There will be one last chapter after this one, but I'd like to take now to thank everyone that has read the story, left a comment (it's 1:00 in the morning, so my mind isn't working enough for me to remember the exact word) or e-mailed me about the story. If you'd like to make any comments directly to me, please send them to (Aedian underscore it's not a space in the name) I'd love to hear criticism, or just general comments on how you all thought the story went. Again, thank you very much for reading it and I hope it was worth the wait. I truly enjoyed writing it for all of you.
1Richard sprinted down the stone halls of The Order's church. His shoes slapped hard on wet stone from where the rains above the city had seeped through cracks to finally puddle. Demons of all kinds swarmed through the same passageways he charged down, but none were able to stop him.
Bullets flew from a variety of weapons as the human servants of Walter opened fire to stop Richard from getting to their lord. Most of the shots were incredibly off target, but the others forced Richard to dive behind a supporting pillar in the stone. The bullets that missed slapped wetly into the demons behind him, killing several and scattering twice that many. Giving Richard just enough time to reach into his pocket and pull out something that he slapped onto the pillar before rolling back out into the open and regaining his feet.
In the brief look he'd had, he'd counted ten loyalists crouched down behind a fallen piller in the hallway. Five more stood holding the ceiling, and Richard hoped that four would keep the weight above him.
Still in a low crouch he sprinted into an alcove, firing several shots to keep the human loyals down. One stood too early, and Richard's shot took him in the head, splattering a cloud of red and pink into the air behind him.
"This'll clear my path..." Richard muttered to himself before reaching back into his pocket and pressing a button.
Instantly the pillar exploded into thousands of tiny stone shards that ripped through the demon ranks to clear him the expected path towards the throne room. Making sure that he wouldn't run into a trap, he pulled another object from his coat. Bringing it to his teeth, Richard pulled a metallic pin out and spun out into the corridor again, throwing the grenade with his right hand while firing with his left.
The grenade sailed true, landing in the exact middle of the few loyalists that remained and detonating with a deafening boom. A quick toss flipped the pistol to his right hand, and Richard turned it sideways, using the muzzle-kick to push his hand across the room. Halfway through his arc, the weapon clicked empty and he took that as his cue to continue the desperate sprint through the now half destroyed piller.
His empty clattered to the floor as he ran, hitting the stone with a metallic ping that rang through the hallway, followed by a dull thud as he dropped something else. Moments later the demons behind him were vaporized as another grenade exploded, force of the blast throwing Richard several feet forward and peppering him with stinging metal. A few slivers buried themselves in his body, but he ignored them, so caught up in the moment that he didn't even feel their sting.
He slammed another clip into his pistol and popped the slide forward as he neared a wooden door at the end of yet another hallway. Planting his front foot, he spun and slammed his back one into it in a kick so hard it snapped the lock and sent the door flying inward revealing two startled human loyals with automatic weapons.
The first fell instantly as Richard shot him in the head, but the second kicked over a wooden table and dove behind it. Eyes widening, Richard dropped to the floor and rolled to the cover of a stone wall as the automatic weapon began chattering and ripping chunks of the stone apart.
While regaining his feet, Richard pinched another small amount of C-4 between his fingers, attached a detonator, and leaned back into the room. Bullets whizzed by his body, one ripping a small furrow along his cheek, but he managed to throw the plastique near the table. A small sadistic chuckle followed as he eliminated the other threat in the room.
With everyone he knew of in the room dead, Richard crouched and slunk into the room. He'd come to far to take chances, and wasn't going to let himself get cocky. In the last few minutes he'd almost died dozens of times, and was getting tired of it. At some point his luck would have to run out.
As his adrenaline stopped pumping through his veins, Richard suddenly began to feel the pain of all the abuse he'd put himself through. A large bruise had appeared on his chest from where the medallion had stopped Alex's bullet, his knees and elbows were raw and bleeding, and with a grimace he pulled several metal slivers from his forearm through a bullet hole in his coat that must have barely missed him.
He used a torn piece of his shirt to wipe the blood from the furrow in his cheek and noted that there wasn't much. The bullet had managed to cauterize most of the wound, only leaving the tail end of it open.
Not willing to stop long enough to fix any of his wounds, Richard took a brief moment to look around the room he was in. The remnants of one body had been thrown across the room, bullet wound still evident in his head. The other had been completely destroyed along with the table. The explosion had left a black scorch mark on the floor and destroyed several of the stained-glass windows in what appeared to be a library. Stacks of books and bookshelves lined the walls, several of them having stopped deadly amounts of shrapnel flying through the air. In one, a large chunk of table was clearly seen rammed through four books on the occult.
The room brought back hazy memories for Richard, tickling the back of his mind and then flitting away like the shadows on the wall. They tried to come back one other time, to show him the more joyous memories he'd had in The Order, but he forced them away this time. Those days were over, and if he held onto even a single happy memory then he could hesitate. Closing his eyes, he remembered the pain, the suffering, and the hate he'd felt all night. Concentrated on it and embraced it, making it a part of himself.
Then he opened them, and the part of him that had once been was gone. He was again the machine he'd been just a few minutes ago, all shreds of humanity carefully locked away. After placing another charge on the doorway, he continued moving through the library and eventually saw a larger stone that jutted an inch out from the wall. It was a dummy stone attached to a trap that would engulf the library in demonic fires, destroying everything should it be pressed.
Richard heard demons begin to enter the library, saw them running angrily towards him. A single push of a button blasted dozens apart, sealing the library off from everything else. Moving quickly then, he pressed the stone underneath the one he'd seen and a door slid back from the wall, perfectly hidden amid the aged mortar and crumbling rock. As Richard slipped into the shadows and blackness of the passage, he hit the other stone instantly engulfing the library in hellfire.
As he ran through the ancient corridor, he heard the screams of demons in agony and just continued running, not caring any further. It was them or him.
The passage led out into a room only a few doors away from the throne room, and Richard slowed to a jog. His breath whistled out of his mouth in heavy gasps, but he didn't have the time to stand there to catch it. Still, he just walked the next few steps, passing several torches that provided the only light to the corridor.
As he walked, he heard stone scraping on stone and spun quickly to see a pistol only an inch in front of his face.
"So you've finally come." Paul hissed as he put the pistol closer, resting the cold steel on Richard's forehead. "I'd hoped it would be you and not anyone else."
"Are you going to kill me now?" Richard asked angrily, pistol hanging in the air halfway to Paul's chest. "Kill me and be in constant servitude to Walter?"
Steel ground against flesh as Paul pressed the pistol harder against Richard's face. "If I kill you, he might let me gain control of a part of Silent Hill."
"Might." Was all Richard said, waiting and watching as Paul's finger tightened on the trigger. Two pounds of pressure, three…there was no telling how much more until it fired.
Then he ripped the weapon away and fired several shots into the corridor, bringing the screams of demons to Richard's ears again. "This way!" Paul shouted as continuing roars of anger began to fill the hallway. "Walter's almost done opening the door to the Demonic Realms!"
Paul grabbed Richard's arm and pulled him into the passageway that he'd come from, firing several shots into what looked to be an oncoming wave of demons. "If you go through here, you'll come out directly in the throne room. It's only a few hundred feet away…GO!"
"What about you?" Richard asked, confused by the sudden shift of Paul's thinking. "Are you just going to stay here and kill demons until Walter's dead?"
Five more shots rang out when Paul's pistol rang out empty. "No, I'm done." He said quietly. "I've been watching you move through the church. Give me a grendade and I'll make sure it's just you and Walter fighting."
As Richard ran towards Walter and his final battle in Silent Hill, he heard the screaming of demons, of Paul, and finally the massive explosion that signaled he was truly without allies in Silent Hill.
Inside the throne room, Walter sat on his throne, hearing gunfire and explosions growing ever closer. Already, hundreds of his demons had been killed and it was only a matter of time until someone came for him. Clutching the Ronin Blade tighter in his hand, he turned and again read the inscription on the wall behind the throne.
"Thus they exalted his name, calling him the Master of The Order. Take thine rightful position Walter Sullivan, and know that Silent Hill is now yours." A voice said from behind him, bringing his head jerking around, white hair making a perfect contrast on the dark black leather he wore.
"I contest that." Richard said as he stood at the bottom of the stairs leading to the throne, stairs that had grow with Walter's power and rank to being over twenty tiers tall. The very sight of them put him on a pillar the likes of which set him higher than any demon lord in Silent Hill.
"You're finally here." Walter said, surprised at how calmly he was able to say those words for he'd never expected Richard to ever make it this far. "I guess it is true…only I can kill you."
"Vice versa Walter." Richard said just softly enough to be heard. With his back still turned, the Master of The Order heard the click as a hammer was thumbed back, an unnecessary and even futile move that told him the necessity to turn around and face his opponent.
Taking a step forward, Walter spread his arms widely. "You haven't shot yet. Probably because you see as well as I do that this is destiny. We were meant to rule together."
He barely saw Richard's finger tighten on the trigger, barely managed to drop to one knee, and barely was able to dodge the bullet that passed less than an inch from his left ear. A flick of his right wrist sent a throwing knife tumbling into it, and as Richard charged up the stairs, Walter flung his arm forward and sent the knife flying straight forward.
The knife buried itself in Richard's arm, bringing a scream of pain to his lips, but he stopped it, biting his tongue hard enough to draw blood instead. He fired three shots as he came up the stairs, knowing that he would have no time to reload when he was fighting Walter.
Even knowing how fast his opponent was, Richard barely managed to dodge the lightning fast swipe of the Ronin Blade as Walter swept it out of the sheath and whistling through the air. It was only by moving the pistol up to stop the swing that he managed to keep from being split in two.
Drawing back for a second swing, Walter dropped his feet out from underneath himself and was suddenly on one knee slashing low for Richard's shins. Only a furious back-pedal kept the strike from hitting, but at the same time he fired two more shots, one ripping into Walter's arm and the other digging an identical furrow in his cheek.
Yet he hadn't dodged perfectly, and despite the sudden pain in his arm, Walter managed to alter his swing and open a long gash along Richard's left leg, digging to the bone before ripping it out.
Pain too intense to be measured flared in Richard's mind, but instantly a wall of sheer rage and terror blocked it out as he forced pressure back down on the wounded leg, ignoring the sheet of blood already streaming down it.
With no other option, he punched out, hoping to catch Walter with the hard steel of his pistol and knock his nemesis back far enough for one final shot. Instead, he found the cold edge of a katana and lost his grip on the pistol, watching it fly over Walter's head and onto the freezing stone in front of the throne.
At the same time, the Ronin Blade flew from Walter's hand, landing behind Richard with a clatter. Wordlessly the two turned and dove for the other's weapon. When they both had turned and looked up they knew what had to happen. Walter had his foot on the pistol, and Richard had his hand on the katana from where he knelt on the floor.
"It has to end this way?" Richard asked through gritted teeth, trying to ignore the horrible burning in his leg. "There's no other way?"
Walter looked at him strangely, as if judging him. "It has to finish Richard. At least Sarah lived. She never was supposed to."
"One" Richard said, eyes closed.
"Two" Walter echoed.
"THREE!" The both shouted as they slid their weapons to the other.
Richard picked the pistol up at the same time that Walter slid his foot under the katana and kicked it into his hand. As the room around them exploded into a deafening boom, he swung.
For a full second after the twin attacks, neither man moved. Walter held his sword fully extended and Richard kept his shooting stance. Then blood began to trickle down Walter's chest and the Ronin Blade clanged to the ground as he clutched the wound where the bullet had struck him.
Soundlessly he collapsed to a heap in the floor and died, the greatest threat to Silent Hill since Sammael had been killed before he could take full power of the city.
"Have peace at last Walter." Richard whispered quietly as he dropped the pistol and began to stagger down the staircase. He pressed his left hand to his stomach as he did so, trying to hold his ruined stomach in. Walter's attack had struck him just below the bellybutton and ripped cleanly all the way through the left side of his stomach.
A trail of blood followed him down the stairs, and as his vision began to fade to blackness he saw Sarah standing at the bottom of the stairs.
"Sa….a….rah?" He managed weakly, holding his right hand out pleadingly. "It…it hurts…" Was all he said before collapsing at the bottom of the stairway, illusion of Sarah giving way to cold stone.
"I'll…..mi….ss……….you." And then he too slipped into the cold embrace of death amid the carnage and destruction of what remained of Silent Hill.
As his last breath finished, an air raid siren began to blow and the city reshaped itself, turning to as it had been when he'd first been welcomed to the city after meeting Walter on the road. Silent Hill was ready for the next poor soul to enter its limits.