Story:The End of Eternity/E17

The Key with the pale armor stepped forward. The thin and pallid spear in its hands was not held forward or even held in an aggressive manner at all, but the grim look on its face held clear its purpose. Arend looked at this final enemy with an emotionless look of his own. There were no more words necessary for him to trade in prologue to this conflict. The final Key barring his way from the truth was upon him. The end was upon him. There was nothing he had to do anymore. There was nothing he could do anymore, besides fight… and win.

“My being follows not the example of others, it seems. Even in the end… No disturbances were enough. I have no power even over a fourth of your mind. We are what we are… Then come. Emancipate: New Era Sepulcher: Assyria, the fourth Chandrasekhar limit!” The voice in the darkness let loose his final announcement without objection. Deep within his voice, a tone of regret could be heard.

The Master of the final pale Key stepped forward, and Arend was stunned into silence. He saw the Master, and looked back upon the Key. Finally the Key’s appearance made sense – its bodysuit was black, as ever, but the bald and empty skull it had where its head went was different than any other Key he had seen before. Indeed, it resembled the face of a common house android, not one of the super-powerful shinra beings.

“This is impossible… I saw you die. Both of you… I saw you two die…!”

In front of Arend stood his only two childhood friends. The only two true friends he had ever been acquainted and connected with. The ones who listened to everything he had to say. The ones who had died for him. They were both the Master of the final defending Key, and they were his final obstacles to the truth.

Collectively the two siblings smiled. “We’ve been waiting so long for you,” said the boy. The female smiled deeper in response. None of them looked a day over the age they were when their bodies were crushed and forced inside an android on an assembly line.

The Key stepped forward and lazily stabbed its blade at Arend’s chest. Klaytaza parried with her blade, but otherwise did not move. Staring hesitantly at her unmoving Master, she resolved to fend off the enemy Key’s lackluster advances.

“I saw you die. You died because of me… How could you be standing before me?” All logic was failing Arend. All causes had shifted and switched with their effects, and all causality had vanished. Still the cross in the sky continued to descend.

“We have impressions of wings on our backs, but are we angels?” questioned the female. Arend remembered those words – he had often asked that very question to the two. They never had an answer.

“I don’t know,” answered Arend.

“We humans who capriciously destroy and rend, are we sinners?” questioned the male. This was another question Arend had asked of them frequently. At the time, Arend had no answer, but he had soon found a conclusive one after their deaths.

That answer was now lost on him. “I don’t know,” answered Arend.

“My being discards the flaws of humanity, but am I a saint?” questioned the female. Arend had often wondered this aloud when he wasn’t aware that the siblings were in his presence.

“I don’t know,” answered Arend.

“My mind rejects the cravings of my body, but am I myself?” questioned the male.

“I don’t know,” answered Arend.

“Does humanity deserve salvation?” questioned both the siblings at once. This was the final question Arend had asked before his two first disciples had rushed to give their lives in place of his own.

Arend shook all over and looked upwards at the falling cross. “I don’t know. I don’t know any of it… I only know what I want to believe. What I’ve seen. But… is that really the truth? What’s next?”

The female stepped forward and looked towards Arend with pity. Both of the siblings – if they were siblings, after all – seemed to wear only dark red cloaks with large hoods. The cloaks ended at their ankles, revealing that they were barefoot, and had oversized sleeves. “The truth is that there is no truth. Only reality and illusions. Life and death.”

“We have been waiting for you, Arend. Waiting so long.” The male tilted his head slightly and gave a warm smile to Arend. Despite the hospitality of the two in front of him, Arend could feel only confusion, unease, and despair.

“This doesn’t make any sense! No matter how I look at it… You two are dead. You died…!” Idly, he remembered the previous battle, and how the being he thought to be the Master was disguised as a Key. Could such a thing be happening again?

“You still have so many fallacies,” the female said as she gazed into Arend’s widened eyes. “We’ve had so much time to dwell on what you’ve asked us. We know now, Arend. We can tell you everything.”

“What…? You know what? I don’t understand!”

“There is no I, friend,” said the male. He shook his head lightly. “You attach meaning and existence to yourself with such a label, but in actuality you refer to an artificial construct in language that takes the place of your existence. It is your intellect that seeks to perceive itself, so it creates a vision and homunculus of itself, but in so doing, erases the actual being. Your Self, in seeking a mirror to see, has become blind.”

Arend stood speechless, the only sound in the platform being the slow clash of blades by Klaytaza and the pale Key. “Wha… What? You’re ignoring what I’m asking, but… That doesn’t even make sense! I’ve proven that I exist! I won’t fade away like the rest of you!”

“Fade away into what, Arend?” The female’s smile faded, but her eyes still crinkled as if she was enjoying this discussion in the center of the end of the world. “What the famine-eater tried to communicate to you was that we all – those of us who do not contest the end – do not exist, in layman terms. We forfeit our lives and our heartbeats to the fall of the Ark. In believing that we will die soon, we assume that we already are dead – for are not we all? And if we are all dead, we do not exist.”

“And in referring to ourselves as ‘we’,” the male added, “All of us not existing, we allow the façade of self-perceiving to fade. By acknowledging that we do not live, and rejecting the sight and thought of ourselves as independent life forms, we erase our reality and uniqueness. Truly, we do not exist, because we do not see ourselves and we will die.”

“What will happen isn’t what’s happening right now! You don’t exist because I killed you! You died because of me!” Arend was growing frustrated, which only added to the fog of his mind contributed by his sheer confusion and ignorance. “I can’t accept that I don’t live. Of course ‘I’ exist! How else would I be fighting you all? How else would I be exploring my philosophies on the earth, or watching the end of existence? How else would I manipulate time? How else would I find the answers I so seek?!”

The two siblings looked in each other’s eyes and smiled. Next, they looked back at Arend.

“You have not yet learned to cast aside your personal identity or your existence. That will come, in time,” assured the female.

“All will come in time,” assured the male.

“No,” Arend whispered. “I do not know the answers, but I will find them.”

“You do not have the time,” the male stated. “Didn’t your Key tell you so? The end is nigh. Soon you will be subject to the time of the Creator. We all will.”

“I am my own Creator.” Arend said with newfound conviction. In arguing with those he thought were dead, he felt as if he had finally asserted that which had mystified him for so long. Truly, he did not know all the answers, or even close to a fraction of them – but he had his own mind, his own existence, his own experiences, and his own world. Even if the physical world around him was ending, he always had himself and his time would never end. “I am Eternity.”

“Our end beckons. Will you not disappear with us, this time?” asked the female. “With but a touch of our hands, we can make your heart end. We can compress all of your body into a singularity, and gift you with nothingness. Just as you did for us.” Her smile widened.

“Come with us, Arend,” pleaded the male. “The end is not as you think it is. The Creator is not merciful. All fall before him. Join us and the others before us. We can be content in our existence forever, as all time endures at once. Forever is all around us.”

“You’re correct… I’m not merciful.” Arend crossed his arms. “You’re leaving when I kill you, which will be whenever I wish. But before then…” His expression softened ever so slightly. “Won’t you two tell me your names?”

Both of the spectres in front of Arend smiled with the same expression of serenity. Each of them reached their left hand towards Arend, reaching slowly to touch his skin. “Yes. We are -”

Their final words were never heard. At that moment, instants before their cold fingers could touch Arend’s skin and rob him of his self-awareness and existence, Klaytaza flew through the air, twirling her blade with herculean force, and decapitated both of the enemies. Their blood immediately splattered onto Arend’s face, and their bodies vanished. The final Key in the pale armor would have fallen to the ground if he wasn’t already lifeless, defeated in his short battle with Klaytaza without much effort.

There was no grief for Arend to feel. He did not even feel regret towards the final eradication of his memories, the severing of his ties to any other living being. Klaytaza had acted of his will to end the conflict as soon as possible, so in a way the foes before him had perished when he had commanded… before, and now.

Looking up to the heavens, Arend let out a final scream, and with this scream he rejected all anxieties and fears. The Thousand Keys to Eternity and his Thousand Sins of the Self had both been extinguished, leaving only his reflection and the End of the World before him. One foe, and then the End. The End, then the Creator.

The cross had fallen to heights that seemed almost reachable from the platform, now. There was barely any skin left on the gigantic man attached to the ethereal creation save for that on his head and slightly below his neck, and even that was melting away quickly.

Arend looked back down before deciding to step forward. In the place of his first two friends, their discarded robes, and their discarded existences, they had left behind a long weapon for his possession. The weapon was identical to the pen-blade that Natalia had gifted him, both extremely long double-sided thin longswords. Arend bent over and picked the weapon up; wielding it, he stepped forward.

“Your limits have been surpassed. Now, step forward and confront me, you coward. Your words have no more meaning until I see the face which impedes my final goals!” Raising his arms into the image of a cross, Arend held his blade aloft. Klaytaza stood behind him.

“The lost link in the chain… Disconnected, but able to link with and dislodge every component. You have gone so far past the end of the chain that you have returned to the beginning. Who is it that dwells in the castle of eternity? Who is it that watches the canopy of illusion? For the world’s sake I live, live, die, live, live, exist, erase, exist! Who am I, I ask? Who is that in front of me? It is I, I, I, myself, I, my existence, I, my reflection, I, my illusion, I, my cause, I, my effect, I, I!”

The leader from the darkness stepped forward into the light. Into it, facing Arend and Klaytaza, walked Arend Vitalis himself.

KEYS TO ETERNITY REMAINING: 1