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“...so this is where it ends, huh?”
It had been two years since the arrival of the Crimson, and two deities sat upon a distant mountaintop, watching as their world came to an end.
One of the deities was the goddess of the ecosystem, of the earth’s harmony. She was dressed in chipped netherite and tattered silver silk, with her hair tied back to reveal her pale face. Her right arm hung limply at her side, the flesh colorless and decaying, with scarlet tendrils winding like arteries underneath her translucent skin.
The other deity was the god of the undead and the unnatural, of the chaos in the seas and the skies. His armor was gleaming and shimmering and wrong , for it bore no marks of the horrors it had seen, only faint echoes of sin and regret. His flesh was made from clay and gold, crackling with magic and lightning, and his emerald eyes sparkled with a terrible sort of acceptance.
It had been the god who had spoken, and so the goddess turned to face her companion.
“We tried our best, didn’t we? We fought the Crimson alongside the others. We failed, and that is the end of it.” She leaned back and stared hard at the horizon, digging her fingers into the mountain’s soil and willing lilies to sprout.
The earth remained barren.
“We could’ve done more,” said the totem god. “We could’ve fought harder.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Of course not,” the god sighed. “We could’ve given them more chances. I could’ve given them more chances.”
“And you know very well I wouldn’t have allowed it,” the goddess replied. “They were never supposed to have three in the first place. It took long enough for Zephyrus to convince his Lady to grant them two more, and she would not have been pleased if we interfered anymore than we already had.”
“Right.” The god smiled bitterly. “‘To cure them of sorrow would destroy them.’ Maybe Lady Death would’ve made an exception for the fact they were already being destroyed beyond compare.”
“Maybe,” the goddess conceded. “But how much of a difference would it have made, bringing them back every time they failed, furthering the imbalance?”
“They might have won.”
“You’d be no better than that fool you call your brother.”
“ Adopted brother, we’ve been over this,” the god groaned. “Must you always compare me to him and his naive demigod antics?”
“Perhaps you should’ve given him your name,” the goddess mused wryly. “Would’ve suited him perfectly, much better than that ridiculous moniker he gave himself.”
The god sat up, suddenly. He turned to the goddess. “Do you think we should’ve gotten rid of him sooner?”
“Who, Dream?”
“They could’ve been stronger, more prepared for the final threat, had they not had to deal with him for so long. Theseus would’ve been so much stronger.”
A second passed, a moment of silence for a fallen hero.
“Maybe they would’ve been more prepared,” the goddess whispered. “But Dream feared the Crimson as much as we did, didn’t he? He defied it just as much. How much larger would the blood forest have grown if Dream hadn’t fought it?”
“If only the Traveler were here,” the god murmured. “The keeper of the fates. He’d have the answers we seek.”
“The Traveler. That’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time.”
“Do you think we could’ve saved him as well?”
The goddess thought for a few moments. “No, we couldn’t have,” she decided. “Just as we couldn’t have saved any of them. There’s no way we could’ve known he was the Traveler until he was already gone. He made the vow of secrecy.”
The god nodded. “His is one of the lost lives I regret the most, for the fact that there was no chance of saving him. That’s one of the ironies of being a keeper of fates. Karl Jacobs’ destiny was set in stone the moment he was chosen to be a Traveler.”
“The Inbetween truly is a cruel place, isn’t it? If only we weren’t bound to this world.”
“If only. But the rules are rules, as Lady Death would say. It will be up to the next Traveler to work on unlocking the castle.”
“This is one messed up story, isn’t it?” the goddess said. “So easy to get lost, to drown in it.”
“It truly is,” the god said. “So much death, so much tragedy. It’s a story that can never be told in full truth, for the full truth will always be too much.”
The goddess tilted her head in agreement. “The truth is too much to simply be told through lines of code on a screen.”
“But this isn’t the end.”
“No, this is not the end. But the inhabitants of this world will be going to the End, and perhaps that is enough.”
“It sure as hell doesn’t feel like enough.”
The goddess shook her head exasperatedly. “Of course you feel that way, Mr. ‘I have the balls to talk back to Lady Death herself.’ You love life too much, I think.”
“And you are far too indifferent to it, dearest Lady of Roses,” the god replied without missing a beat, and for a brief moment the two deities could almost pretend that the world wasn’t coming to an end before their very eyes.
“This is the mountain, isn’t it?” the goddess murmured, turning her attention back to their perch. “The site of what they called the Final Confrontation?”
The god laughed. “I didn’t even notice. Fitting, isn’t it, that this world’s final moments will be in the same location where my dumb brother was defeated for the first time?”
“It truly is fitting.”
For a while, they sat on the mountain as the Crimson continued to creep towards every corner of the world, dragging the earth into the gaping void. Below them, the waves crashed onto the beach, and the infected water stained the white sand pink.
“Hey, Foolish?” the goddess asked her last companion.
“Yeah, Hannah?”
“You were the only one who ever truly understood the Crimson.”
“That’s correct.”
Hannah reached over and grabbed onto Foolish’s hand, watching as blood-colored vines crept up from over the cliff’s edge.
“Tell me what it told you.”
And as the mountain crumbled, and the Crimson reigned triumphant, the two deities shared the final, burning, naked truth between them.