by Marc Mulero
“You can’t be all frowns and sighs. Look! We just saved this little thing.” Sabin hoisted up a small girl with rope marks around her wrists. He tilted his head to look at her before bouncing her up and down to make her giggle. Sabin joined her in laughter. “I know right? This guy looks funny when he’s sad,” he said to her, pointing his finger at Eugene.
Eugene didn’t have to look up - the sound of the hunter’s voice brought him right back to the remembrance, and the mission they’d accomplished together way back when. He kept onward and ran past with a smirk glued upon his face.
“There must have been a reason Blague sent us out together. I have a theory that you secretly requested it, because you love me so much.” Sabin’s smile widened as he dropped his arm over his comrade’s shoulder.
Eugene sneered but shared Sabin’s grin all the same as the memory faded behind him. It gave him fire to recall the strength of his bonds, it gave him power, here, in this place. His momentum grew. It didn’t matter how melancholy his nature was, the commanders he bled with granted strive. Purpose. It was who he was.
Now he remembered. This is how he kept on in the long interval between Jen’s apparent death and her return, and it was because of them - his friends.
A bright light flashed above him, like a nuclear bomb struck with no sound to accompany its blast. After the blinding whiteness, Volaina appeared with her head slumped and her body limp. The sniper held her up and carried her from the Templos headquarters. The vision jogged his mind, where he recalled the conversation they’d shared while he escorted her away from Sabin and the Rogues.
“Blague chose you because you’re strong,” Volaina’s drained voice scratched. “You’ve fallen countless times, Eugene, but you always recover. I need to find such resilience.”
He kicked up his shoulder to readjust Volaina’s lifeless body. “I shouldn’t be your role model, Volaina. Who knows what would’ve happened if I hadn’t found Jen?” He took a few steps and looked down to see her feet moving slowly with his. “I suspect this position would be in reverse.”
The Sin spy almost contrived a laugh in her vulnerable state. “I don’t believe that for a second.”
Vapor clouded his feet while he watched the recollection play out above him. How could it be that the grand spy looked up to him for help. Him! A failure. The last person she should’ve considered. It made his heart pump harder, and his confidence returned from wherever it was taken.
There was nothing else left to hold him back now. He wasn’t fearful of the cosmos in front of him, nor the unknown beyond it. Time to go.
“How many times will you bleed with me before you enjoy a victory?” Blague’s words multiplied throughout space.
“When our work is done. When I’m no longer a criminal to this world,” Eugene heard his own voice multiply in response.
A flashback of Blague came to the forefront. His deep-set eyes were locked onto Eugene’s and his expression was calm and thought-filled, as he analyzed his second in command.
“I’ll take your grim face as a stark reminder that we’re not there yet. But when we do arrive, we will cross that line together,” Blague said before turning to face the road ahead. “You saved many lives today, Eu. You’re a hero to many, even if you, yourself, don’t buy it.”
The memory dissipated like mist when Eugene charged right through it. Any and all of the pressure that fought to hold him down was naught now, for he became a force of his own, a comet sailing through the ether. He was unstop-
Wham.
A wall of hardened blood and writhing smoke – Lito’s blood, and Jen’s smoke – hard-stopped him dead. Of course this would be his downfall. And now look, the wall had crushed his frame. Every bone in his skeleton shattered upon impact and left only his eyes to see through a broken body.
Why this? Why now?
A quiet, low sound played around him that pulled at the strings of his heart. Strange. But he knew, and he knew well what this wall stood for. Betrayal on the grandest scale: once to the sniper through Jen, and again with his own hand to Lito. And there the picture appeared between the dripping blood, with Eugene watching himself pull the trigger. That terrible scene haunting him since the moment it happened. The blast sent a shock through him. A chilling one. He almost couldn’t watch, but his broken body forced him to see a hole shot through the heart of his long-time friend and brother-at-arms, Lito. He could almost hear Jason’s laugh of satisfaction as he claimed Eugene’s body as his vessel.
The Sin sniper peered upon the reel of his life and lost sight of why he was running in the first place. Reliving this part of his past granted him more time to understand the situation, like watching a movie for the second time without the shock of not knowing how it will end. He stared at Lito’s face, which shifted from determination in yanking Sabin from harm’s way, to despair when he gasped for breath that was no longer his. It tore at Eugene that Lito would never know it wasn’t him who pulled that trigger, a crime that was etched in eternity with no trial.
The scene persisted with Jason in control of Eugene’s body, as he swung down from the roof of the mansion to meet his goddess. Eugene could barely look on… how could he? He was watching himself, moving in ways that he never would, contorting a forced smile. And what’s worse, Jen looked satisfied by it. Her face said it all, the certainty of her path was painted all over her expression. She wanted this. She wanted Eugene gone and this monster to take his place. Her eyes glinted with the same ambition Eugene had always admired in her. But she’d fallen so far from grace, from good.
It made him ill.
The wall began to close off around him, concaving with the space and time exercised by the heavens. He was out of options, left to lie with his head facing down toward the pit he’d come out of. Upside-down, he felt as though blood should rush to his head and hemorrhage his brain. That would be fitting, he thought, but the shift in his balance just left him to linger as if he were resting on a bed of nothing. The blackened wall he dove from was far below and barely visible. He’d traveled a great distance, had come so far only to be paralyzed by his past. After all this, he wouldn’t escape the nightmare.
He thought back to Blague who was forced to his knees and stained with blood. His guide showed him that window for a reason, and he had to find out why. Panic set in, renewing the drive to get up, but his body was still crippled. Even a flex of his finger sent a sharp pain shooting up his arm and into his back. He tried to lift his head, but it felt as if it were cemented down, with not even an inch of give. Pain was evident while the wall worked to fold onto him, blood falling fast and hard onto his face, reminding him of the burden that forced everything down.
“Jason is fighting to keep me here, I can feel it,” he said to himself. “I’m locked up… he’s going to win.”
The Sin opened his eyes to a vibrant light that burst from the blackened pit below. Out sailed a shooting star of radiance, racing toward him at blinding speed. Wait a second… this was good. His senses, they were becoming heightened once more. He knew the tunnel, or whatever this place was, was working against him. Jason was working against him. But his guide’s light had not yet dimmed.
It was she who broke from the darkness. And before he could even finish his thought, the star crashed into him, reinvigorating his body with life. His skeleton was mended and reformed like hot iron in a mold, giving him a reason to abandon doubt once more. He shouted while rising to his feet, flexed as his muscles reattached, triggered his guide’s energy to beam through his skin and shatter the wall that worked to confine him.
The last memory enraged him to no end, driving him to sprint faster with the being’s vitality boosting his fury. He shouted again for Jen’s deceitful betrayal, and again for his failures. His voice reproduced throughout the tunnel that once confined him, and as the light at the end of it approached, there was no shying away. He shut his eyes, but the shine penetrated so intensely that it blinded him even through closed lids. His heart palpitated in
his sightless tear. And then nothingness. An instance of bliss.
Eugene’s arms ached from the weight of a rifle and the warm breeze of Auront tousled his hair. Heat and smoke passed into his nostrils with every breath. Sound boomed through his eardrums. One by one, his senses returned to him. He opened his eyes and blinked away the haze. A familiar reality presented itself, one that he thought was long left behind. He awoke to the war that his guide had shown him. It wasn’t a dream. His crosshair was aimed at a man cloaked in black and silver. The realization hit him all at once. He lowered his gun to see booted feet standing over the ledge of a broken isle floating high above the ocean. Control was his. He had finally overthrown the madman that claimed his body.
I won’t be able to fend him off for long.
He stared ahead to see Blague one level lower. His old friend was in peril, weighed down, pleading for life. Fifty feet of open air separated them.
It was real… the window she showed me. The Aura defeated him.
The shock of returning to the world fleeted as the sense of purpose he’d traveled with caught up to him. Determination found with the help of his guide in the depths of consciousness strapped around his body like armor. He looked to his left to see Asura summoning a portal of smoke to strike Blague down and end the Sin rebellion once and for all.
Everything unfroze. Eugene dropped his rifle, realizing what his other personality had done with it, and then reached around his belt.
There it was: the dagger that Jason impaled him with long ago. The key to all of this. Tears fled from his face as he drew the blade. Eyes blood shot. He was distraught, crying for everything he once loved and what it had now come to be. His heart thumped hard, knocking against his ribcage to reverberate his war drum. Jason’s panic ran deep within him since the reins were ripped from his grasp.
Rumbles of war below him fell silent, fading into the background while the sound of his pulse overcame all else. His vision became tunneled. He could only see the two at odds: the woman he once loved, and the leader that gave him a new beginning. Blague’s arms shuddered as he pushed to get to his feet, and the blast he absorbed from the plasmatic wave left him beaten. The incineration of his father culled his will.
Jen’s next summon was nearly complete: a grand mixture of smolder, lightning, plasma, all swirling together from every corner of the island like the beginnings of a storm. She was otherworldly, it was clear - everyone conceded to that, leaving Eugene in awe of what she’d become. Her hair slicked into a sickle, her coverings melted into her skin, deep red veins jolting from her neck and temple. A demon.
The smoke ate everything she once was. It chewed away all of the good in her. We’re all damned to hell if I don’t act now. It was her choice to walk this path. Her fucking choice.
A sensation pricked his hands when Jen shrieked.
The immense pressure of wielding the power of Rol had begun to take its toll. Her life force was depleting.
It was time. If there was ever a window to make a move, it was now. He hadn’t come all this way to stand still, and there was nowhere left to run either, inside or out. Everything had boiled to this point - his journey with the Sins, his lost love with her… all of it.
And so he broke with a mad dash to the reddened woman, too sudden to be found out. “Rrrhh,” he grunted, grappling her in one fell swoop before pressing the dagger to her neck.
The shock in her expression was evident. How? The whole island felt it. The conjured smoke retreated back, lulling, all of the Aura soldiers freezing in place.
But then she relaxed as if in some sort of realization.
Asura turned to him, her eyes wide with disbelief, “Eugene,” she said softly. “You’ve come back to join me.” Her eyes scanned his face. “Yes, I’ve seen this somewhere in my dreams, my visions. I knew this would happen. Eugene… let me go so I can finish this. Then we can slip back to what we were, before all of this.”
His breath escaped him. Yes. Of course she was right… they could go back. This was always a story of redemption, wasn’t it? Jen. Not Asura. Jen. Lines of tension eased from his brow as he peered through the red veil clouding the woman she was. He could see her so clearly, even through all of this.
“Jen…” he whispered.
History melted all of the struggle it took to get here, and all of the betrayal that followed. She was in his arms again, and that’s all that mattered. It was a dance of time. It didn’t have to make sense. Not now.
All the time we spent, the time we shared.
His panic recommenced, surging back. “Blague!” he shouted erratically, ignoring Asura’s whispers. His eyes bulged with torment, connecting with his old leader’s in this motionless moment of chaos. “End this madness…”
The sniper gasped, a shiver of the worst kind trickling all the way down his spine. Why? More conflicted strife within him? No, this was different. Finality. Acceptance. He cried as he did it. He plunged the dagger deep through her neck, cleaving the soft flesh so the sharp of the blade made it through to the other side.
A gurgled screech escaped the goddess.
Blague’s jaw fell ajar, speechless. His old friend returned to carry out the duty where he, Elaina, and his father had failed.
Eugene finally let it all go and sobbed as he held her close to his chest. All the memories of the life they shared together - reality slipped from him yet again.
He was back in his living room from a world ago, enjoying a playful dance she would force him to partake in.
He sobbed for her, and himself. The demons inside them had to be released. The dance they shared was meant to end.
He whipped his body to drag Jen around with him, their backs now facing Blague. It was to veil them from the endless audience looking on. This wasn’t a show. He didn’t want to remember anyone else now: not Blague, the Neraphis, Jason or the Aura. It was their final moment. Only theirs. He gripped her tight, feeling no one else but her, seeing nothing but beautiful hair brushing his lips, losing its crimson coloring as life left her.
It was now time, and so he free-fell backward off the island’s ledge on a long headfirst plummet into the ocean deep below.
“Eu!” Blague’s defeated voice pummeled through as his old friend plunged to his death.
Eugene felt Jen’s body wilt on their way down, and his firm grasp around her torso loosened to a heartfelt, protective hug. He kept his eyes closed and thought of her warm embrace one last time. He thought of her smile.
Rol greeted Mulderan with unwelcoming arms. Illusions rushed past his eyes at blinding speed. The acceleration stopped, and then resumed, over and over again. He could feel the matter’s anger boiling. It lurched to penetrate the invader’s skin, but was repelled. Mulderan was a guest rejecting his host’s drink. A bold move on such uncharted territory.
Vistice’s voice drummed throughout the murky air, before his maniacal laughter took its place. The eccentric scientist sounded far out of reach, experiencing something euphoric. Mulderan followed the noise, taking confident steps forward through the red fog. The haunted atmosphere did nothing to impress him, for he was above it - living not in the moment but only for the future. This was a necessary means to a dominant end. He approached a ledge that presented blackness beyond it, and peeked over to see a river of flames at its pit. Vistice’s voice traveled from its depths, breeding hesitation within the Highest Lord. Was it all an illusion or just the end of the broken isle? The blackened hole curved and rippled about from the fanned smoke that blew from the repellent. This was a trick. A ploy to scare him away. There was no time for reluctance or doubt. And so he just stepped, leading to his fall. The physics of the hoax was perfect, an experience meant to invoke great fear. But Mulderan was a master of judgement and a dealer of tests. He didn’t lose sight of time, nor did he buckle from the pressure. He simply folded his arms, closed his eyes, and waited. Enough of a stretch had passed; the ocean would have swept him away if this were real. This experience could not trump his intuitio
n, no matter how intense. That’s when Rol conceded. Tails of smoke bent in curiosity as ground found him again. He resumed his hunt.
Curtains of haze dragged past the Highest Lord’s body on his search, never touching his skin. White light blossomed in the distance, spurting ichor like a fountain gone haywire. It stopped, and a shadowed figure appeared. Armored shoulders bobbed from laughter. The unknown silhouette was bent over a massive hole infused with the smolder.
“Pull yourself together,” Mulderan said with disgust. “Stand back from that geyser.”
Vistice rose slowly, almost looking headless from his hunch. He turned to his leader, eyes crazed from visions. “It’s beautiful… alive. It’s everything we could have ever dreamt. The Hiezers must have it, Mulderan. It mustn’t be destroyed!”
Rol thrashed at the thought, throwing a tantrum in protest.
Mulderan stared with no response, silently demanding his subordinate to cease his speech.
The floating islands suddenly rumbled with fury. Something of grandeur had just occurred beyond them. An event of war. It was clear to every spectator when the smoke screamed in a more human way than it ever had before, as if it lost a child. Unsettling. And what followed was chaos manifested greatly into something very real - the smoke concocted into a twister, spinning, faster and faster, sucking all smoke free from open air and into a more condensed state.
The battle must be escalating. Could it be possible that the smoke is fleeing from the Aura?
“Don’t you see? It beckons us!” the scientist said with excitement. “I volunteer to be its subject.”
“No, you imbecile,” Mulderan’s flat tone warned.
“We’re over the smoke,” Eldra’s voice sounded through comm. “Transmit the coordinates if there are items of value. Matters are escalating, Mulderan. Hurry.”
“Now’s the time, my lord,” Vistice explained. He rotated the dial on his belt and deactivated the repellent. The smoke shouted, shrieked, and rushed into the pores of the scientist, extracting everything it needed.
