Final Moments
Chapter 2: Fated Meeting
The sun slowly rose above the horizon and crept slowly across the sky. The birds chirped and the leaves swayed with the gentle breeze. As the light raced across the ground, it reached a person's face. The person woke up and stretched. As he looked around, an expression of confusion crossed his face as he looked at the unfamiliar terrain around him.
"Wha. Where am I?" Ranma said to himself. He was disorientated with his surrounding. As he stood up, he saw a bright forest, one like the hundreds that he has seen before in his training. Then the events that occurred the day before hit him. Quickly checking himself, he saw the signs that proved to him that what happened wasn't a bad dream. The dried blood on his shirt, the tear marks, the dirt, they all signified a fight. But look as he might, there were no wound marks on his body.
As he stood there pondering this thought, he smelled a scent. One that he smelled often when he went camping. The faint smell of burned wood. He smelled this scent every time he made a campfire. The same crisp, sour smell of smoke. Now that his mind was on it, the smell became almost overpowering in it's intensity to the point where he had to ask himself how he could have missed that smell.
As he turned around, expecting to see a long dead campfire, his eyes widen, horrified. It was almost as if one moment he was looking into paradise with green trees and birds, the next moment he is looking into the boundary of hell. It is almost as if someone made a line on the ground and decided that one area would be peaceful woodland and the other would be decimated remains of nature.
Behind him was an untouched forest, but in front were stumps of burned trees still smoking. The entire area has been ravaged with not a single sign of life. Here and there, in certain spots was the lingering of sparks. However, what made it worse was what was erected in the center. On a large branch protruding from the ground was the corpse of man. Upon closer examination, it showed that the man had been impaled. The branch entered from the lower part of his back and exited on the right side on the neck, next to his savaged head. And behind him were others. A dead forest bearing fruits of corpses. Rows after rows of death greeted his eyes.
At the sight, Ranma retched what was left in his stomach and staggered away. As he walked blindly through the forest, his mind in turmoil, he tripped on a root of a tree jutting out and rolled down the incline that he was walking on. Ranma laid there for a moment, breathing deeply. His vision started to blur and he lost consciousness from the strain and agony of what he knew in his heart that he has done.
Ever since Keiichi woke up from his dream, he became severely depressed and refused to tell Belldandy and the others what was wrong. The dream that he had, as all dreams do, slowly started to fade into obscurity, however the feeling that something terrible is going to happen never left him.
Belldandy was walking by the door cleaning the floor outside while watching Keiichi out of the corner of her eyes. All he does is sit in the corner of his darkened room and brood. Unable to stand watching him act this way, she takes a deep breath and walks up to him. Forcing a smile on her face, she looks at Keiichi as if nothing was the matter and calls out, "Keiichi?" Seeing Keiichi look up at her, she then goes on and says, "Urd, Skuld and I are about to go out on a hike for a little picnic. We were hoping you would come also. Would you like to go?"
Keiichi looks at Belldandy for a moment and a small smile creeps across his face. Looking at Belldandy trying so hard to cheer him up, he can't help but smile. Nodding his head, he says, "Sure I'll go Belldandy. It might help me take my mind off on some things."
At the answer, Belldandy brightened up considerably and hurried out to start packing lunch for the group. After doing so she called her sisters together to have a little talk. "Now remember Skuld, Urd. We don't ask him what he dreamed about. I'm sure he'll tell it to us when he feels ready to talk about it."
An hour later, Belldandy, Keiichi, Urd, and Skuld can be seen walking in the forest. As they walk and talk about mundane subjects, Keiichi seemed to be quieter than he usually was. A look of concentration fills his face as he looks around his surroundings.
The path and the forest looked hauntingly familiar to him. After trying several times to convince himself that all forests more or less looked alike and failing miserably, the feeling of unease that came to him grew steadily worse. As he concentrated, trying to remember where he saw the forest before, it came to him. Not the full dream, not even most of it. Just a small flash of memory, of running and running, finally seeing the clearing.
Belldandy had been worried about Keiichi and his depressive mood. After thinking about what she should do, she reached out and was about to talk to Keiichi when all of a sudden Keiichi started running. Worried, she called out, "Wait!" But when he didn't listen, she started running after him with Urd and Skuld close behind.
As Keiichi ran, more flashes of his dream came to him. The forest and the markings, the signs that he didn't notice in his dream now struck him with a chord of familiarity. The hills, the grass, the sounds, they all reminded him of what he dreaded. The only thing different now was the sky and the light. Where in his dream, it was dark and gray, now bright light pierced the ground, shining around him.
In front of him was the edge of the clearing that he saw in his dream. Knowing that this is where he was running to, his pace quickened. As he jumped into the clearing, he saw a sight that even in his dream he would not have expected. The stone that was supposed to be there no longer existed. Of the person, there was no sign of him. Across from him was a path, one that he had not noticed in his dream because of the stone that blocked his view. The path must have been once surrounded by trees, but now all that remained were burned ashes and pieces of the tree that somehow managed not to burn to dust.
Soon, the Norns caught up with him and they too stopped abruptly at the sight in front of them. Looking around for a moment, they just stared at the sight in silence. Then, Belldandy and Urd looked at each other for a moment, sharing dreaded knowing looks.
Urd looked back at the ground where the stone once stood and there she saw the remains of the chain created by the intestines of Loki's. She closed her eyes for a moment, and then whispered softly, "So. he's finally free."
Belldandy was just able to nod. Then she slowly started walking forward and quietly said to her older sister, "Father needs to be told about this at once. He might not know, considering who it was."
Skuld was just confused at what her sisters were saying and was about to let that known when Keiichi suddenly spoke up. "You two know who was here? About the rock and the crucifixion?"
While Urd ignored Keiichi's question and surveyed the area, Belldandy turned around and answered, "Oh, of course. The gods were the ones who put him there. But. How did you know about him being here?"
"I dreamed of this place and the man who was placed here." Keiichi answered with a gaze that looked as if he was seeing something else, something that he remembered, but was no longer there.
Skuld became more confused at the way that her sisters and Keiichi were acting. She didn't know about anyone being here and had no idea what it was all about. She opened her mouth to ask when Keiichi interupted her. "Why was he there? What did he do to get that kind of punishment?"
At this question, Belldandy looked pained. "He is the destroyer. We toiled day after day to create the world and he destroyed all that we sought to preserve. His power was beyond belief."
Suddenly, a light dawned on Skuld's face. She had been walking forward along with her sisters and Keiichi along the path that was devastated and as she looked around herself, she couldn't help but shudder, remembering the stories told to her a long time ago. "The nameless god."
Seeing Belldandy nod, Skuld burst out saying, "But that was just a story! He can't really exist!"
Belldandy sighed and said to Skuld, "To most, it is a story. There has been the birth of so many other gods since he was sealed away. There are only a handful that even knows the whole story."
"Who is this nameless god? What are you talking about?" Keiichi asked, confused now at the conversation that Skuld and Belldandy was having now.
Skuld turned to him and said, "The nameless god wasn't always nameless. But, for the sins that that he commited, his name was taken away, forever to be forgotten. That's the worst punishment that can be given to anyone. To lose your name is to lose who you really are. To lose your sense of self."
"Wha. what did he do?"
"The story tells of how his power was so great that the world was kept in constant turmoil. He created wars in which thousands upon thousands died. He destroyed life and creation as easily as if he was knocking down a sand castle. He was the death bringer." Skuld said with a hushed voice. Then with a sheepish look, she adds, "Or at least that's how the bedtime story went."
Belldandy opened her mouth and just when she was about to say something, Urd came running up. "Belldandy, we have serious trouble." When Belldandy turned to look at Urd, she continued and said, "He escaped through the side protected by Thor. He has enough power to break through Thor's barrier. Near the edge of the forest I also found something that you should see. Skuld, you stay here with Keiichi."
"What do you mean stay here! I deserve to see it also! This has to do with all the gods you know. Just tell Keiichi to stay."
Urd gives Skuld a sharp look and says, "Now listen here brat, do what I tell you to. You DO NOT want to see this."
Unwilling to give ground, Skuld says, "Well you can't stop me. Even if you tell me not to come, I'm going to follow you anyways."
Hearing this, Urd gives a small sigh and mutters, "Don't say I didn't warn you."
The group heads towards where Urd was motioning towards. When they reached the place that Urd was taking them to, they saw what she wanted them to see.
Skuld gave a small scream and covered her face from the sight and Keiichi looked on with a horrified curiousity while both Belldandy and Urd looked at it with a grim silence. They came upon an orchard of corpses. Bodies impaled through trees in various states of dismemberment. Belldandy walked up to one of the bodies. The upper portion of the head was missing, giving no hints as to who he was, she checked the body. Near the collarbone was a tattoo of a large hammer and within it a lightning bolt.
"It's one of the priest of Thor." Belldandy replied after a moment of silence.
"Then Father knows that he's loose. The spirit must have been taken to Valhalla." Urd said quietly.
As they were talking, Skuld and Keiichi explored a bit further so as to move away from the gruesome sight. As they were looking around, now back in the area where all life didn't burn to the ground, they were feeling a bit better. Exploring the now peaceful area, they could almost forget about what happened a few yards behind them.
Keiichi looked down a hill on one side when he saw someone laying down there. Afraid that it might be another person who was killed, yet knowing that he had to help if it the person was alive, he cautiously slid down to where the person was. As he approached with a feeling of dread, he quickly sighed in relief when he found the person to be breathing. Quickly he called out, "Skuld! Urd! Belldandy!"
Thinking that Keiichi might be in trouble, all three goddesses rushed towards where they heard the voice. Looking down the hill, they noticed that he was standing next to a person who was lying down on the ground, not moving.
Keiichi saw them and waved his arm and called out, "I think that he might be hurt! Can you help him?" Hearing this, the goddesses glided down next to him. Quickly checking the person over and discovering that he didn't seem to be in any immediate danger, they picked him up and decided to take him back to check more throughly for any damage.
The pig-tailed youth was placed on top of Keiichi's back as they carried him back home.
/----------------------------------------------------------------
Author's Notes:
Sorry for those people who remembers that I was planning on doing a samurai deeper kyo
crossover also. I decided that the story would become too wierd that way so I took it
out. Will try to update more often. Plus, even if I used Kyo, he wouldn't have acted as
Kyo in manga/anime anyways.
Now I'm done catching up. The fics that follows after this will be much slower. But, I'll see what I can do.
