The Finale

The Finale

By Elise Free

Half-dead, with nothing to lose, the hero faces the monster, something resigned in their stances.

And 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 what remains of mountains into rubble; how a simple swipe of the hand erodes what’s left of the seas. The fight is the shortest he’s had in a while. No plans of action, no war council to reason with, no friends to fight by either of their sides. They’re both heavily wounded; exhausted from the months of chase, wanting nothing but the finale of this ridiculous tragedy.

When the fighting stops, Hale stands and Bala, The Demon, the one who defied fate and ate from the Tree of God, falls. She lays merely inches before him, white hair streaked with purple blood, one horn cut, the eye on her forehead permanently blinded by his hand.

It takes effort to stumble over to the space next to her. Black spots cloud his vision of the rubble around them. He doesn’t want to kill her, but he will. She has too much blood on her hands, too much darkness in her soul, too much to answer for.

Surprisingly, Bala speaks first. Her voice is strained, from the stab wound in her throat or the lack of drinkable water. Soft, like the whispers of dusk. “You don’t give up.”

“I don’t.” Hale agrees, hands shaking, swaying slightly with a ringing shriek in his ears.

She hums, just once, slightly amused and strangely calm. If she does manage to get back up, he’ll drive his knife into her heart before taking off her head and burning the 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 had people who loved her once. People who deserve the courtesy of knowing she returned to the Earth like they likely have.

But he can’t risk letting her body stay. She has to die and stay dead. He won’t let her continue this cycle of annihilation.

Hale stopped hoping for chance encounters with life months ago. At the height of the last war, he felt the life of everyone. Every warrior on five different battlefields, every last civilian tucked away in guarded safe zones, every last animal scurrying away from the horrors around them. He hasn’t felt anything since the last battle but her.

But they haven’t destroyed the atmosphere yet. Life can regrow. If he kills her, life can have a chance to start anew.

“Will you allow me final words?”

Hale can’t say no. He didn’t get to hear the others, their deaths were too sudden. They were simply there and then they weren’t. It’s comforting, in a way, to finally hear some. Maybe it’s merely the disruption of silence that he craves, or how he can’t find it in himself to deny her.

How could he? She is just as he is, alone in the world with nothing but dead memories. If not for his loved ones, he would be her. 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, his only solace is that there will be no one to see his ruin.

“I ate the fruit to avenge my dearest Edith.” Bala tells him. “There was no peace in my day. If not famine, then the Beasts, or pure unfiltered cruelty. I was sent to destroy them all. Fools who would sacrifice a nation to ensure their authority; tyrants who sat in palaces and sent their people to die; savages who would murder a babe for nothing more than sick pleasure; and the millions who sat by and watched.”

She smiles with bloody teeth, her eye softening with memories. “Then I met my family. Louis, the one who made me believe peace was achievable, that love was easy, that the world could be kind. Edith, who offered me balance, trust, and the most cherished years of my life. We would speak of joy that reached every corner of the world, of harmony that soothed the horrors of the land, of justice that was fair and never cruel.”

“You loved them.” Hale says, giving up on standing and falling to lay beside her. They stare at the clouds above, reforming after the two of them cut through the sky.

“More than I ever thought I could. It was their influence that shaped me into something softer. Abandoning my planned destruction, I craved to help them. I longed for a reality where all this senseless death was avoided."

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.”

Hale glances at her, “They betrayed you.”

“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 burned every last offender to the ash. I killed in her name, starting the very war Edith feared. Thousands martyred for my frivolous anger. Eventually, I grew tired of death, remembered our dream.”

“You made it to where no one had to die.” Hale whispers, horrified to find himself agreeing with her. If he had the power, he would’ve stopped the war. The personal cost doesn’t matter compared to the thought that people - his people- could be alive.

Bala nods. “ I made them stop. They would never have done it on their own. I didn’t expect to be loved and worshiped. I only wanted to eradicate the horrors of humanity, but it wasn't enough. This world would never maintain peace if it wasn’t enforced. So, I enforced it, even if my followers grew to hate me.”

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

Bala scoffs. “You speak as if I am unchanged, god-slayer, as if I'm not sorry for my actions. I've had centuries to repent, but I will never atone for setting desolation upon the world, for leading us to the destruction I craved to escape.”

She turns to him, and he knows that she understands. When she is done, he will rise and put an end to all of this.

“I'm happy I was able to meet you.” She mummers. “That I was able to see someone hesitant to kill. Someone who my son would be proud of. It gives me hope that he was right. Perhaps we can find peace in the next life.”

Hale laughs. It’s a pathetic thing, more of a sob. 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, and Hale’s chest constricts. “My sins must be paid for.”

“No one has to die.” Hale whispers, a plea.

“And yet we both will.” She contradicts, firm and unyielding like the land she destroyed. “I have come to find that death is inevitable, and I'm sorry to have been that inevitably for this world.”

Hale breaks when he kills her. Even as she cups his cheeks and wipes his tears, her hands soft and her ruined right eye leaking blood. “When we meet in the next life.” She says, “I swear it will be kinder to us both.”

“I’m sorry.” Hale sobs. “I’m sorry-”

“You are forgiven.” She takes his hands, the ones shaking, wrapped around the knife in her chest, stained in blood. “I trust you to forge the harmony I never could.”

Hale holds her until her last breath, then he cries. He mourns for the world, his friends, his family; for all he has lost, all he will never gain, all that will become memories lost with time.

He pulls her closer, uncaring that her horns are piercing his throat, that her claws dig into his ribcage.

In his final seconds he thinks that peace was never meant to be achieved this way. He has found the answer to those who question war. There is but one gain to it, and it is sorrow in its rawest form. At the end of everything, crimson streams mix the blood of a god with the one who killed her, the world withers, and as always, begins anew.