Story:The End of Eternity/E4

IV

Arend’s life was impossibly changed when he realized the full weightiness of the girl who spared his life. He began to feel things he had never felt before, but even so, everything she made him feel was familiar. As if he had once harbored the swirling emotions in his heart, but had locked them away, deep and secure. She unlocked them effortlessly with but a look at him. He resented the fact that she was changing him. He hated how she made him feel, absolutely despised the ideas she gave him and the feelings she implanted.

But he could never hate her.

After they had introduced each other – he was apparently her Master and she was his Key – they silently left the warehouse and Arend led her to walk through the streets with him. As always, he had no real idea where he was going, although now this was out of plain shock instead of him thinking and not paying attention. Everything about the girl defied logic and forced his mind to run around in circles. No matter how hard he tried, there was no way for him to explain what had just happened.

Hours had passed with the two of them walking, neither of them speaking. But Arend found that the silence was comfortable, and that it didn’t make him feel irritated or awkward at all, unlike when he was in the presence of anyone else. He would look at her sometimes, glancing over her impossible attire and her perfectly sculpted features, and could feel his entire body growing warmer. But when she looked back at him, he had no choice but to look away. The thought of her looking at him on equal footing when she held so much power above him – when she was so innately superior to him – was absurd. It made him feel ridiculous. This entire thing did.

But it didn’t matter. None if it did, he realized. Not when she was by his side. She filled him with a feeling he had never known before. Like the androids that scarred him so long ago, his cold, empty heart was being given a nourishing fluid, one that was of a substance previously unknown.

At this point, he looked around and saw that they were near the dark plains of the city’s outskirts. He had unconsciously wandered to where he frequently went, and even now, he was standing still with his hands in his pockets, just staring out to the ruined world before him. The night was out in full by now, and the moon was nowhere to be found. Darkness of the deepest depths permeated the night and the land in front of him, and he was not the slightest bit uncomfortable by it. If anything, he felt at ease, for he was some place where – with the girl standing beside him, uncomfortably close - there was no point feeling threatened by anything in the world at this point. Not with her kind of power.

He would have felt perfect, just standing there next to her and never having to speak, but she asked him a question and he felt the hopes of his night be dashed into pieces. Still, her voice was pleasant and soothing to listen to, albeit with much less magnitude and power than it held before. When he realized she had finished speaking, but that he hadn’t caught any of the words, he looked to her with a look that was slightly sympathetic. She looked at him with divine patience and not an ounce of irritation; he had never seen such kindness in a person before. It took him moments to gather his wits again and reply.

“…I didn’t catch that.” His face begin to redden again as he looked over her face and those odd tear marks that seemed etched into her skin, and he looked back to the plains. “Say again?”

She mimicked him and looked forward, staring at nothing. He wondered if she was questioning and observing like he always did, or if she was really just doing as he did. “Humans did this, didn’t they? Ruined the world. Scarred it.” As soothing and sweet as her voice was, a wounded tone of agony was definitely recognizable in her voice.

“…Yes. Yes we have. It’s disgusting. I hate it.”

“I know. I’ve seen everything. I know everything. The history of the world is nothing new to me.” Arend couldn’t help but look at her with confusion at the things she was implying. For once, the girl did not return his gaze, and continued to stare forward. For once, he realized the scars beneath her eyes made her look like she was constantly crying.

“…What are you?” He pulled the pen from his pocket and began to twirl it in his hands. He assumed she understood that what he was asking was no simple question, and by her hesitation to reply, his theory looked like it was being proven correct.

“I am one of many. Bringing the world to a new destination… Setting the sins of humanity free... Giving the human race another chance.” She spoke slowly and with scorn, her face visibly pained. Arend studied her, watching the nuances of her beautiful face and her slim, unmoving hands. Again, he couldn’t help but notice how she was almost perfectly proportioned. “We are the Keys, and our powers unlock the doors to Eternity and the world itself. We work towards the well-being of all living things. That is what we were all told to do. When the time comes that all life nears extinction, we are to awaken, gather hosts, and combine our powers to reawaken the beauty of naïve life.” She looked at her hands, gloved in shining black, and they seemed to tremble just a little. “That is… all that we have to live for.”

It dawned upon Arend, as quickly and clearly as if he were pointing out that the sun was rising. “But that’s not what you want. That’s not why you woke up and that’s not why you chose me.” She looked at him with surprise and her eyes twinkled with that same helpless, innocent relief that had burned so brightly when they first met. His face grew hot again from the beauty of it, but he couldn’t look away at such a crucial moment. Clenching his fists, he was intensely aware of the weight of the golden pen in his grasp. “Something about you is different. Otherwise you would have slaughtered me just like you killed everyone else down there.”

“That was because you’re different, Master.” Her hands trembled and she held them to her chest, showing an uncharacteristic amount of trepidation. He noted how she didn’t deny causing the deaths of those boys. “They were sinners… Killing those children had nothing to do with waking me up. They were just looking for an excuse to commit atrocities. Just like all humans. Like every human!” Now he couldn’t tell if she was angry or still pained. The tear scars weren’t helping any decryption of her emotions that he had.

Did she even have emotions?

Arend paused and looked down at her for a minute before speaking. As he did so, she finally looked back at him. Silently, as he looked on her organic features and the beauty of her body as a whole, he found it hard to believe that she couldn’t have the same emotional capacities that humans did, but it would be reasonable if she didn’t. Everything about her was superior to humans, like she had transcended the state.

"But I’m just like they are,” Arend said. “I’ve caused the deaths of people before. Everyone on this planet has. Humanity as a whole is fated for nothing but destruction.” He looked away, suddenly filled with a rage blistering his soul and burning hotter than any he’d ever felt. He was unconsciously holding the pen in his tightly clenched fist, grasping it out of his pocket and looking at it with mortification. “That’s why I hate them all… Even myself. We’re all the same inside, the same scum!” He couldn’t help but be surprised at his own passion. What was drawing out this sudden aggression? He was never usually this vocal about his views. Not after they had caused the accident.

The girl didn’t seem to be surprised or taken aback as people usually were when they heard his feelings. If anything, she moved closer to him, her hands brushing past his arm now, her bright eyes looking up at him and trembling. Everything about her seemed fragile, temporary, as if he were in a dream and to reach out and grasp her would be to shatter her and to awaken back in the painful real world. Arend didn’t know what to say to her.

“Yes, Master. I know.” Her hand crept up his back, and he flinched as it came to rest on the back of his neck. The touch spoke of affection, and was gentle. She was exhibiting the same held-back feelings that he was. He found it increasingly hard to believe her explanation, that she had been created a long time before civilization existed. Androids were relatively new technology; how could one, let alone a series, have existed before time began? Arend hoped, for some reason, he was right, and that she really was a living thing. The two of them, human and machine, looked in each other’s eyes for what felt like an eternity.

“You know something of eternity, don’t you?” Arend’s words were a whisper, carelessly spoken from his own thoughts, but she seemed to understand and nodded, her eyes closing smoothly and with hesitation.

“Yes, Master. I know everything of it.” Once again, he saw the pain in her face and heard it in her voice, and felt a surge of unreasonable anger rising in his breast. He hated that she was so perfect, and that she had felt so much pain from something, and he wanted to strike back against that which caused it. He wanted to hurt humanity for making her feel pain.

“Who did it to you? What scarred you so?” He was unable to articulately speak of his anger, nor could he do much besides clench and unclench his fists. The temptation to summon her improbable sword from the pen was too great, so that he may strike at the invisible hand that sought only to hold them both down, but that would be pointless and would do nothing at this time of night.

She opened her eyes and looked at him as a child would look at its parent when asked a simple question. “Have not I said already that I have seen all? It was not one person who did this to me, but all. Humanity has… broken me.” She seemed pained again as the last phrase was spoken. It was clear that she was struggling to let these feelings out.

“Wha… But I thought you were all supposed to be resting?” Arend looked at her now with confusion. It was already hard for him to comprehend what she spoke of, especially when he kept getting lost in her eyes, but now it seemed like she was directly contradicting herself. Could an android look and feel this realistic? His breath began to come a little slower and a little harder when he realized once again how close the two of them were. More than anything, he wanted to reach out and hug her, to comfort her and tell her that everything would be alright just because he was there. But he couldn’t promise that and he couldn’t grasp her in the slightest. She would always be far away from him, just out of reach, even when they were close together and alone like this.

“I… We all rested, yes. All… except I. I was the first… and the only one who was unable to sleep. All of creation… all of history… I’ve seen it.” She looked up at him now, with the determination of one who has put the past behind them – or tried. “It is as you said. I know something of eternity.”

He looked away, down to the ground, mouth slightly agape at the revelation. It didn’t make sense – none of this made sense. It was impossible to be immortal – humans didn’t live that long. Was he wrong after all, and she was not a human? Who could have created her? How could he believe anything she was saying? The questions were running through his brain at incredible speeds, too fast for him to pick one and articulate it. So when he spoke, it was a dumb statement that didn’t help him at all. “But that would mean you’re immortal. That you’re really… not human.”

She nodded ever so slightly and rested one of her hands on his chest. The hand probed and rubbed at first, as if looking for something in the dark, before coming to rest over his heart. Relieved to feel something in his breast, she closed her eyes and leaned closer. They were almost embracing at this point.

“I am one of the Thousand Keys, Master. A Shinra being… the original creation of the creator. Molded in our image and gifted with life and things we could never have, humans were the beings truly meant for this world, built with the proper components to enjoy other living things. We were simply guardians… heralds for when the world would end and we would perpetuate the miracle of humanity. Life was always our eternal purpose, and we slept so that we could awaken with only generosity and love for life. But I… I could not sleep. I was the only one who was unable to rest, no matter how tightly I closed my eyes or how long slowed my body processes. So I walked, and I watched, and I hid. I saw everything, all that humanity has accomplished and built up before bringing it back down. I saw every mistake and every sin, repeated over and over again. I saw war, and famine, and plague, and hatred. That was the worst and the most abundant – the hatred that humans have only for each other and everything around them. It was so painful, and I remember it all, and I remember when I started to hate, myself. I had tried to intervene, to help, but my power was never great enough, and my brothers and sisters would never awaken. The time had not yet come. I continued to find hosts, to try to push humanity in the right direction, but I was mistaken. Humanity will never be swayed from the path of destruction and sin, even if remade and set loose again. That is when I realized that I did not want to restore humanity in the new world. I want to end it, and stop everything from existing. That is why I am alive now, and standing before you, Master.”

Arend did not know what to say to this. He had felt, slowly as the tale was being told, all of his emotions draining from him, slowly dripping down and crawling away. The pen drew his fist to open, and his hand to return to his pockets. His shoulders, tense and flexing, soon relaxed and gave him his usual look of nonchalant observation. He looked forward, to the dead plains in front of him, because he couldn’t look at her while she was speaking of such things. He couldn’t vocalize how they made him feel, or how she made him feel. What she was saying was crazy, insane, and absolute nonsense.

But he believed it with all his heart.

He finally understood exactly what she was made of. If what she said was true, and she was some sort of robotic, pseudo-organic machine that mimicked humans (or rather, that was mimicked by humans), then she wasn’t human. Or at least, she wasn’t supposed to be. Those long years of pain, solitude, and helplessness had given her sentience beyond any artificial intelligence. She understood what made humans tick, and what made them scum, and that had made her human, herself. It was slight, and not immediately notable, but he knew it was there.

After she had finished, the two stood there, both looking out to the monument of human self-destruction in the form of the destroyed world, and time seemed to completely slip past them. Neither wanted to move from the spot they were in, the personal field of paradise they had accomplished with sharing each other’s philosophies. Arend never wanted her to have to speak again, and he didn’t want to open his mouth, either. When they spoke, all they seemed to be able to share with each other was pain, but this, this silence was theirs and it was perfect for them. His hopes were eventually dashed again when she asked him a question. He heard it this time.

“What do you think humanity has amounted to?” He recognized the words as the first ones he had ever heard from her. Unlike that time, mere hours ago, he felt none of the crushing fear, nor the existential despair her presence had instilled in him. If anything, he felt completely at ease, and answered without any hesitation.

“Absolutely nothing.”

She smiled tearfully – it looked like it, at least, with those black scars beneath her eyes burning and twinkling as if they had lives of their own – and nodded ever so slightly. “What is it you want, Master? What shall we do about it?”

He thought long and hard about this question, and tried to find an answer that he knew she would enjoy, but couldn’t find one. All he had was his own ambition, the goal he had been looking forward to ever since he could truly see the world around him, and that was all he would ever had. That… and her. “I want to see how the world ends.”

Again she nodded at this, and again it seemed like the scars beneath her eyes were hiding her true tears. Arend wasn’t even sure that she could cry – whatever she was, however she was ‘built’, he felt that she was perfect just the way that she was. As he thought this, her hands removed themselves from his chest and his neck and slithered into his grip. Reaching into his pockets, she wrapped her slim fingers around his, and the pen dropped into the fabric of his pockets. He raised his hands and the two held grasps, neither of them looking at each other, but feeling and memorizing what it felt for the two of them to be perfectly in sync.

He spoke first this time, vocalizing what should have come first but was simply an afterthought in the face of her perfection. “I am Arend Vitalis. What am I to call you?”

“The creator labeled I as Vizrupaksa, Proti Athanati Kleidi-tis-Aioniotitas.” Sensing his incredulation at the unfamiliar term, she smiled slightly and spoke again. “In the language you speak now, it means All-Seer, First Immortal Key of Eternity. The creator’s foresight is unparalleled, at times.”

Arend couldn’t help but smile when she saw her lips tugged into a smile of her own. Moments like these, when her bright, unnaturally colored eyes squinted with her childish joy, were enough to fill him with a new emotion. It was different from the hatred he always felt, and seemed to extinguish it like water to a miniscule fire. He squeezed her hands and looked at her, drinking in her happiness. That was when he thought to himself that she was his and no one else’s. The creator had no influence on her anymore, not now after she had chosen him and they had connected. He wasn’t exactly sure how, but a contract had been formed between them, and he loved her like he did no other living thing, not even himself.

“The creator has nothing on you anymore,” he whispered. She looked at him without comprehension. “and neither do any of the other Keys. You’re free from all that. I’m telling you that you can do whatever you want now, and I’ll be right there with you through all of it. We’re going to see the end of the world, together, even if we have to bring it about ourselves.” She trembled once more in his hands, filling him with a pride that was completely unprecedented. “You have a new name now, because you’re a new person now. Your name is Klaytaza.” Their eyes met, and Arend’s gaze probed her for some sign of reaction to the dubbing. He didn’t know where the name had come from, or how he had imagined it so quickly and from nowhere, but it felt right on his tongue and it matched her as nothing else did. He had just known, and it was so.

Finally, after what felt like forever to him, she smiled that light smile of hers and looked at him with her sparkling golden eyes. “Klaytaza… If that is who you say I am, Master, then it is so. I am yours.”

He was relieved. He loved her smile, her eyes, her hands, and everything about her. Arend Vitalis realized that, for the first time in his life, he was in love with something that was alive. The feeling was only for her, completely consuming her, not replacing his hatred but simply moving it. When he saw this in its entirety, he was satisfied and content, and looked once more onto the dark plains in front of him. Although the land was still as desolate and deserted as ever, it didn’t morbidly etch humanity’s sins in his eyes like usual. If anything, they were a confident reminder, a proud symbol of the destruction he and Klaytaza were going to cause. It was a benchmark for what they could look forward to, and it looked more promising than anything in the world.

Yes, he thought to himself. He wanted to make his thoughts words, to speak his mind, but the happiness and joy in his heart was so unfamiliar that he did not know how to vocalize it, and he did not know how to comprehend what it meant to him, much like any emotion that was not hatred or analysis. But it was there. Yes. I want to see how the world ends. And I want to see it with you.

“They awaken even as we speak, Master,” Klaytaza mentioned after they had been watching the night. “I can feel them, and I’m sure they can feel me.” He nodded slightly, but said nothing. She persisted. “They will know about my resolution, and they will hate me for what I’ve done.”

“I don’t care,” he grumbled. “You’re the only one who can see just how terrible humanity is. The only one who understands how I feel and reciprocates it. I’ll protect you against anything – we’ll fight against them all if we have to. I’m prepared for that. I want that.”

“It will not be easy. They will all have hosts, and we are completely outnumbered. Even if we fight, they will no doubt convene at some point and start the Thousand Eternal Salvation to bring about the death of this world and its rebirth.”

“Then we’ll just have to fight harder. We won’t die, because we are the real fighters, the embodiment of the truth. God’s in his heaven, but all is wrong with the world. We’re the only ones who can fix it and pass the right judgment on humanity. If they want to have Salvation… We’ll change it. We’ll make it… Annihilation.” Arend’s words were bold, confident, and completely out of character, but he felt justified and righteous in speaking, because Klaytaza was by his side. He felt that he could do anything if she was with him – he knew that he could do anything if she was with him. That was what made his hatred, and hers, so beautiful to him. They were completely equal.

She squeezed his hand back, returning the reassuring motion he had done not minutes before. It surprised him and he looked at her, but she was staring out at the plains again, and with a smile of her own. He couldn’t decipher whether it was from relief at hearing his words, or at his presence, but he knew it was a smile of joy, and that was enough for him.

“Very well then,” Klaytaza whispered. “That is the fate of this world, and we will cause the Thousand Eternal Annihilation with our own power. The eradication of existence will be realized by our own hands.”