Dead and Gone

by lukadarkwater

What if Rythian hadn't survived the Nuke? What is Zoey lost her cool?

"Rythian," Zoey gasped, her arm outstretched to where the mage lay, smoking.
The ash filled air around them rang with Lalan's evil laughter as he surveyed his work.
"Not so powerful now, eh, Rythian?" Lalna called down, floating just above them. "Not so powerful now."
Zoey painfully began to drag herself over to him, stopping every time the searing pain in her arm-or what used to be her arm- became too much for her to bear. The only blessing was that whatever had cut off her arm had been hot enough to sear the flesh together so that at least she was in no danger of bleeding out.
"You should stop, you know." Lalna said, lounging against nothing in the sky "I don't think he's ever getting up again and it doesn't look like you are in much better condition yourself.
Zoey couldn't-wouldn't- listen to him though. She kept crawling, her teeth gritted against the pain, until she could touch him. She managed to prop herself up so that she could see his face, or what she thought was his face. Every inch of him was covered in soot and ash. She knew that there were large cuts under this layer of soot-she had them too- but she couldn't do anything about that now.
She laid her hand on the side of his face and shouted his name. "Rythian! Rythain, please wake up! Please!" Tears clogged her throat but she kept yelling, she had too. He was all she had left.
Finally, just when her voice was starting to go, his eyes opened. They were distant and filled with pain, but at least it meant he was alive.
"Zo-" he broke off as a hacking cough ripped through him. "Zoey, you have to go. The radiation-"
"I'm not leaving you." She said, "I can't"
"Take Tee and go."
The tears began to fall then, "I can't"
"Why not?"
"Tee is dead."
Rythian's eyes clouded over with grief but then he gripped her shoulder. "Then you have to go. You have to survive. "
"But what about you? I can't just leave you!
"Zoey," his voice was soft- too soft. "I can't go with you."
"But Ryth-"
"I'm sorry." His hand fell from her shoulder and the light in his eyes began to fade even as she watched. "I'm sorry Zoey. I lo-" with a sigh, the endermage breathed his last.
"No no nonononnonno," Zoey gasped, her head falling to the place where she knew she would be able to hear his heartbeat, the place where she rested it every night, but it was silent.
"RYTHIAN!" She screamed, her voice breaking as the tears began falling onto his ash covered face. "COME BACK!"
The tears wouldn't stop coming and her body began shaking as she sobbed over everything that she had lost.
All the while, Lalna floated above her, his laughter only increasing as she mourned.
After a while, she could cry no more. The heat around her was making her dizzy and her voice was gone. It was around then that she became conscious of the crunch of boots on the fallen remains of Blackrock that lay around her.
She tilted her head up to see Lalna standing above her.
His blue eyes danced with glee as he stared down at them.
"It is really too bad about all of this." He said, throwing a sparse glance at the havoc around them. "You should have left when you had a chance."
"Yo- you monster."
"I prefer 'Mad scientist' but thanks for the title." With that, he kicked off into the sky without a look back.
Zoey didn't know how long she lay there. It was long enough for Rythian to go cold under her. For the ash to settle. For everything that had happened to sink into her heart and rip it into horrible black pieces and for everything to go numb.
As the sun began to dip below the horizon, Zoey knew what she was going to do. She stood up, ignoring the pain that ripped through her left side, and slowly began making her way to the enderchest that she had kept hidden in a hole a few yards away from Blackrock. The top layer of dirt that had hidden the chest had been blown away but the chest itself remained largely intact.
She pulled the silver key from around her neck and opened the lid. Lying in the bottom of the chest was a jet pack and a power arm. She had just finished making these before she had run. It was hidden away because she knew if Rythian had ever found it, he would never forgive her. Not that it mattered. He had ended up finding B.A.R.R.Y and everything had fallen apart.
She pulled the arm out and looked around. Upon finding a bit of rock that still glowed cherry red, she bit her lip and pressed it first to the arm to fire up the neuron receptors and then, despite her own shaking hand, to the stump where her arm used to be.
An inhuman keening reached her ears as she pressed the robotic arm to her now cherry-red flesh, a keening that she soon realized was her own and the world went hazy around the edges.
She crumpled to the ground, unable to move for a few moments as the arm slowly settled into her flesh. After she was able to see properly again, she staggered to her feet, the metal arm an unfamiliar weight at her side.
She hefted it up and took aim towards the crater. A glowing ball of energy gathered in the palm before she let it fly. It hit with a massive explosion, sending already mangled landscape flying everywhere.
The action gave her no pleasure, though. It had been simply a test for what was to come. She gathered up the jetpack and then walked over to where Rythian's body lay.
She looked down at him with numb eyes. "Dead and gone. Dead and gone"
The words danced through her mind as she reached down one final time to plant a kiss on the lips that she knew better than her own.
"I'm sorry Rythian," she said, her lips brushing his "I will be back."
With that, she kicked off into he sky much as Lalna had done, and headed in the direction that she knew would lead her to the castle.
As she flew, the sky began to darken with storm clouds, as if the universe knew what was about to occur and was mirroring the emotions of the girl who flew through the skies.
She soon saw the bright lights of the towers ahead of her. As she suspected, the force field was down. Lalna was too confident in his own power and she knew it.
She touched down on the roof of the castle and watched for him. A door below her opened and she watched as his blonde head scurried under her like the rat he was into the adjoining tower.
She followed his progress as he reached the large bedroom at the top and waited until all the lights were off before flying over and landing on his balcony.
She opened the door softy, careful not to wake him, and eased her way into the room. She treaded over to wear he lay and gazed down at his sleeping face. It was so peaceful; too peaceful for a man who had committed the amount of murder he had that day. It was almost a shame to wake him- almost.
Her hand shot down and gripped his neck, clamping hard into the soft flesh with its cold metal fingers.
Lalna's eyes snapped open and he gasped up at her, unable to breathe through the constrictors around his throat.
"Hello there," she said, her voice just above a whisper and ice cold. "Did I wake you from a nice sleep?" With a twitch she flung him across the room where he smashed into his dresser. "I am ever so sorry about that."
"Zoey?" Duncan gasped, breathlessly while he clutched at his throat "Wha- How did you get that arm?"
In an instant, with the help of her jet pack, she was across the room and gripping his own hand to his throat lifting him off the ground as she forced him to choke himself.
"Oh this? I made it myself. Do you like it?" she asked as she clenched him tighter until his lips were tinged with blue.
"What's that? I can't quite hear you? Why don't you speak up!" she flung him away, harder this time so that he smashed through the glass and tumbled out onto the balcony.
Thunder boomed above them and the rain began to pound down, making dark red rivets down his face as it mixed with the blood from his cuts.
Zoey walked towards him, heedless of the storm around her, it only fed the energy she had thumping through her.
"Wait! Please! I'm sorry! Maybe there is something I can do to help Ry-"
Zoey gripped his neck so tightly that blood oozed down in-between her fingers, "Don't say his name" she hissed into his ear and then jerked him up so that he was hanging over the balcony.
"How does it feel to be powerless, Lalna? How. Does. It. Feel."
Lanla struggled to answer but she didn't let him, she let him fall down to the platform below them, his cry of pain as he landed only making her blood boil with rage. He didn't deserve to be able to express pain, not after all of it he had caused.
She floated down next to him and watched as he clutched his no-doubt broken arm.
"Surely we can come to some sort of an agreement here?" Lalna gasped, his eyes shiny with fear.
She walked towards him, her arm changing into its sword mode. She leaned down next to him and gripped his hair, the sword slowly gliding down his cheek.
"You should have left when you could have."

Sjin waited by the windows and watched the storm rage outside. He was getting a bit worried as Minty had said that she would be back by now and she was always one who kept her promises.
He heard Sips shuffling around upstairs but paid no mind to it. He glanced at the clock one more time before grapping his coat and hurrying out along the road to Lomadia's house.
Minty had said she was just going to be gone for a few hours to visit with her, Xephos, and Honeydew and that she wouldn't be too late. Yet, here it was almost one in the morning and she was nowhere to be found.
The rain shrouded the familiar path and Sjin couldn't see more than a few feet ahead of him as he walked along it.
An odd scent soon reached his nose, one that he vaguely recognized but couldn't quite place as he walked. Whatever it was, it made him walk with more purpose.
He sighed with relief as he reached the hill that would lead down to Lomadia's house and climbed, glad to almost be out of the rain.
Yet, as he crested the hill, a much different scene reached his eyes.
Fire. There was fire everywhere. It had consumed any buildings that had been there and was now licking the trees around the valley.
"Minty?! Lomadia?!" He yelled as he raced down as close to the fire as he dared. "Hello!?"
"Hello, Sjin." Sjin whipped around and found himself face to face with what looked to be Zoey. But there was something different about her. Her clothes were torn and her hair was down and matted. She looked truly savage as the fire danced in her eyes.
"Zoey, quick we have to get help!"
She simply stood there, watching him as one might watch a yapping dog.
"Zoey! I think Minty is in there!"
"Oh, I know she is- or what's left of her by know."
"You- wha-"
She slowly pulled her power arm from behind her back and watched, as his eyes grew wide at the sight of it.
"What did you do?"
"Did you know that this thing not only shoots energy balls, but also has a flamethrower attachment? You can set it to where it won't burn wood, but I thought since you had such a love for lava that fire would suit you just as well."
"You did this?"
She shrugged, she eyes vacant "You got away from me, you shouldn't have."
"Wha-"
"I was at your house just now, you know."
Sjin's jaw hung open.
"I meant to just burn you along with Sips but I guess we shall do it more like Duncan now."
"Sips- wha- Lalna? What did you do to them!"
"Sips went much like them," she motioned to the burned remains of Lomadia's house. "One second he was alive and the next…. He was a little too much like bacon. Lalna I assume is dead by now.
Sjin gagged and dropped to his knees "How do you not know if he is dead?"
"Well, I guess because when I last saw him, most of the insides of his body had taken up permanent residence outside of it."
Sjin instantly realized what was matting her hair-blood- and had to choke back the bile that had come into his mouth.
"How could you?!"
"As if you didn't know. You and Lalna destroyed the whole world. You cannot be mad at me for taking the rightful revenge."
"But Lomaida? Xephos? Min- Minty? They had nothing to do with it!"
"Oh, I think they had plenty. They knew your plans. Did they lift a finger to try and stop you?"
"You're crazy!"
Zoey walked closer to him, her eyes wide "Perhaps I am. Perhaps I am"
With that, she reached out and grabbed at him, he managed to dodge but Zoey's foot kicked his legs out from underneath him.
She reached down and grabbed him by the hair, pulling him closer and closer to the fire.
"Let me go! You monster!"
"Oh no," she said, her voice soft, " I think we all know who the real monsters are." With that, she shoved Sjin's head into the fire, ignoring the heat that threaded to melt her own skin and listened to him as he screamed.
"I think we all know who the real monsters are."

The fire that she had lit raged untamed. It spread quickly across the land. Burning anything and everything in its path and leaving only a black wasteland behind. Not even the nuked out shell that was once Blackrock was left alone.
This was where it found Zoey. She lay next to Rythian, her head on his chest as if it was a normal night and she was going to bed. The robotic arm lay next to her, torn off as she had landed by her own hand. Rythian hadn't known her with with that arm so she didn't need it.
She made no attempt to move as the fire crept closer and closer to them. It was what she had planed after all. For what did she have left to live for in this world? There was nothing here but pain and death for the girl with the fire hair.

Author's Notes:

I blame Shadow for all of this. Go badger her about it. But yeah, so Shadow planted the seed in my head of what if Zoey lost her cool and basically killed everyone and this is the result of that. Not the normal fluff I write but there you have it.