Sempiternity (COMPLETED)

XVIII Part 2

It took Arend a long time to respond to Bestim's invitation to defeat. He looked everywhere but in Bestim's eyes, and thought long and hard of that which was revealed to him. The Ark continued to fall ever closer, and Klaytaza continued to look upon the two with her sad eyes.

            Finally, he chuckled and a sad smile traveled along Arend's harsh face. "No matter how I look at it, I can't give up. Not after I've come so far. All this time, I screamed about having no emotions and defying humanity, but I was propelled by jealousy and fear and isolation this entire time... And then I met Klaytaza, and I began to fight for love. Love for what? I cannot say. But now... I'm not even confused anymore. It's like... I just feel nothing. It's what I've been looking for all this time, but I can't even comment on how it feels to reach the end. I just know that this is my end."

            "That is how eternity feels. We have become anonymous. We are seraphs of nothingness. I ask you again to look in my eyes and revel in our despair."

            "You say that you know everything about me... So do you know why I came here? Why I started this in the first place, and what I said I would do?" Arend looked up to Bestim, but his eyes were not wallowing in dark despair. On the contrary, they seemed to be melting with fiery defiance. Bestim was taken aback, and hesitated to answer.

            "Of course. You wanted to see how the world ends. Then you received power, and you wanted to end the world and all redemption yourself. And in your heart you wished to reach eternity with Klaytaza."

            "You're mostly correct," Arend stated. "but not entirely. I wanted Klaytaza's love, to be sure — but I knew she does not really love me. She is incapable of doing so... She's just an android, after all. That's why I promised to her that I would end it — all of it. Everything. Even if I become nothingness, I will not allow the world to be recreated anew. I will not allow her to live through history again!"

            Bestim stepped down and looked at Arend with wide eyes. "Even knowing that she will betray you and has no choice but to listen to the Creator, and even knowing that you will become the very objects you fought against, and even knowing you face eternal purgatory within your own mind, you would continue to fight? You would continue to resist?"

            "You should know that I would choose to do so," Arend retorted. "We are one and the same."

            "Yes... You are correct. I had hoped it wouldn't come to this, but I knew it would."

            Bestim raised his arms in the sign of the cross, and in both hands manifested long weapons identical to those Arend and Klaytaza wielded. In response, both of them raised their blades to the man as well.

            Klaytaza did not waste a second before bursting forward, her sword flashing as she swung it wildly around her. Meeting Bestim head-on, she slashed haphazardly, but each flick of her muscular wrist had the potential to cleave Bestim in two. The man who held all Eternity within his breast was not one to be trifled with, however, and he easily blocked her slashes with both blades as if it was child's play.

            As the two battled, the final skin of the massive man on the cross began to erode; all that was left was the skin around his cranium, the Ark. The long silver hair on his head had long since began to fall out, leaving his scalp bare, and the fine white hairs fell upon the platform like quiet snow in a restless storm. Where the skeleton of the colossal man was hanging from the otherworldly cross hung, light radiated and brightened the dark clouds above all.

            "I have fought this battle countless times and won countless times," Bestim said without any inflection. "I am the immortal emperor of this ephemeral kingdom, anonymous and imaginary, and you cannot hope to defeat me." Light glared off his blades for but an instant as he attacked Klaytaza for the first time, and what appeared to be a casual wave of his blades was enough to send her flying through the air and crashing to the ground.