Brant grunted. His spine met the ground again. Then he covered his face as Dove hurled corpses aplenty down onto him. The dead weight constricted all movement, no matter how hard he struggled. He craned his neck to see what Dove was doing, and gasped.
Dove swept the crushed tanks off the ground and hurled them at the dome. At last, the iron skeleton gave way. With a metallic groan, the structure leaned over and fell onto the stronghold below, crushing it to bits. After the collapse ended, very little remained standing.
Next, Dove clasped his fingers together, and Princess Chariya flew out of the rubble, bruised and bleeding. She gasped when she came face to face with the white-robed man.
"Do not bethink I have forgotten thee." he spat in her face.
"Neither should you think I have forgotten you." she said, choking the words out. "I remember you every day, you vile—"
"Thou didst indeed slip through my fingers in the Iron Hallway, when I was but its overseer. But alas, here you are before me, and I intend not to repeat the pattern. Thou shalt not evade me again, Princess."
"I beg to—"
Dove gave Chariya no opportunity to finish her statement, slamming her into the ground. She yelped when her spine contorted to meet the contours of the bumpy terrain. Then he lifted her up again and grinned wickedly.
"Thou art beautiful, fair, and lovely. And thy potential for greatness is admittedly immense. But alas, thou hast thrown it all away, and for what?"
"The happiness and welfare—"
Dove threw her into the ground again before she could finish. "I did not permit thee to speak. Now, believe thou me, it grieveth me much to contemplate my next action. But it behooves me to do so."
Chariya opened her mouth, but her neck snapped before she uttered a sound. Her body went limp. Dove hurled her corpse at a rifle driven into the ground like a stake. The butt of the gun ripped through her belly and impaled her.
Brant gasped in horror at the sight. He cried out in anguish as he struggled to remove himself from the pile of corpses before he became like them. Dove leapt high into the sky and hurtled down into the trapped warrior.
********************
Aaron raced over to the mangled remains of the Sand Dollar with widened eyes. His eyeballs stung as wind rushed across their moist surfaces. He skidded to a halt and fell to his knees. His head dropped to the ground just before his tears did.
He glanced up when he heard a dragging sound around the corner. Aaron leapt up to investigate, only to gasp. Sila dragged itself out of the wreckage with only arms, torso, and head intact, its legs nowhere in sight. It reached out slender fingers to Aaron.
Aaron dropped down and grabbed the robot's hand. "Sila..."
"Hannah gone." the robot said.
"What?" he shouted, his eyes somehow becoming both wider and wetter.
"Master, help."
With that, the robot collapsed and moved no more. Aaron sobbed.
After a few minutes of mourning, he snapped his head up at the sound of twigs snapping. Ace was approaching.
"What happ—oh no." Ace mumbled.
Aaron wiped his face, a fruitless gesture. "Sila said...Hannah's gone."
Ace's hand met his lips. "No way."
The dark-skinned man scrambled atop the pile of ruins, a jumbled mix of metal and twisted wood. With a stumbling gait, Aaron followed.
Ace grimaced at the sight of the disembodied head of an Insurgent soldier, sitting beside the bloody shard of glass evidently responsible. With gentle footsteps, he continued to step across the unstable surface. He stopped at an unnaturally clean-cut hole and pointed it out to Aaron.
"Who could've cut that?" he asked.
Aaron shook his head. "Sila had to get out somehow."
With a shrug, Ace stepped through the opening, Aaron close behind. His eyes softened at the sight of a demolished cockpit, a shadow of the beautiful space it had once been. Sila's legs lay on the ground back near the pilot's seat. The copilot's seat hung above them, smashed into the ceiling, which in that spot more closely resembled what had been the floor.
Aaron collapsed to his knees before a pink cardigan of Hannah's, which now was defiled by a splash of blood. Shotgun shells lay strewn about on the floor. Aaron hung his head and fell once more into mourning while Ace continued examining their surroundings.
********************
Dove swept Brant out from the pile of bodies and hurled him at the ground. Brant created an axe in his hands and swung it at his foe, who spun him with a whirling wind. He dropped the weapon and watched as it collapsed to dust.
When Dove leapt at him with an outstretched foot, Brant gritted his teeth and thought up a new weapon. But only a handle appeared in his hand. He rolled to the side and panicked. Out of particles now, of all times?
Dove leapt at Brant again. This time, Brant snatched him by his ankle and pinned him to the ground. He punched the man's square jaw multiple times, only to fly skyward in a whirlwind. He dropped down into the pile of corpses again.
Brant snatched up a pistol from one of the bodies and fired it at Dove, keeping his hand concealed as he did so. Having failed to see the shot coming, Dove made no move to prevent impact. The projectile buried itself in his ankle, causing him to holler in pain. But with a deep breath and a folding of his hands, he appeared to recover.
Dove floated over to Brant and chuckled. "I came to kill thee, but alas, I shall do far worse. I shall leave thy body alive, yet kill thy spirit."
Brant gritted his teeth. "I'll never let you—"
"All this calamity rests upon thy head. If not for you, these eleven days past would have transpired far differently. Thy selfish quest for thine own honor hath culminated in this." he said, motioning to the desolate battlefield full of ruins.
Brant had no reply but a glare.
"Well, I shall now take my leave of thee."
With that, Dove floated back into the clouds with a whirlwind. He also gathered all his troops and their vehicles with him into the breezy swirl. Together, the entire Alcontean horde vanished into the skies above. Brant hung his head and knelt on the ground.
He had only a few minutes to process his grief before Aaron raced his way and kicked him in the ribs. Brant grunted and clutched the bruise. Aaron continued with a second kick before lifting him up by his neck and hurling his spine into a nearby tree. With his other hand, he bombarded Brant's face with brutal punches, against which he was too weak to defend himself.
Aaron threw one last swing at Brant's jaw before watching him slump agains the trunk. "Look at what you've done!" he bellowed, "Keira's gone, because of you! So's Hannah! So's Sila, and my ship! It's all your fault!"
Brant gasped when another kick bruised his ribcage, the sensation as if the bones had been shoved into his lung. "Hannah's...gone?"
"She is, you bloody chinless wonder!"
Tears dropped from Brant's bruised face. His conversation with the girl from behind the cell bars replayed in his mind, and the accuracy of her foresight increased his misery tenfold.
"At the end of the day," she'd told him, "you're fightin' for your own honor. Well, what happens if ya fail? You're honor'll be marred, and tossed into the dust."
Brant stared at the ground beneath him, his tears wetting the pile of dust that had once been one of his battle axes.
"Will the effort still have been worth it?"
"I think so." he'd said.
"No." he mumbled to himself presently. "No, it's not. Not in the slightest."
"What if others get wrapped up in dis conflict, and they get hurt an' suffer? Is it still worth it then?"
He shook his head again. "No, definitely not! My honor wasn't worth all this."
As Brant consumed himself in guilt, Aaron knelt on his knees and continued his own grieving. He glanced up when Wendy landed beside him with a thud and threw her helmet aside. She stared into his eyes with a wrinkled brow and concerned eyes. Without a word, her gaze carried sympathetic understanding, and she nodded. She closed her eyes and kissed his cheek. Wendy cradled Aaron's head in her arms and laid her head atop his.
Ace and Baird stepped onto the scene at the same time and eyed one another with tightened lips. Baird dropped to his knees in prayer, while Ace stepped over to Aaron, and with hesitation, laid a hand on his shoulder.
A few minutes of silent mourning followed before Brant spoke.
"I'm sorry, guys." he mumbled through his tears, "For everything."
Aaron coughed. "Too little, too late."
TO BE CONTINUED...
********************
A/N: My. Heart. Is. Broken. You know how I was asking last time how much more could possibly go wrong? Well...here ya go. I'll have you know I was actually in tears writing this.
And I get it if you're mad at me, and to add insult to injury, this is the end of the book. Yes, it ends on this cliffhanger. BUT there is a sequel/finale upcoming, and there'll only be a week's gap between this chapter and the first of the IRON PILLARS. So stick around for that, and we'll see then how much of this our beloved heroes can fix.
Now, even though a cliffhanger it is indeed, this is the end, and as such, I'd like to ask you some questions, if you wouldn't mind. Just to gauge how successful I was in writing this, and also see where I can improve.
So I've probably asked this more than once in a few ways, but now that you've seen all, who's your favorite character, and why?
Least favorite character?
Do you have a favorite scene/chapter/arc, and if so, which one?
How were the settings?
What would you say is/are the key thing(s) you'll take away from this story?
Any miscellaneous things you really enjoyed that you'd like to mention?
And conversely, anywhere you'd want to point out some room for improvement?
With that, I'll wrap this up. Thank you so much for reading! You're quite literally the reason I write at all. I mean after all, if I weren't hoping for some sort of readership, then I'd do far better to settle with an active imagination and frequent daydreams. So thanks for coming along on this journey with me, and I hope you enjoyed yourself thoroughly. I hope to see most of you in the sequel when it's up, but if this is where you'd prefer to end it, again, thank you, and have an awesome day.
God bless,
Y. I. Turner