((WTH, did you just kill me? *grumble*))
Glenn covered his eyes, trying to shelter them from the blinding light. Even as it faded he refused to look, unable to take in what he knew he would see.
“Gyah!” Titania let out a short cry as she fell forward, catching herself with a bloody, white hand. She coughed, clutching at her stomach and gasping desperately for air- the wounds around her neck shone and bled as if they were freshly imprinted “Glenn…” she managed between difficult breaths.
The knight moved cautiously forward, the demon’s life seeming to have ended all too quickly. His sword still in hand, he knelt by his friend, quiet and cautious.
“Glenn, remember what Syne told us in the cave? Remember how she told us to kill her…”
He nodded slowly, tightening the grip on his sword as he began to feel the darkness thicken about him.
“…we should have listened to her, but now we have a second chance.
Close your eyes.
Pretend that you’re Noah.
It will make it easier for you.”
She coughed once more, and Malice’s dagger fell from her sash, hitting the floor with a fateful
clang. The knight stared at the object, his eyes flickering cold against the metal reflection.
“So long as I’m alive, so can Kani be. He sealed my fate along with Malice’s when we fought together that last time. Everything since then has told me I was to perish. Now…now there’s been two great sunsets- the deaths of Magus and of Malice. I am to be the third to die.”
“Thou canst expect me to take thine life, Titania.” Glenn muttered “Thou wilt not make a murderer of me…” his eyes flickered up toward the fading figure of Noah “…not again.”
“You despise me, remember? You’ve damned me to hell!” she whispered in a bitter tone but her voice fell once more “Perhaps I deserve it and you are right. I ask you now that if I have done anything wrong in the eyes of heaven to you or to Noah, let me seek forgiveness now.”
“What you are asking me to do is unforgivable.” He answered “It would mar mine soul for eternity.”
“Then you will let me live and let Azrael revive himself?” she clutched at her throbbing neck “There is no more life for me. He flows through my veins and he will make me his new host. Please, I beg you! Don’t let him take me. Kill me now and spare me the torture.”
Sacrayan stayed where he was, watching uneasily as the demon’s body began to pulse with energy. The people of the past had faded and now only Magus and Malice remained, their solemn silhouettes cast dark against the gray sky.
“Please…” Titania whispered quietly -desperately- tears of blood flowing down her face “Please Glenn…I don’t want to spend the rest of my life under someone else’s control…
.I don’t want to be cursed to be something I don’t want to be.”
Glenn flinched slightly at these words. With a reluctant hand, he took up Malice’s dagger, bringing it up above his friend but unable to do anything else. Titania fell forward, unable to hold herself any more. Blood poured out of her pale lips as she coughed and coughed again, in pain though wordless about it.
Malice slowly walked and knelt behind her, wrapping his arms around her pulling her up to sit. He nodded to Glenn and held her tightly, pressing his cheek against hers as he whispered in her ear
“Ishtara aeterna...
Eternal Ishtar
Damia glia.
Brilliant lady
Luminous caeliestié.
Light of heaven
Harrenus lia shildé
Hear your children
Ete gasien lia
And guide us to you”
Blood covering her pale face, Titania spoke with him, her own quivering voice barely audible as the dagger plunged hard into her heart.
The dagger held by Malice.
*
Glenn sat upon the rocky cliffs, watching the sun set behind the shadowy distance. The ocean rushed beneath him- rolling waves growing fat and spilling over in crashes of white foam. To his right lay a clean, white sheet on which rested several tokens that seemed plain -and even meaningless- to any stranger who might have passed by.
There was a scythe -stained with the life of a great and wise mage- the large hilt of a now halved sword –a symbol of a life spent in chaos and ended in the darkness. There was a stone –a piece of the eternally petrified dead- a flute –the song of so much misery- and daggers –the blades of a great warrior that had taken so many lives. Lastly, seeming out of place in the setting was a large, double bladed sword.
The ocean… wrote Glenn in a journal found many years later
…is much like time. It tumbles and turns, and footprints we may leave on the shore disappear in moments. We try to run- to escape the strong currents- yet we always find ourselves pulled back at the mercy of fate. The truth is, we are like so much that is at sea- adrift and unable to see where we are going. Lives come and go as quickly as the waves and in moments we are lost- forgotten.
Ages from now, no one will remember our names, but that is the way it should be. Life is for the living, and once we are gone we should not try to linger. For soon –no matter what- we will find ourselves once more at the mercy of the waves and the cycle of the sea.
We exist only for a moment and then are nothing.
He took one last look at each object –the symbols of lives spent and wasted in war. His eyes lingered longer on the Masamune which tempted him even then. With a timid hand, he rolled the sheet up, binding each of the objects up as best as he could.
“Ete gasien lia” he whispered quietly as he threw the package into the ocean.
The waves crashed and turned, breaking any knot Glenn had used to keep the objects together. There was one last burst of foam and blue and then –as if it were supposed to happen- they came apart completely.
Glenn, noble king and founder of the New Gracia, turned away from the sun-red sea, never turning back.
There was a crash of foam and in a moment, the objects had disappeared into the water.