EPILOGUE - ARYA & THE COMPOSER
"Mother's Mercy"
"Everything is a battle, every breath is a war, and I don't think I'm winning anymore"
-Anonymous
"Wake up..."
"Wake up."
Darkness.
All she could see is purgatory.
The world around the fallen She-Wolf shifted and mended, a constant, maddening swirl of a seemingly eternal void. No light entered, no light escaped, a world completely submerged into the insanity-provoking concept of true nothingness. A sandbox for a superior being, a mere dimension conjured, an entire existence devote entirely for Mercy. Arising, she stood, looking down at her body. Blood still seeped from her wounds, her right arm mangled, her legs barely able to uphold her petite form, as if they were suspending a ton. Yet, she felt no pain, no ending to her misery, a state of perpetual suffering. Feeling the crimson ooze out of her mouth, a cracky groan of agony escaping her broken lips, Arya fell to her knees, her stoic eyes looking ahead, looking dazed and lost.
Footsteps.
"Y-You...y-you b-bastard..."
With each step he took, the world around Arya grew. From the abyss, she could feel the dirt underneath her feet, the gentle yet harsh winds that howled into the dead of night, and the groaning of ancient trees surrounding her like a pack of hungry wolves. With his left hand raised, sparks of red electricity danced, the man who Arya swore to kill standing eerily before her, looking almost amused. There, he stood, as if to give Mercy her final wishes, the man that betrayed her friendship and murdered her best friend and lover. The man who Arya had partially spent six months, locked away in a library, trying to find and kill, at any costs, even her own life if necessary.
And he stood here, just to fucking mock her.
"Miss me?"
"Y'AAAHHHH!!!" she screeched, the bloodied, broken teenager lunging forwards, Needle lousily raised in her left hand. It was hopeless, he is a God, an ascended being that had ironically benefited from the Fusion Incident. Arya herself had once tried that, but lo, had sacrificed all of her abilities to vainly revive Ellie, a sacrifice to her kingdom, her namesake, a sacrifice to feel human. Others may profit, others may find love, redemption, profits, and honor, but what has Arya found? What has her path been? Rejection, disappointment, sorrow, grief, and the struggle against the inevitable. Time after time again, she raised her sword, and time after time again, she fell to the ground.
Feeling a swift kick to her back, Cole merely sidestepping the dying girl's sloppy charge, Cole shook his head, a sickening smile beginning to grow onto his face. Arya, feeling herself collapse, loudly cried out, feeling Needle slip from her hands, reaching down to cradle her festering bullet wounds from her upper chest. All of her adrenaline had been put into that rush, and in an instant, Arya felt weak, crippled, and above all else, shattered. A remnant of former glory, a girl that would go down into history as a traitor, as a pawn to a demon. Nothing more, nothing less, and if her body were to go six feet under, not an ounce of sympathy would be raised, and not a single soul would care.
"Admirable, I'll give you that." Cole softly muttered, beginning to approach the crippled Arya, crouching beside the bleeding girl. Feeling his charcoal sports jacket tugged at weakly, Arya winced, her stoic, ash, wolfish eyes looking up at Cole, her grip onto the man's upper chest like that of an infant to Cole.
"Adorable, even, seeing you still fight, after a whole year. In a way, you amuse me, I don't get that often, what being a God now. I'd call you brave, but you aren't, She-Wolf." Cole softly whispered, reaching over, retaining that same, sickening, cruel grin, gently caressing Arya's right cheek, feeling the grime and filth that covered her face.
"Remember all the great times we had together in the Fusion Incident?"
"G-Go..."
"How I saved your life..."
"to..."
"How I earned your trust, your friendship..."
"h-hell..."
"How I killed Ellie before your eyes..."
"y-you..."
"And left you to rot."
"monster."
Cole flinched, hearing that last word, beginning to pick up Arya in her arms bridal style, the same way Arya carried the supposed corpse of her lover into her quarters, only to be gunned down by the servants to the Coalition. She pounded at his chest, squirming, doing her best to escape, Cole looking down upon Arya, grinning with malicious intent. Leaning back against a tree, suddenly, Cole did the unthinkable. Something that soon would horrify Arya, something that confused her at first, but soon realized the truth in her gasping, dying words.
"Someone needs a nap, how about I sing you a lullaby?"
Without answering, Cole began to gently sing a tone. Almost akin to how a father would sing to a baby daughter, only perverted and twisted, a sadistic vibe echoing in his tone. Not an ounce of relief coursed over Arya, faintly hearing in the farthest depths of her mind the beeping and buzzing of medical equipment, a stunning revelation beginning to dawn within her. She wasn't dead, not quite yet, and this was not the afterlife. No, a state of purgatory, a state between life and death, in whence she could still fight. A second chance? A chance to rebuild her roads? Whatever the case may be, Arya squirmed, she kicked, she yelped, as Cole's haunting tune began to echo out.
Stop getting in my way,
I've lost my patience,
when are you going to decay?
I hear you breathing in your room,
block me all you want.
This place will be your tomb.
Soon, Arya felt Cole's grasp escape her, the world crumbling around her once more. A chilly fear crawled under her spine, the blinding white of dull light and the crackle of flame greeting her gaze. Opening her ash eyes slowly and softly, having not been adjusted to pure light, the Lone Wolf felt her heart skip a beat. The scene felt familiar, the Northerners standing before her, the sight of the Bolton lord approaching her, tied to a stake embedded into the snowy earth by ropes constricting her to the firm wood. As a torch was raised before her, the revelation dawned, one that made her gaze widen in pure fear...
My Fusion execution.
"I hope you die in a fire."
She didn't have time to scream before the flames licked at her skin once again, like it had a year ago.
She threw her head back, the agony coursing through her developing body. Skin melted, flesh cooked, bones charred as the flames rose higher and higher. Her voice began the fade, crumbling into a hopeless crackle. What screams could manage fell on deaf ears, her pained eyes gazing down upon faceless Northerners, swearing she could spot a familiar face here and there. Cries to her family, to her friends, to her loved ones rang out, the constant beeping of what sounded like a heart-rate monitor in the distance beginning to slowly accelerate.
As her vision faded, the world shifted once more, Cole a God, intent on torturing the last soul that wished to see him six feet under.
"Hope you get stabbed in the heart."
Instantly, upon the uttering of Cole's next phrase in his torturous lullaby, Arya would find herself suddenly thrown into another world. Her whimpers and cries echoed as she tried to readjust herself, still feeling the pain of course through her entire form. The scene changed once again, to the sight of a familiar wedding, black-and-white Monokuma bears surrounding her from a balcony above, armed with crossbows. Wearing a crown of iron-and-bronze, renowned for being the crown the Kings of Winter used to upheld, Arya winced as the bolts collided against her flesh once more, like it had two years ago, her crown falling off the princess''s head.
My Monokuma execution.
Like it had in the past, she watched as her Northerners in this hall fell to the ground once more, her family and bloodline with their throats silt, weakly crawling over to embrace the dead body of her brother, Robb. Not a tear escaped Arya's gaze, only the somber, eternal gaze of shattered girl, the realization that Cole was here to haunt and torture her with her previous deaths ever since she stepped foot into these games. This was her afterlife, her prison, a puppet for Cole's amusement. Rising up, bolts protruding from her body, she heaved and huffed, feeling the grasp of a man lift her up by the neck. Choking, once, it had been the Bolton lord, but now, it was Cole, who plunged a dagger straight to her heart, causing her world to go black once more.
Before it changed once more, a whisper echoed out.
"Hope you get shot and expire."
Once again, the worlds switched, but this time, with a blast.
Gunfire crashed against her, arrows of a Elvish bow against her flesh, the taunts of a deranged, selfish mercenary, and the mutterings of killers, false prophets, and hired thugs. Unlike the others, it was not as painful, partially because she had just felt it, yet it was the most devastating. Her library, her quarters, what had happened to her which felt like mere hours ago. Half a year of research, to deny death, to find the killer who broke her heart and trust, all gone in the flash of muzzle fire, Gauss ammunition, arrows, and whatever sorts of foul magic that was thrown towards Mercy.
My Butchering...
Instead of Felix approaching her, however, it was Cole, kneeling before Mercy, a soft smile etched on his lip, seeing before him a girl who had suffered her deaths over thanks to him. Only an expression of weariness greeted Cole, Arya promptly spiting crimson at the ascended human, a shaky voice escaping her dying lips.
"L-Le..ave...m-me...t-to...die."
"What is the fun in that? After all, with the way it sounds, you might not have time left."
A flash once more, and Arya found herself no longer in any world. She no longer bled, she no longer burned, she could only see the dark forest that Cole had originally conjured. Shakily standing up, Arya could no longer pull the facade, yea, she wept. Tears coursed down her face, mixing with her rage, waving Needle about insanely, being tortured and humiliated like some play-doll.
"WHAT DO YOU WANT?! HUH?! WHAT!!!"
Her demands came upon deaf ears, kicking up dirt, stumbling about, feeling her senses fade in and out. The sound of a heartrate monitor grew in intensity, the sounds of medical staff conversing among one another growing distinct. She could even go as far as to pick out certain key words, but alas, Arya could not trace a singular source of where the sounds originated. Quite simply, the voices were everywhere, and before she knew it, a faint light glistened on the horizon. With her stoic eyes glistening, Arya began to slowly push herself, one step at a time, before Cole began to notice this.
"Nonono, I think you are mistaken."
Cole's omnipresent voice echoed, silhouettes beginning to emerge from the woods around her. Soon, they grew details, and lo, Arya could see them all. Everyone she had met, everyone she had befriended, spited, hated, loved, and remembered. All of their faces began to emerge, their bodies a sickly black, as if they had been formed out of shadows. Yet, they shambled over to Mercy, arms extended, an ominous phrase escaping their lips, as Arya mentally began to recite their names.
Bayonetta, Korra, Cosmo, Robin, Erika, Ellie, Stalk, Kotomine, Touma, River Song, Makoto, Desmond, Ruby, Yang, Bran, Rickon, Sansa, Robb, Mother, Father, Jon...
No happy ending
Will ever find you.
All of these ghosts they're
from deep inside you.
She ran as fast as she could, swinging Needle about half-haphazardly, the light growing in intensity. No, she refused for this to be her game over, not now, not whilst she still lingered in this world. For far too long she had made sacrifices, and she refused to go down in history as just another fool who dared to believe. Feeling their hands tug at her, Mercy cried out, reaching out for the light, giving one last war cry, one last scream for the dream of spring, for the dream of hope.
The dream of life.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!"
***
Basalt blocks rose to a sky punched with howling stars. The blocks were all that remained of a vast ruined city. It stood in a barren landscape. Barren, but not empty. A wide and seemingly endless column of naked beings-- humans included-- trudged through it, heads down, feet stumbling. This nightmare parade stretched all the way to the distant horizon. Driving the sentient beings were ant-like creatures, most black, some the dark red of venous blood. When one in the walking procession fell, the ant-things would lunge at them, biting and butting, until they gained their feet again. There were young and old alike. Male and female. Teenagers with babies in their arms. Children trying to help each other along. On every face was the same expression of blank horror.
They marched beneath the howling stars, they fell, they were punished and chivvied to their feet with gaping but bloodless bite wounds on their arms and legs and abdomens. Bloodless, because these were the dead. What awaited them was a dead city of Cyclopean stone blocks below a sky that was itself a scrim. The howling stars weren't stars at all. They were holes, and the howls emerging from them came from entities-- alive, all-powerful, and completely insane.
What lie here was an insane truth that would drive a man or woman mad if they were to gaze upon it. The ant-things served those great entities, just as the marching, naked dead served the ant-things.
That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons, even death may die.
Somewhere in that marching horde were people that Arya knew. Souls lost amidst the chaos of all universes and doomed to a sterile world below hollow stars, a charnel kingdom where guardian ant-things sometimes crawled and sometimes stood upright, their faces hideously suggestive of the human.
Suddenly, the marching dead turned toward Arya, as if they were aware of her presence. The ant-things did likewise, their mandibles gnashing, their loathsome but intelligent eyes glaring. Overhead, the sky began to tear open with a titanic ripping sound. An enormous black leg covered with tufts of spiny fur pushed through it. The leg ended in a vast claw made of faces. One Arya recognized. It was her brother, Robb Stark, and he was screaming. Another familiar face joined his-- that of Ellie, the girl Arya had come to love. They screamed together, their cries creating a symphony of madness. Arya heard a tenebrous rustling sound as the leg moved through the air, a sound that would give endless nightmares. It reached, it stretched, it touched the ground and scrabbled there like skinless fingers, leaving scorch-marks that gave off thick tendrils of smoke.
The leg's owner wanted one thing and one thing only: to remove the sole intrusion.
It was Mother.
Not
a mother, but
the Mother.
Arya, an old woman's voice whispered.
Come. Come to me and live forever.
You will serve the Great Ones in the Null. No death, no light, no rest.
One day, something will happen. Something always does. And when it does... You will go to Mother.
Arya's eyes burned with a red hot intensity. She screamed and reached upward to touch at her face, feeling as if her eyes were liquefying inside her skull. Everything hurt and everything was wrong. The world before Arya darkened, and the girl found herself drifting away.
***
Once the war had come to a close, Joshua the composer quickly found himself busy with a few last dealings of business regarding the afterlife. He had to quickly take care of them before he could head back there in person. He spoke to one of his associates on the phone, mulling over the details with them.
"All right, so you've managed to collect all of the souls who died during the Akibahara war? Even the corrupted ones? Great. We'll work on finding a way to purify them so we can put them through a proper trial of the reaper's game. Right, right, yeah, okay..."
He found himself surprised upon realizing something.
"Wait, if you've gotten all of the souls, does that mean... you've even managed to get Arya Stark?"
...
Surprisingly, even the soul of the child sword-wielder had been retrieved. Unlike the others, she was a difficult case to decide on. He felt she had potential, but also felt as if it would be a waste to put someone like her through the reaper's game because of the talent she had already showed. Perhaps he would simply keep her as one of his own until he decided what really should be done with her...
"Yeah, change of plans on the Stark girl. Convert her soul to a reaper. I believe her body is still in tact, so we won't even have to make her a new one. Revive her there. That's all. See you when I get back."
After his business over the phone was taken care of, he had some other things to attend to regarding a couple people in person. He materialized his white wings and flew over to
Legolas so he could speak with him.
"I believe we have something to discuss, yes?" the composer began, smiling.
"It's the matter of your afterlife task. It was to assist Aqua in making sure her heart got healed. If you failed, you would not only have to pay your own debt, but hers also. Well, it's my pleasure to inform you that she seems to have fixed the problem on her own. Or, at least she plans to. So, you're off the hook, my good elf. And here..." the composer handed him a small bottle with a cork on it.
"This is for you, from her. It's a message you might want to read when you get the chance. Anyhow, you're free to go. Enjoy your life, wherever it may bring you." He spread his wings and lifted off into the sky again after handing the item to Legolas.
Joshua then went to the last person he needed to speak with:
Teresa. He landed in front of her, holding out a hand to stop her before she could say anything to him.
"I think you and I have a few things to talk about," he began, knowing they had more than one topic to broach.
@Hospes @Wedge Antilles @Krieg @Klutzy Ninja Kitty
