The Finale

Half-dead, with nothing to lose, the hero faces the monster. Both wish for little more than the end of senseless fighting, and thus, the battle commences. There's little need for restraint; none remain to die but the two of them. It’s astonishing how a single attack turns mountains into rubble; how a simple swipe of the hand erodes the remnants of the seas. 

This fight is the shortest he’s had in a while. They begin heavily wounded, exhausted from the months of chase. There are no plans. No war council to reason with. When the fighting stops, Hale stands, and Bala falls. She lies merely inches before him, white hair streaked with purple blood, one horn cut, the eye on her forehead permanently blinded by his hand. Black spots cloud his vision as he stumbles closer. 

He doesn’t want to kill her, but he simply must. 

Surprisingly, Bala speaks. Her voice is strained from the lack of drinkable water. “You don’t give up.”

“I don’t.” Hale agrees.

She hums, just once, soft as dusk. If she does manage to get back up, he’ll drive his knife into her heart, cut off her head, and burn her body. He’d like to give her a proper funeral. Regardless of his hate for her, the ruin she’s caused, her destruction of their world, and everyone he’s ever loved, she is still alive. That alone makes her deserving of proper burial rights, but he can’t risk letting her body stay. She has to die and stay dead. He learned from their first war that merely killing her isn’t enough. 

“Will you allow me final words?”

No one else got to say any; their deaths were too sudden. Hale can’t find it in himself to say ‘no’. How could he? She is just as he is, alone in the world with nothing but dead memories. He might still be the one to take her place. There is no one left, and in comparison to that, everything else disintegrates. The weight of such crushing loss is sure to drive him mad. 

“I ate the fruit to avenge my dearest Edith,” Bala begins. “There was no peace in my day. If not famine, plague, and war, then there was pure, unfiltered cruelty. Fools who would sacrifice a nation to ensure authority; tyrants who feasted in palaces while people starved; savages who would murder a babe for the pleasure of a bet; and those who sat by and watched.”

She smiles with blood-stained teeth. “Then I met my family. Louis, who made me believe that love was easy, that the world could be kind. Edith, who offered me balance, trust, a belief in peace, and the most cherished years of my life.”

“You loved them,” Lying beside her, Hale stares at the reforming clouds above.

“More than I ever thought possible. It was their influence that shaped me into something softer. They made me believe in the concept of peace. I even  tried to help them, devoted my first life to their cause!" Her words fall short with a bitter wheeze. "But I learned that humans fall into war so easily. Love is complicated on its best of days; and there is always a choice to be made, a law to be followed, a heart to be broken.”

“They betrayed you?” Hale guesses. 

“They did. For all Louis spoke of harmony, he was just as bloodthirsty as the rest. He killed Edith over a petty crime, and in my rage, I ravaged the Tree of God and slaughtered every offender with my newfound powers. Thousand were killed to sate my frivolous anger. When I woke from my grief, those left alive called me their god. And I used that position to ensure Edith’s dream.”

“You butchered it,” Hale whispers, knowing what happened next. Bala assumed total control of the nations. For a hundred years, she ruled with total control, slaughtering anyone who challenged her until her own children sealed her away.

Bala huffs. “I made them stop all of it. The wars, the fighting, the senselessness. This world will never maintain peace if it isn’t enforced. So, I enforce it, even if my children and their descendants kill me every time I try-”

“You took away their will. Treat them like cattle!" Hale argues, "You said it yourself; they didn’t have to die. You just-”

“You speak as if I am unchanged! As if I have not realized what I’ve done! I have set desolation upon the world Edith loved!” She turns to him with a pitiful sob, and he gets it. When she’s done, he will rise and put an end to all of this. It might be the biggest mercy she’s ever been offered. “I am happy it’s you who finally kills me. Someone hesitant to kill in the first place. It gives me hope that my children were right. Perhaps we can find peace in the next life.”

Hale laughs. It’s a pathetic thing, more of a gurgle. He desperately wants to let her live. To spend the days before his madness or death in the company of his enemy instead of the familiar embrace of loneliness.

“Kill me.” She commands.

Hale’s chest constricts. “No one has to die.” 

“And yet we both will.” She contradicts. “I have come to find that death is inevitable. But...I am sorry to have been the death of this world.”

Hale breaks after he kills her. He mourns for all he has lost, all he will never know, all that will never be. In his grief, he pulls Bala close, uncaring of the horns that pierce through his throat. He knows this, too, is a mercy. At the end of everything, the blood of a god mixes with the one who killed her. The world withers around them. Within the decay, it begins anew.