The flight back was a startlingly quiet one: Rider sat in silence the entire time, arousing power from some unnamed force within his airship. The wind whistled and whipped my ears numb, but with my fingers curled around the edge, I knew without a doubt that I was doing the right thing.
I might die doing this "right thing," but what the hell. You only live once, right? And there were people out there who were born with magic in their blood, people who were slaughtered for unjustified reasons.
I think now that the best way to live life is to live it for others. To redeem and to reaffirm justice.
God, I wish I could talk to my past self. Like, even my "self" a week ago. I might have been able to make some real changes for myself, you know? That quiz last week I bombed? Those college pamphlets I tossed out without a second glance?
I used to be looking for a reason to live, a final, desperate attempt to climb back from the ledge.
Now that I have a reason to die, I have never felt so alive.
Rhio Aias purrs within my coat pocket as I grip it tightly.
This.
This is my chance.
This is my chance to finally live my life.
But as we near where we were before, I slowly come to notice the branches that aren't branches lodged into tree trunks. Tree after tree, green blur after green blur, I notice more and more arrows piercing the bark. Hundreds, maybe even thousands.
A hand on my back tells me Rider is at my side. I don't flinch, not like I would have a week ago, and turn my eyes towards him. Veins of gold protrude from his beautiful face, his eyes narrowed as he watches the land beside me. His fine face is ridged, his hand clutches his staff at his side.
This.
This is a man of war.
This is a king summoning his troops.
God, I'm so turned on right now.
The rumbling was not that of an upset stomach, nor was it that of a trembling mother nature. In fact, the cause for the commotion was not natural in any way, shape, or form.
No, the cause was the atrocity that catapults itself across the land. It comes from four powerful paws that stride across deserts, mountains, and ultimately an ocean, landing firmly onshore of an island east of the majority of the modernized world.
And as Lancer counts his final blessings, the sun overhead nothing more than a black ring of devastation, over the mountainside laps a child of God. He sees it beyond his assailant's rigid face, so it came as a brutal surprise to her when it collided into her back.
No. This thing came from its eternal resting place of Egypt, and throws itself into the woman standing above Lancer. For she was unaware of the pulsating world around her, her bloodlust beating through her eardrums.
Well, more so throws itself against her: size-wise, this… this thing is nearly thirty times that of the girl. It is not soft as it once was – instead, it is glazed over in stone. Composed of spirits whose bodies inhabited it (slaves who fell on the job were subsequently used for insulation) and a still-beating heart, the Sphynx of Egypt is no more human than it is devastation. Golden from generations of sitting watch under the sun, the man-like face is twisted in an unfathomable way with fangs bared and gorged eyes bleeding red under the sunless sky. Powerful muscles ripple in the bleak darkness, stones sliding too and fro as it adjusts to its newfound freedom. It is here upon request of a long-silent master. It is a beast unlike its kin, for it is the most powerful of them all. And it does not hesitate.
Claws sheathed for hundreds of years lash out at the vile, as it acts on command of its master and intuition unparalleled. Magic courses through the stones and skeletons as it paws the ground, casting out a forbidden incantation preventing manipulation through dark magic; for with this intuition, it assess the world around it.
Assassin is subsequently forced from the earth. She lashes out two violent arms – one directed at the man-beast that guards history's most sacred tombs, the other at the man who played god with nature.
The cat cannot react fast enough to stop the assassin. With fingers made of darkness and the most refined of metals, this barbaric extension wraps around the cats hindleg and curls its fingers, cutting it clean off. Berserker, on the other hand, is a little less lucky, and as he charges desperately at his attacker, it pierces him through the heart.
Archer is like a cat in a couple of ways – for one, I could have sworn he'd at least look fatigued, based on the bleeding he's already been victim to. But he stands like a statue, unwavering in the frigid air, bow drawn back from his perch on the top of an ancient oak tree.
And for another, he must have nine lives. I can't tell what's red from the silks or red from his blood any more.
The aircraft hovers beside my scarlet savoir. I lean down beside him, my face almost next to his, as he pinpoints his next bombardment. Tentacles of incredible length curl up as they use the trees to climb into the heavens. He releases, a streak of red the only clue that this weapon was shot forward, as even my enhanced eyes could hardly register its movement.
He doesn't look at me. "What the hell are you doing here."
"I'm here to play my part, remember? I'm not done yet."
"We're outmatched, even with his royal ass here." Archer turns around, bow dropping to his side as he glares without interest at his newest partner. The king rises, linens blowing in the stiff breeze, revealing more illuminated veins of golden glory.
"I am insulted, commoner. Especially since I am the one who saved your worthless skin."
"Please stop bitching to each other," I whine, rolling my eyes. "We have a common enemy, do we not?" I watch the Egyptian king, narrowing my eyes (not unlike Archer would and surly did). "What do you have up your sleeve?"
"I carry no weapon other than my Crook, girl." The king steps closer to the edge, toes curling slightly over the edge. He raises his arms slowly, flawless face tight in concentration. "But I have yet to bestow upon this wretched land the vast glory of Ra!"
And with that, the tree Archer stands on shakes violently. I reach out for him without thinking, and as he looks down the base of the oak, he reaches back to grab me by the shoulder to stabilize himself.
I don't think he meant to.
But it's not tentacles that climb his last resort; it's the earth peeling apart at the seams. Glowing magma seeps through the soil, illuminating various cracks across the earth's surface. I don't see it at first, but I reach slowly to grip Archer's forearm and squeeze in desperation when I do.
As the magma expands, molten talons, claws, fur, and scales line up where the cracks first eroded the crust. More finger-like appendages fit through the doorway from Satin's backyard, gleaming in variations of metal and blood. Then come the eyes: unseeing, all-seeing, eyes swollen with rage and desperation, every imaginable nightmare held in liquid sensory tools come to life.
The smaller beasts climb out first, scampering as if their tails (if, what some of them have, would actually be called tails) were singed by the devil himself. These…. Things, these uncharacterized monsters scamper on legs in numerous pairs, some spanning the entire underside of creatures. Some slither and crawl and slime their way across the forest floor, but no matter the variation, there is but one thing on their hive minds:
kill.
The sound.
The sensation.
The horror of recognizing blood as one's own.
The hand retracts, a wild grin on the girl's face. The Sphynx reacts faster than Berserker can, spinning around. It hobbles, slightly off-balance, but not so incapable of reaching out with its magnificent neck and eating the killer.
It devours her. Not in a single gulp. Not in a single swipe. But first clamping down on her from above, piercing her surprisingly powerful magic-based defense in the chest. She screams a blood-curling scream, a scream only paralleled to that of a maiden raped violently in a hopeless back alleyway. And the creature bears down, planting a malicious paw on her legs as it pins her to the earth she so desperately wanted to control. And it rears its head up, muffling her screams from within its throat, almost to the point that the tearing of her body in half was louder than her final curses. And the screaming stops. And from everyone's place on the ground, absolutely nothing could be done.
It is only now that Lancer can breathe again, unaware that he was holding his breath.
It is only now that Saber comes to terms with the unbalanced spilling of blood.
It is only now, a fraction of a second after the original wounding, that Berserker recognizes the agonizing pain that howls within him.
.
.
.
We're actually beginning to close in on the ending here, folks. Questions, comments, complains, concerns all appreciated! I love hearing from my readers!