Somewhere in the distant future.....
'Weakness …'
It was the faintly sour, acid taste of Earth that remained in his mouth—the rich, earthy aroma of wet ground that had just been anointed by the rains.
It was the sensation of disorientation and haze that shook him. His vision wavered as precariously as his balance. The soggy rain clung to his clothes and hair, making him damp in the oppressive heat.
And still he failed to open his clenched fist.
'Weak'
Such were the sensations that overwhelmed Rick as he attempted to stand up from the ground. He lacked the strength to mock the fact that he had been ensnared by a ordinary, everyday root. All he could do was shuffle ahead in a dazed blur.
'Weak
Everything in his mind was filled with one truth: this was all his fault. He was a coward. He had failed in all the ways that mattered.
'So pitifully … Weak'
This was ingrained within him. He knew this. To be weak was the greatest crime. The second greatest crime was to be strong and allow themselves to be weak. He was guilty on both accounts.
If he had just been more careful. If he had just been more sensitive, if he hadn't dropped the zero-trust policy. The failure rested on his shoulders alone.
His own vision teetered back and forth between clarity and haze. Remote booms rang out like thunder, only emphasizing the drumming rain pounding against him. At least it sluiced the blood away—although he could hardly feel it. Or anything of his own body, for that matter.
He could barely make out the object in his hand, the knife slicing deeper like it starved to suck out his very life. He would not have cared if he had known. Did it matter?
The rain mingled with his tears as he walked. He gagged on a sob.
"Esme…"
'I'm so weak. So terribly weak. She's going to die because I am so weak.'
Memories danced before his mind's eye. He had genuinely thought that he was 'HIM'. How full of himself. How sad.
Had he not been so inebriated with his small victories. Had he lived in his daydreams. Had he not thought he was the hero. Had he not repeated the same mistakes in a different flavor….
It was all so empty now. All the success. All of his genius. It didn't matter. It was nothing. It parched his mouth despite the fact that he stood in the mud.
He had felt that way but there was nothing to vomit up. He had felt that strong a few hours ago. That vision was now shattered. It was empty like a thing, empty like smoke. How he wanted that feeling again. But he couldn't. It was all gone.
All he could do was keep the shamble going. He ran into a tree, his vision still dazed. He tripped. He got up. And tripped again. And again. And again.
He grasped for that sweet shimmering taste of mana. Mana, to him who had spent the majority of his life without it, was like the nectar most sweet, the ambrosia most exquisite.
But now every phone call of his seemed hollow. He could sense it, feel it, there at the edge of his perception. Like a forgotten word on the tip of your tongue, forever in sight yet out of reach. Something you've recalled so often and taken for granted but now forgotten.
He was helpless. Emasculated. Removed from all the authority he could ever have dreamed that he possessed and so simply like a switch had been flipped.
His attempts, like his walk, were futile, meaningless. Like blasting at a rock with eggs if only for the hope to hit a small weak spot.
But he never gave up. He never gave up walking. And he never gave up calling the arcane.
He could hear the mockery of the laughter issue forth from near at hand. That happy, familiar sound he had come to Cherish and rely upon so heavily. And he went pale.
If he could hear that, then he had already made it.
Yes, he had been too far in it to notice, but for a moment or so the struggle must have stopped. It was still now, thunder died down, rain ceased. Even the pain and the void he had been feeling had been rinsed out
There was just that laugh remaining.
"Look Esme!"
Owner of the uproarious laugh screamed.
"Behold my love your puppy. He's come for his master. He's come for you. Run in the rain like a mutt to his master. Foolish wretch."
The words stirred a flame in the breast of the man but the subsequent words quenched it altogether.
"Yes, he is that fool isn't he? A waste of ability, space and talent. All that raw talent, and he never put it to any good use. Wasting it on common peasants"
The loud voice man guffawed.
"Right as rain my love. Its much better we have it now. All he's ever slaved for."
Esme laughed. It was cool, reserved and wasn't boisterous. Like it was asking for permission to be in the room but still commanded attention.
Yes. Commoners were never meant for that. I did attempt to see? But its futile. He never had the courage for what and to be done. And all the 'enlightenment' in the world would never wash away the grime from off of me. I hate the Albrecht method and everything that it stands for.
The man on the floor coughed, black blood bubbling with the air.
He muttered something at a very low level. With the stress he had endured, that he was even aware was a miracle.
"Little twat say something." The man said, and then mockingly, loudly, in the singsong tone of a schoolboy bully, " We. Can't. Hear. You!"
Esme laughed calmly along as the man reveled in the thrill of his triumph.
She looked up at his pitiful form and then had a sentimental expression pass through her eyes. She shrugged the sentimentality aside and with a cold glare at the prostrate man, looked him straight in the eye and commented,
"I won't be hypocritical enough to forgive you. But know this, I am truly sorry. You used to tell me, ruthlessness is mercy upon ourselves. And I have always been selfish."
She then drew out the katana he had crafted for her and struck it straight into his heart. And in that moment, with a dying spurt of energy, he succeeded in catching that string of mana, and then it surged into his body, and into the object in his hand as well as the rapidly ebbing life force.
And before they knew what he had done, He spat out along with his lifeblood.
"And I'm sorry too. This is the last time. Sorry, you're already dead."
As she tried to realize what was happening, a Charred black sword jutted out of her chest with a disgusting squelch. His precious sword, the Life Burn.
The last words they both heard, before the light from the object engulfed everything, were the words of the man.
"Why stop at killing a mutt, when you can kill the bitch too?"