The Afterlife is Calling

Summary: Bound by Will, Reborn in Malice, two siblings join hands to journey to a new world. Instinct is driven by thoughts of Malificarum, knowing exactly what it desires. Twisted AU. SH3.

(A/N): I decided to diverge from my usual writing to do this quick little story for a game I recently finished playing. As with most of my work, it contains much angst, and is rather horror-based. This can be called "another way the Resurrection ritual could have gone horribly wrong."

Theme~ Shadow of the Colossus:Demise of the Ritual

Graham Garland was a man who absolutely refused to accept defeat, sinking into a web of denial and rejection of the painful reality he was presented with, but the silent bodies before him drew only one truth: His two children were dead and now he was left all alone.

The blank white sheet covered the scene, but the sight of their broken bodies was already carved deep into the grieving father's memory, removing any reprieve from his peace that could have possibly been obtained. It seemed as though a cruel fate was just toying with him; his family was dead and Graham had been left alive and in one piece to suffer through it. His son had lived only a few moments longer than his sister, sheltered in Grace's arms as he tried and failed to breathe past a pair of crushed lungs. His daughter—bless her kind soul—had been practically mangled in the accident and he could only be thankful that she had not suffered. But the reality did not register and a gaping hole in Graham's understanding had been left instead.

How could this happen? How could the only two people he cared for be torn away so suddenly?

The realization set in slowly, not unlike the numb pulsing of the father's fingertips, and his eyes deepened into a dark scowl and stared into nothing: he just couldn't let them go so easily.

Graham Garland did not pursue fantastic notions or place his belief in what might be called superstitious ideals, at least not until the tragedy, and then a mixture of desperation and determination caused him to now chase legends he would have otherwise considered pure lunacy. Several years passed as he poured his resources into ferreting out what information he could find regarding the arts of interacting with the dead and separating what was fact from fiction. It took a toll of unbelievable hardship and pain on him and from time to time the lost man even began to question his continued sanity for involving himself in this matter.

However, just when Graham was on the verge of breaking down, a light of hope came in the form of a self-proclaimed black magician named Marlow. The man was unpleasant company but offered a chance with his knowledge of a ritual that could resurrect the dead, and offered to outline the procedure provided that Graham included him on the project. Any hesitation only lasted a few seconds, and the father quickly enlisted Marlow's services and together they built the scratched together lab in his resident basement where everything would unfold. He withdrew himself from society, and in the process shutting out anyone who might have interfered with the work, including his family's loyal butler.

It was then that Marlow told him of Malice and Will, the great forces in nature that would be able to bring back his children. The first thing they needed was to manipulate the immense store of red Malice energy that Marlow found was lurking underneath his home, and use that power to reconstruct the bodies of the two siblings. Once his new ally showed him the trick—flipping through the pages of the mysterious tome he seemed to carry with him everywhere he went—the process started to feel easier, and he couldn't help it when the confidence began to swell in his chest. He worked harder, and what was once a feeling, became an obsession.

Another year passed, and Graham realized that his obsessive work had cost him five years, and yet the loss of his time was nothing in comparison to what he could gain. It is was this thought that solidified his beliefs and finished the new bodies of his children, now devoid of the horrible injuries that the accident had inflicted upon them. In fact, it almost looked like they were just asleep. Soon he would have back what fate had tried to take from him.

But that wasn't the last step, as Marlow had so suddenly reminded him, and the next part was where things could get dangerous. They had put together the complex machine made to contain and filter the necessary energies and repair the rift between body and soul, together with a ritual spell that Marlow insisted that Graham speak himself. He couldn't have been more willing to do so, and when the finishing touches were in place, the heavy tome was in his hands.

Words poured from his lips like a wave, so eager and prepared, and each syllable was carefully pronounced and controlled. This was his chance and he couldn't let it slip by...

Red eyes blinked open/The dark sun unleashed its contempt

The Malificarum longed to claim them

For they were tools of destruction/children of hatred and instinct...

Suddenly there was a crash, cutting the man off from his words, an echoing ring forcing Graham to his knees as a bizarre blue-ish light filled his vision. "What's happening?" He called out in shock, unsure if the ritual was proceeding according to plan or if something was starting to go wrong, but Marlow's voice didn't answer him. A whirlpool of strange light had spread across the ceiling of his dingy basement, casting the area in an uneasy aura as a rain of crimson fell from the hole to gather around his children. For just a moment, Graham had almost believed the lights to be blood; could this be the fabled Resurrection ritual that Marlow had so often described to him? But something wasn't right, as he hadn't even completed the last verse...

But the way that the scarlet rain looked, it wasn't something that Graham felt comfortable with and it almost started to feel...malevolent. "Marlow, what is this?" No reply again. "Marlow! Where are you?" But a quick glance around told him that the man was nowhere to be found. It was as though he'd taken the opportunity to disappear the moment something went wrong.

The time has come...

An ear-splitting crash broke the man's concentration and he instinctively backed away and clamped his hands over his ears as the glass containers shattered into thousands of pieces, the shards of which left small scratches on his face and arms. A brilliant red tint spread across the floors and up the stairs behind Graham, and he could feel the strange chill sinking deep into his very bones even though the temperature remained the same.

We are two Halves of a perfect Whole

Desire/Love/Carnage/Death

A blood-red Sun shines eternally under an accursed Sky

It calls to our Hearts with a Voice we cannot Deny

Summoned by Hatred/Bound by memory

Amidst the sea of broken glass shards were crouched two figures, their skin untouched by the clear fragments which were rapidly melting into a quicksilver liquid at their feet. They were a young boy and his slightly older sister, her arms clasped around his shoulders just as they had at the fateful moment of their deaths five years ago. But now they were so perfectly alive.

The ritual had to have worked, or how else could this have been done? It was a success, they—

Graham stopped himself. Grace turned towards him, still not moving from her place next to her brother, and her eyes twitched and flickered open suddenly. They were no longer the deep green of his family, but revealed a light of purest crimson, and her father was momentarily startled, but not horrified in the least. A change in eye color was a small and insignificant price to pay. Unable to help himself, he started forward, "Grace... You're alive..."

The girl shook her head slowly, placing a finger to her lips in a gesture that surprised her father so much that he paused and went quiet. The young woman's eyes directed downward, where her brother was beginning to stir to wakefulness, revealing a chillingly cold blue-eyed gaze. "Good morning, Johnny," Grace's voice was barely above a whisper, but Graham still heard it, and the affection laden in her words was proof of their identities. The boy spared a confused glance at the dark navy colored gloves adorning his hands and his sister's similar garb—something that the ebb and flow of Malice energy had so meticulously crafted for them—before returning his gaze to Grace and allowed himself a slow smile.

Both siblings rose to their feet, not even the slightest bit unsteadily, and faced down the man before them. Graham only had eyes for the two of them. He didn't see what anyone else could clearly see: that the power unleashed here was beyond the grasp of any ordinary human being. The swirling whirlpool of light still shone from the ceiling. The very air itself here was unstable, to have so much Malice gathered into one place at once; it was at a magnitude that Marlow had not anticipated, overwhelming the Will they had procured by sheer quantity. Ripples were forming in the air, distortions tearing apart the space of the basement lab. Soon these small ripples would rip open into new Windows, releasing monstrous beasts into the world.

Graham Garland noticed none of these catastrophic signs. Only his children.

They walked forward—together in step—and the man extended his arms...only to have the pair pass right by him. Shocked he spun around, "Johnny! Grace! Don't you recognize me?"

"Father..." Grace turned around and faced him then, but the admiring, affectionate stare she'd given to her brother was long gone. The memory of the pair's past life was still preserved, so they did know the identity of the man before them. Thanks to the Will, Grace and Johnny's souls remained in place. But that wasn't enough. Malice invaded and had overwhelmed them utterly, planted in place of humanity an unstoppable power and intense instinct within them that would not be extinguished. "Please don't try to stop us...We have to go home."

"Home?" What could she be talking about? "What do you mean? This is your home..."

"Not anymore..."

Graham stumbled back... What was that Voice? But somewhere in the pit of his screaming subconscious he knew exactly what it was, and human instinct was crumbling into a nameless fear at the very presence of it. Malice is power born from contempt. This was the energy that flowed within his children. That was the moment when he saw the true weight of his folly.

This is what happens when Humans play at being a God.

Even so, the man couldn't let go just yet, and he jumped forward and grasped at his son's arm to try and make him see reason. The boy reacted faster than his eyes could follow and he briefly felt Johnny's fingers on his chest, followed swiftly by an agonizing pain. Graham hand slipped from the boy's arm and he fell to his knees with a thud, his mouth opening in a silent cry as his throat constricted in pain. He didn't even need to look down to know that Johnny's hand was buried wrist-deep in his chest; he could feel the sensation all too well. Blood welled up and flowed both from his wound and from his mouth, and a symphony of snaps echoed from his mangled ribcage. Flesh ripped and tore, split so terribly easy under the force exerted by his son, who had now become something far different from human.

"I'm sorry it had to be this way, Dad," Johnny's voice didn't falter and what pity existed in his tone was no more than the emotion one might feel for witnessing the death of a stranger. His arm jerked back, stained with his father's blood which was pouring heedlessly out. Graham dropped back, leaning up against the wall, one of his trembling hands trying and failing to stem the flow of life liquid from the hole in his chest. The walls around him ripped open, and from newly formed Windows of blue and violet light, claws extended.

Grace stepped to her little brother's side, clasping his hand in hers—heedless of the red dripping maliciously from it—and pulled slightly. "It's over now, Father. It's calling us. We have to go home. Thank you for all that you've done...and farewell." They turned, arm in arm, and stepped up the staircase to the outside world.

Graham watched them go numbly, not paying attention to the slow creeping of monsters through the Windows, their mutilated forms dripping with foul-smelling purple liquid. Many of them displayed bloody innards next to deformed, skin-less bodies adorned with yellowed fangs. They crept closer to him with each second, eager to tear apart the already dying man and rip the tender flesh from his bones, and the man was too removed from reality to acknowledge it.

From his back pocket he pulled out the pistol that Marlow had given him before the ritual began. "Just in case," He had said, handing over the firearm in case something went wrong, though Graham had known that one gun wasn't going to be of much use if monsters appeared. But now he knew what the weapon was really for, and the man let out a choking laugh containing all the despair of someone who knew that he had failed. The movement sent jolts of fierce torture through his being, but he didn't care. Because his children were not who they once were, but had become harbingers of Malice.

And it was his entire fault.

Under the shadow of lurching beasts of Malice only inches away, Graham placed the gun against his temple and pulled the trigger.