Story:The End of Eternity/E6

 V 

The next day was one of a misty chill. The cold came in wordlessly and without considerable fanfare, but it was definitely notable. In the post-Collapse world, unending arid mid temperatures were the exclusive state of most of the planet’s climate, succeeded only by absolute cold with constant snowfall and extreme heat with little populated land. Every one of the bustling Cities that existed across the world were strategically placed in the mid-ranged, unchanging climate zones that gave consistent weather reports every year so as to easily create an agriculture system that would never be under risk of natural sabotage. With so long a time of temperature never changing, the Cities had grown accustomed to never having to change wardrobes or heat a living quarter.

The dropping temperatures were an unprecedented disaster that the city was not prepared for, and it was Arend’s first clue. The second was that the teacher and his Key’s corpse, along with all traces of blood and a struggle, had disappeared the next morning. The final clue was one of less concrete origins, but was a serious concern to him all the same. Ever since Klaytaza had slayed his teacher and deactivated his Key, a sickening sense of concern and pressure weighed down on Arend’s soul. His already dark demeanor continued to grow blacker, and he felt his mental power begin to wane. He knew that the ordeal had only just begun, and that whatever the two of them would have to endure would be a terrible war of colossal proportions.

Whoever would be following his teacher’s footsteps would definitely pose a greater challenge. Now that it was clear that a direct duel would end in Arend’s favor, the rest of his enemies had two logical choices in order to properly seek victory – come at him in a group that he cannot possibly surmount, or lead him into a trap that will hopefully kill him, but at worst distract him while the other pairs started the Thousand Eternal Salvation.

He knew not what this celestial ritual was exactly, nor how it would go about being performed, but there were a few things he could infer from what he had learned. Firstly, the point of the ritual was to cleanse the world of every living thing – a task mostly accomplished by the Collapse – and then to rebuild the world and rekindle all natural life. The part about eradicating humanity as the last living species on the planet were exactly what he wanted, so all he and Klaytaza had to do was sabotage the ritual before it could succeed to the point of rebirthing the world. That would no doubt be easier said than done.

Next, the ritual had been planned since creation began, and this was cemented by the very fact that the Keys – shinra beings, as Klaytaza called them, in stark contrast to the lesser human beings – existed in the world. Finally, the ritual was to happen very soon. This was proven by the very fact that shinra beings besides Klaytaza were beginning to awaken.

Arend didn’t know what exactly caused the shinra beings to awaken, nor how they went about picking their Masters, and Klaytaza was no help in these and other areas of inquiry. It wasn’t that she wasn’t being loyal to him, because he was rigidly sure that she wasn’t even capable of betraying him in any way, but rather that she simply didn’t have the knowledge of these things he asked of her. She spoke as if some knowledge were simple vague memories to her, lost in the endless abyss of time that she had endured. He wasn’t sure if this would have been actually possible, but then again, he was once sure that her existence and those besides her were completely impossible. He had been proven wrong.

Regardless of what he thought of Klaytaza, or just what their Thousand Eternal Annihilation would turn out to be, Arend knew that the immediate future was the one that deserved his attention. It was either that, or be ruthlessly destroyed by the other 997 remaining shinra beings. With Ramayan and his master defeated, it was unlikely that mercy would be given to Arend again.

“They won’t try the one-on-one duel format again. I wouldn’t, anyway, and I doubt that I’m the Master with the most strategic prowess in this whole mess.” His voice was low and muttered, a whisper stolen from his racing mind, but Klaytaza replied to it all the same.

“I fear nothing, as long as you hold my contract. In the end, the side that truly embodies humanity’s potential shall prevail.” The two of them were sitting in Arend’s room. The small square was cramped enough with just him and its peeling furniture in it, and Klaytaza sat next to him on his small bed. It wasn’t very comfortable but it housed the two of them just fine every night.

“I feel the same way, honestly. But mindless confidence isn’t going to get us anywhere, especially not when we’re up against 997 people all trying to kill us.” Arend sighed and wiped at his forehead. Just the sheer thought of all the other shinra beings he had loudly denounced was enough to make his head spin, not to mention the fact that he was really sitting here having a real conversation with what was a glorified android. But then the reality check came in, as it always did, and he remembered the incredible feat Klaytaza had accomplished easily – halting and compressing time itself. This was no android.

“Do you fear them, Master? Is the safety of your family a concern?”

“...No, I don’t fear them. I don’t fear anybody or anything.” He spoke honestly and lucidly, surprised at what he was saying but believing in it completely. The confidence she spoke of was felt in him all the same. “And as for my family… They will die all the same. Although, perhaps allowing the enemy to think otherwise could work in my favor…” Arend cupped his chin with his hand and looked into the distance in thought. Klaytaza said nothing and only watched him in admiration.

His sister walked into the room at that moment. She was only two years younger than Arend, and resembled him greatly. Her hair was a darker flaxen than his, and her eyes were green where his were a dark brown, but she had the same lean physique as he did. Her face was angular and her expression perpetually cold, a malignant exterior that masked any beauty constantly hanging over her person. She had the same disenchanted look about her that her brother did, as it was a natural ail inflicted by the life that they both lived, but she wasn’t as apathetic as Arend was, and held a natural affection for emotion that he did not have.

She looked at the two of them, her pretty eyes glancing over Klaytaza for a dismissing second before stopping on Arend’s postured form. He hadn’t yet noticed her presence, as he still sat with concentration and looked off at his room’s wall.

“What a shame it is that you’re home today, brother. Every night I pray that you don’t return, but every morning you ruin these dreams of mine. If nothing else, you were consistent in your pointless drifting, but now I cannot even attribute that quality to you.” She spoke as if Arend was supposed to reply to her or show some wounding in his face, but he did not. Klaytaza looked to her, and in noticing this, the girl pouted her lower lip and crossed her arms tightly, but did not move or say anymore.

“The cold has come in, and I have told the Master that staying out in it would be detrimental to his health.” The Key, who still sat with Arend’s jacket upon her shoulders and her flowing silver hair cut to a jagged short length just above her shoulders, looked at Arend’s sister with her cold, soulless eyes.

“Don’t speak to me, you whore,” the girl spat. “I wasn’t talking to you. And I didn’t ask about his health.” The girl looked down to Klaytaza with palpable disparagement and her mood worsened. Klaytaza didn’t respond or show any emotion, either.

His sister’s outburst finally caught Arend’s attention, and he looked to his door in surprise for a moment before realizing what had happened. His expression soured and he stuffed his hands into his pockets with a shiver. “What is it that you’re bothering me with, Avdotya?” The now named sister glanced back at her brother and her glare softened, if only for a minute degree.

“Is it too much to ask to see my brother outside of late-night walks around the house? Does it pain you to spend your time here, with me?” What was once angered impatience had suddenly shifted to a pained longing. If Arend took notice of it, he did not let it affect him, and he only looked at Avdotya with his same disapproving aesthetic.

“I don’t see why it’s of any use to you wondering how I spend my time.”

“You’re always like this!” Avdotya suddenly turned, her limbs briefly splaying into the air in a heated frenzy, and she began to pace the small room. Her arms rested on her hips, the school uniform she wore – not unlike Klaytaza’s, minus the masculine shoulder accessory – flitting behind her with as much energy that she held. “You don’t understand anything. I don’t understand you. All I want – if you, just for a second, listened – just listened!” Her words had devolved into passionate rambles, and she began to ejaculate curses and mutters that only populated the room with unintelligible sounds.

“I listen to more than you can imagine. The petty squabbles of which you speak mean nothing to me and only serve to waste my time.” Arend reclined on his bed and closed his eyes. Klaytaza stared after Avdotya, who stopped pacing minutes after Arend spoke, her face suddenly ablaze with a revelation.

“I don’t even know why I bother with you or that harlot you wander around with. It’s clear that you love her more than you do me! That’s something I should have realized long ago.” Avdotya spoke with biting accusations, but her tone returned to its original form of passive hostility. If what she spoke of wounded her at all, she no longer resolved to show it, and spoke as if merely pointing out the natural order of the world and its unchangeable routines.

“You’re the one who doesn’t understand. Please, leave us. I have more important things to think of than your fledgling moods. They scream and rage as tempestuously as the skies and the storms within them; why would I bother to study that which is illogical?” The smirk that Arend’s waxing gave him vanished after a second of further thought. “And I won’t have you speaking of my companion like that again. She holds more meaning in her body than the souls of any human being on this planet – myself, yourself, and all between.”

“Oh, your companion, is she? I was under the impression that you two were in a relation that was as depraved as it was shameless. She calls you her ‘master’, does she not? But to you, she’s just a companion, one you won’t even bother to call by her name.” Avdotya folded her arms and looked Klaytaza in the eye. She barely managed to contain the shiver that went through her spine as she gazed into the Key’s auburn orbs of soulful consciousness and that which was held within – or rather, the very lack of anything within. “Get used to that feeling, intruder, for it is all that he is able to dole out to us mere mortals. There is nothing that deserves merit in dear Arend’s eyes.”

Arend sat up and glared at Avdotya with unmasked disdain in his eyes. “Your purpose here is lost to me.”

“Aren’t they all,” she replied. “to one such as you, oh ascendant?” The two of them met the other’s gaze, staring and groping, eloping into the paintings of abstract feeling that each of them held within their hearts, but surfacing with still clouded eyes ignorant to any insight on the other. “I awake, sometimes, and I am thankful for my life. You speak of the world around us as if it is ending, and if nothing would make you happier than to watch every other human die, and that terrifies me, brother.” She shook with a chill, but she wasn’t particularly cold, even in the uninsulated house they were in. Arend chuckled humorlessly.

“If only you knew what you speak of. How much I tire of living, of being as I am, and not as an ocean or a star. The sins of my existence weigh heavily on my soul, but a weightless one like yourself is condemned to only ignorance without its bliss.”

“Living should be a joy, something you love! I wake every morning, before I am able to think of you and mother and father, and I am excited. I long to see what the day will bring for me, what sceneries I shall see, what people I will meet. Do you not love these mysteries? Would you feel anything at all if you ever managed to solve them?”

“The misunderstanding is thus, for you ask of my capacity for mystery and my agenda in seeking the horizons, but you mistake me and my demeanor. It is clear to me that you have not been taking as much interest in me as you say, but nonetheless, you are wrong. You see, Avdotya, I am completely unable to love. The sunrise, those around me, the history of our world, even myself – all of them are absent in my heart, as is all of creation.”

“Don’t say that!” Avdotya rushed to his person, shaking him with her hands grasping his shoulders, and her eyes began to bother her. She squinted them after a rub and continued to swim in his consciousness. “I don’t ever want to hear you say such a thing again. Please, you must promise me this!” She shook him again, and looked up at him with hurt, pleading eyes, but still his lips remained tightly pursed.

“Why do you prostrate yourself in the face of truth? How could what I say wound you so when you have not been insulted?” Avdotya had nothing to say to this. She sniffled, and looked down with a grimace, as if seeing herself reflected and wishing to wash her hands of the emotion. She swayed, her body tensed, and her fingers loosened, but then it all tightened once again with shakily renewed confidence.

“Please,” she pleaded. “I don’t want you to be this way. I hate it, and it makes me think I hate you, but I don’t, I swear I don’t…” Tears welled in her eyes, but she blinked them away with fervent energy. “Just… Take back what you said. About not being able to love. That would be terrible, so horrible – I couldn’t imagine it, I don’t want to imagine it! And for you to have to experience such a state, it pains me so… it angers me! You anger me!” She looked at her brother, face awash with inconsistent and stuttering emotion swirling like the storms she was such a mirror of. In contrast to this, as always, Arend’s face did not hesitate, did not show turmoil, and did not change. He was the watcher to the timepiece of eternity, self-proclaimed and appointed heir to the throne of antiquity, and the only one who deserved to sit with him on the pedestal of evolution was not the one grasping onto him at the moment.

“Well?!” Avdotya stood now, throwing her arms behind her in frustration. “Don’t you have anything to say to me? I’ve laid myself bare for you to see and to empathize – and your mind fails you?” Her body contorted in agitation, her emotions clearly clouded with irritation and impatience, but her face was still the tempestuous canvas for all the palettes of her mind.

Still Arend was silent.

“You’re impossible!” She screamed in frustration, hands writhing at her chest, and she darkly moved to leave the room. With one foot outside the dwelling, she turned and looked right at Arend. He had been following her with his eyes, and their regards met once again. Avdotya’s glare faltered, softened once more, before hardening on a neutral face of trepidation. “I beg of you, one last time, brother – answer me true, if you hold any spark of feeling in that black heart of yours – it is all I have left in my life to cherish. Just tell me, please… Do you love me?”

The boy struggled, his mind racing and grappling for the answer she wanted to hear and what would benefit him in the long run, but he glanced into Avdotya’s eyes once more and was startled by the emotion she held there, the longing and the deep-set pain, all bolded and laid out for him to see. His intellect came to a blank, and he began to perspire in nervousness, and before he knew it, his mouth had spoken that which his heart truly felt, even in the absence of permission from that which his brain held captive over the rest of the body. “No,” he said, before gulping and continuing. “I never have and I never could. That is my curse, and I do not repent it.”

Avdotya looked at him one last time, her eyes finally overflowing with a last push of emotion and tears, before she blinked them away. The tears fell, and with them her face, as she took on the same slate of emotional neutrality that Arend was so fond of. She looked over him, drinking in all of his features before glancing over Klaytaza who still sat next to him, and left the room silently.

Arend stood slowly, his breath quicker than usual and his chest paining him. There was an unshakable feeling of regret in him, because he had made a mistake, and he knew it. Then a chill ran through his body again, and he heard the idle tapping of rain on the walls of his room. A memory of the shinra beings and the threat they posed came back to him, and he shook his head slightly to rid himself of the fears his sister had given him and the remorse he now knew. There were more important things that required his attention, and worrying about an ephemeral burden would do nothing but weaken himself. Gulping and rubbing his eyes with one hand, he grasped the pen in the other, and remembered the company he was in.

Klaytaza stood just then, summoned by his thought alone, and held the hand of his that held onto the pen. “I’m here, Master,” she whispered. “I will always be here.” Arend looked up to her just then, and watched her face glow with sympathy and love that she could not produce, and felt a painful sorrow burgeon within his chest. A burning in his eyes he had known before was summoned from nowhere, and he wanted to release them, but to do so would only bring him further sorrow. Both of them knew this.

Arend sniffed, feeling the frigid air brush past his nostrils, and he hugged Klaytaza with clenched eyes and a lowered face. Only because she was with him, and he was in her arms, did he allow his vices emerge – to bloom within seconds, then only to wither and wilt beneath his ribs. She felt so warm, even though all of her was of freezing cold. She warmed his body and the dying flowers in his soul: the headstone to the graveyard of his mind, each once-living corpse a testament to that which he left behind.

“This wasn’t what I wanted,” he whined. “I didn’t want to feel this. I hate it, Klaytaza; I hate it. I’m so depraved, so despicable, so full of ruin and mistakes. I’m human, Klaytaza, and I realize it every morning. I hate it. I just want everything to disappear.”

“That’s quite all right, Master. That’s what I love about you, out of every human that has ever existed. It is not you that is special, but rather your ascendance: your realization of that which ails, the determination you have to seek out the true end, and the desire you hold to skin all of creation, along with me. I love it, Master.”

“Klaytaza… It is impossible for you to say such things. You cannot… Love is foreign to you, isn’t it? You can’t love… It’s not something your heart can produce… just as I. We alone hold hands in the face of alienation and pain. Am I wrong?”

“No, Master. You’re right. Just as always.”