Ending 3: Ace of Spade
Numbness, such a horrid feeling.
They say that Man would rather be feeling pain than nothingness. Usually, this is meant as boredom but, as Cinder would attest, numbness was worse than physical torment. Her whole body felt like it was shutting down. The pain she initially felt as Hope's blade split her spine open was now winning, replaced by a void of feeling. Her heart still beat but no matter what, the commands she sent to her limb were met with silence and motionlessness.
That feeling was... Awful.
The lack of control over her own limbs was debilitating for her psyche. The one thing she was sure she could control... Gone. Worse, for all she knew, she could have soiled herself and not even know. Any feeling of liquid or solid waste, of heat, could not be sensed. But the humiliation was the least of her worries. For the first time since meeting Salem, she felt...
Fear.
This lack of control over herself was the most afraid she had been in her entire life. Worse than the beatings at the orphanage, worse than the fear of not getting any dinner if she didn't do her work at the Glass Unicorn, worse than the Immortal Witch's very presence when she was scornful.
Her eyes trembled as she was picked up from her temporary tomb of rubble, held in a princess carry in the arms of a moronic assassin she found eternally distasteful. All she could do was slowly move her head around as she was carried away, a prepared Bullhead hidden away nearby. Her head lulled side to side, looking around, searching for something. As they made their way down the rubble of the broken tower, a section of debris exploded outward violently.
"Good grief!" Mercury yelled in fright. "What was that!?"
Emerald entered Cinder's view as she unclasped her sickle-revolvers, Thief's Respite. As soon as the dust cleared, the thief flinched. The Jabberwock rose, howling in pain as darkness snapped its bone back into place and filled its scars with calcified shadows. All looked in fright at the awful beast's regeneration, then at what it was facing.
He Called Hope, still clinging to life, fruitlessly trying to get up.
Emerald's hands began to shake, the gifted muffler warming her neck. She gritted her teeth as a pain she didn't understand ravaged her heart. Many emotions swirled in her gut, like fear and anguish. Her mind tried to rationalize but failed. Only a scant few hours they spent together, yet she had already grown fond of the strange man. it was mad... but she couldn't help it. As soon as she had gotten to know him, this man who was once homeless, this kindred soul who's known filth and loneliness like her, was about to be taken away into the hereafter.
Even Mercury winced as the Wyvern opened its mouth to strangulate the otherworldly seer with its prehensile tongue. He wasn't as fond of Hope as either of his comrades but even he wouldn't wish death by digestion on him. Had to be one of the worst ways to kick it he could imagine.
Cinder herself breathed heavily, her vision waning as she drifted slowly into unconsciousness. But as soon as she saw Hope, her eyes were wide open and her heart pumped like a jackhammer. He lived still, after all of this? She groaned and moaned, the numbness supplanted by pain. She managed to lift her arm, reaching towards the man who crippled her.
"N-no!" She struggled out.
The Beast's fangs closed around his neck and he closed his eyes, sneering bitterly. Cinder's eyes burst into flames, a burning command erupting from her throat like magma.
"STOP!"
The tip of the Jabberwock's fangs pieced the skin of Hope's neck before freezing in place. The beast turned its massive head to face the one who dared defy it, meeting Cinder's gaze.
"He... Is... MINE!" She commanded.
It glared contemptuously at the broken Maiden, almost smiling at her with eternal malice. Despite her burning eyes, the beast looked like it was almost laughing at her. The tart its mistress took on wasn't even able to take on one man.
Utterly pathetic.
As it was about to gobble up Hope purely to spite that foolish maiden, a dark voice invaded its ancient mind.
That man... Bring him to me.
The beast let go of Hope, letting him fall onto his back and knocking the air out of him. The beast stood tall, letting a cry resound around Beacon's courtyard. Just as it did, four people appeared on the horizon.
"ANON!" A girl in red screamed as rose petals appeared around her.
Ruby became a mass of petals before dashing at the speed of a rushing gust of wind. The dragonoid scoffed, its new mission clear. As much as it wanted to devour Hope, its dark mistress' whims were paramount. Before her petals could come into contact with Hope, the beast grabbed Hope by the collar with its teeth and dragged him with it with a flap of its mighty wings. The current generated threw Ruby back and sent her friends tumbling back. Once on the ground, the beast threw Hope into its mouth, holding it slightly agape so that its teeth were like the bars of a prison cell. Ruby scrambled to her feet, looking up desperately at the monster that held her crush hostage.
"ANON!" Shen screamed.
Hope blinked painfully, tears of disgust growing from his eyes. The Jabberwock's breath was utterly repulsive, the stench bringing tears to his eyes and melting the wax in his ears. He stretched his arm toward his friend, his mind slipping.
"Ru...by..." he whimpered.
The Beast's mouth closed, his arm hanging from a gap in its teeth. The sounds of the outside of his dark, writhing prison were all muffled and indistinguishable, save for one awful, gut-churning cry.
"ANOOOOOOOON!"
Hope closed his eyes, defeated. The darkness came...
And won.
The skies roiled and boiled above a lonely castle, the shadow of the tormented heavens above drowning the scenery in perpetual twilight. The dark castle stood guard over a barren wasteland pitted with lakes of dark, boiling ichor that reeked of Ruin. on the shores of the shadow lakes, unholy aberrations were spawned in countless hundreds, crawling out of the tar-like waters and screaming in anguish at their miserable births being brought to fruition. The largest lake stood beneath the castle meekly, only ever birthing on the command of the structure's castellan.
A pale figure with blood as black as her heart sat quietly at the end of a needlessly long table, sipping on some sort of hard spirit from a flute glass. While she hedl her drink, her other hand held a book of ancient lore. She had never bothered learning of other worlds, seeing as Remnant was so remote on the Cosmic scale. But something had piqued her curiosity, something she learned from a spy amidst the allies of her oldest foe.
Of a seer that appeared from nowhere, a man who worshiped being not of this world.
At first, she hardly paid much attention to the initial novelty of a new pawn. However, once her agent's plan of taking down the cosmopolitan centre of Vale...
Something absolutely unlikely happened.
The black skies opened and blue light poured onto the city.
At first, she thought that some ancient wizard of old had returned from the land of the dead to spite her, but the light was far too powerful, far too pure to be mere mortal magic. Even for the apex magicians of ancient times, this light's purity would not have been possible and certainly not so wide as to cover an entire metropolis.
And it wouldn't vaporize grimms the moment they touched it.
No, this was the work of a foreign entity. And someone guided them there, at the epicentre of the terror that should have overwhelmed the city. It took her some time to pinpoint who it was, but then she remembered the pawn that came from nowhere and the puzzle began to click into place. Not only that, she had noticed that her agent had gotten... attached, to someone. She had poured precious time into trying to discover as much as she could about this man, only to come up with blank after blank.
That is, until one of her agent's pawns managed to catch him praying to deities she'd never heard of.
What was once a novelty and a strange happenstance became definite proof of the identity of this... seer.
The dark castellan of Evernight Castle, Salem, closed her book and put it and her glass down. Before her was a strange weapon that looked like a cane. Of course, she knew who it truly belonged too, despite pilfering it off the body of the otherwordly seer. She carried the shaft, her stare blank and empty.
"Oh, Ozma..." she called to, her voice as soft as velvet yet cold as ice. "Once again, you tried so hard to hold on."
She took hold of the cane, examining the form and design with calculating eyes.
"Only to fail, again."
She twirled the cane absentmindedly. Although she wasn't as good as he used to be, she knew her way around a sword, even if it was a cane meant to imitate the shape and function.
"How many times has it been for me to take what you built and tear it down to the foundations? Hundreds, maybe thousands of times?"
She scoffed.
"So pointless."
She let the cane fly out of her hand and tumble on the table. She crossed her legs and took hold of her glass, swirling the rich liquor absentmindedly.
"I let you build up, I tear it down. Rinse, wash, repeat Ad Infinitum."
She took a long sip, letting out a sigh afterward.
"To think that once upon a time, it hurt my heart to end your life. Now it's just... Boring. A chore really..."
She uncrossed her legs, only to cross them the other way around.
"And once more, you lie dead in some ruin, alone. Your champions are in disarray and your maiden is now mine... Broken yes, but mine nonetheless."
An unfamiliar yet hollow smile curled her lips upward.
"And not only her... But this Otherworlder as well, this seer, is in my hands..."
She paused gravely as her empty eyes stared at the moon through the stained glass window behind her throne.
"And soon... He too, will be my pawn."
Hope struggled to stay awake, his body drifting in and out of consciousness at a whim. The amount of blood he lost would definitely have killed him were he a weaker man. But weaker men would have died long ago. He groaned as he tried to move, only to find that his limbs were restricted, even his stump arm. He tried to look around, only to be met with unnatural darkness.
"W-what...?" He struggled to say. "Where am I? This... This isn't Gehenna..."
A pit formed in his stomach and anxiety fired up the neurons in his brain. Something was amiss, Something was terribly, terribly wrong. Something wet fell on his face, something sticky and stinky. He looked back up...
Only to see a thousand red and yellow eyes looking back at him.
His pupils shrunk as he struggled against his restraints as more and more of the black ichor fell onto him. Suddenly, terrible pain shot up his stump and a scream emerged from his throat. He looked down to see his stump being stabbed into the tar-like liquid. The excruciating pain intensified as it dug into the marrow, fiddling and violating his nerves as it pleased. Tears flowed like water as the pain became unbearable and a long, agonizing scream left his lungs. His screams mingled with the sound of mangling gore in a terrible cacophony.
He screamed, and screamed, and screamed... Until not a sound came from his chamber, but a whimper from a tainted wretch. Of one who wished for death, sweet merciful death.
One that would not come, no matter how much he prayed and begged.
His life may have been saved but the nightmare has only begun...
BEACON DAYS - COMPLETE!
ENDING 3 Achieved, conditions met:
Apocrypha: Iron Wrought Promise - UNCOMPLETED
Apocrypha: Dark Dogs Days - COMPLETED
END RANK: Tarnished Silver
TIMELINE TITLE: RISE OF THE THREE-EYED KING
LOAD FROM POINT OF NO RETURN?