Usual Disclaimers. Konami Characters, all rights reserved. My characters and my plot belong to me. Etc.
Luca's Redemption – Chapter Twelve
Ayuko's Story
Denouement
Location: empty Fields
"…What has just happened?" Maroux asked.
"…Well… uh, seems like we're in fields." Dr. Robert answered.
"…I can see how you're a doctor, Bob." Ayuko sarcastically remarked.
Endless fields lay around them, and endless gloom was their sky. Not a ray of sunlight, but just an aura of some kind emanating from the grey clouds. The entire place was colored in a blue green hue, as if the sky and grass decided to melt their colors together. An atmosphere of unnatural Armageddon permeated from every bit of their reality, and four figures stood without a clue in the midst of infinity.
"Seriously though, weren't we just—"
"Wait a minute… who are you?" Ayuko said, as she, and the others faced Maroux.
"… Who are you? I have never met you people before." Maroux said.
"I'm Ayuko."
"My name is Robert, but I guess my new name is Bob. I'm a doctor."
"And I'm Maroux."
The other Maroux laughed: "What trickery is this? You are not Marlow, for that is who I am."
"How's that possible? I'm Maroux!"
"… this is… truly strange," the Doc said.
"… again, Bob, bravo" Ayuko was feeling a bit edgy. "Where's Luca…? Or maybe just what's left of him…"
Dr. Robert remembered what was happening earlier: "Wait! Ayuko! You were injured? And you … were trying to tell us something, right?"
At this point, Ayuko gave up and just patted Bob on the back for his brilliance. "It was… Luca. I was at the edge of town, and I found him—"
---
She walked and found him there, limping, bleeding, walking towards her. His eyes were not his own; there was something else within Luca. Something fueled by the warm blood flowing down his right arm. The Beast Rune, no doubt, had awoken with Luca and decided to unleash its rage on that insignificant day. The day that Luca was weakened enough in his mind for it to do so, and yet Luca possessed enough rage and hatred to make any True Rune lash out in blindness. The Beast Rune was perfect for Luca, in every way imaginable. Only his rage could set it free. And on that day, it did.
Luca's eyes were not as they usually were. His deep pale iris was white as death, and the rest of his eye consumed with a blue darkness characteristic of the Beast Rune. Markings of the beast etched themselves onto his face, and his primal stare pierced Ayuko, frozen in deathly fear. Indigo flames singed into the air around Luca, leaving trails of black burns where his footsteps lay. As the flaming wounded inched closer and closer to Ayuko, his armor began to melt away into nothingness. Gold lining, steel chest plate – physical defenses created for their formidability in battle crumbled like sand at the touch of the fires.
"…d…ie…die……all … die………" It spoke with a voice not of Luca's. The greatly feared warrior was now nothing more than a vessel for the mark engraved into his right hand.
"Luca…? What are you doing up? You're supposed to be in bed." Ayuko reminded him, with utmost futility.
Then, the light exploded.
The sky – as if afraid – covered itself with clouds, which in turn shriveled into black shadows streaming across the heavens. Rain poured in the form of blood droplets, and the great stone city which the two stood just outside of was painted crimson. It seemed the End was near for this island: an end that would be comparable to the great Burning of the Grasslands, when the True Rune of Fire broke out.
But no one would ever know.
Ayuko was thrown back like a lifeless toy to the tyrannical child that was the Beast Rune's power. She inevitably blacked out.
When she came to, there would be little left for her to see. Her eyes were weak, and her head spinning as she staggered to her feet. The vision which she beheld, painted in front of her like a mural of horror, was reminiscent of what Muse looked like when the Beast devoured all the souls of that city. History indeed repeated itself. Only this time, it would be worse.
People were incinerated out of tangibility, and their spirits were sucked into the vortex of malice in the sky. Within Ayuko, something was triggered. The sight of the red city, and the azure-colored mist escaping the top of the buildings, gave birth to a resolve in her. As if to serve as a reminder to her of a past she thought she could forget. Memories filled her mind, until a tear escaped her eyes – and then she walked into the damned city.
If ever was a battle one-ended, it would be the one that ensued. Luca was now transformed as he floated in the center of the falling metropolis, and Ayuko barely recognized him. They hadn't known each other for so long, but Luca was not the most forgettable at all. Luca had struck her in an awe of trepidation: not because of what he was, but rather as an apparition of someone she knew from long ago, from a time that truly would not leave her alone. She had barely drawn her weapons before Luca noticed her there, and a meaningless moment's hesitation passed before he hurled magic at her. A blue fireball, shaped like a two-headed beast flew at her without mercy, and her body was decimated. The resolve that was born not long ago was crippled now, and yet it somehow gave her the strength to escape. She made it to the Doctor's clinic, just before everything became nothing.
---
"…which brings me back to where we are now," Ayuko finished recounting her story. Even remembering a glimpse of what had happened instilled the fear within her again.
"Well that answers exactly nothing. We are still here for apparently no reason, and there's still this person who claims to be me."
"Fool! I am Maroux! Has it ever occurred to you that I am truly who I claim to be!" Maroux exclaimed, "What possible motivation would I possess to make me lie so!"
"I could say the same thing, you imposter!"
Dr. Robert was utterly lost: "This is hardly worth getting in an argument over right now, wouldn't you two say?"
"He's right. We have to find Luca." Ayuko had a look of worry on her face. But it was hardly for him; it was for the repeating of that same tragedy. "All those people… all the townspeople are dead. We have to make sure that doesn't happen!"
"How would we even stop such a thing? Ayuko, you of all people should know!"
"… But…" She answered.
The situation was beyond normal thought, and in that sense, it was the perfect opportunity for the inexplicable to happen.
"Where on earth am I? I thought I died!" The real Maroux said. Indeed Maroux Blight had been dead for decades.
The other Maroux then spoke: "You were."
The others looked puzzled, and mildly astonished. There was a look about the other Maroux, that somehow made it known to the others he was not who he was before.
"I remember now. I am not Maroux Blight. I am… someone who wanted to give Luca another chance." The man waved his arm, and the sky opened. Descending from the hole was an unconscious Luca, blanketed with the same light as before. Dr. Robert and Ayuko called out in surprise: "LUCA!"
"Luca… is my descendant. Or rather, the descendant of Maroux Blight: that would be you." The man's gaze fell upon Maroux who, despite his disposition when he was alive those years ago, believed him. It seemed Truth had his skepticism by the throat.
The man breathed with a sigh of ultimate wisdom, as if nothing was a mystery to him anymore, and the burden of Truth was just heavy enough to make him sigh: a sigh that was sighed by many of the past's brightest minds. The truth of the matter was, however, Maroux did not know everything. He simply knew everything about what had happened since this story began to be written.
"Alright, I think I can take it from here. You don't have to narrate anymore, and I'll be talking a lot from here on in. I'll let you know when I'm finished. As for you three, Maroux, Ayuko, Dr. Robert or 'Bob' as I may have dubbed you, please allow me to explain what has happened, while Luca comes down here.
"I am from… a place that is very far from here, not only in distance but in time. I have bore witness to Luca's wrath first hand… Yes, I am originally from the lands of the city-state of Jowston. I was very well acquainted with Luca since childhood, although I may not say the opposite to the same extent, and I have seen firsthand what Luca went through. It has been… a terrible fate that befell Luca, and no one could possibly understand why he did what he did.
"But I could.
"Luca's life – his fears, his memories, his traumas, his pains, his joys as scarce as they were – is not foreign to my own. I'm not as high up and 'important' as Luca was, and unlike him, I was just a small, insignificant member of low-class society, but our experiences were common.
"Likely, this is of no consequence to any of you. Ayuko and Dr. Robert, the two of you really don't know the beast, Luca Blight. His exploits are only known by people on the other side of the seas.
"As terrible as these acts were which he committed, I could see a part of myself within him. It's probably even more awful that if I were in Luca's shoes, I would do the same things he did. And I can say that for certain, because apart from why he did what he did, I also know exactly what he did. Most people don't know that someone like me exists. In fact, I don't think anyone would believe my story if I told them; the story of my life, and, more importantly, the story of Luca's.
"Seeing Luca, broken and dying in the forest that night, I went to him. Using a forbidden power, I summoned the voice of Maroux Blight, who is Luca's ancestor – you, Maroux, I summoned you – to reach to Luca. What separates a dying man from a corpse, is their will to survive. And on that night, Luca was not only wounded to the verge of death, but also without a hesitant bone in his body to keep him from letting go of life and embracing death; a hesitant bone called hope. Luckily, I didn't just have the forbidden power to call Maroux, but I knew a lot about the Blight family ancestry. So I called you, Maroux, to save Luca.
"But I couldn't keep you in this realm – no – not without grounding you to a body, Maroux. And since the only bodies around me at that time were dead ones, I had to invoke you myself. The spell didn't quite work as well as I'd hoped, though. Strangely, Luca didn't notice the change in dialect between the times when Maroux was the more powerful mind and the times when I was. Maybe he thought I was just being an inconsistent idiot who couldn't keep to one dialect, and he could be right about that anyway.
"Still, one night, the spirit of Maroux left me, and I was left in my body – which had transformed into Maroux's – along with Maroux's memories. So while trying to regain my own existence, I had to work with Maroux's memories to get Luca to atone. Luca probably wouldn't be able to bring himself out of his fury, but I was there. Luca had to live with what he did, and I had to live with being a witness to what he did. I could help him, because only by seeing what he did can he be reached, and then saved – I had to bring him to see what he had done.
"So on went the charade, which unfortunately as you probably witnessed, eventually failed. Luca lost himself to the seduction of the Beast Rune. What you see around you – or rather what you do not see – is the remains of the city. This is because the city itself was devoured by the Beast Rune, along with the rivers and mountains of this place. In fact, the entire island was devoured, along with, of course, all of us. In effect, we are in the Bowels of the Beast.
"You see, the one true nature of all beasts is their thirst, their hunger – their senseless urge to devour things in order to satisfy their insatiable appetite. The Beast Rune would of course be the ultimate example of this instinct. So, in a matter of speaking, not only has the entire island been swallowed up by the Beast Rune, but all memory and evidence of its existence have been devoured too, as well as this of its inhabitants. The island which we were residing, as far as the real world is concerned, never even existed.
"This… is the total unrestrained power of the Beast Rune.
"The only reason that you three are still corporeal is because you have not really existed in the first place. The Beast's Insides are merely at a loss at what to do with you. I will explain this later. As for what you see around you is an illusion that is just a bit more than nothingness itself. Nothing makes more sense than an endlessly devouring creature with an insatiable appetite because it is filled with sheer nothingness, wouldn't you say? You can come back to narrate now," ended the man.
An indescribable expression stretched across Maroux, Ayuko and Dr. Robert's faces. It was the sort of expression you would expect when being given an incomprehensible truth so beyond believability that it somehow reeked of legitimacy. The wind always blew in those fields, and still managed to make a whistling sound as the near-nothingness swirled around inside itself. The four figures stood there, as a fifth continued to descend upon them. He finally arrived.
Luca stood before them, with his head looking up. He slowly moved to look at those around him as they stared at him, and opened his eyes. On his face was a look devoid of anything, as if to mirror the nothingness inside the Beast Rune.
"Now, to hurry and end this story – as every story must have an end – I will resume speaking. Firstly, Maroux Blight: you're place is not in this world. You have passed, and I shall soon send you back to the netherworld. Ayuko and Dr. Robert: your memories are artificial. Your stories, along with all people on the island you inhabited are figments of my imagination, and I wrote your stories as a backdrop for the place where Luca would atone. However, it seems my design was flawed. This is my first try after all, so I have to be patient. But do not worry: I shall return you to non-existences shortly also. I'm very busy, as I have to continue to work on saving Luca." A flicker of intense obsession was seen in the man's eyes. Twisted is this man who stood before them. "Now if you would just—"
Before the man finished, Dr. Robert clubbed him with his hands and knocked him down. "This is senseless. Even if what you say is true, do you seriously expect us to just bend over and let you obliterate us! We're going to live, you sick bastard!"
The doctor grabbed Ayuko's hand and ran. He could see the endlessness around him – they both could, but they weren't going to give up. Maroux stood silently over the man, watching him as he got to his feet.
"Well, that was certainly odd wasn't it. Maroux, surely you will act more rationally," said the man.
"Oh why yes of course. I want to go back and sleep my eternal slumber, but first I have something I must ask of you…"
The two scheming men stood, shadowed in the darkness of the Bowels of the Beast. Luca was dazed, his eyes open and yet his mind was sleeping.
To be concluded…
I've decided to end this story, instead of leave it incomplete. So I had to change my layout for this chapter.
As for the next chapter, it will be the last.