Broken Wings
N.W. 3203
Letting Go
He didn't know how long he'd remained in the air before almost literally crashing back to earth just outside Heimdall. The elves had found him unconscious in the Ymir Forest, and had brought him back to Heimdall, where he had woken up feeling numb.
Something inside of him, something that had kept him going for so long, kept him alive, had simply... snapped.
"Don't die, Lloyd."
He hadn't... He hadn't! So why... why...
He knew why. He'd read it in the final entries of his father's journal.
Kratos had left a human teenager on Aselia. And a human Lloyd would have died of old age not long after the year Kratos had died.
But Lloyd wasn't human, hadn't been since he was twenty-two, and they'd had no way to tell his father by that time.
There was so much rage, so much pain...
Lloyd stood and left the room he'd been placed in, walking through the village with a vague purpose, and an aching heart.
He found his way to Origin's slate in a daze, a part of him peripherally aware that he must have looked like one of the lifeless angels that had dotted Welgaia thousands of years ago—because that was how he felt.
He knelt in front of the little monument, not here for Origin, but for the half-elf whose body had been buried behind the slate. "Was this how you felt, Mithos? Was this what it was like, to lose your sister when you had only just ended the war? When the tree was dying, and you'd lost anyway?"
A single tear fell from his eyes, and he let out a ragged breath. "It didn't hurt like this when they died. Lilia, Colette, Zelos, Corellia... But this... this isn't just about death, is it? Martel lied to me for millennia. And Colette... Maybe that was why she gave up when she did. She wanted to drag me down with her, so I'd never know."
He hurt. It wasn't a physical hurt, but it was an ache that weighed down his entire being.
"I thought, when the Blood Purge and the mess with Ratatosk happened, that I'd figured out why you would be so willing to let the world die for your sister. I realize now that I was wrong."
"Lloyd..."
Origin. He had appeared out of the slate, looking far more human than Lloyd had expected. It seemed no spirit wanted to bear their formes more than a few millennia at a time. Still...
"Did you know, as well?" he asked, little to no bite in the question. He was far too tired now to be angry with the spirit of creation just yet, when he hadn't gotten an answer.
"I suspected. But I never asked, and perhaps that was a mistake."
Lloyd closed his eye, took a deep breath, and gave up tamping down the rage bubbling up within him.
He wouldn't take Mithos' path, no matter how tempting it was to kill the Yggdrasill. Humans, elves, and half-elves no longer needed mana, after all, though the lack would severely affect the elves.
And so, for Origin's sake, he would do this one last thing.
Blue-green wings spread behind him, then changed, mana becoming almost glassy, the tips of his wings fading to white, while the feathers across the top edges and nearest his back darkened to violet.
And floating between his folded wings, as if the mana feathers were disguising some form of sheath, was the Eternal Sword. It flashed from its place at his back to a spot in front of him, and Origin's eyes widened, clearly aware of what Lloyd was about to do.
The angel spread his arms wide, and the Eternal Sword seemed to shatter, four items floating in a bit of a rectangle formation before him.
The Vorpal Blade he'd gotten from his adoptive father, Dirk.
The Flamberge gifted to him from his biological father, Kratos.
The Ring of the Pact, materials collected by the latter and forged by the former.
And the Diamond Ring he had received when they had made their pact all those millennia ago.
"Lloyd... Please, tell me you're not..." Origin started.
Lloyd raised his eyes to meet the spirit's, determined to do at least this last thing right.
"Origin, Spirit of Creation..."
"Stop, you need to think this over—"
"I am one who holds your pact."
"I know you're hurt, but this isn't—"
"I return to you now your pact ring, and relinquish the Material Blades."
"Lloyd! Please, don't!"
"With this, I nullify our pact."
With a cry of what could have been pain, but which he had a feeling was simply frustration, Origin disappeared, the Diamond Ring and Ring of the Pact with him.
The two blades he'd received from his fathers seemed to taunt him from where they remained, stuck into the ground in a cross.
"It's done, Mithos. I swore I'd never follow your path... and no matter how much I may wish to do so now, I owed Origin this much." A pause, and Lloyd pulled a few feathers from his once-again blue-green wings, laying them at the base of the slate in a mockery of flowers. "Farewell... brother."
He had orders to give to the elves.
They would need to separate the blades. The Flamberge would go to the desert somewhere. The Vorpal Blade would be sent to the north, where ice clung year-round.
And in the meantime, Lloyd flew to his sanctuary, walking through the garden still aching.
It was automatic, carving a new name on his list, and Lloyd hadn't quite realized he'd done it until he'd finished his work.
The name taunted him, reminded him of everything he'd been clinging to for years. The hopes, the plans he'd made for when Kratos returned, Ratatosk teaching him to free his friends and father from the pull of mana...
"Don't die, Lloyd."
"Easy for you to say."
"Don't die, Lloyd."
"You never even heard me, did you?"
"Don't die, Lloyd."
"No? Fine. I guess I did promise, didn't I?"
"Don't die, Lloyd."
"I've never gone back on my word before."
"Don't die, Lloyd."
"Shut up!"
Later, Lloyd would realize that using Athame's final gift to him in such a manner should have been his first warning that he'd found and passed the point of no return. He'd ruined the beautiful blade, and now that rough gouge would always mar the surface of his memorial stone.
But at that very moment, he couldn't have cared less. "You didn't want me to die? Fine! Heaven, hell... I don't give a damn what sort of afterlife you ended up in! I'm never joining you there!"
Blue wings churned the air as he fled.