Uroboros: Resident Evil V

Chapter Forty Seven: The Flames of Judgement

Of course… of-fucking-course Wesker had to be one of the few who Uroboros actually liked, so now instead of the blond man being eaten alive by the black tendrils, he was swinging them around from his hand like a damn whip while Chris ran for his life. But where was the Agent supposed to go? This volcano was like a giant crater, filled with boulders and ledges, paths that went nowhere, and high rock walls around the distant edges that he wasn't sure he could climb out of even if Chris somehow managed to get there.

"Why are you running away, Chris?" Wesker laughed, destroying a large rock with a swing of the tendril-whip. "I thought you wanted to fight me."

While he probably had the strength to easily overtake the fleeing Agent, the blond man instead kept pace with him, forcing Chris to dive out of the way of that powerful whip each time he dared to slow down, like his enemy was simply toying with him for amusement. Regardless of whether or not this whole thing was a serious incident to Wesker, the Agent was left with no choice but to keep going, trying his best to keep distance between them by climbing over ledges and taking steeper paths… but just not gaining any ground.

Heavily out of breath and exhausted nearly to the point of passing out, Chris continued to climb up a steep incline, using any ledge or foothold he could find in order to keep moving, only to find out that this slope had been a dead end. Reaching the top, and breathing heavily while falling to his knees, the Agent looked down and saw that he was high above the river of lava, right above the plane that was about a third of the way melted by this time… but also noticing that there was nowhere else to go as Wesker approached.

"Cornered yourself, did you?" The blond man asked, slowly getting closer. "Your life is going to end in a few seconds, Chris… so do you want to jump into the fire, or get very painfully consumed by Uroboros?"

Without waiting for him to answer, Wesker roared while swinging the tendril-whip, and if Chris hadn't jumped for his life, the squirming black mass would've consumed him instead of just destroying more rocks. Of course, his current situation wasn't much better, watching his enemy get further away as the temperature around him rapidly increased… but instead of landing in a puddle of molten rock, the Agent was startled when his back slammed down onto something solid. Immediately starting to slide down some kind of smooth surface, he reflexively grabbed onto the edge to stop himself, and only then did Chris realize that he had landed on the wing of the melting plane.

The aircraft was still slowly sinking into the river of magma, but at this rate there was still more than an hour until it melted away completely, which would give the Agent plenty of time to pull himself up to his feet and find steady footing in order to walk all the way across the body of the plane to the rocky shore. It wasn't a permanent solution to his predicament, since Wesker was still up at the top of the cliff, and would still have to be dealt with somehow, but at least Chris wasn't cornered anymore, and now there was time to…

"I'm coming for you, Chris!" The blond man yelled as more black tendrils protruded from his body, wrapping around him like snakes. "There is no escape!"

With that, his enemy let out an inhuman roar as he leapt down from the top of the cliff, and the Agent ran for it. Regardless of the risk of losing his footing and falling into the molten river, Chris sprinted as fast as he could across the plane's main body to try and escape, but he had only gotten a few steps onto the other wing when Wesker landed hard on the other one with a loud thud. Suddenly he was being lifted into the air as the wing he was standing on shot upward, catapulting the Agent back the way he came, and then knocking the wind out of him after he ended up rolling across the rocky terrain.

It wasn't until he was able to look back at the current condition of the plane that he was able to understand what just happened; Wesker's increased weight and velocity hitting the wing hard enough to shift the entire aircraft onto its side so that Chris was sent flying while the blond man… while the blond man screamed when he was sent tumbling down into the lava. For a moment he vanished completely, allowing silence to fall across the volcano crater, but then Wesker reappeared, the top half of his body splashing up to the surface like the creature from the black lagoon, and screaming like one of those Hunter things from back at the Spencer Estate.

Although most of the red hot lava simply fell off when he broke the surface, the blond man's body was coated in flames, as were all the black tendrils that were rapidly falling off before vanishing into the river. It was hard to believe that even someone as powerful as Wesker could even be alive after something like that, but then his enemy waved his arm, sending out another massive tendril-whip shooting across the river right toward him like some kind of last ditch attempt to win the battle.

It the squirming mass hadn't already been on fire, breaking apart as the hundreds of individual black snakes splashed down into the river and then littered the shore, Chris probably would have been dead, but luckily the whole thing just gave up and collapsed a couple meters from where he had landed. Wesker tried again, as if killing him was more important than trying to get himself to shore, but this time the tendril-whip didn't even make it across the lava, and now the fire coating the blond man's body had intensified, but it was too late for him to get himself out of the river, since he couldn't even manage to get a single step when he tried.

"Chriiiiiiiiiiiis!" Wesker screamed as fire even started spewing out of his mouth. "You're not getting out of here aliiiiiiiiiiive!"

The blond man's hair was gone, all burned off by the fire as was just about all of his skin, and the burning black tendrils continued to fall out from inside him as if Uroboros was still multiplying as fast as it could to try and survive. Instead of making another attempt to escape, however, Wesker just screamed again as he raised both arms up into the air, creating an even bigger whip consisting of flaming tendrils that were rising up, and up, and up… until the whole thing just collapsed.

Maybe his enemy's plan was to make the thing fall over on top of him, Chris wasn't sure, but what the blond man got instead was a million burning tendrils raining down on top of him… as he slowly sank down into the molten river. Wesker screamed in rage one last time as the bulk of the last tendril-whip he created crashed right down onto him, and when that giant mass of tendrils was all burnt up by the molten rock, the blond man was… he was just gone. The last few black tendrils burned up in little sizzling puffs of smoke, and then all was quiet across the crater as the plane slowly continued to sink.

Remaining where he was for several minutes, Chris was honestly scared that his enemy was going to suddenly jump out of the lava and attack him again, but this didn't happen, and still nothing had happened by the time that the Agent was able to drag himself to his feet. Coughing from both the pain in his body as well as the fumes kicked up by the lava, the feeling of finally being rid of the man who had caused so much pain in the world, was overshadowed by the fact that there was no visible way out of this crater.

Damn it, he should have been able to jump in the air and shout in joy for getting the vengeance for his comrades in STARS, and everyone else important to him that Wesker had either hurt or killed, but even though Uroboros had been stopped and the world was safe… God damn it, there had to be a way out. Looking around for another way to get back across the river, that wasn't possible now since the plane was turned on its side, so the Agent climbed back up that slope and looked everywhere, but now… there was just nothing.

He was so tired… tired, sore, and thirsty more than anything, so Chris sunk down to his knees, continuing to look around in the hopes that he would see some magical way to escape that he had just overlooked before, but there wasn't… hey, what was that? There was a sound now, sort of like a rumbling that could barely be heard over the bubbling of the molten river, but whatever it was, it was getting closer. The sky was filled with thick clouds, leaving the dim red light from the crater as the only illumination, but… wait a second, there was something up there in the sky.

Needing to rub his dry, bloodshot eyes in order to see more clearly, at first the Agent thought that he was hallucinating, but no there it was, able to be both seen and heard… it was a helicopter. Sliding back down from the slope, and then waving his arms frantically while heading back toward the melting plane, Chris figured that they had been tracking the aircraft's transponder or something, and he had never been so happy to see the BSAA logo on the side of the helicopter as it landed, in his whole life.

Trying to walk toward it, but then falling on his face as the last of his strength faded, the Agent could feel the rush of wind from the aircraft's rotors for a while, and then someone was grabbing his arms to help him up. No, it was two someone's, and Chris was pretty sure that he heard Sheva's voice at some point while he was being almost carried back over to the helicopter, but honestly he was about to pass out, so it wasn't sure. Someone else was talking now as he was being loaded inside, but now the Agent's biggest struggle was just to keep his eyes opened, while the sounds of the helicopter taking off and basically everything else became muffled… a struggle that he failed shortly after takeoff.

And why not? Wesker was dead, for real this time, Uroboros was taken care of, and everything was good… so why not… why not just take a little nap… just for a little while?