A Fitting End

For a monster of dread,

By massacres it fed,

A tool of genocide for a purpose long lost,

Like a sword without edge, left rust in frost.

A relic forgotten, through millennia passed,

Yet still, it defends ghosts of its past,

Only to fall, as fate would intend,

To hands just like those that once called it friend.

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Blood. Warm blood. Soaking my vermilion plumes in an even darker red.

The air around me cooled as the last drop of power drained from my lifeless corpse. My end—the end of the Eternal Behemoth—was coming.

Yet, laying on the cool jungle floor, staring at the amber sunset, I felt relief. Dying beneath such a sky, my existence, once larger than life, had never felt so small under that ball of fire.

I tried to move my battered corpse near a cliff. With every inch, more of my coat flaked off, leaving a trail of feathers and scales. My size and weight would have collapsed the cliff, but I no longer cared.

With a full view of the scene, I let my weary eyes feast one last time on this nectar before eternal darkness. Blood still flowed from my wounds, watering the canopy below with crimson rain.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” A person, a man in metal of cosmic nebula, sat down beside me. His form was battered too, but he fared better, uncorking a flask of red liquid before dumping it down his throat.

This man was the only other Terrarian in this world, the only individual who could rival my master. The being that had reduced me to such a state and would soon do the same to my master.

Yet, I felt no animosity towards him. ‘How strange.’

‘Was it because I truly felt as though I had done all I could? That preventing the confrontation between the only two beings of the same race was impossible to begin with?’

Stolen story; please report.

I chuckled at the thought. I had had these same doubts ever since he “appeared.” To have all this power and still have doubt, maybe it was truly better if my kind was wiped from existence.

My kind. The race of Behemoths. Wielders of the Sovereign Empyrias, holders of authorities beyond that of mere gods.

Such a being...

‘Can’t even protect his brothers, his master’

“Tell me, infinite one, what purpose drives you? After my fall, what then is your ultimate aim?” I turned to ask the victor. I wanted to at least know if it could be different.

Beside him lay a long, curved blade of metal, piercing with vermilion light. Its single edge glowed and hummed, crackling with bolts of red.

He stood up, using the blade as a cane to hoist himself. Still staring at the sunset, he replied slowly, “I never saw this as some sort of grand journey, per se. I just wanted to live in these lands. One thing led to another, and we’re here. I learned somewhere along the way that I’m not really human, nor mortal, nor god. That I’m something straight out of a storybook.”

“Did you believe, because of that, that you had a higher purpose for existing?” I prodded him.

“Do you have a higher purpose for existing?” he immediately replied, then turned to me. “When I kill you, would children born be immediate stillborn?”

“No,” I answered, knowing the truth.

He sighed, eyes downtrodden. “Though I would be lying if I said I have never felt that way. But thinking about something that big, I could barely plan out the year in advance!” He let out a sheepish laugh, then turned back to the setting sun.

There was a difference, a mortal difference. Though with such a mindset, he wouldn’t remain sane for long.

“It’s time for me to go,” I said after a long lull in the wind.

“I thought you wanted to wait until the sun set.” He held the blade up, not yet pointed at me, but it had already begun to pulse with heightened power, crackling with a force just like when he first cut me.

“No, I’m satisfied.” I put out my neck. My coat of interlocking scales and feathers had already failed long ago. A simple swing would be all it took to end this immortal life.

He brandished his blade, taking a stable stance, ready to cut. I closed my eyes, my vision filled with regrets still left undone.

But I did all I could and I am satisfied with that.

The blade came down. I felt nothing but a familiar sensation.

Warmth.

‘Death was warm’

“Waw..?” The surprised noise of my executioner caught me off guard. I reopened my eyes to find my neck uncut, surrounded by a golden mass. Its endless momentum swirled into itself infinitely, flickering between auric and ruby. Each particle burned distinctly with the power of a star, yet they all moved in unison, each one indistinguishable from the other.

They danced around me just as they had once danced with me on the stage of combat.

This was his empyrion, my master’s.

The superfluid particles morphed and climbed, forming a shell and pulling my existence to another place. At first, I thought he had called me to return. But the concentration of empyrion was astronomical. It felt like he had poured all his existence into this spell. Far from merely transporting me to his abode, he was punching a hole through this world entirely and sucking me into it.

I willed my empyrion to reject, but left exhausted from my fight, all I could manage was a whimper. I tried to roar, to scream out his name.

But all that came out was a soundless whisper, eaten up by a white void.

I suddenly felt nauseous, like my body was being flung across space-time with no pause in between each jump. I forced my eye open but could barely hang on. Then, as I almost slipped into unconsciousness, I heard his voice.

“A legacy worthy of the last Behemoths.”