“Get away from me! Back away you foul demon!” Luxcious screamed.
“Easy scholar, take it easy. Rise and turn back, for it is not your time, not yet.” The creature said.
”How!? I am stranded here, how am I supposed to get back!” Luxcious yelled.
”You did come here of your own accord Scholar, did you not?” The creature asked.
”No, I remember opening a portal back to the Abyss. But when I stepped through, I ended up here, wherever here is. Now if I tried to make another portal, I just can’t, something’s stopping me.” Luxcious answered.
”That would be my keeper, Death, or Xyun as she prefers to be called. Though just because she denies you egress, doesn’t mean that you can’t still be freed.” The creature chuckled and formed a scythe in its right hand.
”So, this is another afterlife then? Or is this just a prison for you? And how exactly do you plan on freeing me?” Luxcious inquired.
“Well, my dear, it is a prison, albeit one where the role of prisoner and warden are one and the same. Now for there to be two afterlives stacked on top of one another would be preposterous, frankly absurd. Now as to how I shall free you, well just because I’m trapped here doesn’t mean you have to be here as well.” The reaper smiled and sliced open a portal using the blade of its scythe.
Luxcious looked back at the creature before him. It stared back at him and gestured towards the portal in front of him. Luxcious looked towards it, gazing out towards the spire off in the distance. The creature walked towards the portal and stuck its hand through, only for its entire body to be flung back onto the floor.
”That, my boy, is why I cannot leave here. Any portals that are made here cannot be passed through by me. For I am to remain here until I am summoned to judge those above for a brief while. Such is the task of Ayir Halak, Finality’s Reaper.” The creature groaned.
Luxcious bowed his head and stepped through the portal and back into the land of the living. He had to stop James, before he committed any more murders.
James looked back towards the spire which pierced the heavens behind him. He then gazed at the overgrown and war-torn citadel ahead of him. James looked up at the aunyx spire at its center as fear began to overwhelm him. He fell to the floor unconscious as his eyes slowly rolled back into his skull. The last thing his mind could feel was insanity slowly beginning to latch onto him. James woke up again only to be face to face with himself, albeit with no missing skin. He stared at this double for a moment before drawing his sword. The double did the same, only taking longer to do so as it was right-handed. James chuckled and put the sword away before circling his double.
”So, this is my humanity? This is what still remains of who I once was?” James smiled.
”Fiend! You let yourself be brought back! Could you not beg them to let you embrace the relief of death!” The double hissed.
”Great, you’re still hung up on not getting your beloved “closure” as it were.” James groaned.
”I was supposed to die! We were supposed to die! This place is not for people like us! Yet they brought us back, they want us to suffer! They can’t let us be!” The double responded.
”She, need I remind you! And besides, Beth wanted me, well that’s not entirely true. She just wanted someone whom she could refer to as company, and she just happened to choose me. She brought me back because she cared about me, albeit for her own benefit, but she still cared about me! And now here you are messing things up, trying to upend everything!” James hissed.
”So, you are aware of the fact that she wanted to use you to keep herself in check! Good, so why then won’t you kill her!” James’s humanity asked.
”You already know the first reason; I don’t need to restate anything. As for the second, I love her, or rather I respect her, and she respects me. So, why then, should I kill her? What reason could you give me to do that?” James replied.
“Well, I take it then that you have put into consideration her effects on the world around her? How long till she kills off humanity? Tell me, how much time do they have left?” his humanity inquired.
”Mankind will live for as long as she wills it, which is to say eternity. Yet again this is an example of mutual respect. She respects mankind and their willingness to continually defy her. Mankind presumably respects her as well to some degree if she’s still keeping them here.” James answered.
Silas looked at his humanity and noticed the darkness creeping up behind him. He chuckled as his vision faded and he collapsed to the floor once again. James opened his eyes again only to be met with a black cat staring back at him. Only the cat had one singular glowing orange eye on its forehead and its tail split in two at the base. The “cat” tilted its head and rubbed its face against his legs. James smiled and patted the cat on the head. He listened as it purred before making direct eye contact with it.
“Well, it’s been while since I’ve seen you, hasn’t it Lythros?” James asked.
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The cat finally looked up at him and smiled. James felt himself getting colder as it stared into his eyes. He winced in pain as something began to burrow into his mind. James turned his thoughts inward and entered his mind once again. Only this time, darkness began to crawl out from the depths, covering everything that it touched. He looked at his humanity and smiled as the darkness took hold of it. He walked towards it and the darkness grew tendrils so as to restrain his humanity. It tried to speak, but the words could not exit its mouth. James chuckled and watched as his humanity was dragged down into the depths. The darkness moved forward so as to grab James and drag him downward, but he drew his pistol and fired a warning shot. At once the darkness crept back a little, so James fired another shot, and the darkness retreated from his mind.
He opened his eyes again to find that Lythros was still staring at him. James got up, put Lythros on his shoulder, and walked towards the citadel. The massive gateway, which was once the entrance, was now nothing but rubble. Time had not been kind to this place. The once beautiful ramparts were overgrown with countless flowers and vines. James walked through the ruined gateway and finally set foot inside the walls of the now derelict citadel. He looked around to see that the buildings too now lie in ruins. Then he stared up at the massive aunyx spire at the center of this place. The spiral staircase was for the most part still functional, despite a few gaps between most of the stairs.
James began to climb up the spire, but the stairs only got him so far. The way inside was blocked off by rubble, so James decided to climb the rest of the way up. He pulled out his sword and dug into the wall above him. The blade stuck and James used it as a bar so as to swing to a nearby ledge. Despite the velocity and angle of the swing, James did not reach the ledge. His fingers were just barely out of reach and as such he began to fall 500 feet downward. James quickly recalled the sword and threw the blade up towards the ledge. He was approaching the ground and fast, it would only take a few more seconds before he hit the ground.
Luckily, the blade latched onto the ledge a second before he hit the ground. James could just barely touch the floor from this height. He sighed and looked at Lythros whose fur was arched back. James chuckled and retracted the hilt of the sword. Once he reached the ledge, James used that the grab onto the rim around the spire’s roof. Once he had reached the roof, he dangled his feet over the edge and looked down at the world below.
”When’s the last time I came here?” James asked.
”Pretty sure it was when you murdered a politician by pushing him off of this exact spot.” Lythros answered.
”Did I.. did I really do that?” James replied.
”Last time I checked, you did. Sheesh, how come you can remember all of your stupid contingencies but not the people that you’ve killed?” Lythros responded.
”Honestly, I don’t know, it’s just how my mind works. I do have one other question for you though.” James said.
“And that is?” Lythros asked.
”Why did you, presumably, kill off my humanity? What good did that do you?” James asked.
“Well, I have something to ask you, what good did it do you? Because I’m pretty sure it wanted all of us dead.” Lythros replied.
”True.. wait a minute! I don’t recall asking Beth to bring me back with my entire soul intact!” James said.
”Well then, who did? Because if I take a peek inside your mind, the handwriting of all those messages you sent her were yours.” Lythros responded.
“No, they can’t possibly be in my handwriting. Or at least, they’re not in my handwriting. That bastard probably told her to do it! And neither she nor Luxcious could have possibly distinguished the difference between the two. My instructions, which I left in my eulogy explicitly said to only bring me back with 0.01% of my soul, not the entire thing! I know this is all so confusing, just give me a moment.” James replied.
Lythros nodded and looked up at the eclipse, she could sense something staring back at her, something familiar. James tapped her on the head and showed her his revolver.
”This, I made this in case of an emergency. That bastard, my so-called “humanity”, does not know about this. Now there should not be a difference between him and I, yet despite that fact there is a difference. The reason, his part of my soul was before I had died, before the darkness had taken over. The 0.01% that I referred to in my instructions is my half, my true soul. That’s why there’s a difference, one of us is a man “uncorrupted” by darkness, while the other is corrupted. That’s the answer!” James yelled.
”Uh huh, and for just how long have you known about this?” Lythros asked.
”Years, decades, possibly even centuries! I don’t know how long I’ve had that theory in my head for! Yet now it all makes sense, that’s why there’s two of me in my head. There is no one on my shoulder to guide my actions, for I am my own guide! As for that bastard, what happened to him?” James replied.
”He’s not dead, but he’s dying, or at the very least he’s getting corrupted by my chaos magic. If he survives then I’ll have you finish the job. He’s too dangerous to be left alive.” Lythros answered.
”As am I, and yet you guys keep me around for no reason.You see me as this unstoppable force, but you refuse to see me for what I am. A man who is simply trying to survive, for everything that I do, I do out of desperation. All the protocols which I made were made with extrapolated data. Yet that was all my own doing, I lacked my humanity back then, and I lack it still here and now. Thanks for that.” James said.
”No problem…” a voice said from behind the two.
James looked around only to be met with his own humanity staring him down. He was covered head to toe in dark twisted, blood-soaked vines. His veins were exposed to the open air, and he lacked any form of both a muscular and skeletal system. James drew his pistol, but his humanity had already beaten him to the punch. James stared down the barrel of a gun similar to his own. He laughed for a moment before his vision went white as the bullet exited the chamber. It pierced through his skull and his body fell off the edge and plummeted to the ground below. Lythros looked over and almost jumped off the ledge as well. But James’s humanity had grabbed her before she could do so. It held her by the neck and locked eyes with her. Lythros tried to pierce into its mind, but she was unable to, despite the fact that the creature lacked any form of mental defense.
”Oh no…” She whispered.
“Poor poor Lythros, you doomed yourself. Could you not have foreseen something like this? Or did you want this to happen? Did you want your chaos to spread to another living thing? Did. You. Want. This?” James’s humanity hissed.
Lythros shook her head and watched in horror as James’s humanity smiled at her. Its mouth stretched across the middle of its entire face. Then James’s humanity rolled its eyes and let go of Lythros, sending her falling towards the ground. It turned to face the eclipse on the horizon and smiled one last time before changing its shape to match that of James.