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schaaadenfreude · 6 years

Text

emptiness

mentions of character death after the cut. implied Asra x MC in the form of my apprentice Kye. another ‘bad end’ because apparently i can’t leave well enough alone.

“Ever since the plague returned, people say they hear things from the Lazaret, even from the Vesuvian shore. Some say it sounds like a raven, but I heard it, and no raven ever made those sounds,” said the fisherman nervously as the little dinghy nosed up to the shore of the Lazaret.

“Yes, I heard it, too,” Asra replied. It took more than he thought he had to sound normal, and even then, the words came out bleak and hollow. He had one hand buried under his vest where Faust kept a loop of her tail around his wrist. His hand was starting to tingle from her fierce hold, but he couldn’t bear to lose the contact. “I’ll be back soon, if you can wait here. I just… I need to see it for myself.”

Asra had only set one foot on the soot-stained beach when a terrible sound rose from the depths of the island, discordant and shrill. It bore passing resemblance to the shriek of a crow or raven, but only in the harsh vibrato that grated along every nerve in him. Even Faust tightened her hold in reaction and sent him little flickers of unease. The scream lasted for what felt like an eternity, trailing slowly into a deeper register that thrummed in his ribcage, until it cut off with such suddenness that his ears rang.

Vaguely, Asra heard little splashing and thumping sounds. The fisherman who had brought him knocked their oar against the side of the dingy as they shuddered in a paroxysm of terror. He just had to hope that their fear would hold them in place until he did what he had to do.

The unearthly scream did not repeat when Asra stepped fully onto the Lazaret. No sound, not even the whisper of wind through the leafless trees, accompanied him deeper into the island. No matter how much he listened, the only noise was his own footsteps; even that sound was muted, as if the silence swallowed it. He had heard a silence like this before. It was the kind of silence that listened back.

It took a few tries to speak into that silence. “Kye? Are you there?” Asra hated that his voice broke when he spoke their name.

WHY?

Suddenly it was there, right in front of him, making him gasp so hard he choked. It looked like a raven the way Lucio’s specter had resembled a goat: hugely tall, humanoid but for the head, with scaled avian feet and bedraggled white feathers. It didn’t just look like a raven; it looked like Zenobi, Kye’s familiar. It peered at him through its right eye which glowed faintly red.

WHY? it repeated, and opened its beak. The cry that emerged rattled like dry old bones. YOU DO NOT BELONG HERE, ASRA.

He winced when that which had once been Kye said his name. “Neither do you.”

LEAVE THIS PLACE, ASRA. YOU FAILED.

The accusation struck him like a blow. “I tried,” he whispered, feeling the sting of tears in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Kye. I tried everything I could think of.” He knew that this was not Kye. He knew that arguing with it was useless. Even so, he reached out in supplication toward the entity that wore the aspect of his beloved.

YOU FAILED, ASRA. YOU FAILED ME. YOU FAILED NADIA. YOU FAILED ILYA. YOU FAILED US ALL.

Guilt drove Asra to his knees, bowed him under its unbearable weight. Kye was right. He had failed. Failed to save Kye from the plague they contracted. They had come to the Lazaret to die, and left behind this reminder of Asra’s inadequacy.

He’d failed to stop the palace guard from arresting Ilya. Without Kye’s testimony and support, Asra had failed to convince Nadia that Ilya’s death would not solve any of her problems. He’d cut Ilya down from the gallows when the curse had prevented him from dying of a broken neck, but the guards had prevented Asra from interfering when they cut Ilya’s head off and burned his twitching corpse like they would a witch. Asra had not been arrested, but only because he had vanished from among the guards before Nadia had reached them to deliver the sentence.

Only a day after that, word reached Asra as he wandered the market under a glamor that he had failed once more. Nadia had fallen into another catatonic slumber.

WHY DID YOU COME HERE, ASRA?

He’d known better than to come here. This was not Kye, no matter that it wore their semblance and spoke in a rasping mockery of their voice. He had known that the only thing he would accomplish by coming here was to make himself even more miserable. But he deserved to be miserable, didn’t he, as punishment for his failure? Hah, now he understood how Ilya felt. Now he did, long after he had any hope of making things right with Ilya. It was too late.

TOO LATE TO SAVE ANYONE. TOO LATE TO SAVE ME. ASRA, WHY DIDN’T YOU SAVE ME? YOU SWORE YOU WOULD DO ANYTHING FOR ME.

He’d done everything in his power, anything he could think of. But it hadn’t been enough. Asra couldn’t speak, could hardly breathe for the sobs that piled up in his throat. Not even Faust’s attempt to comfort him, to draw his attention away from the thing that was not Kye, could free him from the burden of his own inadequacy.

ASRA. LOOK AT ME.

Even though everything else was a blur of tears, when Asra looked up, he saw it. It had turned its head to regard him from what would have been its left eye. But where Kye’s face had been scarred, on this creature, there was a gaping pit. Cracks radiated from it as if there were faults in the very fabric of reality. The craggy pit was black as pitch, but more so. As if it swallowed every photon of the dim moonlight that shone down upon them. It swallowed him, too, the longer he gazed into that void.

THERE IS NOTHING LEFT FOR YOU, IS THERE, ASRA? the blackness asked.

“No.” Kye had been his everything. Their smile had pulled the sun from the sea every morning. Their laughter had been the wind that brought him home. Just knowing that Kye had been on the earth at the same time as he was, knowing that he’d breathed the same air that has passed through their lungs, had given him strength in his darkest hour. He’d thought himself the luckiest human being in the world for knowing them. And now, all that luck had run dry.

GO, THEN. TAKE YOUR EMPTINESS AWAY FROM ME. And then it was gone as swiftly as it had appeared, leaving him even more alone than before.

#the arcana #asra #asra x mc #bad end #angst #character death

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