Story:The End of Eternity/E16

“Tell me what’s going on,” Arend cried into the abyss. “What I just saw… What I felt! It went beyond the powers of a Key. That was real…!” The boy’s hands were out of his pockets now, and alternated between forming tight fists and open vices. His hair had been tossled by the wind as he fell, but now his flaxen locks sat messily atop his sweating forehead.

“You haven’t caught on yet?” asked the voice from the darkness. “To think you’d assumed the Gates of Paradise would open without a trial…”

“What are you talking about?!” Arend exploded. “This is not Heaven! I am not trying to go anywhere! All I want to do is kill you all – end it all! – so why won’t you let me just do that? Let me have my way, just once!”

“But I am,” countered the voice. “Longing is beauty, as separation is fate. That’s what he told me… Is it not the truth?”

“You bas-“

“Master,” Klaytaza interjected with a hand upon Arend’s bicep. The boy whirled to her with a visage of rage, but his aggression melted upon seeing Klaytaza’s eternally stoic appearance. She tilted her head slightly. “There is no time to converse with the enemy. Not anymore.”

Arend stared at her for a moment, his eyes uncomprehending. Never before had she interfered with him or his discussions, and never before had she shown any concern for time. She was always supremely confident in him and his decisions, sometimes painfully so. What, then, did this mean? Was she losing her confidence in him, or was the end really that close?

He assumed it was the latter. As the Key who held dominion over Time, it was not too far-fetched to believe that Klaytaza was in-tune with the intricacies of it, and would be able to foresee its collapse.

“You’re right,” Arend stated with a sigh as he turned and wiped at his forehead with his arm. “You love me, don’t you, Klaytaza?”

“Of course, my Master.”

This time Arend believed it.

“If your heart hopes to dance to the haunting song of Vizrupaksa, study what her friend said about Adam suffering Eve’s desertion.” The voice’s smirk was almost palpable; it spoke with supreme condescension. “A bastardization of the chronicle, perhaps… But the meaning, unchanged! They deceive, they all deceive… We all deceive!”

“Enough of your babbling,” Arend stated as Klaytaza summoned the blade to her hands. “We will handle you soon. Step forward, next one.”

The voice audibly chuckled. “You are disconnected… but we are all connected, through Him. Very well. Come,” spoke the absent voice, and so the Key in the black armor stepped forward. “A quart of wheat for a denarius. A song for the vanished. A laugh for the vanished. A judgment for those who sin, when the only sin is birth. Preserve: New Era Sepulcher: Delphinus, the third Chandrasekhar limit!”

The black Key held a scale and a scepter. It had the appearance of a wizened old man with balding hair and beady, piercing eyes, despite the relative youth of its eternal body. The Master for this Key was a short boy with uncut dark violet hair that teased around his eyes and face. Most notable about the Master was the fact that his arms were restrained in a black straitjacket. His mask and nose were covered by a half leather gimp mask, leaving only his dead eyes to stare out from below his hair.

Without wasting a moment, Klaytaza jumped forward, blade aimed to impale right through the Master. He simply blinked at this, and before the attack could be done, Klaytaza seemed to stop in the air for a short moment. Immediately afterwards, she was nowhere to be found.

Arend’s face fell as he looked around for the disappeared Klaytaza. He found her standing behind her, right where she was before she started to attack.

“I’m hungry… Aren’t you?” The detached voice, Arend realized, came from the bound Master behind the black Key. Said Key had its pure black scepter raised into the air where Klaytaza had been when she disappeared.

“Again, Klaytaza,” Arend stated. Following his orders, his Key with body-length hair bolted forward, this time thrusting her blade to the Master whilst running at him. Once again, the Master blinked and Klaytaza’s dash stopped unnaturally for just an instant. Following that, she disappeared.

Arend looked back. Once again, Klaytaza stood behind him, in the same exact pose and with the same exact expression. It was if she had never moved.

“So hungry… Doesn’t it just make you want to cry?” The voice of the Master was muffled due to his mask, but it was still audible. In front of the dark boy in bondage, his dark Key was raising an arm and a scepter within it, pointing right to where Klaytaza had stood.

“Your lack of difficulty makes me cry,” Arend replied. “I can see that your scepter rewinds events, or makes them cease to be. But if it was simple enough that you could point it at me and remove my existence, you would have already done so… Which means that you can only rewind events or actions. Correct?”

The boy looked at Arend with dull eyes that looked like they wanted to weep. “Would creation not be an event?”

“End me, then.”

“Why would I want to do that? It wouldn’t help with my hunger… Not at all…”

“Again, Klaytaza. I tire,” Arend said with a dull tone. Once more, Klaytaza ran forward, spinning her blade with the intent to lop the stoic enemy Master’s head off with one fair swing. And, sure as clockwork, her movement seemed to pause seconds before impact.

Before she could stop, Arend willed time to stop.

The cracks appeared in all existence once again. In his brief moment of observation that time had indeed stopped due to his will and his proximity to Klaytaza, Arend realized that the enemy Key had its scepter pointed to where Klaytaza had stood, proving that this was the action that caused her actions to rewind and/or disappear.

Klaytaza, unbothered by the pause of creation, went forward with her slice and effortlessly decapitated the violet-haired Master. Arend watched the boy’s head severe from the rest of his body and fall forward with his own two eyes, taking solace in the comforting action. Another obstacle removed.

“Two,” stated the figure concealed in the darkness.

Before the allotted five seconds could elapse, time began anew.

When the cracks and color fading disappeared from his sight, Arend found himself standing in a radically changed environment. Around the large platform hung dark clouds that obscured the atmosphere; now, after time had ended, they became much thicker and denser, to the point that almost no light escaped them. The gigantic cross from which an equally massive man, who faced the inside of the cross and thus was impossible to study or identify, had his hands hanging and framing the platform, and his long white hair fell to a mere few feet from the platform. Now that time stopped, the man’s skin appeared different; it looked as if it were melting. This sensation originated near the small of his back, and beneath the melting skin, only a skeleton of pure white could be seen; there was no blood or internal organs beneath the canvas of epidermis. The melting progressed slowly, but still faster than the descent of the actual cross.

Klaytaza stood behind Arend, and the enemy Key and Master stood in front of him, unharmed. The wizened old Key held up both its scepter and its scales.

“No way…” Arend breathed. So shocked was he that the Master in front of him escaped death that he didn’t even realize the figure in the darkness spoke before time continued once again. “We killed you. I saw it. I know it happened!”

“That outcome was deemed unsatisfactory,” stated the Key in black armor named Delphinus. This startled Arend even further, for rarely had he met a Key besides Klaytaza that had spoken unprovoked by their Master.

“What if what you saw hasn’t happened yet? What if it happened before, but will not occur? Or perhaps what you have seen is what you wanted to see, and the true outcome is different. I don’t know… I just want to eat…” The boy in the bondage struggled, his chest seeming to expand as his arms struggled against their bindings. “Will you let me eat…? Please?”

Arend staggered backwards, his mind racing at what was occurring before him. His first instinct was to have Klaytaza freeze time again and make absolutely sure to kill the Master, but he remembered that there was only one instance of this power that he could make use of before it ran out, and there were still two enemies before him. It would be best if he could figure out a way to victory without resorting to her limited power, but that was proving quite difficult…

Klaytaza, in her Master’s moment of indecision, stepped forward with conviction. Unlike before, she did not run towards the Master, nor did she brandish her blade into an offensive stance. “Judge me,” she said quietly, “but not my Master.”

“Very well,” spoke Delphinus. He pointed his scales to Klaytaza, and immediately she stumbled. Before Arend’s very eyes, the muscles on his Key’s thin and shapely body vanished, and she began to look unhealthily skinny. The black bodysuit that fit so tightly on her before began to look baggy and unfitting, and her hair appeared too heavy for her head. She tried to hold up her sword against the elderly Key in black armor, but in the action of moving the weapon, her skinny arms broke. After a terrible snapping noise, her arms hung at the elbow in a sickeningly loose fashion.

The Master in bondage began to walk towards Arend, his arms still working to escape their shackles. “So hungry… So, so hungry…”

“Don’t think you’ve beaten me!” Arend ran towards the Master, pulling loose the blade he kept in the back of his belt, and pointing it at the enemy’s neck. The blade he brandished was still stained with the blood of Natalia Monomus. His travel was uninterrupted, surprisingly, and Arend successfully plunged the blade into the neck of the enemy Master.

He stood stock still, looking at the now-bleeding enemy with widened eyes. “You… didn’t stop me? Why didn’t you stop me?”

Delphinus looked right at Arend with the same empty eyes that every Key to Eternity boasted. The scepter was lowered, and the scale still pointed at Klaytaza. Within his chest, Arend felt a growing feeling of fear and anxiety.

“Everything is winning or losing to you… But you’ve already lost, friend.” The boy in the leather mask continued to walk forward to Arend, even with the long jagged knife embedded in his throat. “How can what has already been destroyed be beaten?”

“Stop! Just… just stop moving! Stop it… Die already!”

“Let me eat…”

The boy finally made it to Arend’s person, and in doing so, the leather mask he wore opened up. More specifically, a horizontal slit over where his mouth was opened sideways and unnaturally. Where the leather opened, the boy’s mouth was, populated by teeth that were decayed and yellowed from disuse. With those same dead eyes of his, the enemy Master plunged his teeth into Arend’s shoulder and began to eat away at his flesh.

The cannibalism gave Arend a mental sensation that he had not felt since he met Klaytaza. This feeling was different, though, because it was completely negative and filled with agony. Before, when he met the Key who would unlock his destiny, Arend had been engulfed with cosmic curiosity and a fear of the unknown, but those emotions were still linked to the future. He had been unsure of what they meant and crushed by their significance, but was still passionate enough to choose Klaytaza and her goals over simple death. Even if this choice was made subconsciously, it was still a choice he made.

This was something different. Feeling the chiseled chops of the enemy ripping away at his body gave Arend a new mindset. Whereas before he saw all the future stretching in front of him, now he felt the past crumbling away from him. There was no longer any control in his grip. All that he was ceased to be. He would be remembered by nobody, mourned by none, and there was nothing he could do about it. Did he impact any lives? Did he prove any points? Was there any point in his journey and his hardships?

“Yes,” gasped the enemy in between bites. His leather mask was now covered in Arend’s blood, while his body below the neck was covered by the blood running from the knife embedded in his jugular. “Yes! You are delicious!”

“Why didn’t you die? Why did you let me kill you? I don’t understand.” Arend whimpered. He could feel the pain, but just as before with the previous Key he battled, he could not properly vocalize it through screams.

“It’s too much for you to understand.” The Master continued to eat him. “You’re just a kid, aren’t you? You don’t have the power. If you did, you’d be able to do anything, with that will of yours. You’re hungry just like I am, aren’t you? But you don’t have the power.” He continued to eat. “You’ve tried so hard, haven’t you? But it didn’t work out. You were too hungry.” The Master lifted up his head, having thoroughly consumed most of the meat on Arend’s arm, and began to imbibe on the flesh of his torso. Still Arend did not move. “Don’t look so sad. It’s alright to be inferior. That’s just how we were built to be – some of us eat, others are eaten. That’s how it must be. The only comfort I can offer is to eat you honorably. Do not resist… I’m so hungry. Ugh, you’re so delicious!”

By this point, most of the meat around Arend’s chest cavity had been ripped out, and as he finished his speech, the Master positioned his maw over the spot where Arend’s heart muscle was focused. Despite the agonizing pain he felt and the slipping of his consciousness, still Arend endured. He struggled to reply during the ruthless cannibalism, and only now did he finally muster up the energy to speak during the lull in feasts.

“What power do you have… that I do not?”

“The power to not exist,” stated the Master. He paused in his bite and looked up to Arend from beneath his messy purple locks. Even his bangs were spotted with blood. “You always have something to prove. You do not take solace in the existence of others. Your eyes see what is interpreted from light rays, while the rest of us see what is created. Do not try to break down that which is already manifested; try, instead, to disappear and flourish within their bonds. You can never escape the bondage of the Creator. Relax, and let me eat you…!”

“That’s not your power… That’s your curse. I still exist…”

The Master bit into Arend’s heart.

Finally Arend cried out in pain. He began to clench his eyes shut when he began to see more than what his eyes did. As if he were in an out-of-body experience, he could visualize himself floating in a realm of boundless void, suspended with arms above his head. As he rose ever higher into the oblivion, he could see – and feel – thousands of piercing pain sensations. They flew into his flesh, a thousand swords of guilt and hunger, removing his ability to feel satisfaction and filling him with agony and regret.

"Your soul tastes so good… Your existence is so delicious…!” The Master began to salivate as he pierced through the strong cardiac muscles in Arend’s chest cavity. “Vanish… Weep… Feed! Doesn’t it feel so good to feel their emotions? They starve you of your being… But it feels good, right? To let go? To let someone else remove you?”

"No… Let me go… My soul is my own!”

"You’re too weak. It’s okay. You’ve come this far. Rest. Let me give you my hunger. You can disappear like the rest of us into the psyche… Yes, how delicious!”

Klaytaza let out a whimper of pain as her joints crumbled beneath the weight of her own armor. Arend opened his eyes.

“No… I cannot let you take me! I will not be taken! I… I still exist!”

“Do not resist. Let it take you away. Do not let the price of being weigh too heavily upon your soul. Give it to me.”

“No! You won’t stop me! I won’t stop! For her!”

“Delphinus. End her.” The Master poised his teeth over Arend’s neck. “I will end this one. He will fade like the rest of us.”

“I won’t let you! I still exist… I still exist!” Klaytaza whimpered once again, and in his vision, Arend pulled out a sword from his own body. Holding the sword forward in the dream and his arm forward on the platform, he wrapped his remaining arm on the enemy Master’s neck, fingers separated where the knife was. “You won’t end me. You won’t take away my pain!”

The Master looked at Arend with sympathetic eyes. “You said that you feel no pain, and no love, but you defend your pain and your love even with fear of death. Doesn’t that make you a liar?”

“A liar I may be,” Arend said through gritted teeth. The pain he felt was clouding his vision; he squinted and saw only the opposition in front of him. “I can’t make anything right. I’m separated from humanity, even though a human I may be. But I will make good on my promise to her… I will watch everything end, and I will be ended by it all! In order to end… I must exist! I still exist! I won’t let you stop me. Though you may erase me, I still live… I still hate… I still fight… I still exist!”

“So you would deny the hunger of your soul? You would forsake the mercy of our Creator?”

“I will create my own mercy.”

Arend removed his hand from the enemy’s neck and wrapped his fingers around the knife embedded in their flesh. Pulling the blade out without resistance, Arend threw it without fail at Delphinus. The blade struck true into the wizened old man’s neck, and he fell to the ground. Within seconds he was dead, and within seconds the enemy about to bite Arend’s throat fell to the ground, lifeless. Within seconds, Arend’s wounds disappeared, and Klaytaza stood up once again, weight and structure returned to her body.

“No false Key with speech training can fool me,” Arend stated as he looked towards the final Key and its leader in the darkness with defiance.

“And no paltry words about giving up my ideals, either. I only hunger for the end.”

“Very well, then,” croaked the voice in the darkness. “If you had it, you could have anything… Timeless, Errorless, Paradiseless. But the end is the end and I am what I am. The final Key awaits you.”

KEYS TO ETERNITY REMAINING: 2