#death scene

I have been UTTERLY BROKEN by Aequa's brutal death in the last chapters of the book, holy shit. I shipped her with Vis so fucking bad.

This shit is fucking with my brain and preventing me from focusing on my original work. You know.... I really, really ought to pour my emotional turmoil into writing some fanfiction where she doesn't die.... This will be one of my first ganders into fanfic shipping and writing a fanfic around a book, but I think it will be worth it!

Life itself blurs out from my view. The last things I see before my very body is whisked away, are Myren and Meldrene’s dual blue and purple eyes looking down on me. Bidding me a final goodbye.

Like that exhilarating time before, I feel my body raised up into the indistinct night sky again. The cool surface of my sword rests like a guardian against my chest as I accelerate and the scene around me blurs and reality itself seems to shift.

I am not alive anymore, not in the real world. I am… raised in an uncertain world of multiple colors swirling through space, themselves rushing by me as if I travel an impossibly fast journey up overhead.

And, just like before, the voices, the screams, the shouts and yells and the horrid screeching and roaring slowly start to fill in all around me. Dread and panic set in, making my nonexistent heart thump like a drum. The indistinct forms of beasts and daemons and otherworldly creatures flash all around me now, seeming as if to reach at me and attempt to drag me away from my course, just as it happened before.

But no horrific arm reaches in and pulls me out. All those combined limbs and bodies paw at an unseeable wall of protection that seems to erupt around my path, almost like a tunnel. I grip my mythril sword, Lauderiet tighter than I ever had in life. It’s Lauderiet. The godblessed metal is protecting me. Thank the Steelfather, my beloved blade holds the horrors of the void at bay by his blessing. I tremble and cry in joy and sorrow and all sorts of emotion that finally burst and blend together as the cries of monsters fade. Because it really is over. My life has come to an end, and I am leaving everything and everyone I knew, everything I did and believed, behind. Forever. There is no going back now. I cannot reverse my upward course. There is no changing my choices, no seeing the descendants of my loved ones, nor the two great heroes I saved again. There will be no wandering the beloved soil of home anymore. I feel all this as I soar up through an indistinct miasma, shaking and quivering from it all.

And yet… I am happy. Happier than I have perhaps ever been since I was forcefully resurrected. Because that light is nearing. The inexplicable Light that glimmers and grows at the center of my vision. I reach out for it, begging it to join and embrace me. I am filled with a surety that it is Finality. The End of Everything. Maybe then, I can finally relax, hang my sword up, rest knowing that I have done all I could in my long life back home. And maybe…. Maybe I could look on from above. See, and silently swell in pride for the twin heroes who cut me free, and for all humanity.

The Light is no more a twinkling star, but a blazing sun in front of me now. And a sense of calm washes over me, stilling all my frantic grappling over my life.

Then, slowly, it fills up half my vision.

Then, there is nothing else to see. And I feel as if I am reaching the end of the tunnel.

“Thank you.” He rasped, looking at Meldrene first and then me. His eyes, absorbing as they are, seem especially keen now. “Thank you so much, you two…”

I look up at Meldrene. Her eyes are red and puffy with tears. I’m sure mine are, too. “We should thank you.” I grip his shoulder tight. “Without you… we couldn’t have known what to do.”

Viarden closes his eyes. And for the first time since we ever met him. He smiles. He smiles harder than almost anyone in the world ever had. “I am honored to have met you two before I go.” He opens his eyes again. “The two of you will- no, are heroes. Myren, Meldrene, I am proud of you two.”

His life is fading away even as he speaks. I only have a little scrip of Medarda’s power, and yet I can feel how fleeting, how fragile his lifeforce is. He does not have long left before he passes.

The tears prickle at my eyes and threaten to start spilling over. Meldrene’s are already falling in cascades, dripping down onto the rough stone floor. “You don’t know what you have done for me.” She rasps. Gulps. “I owe it to at least let you know.”

“I couldn’t have done anything else.” The ancient hero murmurs softly. “They took your life in their hands and tried bending your will to them, just like they-” He coughs “-they did to me. We were the same, Meldrene. We are the same.”

A look passes over Meldrene’s lavender eyes. They seem somber, more somber than anything I had ever imagined in my life. Haunted, but… accepting.

“And you, boy.” He shifts his impossibly deep gaze over to me. “I hope they never take your life and dignity for themselves, like they did to me.” He’s making a visible effort to speak properly now. “I hope that- that you live a good and full life with the people you love, Myren. And, if you die… I hope you die fighting, die with your armor around you and your sword in hand. Because that is the only way to get the Eternal Peace.”

He then gazes straight up, at the twinkling dance of the bright stars and multicolored clouds so far away in the nightsky. “My sword,” he finally says. “My sword. Bring it to me, please…”

My head jolts around to look for it, but Meldrene has already rushed over to where the silverine beauty fell. Viarden needs the blade, the cool touch of the godblessed mythril to safely make his journey to the afterlife. If not… he will be ripped back into this life again. As the daemons’ slave, like they tried doing to Meldrene. She walks quickly back with it in hand. Kneeling, she presses the handle of the blade firmly into Viarden’s palm. His grip tightens inexorably around it as she lets go. 

His life is so close to it’s end now. I can feel the clock ticking. Tick, Tock. There are only mere moments left.

I give him one final squeeze on the shoulder. “Rest well, Sir Knight. And never, ever stop fighting.”