Jäger, Part 2 - SCP Foundation

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Jäger, Part 2

23/11/2021

Undisclosed Location, Greater Poland Voivodeship, Poland

Calling the Palace grounds empty would be a vast understatement.

As the whirling portal bridging Esterberg to the ruins before him closed, he took the first step forward. He was pretty sure that by whatever ancient law that still reigned here, him setting foot in these ruins was considered beyond sacrilege. But he continued all the same, setting his heavy boots against the millennia-old pavement unraveling itself below him. For what little it was worth, the silent pathway didn't really seem to care.

The road was long, stretching far into the horizon, its meandering way strangling the hill upon which the palace stood like a concrete snake. A sea of thick mist shrouded the land as far as the eye could see, laying a blanket of silent dawn upon the complex. Nobody thought, for just a moment, that the whole place looked as if its spires fractured the sky and let their Palace be consumed by the clouds previously hanging on the firmament, now brought down to earth to swallow Mab whole. The clean, silver towers looming over the horizon seemed to very much support this, their near-immaculate form practically shouting the word 'hubris' as they challenged the gray sky above with their height.

The sky itself, too, didn't feel too normal.

Remnants of antimemetic glamour silently floated in the distance, incorporeal spirals and fractals endlessly twisting in the sky. Had they been intact, not even the Foundation with their Hughes and Wheelers could penetrate it, its nature made sure it was impossible for any human that dared to ever think about the Queen to even conceive of this place, hiding it for so many years as Mab's final shield against the incoming darkness. So it stood there, untouched, untainted, unmoved, for so long that its mere existence could now be classified as a long-forgotten myth.

But Nobody fell just right outside the 'human' requirement, so for the first time in eons, the sky stood strange, finally devoid of its invisible bulwark, revealing the insides of its protected Palace for the first time in a quarter of a million years. Strands of white and grey and green and blue streaked through it, the final memories of Mab's ancient spell. Even now, they seemed to spark angrily, perhaps aware of the presence of an intruder in this sacred realm.

Nobody carried on regardless.

His pilgrimage forward felt like it took untold ages, the monotone path reaching further and further into the irreal complex before him. It was as if he was walking through some twisted monument, frozen in time, a snapshot of the precise moment the Mad Queen had pierced her sister with the Irrilite Tuner at the height of her own fall. He passed an endless stream of beautiful spires, lofty gates, and imposing walls, a combination of irrilite and marble making up every one.

In another life, perhaps, Nobody would ever stay and observe, realizing his position as the first-in-millennia witness to the beyond-beautiful lost techniques of the architecture of the ancient Fae. But, just like the Palace's previous guests during the First Diaspora, he didn't really care much for its beauty. The Queen that sat deep within its ruins would agree with him that, for what it was worth, his hunt was the only thing that truly mattered now.

As he carried on, eventually, a lifetime passed; then another; then another. But that skeleton in a trenchcoat continued to bore his crossbow, incapable of letting go, incapable of seeing anything but the carrot at the end of his own stick. He just tightened his grip, bringing his weapon ever so closer, and fastened his pace, treading through one acre of this sacred land after another.

And in time, those lifetimes paid off.

As Nobody emerged from another incomprehensibly large corridor, he was greeted by something unexpected; something strange, almost. Instead of another doorway or balcony, he came to see an open space, extending as far as the horizon. Though it was obvious that the Impasse was already taking its toll, the silver grass that riddled the courtyard was breathtaking nonetheless. Flora of the bygone eras decorated the garden, barely held up in some twisted time capsule by the magic of the dying Queen.

Among those surreal roots and bushes and flowers and trees never seen by any creature still alive, ruins lay. The tower which stood tall at the end of the courtyard was damaged, that much was obvious — from the shards of its structure that had fallen and pierced the ground below to the gaping holes in its walls, the spire looked like a long-bled-out corpse. The signs of struggle and battles fought here during the final hours of the Fae Empire were still visible, the brown blood of the Yeren rebels mixed in with the red viscera of the human slaves and the blue ichor of the Fae royalists tainting the chunks of the clean and ruined white stones. Here and there, Nobody could even spot arcane weapons and thaumic residue, frozen in battle against the oppression of Mab.

Briefly, he closed his eyes. He took a deep breath.

I will conclude their fight tonight, he thought. I will finally give them rest.

When he opened them back again, he could almost convince himself that it was true.

With his focus now set on reality, he immediately noticed something infinitely more interesting than his own fear. Before the gates of the tower leading into the darkness of the Palace's throne room, there was a figure. A tall Yeren sat crooked over some old stone, a long staff propping up his decaying, ancient body. His sight was tired — tired like Nobody had never seen — and its whites were focused on just one thing: the once-man in front of him.

Having no other choice, Nobody met his challenge.

It took just a few steps to close the distance between the two. When the skeleton approached, the old man didn't stand up; instead, he looked to the gates of the Palace. They were still open, still in the state they were left in ages ago when a furious mob stormed Mab's final hideout in an attempt to bring her down. And that much was obvious — if not from their remains he had previously seen or the instinct of the Hunt deep within him, he would be able to deduce the presence of the Queen from the way the darkness moved inside. It was wrong, its strange stillness almost breathing, almost alive, almost challenging the two figures standing before it with an untold mockery. Nobody blinked twice, and as he heard a silent whisper in a language he did not comprehend, the feeling went away.

Slowly, the crooked old man turned to Nobody, a faint but sad smile visible upon his dried-up lips.

"Hello, Hunter," he said, his tone quiet, almost breaking upon the wind which now rushed through the whole courtyard. "I have been expecting your arrival."

Nobody didn't meet his gaze. "Can't say the same about you."

"I would be surprised if you could." The graybeard chuckled, exhaustion seeping from his every gesture. "Besides, that doesn't matter, now. What does indeed matter is the fact that you are finally here." He sighed, waves of relief going down his face.

Nobody raised a metaphorical eyebrow. "You've predicted my arrival. Are you an oracle?"

"Hah!" A slow smile entered his face. "I have simply lived too long, son. The world is full of stories, many of them the same. It is simply a matter of recognizing the pattern. You were an inevitability."

"Stories?" This time, he crossed his arms.

He looked somewhere beyond the horizon, as if he was able to see something that Nobody couldn't. "You'd be surprised at what the folk from beyond the Compass have to tell. And I've heard enough of them to piece together what you — and, by extension, the Queen — truly are."

The skeleton grunted, the expression carrying neither approval nor dissatisfaction. Perhaps it carried both. Neither of the present were really sure, so instead of inquiring further, they just turned their gazes towards the gaping black gates of the Palace before them.

"Who are you, anyway?" Nobody broke the silence, still staring into the void.

"Me?" The Yeren scoffed. "My name lost meaning long ago. It would tell you nothing."

"So you too heard the call of the Hunt, did you not?"

"Oh, nothing of the like," he waved a hand dismissively. "No, the Queen had nothing to do with it. Not directly, at least. Names are powerful things, my son. Even if you recognized mine, it wouldn't truly depict who I am. My brother made sure of that a long time ago."

A brief pause fell over the pair. The old man continued: "I suppose you'd want to know what I'm doing here, too."

Nobody nodded.

The other took a deep sigh. "I heard a horrible rumor this world was dying. I could not believe it, for even to imagine that the Queen had won was beyond my comprehension. I thought that your kind," he emphasized the second-to-last word with a strange change of tone. "had taken care of that. I owed at least this much to my people, to come back home and try to help. I knew it when the Lantern they lit up so long ago shone brightly once more."

"I was an old fool, thinking I'd end up anywhere else but here. To see nobody on the watchout felt strange, after so many generations of wardens protecting the world from what lurks in those marble halls." Nobody wasn't really sure what most of this truly meant, but allowed the Yeren to continue regardless. Before the old man did that, though, he shrugged. "So here I am, now, waiting for the Hunt's spawn to continue their duty, fulfilling it to my best before they could arrive. I could do at least this much, after everything I didn't do."

"You keep talking about… about the royal me, so to speak, about 'my kind'," Nobody retorted. "What… What do you mean, exactly?"

"Ah. I see. So you do not know yet." He pointed toward the corridor in front of them both. "You should come in, then. She will explain it better than I ever could."

Nobody walked up to the threshold, the space between the fading realm and the unknown inside. One final time, he turned to the old one.

"You say you know the patterns of stories, how the Queen and I fit together. How does this one end?"

The Yeren smiled, just a brief spark of amusement flying across his face. "How boring stories would be, if all the players knew of their fate."

Nobody didn't attempt to lengthen their conversation. He knew that, for what it was worth, this particular source of information was a dead end, at least for now. It wasn't like most of his words even made sense, for that matter. The only true source of answers lay before him, hidden somewhere inside those dark, dark crypts. He supposed it felt fitting that no matter what he truly wanted to do, every path he could take would just lead him back here.

So, left without any other real choice, Nobody took the initiative and stepped through, entering the incomprehensible shadow beyond creation without as much as a second thought.

Whoever had built those corridors so long ago made more than sure their architecture wasn't Euclidean.

Not to say the design was labyrinthian, no — it was a relatively straightforward structure, all things considered, but there was simply no way, Nobody thought, that the hallway he was traversing could ever last for so long. Not here, and not anywhere else on the planet. Not unless magic was somehow involved in its construction, of course.

The ceaseless darkness carried on and on, stretching far into infinity. With it, though, a certain sense of comfortable familiarity crept along Nobody's back. Calling it déjà vu wasn't the best way to put it — it wasn't just like he himself had been here before. It felt like some part of him, some arcane particle of himself beyond comprehension frequented these halls epoch after epoch, bringing so many different memory sets to form a whole mental map of the road that lead directly to Mab's throneroom, forming them from frantic final attempts at preparations before meeting their terminus at the end of the corridor.

Involuntarily, Nobody swallowed.

Suddenly, a horrible cloud of darkness fell over his mind, no, his soul. Like an object too big to comprehend blocking the stars so too did it sever his connection to reality, only allowing his feet to continue their journey forward in an almost automatic manner. For a terrible second, he felt genuinely scared, thinking it was the Queen's doing. But when the first flash of nonexistent memories exploded before his eyes, he knew it was something much, much worse.

It was the truth.

Like a finally completed puzzle, it suddenly all came together to form a cohesive whole. The Hunt, the Yeren's words, and the déjà vu, it all… it all made awful, awful sense.

He was no longer himself, as much as he could even say he had ever been himself to begin with. He was the hole in the chest of a fractured body, broken by the irrilite spear of its sister. From somewhere above him, a mocking laughter came, filling the cold hall of the throneroom with Mab's final words before the furious mob would get to her not two minutes later.

"You've lost, sister," she whispered out, a malicious grin filling her face. "You stood against me, and you've lost. Now carry the consequences of your treason," Mab ended, already waiting for the surge of stolen power to come from her dying sister through her own thaumic weapon directly into her body.

But history wouldn't remember this night this way, for something else — something infinitely, infinitely worse, at least to Mab — happened. In her final hours, the being which would come to be called the Inventor simply let go. She never called her magic back, never tried to defile death with its usage, and never tried to bring her own sister down with her. She just ceased, allowing the shards of her being to fall free through space and time as they saw fit, finding their way into whichever of her people needed them the most.

And she never forgave her sister for what she did.

In time, most of those pieces faded, blending into what would eventually be considered baseline reality. He could feel them — from the foundations of the City of the East to the many forms of the fair folk — and they were beautiful beyond expression, the way they molded into new shapes. But one of those shards — just one — didn't let go. Instead, it came to shatter even further, spawning twenty-four of its own children.

And that twenty-fourth child was finally walking down the hall leading to the place of the original breaking, ready to finish the job the others have started but never finished so many times before him.

He could see them, now. All of them. From the man who had traversed the seas for over a decade in search of home to the ursine bearing a fedora, the weight of all of their lives came down his soul. The twenty-three Nobodies that had come before him locked their eyes with their final iteration, putting their hands on his shoulder. And above his head, for a single, infinitely small moment, a diadem came to exist — a diadem of lost dreams and the world that could be, sacrificed at the altar of forever hunting its own sister from beyond the grave.

As he took another step forward, he finally regained clarity. He blinked twice, and the silk over his mind was gone, replaced with pure, unfiltered determination. Nobody tightened the grip on his weapon, feeling his action carry the will and momentum of all those that came before it. He knew that, for what little it was worth, they were there with him. They too wanted to finally, finally put an end to their own Hunts, trying their very best to make sure that a twenty-fifth sibling would not need to come to bear their curse.

In time, that clarity lead him to the only place it ever could: the throneroom which held the conclusion to his story.

"You've grown weak, sister," a mocking hiss came from atop the seat located at the other end of the infinitely long hall. As it echoed between the gigantic pillars which held together the might of the Fae Empire, so continued to smile its source, visibly amused to finally get a visit from someone she had expected so many years ago. "And I would not have it any other way."

Nobody didn't answer. It simply was not worth it. No. Instead, he refused to stop in his tracks, and let his feet carry him forward up until the very end. The Queen before him noticed it too, and she herself stood up from her throne of power. With a heart too dark to even comprehend, she set out to meet the one she had met again and again and again and again, already knowing what was about to transpire, just as it had always had.

And as the two gods, the two aspects of creation, the two fatally human avatars of Seelie and Unseelie clashed with each other for the final time in all of history, reality ceased to exist.

23/11/2021

Where Dreams Go To Die, Beyond the End

To say that Mab was powerful was a great injustice to both the true meaning of the word and the limits of spoken language in general. Not even the Impasse could change that.

She was everything, always. Before him, she stood, a monolithic pillar of hubris larger than life, larger than reality, larger than everything anyone could ever possibly imagine. In her hands sat the world, crowned hers by right so ancient it was beyond divine. On her head fit the diadem, granting her the insignia of untold power to all those that dared question her rule. And in her eyes starlight burned, drilling into the souls of her enemies with the fury of a million dying realities forever chained to obey nothing and nobody but her and her only.

And before her, inside a room inside a building inside a country on a continent on the infinitely small planet she held, Nobody stood, defying her the only thing she ever wanted: victory over his kind.

He looked directly into her eyes, aimed his weapon, and fired.

And—

—the world bent, laughing at that fragile attempt to harm the everrule that reigned in the skies above it. She didn't do as much as flick a finger, and the planet was gone, forcing the fragile insignificant little being to heed the inevitable way of all things down, falling ever so lower into the dark abyss of infinity.

As the void consumed him, a single star flickered to life in the distance.

He woke up, only to wake up again; in one moment, he was the Prey — in the other, he was the Hunter. The cycle continued over and over again as he died and lived and triumphed and lost, pushing it ever so forward, ever so closer to its inevitable end. But the end did not come. Instead, the wheel of infinity moved farther and farther into the distance, forcing more and more to suffer from the samsara of a conflict concluded so long ago. And, for what little it was always worth, the cycle used all of that momentum, and—

the world was over. it had always been over. it would never be anything but over. as Nobody looked above himself and gripped his weapon, he realized this was the ultimate truth before which he was forced to stand trial against. the Starlight which gloomed over him — over everything — her trail of broken worlds and eaten stars falling between her hair; she looked at him, and laughed again. just as he had always done and just as he would always do, he aimed once more, and pulled the trigger, and—

Upon the end of twenty-four,

when midnight came to die;

the Starlight laughed beyond her star

and so the Hunter cried:

It was no use. No use to rebel, no use to oppose, no use to live; for all intents and purposes, Nobody was just a cog in a mechanism, forever-bent to worship Mab. As he fell to the bottom of the world, he felt the weight of all of reality come down upon him, the irreal wave of equally nonexistent kilograms crushing every single part of his physical corpus. The skull erupted as waves of unfiltered thoughts broke out from it, free at last to fight their final fight; the hands crumbled beneath the size of eons as they let go, finally accepting that there was truly no purpose in his quest; and his legs fell to their knees as they shattered before their new Queen, promising their very best to never ever walk a mile against them; and—

His soul, however, refused to let go.

In that deep dark abyss beyond light, beyond vision, beyond hope, he finally awoke. Stripped down from everything he was and everything he wasn't, the wolf that slept somewhere within him opened its eyes, realizing its chain has been snapped for good. Instead of falling to the ground beneath it whimpering for its life, it did the only thing a creature of its kind could do when confronted with the Starlight up above; it howled to the echo of twenty-three in the distance, crying for its lost brethren, and—

The wolves howl back, and he finally knows who he is. Without as much as a second thought, he sheds his fake fur and revels in the person that he himself is and always had been. He accepts it — all of it. The terrible, unbearable weight of being human, the awful, unimaginable wound fracturing his heart, and the incomprehensibly, indescribably painful realization of consciousness deep inside his brain. But he feels no shame, neither does he feel fear. He snaps his chains, and accepts reality, and flies through the skies until there is nothing left but him, and—

Nobody is dead. Nobody has always been dead; he now knows that. As he treads ever up from that lost glade somewhere at the bottom of the universe, his soul soars, now free from the shackles binding it down to its inhuman body. It revels in its new-found status as it howls once more, and it looks up, only to see just one thing: the Queen, still grinning, still just waiting for him to try her again so that she may have her fun, forever and always. Right now, though, something terrible happens: that grin is punctured. Like a broken wall, one piece after another it falls to the ground, and it finally realizes what has happened, what she let happen, and—

He looked at her, now at her level, at last unbound from her little game. The shards finally broke for good, shattering upon the inevitable progression of all of reality, and similarly did Nobody disintegrate.

The only thing remaining of that broken title now was a long-lost mantle, thrown over the side of the human that rejected who he wasn't to accept the only form he ever craved: a man-shaped hole at the top of all of reality, looking down upon the only thing that stood beneath him.

—And for a single moment, he allowed himself to smile.

He let everything go, as he embraced the open skies.

If she wanted the whole world, he would let her have it. He fed that impossible, infinite hunger with the equally impossible void of the creature which had called itself Nobody which he had left behind him, letting it swallow her whole. For the first time since millennia, the conflict was head-on, now. There were no longer any middlemen.

The only thing still left churning inside the furnace of reality were two spirits, finally forced to confront themselves directly, finally clawing at each other's faces. And beyond them, beyond everything that could ever be considered real, there say a single figure: a free spirit, unbound from his past, unbound from his present, unbound from his future, doing the only thing he ever wanted to do.

And as the two eternal enemies finally broke upon the shores of each other, he cracked a smile, kicked back, and looked at the world's melting core.

And the end went something like this:

24/11/2021

Site-120, Częstochowa, Poland

It took a very quick exhale to break the silence.

"Are you…" Daniel Asheworth slowly began, measuring his words very carefully. "Are you absolutely sure this is correct?" He looked at the four other figures sitting around the circular table in the office of Site-120's Director Council. Out of the remaining four Directors, Jessie Rivera and Magdaleine Cornwell seemed to share his disbelief; James Micheals and Ethan MacCarthy Jr. instead indulged in what he could only describe as 'scientific wonder'.

Micheals corrected his glasses. "Y-Yeah. Yes." He tapped the screen of the tablet in front of him, once again bringing all of the appropriate data. This time, they were backed up by a few colorful charts that very much seemed to confirm what they were saying. "J-Just to be sure, I ran it by K-Kaufmann, then by Madden. It checks out. All of it."

Asheworth exhaled again. If he had any glasses, he would have taken them off and cleaned them, still in total disbelief at the data in front of him. And yet, the EVE energy charts within Esterberg and the surrounding Częstochowa seemed to still indicate the same measurement as they did when Micheals had hurridly brought them up about ten minutes ago.

The entire city was booming with magical energy.

"Is there… any particular source?" The dead silence was broken once again by Rivera's trembling voice. She tightened her grip on Cornwell's hand and calmed her breathing. "Do we even know what caused this?"

This time, MacCarthy Jr. was the one to correct his eyewear. He cleared his throat and pulled out his own device, a global map of EVE displayed upon it. Quickly zooming in, he made sure it only showed Poland. Then, he pointed to two very red dots upon it — Esterberg, and some seemingly random place in the north-western part of the country.

Between them, an equally red highway of magical energy being transferred stood.

"Whatever that is, it's our golden star," he said, just barely suppressing a coughing fit. "Micheals' boys did all of the possible readings on it. EVE is the largest in recorded history." He paused. "And so is Akiva."

Asheworth crossed his arms. "So… what is it, actually? Like, what does that mean?"

"Our best guess is theological annihilation," the theologist continued, immediately realizing his mistake upon noticing the confusion on his co-workers' faces. "Two absurdly large deific beings interacted, annihilating each other upon contact. Ended up releasing all of that," he tapped the EVE and Akiva charts once more. "Kind of like dark matter and matter."

"Kind of like dark matter," Rivera repeated, absentmindedly.

"Right, but… what the hell did that?" Cornwell asked, exchanging looks with Rivera and then Micheals. "Don't you people have things to detect events like that before they happen?"

"Right. Yes. We do, but this…" he slowly. exhaled. "It literally broke all of our radars, Mag. All of them. You have to understand, we didn't ever… expect to see something like this, ever. Not on such a ridiculous scale."

"Besides," Micheals interjected. "it doesn't m-matter what really caused it, for now. B-Both sources are permanently gone, so they won't be a threat to us a-anymore. What does matter n-now is that—"

"—That Esterberg is alive once more," Asheworth added.

"Y-Yeah." Micheals nodded. "W-Whatever the hell did that c-clearly was at least p-partially conscious. A… A transfer of this much magical e-energy, of this magnitude and stability, couldn't just be done by something r-random." He looked up to Asheworth for confirmation.

But Asheworth wasn't listening, not anymore. He just absentmindedly stared at the wall before him, running some quick EVE calculations in his mind. When he reached a sufficient conclusion, he smiled faintly, realizing what it really meant.

"You son of a bitch," he silently muttered, letting his smile turn into a full-on grin.

24/11/2021

The Forest Which Had Once Had No Name, Reality, Unchained

The Forest was unusually calm, for that part of the year. But it wasn't like its new guest would ever know that — despite all of her involvement with its creation, it was her first actual time down in this prison of her own making.

As she opened her eyes for what felt like the first time ever, Queen Mab awoke to a dead-silent reality.

At first, she thought she was dreaming some final-hour mirage. To even conceive of her continued existence was ridiculous, keeping all of the memories of yesterday's battle in mind. But when she slowly stood up and her head started to feel like death, she knew her current state was real. The feeling of grass beneath her naked feet, the rays of the sun blowing in her cold eyes, and the rush of wind between her silver hair and long, white dress only helped to confirm that realization of continued life.

A grin entered her face.

As she stretched her arms far and wide, she began to laugh. Letting all of it — all of it — out, she let a loud expression of pure and unfiltered amusement into the silent glade around her. That sound, that horrible, horrible idea carried on and on, echoing through the trees around her. In that moment, she didn't know of a reality that wasn't part of her continued mockery.

After what felt like millennia, she suddenly stopped. But that grin of satisfaction didn't leave her. No. Instead, it doubled, threatening to break her perfect pale skin with its new width.

She looked into the sky, her eyes once again nothing but freezing with hatred. "I win," she quietly mouthed, looking at the horizon beyond the forest. "I win and you lose, you pathetic worm" she added, reaching to correct her hair.

As her long, thin fingers took the first grip of those silver strands in her hands, she let herself wonder, for just a moment, what she would do to anyone that rancid little creature cared about when she would finally take a step into the real world. She imagined all of those wonderful fires, burning ever so bright, the people he dared to call close deep inside their molten flames. Yes, she could very much see that. And now — now that she was free from the shackles binding her inside that rotting palace — now, coming back to her new kingdom was just a matter of taking the first step forward.

When she opened her eyes again, however, that laugh died within seconds. She froze.

A thought hit her. She recognized those trees. This wasn't just any forest, no. No. No. No, no, no no no no no, no! It was impossible. She won. She won. Not him. Not them. She did. There was only one ruler, here and everywhere, and this was just not—

Suddenly, from in-between those trees, figures started to appear.

Their first immediately recognizable trait was that they were tired. So, so tired. They had been freed from their animalistic mockeries of forms and returned to baseline Fae bodies, the relief visible upon their restored faces was almost washed out by the pure exhaustion of those one-hundred-and-twelve years of agony. The once-prisoners of the Forest stretched their long limbs, able to finally move freely and without pain for the first time in more than a century.

And all of their gazes were focused just on Mab.

Involuntarily, she swallowed hard.

"No!" She shouted, extending her hand forward. When no sparks of arcane electricity came out of her palm, her eyelids twitched, and she repeated: "No!"

But the figures didn't seem to care about her complaints; they slowly began their march toward her all the same. From every corner of the Forest, from every corner of reality, all of those she had damned to eternal torment so many years ago were now closing in, their faces twisted in an expression of barely comprehensible satisfaction.

"No!" She said once more, beginning to back off, only to trip on some wet piece of grass behind her. "Get back! I command you! Your Queen commands you!"

In the distance, one of the Fae laughed. "You have no power here, oh Queen. Not anymore."

"Liar!" She tried to thunder out into the gale, only to be met by a weak and fragile imitation of her own voice. "You— I— No— I— I— I…"

She continued trying to escape, forging her own desperation into a quick pace, then allowing it to turn into a full-on run. It didn't last long, though, and ended rather abruptly when she fell against a particularly muscular Fae blocking her way. She felt a grip form around her throat, and as she met the gaze of the man before her, she could see nothing but his own smile.

"Oh, but don't you worry, your majesty," he spat out, tightening the grasp of his gigantic hands on that fragile body before him, ignoring the movements that attempted to get her out. "I'm sure your court will treat you just like someone of your position deserves."

"N—ahghggh!" She only managed to get out as she felt a twist of unimaginable agony somewhere in her leg. Then in her arm. Then in her feet. Then in her back. Then everywhere, all at once.

And then, when her subjective reality became nothing but a swarm of furious Fae, her sneers and jeers died out to the cacophony of kicks and hits and punches and spits, one after another, repeating into infinity.

24/11/2021

An Old Cliff, At the Edge of the Horizon

To witness the sunset, Nowak thought, was one of the most moving experiences a human could ever partake in.

His awakening wasn't particularly special. It wasn't even really all that important, in the grand scheme of things. He simply opened his eyes — his very own eyes, for the first time in almost forty years — and knew where he was, who he was, and how he was. He flexed his muscles, felt the cold breeze of the sea blow in his face, and corrected his long hair, just barely containing the will to scratch his burn scar. For a moment, he took it all in.

And before him, the sun was fading.

It was calm, all things considered. He didn't think that something as big as death ever could or even should feel that way. But, as his first end was rather abrupt, he figured it shaped up just a little of bias when it came to what he expected his second conclusion to be like. Ten bullets to the chest weren't exactly the best way to go, but hey, that was that. It wasn't like he could change anything about it, not even if he wanted. At least this one was going to somehow matter.

As he looked toward the star in front of him, he couldn't help but notice its beauty. Those reds, oranges, and yellows blended so seamlessly into the dying sky around it, marking the end of the sun's reign over reality — at least for now. Nowak smiled, falling down on the ground again. The moment he hit that warm ground beneath him and let his legs hang beyond the cliff at the end of reality, he finally let everything go.

He breathed out, and knew that just like the sun, he too will fade soon.

He was surprisingly fine with that. There was no fear, no anger, no will to really do anything else inside him. Just acceptance. The End came for everyone, in its inevitability, so why would he struggle against it? He had once heard someone call death the king of all fears, lurking at the finale of everyone's journey, never letting go. But tonight, he couldn't disagree more. After all, with a life well spent, what was there to fear?

He just lay there, bereft of any thought, staring into the increasingly starry sky above him. With each passing minute, another bright light popped into existence from seemingly nowhere, and he felt more and more of life's fleeting energy leave him. But he didn't close his eyes. No, not yet. He still had to witness that beautiful moment in which day and night met for one final time, before he went. He felt he just needed that, and then he would be done. Just one more time.

He knew that the End would grant him that much, after everything he'd done for it. The sudden appearance of a tall figure at the edge of his vision seemed to very much confirm that belief.

Without any words, the newcomer sat down next to Nowak, legs dangling beyond the cliff. Damien knew exactly what he was — he didn't need to check. He'd met the avatar of death so many times they could almost be considered acquainted. The being that greeted all those that were lonely and unwanted at their very end may have hidden behind the glamour of his close ones, but it was all for nothing. He could feel its presence beside him, even though it very much wanted to hide that with its appearance of Daniel Asheworth.

And still, he felt no fear.

For a moment — for a single, fleeting moment — they exchanged looks. In those cold, cold eyes, Nowak saw just one thing — he saw himself. And, exhaling once more, he let himself get carried by that impression. He let the End pretend to be the only person he ever really came close to, in his final minutes. He didn't want to go alone.

The avatar offered no words of his own. Instead, he extended forward a hand with a lit cigarette, his own smoke already in his hands. Not giving it much thought, Nowak accepted the gift.

And so, there they were, two dark figures sitting somewhere beyond reality, looking into the horizon before them. The final rays of an equally dead sun illuminated their lanky features, and the wind blew the smoke away from their faces, allowing both for a few final breaths without interruption. It felt like lifetimes passed, waiting on that cliff. It felt like lifetimes passed, but that was alright. For tonight, everything was still, everything was silent, and everything was calm.

And everything was okay.

Quietly, as his smoke finished burning, Nowak turned to his companion. "Is it done?"

The other took a long drag and slowly nodded, no emotion present in the expression.

"Alright," A faint smile entered Nowak's face as he let out his final, final breath. For a second, he paused. "I wonder where I'll end up this time," he chuckled.

The other put out his smoke, but didn't answer.

"Guess it's high time to find out," Nowak concluded, and finished his cigarette, too.

As the sun went out, finally dipping below the border of the horizon, the world went dark. Despite a million stars shining above, the cliff below stood engulfed by a sea of calm darkness, devoid of anything to break its tranquility. It stood there like that, uninterrupted and unwitnessed, until the sun came back up again the next morning, shining the rays of a clean light above a new world. For the first time since its inception so long ago, all of creation was finally unshackled from the never-ending struggle of the Mad Sisters.

When that light reached the cliff, it found it empty. The two figures that once witnessed the death of the old reality were now long gone.

The hunt was over.

Jäger, Part 1

GASLIGHT, GATEKEEP, GIRLBOSS

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