Maybe I've made it plenty obvious from the summary alone, but I pulled major elements and inspiration from Middle Earth. And if one thing is more evident than any other it's gotta be the Shadow of War one. I loved the duology for what it was and contemplated how it felt refreshing for the franchise back then. I liked it enough to think of this idea and voila.
If there's not enough lore for Zero, I'll just fill it with something and move on. Really have fun with it.
Enjoy:
After life; but not in death
"Ghurarmu shirkush' agh azgushu"
…
It felt like asphyxiation. Fogging with heat and inflamed to the point of paralysis.
One moment he blinked, and the next he drowned in a fever. Subaru strained to scream yet couldn't even force out a weeze. A feeling of dread froze him in place like a force jacket. He could only wish to thrash out of the creeping sleep. He fought to resist, to no result.
Not that he could console himself to think he even could. He barely struggled to muster energy for blinking. Thank God for this much. His sight was already stained by fog.
He blinked.
/
"I ain't shit-gurgling here, pipsqueak! Throw that book - Gimme the book, shithead!" Roared behind the debris, Reid.
"Piss off! Demand books from me when you learn how to read!" Subaru hollered back with sweat trickling in his eyes. He never imagined being able to outrun Reid, however he wasn't going to squander this distraction either.
Truth. He couldn't look me in the eyes - eye?; eyepatch inconvenience; and deny being illiterate.
Subaru felt so tired, panicked and weak, he easily recognized to have passed the point of fear. Like being too tired to feel tired, he was the same with his recently acquainted bully.
"Emilia, don't let him catch up!" Subaru hugged a hardcover book in one hand while with the other he dragged Beatrice above the blank white floor. "Beatrice, do your party trick!"
"Disrupting an incarnated apparition! Respect Betty's -" a cleaving gale lacerated through the air and barely spared them, courtesy of a glacier taking the hit instead. "-gahh! Fine, I suppose, fine!" The tiny girl bulged her eyes and clung tighter to her handler like a koala bear to its parent.
Swish!
Beatrice's silent casting was felt across the mana replete air.
"OI!" Suddenly feeling lighter and numb in the knees, Reid stumbled. "Get original! Ya stealin' cunts! THAT'S MY SHIT!" With a swift pirouette the old yore's hero broke the line between him and the caster. With Beatrice's focus severed, her attempt at concept cutting his manifested memory also fell cut.
"Keep running! We're almost there, Subaru!" Howled the elf who jumped behind them from one ice cleft to another. "I'm keeping him at bay." She sprang ice spears from her landing steps, adding to Reid's bulldozing path.
Subaru's hopes spiked up and almost felt palpable - a clot built in his straining throat and a fever coated his lungs. At the end of the second chamber lay the open ascension stairway to the Tower's peak.
Burst!
Mana sublimated into nothing. Sound fell dead. A pressure clawed at their brains.
And the ice barricades behind them crumbled like sand before the sea.
"You ain't keepin' dick away!" Seethed Reid in one leap, now plunging upon them.
Crunch!
/
"Zant ya apakurizak"
…
Suffocating…
Yes, Subaru could not force an inch of himself to budge.
Struggle to think whatever – his brain could only give so many answers before suffering after deprived air.
Sensations diluted into a dull ache, following to pour in a stream of itchy pain. He felt tired and sore, then weak and tender, now cold and still.
But maybe this inability itself keeping him from coughing a gurgle was a type of solace by itself. It was almost peaceful. On the outside. He felt almost inclined to say it would save him some face.
No additional pitiful last scene he would cling to in vain. Just a quick and silent passing. A rare standard to this world and age. Almost nice for a change.
Kind of refreshing…
Is what Subaru would say if he happened to read this event from an unrelated character of no consequence to him.
Who am I kidding?
Acting tough now didn't soothe much. There wasn't any silver lining for him to make by coping. This was the end of his line.
Or rather the end of a world line.
His vision now was stained in cloudy webs.
He blinked again.
/
"Dunno how ya found him; Dunno how ya thought to take 'im; And don't think I care how ya thought ta think." Reid dully uttered as if going down a checklist. "But serves ya right fer disrespecting him…" His voice flowed like a cold river while his eye shone with a regretful glint. His bolder tight fists kept hovering above Natsuki, hung there like a silent threat instead of indulging in the pummelling.
Hahh? What's this - what's this? Should I report you to isekai 101? Don't tell me your actual brain came to life there over your dickhead!
Just joking…
Having discovered himself an alleged amnesiac and strung through what he 'lovingly' pet named 'death cycles', Subaru felt entitled at least to crack a joke about the sham isekai he was dealt.
Crack.
"Hnnng." Groaned the boy from his ribs popping in line with his humour. "'He-him' up and down. What guy ya even talking about?" Irately he called out to Reid as he dragged himself with an arm.
Splat.
His bloodstained hand shot out to clasp the man's ankle. The squelch echoed from his own iron puddle.
"Mneh. …better if ya ain't pulled down that rabbit hole." Reid impassively denied an answer. His stare passed through Natsuki and the chamber's white void. Looking in another void Subaru assumed only ghosts like him could, Reid appeared dim and turbulent. "Wisen up and think better next time, sackseed. Ay? Good."
Pulling himself out of his stupor, Reid bent over the ragged run boy and roughly pulled at the book he still hugged.
"I ain't know how ta read!" Claimed the redhead boldly. "But I think I know ma own family name when I see it!" He plucked the tome free.
You think you 'know it when you see it'? Christ, only you'd admit something this embarrassing out loud. 100% no shame. 'I don't know how to read'? Scratch that, 1000% no shame. Just the type of meathead I remember the first time I woke up. A certified pea brained bos-bsttle on manga paper. Please don't change again mid interaction between us! You're ruining our thing here! I don't care enough about you to try and delve about your complicated-understnadable-not-such-a-bad-guy-not-so-different-from-me character event. Get lost! As if I care! B-b-baka!
Heh-heh, kidding again.
This mix between resentment and regret was out of place on someone so capricious. Even more so unexpected when Subaru experienced Reid's hesitation to boot. It emboldened him to forget he ever was struggling to keep isinde his ribs - blood? - after being flattened over the ivory floor.
"Maybe you'd have learned something other than knuckle dusting if you bothered this family of yours more. Like for reading tips." Subaru winced, something else inside felt extra squishy after forcing that out.
"Ah, yeah, better call that blonde twerp here ta fix ya up, lil fish. Still though, ya deserved yer come-upings from me." Crossing his arms under his chest, Reid sighed and blinked slowly. "And don't talk smack to me 'bout ma life when it got me over ye, bruv!" He went right back to his naturally loud and overbearing attitude.
Fair. But also kind of not. Don't think you'd have had it as peachy if we swapped places. Suddenly waking up in the middle of a highway road traffic, during rush hour can be scary back in my homeworld. Or if you just met police officers, period. But I can't complain that much. Having you keep me company for my last seconds is better than having you running about loose. Just have to hold your neanderthal attention span for a bit more and Beatrice with Emilia easily reach the next floor.
Are participation awards in this world a thing? If so: jackpot! I'll already reach MVP status. But hey, so long as it counts to ending whatever spooky trial-things are going about this world I'm all for it – …I really want to return home…
"Wa-wanna h-... hear a joke?" It became harder to breathe. No surprise on that end, Subaru expected that harsh impact Reid plunged with did a bit more than just break ribs or rip skin.
"If it ain't 'bout fucking, drinking and more fuckin'? …Imma pass."
"You sure? …really missing something good here…" Crawling his way closer, Subaru clenched tighter on his grip around Reid's ankle.
"Yeah - think I'll go now. Gotta arbi-abri-arrbt-arbetrie- REFEREE this trial shit! Sorry, not sorry, fishy. Busy kicking ye rats out. Trick me ta win one? Fair game. Trick me ta pass by? Now we're actually getting on the cool side. But this?" Reid crouched and parted Subaru's hair. Dusting away caked blood and fallen bangs off his cold brow. Subaru could now clearly look him in the eyes.
Swiftly, Astrea raised his eyepatch, revealing both of his dead-man-blue eyes.
"Answer me: Did ya read it?"
"..."
"Well? …DID ya, cunt?"
"..."
Reid scowled.
They both blinked.
/
"Gul-n' anakhizak"
…
Right after I even had the spine to get up after the last reset and face that red cunt. Wistfully recalled Subaru from an already failing brain.
Right before climbing the summit. Regrettably he clung to an already parasitized vision. Itchy ruptures blotted his sight.
Yeah… it definitely is bad. Clarity was washing off to sunken depths outside this reality.
Like river blindness: strands of wriggling light burnt to blue sepia spots in his vision. And a distant light walked around in the gloom, flooding his sight in azure blue.
"...ru! Su-ru! …ARU!" Maybe that scream was meant for him. Maybe from someone he was here with. That by itself should rouse a sense of panic from Subaru. That whoever it was, now was left on their own to deal with — with it. Whatever urgent this 'it' was.
It was hard to think now.
Subaru felt regret about failing to solve it. He touched on the cusp ending the nightmare.
It probably didn't matter now.
Not when for what could be the first time - before alleged amnesia not included - his life flashed before his eyes.
Mnhh. Close enough I guess? Not exactly my full life but just bits towards an end. Every story says it would be a bit more grandiose deal. The 'piece de resistance' on the living aspects. Eh, but beggars can't be choosers. First time ended worse than a pancake off the steps. Novels, eat your hearts out, nothing noteworthy about this last croak!
It's something new at least, I'll take it! Weirdly calming too… Not as scary anymore. Maybe I grew up some. Or that's just the lack of oxygen talking. Hey! Brain! If you are still working there, give me a sign.
Fuck off
Figures. At least I'm kicking my way off with flair. Inside my head…
Can't say I can imagine something bailing me from the heartache though.
"SUBARU!" Beatrice cried one last time after the dead man. And with her spirit call clinging to the hope of life, the bridge between them and the long departed was visited by Subaru again.
Chaperoned by a distant light. A walk shadowing the earth and sea.
I'm anticipating some sing off farewell, you know, since dying and all that– but it's pretty empty. Well, it might have been more impactful and I just spoiled myself from the curse. Not that much fanfare. Pretty stale. Almost comical. Not that important. Overall? It feels too mundane a thing to hold weight anymore. Kind of like an empty eclair. No fun without the stuffing.
All theory and no substance makes Subaru a dull boy. …Or, a dead boy? Mmh, forgot how the correct reference was anyway. Yeah, I really need to get a grip… Fix this whole mess, I guess…
Next time…
Subaru blinked shut.
To another end.
"!"
With a breath he long lost, Subaru drew himself up, lucid and sound of mind.
"As sound of mind as I'm left with…" mumbling his unshared frustrations, he stiffly got off the sandy floor to rub his eyes, still muddy with his doom's impressions.
"Aahhh… What a letdown." Under his breath the laments would go unheard, but at least aired out. "I don't remember it being this hard before to die and return." Cringed Subaru with bared teeth. His sight still shot through like fruit tunnelled by worms. He was anew born to this unclear sight of the reality he was rewinding.
"Or I fell from bad to worse," he had to hand it to himself though - freshly shoved in this abominable isekai sham bullshit, but he accustomed quick enough to things going tits up. More bad than good, but it somewhat helped with his existential crisis at the moment.
A quick peek down along a daft move, and he grasped a flimsy ribbon.
Hot pink.
The most cliche best colour a young girl would answer with.
A strange find, and a stranger thought to first imagine a petite girl wearing an overly frilly dress like pulled out from a barbie box.
What was her name again…?
Clearly this stood as a difference from the norm of death resets. But all the same, a reset. Subaru would take it.
"HELLO? Beatrice?! …Was it?" He called for the girl claiming to be his bound spirit. He was sure enough that was the name she used when introducing herself. The least maddening thing in the tower at World's End had to be her. And hopefully it would remain as someone who'd still answer his call or stay friendly.
…
"Ghurarmu shirkush' agh azgushu"
…
"Emilia?" Subaru turned to face the whisper like a baby grasping at the alien concept of speech from parents. The trailing fog of dragging lights – the same crooked vista he could not rub off – was all to find. "Ram?!" Maybe that name would do the trick. The girl acted harsh, maybe too capricious at times. But she had to be on the team's side.
…
"Zant ya apakurizak"
…
Subaru pivoted like a flag in the wind, chasing a paracusia on the billowing sands. He wouldn't put it beyond him to hallucinate. He already couldn't see fuck all.
"P-Patrache?" Maybe the affectionate dragon companion would answer with a screech. "J-Juli? …JULIUS?" Or he hoped the dutybound knight would not fuck around and be the only one reasonable to immediately reply.
Alas, no boyscout revealed himself.
"Am I blind…?" Subaru whispered with a crestfallen scowl. The grainy winds kept scratching the clarity he saw the world in. "Or go insane - no! I couldn't..." He checked his palms, his arms, his body. He seemed intact. Untouched and well, as if he was never injured.
Clearly 'so far so good'. He was returned before the injury in the desperate attempt to pass by Reid with a distraction.
Subaru at least could scratch the Astrea name off the list of options. Reid's book only riled him up.
But Eridna was of the same mind as he was. If not maybe the only one to encourage him and try anything he imagined.
…
"Gul-n' anakhizak"
…
"ERIDNA!" That did it, Subaru was sure now. "I thought your acting was lacking before. Now this is the part you pounce?! Should've hounded you out the tower when I could!" He puffed with haggard effort. Flooding with panic to have lost the point of resets, Subaru hardly thought with logic.
Yet he didn't receive the villainous monologue he felt would suit Eridna. No. He was still stuck to grasp at a stranger world than the one he awoke to. In a place he felt even further distress the longer the silence reigned.
In a place like removed from his cycles of death and return. It should've sounded like an improvement.
It was nothing short of sinister.
…
"Armu-nu kiyu garzin, Kalparinkar"
The pale light flaking like sand against the winds veiled his broad horizons - he was in the sandstorm's eye.
The sky above or the library's dome of rock he should wake under was not to meet. He saw what best fit unfinished margins from a painting. A dark void.
Sounds without source itched and tickled his ears. A muffled ambient of white noise.
…the floor alone, made of marble like the rest of the Tower's spine, at least remained under his feet.
"Not Taygeta exactly." Uttered Subaru with a worn attitude. "And not a restart either." He now wearily stepped around, halfway between sneaking and tensing to jump away. "LOUIS! We can chase each other like Scooby Doo ghosts all day, but you're getting nowhere either if you keep me here!"
Not even the itchy echo responded.
At every turn all there was to see was a drowned world.
"You'll die too, you fucking rat!" Blew Subaru at the shimmering corners. "If the shadow takes the tower that means it takes your books to the Hall too! And good luck eating shit in hell then, asshole!"
Boiling in his own anxiety and reduced to mostly a snowglobe prisoner, Subaru gulped his rushing cries and blinked away the sweat trickling in his eyes.
"What is this…?" He breathlessly whispered, padding over the hardly lit floor. Without any landmark in distance and no distinguishable object to find, all it brought to Subaru was an ominous sense of calm. "I died climbing the second floor…" He recalled with an empty stare, wandering the expanse like a diver on the ocean floor. "I almost forced my way past Reid."
"But not past Augria."
A trembling mirage cut the corners of his eyes.
Subaru's plea to the unseen continued:
"If I stuck with Beatrice right before the last lunge," with a tremble, Subaru hesitantly brought his arms around himself, trying to stave off a cold burrowing in his bones. "I nearly saw the end. The damn end, above…! The thing everyone was seeking had to be there!"
Alas. The open rooftop was kept beyond his reach. If anything, he remembered causing enough of a scene with the bulldozing red bully to buy the weird elf girl time to make it.
That's if the scorpion didn't get her.
Wait. If!
Maybe that was it and Subaru promptly perked up. "Did she do it? That one - Emilia? Had she reached the roof? Then the trial's over! The fucking Tower's over; so's the shadow!" With an eager pace, the boy swung around, jogging circles at random over the flowing air.
A mellow joy in his tone.
"That has to be it! I'm on my way back home! I'm on my way back home because that godforsaken Tower's gotta be crumbling down or whatever happens to cleared dungeons! YES, I must be! I'm going home - I get to see them again! I get to see them… and work things out. I'd apologise…" From desperation to forced elation, the unchecked thought of hope turned around Subaru's view. From endless purgatory to waiting room between dimensions - it had to be it. The most sound answer a boy his age and recent experience could arrive at.
Then why had he felt his own lips twitch and his voice die down during his celebration.
"You're yet to sing praise for home."
Subaru, shook between a desensitised glee and moody gloom, chased the all surrounding voice with his moistened eyes.
It was too good to be true, he knew.
Deep down. He knew.
He died right before making it.
Maybe it was thanks to the proof of presence beside him in this hallucination. Or maybe it was something he once more chalked to becoming used to dying.
No way he returned home; not with that end.
That dead-end.
"I…" Either his curse took hold and events reset at random. "For good…?" or indeed he made it. Whatever kept him in that realm had its quota filled and let him go. But either way - "Am I dead?" there was no return to a reality magic did not persist in if you weren't alive in the beginning.
Subaru, as if awakened from a murky rest, repeated the obvious. "...am I dead…?" Now calm and resigned, he forgoed what energy seemed to drive him and thrash about.
"...what is this place…?" Groaning his primal concern since when the curse should have reset, Subaru rolled his eyes over the sable dark above and foggy horizons forward.
"See for yourself." He was invited as if by death itself.
And from the river blindness realm he pondered, the shining figure of a lord stepped forward. A phantasm fit in line to an end like his, answered flatly with a wave from endless seas.
And aghast and wordless as he stared, Subaru stumbled with a limp and short of air. As if by order his ill sight was cleared from rotting winds, and scattered dunes took to the fields.
"...Augria?" The world returned to shape. The sky regained colour. The winds died down. The blind realm waned like morning shadows. "I'm… in Augria."
With a disbelieving murmur, Subaru nearly choked. Like gut checked, the boy leaned over and crashed against the thin pillar adjacent to them.
His disoriented moves dragged his flushed head to look about. A pergola of marble nestled them. He and …he rather not acknowledge the dead.
Not in the library, but still in the Tower.
Not on his way back home, but still stuck among animals, here.
Not free of the tasks enforced on him, but simply rearranged.
"Now do you understand, boy?" Someone still persisted after the faded purgatory. Someone keeping him company.
"What has happened to me?" Stumbled Subaru from the Tower's winged balcony. Sick with a cloying mix of relief and madness, he barfed a distressing question to the spectre still burnt in his retinas.
…
"You are banished from death."
A slag of cinders felt like dropping from Subaru's crown to his toes. His jaw fell slack; his eyes dimmed and watered; his face pulled taut.
Subaru craned his cementing neck to the looming wraith still with him.
Do-over, commanded his brain. A new element spun his world again. Overshadowing and illuminating.
That was the wraith's nature.
"Cast adrift between the realm of Od Lagna and home. A curse, binds us together within the walls of Augria." With a gesture in presentation to the encompassing desolation, Subaru's newly met dead comerade answered. Speaking through layered faces; different races; old and young meshed, Natsuki stood stunned in sight of another horror beyond his home.
Once, in life no doubt, he had to have been a great man:
Tall and robust. A calloused labourer with wide shoulders. Hair(?) to fit the bill of a rugged adventurer dragged by the feet in dirt, hung loosely down his forehead and temples, reaching his neck. High cheekbones and chunky nose that saw its share of blunt force. And skin the pale pigment of night lights. A pauldron on his right shoulder and flared vambraces down his forearms. With stout padding hidden under shirts of thin and weatherworn armour.
He was cast in moonlit shade. A contour out of this reality.
Nearly real. But obviously not.
Where he still not between life and death, Subaru would have liked to believe him a fancy haunted house prank.
Yet waiting for this shape of death to finish posturing and resume what had to follow his cursed boon, Subaru couldn't help but talk to it. If he was meant to die again, he sure was being taken time with.
"...Is. This real?" He spoke with pause and weight. Expectant to be suddenly caught back to his sterile reality of hopeless fantasies. In short - him crying against impossible odds back on Taygeta's floor.
The looming spectre who parted the encompassing seas of blindness tilted his head(?) and slowly brought a hand up. "..." Gently it fell to rest over his shoulder, intangible and cold like the sea's salty breeze. For all Subaru knew this was an illusion from his deranged brain.
And yet, the wraith kept waiting with patience Subaru wouldn't posses. Looking. Piercing him with eyes so azure he swore those were as tangible as his.
"If this - this is no joke…" The boy eyed the phantasmal limb retreating from its touch like any other lively gesture. "How? Can I go back home?" He could not think twice over anything else but this exact question. Nothing was as important as escaping and returning home this instant.
"How do we escape her?"
Nothing as important as getting out of the curse monster's reach.
"We find the one who binds us. The Witch of Sin." Replied the dead like having lived for this moment. A solution he had chanted for an eternity into fact. Bone and muscle all underneath the shimmering film of light bound as torn skin tensed and pulled to form this response. "Satella. The bain of all life."
Perhaps it was the charisma he carried. The intonation he spoke with. The new circumstance Subaru was thrust in. And the sudden ally he found directly speaking to his heart's desire of revolting.
There were many reasons for Subaru to jump the gun and plunge headfirst into the otherworldly halting his return in time. And many more doubts and fears to go with it as they went with every new turning point hit since waking here. In this Tower to the Abyss.
But all at least resumed to this one simple answer. Defying the curse wordlessly chained to him. And doing it felt about as right as any wise and bad choice could in this instance.
Subaru wordlessly broke his gaze with the wraith, moving at the avenue's rim. And down from a suspended wing of the mighty burnished Tower at World's End, the harsh storms parted. And lo!
A realm of beasts, crags, sands, heat and barren waists awaited. A crucible of storms over the fields. A swath of thunder across the dune canyons.
From the wing of this burning Tower overseeing all there ever could stand to cast shadows on this earth and over - past the shoddy and meek city at its desert's lip.
Their shadow was cast over Augria.