At the crack of dawn, we got up, got dressed, and got ready. I picked up both the metal fragment I still had left, as well as Soul Calibur, and stood before Soul Edge. I will never forget that moment. The moment when I realizes it was all over. When the Soul Blades are gone, when the world is saved from one disaster, when the love of my life disappeared, and Talim lost her new found life. I could still have one last chat with Talim, show her some parts of the world which only I know about,... but in the end I'll just be postponing the inevitable. Convincing myself it's the right thing to do, I stabbed Soul Calibur into Soul Edge's eye, and stabbed the last fragment into Soul Calibur's eye. The fragment would blend with Soul Edge through Soul Calibur, but one will have destroyed the other, so it wouldn't matter if it ever blended. When both swords got damaged, they seemed to emanate some kind of glow, a whole orb of... energy, or so it looked. This caused Talim's last words to be: "LOOK OUT!"
Again I was knocked down, only this time somebody else lay on me when that happened. I faintly heard an explosion.
When I woke up, I felt something lying on me. Remembering what happened before I passed out, I knew it was Talim. I turned my head, and got spooked when I saw a human skeleton lying on me instead. Then I recognized Talim's clothes. This made me figure that this is Talim as she should look by now, had she died hundreds of years ago as she should have. It was, and still is, hard to believe that someone so pretty as Talim, could become something as frightening as that. But that wasn't the first thing that came to mind. Talim is gone! In fact, I killed her! I mourned about it for days. I wouldn't eat, I wouldn't sleep, I wouldn't drink...
Eventually I decided I should give her a decent burial. One she deserves. And as a symbol of what we accomplished together, I was going to bury whatever's left of both swords with her. I got up to pick up the pieces. Was I surprised to see that there was only one piece: one normal sized, medieval European sword! They say that one must find his or her exact opposite to find completion. Could it be that the same thing goes for these swords? Or were they once one? I have no idea. In either case, it's powers are gone, or else Talim were still here. Having to bury her is difficult on it's own, and I don't mean the act of burying on it's own. If there was only one sword I had to pick up, I suppose this would make burying her a little bearable. Or so I tried to tell myself, in an attempt to get over her death.
Underneath the cathedral, I dug a pit, that was deep enough so that my head only barely sticked out of the ground. I had put her in, along with her tonfas, and covered her with all the dirt I had dug up. Like a crucifix, I stuck the sword into the ground. I still stayed for three days, or more. The grieve caused me to lose track of time. At long last, I felt the wind. To Talim, the way the wind blows has it's own meaning, but to me it was just wind. But this time, I saw it as a sign. I could mourn over her for the rest of my life, but she wouldn't want me to do that. I still hesitated, but I decided to leave eventually. By the few means I had, I did everything I could to get back to my home country.
Instead of going home to my parents, I returned to my studio apartment. There were marks on the door that indicated that somebody had tried to burst it in. If it were one of those others who knew I had some shining piece of metal, they would have succeeded in breaking the door. Whoever did this, did not succeed. My guess is it were my parents, who thought I just didn't want to open the door for them. Not that it mattered much to me. I opened the door, entered my studio, locked the door behind me, put down my backpack, didn't bother to take off my clothes, and went straight to bed.
I was asleep for thirty minutes maybe, until I heard some familiar voices, screaming at me to open the door. I knew for sure it were my parents, but for some reason I didn't care much anymore. I opened the door, only to receive one smack in my face from my mother, who kept raving on about how they worked to feed me, and how I throw away all the money to going on some trip with my friends. In fairness, none of their precious money was even spend on it. Also the trip was never even meant to be any fun at all, and apart from meeting the love of my life, it was no real fun either. I was threatened by an undead pirate, nearly killed by a bunch of paranoid ninja's, had a painful recovery from that near-kill, faced of with some supernatural creatures, destroyed two swords capable of destroying the world, knowing that it would kill somebody I loved. This is exactly what I told the both of them, and I added that they should stop screaming because I'm not deaf. Perhaps they are getting deaf, but I'm still hearing everything perfectly fine. My father was about to punch me in the face, but I blocked his fist, and punched him instead, after which my mother got what she was coming to too (a smack back into her face). They threatened to stop paying for my studies, but I don't care, since to their knowledge I'm studying something I never wanted to study in the first place. Plus out of the thirty millions I won, there were still over 29,9 million left. They even threatened to call the police, but if they really would have done it, the damaged door would prove into their own disadvantage. Additionally I'm not the only one who stayed in the building, so I have witnesses to tell the police that I was legally defending myself. There's really nothing they could do.
It's funny how that summer changed my life forever. I had faced whatever I would have avoided, seen things I could never imagine them to be real,... it helped me to find the courage to stand up to my parents. Something Talim once said, according to the stories, is 'Conflict lies within you'. Somehow my last run-in with my parents got me to remember that, even though I'm still not sure about what it means. Remembering that, something else had hit me: she never knew my name! None of those we met did either! I'll probably be described as some fearless warrior, who fought bravely for the fate of the world, or some blood thirsty psychopath who wanted the sword for the so-called 'ultimate kick'. In any event, none of the stories that will come out of what happened back then will be told like they really did happen, and likely to them Talim was just someone who will die in the end, which did actually happen, and therefor she will not fall in love with the hero of the story.
I can't believe I just used the word hero to describe myself! I know exactly what it is that I'm worth, what it is I can or cannot do,... A fourteenth century troubadour once sang, that chosen by history a man becomes a warrior, and engraved into history a warrior becomes a hero. For all I know I'm not engraved or chosen anywhere, therefor I will never be a hero. Or at least, nobody will know it's me...
THE END
