/sus/ - A Single [ACT]

from /sus/ Thread #989: Kissmas Edition
https://desuarchive.org/trash/thread/61667100/#61717296
https://pastes.psstaudio.com/post/9b4f12cf7e974dec859ccf9e42fb2746
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This is a re-write of a story I wrote a while ago about Veth and the end of all her schemes. Being addicted to sweetness and good endings, I copped out and gave an impossible happy ending to an unhappy situation. After much thought, I have elected to re-write it, to see if I could do the original concept justice. I present to you

A Single [ACT]
By GreenSwordsman
__________

The shining eyes of dead gods stared down at the turmoil below them. Lightning danced between the clouds of ash that covered their countenance, uncovering their unknowable visage. Rivers of red fire poured out of the dying mountains from which the titans had been birthed, choking and coughing out gouts of newborn earth and ash in their death throes. Below the great and silent ones, were the scars and smoke of a terrible battle. Swords stuck through the ground that had clashed amidst screams and cries of countless souls fighting for their lives and the lives of everyone they knew. The souls below had looked up at the majestic terror standing inert and towering into the furthest reaches of the sky, and knew that if they failed, the last thing they would see would be those dead eyes waking up, ready to devour every world between light and dark.

It had raged for a full day and a full night, and now it was over.

The forces of the enemy were unmade. The oozing remains of their blackened forms lay strewn about the foothills and blanketed the earth round about.

All that remained to do was to dispose of their leader, and she knew it. There was no bargaining. Nowhere left to go. A sword, an ax, and magic that healed the wounds of those who wielded them loomed over her, ready to finish this fight once and for all.
-
The Vessel looked down in horror at her own broken sword. A sad question floated in her thoughts; what would be more pathetic? Going down without a fight? Or trying to put up a feeble resistance with that broken weapon? There was no answer. It didn’t matter. It was over any way she looked at it. She looked all around her to see her plans all falling apart into magnificent shambles. The titans would never awaken again. Their deadened faces only glowing with a waning residual power that she had failed to reignite. Her forces were vanquished. Gone were the abominations that Neuro had created, rending their lifeless, shaded forms into mist and slime and nothingness.

But perhaps the most devastating thing to see was what was right in front of her.

Kris, Susie, and Noelle stood before their foe, unquestionably victorious.

As she saw the shattered pieces of her dream under their feet, something inside her broke like glass on the hard, cold stone of reality.

Her hands went to her scalp, gripped it until she felt it would tear, lurched her head back, and screamed.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!”

She screamed with all the soul-crushing hopelessness and anger that her powerless impotence bred in her. Everything she had wanted, everything she had hoped to reclaim, her inborn right to be the hero, to write the story, to be the center of the prophecy, had slipped out of her fingers beyond all hope of retrieval.

Over and over she pushed the air out of her lungs with all the violence and anger of bitter defeat. She screamed at her enemies, throwing her final condemnation upon them.

“YOU TOOK EVERYTHING FROM ME!! YOU TOOK MY HOME! YOU TOOK MY DESTINY! MY SOUL!!” She picked up the broken hilt of her sword and threw it at Kris with all her remaining strength. “YOU TOOK EVERYTHING AWAY!”
-
Red eyes looked upon her and struggled to find something to pity. Maybe a week ago, that would have been found, but not now. Those eyes would look up and the human would see why. Dreaded unknowables in whose name Ralsei’s life was taken. In whose name countless darkners had followed suit. In whose power this wretched thing had hoped to trust in bringing about a fallow dream sowed in the ashes of his own. Maybe somewhere in the back of his mind, somewhere that was still stuck in the past, there was pity.

Susie felt no such pity for the crying gray heap before her. Her knuckles went white over the hilt of her ax. “For damn good reason, I’d say… Kris, it’s your call.”

With a scowl hidden by flowing bangs, the boy gripped his sword and took a step towards the foe.

“I only wish there was another way…” he almost whispered

Noelle shook her head. “You shouldn’t pay for her mistakes anymore. None of us should. She’s brought this on herself.”

The Vessel had nothing to add. Deep down, she knew they were right, but her heart refused to admit it. It refused to remember all those times mercy was extended. All those times his words contradicted her understanding. They all had to be lies. They were all lies. That was her soul. That was her destiny. The world should have been hers

The human continued to approach her with no such notions, sword in hand.

Against every last ounce of his better judgment, he proffered her the other.

The vessel stared at him in awe

“One last chance.” Kris said with all the sternness of stone. “One last chance to leave all this behind.”
-
Those last four words bounced around in the vessel’s head like a bullet ricocheting off steel, and the ringing ached in her ears and shot her eyes open. Those words stole her breath and stopped her heart for all the wrong reasons. Leave this all behind. Just give up. Quit. Accept defeat. Take this hand and forever forfeit your dreams, here, now, and forever. Forfeit them to the very one who took them out of your reach. Surrender to the most hideous irony you have ever felt smothering you in all of your short life.

The Vessel refused.

She found her breath again, and with mounting momentum, it gained in volume until she was heaving and panting with a rage beyond words.

She found the broken half of her blade, picking it up with a shattered gauntlet that let its edge bite into her palm. She screamed not in pain, but in fury.

“RRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUGGHHHH!”

“VESS!”

She had only seconds to capitalize. Seconds to get that blade into his neck or under his arm, ignoring her own bleeding to make sure he bled more. His friends were already closing the distance, and once they got in, her chances would be gone. Kris had only just lifted his one sword into a ready position over his head, point fixed on her. It wasn’t fast enough. The speed of her arm nearly outstripped the speed of her racing heart as the broken blade in her bleeding hand bit under plate. The boy gasped as metal entered his gut and the vessel’s weight came crashing into him, knocking him off his feet and onto his back.
-
With her gasping enemy under her, the vell’s teeth gritted into what may have almost been a smile, breath hissing out with frothing spittle as she pulled her arm back to arm another strike. She sent her blade to him, over and over again, most often hitting plate as he tried to deflect her. On instinct did she strike at him and his friends as they encroached her, the last remaining bits of the blade’s power shining in her hand as she sent a final dart of blinding white magic tearing through the air towards the dragon, stopping her momentum and sending her to the ground to clutch at her stomach for a few more precious seconds while the Vessel bore down on Kris with all her hateful fury.

“DIE! She screamed, desperate to feel her blade rending her foe just one more time. “DIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE- *glk*!”

The air fueling her scream stopped against a dam of steel. No breath could move in or out, and her chest heaved in vain against the now searing pain spiking through it.

The vessel looked down and saw a pink blade running diagonally through her chest, just above her heart and closing off her throat. She breathed in vain against the steel until it came sliding out of her chest.

Kris propped himself on his blade until his friends could come and steady him. The doe’s magic undid all of the vessel’s last efforts in mere seconds, and the human stood unbloodied above his falling foe as pneumothorax brought the adversary to her knees in ugly croaks and gasps.

Noelle’s hands lowered as the last gashes in Kris’ skin vanished under shimmering verdant light like something out of the frozen northern sky. Their fading luminescence faded from the boy’s red eyes, leaving no other light in their wake. A countenance harder and colder than stone looked down upon the gurgling heap.
-
That stone soon crumbled as Kris’ mind came to terms with what he was seeing and what he had done to make it happen, The boy's stomach churned at the sound and sight of the black blood spewing from the vessel’s sputtering mouth and the wheezing open chest wound left by his blade. Everything in him wanted to deny what he was seeing, the reality of it, thinking that he could shut his eyes, open them, and awake from the horrid dream unfolding before him. It didn’t matter how necessary it was. None of that registered. It was white noise drowned out by the sound of sputtering breath and fingers squeezing blood-soaked cloth.

The magnitude of this finality grew ever crueler as Kris realized that the Vessel wasn’t dead yet.

She couldn’t form words through the haze in her mind and the agony radiating through her body. The fury and rage had drowned under a flood of anguish and pain. Instincts she didn’t know she had came bubbling up to the forefront of her mind like gasses through tar, and she began to gasp through a ruptured trachea.

The dragon and the doe remained silent as their eyes skittered between the vessel and their leader and friend. Neither knew what to say or do, and no amount of exchanged looks coil substitute for exchanged ideas. Neither wanted to look at this sordid scene any further, nor be confronted with the sorry fact that it all had to come to this. Both just wanted to get away, to stop seeing this, and that wasn’t happening the longer Kris stood in abject catatonia at the sight of the fallen enemy.

Susie reached out for Kris’ shoulder like a child trying to touch a wild animal. “Kris?”

The boy didn’t respond.

“Kris let’s… let’s just go-”

“Why?”

The human’s response paralyzed her. “Wha-?! Kris, please, we-!”

“Why isn’t it over…?”

Noelle tried to take Kris by the hand, but it stayed immovable by his side.
-
The boy looked at the homunculus choking and gasping for breath, legs kicking faster in vain attempts to right itself, hands clasping and clutching, eyes glued forward and wide open, looking at nothing. Kris felt something in him beginning to snap. He didn’t want to see this any more, but he couldn't look or walk away. He would not entertain the thought of feeling the weight of a pierced body on his blade again, but there was nothing more he wanted than to hear the agony stop and just be done with it.

Then, the vessel turned toward him, eyes fixated on his with a kraven look that he could not discern. Their tarnished silver pierced through him like the very blade he had removed from his gut, and he could bear its sting no longer.

His voice was a rasping, whispered scream through his teeth. “Stop…”

The vessel’s eyes widened in horrible fear that Kris misread as the same violent anger he saw when she made her last attack, and in that very moment, something in him snapped.

“STOOOOOP!”

The vessel could only voice a pathetic mewl past her bloodied vocal cords before the human dove onto her with hands around her neck and thumbs crushing into her windpipe.

“STOP! JUST STOP!”

“GHK!” The vessel would have screamed if she could, the last strength in her arms wasted itself on trying to push off her assailant. The instinct to flee for her life flashed in her broiling consciousness like lightning.

Noelle gasped with hands over her mouth. Susie stood dumbfounded.

“Kris! Kris, NO!” The doe called out, hoping to wake him from the haze of unfettered rage that had come to possess him. “Susie!”

The dragoness heard but wasn’t listening. Paralyzed by indecision and despondence, she could only look on in horror at such mercilessness coming from the most merciful person she had ever met.
-
The vessel could feel her extremities cooling and losing feeling, and a fresh terror gripped her as she realized in her heart of hearts that she wasn’t going to make it. The instinct born from that fear goaded her into what she would have otherwise never done, to plead for mercy, but her voice was gone. All she could plead with was her eyes, locking them ever more on those fiery red irises in a vain attempt to beg, but the more she looked at him, the more he misread, and the louder he screamed.

“STOP IT!” The boy yelled with a rasping throat. His arms burned with exertion as he slammed his foe’s head into the broken, stony earth underneath them, her silver eyes wet with terrified tears and refusing to look away from his. “STOP IT! STOP TRYING TO TAKE EVERYTHING FROM ME! STOP HURTING EVERYONE I LOVE! JUST STOOOOOOP!”

“KRIS!”

That voice nearly froze him. It gave Susie just enough opportunity to send her arms around him and pull him off of his enemy, dragging him until his arms stopped reaching out for the homunculus’ throat some fifteen paces away.

The Vessel laid motionless, unbreathing, eyes stilled, dilating, and eternally open.

The truth of what he was seeing distilled on him like creeping frost. It felt like a hundred eternities in the ten seconds it took for Noelle to break the silence.

“It’s over.”

No sooner did she say that than did the human begin shambling away towards the shimmering fountain. Wordless, almost thoughtless. His companions lagged behind, dread to speak further, to broach what they had just seen and done.

Their exit was as rote as it was unceremonious. They had closed other fountains. This was simply the last one. None of them wanted to look back at the ruin. At the devastation and the towering corpses of the titans. No one spoke a word as a crimson light erupted into the shimmering dark and set it ablaze one last time.
-
Three sat there. There was no fourth anymore. There was not another soul around or among them.

And with that finality left undeniable, Kris stood up and began to walk away.

It was a boilerplate question, but Susie had to ask. “Kris? Are you okay?”

He didn’t answer.

“Where are you going?” Noelle almost got up to follow him.

“... I wanna go home.”

Neither followed him. As to where either of them went, or whether they stayed there, he didn’t know. He didn’t check. The boy walked into and through the streets of hometown, empty at midday and cast under the shadow of a congealed sky.

He opened the door to no fanfare. No one was home today. No one greeted him. It was just as well. He didn't need or want company. Not even that of his family or closest friends. His footsteps creaked on the wood of the stairs in hollow echoes. He entered his room in a trance, not even bothering to shut the door behind him.

Then, Kris sat on his bed, eyes wide open and fixed at some point miles below the floor.

And he, like the vessel, stayed silent.

[The End]