“You…” Aerin began to speak softly. “You didn’t promise. I know you didn’t promise me…”
She had to fight back the urge to break down. There was a lump in her throat and tears in her eyes. Her arms were weak and her body ached. She slapped her hands together again and created a few more Cyphers around him.
“You never promised…” Her strength was fading again; there was nothing more she could do. “Please… Don’t leave me like this…”
There was a voice in the distance. It was barely audible, but it was there. It sounded sad. It called out to him, but he could hardly hear it over the sound of the ocean around him. He was sinking deeper. The farther down the currents pulled him, the fainter the beams of light above and the sounds of the voice in the distance grew. Drifting away into the darkness felt like the right thing to do, but something nagged at him in the back of his mind. The fact that he could hear the voice so far down, even as deep as he was, it awakened something within him. A promise he had made to himself, but had never voiced aloud.
This was not his resting place. He did not belong here. He belonged outside where the voice was coming from.
He belonged with her.
The current was strong and it tried to hold him in place. He swam up as hard as he could, toward the beams of light and the voice that called his name. They steadily grew closer and he reached out as far as he could to take hold of the surface.
John's eyes slowly opened for what felt like the first time in years. His body was heavy and refused to respond to his commands. He looked as best he could, there he found the one who had brought him back from the brink. Aerin's face was buried into John's chest, which was soaking wet with her tears. It was a sad sight, but one that filled John with an oddly warm feeling. Seeing Aerin crying so much for him, he couldn't help but smile. He pushed all of his might into his right hand and forced it up, bringing it to rest upon her cheek. The sudden touch caused her whole body to lock up and her eyes quickly opened. She stared, completely frozen, into John's eyes.
"Look what I made you do…" John's voice was soft and hardly audible as he slowly wiped a tear from her cheek. “I really am… the worst.”
Aerin's face was a mixture of emotions. At first it appeared that she had broken, but in truth her mind had yet to process everything that was happening. In her heart she had resigned herself back into the state of loneliness that she had felt for most of her lifetime, but seeing and feeling John once more had done something to her. The emotions began to finally resolve themselves within her mind, and it played out as well upon her face. Her eyes began to produce more tears as she struggled to smile. For the first time in her life, she was truly happy.
"John!" She shouted as she threw her arms around his neck. She buried her face against him and squeezed him into a tight hug. The pain of suddenly being embraced so tightly was nearly unbearable on John’s damaged frame; but somehow, by some way, he endured. “I thought I lost you!” She cried.
"I know." John slowly wrapped his arms around her as well. He hugged her back, causing Aerin to sob once more. His right hand instinctively moved to the top of her head and he slowly stroked it in an attempt to calm her. “I… I thought I lost me too.”
"Promise me!" She suddenly shouted as she pulled away from him; tears streaming down her cheeks. “Promise me you’ll never do that again!”
Her face was red and her eyes were full of desperation. For the first time, John could see into her heart. There was no way he could say no, not even if he wanted to.
“I promise.” He stated aloud as best he could. “I won’t leave your side ever again.” He said with a smile, forcing out the words he had wanted to say for a while. “You’re my partner, Aerin. I want to stay with you.”
Aerin fidgeted for a moment. She seemed awestruck at his words. She ran them over and over again in her head; each time her cheeks turned a brighter shade of pink. Her lips trembled as she did her best to keep her emotions contained, but soon they spilled over. Tears streamed down once again as she felt truly okay for the first time in a long while. She stared down at the man before her; battered and broken, but alive. He hadn’t left her. He had come back. She had her Slayer. Without warning, she threw her arms around him again, burying her head against his chest. John’s body ached at the pressure, but he didn’t protest one bit. Instead, he wrapped his arms around her as well and held her tight. He had his Angel. They stayed there for a while, lost in each other’s embrace as a cool wind blew over the broken land around them.
“So.” John spoke up, finally breaking the silence. “What do we do now?”
Aerin sat up a little, but her body was still weak from the healing she had done. She caught herself before falling forward, but her forehead came to rest against John’s. This close he could see how red her face had become, both from the tears she had cried and from the joy that she felt. She smiled down to him as she pressed her index finger to his chest, right where his necklace used to be.
“Well, for starters, we should fix this.” She said with a smile as she poked him again.
“I guess so…” John stared down at his chest. It felt naked, and not just because he was missing his shirt. There was something important missing, something he wanted back. “So how do we do this again?” He asked with a sly smile.
Aerin sighed and shook her head as she forced herself to sit. She held her hand out towards him and smiled, happiness filling her expression once more.
“Give me your hand.”
It was nostalgic. So many things had changed since that first day. He’d been through so much with this girl. So many places, so many faces, so many battles; all of it had been worth it. He didn’t know why he was still breathing. None of it made sense, but then again, it rarely did. John had made it this far without asking questions, going with the flow was just in his nature. Somehow, though, they had made it. Station was a complete loss, but in that loss something precious had been gained, a new chance to live, to love, to travel on, and there was still so much work left to do.
He took hold of her hand without a second thought.
Note from the Author
Hello there! Thank you so much for making it to this point. I really hope that you’ve enjoyed Slayer as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it. To say it’s been easy would be one of the biggest lies I’ve ever told in my life. When I was a little kid I always had a dream about making something, way back then it was video games. I wanted to grow up and go make all these games that would tell all these crazy stories, but as I got older I started wondering if that’s really what I wanted to do. I loved telling stories after all, I was gifted with a pretty decent imagination I’d say. When I got out of high school I had plans to go to a college and learn game design, but things got kind of rough. I couldn’t get the scholarship money I needed and the economy was taking a turn for the worse, so instead I ended up staying at home and working with my family. Years of slaving away in a hot kitchen cooking meals for ungrateful and mean spirited people in a small town led me to fill my time with imaginings. I saw worlds in my mind I wished desperately to explore. So, in April of 2012 I purchased a three subject spiral bound notebook, the first of many, and a Zebra F-301 ballpoint pen (which still to this day is my favorite pen). I started writing in my off time at work. Slowly, but surely, Slayer started to exist. The first draft was a mess, oh God it was laughable, but that was the point. You have to start out somewhere, and that’s what I did. I worked at it when I could, writing and revising until this vague idea slowly took on a tangible shape. By 2013 I had finished the first draft, and in 2015 I had rewritten it again. It was slow, tiresome work. I had to fight for motivation and drive, all the while a voice in the back of my mind kept telling me that no one would ever read this, that I was doing this all for nothing, that all of this effort was just one big waste of time. I didn’t listen to it though. Somehow, I powered through, and by 2017 I had rewritten the book 3 times. I went through two editors but never really got anywhere with the
m, so in 2017 I took it upon myself to edit this thing. I went through it as slow and methodically as I could, scanning each paragraph for consistency and issues. I’m no English major, I know I’m not. I’m sure Slayer is still riddled with issues, so I hope and pray that you could excuse them enough to enjoy the story. This has been one big learning experience for me, so I think the next one will be a lot easier… At least I hope it is.
Anyway, thank you again so much for reading! See you next time!
Epilogue
The helicopter touched down onto the sandy black ash that covered the broken street. The rotors slowly spun down as a thick cloud of silt swirled about, obstructing their view. Two men stepped down from the ledge and their boots dug into the soft ground beneath them. Shielding their eyes from the dust around them, they moved forward.
“Christ… look at this place.”
It had been a city once, in a time not too long ago, a bustling metropolis that was the envy of the country. Rails from all directions had met in the center, making it a trade hub that brought in more wealth than they knew what to do with. Now it lay in ruins. A huge burned out corpse of what it once was. Something otherworldly had taken place here. All the inhabitants had disappeared, as if they’d been raptured away before the city was laid to waste.
The two men pressed on, finding it easier to see once they were free from the dust cloud behind them. It was a long way down. Where once skyscrapers had towered over the land, now only a massive crater filled the space they left behind. Broken water lines, sewage pipes, and open sections of subway could be seen as they descended further.
“Glyph says we’re 30 meters to the target, keep your guard up.”
They drew closer to the bottom, treading carefully as they approached. Both men readied themselves.
“10 meters.”
In the center of the crater there was a massive pile of rubble. It had been piled together and melted in the extreme heat, the dirt having turned a dark colored glass around it. As they drew closer, they could see something sticking out of the top.
“There’s something over here… looks like a body.”
There was a hand sticking out, it was raised toward the sky unnaturally. The skin was charred and broken, which was understandable considering where it was. The two men began to heave rocks and debris away until they unearthed the corpse held within.
“God… look at it. Was this thing human..? Wait, is that?”
The corpse was severely burned, its features completely stripped away. While the rest of the body was still somewhat covered in skin, the head was nothing but a skull held precariously in place by cauterized tendons and bits of flesh. On its chest was something peculiar though. A symbol of some kind, like a brand, had been burned into the flesh. It seemed to glow a bit in the dim light of the Colorado sky, though it could’ve been an illusion. One of the men placed his hand upon it and found that it was warm.
“Apollo, we’ve got the mark.” He stated, holding his hand to the earpiece on his right ear. “What should we do?”
“Extract it.” A voice came through the communicator. “Careful, the old man said it’s fragile. We’ll need it intact.”
“And the body?” The man glanced down to the charred remains before him.
“Destroy it. Leave no trace.”
“Copy that.” The man nodded to the other beside him. “Nomad out.”
Flames roared up around both of them as they called out their Extensions. The last trace of the Bloodstone had been removed, leaving Station an abandoned, empty husk of a city. There was no reason left to stay; and so, with what they came for in tow, they left. After all, there was still so much work left to do.
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