happened to my Semblance?! Why... why...? And all of these questions were reduced to ash as she saw her own face staring back at her, eyes mirrored in their size and shock.
Blake saw her face everywhere she looked. There were so many bodies, corpses of black and white that laid on the ground like some kind of terrifying monument to her own failure. The bodies were strewn throughout this hellish domain, laying atop of one another, some stained with blood that had long dried up, others ripped to pieces by the claws of a Beowolf, and others without any physical wounds.
Then the stench hit her like a tidal wave. The reeking, festering odor of rotting flesh. It assaulted her senses, searing her nostrils as she fell back. Her eyes watered as she looked at what she was standing upon. The Blake that laid below her was rotting, and like a blanket being left from atop her head, she realized how many of the Blake's were nothing more than melted, decaying flesh sliding off of bone.
Blake stared at this field of death and rotting, and slowly the truth dawned on her. It was so simple an answer, yet she tried so hard to find another answer. Anything else, but the truth. Anything else, but the rank, foul, unholy truth.
She had always believed her Semblance was an attempt to flee from danger. That the illusion would die in her stead, that the sacrifice of a mirage would ensure her victory, but she was wrong. As she stood in the wasteland of rotting flesh and dead Faunus, she knew just how wrong she was. It fell upon her like a weight, crushing her as she knees buckled to try and keep her standing.
Her Semblance did not create an illusion. It created a copy. A copy that was perfect in every way, even down to the memories and soul. The copy would live her life, while the original faded away into this cold, empty void. No... Not the original. The only original in this tomb was the first Blake. The child who had discovered her Semblance while training with her father.
What a lonely death. One moment she was staring at her father's curious eyes, so full of love and compassion for her. The next, she was in a void of darkness. A pit so empty that she could do nothing else, but die.
Blake must have used her Semblance over a hundred times in her life. She would use it without hesitation, easily dodging the blows that were meant to end her life with them. Each time, she damned herself to a cold, lonely death.
The older bodies were decayed, rotten, bathed in a foul odor. The more recent bodies were emancipated, bones outlined by the skin that struggled to cling onto them. Their faces were trapped, paralyzed in an expression of horrified agony as they laid in this wasteland.
Blake walked with trembling feet, staring beyond the horizon of bodies to find walls of black fire. It was impossible to see through. It was impossible to see anything beyond the crackle of ebony flames, and the occasional white ember. Even the sky above was nothing more than an endless void. It was if this place was made to immortalize her mistake.
This place was her hell, made for her, by her.
Was there any escape?
Did the rest of her wonder that same question?
She walked through the field of death, her cold, icy blood flowing down from the wound on her arm. She was numb to the pain as her amber eyes searched for even a glimmer of hope. What she found instead sent her further plummeting into depression.
There were trails of dried blood on the shadow-colored floor, as if someone had dragged them away from their original place. Each body was especially bloodied and damaged. Their flesh was torn and cut, and their remains had... they had bite marks. Their bodies were dragged into a ring, a monument of depravity, and in the center of it was a Blake with scarlet lips. Her eyes were frozen to the Heavens, her fingers still holding a piece of raw meat.
Despite it all, Blake could see the glimmer of madness still sparkling in her counterpart's eyes. The black, drawn out bags from under her eyes tainted her pale skin. Her raven-locks were frazzled, turning into a mess, stained with blood and chunks of meat that escaped her toothy maw. Her stomach was misshaped, filled to the brim with meat and bone that no human should ever consume. Even now, the corpse seemed starved...
Blake put a hand to her mouth, holding back bile as her stomach churned. Why? How could they have brought themselves to do such a thing? How could she have...? Was it despair? The hopelessness of it all?
No. It was something far more powerful, she realized. She pondered, searching for an answer as to why this Blake... why she would have done something so horrible. The only answer Blake could find was also the simplest.
To live a little longer.
Because of hope.
She believed her friends would save her. That if she staved off her death just a little longer, she could be saved and she could prevent anymore of herself to experience this hell. She justified that horrible act with the promise that if she could escape this torment, she would never use her Semblance again.
In the end, the only difference between her and every other Blake in this nightmare was that she died with a full stomach.
Blake hugged herself as she quivered and quaked, falling to her knees before the shrine of cannibalism and madness. Her fingers felt the wound, the spot where the bullet went through her shoulder still bled. It ached, and it stung, and it agonized her, yet it still felt like a papercut compared to this horrible place.
She was a rarity. An anomaly.
Most Blakes came here already dead. The few that didn't would die a few moments later. She and her... bloodied sister were exceptions. They came to this place injured, but alive.
This Blake tried to survive, and fell to madness clinging to her hope like an anchor at sea.
Was this her future?
Her arms fell as she struggled to breathe. She could hardly take in the noxious fumes. Her vision blurred into an ocean of black and white as she fell to her knees. She laid there for what felt like forever, sobbing as tears fell upon her legs. She only rose her head when a loud thud awoke her from her stupor. She wiped her eyes with her arm, hissing in pain as blood stung her eyes. She wiped at it again until the tears stopped and she could see what made the noise.
It was a body. One that hadn't been there before. It laid on a pair of other corpses, the stump of her neck dripping blood onto the ebony floor. The fingers twitched, still hot with life. Their head laid about a foot away from them, petrified in a face of horror and realization. This was the Blake that replaced her. She lived for a few minutes, a life of combat and violence, before dying like every other Blake before her.
It wasn't even a minute until another body fell. Blake rose up on shaking legs towards the fallen body, because she did something Blake feared would never happen again. She called out to her.
"W-who are...?" There was a choking sound. Blood poured from her mouth. She coughed, struggling to say something as her amber pools widened in confusion. She looked upon this realm of death, before looking at the other Blake.
"Shhh..." Blake begged her not to strain herself. Her throat was slit. Her death was inevitable. "I'm sorry," she whispered. The other Blake tried to speak as the first took out Gambol Shroud. The black sword gleamed in the sunless light, before a single thrust into the copy's heart ended the her poor existence. The clone fell limp, another forgotten corpse in this tomb.
Blake knew that there was no escape from this place. She fell to her knees, gently cradling her copy, crying into her raven-locks. She wept for all of the Blakes that would die, alone and forgotten in this place. She cried over the family and friends she had left behind. She screamed out into the void, pleading for someone to save her.
She sobbed for the life that was stolen from her and for the Blake whose life she must have stolen. She lived a life that was never hers as the Blake before her died and rotted away.
She couldn't just accept this hell. She couldn't just close her eyes and accept this torment. She wanted her death, needed her death to be her own choice. With a shaking, trembling hand, she reached for Gambol Shroud.
The choice between hope and despair laid before her, but her mind felt swallowed up by a fog. Perhaps it was this place. This oblivion that she had created, or that had created her. Hope was a light that seemed unattainable here.
With a simple swipe of her hand, she converted Gambol into a gun. She lifted the weapon with shaking, uncontrollable fingers. She aimed it under her chin, straight into her brain.
The choice between hope and despair... Hope laid behind her, a cannibalistic, insane hermit that slept on the bodies of those past, overcome with insanity. Despair laid beneath her head, shaking in her grip, Despair laid on her lap, peacefully sleeping.
In the end, she knew what she had to choose. The only thing she could choose.
She pulled the trigger, and everything went black.
END
Sometimes, you gotta go out of your comfort zone and try something new, y'know? I've always wanted to do a horror/tragedy thing. As I'm mentioned in Wet Dreams, I want to try a little bit of everything. I've done comedy, porn, a lot of romance, why not try... whatever this is.
For those of you who may not get it, the simple idea here is that whenever Blake uses her Semblance, what's happening is that a copy is made of her that continues the fight, while the one who activated her Semblance is killed or injured, before being sent to a void. Is it likely canon? Hell no. But I wanted to try something like it. So the Blake we know is a copy of a copy of a copy of a... well, you get my point.
So, what'd you think? Scary? Just sad? Scary and sad? Should I try writing more horror/tragedy in the future? Either way, this was a fun little attempt at going out of my box.
Back to work on porn and romance!