Chapter 32: Last Rites

They decided that it would be best to take the day off to better mentally prepare for the final assault on the Order. It was a good chance to do some thinking and say a couple of goodbyes for the compact woman sidling along the darkened buildings of the town. Even with the mist Julia did not have a hard time finding what she was after departing their apartment base. Barefoot and alone she should have felt more awkward and afraid going to a place like this but she had bigger concerns. The large oak tree was just the way she remembered it and the two plain graves had not changed either. It had been more than two years since she was last here and a lot in her life had changed since then. What hadn't was this place and her promise to the two long dead people interred under her feet.

"Hi guys." she said to the cold stones. "It's good to see you again."

The pilgrim traced the engraved letters and numbers with her fingers lovingly and hovered over the names "Jason" and "Emily". Such a strong name for her father, such a pretty one for her mother. She thought of them often while she was here and what they were like, wondered which activities they enjoyed doing, the music they listened to. Victor had once asked her which of them had given her the nickname of 'Jewel' but she couldn't remember. If she had to guess it must have been her mom. Not to besmirch her father but it just seemed like too cutesy of a name for a man to come up with.

The newspaper clipping that brought her here, the one she recently found out had been sent to her by the Fater, was back at home and sealed in glass. From it and the grainy family photo she knew that she resembled her mother, strong jawed, black haired, short. It was impossible for any orphan or adopted child to ignore the what ifs and could have beens that plagued their lives. It was a wound that never truly healed but she'd learned to live with it and make her peace with her erstwhile brother, Alex. It was hard to hold a grudge against the man when she had killed him herself and the knife she used to do it was buried just a couple inches away.

"I wanted to thank you for watching over Victor. He's a good man, isn't he?" she asked the graves. "I think that if I brought him home you two would have liked him."

Taking a seat she felt a little strange talking out loud but didn't care. There was no one around to judge her, not here. "Chuck is a good person at heart, too. Going to need your help a little longer keeping them safe so we can finish this."

Sighing the pilgrim stared off into space as the quiet mist swirled around them. "Can I tell you guys something? I can tell you anything, right?" she asked as if there was an answer forthcoming. "I'm...not so sure I want to leave. I know, it's horrible, but what else if there for me back home? You're here, Vic's here...what's wrong with us that we can't get enough of this place? I wish you were alive so you could tell me what to do...I wish you were alive for a lot of reasons."

Rising to her feet she walked away from the graves before she became too melancholy. The shore was nearby and the embankment ended in a tiny cliff where the lapping waves of Lake Toluca barely made a sound. Selecting a couple smooth, light rocks from the sand she skipped them out over the water and made a couple wishes.

Though his mind had been tampered with and his memory skewed the knight still found his destination without thought. While he could not summon a complete map of the town at will this memory at least was unassailable, incorruptible. It was a dangerous place to return to but he knew now that the Order would not be looking for him at the moment. They were busy trying to hide from the might of Nowhere and they did not yet know that they had already failed.

Picking through the ruins of his apartment Victor thought of his earliest memories of Silent Hill. He remembered his mother being happy, smiling, care free. The Vermont trees he grew up around were not so different than the ones hemming them in here in the town of his birth. The knight wondered many times if they had moved relatively close by because his mother missed the Place of Silent Spirits.

It had been a long while since he'd last dwelt on her and what his life would have been like had she lived. It must have been this place and how much time he had spent in it both before and after September 1985. It was a peculiar kind of fate that had been left to him and the other two he traveled with. Had tragedy and calamity not taken them from Silent Hill in the first place then Daniel Kewahqu's vengeance would have most assuredly brought an even worse end upon them.

Clearing his favorite old chair of the debris the Order's strike team had left he sat down and closed his eyes. He was still a little tired and this was something he had once never worried about. Victor took a minute to muse on his steady progression away from human constraints when he first lived here. He slowly stayed up later and later and was asleep for shorter and shorter periods until one day he simply stopped doing it. Hoarding food when he found it he ate less and less until it would go untouched. Before the darkness came he felt it in his bones like a change in the air pressure before a storm. It sounded silly at the time but when Julia said he was coming with her to the outside world though there was a very good chance he'd died a long time ago and was simply a ghost too stubborn to realize it was time to leave the physical world.

It wasn't so bad here all by himself but...sometimes it was. The encounter where Nothing slaughtered the Order's adepts would haunt him for years afterward as would the occasional and disturbing signs that the Fater was keeping tabs on him. The first time he saw Pyramid Head it was deep in the bowels of Brookhaven where it was busy massacring dolls seemingly just for sport. The knight had never run so fast or hid so cowardly in his entire life and would be plagued by nightmares for weeks. There were at least a dozen close calls in the darkness where Victor barely escaped with his life and it was mostly thanks to the arcane training by the man he wanted so desperately to kill. He should have known Stone would not live and let live. He should have acted earlier. He shouldn't have left.

No, that wasn't right. Moving to the desk where he'd traced out hundreds, a thousand wards and runes he knew that leaving had been the right choice because it brought him together with Julia Stormson. Out of all the boons Silent Hill had ever given him she was most precious by far. Fierce, loyal, supportive and intelligent she was everything he could have hoped for in a beautiful woman who for some reason wanted to be with him. Because of this he could never tell her exactly how far he had gone for his own Assumption before he met her or how much he longed for Silent Hill when they were away. It was difficult for anyone, excepting perhaps Nothing himself, to understand his deep connection to his homeland but the knight knew one thing: if Julia decided that they would leave the misty land for good he would follow her. He did not track her across town, bring her to the depths of that horrid hospital and face down Pyramid Head to let anything happen to her now. They had been through too much, spent too much time watching each other's backs...spent too much time in bed together for him to be able to leave her behind.

Walking to the center of the old apartment the knight went to one knee and laid his wavy, killing blade down next to him. Its skull cross piece glinted in the light with the flesh slicing hand guards promising bodily harm where ever the blade made contact with an enemy. He wanted nothing more than to skewer Stone with it, to feel his body shake as the life left it but for the moment Victor put aside the roiling, fathomless hatred for the Order Master. Marcus had taught him long ago how to pray to the Old Gods and while Victor didn't expect any favors he still knew how to ask. It couldn't hurt to try.

Clasping his hands in front of him and closing his eyes he said, "Spirits, are you here with us? Spirits, from the sunrise, from the sunset, hear my voice, see my sweat, feel my blood. You who rule over snakes, grant us our lives, let your stars guide us. Be our dawn and our hope, abandon us not..."

Sitting by himself in the ammunition room he spent his time filling every clip they had with bullets. It was repetitive and dull, not to mention after the fifth clip it became sore on the thumb. Chuck hated having time to think as his thoughts always drifted to placed he did not want them to go.

He decided to focus on imagining a positive outcome to the impending battle. Everyone surviving intact and their enemies dead in the dust sounded like an acceptable finale to him. While they had earlier been hesitant to use deadly force against the mercenaries and the Order he saw now that this was a mistake. The mercs didn't care about sparing their lives and despite the killer's mantra to never take another life this simply could not be helped. He had healed up well in the last couple weeks from receiving their hospitality but he was still sore in a few places the bats had struck repeatedly. Adding to this was the trauma from the bullets that knocked him down. They were stopped by the vest he wore but it still felt like getting hit with a sledgehammer, minus the kevlar. They were constant, physical reminders of the people he was dealing with and fighting against.

Shifting to after the battle he thought about visiting his 'parents' but he knew that this wasn't a great idea. He'd caused them enough grief already and they weren't even his birth parents. How could he ever face them again? It was bad enough that he was a convicted murderer but worse that they had hid his past from him for his entire life. He would not even know where to begin if he went home. No, there was little waiting for him beyond the city limits. What was he but an escaped mental patient to anyone else? What was he to himself for that matter? It wasn't anyone else beating Sandy to death.

Just like that he'd come right back to the most painful, terrible moment that had defined his short life. Everything began and ended with those few hazy, blood red minutes where he had taken away his own future. It was never too far off in his mind when things slowed down and he had time for retrospection. Still, he was grateful that he had such vivid memories of what he did that were unclouded by his psyche. The alternative, not knowing what had happened, was much worse. Accepting responsibility for his actions was the key to being able to operate under the massive weight of his crime.

This is what drove him to finish their treacherous and bloody task. It was a chance to do right that it might in some way undo the wrong he had wrought. If they won he would dedicate his life to helping others and making sure no one made the same mistakes he did if at all possible. He once had the idea to work with the Dark Man directly in this but now he wasn't so sure. Knowing what he did about the shade was unsettling at best. Could he bring himself to remain allies with a murderer of that proportion? True the killer was no saint but Nothing was an atrocity level menace.

On the other hand it was hard to dismiss his best and only ally since all of this happened. His imaginary friend Troy turned out to be exactly that and other than Julia and Victor he had no other acquaintances to speak of. If there was one person other than Sandy Williams who was most responsible for altering his life forever it was the Dark Man and somehow the ghost did it for the better. The why of it still eluded him but Chuck was confident that eventually he would learn the motivations of the maniac responsible for so much of Silent Hill's madness.

Realizing that he had been spacing out for some time Chuck looked down at the clip in his hands. It had long since been filled and he set it aside to pick up another. They still had shotguns and rifles left but who knows what would happen when they attacked the Order's stronghold. Conventional firearms might not be enough to deal with whatever they would face. Looking around Chuck saw the grenade sling he'd passed over before and decided to see how well it would fit.

Piously sitting cross legged on the cold floor of the throne room the Fater fiddled with the leaves at his bare feet. Scattered out in front of him were the eight bone daggers still stained with Order blood. No matter how deeply they drank the life fluid of the dark clergy the weapons' thirst could never be slaked and neither would their owner's. The master of Nowhere should have been pleased at the progress they were making but he wasn't, never. There could be no satisfaction, no end to his vendetta until every last Order member lay dead at his feet.

Troubled and irritable he waited for the call to come across the dimensions to his ears. Healed and almost fully powered he could only pass the time as his earthly allies prepared to bring the fight to Marcus Stone and his hated resonance. Meanwhile all of his realm was in a week long party to rejoice in the their light-collecting spoils and no wars would be allowed for the duration of the holiday. Normally this was a time for merriment but the Spirit of the Night Air was in a foul mood indeed.

"You do not join the festivities?" Tower whispered in his mind.

"What exactly do I have to celebrate?" Nothing asked redundantly. The building knew full well the answer to the question, it simply could not help but bring things up. He had given the structure far too much intelligence when creating it.

"You always join in the post-Lightening revelry."

"Not this time." he said as he spun a leaf by its stem with his thumb and fore finger.

"Are you unwell, Master?"

"Anxious, Tower. Everything is riding on them. We have fought this Order heresy for too long to lose now."

"We cannot fail, Master. Not with you."

"Can, and have." Nothing corrected. "Already once they caged me. This imposter is at least my rival in power if not my better. He does not, however, have the advantage of surprise this time. We will see who dances with the blades better when next we meet."

Ignoring the sound of raucous partying and laughter rising up from below them he traced patterns in the leaves. The building was suspiciously quiet and Nothing sighed. "What is it?"

"About Victor Rosencrantz..."

"Yes, he's making strides isn't he?" the shade beamed. "Stone may have unwittingly succeeded where I have failed. He brims with passion, violence...hate...lust for battle. His dedication to the misty land borders on complete. I could not have done better myself. There is only one caveat..."

"Julia Stormson?"

"She drives him from me, nurtures his weaknesses. Had she not proved an extremely capable tool in her own right I would have eliminated her long ago."

"You would kill a chosen believer?"

"I would kill all three of them if it would ensure an heir to Jennifer Carroll's legacy. Perhaps in this battle a dagger may slip between her ribs in the dark..."

"Is she not a candidate herself? And a very viable one at that? Already she bears your blood, Master. Why seek her destruction?"

"Oh ho ho, a powerful resonance she would be." he shuddered with delight. "She is a vicious portal, worthy of being enshrined in stone. But Victor Rosencrantz would be greater still. I would release my grip on her for him to ascend to my right hand. As it is they rely heavily on each other. If one is lost in the upcoming cleansing...perhaps sorrow may accomplish what lust for power cannot."

The building was quiet a moment before it said, "Lord Nothing..."

"Hmm?"

"May I make a request?"

"A request? This has not happened since-" he scanned his long memory. "This has never happened."

"If at all possible, I would like to see Julia Stormson unharmed."

"Really." the Fater blinked. "This I would have not foreseen."

"We spoke at length when she passed through me. Praised my garden, admired your works. I like her. I would favor another visit."

"Ha! You have a soft heart my friend!" Nothing slapped the floor.

"I make no apologies."

"All right, request granted. I promise not to harm mine favored pilgrim unless it is absolutely necessary."

"Thank you, my lord."

Looking up Nothing visualized the blank spots hovering out in his atmosphere past Tower and the clouds. He did not think the Order was capable of threatening his realm but he'd underestimated them. That they would attempt to raise their own conjurer was a genius move which he did not see coming. They understood that it would take a godly entity to defeat him but this would not be enough either. Even the gods could bleed if one knew where and how to stab.