Beautiful, Sad; Goodbyes

"Huu- haa, huff, huff..." Ciemnosc was lying on the large, new gaping hole near the center of it. Its size was just a few 1 digit numbers above the kilometer mark, while he was at its epicenter, without any clothes and separated from the fragile, also naked and injured body of Fu Lan by just 40 meters, who was also lying on the ground and both of them facing the night, deep blue dark sky.

It had been more than 2 hours since the explosion went off and more than 2 hours since the immobile Ciemnosc had seen Fu Lan for the last time, but he could at least see her with his Spirit Sense without any problem.

His wound wasn’t gone, and it wasn’t healing any time soon, not now that he wasn’t able to eat anything or anyone up and not now that he had gone through several battles and was even impacted by the blast of mixed pure energy. Which strangely did not harm him, yet left him helpless to even blink, with his eyes hopelessly staring in only one direction this 2 hours.

One thing he could tell from this was whether he wanted it or planned it or not. Ciemnosc felt his cultivation grow at the moment of the explosion. But it wasn’t just that, he even…knew that the majority of the blast was all eaten by him and that there was nothing else nor anyone else who shouldered the brunt of that blast but him. Even then, he extended; all of his remaining dark Power Energy towards her, making a cocoon all around her at the last instant.

Ctrrrr~, ste-pff, thud… …Step, step step, step-tap tap tap…

Slowly gaining mobility after so long, Ciemnosc began to do his best to stand up immediately. His body was fragile at these moments, and he couldn’t help becoming really wobbly in each of his movements. Trying to stand up for the first time, he instead fell when he tried to push his body up while facing skywards, sliding through the darkened grains of sand and with his whole body falling with his back and bum first back onto the ground.

Taking 2 quick breaths, Ciemnosc tried once more, this time managing to stand up in a jiffy with his elbows bleeding slightly, and his back having quite some gruesome scraps that showed muscles and a couple even showed his ribs and spine. But quickly began healing up, as they seemed to be the only injuries on his body not occasioned by a Mortal grade weapon or a blast from mixed pure energies of the world with their everything.

“Ughh,” after tumbling about a little bit, his body comically trying not to trip down once again as he feared the struggle just to get up, a sensation he hadn’t felt for more than a decade… Ciemnosc then began to step towards Fu Lan, rather quickly but still with ease, groaning at the beginning before then starting to make his way through the struggle.

Step, step step, step step step step step step step step step step step step step…

“...Cough-ha! Cough cough cough cough, cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough…” While Ciemnosc was finally nearing Fu Lan, she was waking up, and the first thing she did was to immediately begin coughing a lot, delicately while serenely watching him come closer.

Showing no struggle nor fight for her life, nor any kind of survival. Fu Lan continued on coughing delicately a few times until Ciemnosc arrived before her and knelt to her left, her precious bare body having already been engraved in his mind since their first plays together. Ciemnosc merely placed his right wrist under her neck with his right palm under her head. She turned her head to look at him to her left.

“Cough, cough cough… cough, cough. Wh- what are you looking at me for?” Delicately, very daintily coughing a few last times, she said while looking at his face and letting his slender yet not manly enough hence small hands take hers and put them together before clasping them at the same time with his left hand. She added, “Don’t put any shitty words on me now, Little Ciemnosc. There are many who can’t even choose how to die. Am I not lucky?”

Saying with a bit of self-ridicule but true to her words, Fu Lan tried lifting her left hand to caress his cheeks as she had done a couple of times before in times of intimate passion, to a certain level. But she failed to even lift her left arm halfway up, falling limp the next moment with her face becoming annoyed, rolling her eyes a bit, but not even that was successfully completed.

Without saying anything in return, Ciemnosc picked her left wrist with his left hand after letting her right hand on his lap to feel his freshness, as he was already too aware that much warmth…he didn’t really have. Still, it was so that her right alone hand wouldn’t feel lonely, cold, and neglected while he held her left wrist up to his face.

“Hee…” Her fingers opening to encompass his right cheek, she became marveled at seeing their skin placed together for the umpteenth time, though this time was in quite the uniquely and most tragic of ways imaginable.

“Like?” Ciemnosc asked as he moved her wrist a little, her skin so soft and…getting colder on his cheek. Fu Lan nodded, her eyes narrowing enticingly but purely at the same time. “Mn, yesh. Like like.”

After this little bit of carelessness and doing the same with her right wrist to his left cheek, Ciemnosc, and Fu Lan then simply gazed at one another while holding both her hands with his left hand and slowly encompassing her with his palm under her head while bending over to face her face to face. She quietly spoke while frowning her blonde, striking eyebrows now somehow paler than supposed to be.

“I really hope you don’t find her…” Fu Lan then set her gaze on him, her eyes just stuck on his charm, handsomeness…and whole self.

“...” Ciemnosc looked silently at her, saying nothing, nothing at all. Closing in their faces to one another, at last, and something he hadn’t done to even Valeria. He then closed his eyelids, half a tear coming out from both his lacrimals, and then, with her eyelids closing, expelling a hurting tear from each of her breathtaking eyes tremblingly puckering her lips up to his.

“...mfggh, mhh… mfuu…” As they threw each other’s hearts to the other, not even being able to move them anymore, Fu Lan left another couple of tears come down both her lacrimals once more as she… as she… just really wanted to embrace his head, neck and back and evermore - to embrace him fully while granting him this kind of…it all from herself…but in the very end…she couldn’t.

Step- whoooosh…

After separating their lips, faces, and chests from each other, Ciemnosc had more than enjoyed tenderly holding her head in between the solid, dark grains of sand. He stood up with his left arm below her both of her knees and his right arm around her shoulders while his upper arm became her pillow along with his right chest.

“I can hear your heart from here…” She said, using most of her last traces of strength to palm his chest and close her tired and getting paler eyes affectionately, her paler eyelids showing her vulnerability to his surprise. Following her, her heart, and his own heart, Ciemnosc lightly placed his forehead on hers and also closed his eyes.

“...” - “...”

When he reopened their eyes and looked at each other, Ciemnosc noticed that she had been seeing this vulnerable side of him with his eyelids showing themselves fully for a bit of time already. Embarrassed, as the boy that he is, he dumbly smiled a little before both of their pair of eyes then fell on each other’s sclera, irises and pupils, everything.

… … … … … … … … … … … … A long time went on, a long time was needed; Ciemnosc held his little princess that was actually of a much higher age than him, though just by several eyes, her never looking away and him never bothering to say anything else. Such silence, such perfection.

“...” At this very moment, Ciemnosc felt her go away. Undoubtedly, he instinctively gritted his teeth within just a moment, released and gritted them again. It all came to him in the way he least expected it, wanted it, and… wished it… Tears, complete and full tears began, tearing down, all the way from his face to where his arms made a tricky pathway all until it moved at her skin below her knees and on his wrist at her nape.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Her bright azure colorful eyes were now gone but-... but Ciemnosc didn’t dare to move, letting them stay locked while looking up at him like a teenage girl completely dumbfounded by love.

But he eventually succumbed, and with his arms propping her tighter and closer to his chest, neck, and sobbing throat with his shaky face, the boy slowly closed his eyes as he closer hers with the skin of his neck.

Zzzzzzz… crackle- crackle~...

As the darkest, deepest of blues in the night arrived, and bathed it all, the entire world at the same time… The darkest flame with small portions of ordinary orange shone to the surroundings from the epicenter of the 1 km radius hole in the middle of nowhere, illuminating and yet not fully illuminating everything around the epicenter… for just a few seconds.

. . .

On the road, onwards to the west, but firstly towards the Little Lake. Deep in the morning.

As Ciemnosc looked ahead with his eyes never more serene, never more cold but never so lifeless.

He then looked back at the rest of his commanding vehicle, empty… When he went back to his commanding vehicle, spending about an hour looking around with his Spirit Sense all always too active, never discernible, and unstoppable for those on his side and those enemy disciples, with his feet slowly dragging around the ground and lifting as much dirt as many more signs of obvious battles had done in their respective areas.

Circling all around until he found the last… corpse of those who followed him, it was until he found that very last one that he realized that they were basically outnumbered from 1 to 8, and about half of them were also at the Spirit Gathering realm even if it wasn’t that many nor that advanced. And the weapons they could use were only about 3 to 4 from those, which he had made and given to them before the battle could commence.

Those 3 to 4 weapons he gave to the few 100 people that came with him from the escape from the Self-Mutilating Honores Sect’s territory, a thing that was basically unthinkable, but only someone like grand elder- no… just Jing Zhu; could do and pull up altogether.

None of them were left alive, but they at least used their top notch quality weapons until they either mostly broke or became shambles. However, there were also some of those weapons he gave them that were used against themselves, which could be seen so clearly by how the enemy side had those weapons he could very well distinguish with their respective handles closer to their bodies - and some of those on his side had those weapons’ injuries.

…Having picked their bodies, he buried them all respectively, giving each of them a good spot that Ciemnosc deemed with great nature before walking back to his commanding vehicle. Noticing how lonely the commanding vehicle had gotten, the silence from before was stern and steel-like. But it had become now utterly silent instead when he boarded back his armored car.

As for the rest, those enemies’ corpses, let them all rot slowly and be eaten.

And now, a few hours later, Ciemnosc was already nearing the part where the plains began to become slightly wet, and where he could already see the snow from that central west of the Region begin to somewhat spread towards the center of the Region and connect with the snow of the north. The mountains in the south were also seemingly going to have some new layers of snow for the next weeks, months, and probably years even.

At this moment, he was driving towards a hill after having just left the road, obviously not going to remain on the road the whole way to Little Lake. But, just as Ciemnosc was about to basically jump over the hill and hope it didn’t take long for the incredibly heavy large armored car to fall right down to the ground - a pair of figures holding each other’s left and right hand respectively appeared over the hill to his right.

‘Sigh…’ Ciemnosc rolled his eyes as he began stopping his commanding vehicle, ‘parking’ at the side still a few tens of meters away from the couple that remained standing a certain distance away. Getting out of his commanding vehicle, Ciemnosc then walked towards the pair of lovebirds, recognizing them as Helala and Niloi right away.

On the other hand, Ciemnosc was also recognized, not only so easily but also expectantly, as they remained on their spot and watched Ciemnosc come towards them. And as Ciemnosc walked towards them, his Mortal sword appeared in his right hand, while the Covert Space bag didn’t even seem to make a sound for it when it happened as if the world had all gone dark already…in more than one way.

“Ciemnosc, we…” Niloi started talking, his gauntlets already on, and with Helala beginning to take a pair of rapiers with an icy appearance, actual ice forming said weapons.

“Shut up. I didn’t come here to talk!” Ciemnosc semi shouted, his voice dark and seemingly infuriated, but mostly his voice seemed to express…venting. And so he was. As Ciemnosc reached both of them, their pupils constricted as their eyes widened, and they immediately jumped away from each other to avoid a simple upper strike from Ciemnosc’s Mortal weapon.

Slash- whoosh, step… … Step step, whoosh whoosh…

Avoiding altogether the heavy, fearful strike that left them feeling really afraid by just seeing how much the dirt they were stepping on was cleaved by the simple strike with just the use of his physical strength. The couple thought to themselves at the same time as they looked at each other at 10 meters of distance and even with Ciemnosc in-between them.

‘Is this his power? How can his body be this powerful?! He isn’t even using any Power Energy. What the hell is with this Ciemnosc?!’

However, Ciemnosc wasn’t in any non-bad sort of mood. And right after his right-handed sword had gone high up with that heavy attack and took some time to fall down, as soon as the middle of his thin sword reached right above his head, Helala and Niloi both dashed towards Ciemnosc at the same time without hesitation. They trusted each other and they were both at the 10th stage of the Spirit Gathering realm anyway!

Tshiaaankk~.

From his right, Ciemnosc felt Helala suddenly summoning a huge amount of ice with her rapiers doing most of the work. But her capabilities were so amazing she almost mimicked someone at the Conflagrate realm! Even if it would be just the 1st stage, that capability of sending out deathly techniques was already grasped by her clever mind.

Bom, bom bom…

On the other hand, and a bit slower than Helala, Niloi was practically having explosions on his palms and with strong, powerful yellow-orange flames beginning to cover his body from his arms, his unique tool gauntlets making quite an illuminating scene contrary to the sight of Helala’s ice gaining an extra dark tinge to her every action.

Crystal blue hair flowed in the air as Helala’s beauty was hidden to the naked eye of all who looked at her, except for Ciemnosc, as she surfed on her own ice that was being formed like waves but was actually being re-utilized. The ice that was already formed that was left behind would still be connected to the new ice that was ‘brand new’ and beginning to form.

In this way, with both her rapiers inserted into the surfing base she was standing on, the ice from the back would turn into her Power Energy once more, and those Mortal weapons would take in that Power Energy to re-create and re-create more and more ice without wasting her own Power Energy more than necessary. At most, she just needed to use more if she wanted to speed up or formulate an actual attack other than for traversing any kind of land with a substance that wasn’t too fragile.

Ciemnosc was feeling pretty innovative with this discovery, indeed… But what he was feeling right now was nothing near the heart of what a Craftsperson would have at these moments!

Rushing to his right, making Niloi frown a bit and keep that frown up his eyebrows, Ciemnosc mindlessly threw himself towards Helala. But Helala was, of course, not going to become also mindless and end up charging against Ciemnosc, who just showed them the stupidly perverted bodily strength he ‘just casually’ possesses.

Spending some of her Power Energy, all of it crossing through Ciemnosc’s darkest pool for eyes without a single data of her every move and all of her capabilities in the motion, she jumped away from her waves of ice that suddenly increased in thickness but got smaller in size - crashing towards Ciemnosc’s position with its speed increasing and seemingly having a life of its own as it gave its target the sensation of being locked on by it!

Step! Crack…

Making a harsh step with his left foot against the floor, leaving a crack behind him, Ciemnosc’s right leg was as if gone limp. But when his body jumped into the air, the ‘dead weight’ from his right left and his left leg tilting along with his right leg, he ended up facing where his back was previously facing, making a simple somersault and stopping midway with the top of his head pointing towards the ground.

With his right hand making a simple swipe from hanging and his Mortal sword also pointing at the ground, towards his right as Niloi remained on his left, and the wave of ice continued to rush towards him from his right, that sweep of Ciemnosc’s right-handed sword was timely in order to collide against the wave of ice but also carrying the wind with it to clash against the wave of ice!

…Crrrrraaaaassssshhhhh~...

With such simple motions, Ciemnosc’s body passed right through the wave of ice that had its middle practically destroyed, leaving a large gap of almost 1.3 meters in what the width of the wave was barely around 3 1.6 meters. And all Ciemnosc did was to cleanly pass through it, without placing any Power Energy to at least protect his body and without making any more movements with any part of his body.

From the jump of his one step with his left foot to the moment he landed on the broken ice, the wave of ice simply crumbled to the sides after Ciemnosc passed through it seamlessly, revealing a pair of dumbfounded and gaping with their mouth almost fully wide open a few meters away from where he was.

In return, Ciemnosc’s right-handed sword had some bits of ice that slowly cut itself by just resting on the Mortal weapon and then slid down towards the ground. And Ciemnosc’s face, oh, his face…it was silently terrifying yet not terrifying at the same time; as he looked back at their dumbfounded faces.

…

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Let It Rain's Note: Malibu 1992 from COIN and All I've Ever Known Bahamas were these 2 chapters' muse; in a way.