Chapter Text
The universe stands quiet, deathly quiet.
Tis done.
The Endsinger is slain. At the edge of the world the final peril aside from man’s own hubris is gone.
As is everyone else. Only now can you mourn, can you feel the bottomless hole in your chest.
Thou shalt know no rest. Tis an endless confluence of forces; a struggle without cease. More terrible still is the attrition wrought on thine companions, as they are swept up in the storm of thine existence.
For all your strength, you could never protect those around you.
How would you be able to face them, Tataru, Krile, Ameliance, Fourchenault, Aymeric, Matoya? How could you look them in the eye and tell them that they all sacrificed their lives, every last one of them and you, only you, returned alive?
How would you be able to live with the guilt, the anguish over their deaths, souls dissolving before your very eyes every day without complete misery. It should not have been you. They should not have sacrificed themselves for you!
“What are you doing! No!” Zenos tackles you to the ground. Dazed, you forgot he was here, an unlikely friend at the ends of the world.
Your weapon clatters to the floor when he seizes and wrenches your arms. He pushes it away from you.
“You bastard! Let me go!” His hold on you is tight and unrelenting, you are greatly disadvantaged. Tears stream down your face.
“AHHHHHH!”
He presses his body against you to prevent you from hurting yourself trying to wrench free.
“Why did you stop me!? Why!?” you cry, “You of all people should understand!”
Your head sags to the floor and you grow limp, you look up at the sea of stars. “To live is to suffer,” you say aloud. Hydaelyn warned you, she tested you and still you felt that it did justice to the brutal reality.
“I have suffered enough, Zenos.” The pit of despair in your own gut grows hungrier.
“I question everyday why I survived. I struggled coming to terms with my reality. I did not have the burden of relations to provide me anguish, but my pain was no less true than yours.”
“Hear me,” he repeats to you, “Endure. Survive. Live.”
“You just want to fight me,” You say tiredly.
“I do. But you also saved me, my friend, you saved me from my cruel and wretched existence. I have found further joy in my life because of you. I owe you the same. You need not go back to the world where you will be hailed as a hero.”
Assessed that you are calm, Zenos sits up on his knees and allows you to wriggle from his iron grip. He holds out his hand to you, it is a soft gesture, though eerily parallel to the events atop the Royal Palace of Ala Mhigo, there is softness where there used to be arrogance.
“I offered you once before, and you did not take it. I offer it to you again. Come with me, and we will while away the hours, my friend, my dearest friend.”