Put an End to This False World

[warriorscribe]

Characters: Enoch and wide open
Setting: Graveyard, morning, slightly forward-dated to when the drops in question are processed.
Format: I'm starting in prose but it doesn't matter.
Summary: A small handful of names show up in the graveyard, and they prove there just might be a right way to break.
Warnings: Hostility will be met with violence right now.

Enoch didn't know how he'd let the graveyard's significance die. He didn't know how the names on the headstones had become a blur. He didn't know how he'd become numb to this job that was once so painful. He even missed Yu's headstone until the moment it came into abrupt clarity for no apparent reason. While he wondered how he could have missed it, wished him and his guardian strength, another nearby caught his eye. He could swear his heart stopped for a moment.

He walked swiftly through the row of tombstones, turning for another pass, in disbelief.

Tohko Amano.
Raphael.
Yotsuba Koiwai.

Tohko. She'd been getting on his nerves and Lucifel's both lately, but she only ever meant the best. He'd never finished writing her his story. At least, books did not crumble on the destroyed worlds. She may not need to eat but she could take comfort in her stories.

Raphael. The first person he recognized from home. Someone he'd been able to confide his suspicion in. Trapped on a dead world with a dead God.

Yotsuba. Such a bright light in such a hostile place. Like so many children before her she'd endeared herself to him immediately. It was always easy to talk to her, even with Eleven's screaming in his mind. Having earned a place in Lucifel's heart and spending time with the both of them, it had begun to feel like a family.

He had promised her he would restore the worlds. Now she herself would fall victim to Ruana if he failed too. Someone so young...someone who had begun to feel like family.

For a moment, it seemed to nearly echo a moment from his near future on Earth, where he would encounter Belial. His fists clenched and his shoulders tightened. Anyone who could see the flaming aura at the back of his neck would see it was flaring out. Eleven screamed shrill in his mind, the only sound he could hear.

Until he screamed back.

His voice rose to drown out the one in his mind, a roar that echoed in the solemn floor. He drew another breath, and screamed again, not in fear but in anger. The third scream found words involved.

"RUANA! I WON'T LET YOU HAVE THEM!" Every word he spoke, he shouted over Eleven, his eyes alight with something dangerous. His Arch found itself in his hands, open and raised. It buzzed as he slashed at the air in front of him.

"YOU WON'T TAKE THEM, DO YOU HEAR ME?"

Comments

[blackestomen]

"We carry on in their place. We do their work in their absence."

There's considerable strength in her tone, as she holds her ground, as she lets Enoch have his space. This isn't her own loss, after all. And it's easier to say the right words and make the right choices when it isn't anywhere near as raw.

"We haven't failed yet. And we won't."

[warriorscribe]

There was a difference between having faith in success and acting as if it was a certainty. And with the stakes raised a little bit more every passing month...

"...There is more to do. Dax's research..."

It's their safest way of learning of a means to stop Ruana. Dax had evidently discovered a great deal. But until then...he only saw the only solution that had been available to him when negotation was not an option.

[blackestomen]

"...Dax's research?" Was that something that she ought to know of? She knew of researching the collar fluid, but... this, what was this?

She took a step closer.

[warriorscribe]

"It was in the message he left for us..." He pulled a copy of it he always kept from his pocket and handed it over to her to read again. "He said it was 'almost everywhere', but sealed away."

[blackestomen]

Zeal cleared the space between them and reached out to take the document. Upon reading the first few words of it, she recognized it. But to re-read it was for it to make sense, for it to finally have a context. "I must've been out of my wits when this first came about..." She muttered softly to herself, and took it all in anew.

"...hidden under glamour? Written in more code?" She rubbed at the edges of the paper with her thumbs, frowning at it, then handed it back to Enoch. It was his, after all.

"The collars fetter our souls, somehow. If... when we solve the mystery of the collar fluid, then perhaps we'll finally have the strength to fully strike back. And perhaps to reveal whatever is hidden all around us. And to save them."

[warriorscribe]

Enoch nodded as he took the note back. "Our powers could be invaluably useful, if they were real. We have among us those that can take us from place to place in a moment, who can heal with a thought..."

[blackestomen]

"And many, many other things even beyond that." How far had Enoch thought this through? There was worry in Zeal's expression, and she searched his for any sign of the same. "If it does happen, this place will likely become even more dangerous. I somehow doubt that all of these unfettered gods and monsters will all agree to work together peacefully."

[warriorscribe]

He'd offered Jason the chance to do it willingly, which would give him and them the best ability to police themselves and keep one another from destroying the tower or something equally drastic. Jason had, understandably, turned it down. But it had been their best chance for safety as far as he was aware and as far as he could see, though his clarity is rather questionable at the moment.

"We will have to keep one another in check, of course. It will be difficult on our own, but we have no choice. The less they can control, the more advantage we have, and we need all we can get. Too few monsters carry weapons to rely on them alone."