Chapter 85: Duel Under The Raining Skies (VII)
Back to the physical world, the fragments of that shattered reality turned white, scattering into motes of energy that was reabsorbed back into his heart.
Zan observed this with an empty mind. At this point in time he was content in just experiencing the mystery of it all rather than trying to understand it.
As the reality of his inner world completely faded from sight, his vision was once again welcomed to the larger world.
The rain still fell and the wind still raged, beautiful but fatal aurora lights still pervaded the sky and the clouds, and the swordsman was still there, with an expression of extreme anguish on his face.
Zan broke out of his reality the same time that Lloyd still stayed stuck within his own, but luckily the swordsman had not brought his painted sword of misery down onto the world just yet.
Zan wasted no time, he summoned his will to push forth and although he stumbled from the lack of energy, his body dutifully struggled forward.
In fact, it seemed to do so too well…
He briefly inspected his body, finding a familiar reanimated hand on his shoulder, before being stunned by the two things he found. The first, was that his power of will was resistant to the insidious light that tried to affect it.
If he had known this earlier, he would have tried to fill his body with it instead of just his energy, possibly going further than where he was.
The second thing that stunned him however, was not only was his body and mind cleansed of the effects of the aurora lights, but there was a layer of ash around his body that completely resisted the terrible effects of that light.
His mind was brought back to the embrace of those two scorched figures, who were charred and even started to turn into ash…
Suddenly Zan felt something beneath his feet and his focus exited his mind and back into his body. He found that the shield of clouds was slowly dissipating. Large areas of it, already faded away revealing the sky below.
The insidious aurora lights escaped from those openings, causing many spectators to lose function of their bodies. To be fair they were quite lucky, for it had already been three long minutes for those watching in the ships above. For those three minutes their lungs had stopped working and their heart started to beat slower and slower. They were hoping the battle would finish soon or they might really suffer death’s kiss.
Zan pushed his body using his power of will. Although the insidious effects of the lights had disappeared, it didn’t mean that his body was not already drained of most of its energy. His own recklessness played a part, for a large amount of that energy was wasted on recreating his destroyed human torso.
A rumbling hunger shook his stomach, that extended towards his mind and soul as his entire existence was begging for food and nourishment.
“Move! Move! Move!”
“MOVE GODDAMNIT!”
The youth neglected his body and screamed, and so too did his body for more energy. His walk turned into a stumbling run, and that run transformed into a barreling sprint.
The shield of clouds was dispersing moment by moment, leaving only tiny platforms that luckily still brimmed with energy and intent. Those platforms, served as the only foothold for Zan as he made his way towards the swordsman.
As he sprinted and leaped from passing cloud to passing cloud, the red light of his left eye was flashing brightly into Lloyd’s windows of the soul.
Within the swordsman’s vision, bright red flashes of his physical reality overlaid the dream world that he was stuck in, and both the sky and the earth started to tremble and quake. The ground turned into windy sky, air, and passing clouds, but then started to turn back into its dirty war torn surface.
Flashes of Zan who was stumbling, staggering and leaping towards him overlaid the image of his dead lover’s corpse, but those awakening flashes became more and more spaced out and infrequent. Lloyd’s world and reality that was shaking, also started to calm back into a lull stillness.
Zan’s will was to break free and move forward, while Lloyd’s deepest desire was to see his lover no matter what, even if that meant only being able to see her lifeless body. And so, apart from the falling rain, that was all that was left in his eyes.
The flashes totally stopped, his world completely stopped shaking, and his focus was once again fully enraptured by that tragic sight. Apart from the sound of the rain ceaselessly hitting the surface, everything else was silent. Even his breathing had stopped long ago, and maybe because his love for her was so intense, the man’s heart also started to match the rhythm of her still heartbeat.
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Minute after minute passed by as Lloyd’s heart passed further into the point of no return. Grief, rage and self destruction crept up on him as if he finally realized she was never coming back.
Tears started to fall like rain from his face, and he moved his sword in position to spill the blood of his foes. It was pointed upwards towards the sky, as the yellow tassel of his beloved danced above his head. Now even the sound of the rain falling had stopped.
Enemies surrounded him in abundance, but his eyes still focused on her body. Even if he was going to slaughter thousands upon thousands, their deaths were not worth a single glance compared to her.
Moments before the dark blade descended however, a tiny wisp of light briefly appeared in his vision.
Lloyd’s eyes went wide before he focused his sight above him, towards the yellow tassel on his sword where it seemed to have floated from and originated.
He looked at the precious thing deeply, and his sword hesitated to make its arc.
What was that speck of otherworldly light? It floated gently and freely like cherry blossoms swept off by the wind, but at the same time it made him feel so…familiar. What floated by did not feel like an occurrence of nature but something more.
He was not sure if he imagined it or not, but his current mental state was definitely low enough to do such a thing.
As Lloyd was focused on the last gift of his beloved, in his despondent gaze a hint of movement occurred within the peripherals of his unfocused sight.
The swordsman was also nearsighted, so whatever happened in the background was only a blur to him. He would have normally ignored such a thing, but the blur of movement occurred near the view of his lover’s corpse.
His eyes unfocused themselves from the yellow tassel and madly darted back towards her motionless body. Maybe he wanted her to come back so bad that he actually imagined her to have moved. The swordsman gazed at her longer and longer, not knowing what he expected or even wanted to happen.
He was stuck in this moment, he knew that he was, but deep down he did not want to make that change, he didn’t want to forget the love even if it meant remembering the pain. Over and over the same scene replayed itself and the thought occurred to him that maybe here, he could be with her forever.
So in that eternal memory where his heart had already stopped beating, and his soul was soon to rest, his lover came to answer him. That which was already dead and motionless once again started to move, and Lloyd watched as her body that was supposed to have slept for eternity started to awaken.
The swordsman stepped back and his sword wavered.
The once silent and stuck world now paid witness to the dead woman’s will. Her heart had stopped beating, but the patter of her pale feet hitting the ground echoed into the silent world and forced the stuck rain to flow once again.
It was strange in a sense, death was thought to be the end of all things, the ultimate place of rest, yet here it was commanding the world to move.
Each step forward created a compounding effect on the life of the world. The first step shook the ground while the second step shook the sky. On only the seventh step, all of the rain in the entire world had once again started to fall, and this time it fell beautifully instead of tragically. The rain hid many profound truths, and what Lloyd felt this time was not the tragedy of something ending, but the beauty that it had happened in the first place.
Powerful winds blew upon his back and the swordsman was lightly pushed forward. It took him off guard as he struggled to regain his balance. The wind left his hair a total mess, while it blew his lover’s hair away from her face, revealing a sweet but helpless smile.
It was a playful smile that she couldn’t help but to make at the unfortunate circumstances that surrounded them. The emotion behind it however was not one of defeat, or bitterness, but of gentle acceptance and boundless clarity.
It was that same acceptance that generated an unyielding strength, and that strength pushed its person forward with courage, love, bravery, and resolve. It was evident in that each step the young woman made towards Lloyd, shook the entire reflected world.
Now, she stood right in front of him.
Lloyd took notice that she looked the same as ever. Even with her complexion that had hints of dirt on it, her face somehow found a way to remain pure, untainted.
Her hand raised itself to his cheek as he stared deeply at the face he wouldn’t ever let himself forget.
In the next second, her lips moved but no sound came out. In a desperate attempt to understand what could very well be his lover’s last words, from the afterlife no less, he began to read her lips as if it was his favorite book.
“Le– Let?”
“Let go?”
Her lips moved again, this time in a different pattern. Lloyd was no expert in reading lips so this time the translation was lost on him. In the midst of his fruitless attempts he became lost in daydreams of those moving lips.
The young woman smiled helplessly once again, and moved her face closer to his.
For a moment his heart wanted to start beating again, and madly too. The young man saw her lips moving ever closer, and he moved his own in a bid to meet them.
Yet her lips passed by his, and instead came over to his ear.
A mysterious power, the same that made Zan feel infinite, passed through her lips and entered into the reflected world where time was stuck in place.
Empowered by it, her voice carried over through time, space, life, death, and reality, to reach her lover’s ears.
For the first time in five years he heard her sweet voice, and it echoed through the whole reflected world.
Her sweet voice muttered…
“Forward.”
Like glass that was in the process of shattering, the sound of tens of thousands of mirrors cracking rang out. The glass of Lloyd’s current reality seemed to be unfit to hold the girl’s infinite love, and the reflected world was now totally covered in mirror-like fractures.
“...Forward?”
The girl’s hand touched his own, and together they brought Lloyd’s painted sword made out of the colors of anguish, pain and regret, in front of him for the couple to look at.
The young woman looked at the sword while Lloyd looked at her. By the look on her face, she obviously did not like its colors, but in the next moment she flashed a bright, cheery smile at her beloved, as if telling him and assuring him that it was all going to be alright.
The young woman tilted her head towards his, as she looked at the painted sword. Lloyd sensed that she wanted him to look at it too, like the times where she wanted him to look at the night sky above the gray clouds.
He turned his head to meet the painted sword, its sorrowful and grief filled colors showing him exactly what he had done in his past five years without her.
“Forward.” She said once again, and on command of that softly sweet but powerful voice, the reflected world cracked further and was now on the verge of totally shattering.
A bright red flash appeared momentarily in his eyes, and an echo of another voice rang out in his ears. It was first soft, vague and unclear, but as time gushed forth like a raging river, it became more and more powerful.
In the next moment, a masculine voice instead of a feminine one shook the whole world as a thunderous voice echoed through his reality.
“Move!”
And what followed it was a gentle, subdued, but equally powerful voice.
“Forward.”
BANG!
The glass of his reality was shattered into a thousand pieces, and so too was the painted sword.