38/ Umbra
During a short respite, the Dead Apostle implores Rich to partake in the quotable truth he’s translated from the world of magecraft. All the pastors I’ve had the privilege of hearing preach have always tried to honey their passion with the milk of logical argument. Father Kelsey always says a great preacher can call upon both, but most clergymen are better at one than the other. There is no distinction for the Dead Apostle. Impenetrable, clerical, I hazard holy. The argument is so blatantly the entreat that I can’t comprehend, only accept what is said as a prayer.
If the Dead Apostle’s arguments are oratorios, then Rich’s refutations are sweeping cinematic soundscapes. Even I, tone-deaf Chris who can’t tell the difference between our pipe organ and a digital one, hear the passion dripping from Rich’s arguments transformed into .
“Hör' es die Fluth
Hear me ye Flood!
”
There are no visible instruments, yet the air becomes abuzz with a clear, twinkling melody. It gushes out of Rich’s meticulously sculpted body, then tempered by his conducting overwhelms the affronted shrieks filling the forest encircling us.
The notes don’t cool my sizzling brain; they croon to a similar hypnotic beat. That’s right, the rhythm I whisper to myself with when spellcasting. I’m no music aficionado. Music is a measured pattern of sounds and silences, mathematical vibrations plotted on a single axis. When someone asks me what I listen to, I pause for the right amount of time and answer Spotify’s Discover Weekly is the best place for new music. Crazy how good that algorithm is, right? Having no taste, I can’t say if what’s in the air tonight is ‘real’ music. But, there’s magical energy, so at the very least, this is magecraft.
The notes Rich’s circuits pluck from the ether into being intone that the plummeting Black Keys now arching upwards in defiance of the Dead Apostle’s claws and my repeatedly deflected fists are symptoms of heroism. This is the closest to humanity’s ideal condition without the final piece. It’s not. I’m not. This has to be more than that. This has to be petty. This has to be selfish. This is —
Now you’re overcompensating. I’m fighting a Dead Apostle. He’s the villain, not me. I’m a person, Rich, I don’t think we fit the binary mold of your movie soundtracks because no matter who we are, we’re merely idiotic, pathetic, weak human beings no offense, you tune dolls.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s impressive magecraft. Beyond impressive. A magi’s reply to the Dead Apostle’s instance that Formalcraft that solely requires ritualistic knowledge can be called magecraft must be. I don’t know whether that’s true, if it matters, or whether the Dead Apostle is referring to Formalcraft
Elemental Conversion
or Formalcraft
the magecraft style
. You obviously do.
Yet, even if the magical music has saturated the clearing like an ominous wind, the magical energy doesn’t directly target those within, but the location itself. Namely, the intervention is weak. Whatever effect on the Dead Apostle is negligible. He’s already pushed me half-way to the lake’s edge. This isn’t a fight. This is the Mission Prep, ‘,’ going into the seventh innings needing five home runs.
But, that’s why I trained with the old man, right? We’re Executors, not warriors. It doesn’t matter what or how it is accomplished, we execute the Lord’s will. Keep playing, Rich — keep playing and you’ll reach me. You have to reach me because maintaining the Ash Lock that’s fastening my sense of self onto this plane is burning my brain to cinder. I need your to reinforce who I am and that this Dead Apostle must be my enemy, Master or not.
Yes, Rich, there’s resentment, so much resentment because there had to be resentment when he lost his parents.
Yes, Rich, there’s love, flitting, agitated love for the world and all of humanity because there has to be gratitude after being nurtured for these years.
Yes, Rich, there’s fire. There’s always been the fire of passion inside of me. I’m a person. That must be what I admired in Saber. That’s why I thought she was beautiful. That must be me.
These are the elements that make up Chris Frampton. The fragments that I’ve worked so hard to collect and bind to myself, expressed in pure music, so why did you cast them aside for —
. . . merely foam. . .
Stumbling feet stabilize, trembling fists tighten, my Lesser Source glides through the overheating circuits, using the music as a heat-sink as the Valkyries ride between the border of life and death. Their white horses thunder across the sky, leaving a tempest of broken families in their wake. Sisters in make. Sisters in duty. Automata of the One-Eyed Gallows God. There is no need for need, Chris. There is only the execution. You understand that, right?
This Ash Lock can’t purify him.
These Black Keys might as well be trying to pierce a Servant.
That overly-lengthy Baptismal Sacrament will never be fully recited.
So what? Rich’s march belts in defiance.
This is how you’ve lived. This will be how you die. There’s no difference, only the connecting movements. That’s why you thought she was beautiful.
That’s wrong. That oppressive wrongness sprouted from Lancer’s trees must be within me too. One of the flock, I too am tainted with the Original Sin and absolved through the Sacrifice of our Lord and Savior. After all that’s happened, I have to want to kill this Dead Apostle.
Forearm, inner thigh, and right kidney, the fists graze the first two and a spinning Black Key cuts into the third. The bruises and cuts regenerate the moment the wounds appear; he steps forward to throw off the attack, forcing me to retreat; I can sense my death in thirty exchanges. But, I can keep up now. Instead of letting your consciousness white-out, lose yourself in Rich’s white noise.
Keep swinging. Keep moving. Keep .
Then you’ll be okay with —
“All the mysteries your personage renders are as lacking as your signification to the Human Order that texturizes the planet, highlighting your ignorance.” The Dead Apostle shakes his head as a flash of his claws shatter the holy nails. “Your figure alone expresses your membership to the Holy Church. Your performance shares in their mission. Strike down Those Who Apostolate Death (死の, shi no tomogara) who struck your pre-descendants down. How can there be such a breakdown of internal consistency? Your actions are out of character. You’ve fought with calculation of a mechanical level and none of the brainless impulse (気迫, kihaku, "drive/air/vigor") cursed resentment brings forth. Even that self-proclaimed magus’ spellcasting (呪文詠唱, lit. cursed text aria) interfaces with more pathos.”
Without thinking, “Shut up! Shut up! I don’t need any of your considerations!”
Not me. The incoherent voice line welled up from the pit of my stomach and flared out. Maybe it was a side effect of Rich’s music. The rhythms don’t match, though. The cadence of those words almost crackle like a flame.
Snap a falling Black Key, push away my bound leg, spin to avoid the next Black Keys, and target Rich, of all people, with your Mystic Eyes all you want, Dead Apostle. With such an obvious opening, my fist finally connects, striking him squarely in the face. Now, the follow-up —
But, “The veracity within the sought is absent vengeance.” Mystic Eyes still subjugating Rich, the Dead Apostle speaks to me.
I —
!
Nothing. The Black Key hangs in the night air like last year’s lingering Christmas decorations. My fist drops limply to my side.
Punch, kick, gouge, knee, bite! Come on. You can feel the remaining Lesser Source ready to blaze through the circuits. As long as the Ash Lock is intact, you can force your body to move. So come on, this is the opening you were waiting for. The one to finally end —
Oh. . . I can’t move. Like my strings have been cut. No, not because of the Dead Apostle’s Mystic Eyes. Rich is doing more than a fine job warding them off with mental strength alone. Just. . . almost like he made it apparent the fire I thought had always been burning inside of me, inciting me, doesn’t exist. A cavity. Hollow. Emptiness encased in a thin membrane of soap.
Yes, maybe, absolutely, I don’t feel anything, but that’s right now. I’ll thrust these Black Keys through his undead flesh, and everything will finally be as it should. Parents avenged. A concluded. That forsaken boy, affirmed. And me. . . finally, me. Yeah, that’s right. That’s absolutely correct. So why aren’t I moving?
“Lancer!”
It’s over. Not because either Lancer or Archer will burst out of the forest in the next few seconds, or Rich has disrupted the ritual, but because I’ve admitted defeat.
“Neophytes may employ the nerves as thaumaturgical circuitry (魔術回路). Though, to have thought there was a Spellcaster (魔術使い) so profligate as to employ exclusive thaumaturgical circuits unto the nervous system (神経系, lit. divine scripture system). Incompetent.” His goodbye is a simple fact.
To him, this is gospel.
To him, I’m some data point he can plug and chug to his model of the World.
I understand now. For him, everything is foam too. The individual don’t matter as long as the information to serve a greater narrative, his greater purpose. He doesn’t see Rich or me, only breaks us down, calling our useful components greater than the sum of our beings.
Accept everything to except anything. The Dead Apostle greedily drinks from his blood fount.
Even if I’ve given up, Rich is still playing. His magical martial march urges me to ride on, no matter the conclusion because the meaning is in the message. I know. That only reinforces what the Dead Apostle said.
— The veracity within the sought is absent vengeance.
If there’s nothing, then die. Accept that you’re being swept off the stage.
The Dead Apostle unsheathes a thin black sword. Condensed from the darkness of his cape, it’s shrouded in sinister magical energy. Having wrung me dry, he will now dissect the useless parts.
Demonic. His swordplay can only be described so. Sable starlight puts the black in my Keys of Purification to shame. I can clearly see the dark needle piercing through the moist air at a superhuman speed. I can’t stop it.
“What?” His sharp intake and my gasp.
The needle flashes, redirecting itself to zig-zag at seemingly impossible angles to both shatter the invading Black Keys and push back my Ash Lock-bound fists.
No blood, but the section where naked, black mystery met the Word of the Lord was torn. A greater mystery will overcome a lesser one. The absolute, defined domain, Rich’s music seethes to me. That is a gap you can’t surpass.
I must surpass that gap with this half-broken body.
“Was my articulation not as not sufficient, whelp? My most substantial mystery divulged, your expressed thaumaturgical techniques elucidated then advised upon, and even the Truth of your psyche bared for your apprehension. You lack reason. You lack reason to continue such hindrance!”
Rich adding additional mystical factors to the environment interfered with the ritual to the point the Dead Apostle needn’t worry about protecting the hollow anymore. He’ll use the full force of his greatest mystery to kill us.
When he drew his sword — my eyeballs started hurting. What Cherry calls my kind eyes. Pain. Not an ache, sting, or burning. But pain. Like everything in me was shutting down. They really hurt, so my body naturally moved as if programmed to follow whatever my eyes saw.
Like the sting of the bees that pollinate the flowers growing near the water’s edge at a springtime that has been ever-gradually stepping on winter’s tail ever since the Industrial Revolution, his rapier shoots forth to pierce my ribs
has shot forth and pierced my ribs
.
“RRRyaaaa —!”
I twist my body to avoid it, but I’m too slow. The tip of his sword catches my left shoulder and blows through all but a single page of protection. It doesn’t hurt because my brain is drowning in flame. Not because of overused circuits, I know that feeling all too well since Cherry always says you need to feel the mystery to truly understand it. It’s these eyes. I just —
Like him.
Like him, my eyes are affixed beyond. As if a single frame in a filmstrip, a distant scene is injected into and then brands my brain before playing.
There’s blood.
As expected of a vampire there’s so much blood.
Don’t go any further. Leave it at Dead Apostle. That’s all I need to see. That’s all I need to know.
I kill scores with that sword. You probably don’t remember them.
My swordplay is impeccable. Inhuman. But, stagnant. If I kill every opponent on the first encounter, there’s no need to improve. No one’s ever survived. No Templar, no Knight, no Executor, no Age of Gods mystery.
Slash. Dead.
Thrust. Dead.
Slash. Thrust. Dead.
Each of them only glimpsed one, two, maybe three attacks. Equally meaningless, individual bubbles. Yet with each encounter, they pile on top of each other until the past becomes a spray of seafoam. The accumulated experiences, the mountain of forsaken bodies, these eyes accept them all.
A wide swing and then two thrusts. I know what will happen so I announce that a constellation of Black Keys shall plummet to cover my retreat. He’s too fast or I’m too slow. Either way, his slash tears open the portion of the Ash Lock protecting my chest.
My eyes hurt.
The Dead Apostle charges like he always does when he’s agitated. How —
Like him.
For all your evening finery and composed sermonizing, you’ve never been this close to your dearest wish, have you?
Wish. Goal. Objective.
Throughout your blood-sucking second life, you’ve always moved with purpose. A heretic might mistake it as their own, learning and then reaching the shape of Truth. Magi are people who only have the beginning and end, zero. Your goal does not point towards something that never existed. Yours has always been around you. You are confirming the shape of the World. There’s nothing. . . nothing, mechanical about you. A passion for understanding — taking each data point, carefully considering it under the existing framework and categorizing where it must fit.
Your sword affirms this has been your entire life in blood spilled.
Your sword declares my are empty words posturing.
The proof?
Everything of yours is encapsulated in that sword, that’s why it is named —
But he’s a Dead Apostle. Dead Apostle. He can’t be anything but a Dead Apostle.
That’s the difference between you and I —
Like him.
I admit it. I like him.
Not in the way I like Saber, the distant funeral pyre who tells me that everything I’ve wished for is possible. Not in the way I like Cherry, the person who raised me the best she could. Not in the way I like Kayla, the personification of halcyon days. Not in the way I like everyone because they like me.
If the boy I replaced survived, he would be like the wielder of this flowery rapier.
Love the world you’ve so carefully boxed yourself into, to the point that each spoken word becomes a link in a chain to anchor yourself to the world.
Sincerely.
Not because you’ve always lived this way and cannot think of living any other way, but because there’s an oath to protect and a goal to be reached. So at the end of this path, you’ll even sit alone, atop your chthonic throne. Lord of the manufactured. Forever waiting for enough souls to kindle that four-layered mortal solar engine you’ve replicated at this lake.
My eyes tell me to accept that.
— As long as anyone has lived a semblance of a life, there is no way you can call them a monster.
The beautiful things are ugly, and the ugly things are beautiful. In this way everything is merely foam, glistening in the weak moonlight. So, of course it’s there — the thing I’ve been searching for since I was born.
I’ve lost. I’ve completely lost.
How can a Dead Apostle be so unlike a Dead Apostle?
“Then drown and rot.” A voice. Not his. Not mine. Definitely not Rich’s. It hisses, dripping poisonous embers that reprimand me for forgiving this blood-soaked plague on the world.
What of the scores lost in this city alone? It roars.
What of the thousands slaughtered? It raves.
What of the millions drained? It rages.
Right, he’s a Dead Apostle. That’s all I need to know.
His sword closes in for the — how many times has it closed in?
I sacrifice three Black Keys to give myself enough time to clear my mouth of blood. The glob hits the mud our shoes have compacted and refuses to mix. Most of my damage is internal. Rich’s music is mental doping that, at most, affects the spiritual body, allowing me to ignore my already broken body. I’m not too worried about that though.
It’s hot.
My feverish brain sucks all the heat out of the other functions, except my eyes. They really hurt.
The eyes calculate the sword’s history so it can be accepted. The body moves accordingly because seeing is believing, even if the body can’t catch up. I pay the cost of the contradiction in bloody pages. The mental counter no longer ticks downward, the clicks begin to overlap, announcing that my prize is death. In order to accept the past to survive the present, I sacrifice the ability to block future attacks. A deathly feedback loop that shaves down my remaining protection. Ripped and torn, only scraps of my Ash Lock
righteous vengeance
remain on my robes.
The Dead Apostle readies a thrusting stance. The biggest difference, both hands are on the grip. He’s serious.
I stab a thousand opponents, rupturing them like the disk-shaped red blood cells that are popping in my eyes. A thousand rivers of sticky red run down the black blade. Unconsciously, I whisper her name a thousand times.
That doesn’t make sense.
I inhale, sharply. It hurts my throat to make such an unnatural sound.
“Tan Hua are white.”
For the first time this entire night, his eyes widen, and for a second, his stance almost crumples. For him, every action has been ritual and every verse, ascendent prayer. Not a writ to beseech, but to confirm his faith.
He closes the gap between my heartbeats like I’ve done a thousand times before.
Can’t dodge, so catch the blade on the wrist of my left gauntlet where the conceptual weapon is still at its thickest in hopes I can sacrifice the arm instead of having the remaining oxygen knocked from my lungs when his knee, encased in a leather, thigh-high boot will strike me squarely in the —
“Gah —”
I’m too slow. My peripheral vision disappears as I double over. He doesn’t let my knees sink into the mud. His pale claw wraps around my robe’s collar, holding me a good foot above the ground.
“ — Ha, ha, ha. . .” I can’t help that I’m desperately gasping for breath. Good, I hope the increased oxygen flow increases the free radical-induced damage to my genetic information. That’s how petty I should be.
“If you are capable of visual confirmation, then why flounder? Your motivation (演算, keisan), your performance (性能, seinou), your juggling (魔術, majutsu) have all been neutralized. Your personage has always been as a secondary, but now your purpose is non-extant. Obliviate yourself.”
He doesn’t scowl nor do lines bulge, but he finally sees me. It’s personal. The last time that happened — I involuntarily gag but there’s already nothing left in my stomach. Half-digested Costco hotdog and soft-serve on his cravat would have been the right amount of petty.
“This obstinance must be rendered from the Tuner’s thaumaturgical function.”
I don’t look at Rich.
It has to be because I want to kill you for my own reasons, so please plunge your sword into my chest, giving me enough time to release all the remaining Black Keys in my robes.
Bracing for the death blow, I announce, “Se—”
The world flips upside down before I'm able to finish the incantation. Bladed tendrils of cold lake air cut into my raw wounds. Instead of crushing my head or stabbing my heart, the Dead Apostle threw me across the clearing. Correction: I’m pitched across the clearing. How on earth did a Dead Apostle pitch me as a God honest sinker. Nothing was imitated; he simply threw me without experience, form, even intent. I know as much about baseball as any other kid, having only watched the Bishies from the bleachers, but somehow the result surpasses the high school league and even the blunt weapons the kids duel with outside the downtown 7-Eleven.
S.V.S. with me as the ball.
The slugger that erupts from the Dead Apostle’s forest’s edge could only be that feral mass of muscle. His bat? The leaf-spear that can split the air faster than I hurtle through it. Bunt, line drive, flyball, anything more than a touch and I’m a fly against a windshield.
You should have killed me yourself, Dead Apostle, instead of pitching me to your Servant so you could deal with the greater threat, Rich. Even those kids at 7-Eleven after school know that the relationship between pitcher and batter surpasses intimacy. Say you’re playing a Japanese street sport for the clout as much as you want, but once you step up to that pretend mound, step up to that pretend box, you fight to understand the person you’re facing. It’s in the name of the game; everything else disappears into the background, even the greatest hero in history.
Like a rhinoceros from an Animal Planet video, Archer bulldozes Lancer. The left half of Archer’s steel-like body crushes Lancer’s collarbone. The crack is audible. If Lancer was human, he’d be as pulverized as I’m going to be in the next few seconds.
Lancer holds fast, magical energy streaming out of his feet, roots refusing to relinquish the nourishing soil that sustains them. He won’t budge. The temporary rank up to Lancer’s STR might not be enough to overwhelm an Archer at his peak with both arms, but —
Dark bulbous veins protrude from the second arm that should have been forever lost, uprooting Lancer and hurtling him back. The very next second, large, rough hands enclose my back, pulling back to nullify all the force I was pitched with. As gentle as a father swaddling his child.
He shouldn’t have saved me. I’m grateful that I’m not dead, but Archer won’t be able to shoot down the sprinting Dead Apostle. Archer may be a legendary archer but I’m sure scrawled in the margins of the fundamental laws of archery alongside not being able to change targets when the arrow is in mid-flight or the consistent lag time between choosing a target and firing is that a bow cannot be drawn with a child in your arms.
Heroic Spirits may be the manifestations of overturned fate and there are a number of legends of archers breaking the fundamental rules, but factoring in the Dead Apostle’s inhuman speed, Archer has no way to put me down, fend off Lancer, and prepare a shot before the Dead Apostle plunges his sword into Rich’s chest.
Rich. . . the Einzbern family aren’t suited for combat. Its Tuners even less so. I heard it with my own two ears tonight. If I’m truly grateful,
“Archer, throw me.”
Archer doesn’t look down. His muscles twitch. His golden eyes tell me he can’t. He can’t let another child —
— Boom. His regenerated arm snaps.
Back. Leg. Hips. Shoulder. Knee. Calves. The undead being living in mystery needed his entire body. Archer sent me hurtling with only the flick of a wrist and his forearm.
The dregs of my Ash Lock’s spiritual integrity vaporizes into the cold night air. All there’s left is to pray.
“I will kill. I will let live. I will harm and heal.”
Pray that if I’m going to die, then I’ll just have to take you with me, Dead Apostle!
“None will escape me. None will escape my sight.
Be crushed.”
A clearing molded into a magic circle must have sacred dimensions. Bisecting the circle from shore to Rich through the origin is the hypotenuse. Every other point on the circumference draws a Euclidean right-angled triangle.
“I welcome those who have grown old and those who have lost.
Devote yourself to me, learn from me, obey me.”
Sin, cos, tan — the exact trigonometry has no meaning since anyone could tell the distance from third base to home is shorter than second to home.
“Rest.”
Small golden-leaf-wrapped links scatter into the wind as my still-bound left hand tears off the old man’s rosary from my neck. In my right is the red hilt of a Black Key to run the Dead Apostle through.
“Do not forget song, do not forget prayer, do not forget me.
I am light and will relieve you of all your burdens.”
Dead Apostles are sensitive to death, so he must feel his own, flying towards his cloaked back. I doubt I’m faster than a handgun bullet, so react.
“Do not pretend.”
React!
Since stepping into the bounded field, I steeled myself for a mutual death. You have more than enough time, so why do you simply turn, your blade pointing at the ground.
As if you were a cross, arms spread out wide, resolute.
As if you were a shepherd, worried that this foolish lamb had not, could not comprehend your sermon.
“HAAAAA —”
We crash. Tumbling, tumbling. The wet mud softens a landing that doesn’t need softening and strips my final scraps of protection. Caking from my elevated body heat, the lake mud clings to the remnants of my useless Ash Lock, robes, and body.
I look down at the corpse I’m straddling — cold, pale, death strewn in the mud.
The greatest enemy of the Church. The monster that killed parents. Everything I’ve been living for has been for this moment.
Yet — underneath the weak moonlight, I can’t see the Dead Apostle as anything other than what doctrine demands must be destroyed.
There is no hate
vindication
rejection
something
anything. . . .
“HAAAGGGGHHHH —!!!!!!!!!!!”
The Ash Lock finally snaps. The binding that has been holding me together tears apart as the Black Key in my right hand slips into his breast bone without resistance. Not enough. Not nearly enough. Squeeze out the last of your magical energy and force that still-gauntleted fist to bash Black Key after Black Key into the Dead Apostle until only hilts sit atop his evening formalwear.
He laughs. A staccato of sharp intakes.
Don’t waste your breath, Dead Apostle.
“Retribution for forgiveness, betrayal for trust, despair for hope, darkness for light, dark death for the living.
Relief is in my hands. I will add oil to your sins and leave a mark.”
Heart. Neck. Left hand. Right hand. Left foot. Right foot.
In each is a , crucifying him to the earth his body shall return to.
I grip the old man’s cross in my left hand as if holding it could hold me together.
“Eternal life is given through death. Ask for forgiveness here. I, the incarnation, will swear.
— Kyrie Eleison.”
Be purified and purged of your Curse of Restoration.
No light, no sound, no change in the World to signify completion like heretical magical formulae. The Baptismal Sacrament is the antithesis of magecraft, the artificial mysteries that plague the world. The sacred power from the foundation purifies all that digresses from the Lord’s Natural Law.
You are unwanted. You are unneeded. You shall not transgress on the Lord’s Kingdom.
Be purified. Be executed. Begone.
This is bloody Work.
Ash Lock torn apart, Black Keys all spent, body broken, straddling a corpse, I exact his vengeance. The only thing that should have mattered to him these years is hidden in the background of Archer’s and Lancer’s clash of titans. Demigods manifesting on this plane as the crystallization of the myths we tell ourselves changed the inlet sea’s landscape with superhuman feats and divine magical energy. Compared to that, insignificant as this was, petty as this was,
it’s over. Thank God, it’s over.
Judging from the Master clairvoyance, Lancer at full strength would struggle against an Archer in peak condition. A Masterless Lancer who is hemorrhaging magical energy will quickly be defeated.
Right. Everything is over. I should be satisfied with that for now.
Rich’s circuits are no longer running as he steps away from me. He can see that the Dead Apostle is crumbling into dus—
“Why (何故だ, naze da)?”
The rasp only a corpse’s throat could make should no longer exist.
“You claim instruction in the laws of mystery, yet your actions exceed blind arrogation, plunging headfirst into ignorance!”
He unpins his hands from the ground without extracting the Black Keys from his palms. He stands; a simple click of each heel snaps the holy stakes that bound his feet. Mud against carrion sounds like two pieces of meat slapping against each other.
“A Baptismal Sacrament to drive the Lord’s divine providence into the body and Keys of Purification to return the flesh to dust.” Words tumble out of my mouth, “You weren’t Christian. No, that shouldn’t matter. My faith just isn’t strong enough. No, I definitely connected to the foundation. You’re a Dead Apostle. You should have been purified. You’re a Dead Apostle!”
I’ve been searching for you all my life, and you’re finally here. Everything I’ve worked for has been leading up to this moment when I finally, after all this time fe—
“Dead Apostle? When did I pronounce myself a Dead Apostle?”
Wha—
He’s too fast. I’m too broken.
He plunges his black rapier into my torso.
“Gah —”
I don’t feel it. That’s not the problem.
I don’t feel anything. That’s the problem.
“Not. . . a Dead Apostle. . . but you. . . “
Have to be a Dead Apostle — I. . .
“An introduction is in order.” He looks down, blond hair glowing in the pale moonlight, red eyes aflame, pitch-black sword bloody. “Eternal servant of his majesty Lycaon of Arcadia, Master of Lancer — Wolfgang Faustus, Lamyros.”
Lamy — ros.
— Considering the quality of the mana in the modern world, I wouldn’t believe that still endangered humanity.
— I’ve decided. A Lamyros will be the perfect warm-up for challenging this burning warrior queen.
— Hail, child. A good day for a Lamyros hunt.
— Child, you don’t want this Lamyros to be a Master, do you?
This entire time, I’ve been —
This can’t be happening. I don’t mind a Dead Apostle killing me, but this. THIS? Get away. I can’t. There’s a sword sticking into my stomach. I trip and fall instead. Not because my legs can no longer support my body, I’ve been drained of too much blood, or even because of a stray rock in the mud. I trip over myself.
*****
Acrid, sour, like I’m inside a rather than a primal womb.
Every breath clings to my skin like a membrane saturated with death. Death is not sterile, cold, and dry but a moist, liquefying blackness that fuels the fire ahead of me.
Unable to keep my footing, I begin to drown in the death, leaving nothing but bubbles that slowly rise to the surface of the viscous substance before popping, revealing there truly never was anything inside.
“Your life.” The poisonous hiss of the illusory flame in the center of the cave.
Whatever substance I’m sinking into responds to its words. Thousands of hands grab me and drag me down. Drowning me.
I don’t want to drown in my ██████ and die.
I flail, reaching for the sides of the pool. There’s nothing to grab for support. There never was. That’s what the flame has been saying all this time. I just haven’t been listening because —
All of us, no matter who we are, are merely idiotic, pathetic, weak human beings.
The thousands of hands tugging at me ease up. I don’t want them to. I’d rather drown than be beholden to Dilo’s words. Because none of me has anything to do with that bishop. What I want to feel and how I want to see the world comes solely from . It has to.
I stretch my arm out to drag myself out of the pool, away from the flame. I need to get back. I don’t know what I’m returning to, but I can’t stay here.
“Gah, the idiot, didn’t he realize he declared all human beings idiotic, weak, and pathetic?” Drips the poisonous voice. My arm stops moving.
“There is only misunderstanding. It is impossible to truly hate something if you try to understand. Who actually believes that nonsense? Blind, foolish, small-minded man. Anyone alive sees the ugly things if they have lived long enough. Give a man enough bitterness, riches, or ambition and he shall betray. Even in your sanitized world where there is no choice but to externalize the evils of the world, they cannot be totally banished.”
No matter how blithely I live in a Central California bubble, the Sisters that cradle this town scream our sins.
At school/In an prosecutor’s office.
At the Farmer’s market/At an engagement feast.
In this town/On the open sea.
I can’t help but look at that mundane, petty ugliness and accept it, forgive it, calling the sentiment, the emotion behind all that ugliness, beautiful.
Protecting the station that you’ve worked so hard to obtain —
Protecting the self-esteem you’ve mustered until you know you’re the most suited for the job —
Protecting the genuine, romantic love that won’t lose to anyone else —
Dazzling in all its pettiness no matter the result. It’s there, what I’m missing but shouldn’t be.
“That’s why you’re disgusting.”
The viscous liquid drowning me begins to churn. The grating, jarring echo of a stomach about to evacuate its contents reverberates through me. The vultures in the forest screeched, their fictitious chatter begged to be validated, accepted, observed. They are the missing, strung together with the line of fate embedded in that word alone, and Lancer, their king.
This is the opposite.
The moist, viscous death made up of a jumble of splayed limbs amalgamate into fleshy scales that squeeze the remaining breath out of me. Made from not only the liquid in the pool but the cavern itself, the wyrm undulates like an intestine. Blind, deaf, mute, and ageusic. Only feeling. A colony of interlocking , it wallows in its own forsaken filth, decrying the Lord. Its rage and size forever grows. This serpent won’t encircle the world and fill the seas. It is already us.
The belly of the beast constricts me. I gasp for breath. Not even bubbles come out of my mouth anymore.
“Once upon an age, a Saint was said to have visited this island.” What venomous derision at the word Saint. “The inhabitants called this island something else back then, before it was used as a smuggler’s cove. The pious Saint, urged on by the cries of believers descended into the bowels of the earth and found a wyrm. A Saint and dragon, bah, how obvious. Not even worth the coffee brewed to tempt the telling.”
The mass of drowned bodies slithers, soft moans echoing as heads bash into rocks, incorporating those fleshy aggregates into the main body. The cavern is completely made out of wretched bodies. No wonder it feels like I’m inside of one.
“No hatred in your heart, not even for a vampire. None of the Love the Father blessed this world by way of sacrificing His Son. Disgusting. To blindly accept all is to affirm that this hateful world, filled with ugliness is correct. Do not avert your eyes!”
I haven’t.
I really haven’t.
This world is beautiful. If you don’t look at the individual evils and only the shape of the bubbles, the tapestry of Humanity, then —
“I don’t know what’s more disgusting, the systems that enslave the world or your championing them.”
The contempt radiating from the hollow flame is real. I even accept that; this flame forever burns in hate. It’s natural for you. Apprehension, fear, self-righteousness. You are absolutely valid. Look at me mixed in with this . Anyone would revolt either out of righteous fury at the sheer wretchedness or fear for the aesthetics that shape their lives.
Like the saintly figure in robes beyond me, they would see that jutting out from the cresting waves of bodies, in front of the dark flame, is a , a glittering slayer of dragons. With steady hands and desperate feet, they clamber through the wallowing filth knowing each that crunches underfoot is a flame scrawled message for those who shall come after. Many sink and drown in pursuit of that , becoming one of the many , yet they persist.
The liquid scales, sweaty, fetid, sulfuric, may cling onto the skin like lakeside mud, but they will soon cake and be forgotten.
The wretched groans may resound in the brain, like a dragon’s roar, but they will be nothing but white noise to sleep to.
Because there is something to reach. There is something to avenge. There is something to feel.
“This path. . .”
Is ugly.
The dark flame knows all too well.
“Yes, this world’s stories are usually like this.”
It should make anyone furious. Even me, right?
You’ve pulled yourself from a pool of humanity’s refuse, those even the Lord has abandoned, stepped over these ceaselessly, uncaring, to be able to kill a Dead Apostle because that’s what you thought someone else would want to do. All to give meaning to a life unfulfilled. This is the place you’ve arrived at.
Chris, all there’s left is apotheosis.
Expel everything. Expound on why it’s wrong. Exact vengeance from it.
My eyes hurt. Everything truly is merely foam.
“Goddamn it, for the first thing in your life, reject something.”
The world doesn’t have to look like this. You won’t be the first. Look past the dark sea and foam at the edge of the shore. There is the shape of malice to be rejected.
Naturally, the hand must reach out for the cross. It ignites. This is a body that has been built for this purpose alone. It has no wish. But, even without a wish it must reject what has been forsaken. So, as a matter of course, the blade loosens from the that serve as its sheath.
. . . you are nothing more than a mere human being.
Shut up.
“Ah —”
I hesitate. Something huge rams into me. My knuckles tighten around the hilt. I can’t feel my left side anymore. The senseless serpent devoured my left side. There’s no pain because the legion of forsaken have no teeth; its fleshy gums impotently gnaw at me, trying to incorporate me into itself. Yes, there’s no pain, I scream solely from the fear of losing myself.
Your actions are out of character. You’ve fought with calculation of a mechanical level and none of the brainless impulse cursed resentment brings forth.
“Isn’t it ugly? Isn’t it disgusting? You can feel it now, the grudges, impotent wrath, and poison seeping into you, dragging you down to its depth. Reality and Fate playing its sadistic hand. This is what the bestial nature the world has produced; the wretchedness that consumes everything.”
The poisonous flame urges me to raise the cross, look beyond love and hate and begin walking down the as so many have before.
“Reject it. Otherwise, accept your drowning into despair. That itself is your hell.”
Everything inside of me screams to strike the wyrm down like the Saints of myth. To retain identity. To retain self. To retain purpose. Of course, there was nothing to break in the first place, so I am complete. There doesn’t need to be anything more than what was constructed.
Flaming held aloft, it falls to vengefully sever that which all the evils of the world engendered, the wretched forsaken that even our Lord cannot save. All is right in the world, Amen.
This... isn’t a fate that you should thank me for.
I. . .
What idiotic words. What an insincere smile. What a stupid man.
I can’t.
Half of myself in the maw of the , tears streaming down my face, I throw the cross away.
*****
Still impaled on his sword, I feel a Black Key flying from my hand as I regain consciousness. It was a clumsy throw like I was trying to swat something wretched away. Even my first throws behind the Mission were better.
“Such askance. . .”
Shocked, he tilts his head to avoid the Black Key thrown by someone who shouldn’t be able to move. He’s cut anyway. We’re so close together even his superhuman reflexes won’t allow him to dodge and come out unscathed.
It doesn’t matter. Keys of Purification won’t baptise his flesh. He’s not a Dead Apostle; he’s a Lamyros. A blood-sucking irregular Phantasmal Species. I may as well be attempting to pray a True Ancestor away.
A pained gasp. “What?!”
The flame-wreathed cut on his cheek doesn’t heal. But, even a cremation rite wouldn’t be enough to —
“A cremation ri. . . no.” Inflamed, red, bleeding. “You. . . hidden under its bowels was —”
Explosions and trees flying drown out the rasp of the pale corpse. In the foreground, Archer soars through the night sky, black bow drawn. He shouts something, but there’s so much noise that I can’t hear it. Nine phantasmal dragons draped in divinity shoot forth. God’s wrath manifests to punish the sinners who dare crawl on the earth.
The Dea— Lamyros unsheathes his sword from my chest in one motion as his other claw steadies him against the buffets of magical energy. He pushes through the tempest; his now visible Command Spell flashes. A stroke, a pair of wings, disappears.
A fortress made up of forest erupts from the lakeside, but the nine-headed divine dragons’ poison devours the chthonic defense. I can’t hear the vultures screeching in resignation or defiance. It might be because of all the blood that I’ve lost but everything’s drowning in bubbles. Like the foam that makes up the edge of the lake, a million bubbles make up Archer landing, Rich screaming, Lancer disappearing and the Dea— Wolfgang retreating into the night.
I fall onto the . I hold my out to the . My breathing is shallow, so I use my remaining strength to twist myself to my side. A large cluster of bubbles stands beside me. Reflected in them is me disrupting Wolfgang’s ritual with my Magnituning. The cluster begins to move away from me, but a larger cluster further down the sea of foam shouts at it. I can’t hear what the bubbles are saying, but I understand that reflected in those bubbles are the shadows of the past.
“Umbral. . . foam. . .”
My breath is ragged. I don’t know if it took a unit of Planck time, aeon, or if they’re the same thing but eventually everything starts to go dark, even the bubbles. Amidst the darkening lake of foam floats a single black flame, smoldering hatefully. The same flame that hissed venomous words in that island cavern burns the world of foam back.
It flares for a moment, darkening until it loses all dimensionality. From the strides a Tiger. A lithe feline with black stripes as if blow-torched on and paws that sink into the foam. It stops when it reaches the dying me, and speaks in the same hiss.
“Transience Ignited
Via Crucis — Unsealed
”
How? I couldn’t reject the forsaken. I threw the sword away.
“You still drew the cross.”
Still gripping onto the old man’s cross for dear life, I close my eyes and drown in my failure.