The Beginning After The End novel Chapter 422

A choked sob lodged in my throat as I stared down at Ellie. My mind was blank. I grasped for sense, but the image of her ripped open and crimson with her own blood seemed so impossible, so unbelievable, that all reality shivered to a halt. The only thing to penetrate my brain aside from the horrible sight was the mournful roaring and tramping of Boo behind me, which felt like a manifestation of the emotions I couldn’t shake loose myself.

“—thur!”

A hand was on my shoulder, squeezing and shaking. A heavy wave of aether rolled outward from my body in response, and the hand pulled away. Distantly, I was aware of Mica and Lyra struggling against the monsters.

A shadow crossed over Ellie, and I looked up into Regis’s bright eyes, now full of our shared despair. He phased into incorporeality, then took on the shape of a wisp as he sank down into Ellie’s body.

My spark of hope was doused before it even fully manifested. ‘She’s…gone,’ Regis thought, drifting around her core. ‘Wait. There’s something wrong—’

The weight of Ellie’s body vanished from my arms as she became transparent. For a moment I could see plainly how the dark wisp of Regis settled into her outline, then they both vanished, dissolving like the monster that had killed her.

I opened my mouth to yell or curse, but only a wheezing breath came out.

“W-what happened?” Mica asked, batting aside a skeletal, grinning beast, but not before it took a chunk out of her side.

“Regent…Leywin, you must…release your—”

Rage flared within me and I spun on Lyra. The Alacryan retainer shrank back and fell to her knees, succumbing to the force of my intent. Aether formed into a sword in my hand without my conscious manipulation. There was fear in her eyes, radiating as bright and clear as the reflection of my weapon.

Grimacing, I swung the blade.

It carved through flesh and bone. A brief shriek of pain, then silence.

The monster that had manifested behind Lyra collapsed into two pieces, then melted away.

Closing my eyes, I forcefully retook control of my aura. When I opened them again, Lyra was watching me warily. She swallowed heavily, then eased back to her feet, as if she was afraid that any sudden movement might set me off again. In the next instant, her entire body flinched at a roar from Boo. The bear launched itself at another attacker, ripping into it mercilessly.

What am I going to do now?

‘You have to go on without us,’ a somber voice answered in my mind.

I froze. Regis?

‘Don’t worry about us. We’re in heaven now. It’s beautiful. Nothing but busty demon babes as far as the eye can see, you know? Just like I always wanted.’

An eerie tremor ran up my spine. Before I could reply, a light bloomed in the distance, arcing across the empty black background like a flare.

One of Ellie’s arrows.

It had to be. Boo looked up from his kill, the light reflecting in his small black eyes, then he vanished with a slight pop.

Regis, you son of a bitch, explain or—

‘Don’t speak ill of the dead, princess,’ Regis shot back.

I rushed to the door that would lead me backwards, but hesitated, turning to look at Mica and Lyra. Another horror had manifested, but Lyra and Mica were already unleashing their spells.

“Go, we’ll be fine,” Mica said, spinning to slam her hammer into the jaw of a faceless monstrosity.

Wasting no more time, I went through the door. It seemed painfully, impossibly slow moving, dragging me through empty space with deliberate malaise. When I finally reached the second platform, I fired an aetheric blast from my palm, ripping apart two of the monsters, then hurried back into the door.

My heart stopped.

Standing on the edge of the starting platform, staring out into the zone, was Ellie, her bow in hand. Boo stood next to her, nuzzling her and moaning deep in his chest. Ellie, who was pale and shaking, had one hand entwined through his fur, holding on as if afraid she was about to fall.

“Ellie,” I gasped as I stepped out of the door.

Twisting around, her face wrinkled up as sobs overtook her, and she threw herself into my arms, heaving breathlessly. I could do nothing but hold on to her, too shocked to even feel joy that she was alive.

Eventually she pulled away from me to wipe her face on her sleeve. Her eyes were red and swollen, and there was a sense of horror in them that kept her from looking at me straight on.

I stroked her hair and made gentle cooing noises to try and comfort her. “What happened?”

“What happened is easy,” Regis said, sitting back on his haunches. “Like our furry compatriot here, we poofed across the zone. Ellie reappeared in her door, and I came out of yours. How and why it happened…” He trailed off with a shrug.

I pulled Ellie to me, lifted her up off the ground, and pressed my lips to the top of her head. “I’m so sorry, El. I never should’ve…I—” I felt her small hands press against me, and I eased up, allowing her to pull back.

“It wasn’t your fault, Arthur,” she said, wiping her puffy, tear-reddened eyes. “It happened so fast. It felt…it was so real.”

I went quiet, unable to think past one all-encompassing fact.

I had failed. My sister had died in my arms. Whatever was happening in this zone that brought her back didn’t change that.

Reaching into the extradimensional storage rune, I withdrew the Compass.

“What are you doing?” Ellie asked, taking a step back, a slight flush coming to her ghostly-pale cheeks.

“I’m going to take you back.”

“No, I don’t—”

“This isn’t a debate,” I said firmly, not looking at her. I didn’t want to see the expression of hurt I knew was on her face. “I know exactly what you’ve just been through, because I went through it myself a hundred times in Epheotus. But now, unlike there, we don’t know if you’ll come back again, or how many times. We don’t have any idea what’s happening here. The platforms are only going to get harder, and if I couldn't protect you in the earlier ones…”

Ellie grabbed my arm and pulled at me, reminding me suddenly of the way she’d used to drag my mother around the shopping district. Bile rose up in my throat as I imagined telling Mom that Ellie had died…

Warm tears slid down my face. “I can’t lose you too, El.”

“You won’t—Boo, help me!” she sputtered.

The guardian bear sat down and huffed, turning his face away from Ellie. Her grip loosened and slid off my arm. “Boo…”

She approached her bond slowly, but he kept turning, putting his back to her. She sighed and leaned in against him, pressing her face into his fur.

I gritted my teeth and resisted the urge to crush the metal half-sphere in my trembling fingers.

It wasn’t working. The aether moved into and through the artifact, but didn’t activate it. It was dormant, like God Step and Destruction.

We were trapped.

One of the doors glinted with internal light, and Mica appeared within it. Her breathing was labored, and I almost thought I could hear the rapid hammering of her heart. I released her almost instantly. She solidified in front of her door, her hands patting up and down her body frantically as she confirmed it was really there.

“It’s okay, you’re—”

“I died…” She blinked several times in a fashion that would have been almost comical if not for the horror of our situation. “But…I’m not dead.”

“You’re very much alive,” I said, squeezing her shoulder. “We’re not sure what’s—”

“Oh,” Mica said, the exhalation part gasp, part moan.

I turned to follow the line of her gaze. Lyra had appeared in her doorway, looking slightly green.

I hurried over and, with a spark of aether, drew her out. Her eyes drifted closed and she took a deep breath, then wrapped her arms around herself.

“I can still feel it, the claws and teeth inside me, ripping and tearing at the meat,” she said in a breathy whisper. “I’ve been subjected to many tortures in my life, but that was by far the worst…”

After taking a few minutes to calm down, we were all sitting in a circle around a small bottled flame that Mica had brought. It took some prodding, but I had convinced Ellie, Mica, and Lyra to eat, and they were chewing mindlessly on some of their rations. Ellie was leaning back against Boo’s side, her focus somewhere deep in the void darkness. Lyra and Mica both watched the flames curl and snap with matching haunted expressions. Regis was standing several feet away from everyone else, his back to the fire.

“When we first arrived here, you two mentioned feeling strange in your own skin,” I said, breaking the long-held silence. “And some of my godrunes are dormant and unusable.”

Mica only grunted in response.

Lyra leaned toward the fire, moving her index finger in and out of one lashing tongue of flame. “You think…what, exactly? That we’re…” She waved her hand in shallow circles, trailing off as she searched for the words.

“I doubt even the Relictombs can resurrect the dead,” I said, steepling my fingers in front of my lips. “This zone is different. I don’t think it’s real. Not in a physical sense, anyway.”

“What does that even mean?” Mica asked gloomily. She punched the ground beside her. “That feels pretty real to me.”

I shook my head. “I know, but hear me out. When I trained in Epheotus, I spent a lot of time—years, actually—inside a relic called the aether orb. It’s complicated, but it basically manifested my mind and spirit inside another realm, where I could train and fight—and die—indefinitely.”

Lyra hissed. “Vritra’s teeth, that’s cruel even by Alacryan standards. So what we just went through…”

I gave her a tight-lipped, humorless smile. “I’ve done hundreds, if not thousands, of times. You…” I looked at Ellie and hesitated. “Experiencing death over and over is something you can never get used to. It messes with your mind, and warps your sense of what’s real. I didn’t bring you here to experience that.” After all, what was the point of going through such trials myself, if not to keep those I loved from experiencing the same?

“You think this is…like that?” Ellie asked, plucking absently at Boo’s fur.

“I know the djinn have similar magic. In the first two ruins I discovered, I fought the djinn manifestations inside of my mind. It felt real, but it was separate from physical reality. This zone could be too.”

The silence crept back in as everyone considered this theory. After a couple of minutes, Lyra said, “Perhaps this is the universe punishing us, forcing us to feel the deaths of all those we’ve killed…”

“Don’t lump me in with you,” Mica snapped, jumping to her feet and leveling a glare at Lyra. “I’ve always had reasons to kill someone. Right reasons.”

Barely audible, Lyra whispered, “From where I stood at the time, so did I.”

Mica scoffed but sat back down, glaring into the small flame. “We need some kind of plan of attack here.”

“Agreed. Even if we cannot die here, I have no desire to experience that again.” A shiver ran through Lyra as she finished speaking.

We discussed it for a while. Although no revelation was made about how we could progress deeper into the zone, it provided an opportunity for the others to rest and rebuild their confidence.

But one aspect of our progress in particular continued to vex me. I didn’t voice my concern out loud, but those last moments where it was just me and Ellie on the platform were the most difficult and dangerous.

How can I protect Ellie from the increasing number of monsters while we both have to concentrate on creating the connection between doorways?

My aetheric powers had given me the strength to reclaim a lifetime of training and power in a matter of months, but I was well aware that there were limitations to what I could accomplish with such limited flexibility.

‘The problem with a sword is that it’s only as useful as the swordsman’s ability to wield it,’ Regis said, watching me from across the fire. ‘Which, of course, is why I am the superior weapon.’

When I was a quadraelemental mage, I had a dozen spells at my disposal that would have been more effective. I need to be able to defend myself without one hand tied behind my back, so to speak.

‘You’re thinking about the second djinn projection,’ Regis noted, frowning.

I should have pushed myself harder to learn her techniques.

‘Isn’t the point of all this insight business that you have to discover these things for yourself?’ Regis pointed out.

It’s not enough. If I can—

I cut myself off, acknowledging the spiraling pattern of my thoughts. It was a deep, twisting road down the path of self-doubt and regret. And another part of me knew that I had learned what I could, or what I had to in order to progress. Now, though, was one of those times. Without increasing my skills, there was no way to get my companions through this zone.

“Don’t think talking’s going to get us any further,” Mica said unexpectedly. When she turned to face me, her huge hammer coalesced in her hands. She let the hammer’s head fall heavily to the floor, and I felt the weight of it tremble through the mana. “I don’t care if I die a thousand times, I’ll be damned if I’m going to let this place get the better of me.”

Beside her, Ellie gave me a grim-faced nod.

Lyra unfolded from her sitting position, rolling her shoulders as she stood. “Indeed. Though, I would prefer avoiding feeling the grasping claws of death again…”

I studied my companions for a moment. Although I could sense the scars of their experience hidden just beneath the surface, outwardly they projected strength and defiance. With aether, I plucked at the force that was always tethered to me. Black scales inlaid with gold feathered into existence over my body as the relic armor enveloped me.

Mica cracked her neck and gave me a vicious grin. “I’m ready. Let’s do this.”

***

“I wasn’t ready for that,” Mica gasped, wiping vomit off her mouth.

She was on her hands and knees, a pool of sick splattered across the ground beneath her, but I understood the reaction. Watching as a headless horror pulled her intestines out through a gaping hole in her stomach wasn’t like the quick deaths I had experienced at Kordri’s hands so many times.

Taking her under the arm, I helped lift her to her feet, then wiped a streak of bile off her cheek with my sleeve.

As we had moved to the fourth platform, the horde of grotesque monsters had overwhelmed Mica before Lyra could even arrive. Regis had fought them off, killing enough to make way for Lyra, and the rest of us tried to push on. Unfortunately, it had taken Regis three attempts to find the fifth platform, and in that time Boo fell under a wave of attackers.

Deciding there was no point in moving forward, we headed backwards, but that proved just as difficult, and Lyra perished on the way, dragged off the platform by rending claws. But at least my sister hadn’t died again.

Once Mica was steady on her feet, I went about releasing the others from their doorways. Boo seemed unphased by his repeated deaths. Lyra was quiet, and the others seemed to take their cue from her.

I wasn’t sure how much of this they could take.

“We need to move faster,” Mica said after the post-death fog had cleared. “Sometimes there are multiple doors facing the next platform, right? We should send two through at once.”

“But that removes two people from the battlefield,” I countered.

“True, but it would speed up getting two of us to the next platform, which is when things are the most dangerous for us,” Lyra pushed back. “You are always the last to leave one platform for the next, and you are the strongest. It is as the rest of us move to a new platform that we are going to struggle, especially the first person there.”

Regis hummed deep in his chest, almost more of a growl. “Even if Ellie and Arthur can keep up with sending two more-or-less at once, there have only been a couple of platforms where that’s even an option. Really, whoever is following me needs to get there and turtle up until help arrives.”

“Then send me first this time,” Lyra said, not quite able to hide the quaver of fear in her voice. Mica scowled, looking as if she wanted to argue, but Lyra forged on. “My defensive spells are more potent. If we can’t be sent at the same time, then I go first. You’ve”—her tone softened somewhat—“had it worse than I have. It is my turn to take that risk.”

Mica’s anger morphed into uncertainty, then begrudging acceptance. “Yeah, all right. Whatever.”

“Third time’s a charm,” Regis muttered, then vanished through a door.

***

As Ellie finished firing the connecting arrows between two doors, Boo’s image vanished from the door in front of us. I was keeping tabs on the battle at the next platform through my link with Regis. So far so good.

Ellie transitioned from preparation to combat with growing ease. Arrows of white light and pure mana leapt rapidly from the string of her bow, hitting target after target. We were on the sixth platform, and the monsters were surging constantly from the void, manifesting two or three at a time.

I counted in my head as I cut them down, moving constantly so as to try and protect her from every direction. Her arrows picked off some just as they formed, but any who closed in on us, she left to me.

My blade carved through a slashing arm, severing it at the elbow, then reversed direction and bit deep into the monster’s boney hip. With my free hand, I pulled Ellie away from the scything claws of a four-armed horror that was skittering up from behind. With a forward kick, I sent it flying off into the void, where it vanished, reabsorbed by the darkness that birthed it.