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An aged woman strolls over the spillover debris from a nearby ruined apartment with an exasperated sigh. She wore trousers and a loose linen shirt, and had a long cord with a red vial hanging around neck. It was the seventh time this whole walk, and for goodness sake, and it hadn't even been two hours.
Granted, she didn't exactly expect the city to be spotless after a rabid zombie invasion, but she was well within her rights to groan.
The consequences of two years emerged in a day, as all the mistakes built-up over the course of immortality spilled over in a single, crystal night. The Lordbreakers had finally been pushed to their tipping point, as hundreds of them laid siege on the Necroforensics Corporation. The very same evening, there flooded out like a swarm of hornets, feral corpses from the Greenbelt, tails and ears that evoked the aura of a cat and the apathetic eyes and bloodied fangs which invoked the sensation of a preyed-upon mouse.
The moon peers over curiously, and it seems to stand still in awe, watching as the city of immortality decays in on itself. An extant form of life, at the cost of life itself.
It was easy enough to escape the Lordbreaker-Smiley refugee outpost she was chaperoned to; a fistful of catnip while all the guards were looking the other way, and then she simply slipped past amidst the bangs and shouting and shooting and the fighting-for-one's-life.
Now she walks, past the shops and past the houses and past the urban miscellany and spots she memorised like the back of her hand, all ruined. Empty, silent, hollow.
...dead.
The ravenous maw of the end doesn't spare her any crumbs of beauty. She's seen first hand it doesn't, and yet its innocent victims lodge themselves still in the back of her mind. If there's one she can rely on never to discriminate, it would be misfortune.
As she has in the past, she curses it.
She could remember it vividly, even now. The rumble of exploding shells, whoever sending them blinded by the downpour, blasting its presence through the blinding dark and deafening rain. Hardly a distraction enough, she thought as she pushed down on the plunger of the sedative syringe in the base of her groaning charge's neck, from the dozen patients she had to treat alone.
She wasn't even in the front lines, yet could hardly differentiate lightning and explosion. She remembered the old fairy tale, how Robloxia's spirit had rended apart the four empires with thunder just to stop them from rending the world in their greed for an ultimate power.
How history repeats, she thought cynically.
Suddenly, the medical ward's tent flap opened, revealing a man's sopping wet silhouette, and behind him, a glimpse of the downpour outside.
With an apology for the intrusion, the man emerged drenched from his shadow, explaining that he had just come from the front lines, looking for his brother, who he was told was sent here. She blinked, before gesturing to the person she just sedated.
The man's sigh is confirmation enough. He controls his collapse onto the nearest chair as he buries his face in steepled hands, while she just busied herself with making tea for the two of them.
She doesn't know when it started, but the two talked. It gets lonely sitting in a tent all day, and clearly the man needed a distraction.
So they talked. For a minute, then two, then a dozen, then an hour, then several more. Anecdotes, experiences, opinions, jokes, laughter.
Slowly, ever higher, the moon rose, and it wasn't until it was directly above them both that their conversation was interrupted by an artillery shell exploding almost right next to the tent window.
It was here that the man realised how late it was, bowed, and turned to leave. Wait, she called out, as he hadn't even introduced himself.
He turned. Astarossa, he said. Lysa, she replied. He nodded, smiling, before giving his unconscious brother a final glance.
An ember sparked. She welcomed the new light before it would fade.
She shook her head, thinking of him would only make her heart ache ever more so. So she kept on walking, periodically checking if the vial around her neck was still there.
Bloxburg to her nine year-old self was a playground, and no amount of war, time, trauma, or apocalyptic tragedy would ever change it. Every restaurant, every club, every house and neighbourhood, each as indispensable and dear to her as her very own skin and flesh. If Astarossa was her better half, then Bloxburg was doubtless their third. Through sickness and health, life and death, they remain part of each other.
She feels oddly empty. No wonder.
The lack of lighting combined with her extensive knowledge on every lane, alley, and shortcut through Bloxburg lent her a cloak of tracelessness. The first and second horde of PLURRALs she watched prowling across the streets, their fangs crimson and bared, body parts mutated and melting, she found out just how well the ruins make for good hiding spots.
It was the third which found her. It wasn't her first time going through hostile territory, and her dozens of years as a Demon War veteran kept her well trained for such situations; she never did like them however.
It was in a junction, and she had kept close to the walls that the shadows might cover her. As she neared the turn, she took a glimpse right, and the only thing she saw was empty, dead white eyes, staring right back.
It was almost comical, how they both greeted each other with a polite, incredulous blink.
And then the beast bared its fangs with a hiss, the horde behind it responding to the call in kind.
The first to strike was a brilliant idea on her part. The second was her fist, landing with a crack on the zombie's now-deformed face.
Thus she ran with a catgirl horde hot on her heels.
She was going to die here. Alongside the rows of her patients, alongside this subpar medical tent, alongside her several year-old service revolver, and alongside the heavy rain, which could do absolute fuck-all about the sounds of gunshots outside and the artillery getting dangerously close.
It was around midnight when hell broke loose. An onslaught at the front lines led to a front-wide evacuation. Apparently though, despite her medical outpost having walls thin enough that metal would be the better insulator against the cold, it was also one of the furthest from the nearest siren, so when she finally even heard the damned thing blare out amidst the downpour, it was after the gunshots came dangerously close.
She had turned the lights out, and had aimed her pistol at the tent flap; she would never let death take her without a struggle, futile as it may be. The ailing in their beds could hear the sounds of a hostile advance, and yet none could hold a rifle in their state, much less aim.
Footsteps- a group of footsteps, accompanied by gunfire- rapidly advancing on her position. She tensed up, training her gun on the tent flap. Judging by how many there were, and how they all came to an abrupt stop in front of her outpost, she might as well have aimed it at herse-
Astarossa?
The tent flapped open, revealing a man's sopping wet silhouette, and behind him, a glimpse of the downpour outside, alongside what had to have been a whole brigade armed with rifles, trained outwards.
The rest of what was a whirlwind of activity- half of those he brought along (all whom looked like they were coerced into this) quickly followed suit and began helping supporting her patients out of their beds, and slowly carried them (alongside their groans and winces) outside, where the other half gazed into the horizon, guns aimed. Astarossa supervised his crew from the inside, right next to a silent and very baffled her.
It took just under a minute for the whole outpost to be empty save for her and what may very well have been her saviour. He turned to her and flashed a smile as the last injured was escorted out.
Ever higher, the moon rose, and yet it wasn't until it was directly above them both that they both turned to the exit, smiling at each other though the world around them went to hel-
RRRIIIIPP!
A demon- twice as large as Astarossa and wide enough to block the entire medical tent flap just by sitting, with muscles the size of small boulders bulging out of its skin- tore off an entire side of the outpost with its bare hands, before taking the menacing shotgun of its back and aimed right for both of them.
She and Astarossa sidestepped death by about half an inch as they jumped out of the bullet arc. Smirk hidden by the extinguished outpost light, she could make out only that the shotgun was now trained on her-
BANG!
Astarossa's pistol exploded, so did the demon's head. He stared at its collapsing corpse before looking to see if she was injured at all; futile really, even if she was, there'd be no way to tell under all the blood.
Their staring was interrupted by an artillery shell exploding almost right next to the open outpost hole, and they both quickly scrambled away from the mud sent flying in.
...
She asked him awkwardly over drinks, a few nights later once they were safely ensconced behind the front, while they both stared at the ground, how a pistol could produce the same result as a shotgun. Active Drakkobloxer blood, he explained. Not only does a pinch gunpowder keep it from coagulating despite the outside air, it releases several combustive compounds just by living, making the shot flaming lethal.
The flicker of affection has caught drywood it seems, as he rambles on and on about the blood properties of several beasts, and she warmed herself by it before it would inevitably go out.
Compared to the drills she faced during the Demon Wars, this was a leisurely stroll with stops for sightseeing. Compared to the casual races across the city she had with her Astarossa when everyone else was asleep, this was a calm walk.
However much Bloxburg had turned monochrome with his death, the moderate dosage of adrenaline painted the world with just a touch more chiaroscuro.
Oh, and the zombie catgirls pursuing her were quite literally wearing their own bodies down gave her a bit of a smile, she supposed.
But she wasn't trying to outrun them, no. Had she gone full-on demoniacal, she could've left her assailants in the literal dust. No, she wanted them on her trail still. Stopping every junction and diverging path just to turn around and taunt at the horde was a part of the fun.
She dashed across the streets of Bloxburg like this, silently enjoying the pleasant exercise, feeling the vial she strung around her neck sway, counting down the addresses and blocks, until finally, she found a general store. It was abandoned, looted, its doors hanging by the hinges. It pained her to do so, but she took a lighter; placating her guilt, she left some money at the register, hoping it would reach the owner; a middle-aged man with a grizzled beard, if she recalled correctly. As she left, she casually gave a vicious uppercut to the catgirl that tried to jump her.
She continued on like this, past the remains of cafes, cinemas, desecrated graveyards. Each ruin was a stab in the chest, dulled ever so slightly by all the sensations that came with with mild physical exertion. She tuned into the sounds of her footfalls, to the rhythm of her breath, the fingerful of beads of sweat she was slowly getting, all to distract her from the sights of her home desecrated. She was grateful at least somewhat for the life-or-death situation, and for the light chuckles everytime a zombie collapsed trying. to move in spite of how spent their body was.
It took around an hour, but finally she arrived at her location. With any luck, she'd be giving whoever her husband entrusted to bring about dawn a few hours of respite.
And one hell of a show.
She opened the crate closest to the firework store's entrance. Fortunately, the fireworks were not only there, all of their fuses trailed to the bottom. She smashed the lighter on a wall, and had its fluid spread across the bottom of the crate.
She had already used the remains of the lighter to set alight a discarded newspaper on the ground she picked up; the catgirls, meanwhile, had just peaked out of the junction a mile behind her, their smiles dead and blank despite their whole bodies giving way.
With a smile and a prayer for her city, she threw the burning newspaper into the crate and took to her heels- right to the catgirl horde.
Had they any ounce of energy left, they would have hissed and rushed her. She slid on her back to the asphalt, catching her vial flying off its knots with her mouth, slipping between their tangle of legs, and landed a final hook in one of their kneecaps before the world exploded behind her.
This was the most preposterous position she has ever found herself in, but she wouldn't have it any other way. A few hours ago, the front lines collapsed again. Good news, whoever ran their side's whole show realised that needless casualties should be avoided- in other words, she managed to catch the blaring siren and get help evacuating the injured to behind the new defences, not too far off.
Bad news, in the diaspora of the retreating army, she couldn't find Astarossa.
They weren't part of the same battalion, and yet, it seemed fate had an odd way of matchmaking. Everytime her regiment was working as a corps with another, she'd always spot his face somewhere in the crowd. If not, then he'd always spot hers. They'd call, get to talking, forget about the world with each other, and then something would interrupt them both and they'd go on with their duties.
And yet no matter their separation, it never lasted long. Neither particularly objected to fate’s arrangement.
She'd spend time with him in medical bays, in support trenches, the city whenever they got the chance, small patches of serene nature that somehow slipped past the destruction of wartime whenever they found any. It was surprising, funny almost, nice invariably, how their shifting across the lines somehow always led to them both meeting each other.
For the past week, the final push against the Jestorder began, and just as she was getting accustomed to the view of the barren hills torn asunder by artillery fire, she spotted a familiar face staring at her.
Fate really was a romantic.
They waved at each other, an unsaid promise to spend a night together again spendthrifting time and having fun.
Slowly, ever higher, the moon rose, and it wasn't until it was directly above her, as she eavesdropped on high commands and rumours, that their promise might go unfulfilled.
A bitter pill that made itself known in every piece ofdull conversational fare she bit into: only a single battalion had been surrounded in the counter attack. What brought relief to her comrades brought ink-black dread to her. Everything past the realisation was a haze, but she could vaguely remember popping into every soldier camp there was, anxiety growing with every check that Astarossa wasn't there, dropping a smokebomb while all the guards were looking the other way, and then she simply slipped past amidst the bangs and shouting.
Right into a rapidly disintegrating front line.
How poetic: memories flooded in as a flash drizzle set; just as she reached the point of no return too.
She had only the moon and the shots sounding throughout the air to guide her through the darkness. Adrenaline and dread as her escorts though, straying never was a possibility.
She could feel the moon' standing still in the night sky, its incredulous stare from above. Had her goal been anything else, she would be confused as well. But for the one person who had made the war bearable, nice even-
A stray bullet just missed her.
She raised her service revolver to return one in kind.
Astarossa had a friend of his supported on one arm, and his gun heeding off his assailants on the other. Streaks of light dash madly across the field, some just grazing his body.
She watched the whole scene from atop a small hill, and it was with a skipped heart beat that she saw a shadowy figure aim a rifle right at Astarossa.
Time seemed to slow as the stakes made itself known. Telamon damn her if she still missed shots after thirty years of wartime.
Three bullets lodge themselves perfectly into the demon's skull. Astarossa turned around to greet the creature with a bullet of his own, but froze and glanced around for his saviour when his gun honed in on a collapsing carcass.
Their eyes met, hers accompanied by a proud smirk and his by incredulous- though euphoric- surprise.
Ever higher, the moon rose, and yet it wasn't until it was directly above them both that they both turned to the exit, smiling at each other though the world around them went to hel-
They were violently interrupted by Astarossa's friend yelping as an artillery shell exploded just shy of directly adjacent to him, splattering mud all over their clothes, and the three fled with their proverbial tail between their legs, gunfire at their heels.
Adrenaline was gasoline to the fire, and she felt a distinct warmth whenever she saw Astarossa smile.
Bloxburg was not designed with silence in mind. It was quaint, and even after the enzyme made it a powerhouse, it remained that way mostly. There was rarely any hustle-and-bustle, nor were there sidewalks or pavement cramped by a stream of pedestrians. Every citizen of its could attest to an almost sleepy, lulling aura during the first hours of dawnbreak, an invitation to sleep the day away if there ever was one.
But silence was unnatural. Unnerving, on any other day. And tonight, however much she was relieved to have those catgirls chasing after a crateful of fireworks instead of her, the silence was painful. Earsplitting.
She'd much rather have blood pounding in her ears than memories.
Of the city,
of its people,
of Astarossa,
of what she swore herself to do tonight.
The vial swayed against her neck, a convoy for her recollection.
She passes through parking lots, parts through bushes, catches her neck cord on a low-lying branch.
She tried focusing on the absence of feral catgirls; their not being here meant that her detour to set a firework shop alight worked and drew them like a mosquito light.
That meant no more distractions for her, unfortunately.
She finally arrives at her destination: the Church of the Astral Faith. Formerly, the church of Shedletsky, where she and Astarossa got married.
She opens the door, and chaos greets her. Chairs strewn this way and that, the podium toppled, lantern holders toppled and some cracked in two. Her every step invites a creak, emboldened by the silence to become ten times louder than it should be.
Her main target would be the stairs to the side of the entrance. The vial hanging off her neck beckons her to it.
As it has in the past, her heart beckons her somewhere else. The altar, the spot where she made her vows, and listened to her dear Astarossa’s.
And as she has in the past, she forces the thoughts away, and honed in on her orders.
She ascends the marble staircase, following a macabre trail of blood. From the way it’s sprayed, and its positioning, she could’ve deduced that it wasn’t just a dismembered head or something, it was a whole corpse being savagely dragged down the flight of stairs.
Her chest tightened; poor Astarossa.
Lucky for her, the blood trail led her exactly to where she wanted to be. Though the first floor was decked out, clearly for public prayer, the second floor was a lot more quaint, and she could probably find the room where Astarossa was last alive even without the blood.
She opened the door where the blood began to pool beneath.
If the first floor was a mess, this room was a shipwreck and a half. Bookshelves toppled, their contents spilling over the floor, parts of the wall shattered and turned to dust, forlorn. A desk toppled and the chair behind it lying on its back.
A tall, body-shaped absence of dust and overall chaos, there on the wooden surface.
She kicks aside the rubble, its clattering magnified tenfold as it scatters throughout the macabre room. This was the last room in which Astarossa was alive. If this was the case...
…she rummaged through the overturned desk, and found what she was looking for buried in the first drawer’s piles of paperwork.
Astarossa’s service revolver. Polished, aged, fully-loaded, solid, reassuring, lethal; its true wielder lives on within the metal encasement.
Though she’s planned this since Astarossa bid farewell, her hands shook traitorously, tauntingly as she carefully unties the vial from the neck cord. It trembles crimson as she holds it up to the light.
Active Drakkobloxer blood. Astarossa’s last vial, corked and stowed away under their bed, gathering dust. She never did manage to ask how he got several vials worth.
It's a fact that living organic material in the bloodstream was cyanide to anyone that took Necroenzyme.
With a calming breath, she uncorked the vial, and held the revolver face up, popping the spinning bullet chamber out. She slowly poured the glass's contents in, before snapping the chamber back inside, getting a bit of crimson in her own clothes, and it spilling slightly across the handle.
She looked down the loaded barrel of the handgun, the thinly veiled temptation to join everyone and everything the end has claimed.
...
No, no, Astarossa wouldn't be proud about that.
...well, she pondered, setting the pistol down with an exhausted sigh, she could always hide here until Bloxburg resolves itself. She's seen its citizens, and she's welcomed the interplanetary diaspora. If there's anything she believes in now, it's that Bloxburg's inhabitants would fight so that dawn may grace once more their home. Besides, ever since Astarossa's incursion, this particular community hall had long since been abandoned, forlorn, forgotten. The only signs of life, mortal or otherwise, were the scatterings of cockroaches and rats and whatever else had made its home under the rubble.
She set the chair right, and sat where her husband did last, face in her steepled hands.
...?
For all her optimism, she wasn't unrealistic; the little which returned from the Demon Wars did not do so in one piece.
A descendant of the Sinister’s just pulled a coup against the Jestorder’s Hell of Revels, and had signed a peace agreement. There was no celebration, no grand speech.
Just quiet, muted, resignation.
She was waiting a week after the announcement at a front-line train station, just repaired and relieved of its duties as a logistic unit, now restored, bringing those at the front lines back to the pile of ruins that was their home.
How fitting, the person she was chatting the time away with was Astarossa.
Their conversation came to an abrupt halt as the train did too. They looked into each other's eyes: solemn, grateful, longing, passionate.
A silent thank you for everything.
They separated then.
At least, until she left the train and waited to board the next one, to reach Robloxcity, and then transit to Bloxburg.
While she awaited, she saw a familiar face of tan staring incredulously in her direction.
They talked again, saying how coincidence was funny sometimes, but how neither of them minded, really. Desultory conversations, though both carefully avoided any mention of separation, fully intending to let that sorrow be one for their future selves. She wondered quixotically if he too felt a confusing muddle of warmth in his heart when she was near him.
Then the train came, and she forced herself to bid adieu, only for the man to step in himself and say he was taking it too.
Another round of laughs, another half hour where the butterflies in her stomach spread warmth like pollen, another train stop, on which they both left again.
She finally said her farewell when she boarded a car- a mechanical miracle inspired by the technologies of the ancient Doge, with four wheels that could move without a horse- and realised as everyone in the vicinity cramped for a spot on the thing, Astarossa couldn't find a spot in time. They exchanged one final glance at each other as the coachman (a driver, she thinks he was called), her heart begging her to just act before her chance left forever-
And then the car made a turn, and he disappeared from sight, leaving her to dread the future alone.
Until, that was, when she waited for a carriage to Bloxburg on her stop in the Robloxcity outskirts, and she saw a car slow down, with a familiar face looking as unbelieving as she was at meeting her again.
Fate was not being subtle.
They talked for hours, shoulder to caring shoulder, about how they'd miss each other, how funny coincidence was, how happy the other seemed to be just to be able to spend a little more time with-
She planted a kiss right on his lips.
She sees a carriage roll into view, and yet her heart beckons her somewhere else. She almost has herself convinced.
But she's already sworn loyalty to her home. Though her heart ached thinking of what could be, she would never renege a vow.
Cheeks red, she dashes into the carriage, tells the coach her destination, and gives one final smile to her dearest companion in those hellish trenches, laughing a little as she sees his own face turn crimson, and loving him even more so as he nods an acceptant farewell, a prayer for her happiness wherever she went.
Her heart has already built a fireplace around the blaze that man has lit in her heart, and as she arrives at ruined Bloxburg and engages a cheap hotel as she thinks about what she's going to do, she shrivels at the thought of no longer being able to feel its warmth.
…
The habits instilled over dozens of years were hard to break. Before dawn even broke, she was wide awake, walking across the damaged streets the next day.
She sees a familiar face looking at her in incredulity.
…
The marriage took place a week later in the church of Shedletsky, one of the oldest buildings in the village. Attended by most of the townsfolk, who had pieced together from rumours the gist of their love story and had helped them both set the ceremony up. Unalloyed happiness had long forsaken the town, and a marriage right after the war was unthinkable, wondrous, beautiful.
For all her optimism, she wasn't unrealistic; the little which returned from the Demon Wars did not do so in one piece.
She could only be grateful that she's managed to find herself in an oh-so wonderful mosaic.
The blaze that she sheltered, that kept her warm all those years, was finally part of her, fireplace and hearth rug, as they both had their vows solemnized by the one friend of Astarossa's that she's saved a a few weeks ago, who also helped carry the injured out of the medical posts years back, who was a priest before he got drafted into the army-
Le Blanc, preposterous robe and staff and hat and eye put out from the Demon War in full display, and his masked Evangelists following, who didn't look any better honestly, took a breather in an alleyway which had a firepit lit. She had a perfect view of all of them from her vantage point in the empty office.
She saw one of the few people not wearing a mask get up, and everyone else, Le Blanc included, listen with their heads down in reverence. Curiosity edges her towards the hole in the window overlooking the group.
”- sciples of the divine revelation, today we gather…”
”... apostates who resist the embrace of the divine…”
”...a higher apex. A despot-”
…despot?
“ -his demise serves as a warning to those who dare oppose…”
...the window hole, conveniently shaped just enough for the barrel of the pistol to jot out without drawing attention to her in the shade, was a reminder of what she swore to do, the feeling of the cord now off her neck a convoy for recollection.
Her arms feel like trembling, and yet do so in a way that when she raises the pistol upwards, it points to the zealot.
Cold feet turns to coldest loathing as she hears her late husband get so unscrupulously slandered.
"Ross... can I talk to you for a moment?"
”Yes, Lysa?”
"...are you really sure you want to go through with this?
"...I have to. I'm not going to let Bloxburg fall into the hands of those who seek to fanatacize the concept of immortality."
"But... you might..."
"I know."
"...Isn't losing your brother enough? I'm... not happy with the idea of losing you too."
"...I know."
"...Could you promise me something, Ross?"
"...yes?"
"Don't let his death be in vain?"
"I promise."
"..."
"..."
"You'd never lie to me, would you?"
"I- of course not, Lysa? What’s-?”
”Then tell me honestly, do you think you'll be alive to see tomorrow's dawn?”
“...”
“...Ross.”
”...hah, can I invoke my right to remain silent?”
”...”
”...Lysa, please, I’m so-”
”Is this for the good of Bloxburg?”
”Always has been.”
”...”
”...”
”...you answered that so quickly, my dear ‘Rossa.”
”I’m proud to have. I’m sorry, Lysa.”
”...don’t be. Just, save me a seat in the afterlife, alright?”
"...could you promise me something, Lysa?"
"..yes, dear?"
"See to it that this city sees through the dawn? Since I won't really be able to."
"I promise, 'Ross."
”...thank you, Lysa. For everything.”
”...thank you, Astarossa van Buren, for everything else.”
She adjusted his hat, and dusted off his clothes quickly before giving him an approving stare.
He gave a genuine smile, giving her an eternally thankful one in turn.
Slowly, ever higher, the moon rose, and it wasn't until it was directly above them both that their mutual admiration was interrupted by a knock on the window by one of Astarossa’s men waiting outside.
She was thankful at least that she could grieve in advance; had she done so when the news came in, she might not have had the energy to have followed the chaperoning Lordbreakers.
She slotted the gun’s barrel through the hole. Perfect fit.
The blaze that had kept her heart warm all these years has finally left, leaving nothing but cindering remains.
Grief had left already, both Astarossa and the city following suit. All she was left with now was a husk of an identity, and a promise.
Immortality is a soul-crushing responsibility. Those pathetic enough to proselytise it should hold no power.
” -mbrace the divine gift, for we are the chosen, and our destiny is-!”
If there's one she can rely on never to discriminate, it would be misfortune.
As she has in the past, she blesses its soul.
For the crime of apotheosis, the verdict is death; make your deathbed, o’ immortals.