Chapter 81

Tears of a God

Snow kissed the gentle dirt repeatedly, snowflakes pooling into hills and mountains, and melting under the pressure of rotted feet and boots on the other end, forming rivers and ponds and streams. Wall stood like a barrier between two antithetical worlds, two opposites, two inevitabilities in the unending story of reality. The sky above remained ashen, and whether it was day or night, nary a ray of sun burned through. Dark, instead, reign. And invisible muses sang the song of the winds—low and harrowing, cascading through the open doors and windows.

There was no silence to behold the moment; the world was swallowed in the season, in the cold, in the wet of the winter. On one end stood the living, braving the fears, and on the other stood the dead. It was a sea. A flood. A number that left everyone stunned—Sylas especially. The rows encompassed the entire northern walls, tens of thousands only of the visible ones. The dead never ended, and they never began. They were all and everything. Untouched.

He instinctively grabbed onto the stoned wall, cupping a handful of snow. His brain didn’t even register the chill and the cold of his fingers—instead, it was too busy losing reason and hope.

“What… what in the Gods’ name is this?” Valen mumbled helplessly.

“… this is… not normal,” Derrek, similarly, shuddered and shivered and stuttered in disbelief.

“Indeed, it is not," a childish, yet choral voice drew attention to himself. Iun climbed on top of the wall and glanced to the other end, inspecting the dead. "I am afraid your home… has been Marked.”

“M-marked?” Sylas quizzed.

“As new grounds for the building of the Well,” Iun said. “All the dead here shall give birth to it.”

“…!” Sylas’ eyes widened in horror, the chill of his soul far eclipsing that of the winter.

“You needn’t have told them that,” a voice broke from within the ranks of the dead as a cloaked and hooded figure, hunched unhealthily, stepped forward, supported by a wooden, crow-headed cane. “You will kill their spirits, Iun.”

“… your protection will not be eternal, Ghost,” Iun spat out. “And when it ends, I shall rip your spine out personally.”

“He he he,” the figure laughed strangely. “Always a pleasure. But, I plead thee leave now. We wouldn’t want any misunderstandings to occur, would we now?”

“…” Iun turned toward Sylas and Valen before sighing. “Good luck, little humans.” The boy suddenly melted like a chunk of ice into a body of water and disappeared, as though he was never there.

“Good,” the figure said, turning around and walking back toward the ranks of the dead. “Now that the nuisances are gone… Chan-te g’akaa benum…”

As the voice faded like a distant whisper of a dying man, through the belting winds came roars of the dead—roars the shook the world. All eyes grew alight, as from within the ranks of the dead, over twenty pulsating figures came rushing out. Sylas recognized them immediately—as did Derrek—but only the latter responded in kind.

“EVERYONE, GET OFF THE WALLS!!!!” however, even his loudest, throat-burning shout… barely reached anyone. And those few that it did, stood about confused, unsure as to why.

Just then, the Infernals reached the wall… and exploded. Beyond the sheer horror, Sylas mused as he found himself flying through the air, looking back at the wanton destruction, it was… beautiful. His eardrums were immediately blasted, bleeding profusely. But the sight, for the briefest moment he experienced it before being blinded, was beautiful.

Colors spilled over the world like canvas, edgeless, formless, bleeding over from one onto another. The massive wall was uprooted like a plant, its bits and pieces and chunks flung about everywhere like an upward rain. Amidst the rubble of the stone and the rocks and the wooden planks, what stood out the most were corpses. The human blood stained the world at that moment.

All of the reality slowed down for him to see—for him to see all that he could lose. Valen was cut across his abdomen, his lower half missing. Just like Sylas, he was stunned, brutalized, arms spread open like a prayer to the Gods that would not listen.

Ryne was bleeding from both her eyes, and it looked like she was crying tears of blood. She was screaming, Sylas saw—whether it was in pain, in horror, of any combination of the two… he didn't know. But his heart broke, all the same—it broke like a glassed bowl tossed against the wall, its shards spilling onto the ground.

Tenner was decimated completely—Sylas saw it as soon as the first explosion occurred. He, unluckily, stood straight above one of the explosions, his entire body blown up into bits and pieces, chunks mingling with the rest.

Derrek lost his right arm, his expression a mixture of horror, pain, agony, and anger. The whole of mankind bled at that moment, amidst the rapture, amidst the horror, amidst the blood-stained snow. They fell like trees being cut by a lumberjack. One by one, yet at once.

You have died.

Save point ‘Pup’s Blood’ has been initialized.

“There’s no way,” Sylas mumbled into the cold and distant night. In the distance, they celebrated. They celebrated a victory. But his heart was bereft of joy. Instead, within it… only horror at the realization they were doomed remained. They couldn’t win. Even if there were twice as many of them, they couldn’t win. "There has to be a way," he mumbled in a contradiction. "It can't end here. No, it can't end here. I won't allow it. It can't."

The scene was still vividly imprinted onto his brain—and he knew that it would never leave him. It would join the ranks of the few other scenes that he could never forget, no matter how many years had passed—the first time he died, the first time he saw the sky rain the dead and the figure being lowered on the harness of chains, the first time he killed someone, and now… it was that. The scene straight out of a story depicting the downfall of mankind. The dead won. No, to call it a victory would imply there was some kind of a struggle. There wasn’t.

“Jesus Christ,” Sylas mumbled, standing up and walking over to the porterboys in search of wine. “How many years will I spend in this fucking loop?”

After scoring a few jugs of wine, he retreated into the darkness of the woods, hiding behind a tree. Up until now, at any other point, he never felt completely hopeless. He felt defeated, hollow, even beaten, but never… hopeless.

“No, not completely hopeless,” he mumbled, half-drunk. He could think of only one thing that would have a chance of salvaging this loop—talismans. Specifically, the ones Ryne and he experimented on using the ancient version of the characters.

Naturally, they didn’t make any through that method—largely because they just had a few days to practice. But… that could be remedied. Three months and a couple of weeks—that’s how long the current loop would last. To be grounded, Sylas gave himself three months—three months per loop to continue learning those talismans.

They'd have to immediately swarm Iun to share them and then study. And each loop, Sylas would have to force Ryne to catch up since she had a far greater comprehension ability. Over and over and over again, until, someday in the distant future of the present… they could make talismans entirely from the ancient characters.

“Fuck,” he cursed, drinking without a stop, even after vomiting once. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…”

“E-eh?” a voice drew Sylas out of his stupor, causing him to look to his left. There, a woman stood draped in the guard’s armor, looking at him strangely underneath the hood. He could barely distinguish some of her features due to the lack of light, but, at least, her shimmering, lime-green eyes stood out. “I—I’m sorry. I… I thought I heard something so I came to—”

“—want a drink?” Sylas interrupted her, trying to hand her a jug of wine. To his surprise, she looked at him for a moment before accepting and walking over, sitting opposite of him.

“What?” she quizzed. “You look like you need to keep drinking. I’m here to provide company and ensure you don’t kill yourself.”

“… we haven’t met, I don’t think,” Sylas said, though he couldn’t be certain—after all, he was fairly drunk. “I’m S—Sylas,” his speech was quite slurred, but he continued to drink.

“I know who you are,” she said.

“Oh? I’m famous? H—how flattering.”

“… why are you here?” she quizzed. “Celebrating on your own?”

“Hoh? You think—you think this is me celebrating?” Sylas crackled in laughter, startling the woman for a moment. “Celebrating, she says, ha ha ha ha… ‘das a good one. Good one, I tell ya’. No, no, ‘fraid I’m not celebrating. I’m mourning.”

“Mourning… what?” she quizzed. Even drunk, Sylas picked up on her rather thick and strange accent—almost a posh-like one, just even more… pompous, so to say.

“The death of mankind,” he said, heaving the jug of wine up in the air. “Don’t tell anyone this, but—I ain’t, I ain’t really a prophet, you know?”

“You don’t say,” the woman mumbled.

“Instead, instead what I am—is a looper? Aye, a looper. I die… and then, and then I go back. Go back in time! Ha ha ha, can you believe it? Utterly insane, I know! Bah. I die and I die and I keep on dying and waking up in this fucking place, this fucking night, over and over and over again. And… and it’s only just begun.”

“…”

“I died, recently,” he continued, talking to himself more so than with her. “Not just me. All of us, actually. We were at the castle. It was winter. Deep, deep snow. An attack. Another one. Heh. Another one. So many… so many dead,” he said, drinking some more. “And then… boom. Boom went the wall. And us with him. And I am… I am tired. So, so, so tired. It has to be me. For everything. There’s only me. I have to figure out this. Figure out that. Find all the answers. And now—and now I need to learn how to stop an army of tens of thousands of dead. How to stop the castle from falling.”

“…”

“Bullshit! Fuckin’ bullshit!” he yelled, deeply drunk by now. “I—I’m not good at this crap! I, I mean, gimme some rich fuck, and I—I—I’ll get you some of ‘is money, you know? I’ll get you that. But, fuck, do I look like some hero who will save the world? I… I’m trying, goddammit! But this world… this fuckin’ world of yours just won’t chill!”

“… you sound like you need a hug,” her voice still somehow managed to pierce into her psyche.

“A hug? No, no, what I need is a nuclear fuckin’ bomb to deal with that army,” Sylas said, sighing. “I’m just… so tired. So, so, so tired…”

“Even so,” she said, the sound of her boots beating against the snow drawing closer as she crouched in front of him. “You shouldn’t sleep in the snow. You could die.”

“… can I tell you something? Like, honestly,” the woman drew back slightly at the stench of his breath, but still nodded. “Sometimes… sometimes, I—I wish I could.”

“… life is precious,” she said. “We need to hold onto it. Come on. Take my hand. I’ll escort you to your tent.”

“What’d you say your name was?” Sylas asked, hardly aware of what was happening.

“I didn’t,” she replied, tossing his arm over her shoulder and slowly dragging him to the camp. “Steady, steady! Just hold onto me!”

“… you’re good,” he mumbled, falling asleep. “A whole lot of you are good. Valen. Tenner. Ryne. Even that handsome fuck Derrek is good. Why? Why are you all good?! If… if you were evil scums, I could have left. I could have gone away. Washed my hands of you lot. I could have… I could have escaped this hell…” Sylas fell asleep, his mind dazed and adrift, uncertain. For the first time in a long while, he slept peacefully, as though cradled within the arms that banished all his demons. He slept and he rested, blooming like a flower in the dawn.