Walking elegy: chapter 11: Live for those who can not

Loss has a taste. It is the coppery tang of blood on the tongue, the acrid ash of incinerated hope, and the sterile, empty flavor of absolute defeat.

It is the taste of the dirt I was currently lying in, my face pressed against the cold, churned earth of a battlefield we had so decisively lost.

My body was a cathedral of pain.

Every stone and spire of it ached, a symphony of broken things conducted by the fist of a True Dragon.

I could not feel the touch of the blue stone of Stillness which if nothing was done meant that the effects would soon be gone.

My magic felt spent even though it should not be possible.

It felt like a well scraped dry.

She must have done something while I was unconscious.

My limbs felt like leaden weights, too heavy to lift.

The only thing lighter than air was my spirit, a tattered flag ready to be torn from its pole.

And through the haze of my own ruin, she stood.

Velgrynd.

The Scorch Dragon.

My… sister.

She looked as pristine as if she’d just stepped from a royal court, not a cataclysmic battle.

Her azure blue cascaded like a clear waterfall, untouched by sweat or grime.

Her dress was immaculate too.

She looked as if she was  a goddess surveying a world she had deemed unworthy, and I was the mangy creature at her feet.

“Comfortable down there, little sister?” Her voice was a silken purr, laced with condescending amusement.

It was the sound of absolute victory, and it grated against the raw edges of my soul.

If I could have, I would have tried slapping the this expression the fuck out of her face.

I pushed myself up onto my elbows in a effort that felt herculean, that sent fresh shards of agony lancing through my ribs.

I didn't let it show.

The world swam for a moment before righting itself. “I’ve had better naps,” I croaked, my throat raw.

She chuckled, a sound like crackling hearth-fire. “You put on a respectable show. For a newborn. That little trick with the planetoid… ‘Paradise Lost’? A bit dramatic, but I appreciate the flair. It almost felt like a real fight.”

I said nothing.

What was there to say?

She was right.

It had been a show.

A desperate, flailing performance for an audience of one who had already written the review.

She began to pace a slow, lazy circle around me, her heels sinking slightly into the mud. “It’s a pity, really. All this potential, wasted on such… fleeting sentiments. You fight for a patch of dirt, for the chittering of insects who will be dust in a blink of my eye. It’s beneath you, Nanana.”

“They have names,” I whispered, the words tasting like ash. “They have lives.”

“Do they?” She stopped, tilting her head in genuine, infuriating curiosity. “Or are they just patterns of dirt, temporary collections of matter that briefly achieve consciousness before returning to the void? You and I, we are the void and the fire. We are the concepts that give their lives context. To bind yourself to them is like a hurricane mourning every leaf it tears from a tree. It is a fundamental misunderstanding of your own nature.”

I thought of Shale and how even in war, he still cared, had empathy for those who would not have such for him.

I thought of Borin, hammering hope into a piece of metal.

I thought of Kael, tending toflowers for a child he might never see.

Patterns of energy?

They were stories.

They were people, people who mattered.

“You wouldn’t understand,” I said, my voice gaining a sliver of strength.

“Oh, I understand perfectly,” she countered, her eyes glinting. “I understand the burden of attachment. The pain. The exhausting, grinding weight of caring for things so fragile. It is a sickness, little sister. And I have the cure.”

A cold dread, sharper than any physical pain, began to uncoil in my gut. “The cure?”

She smiled, a beautiful, terrible thing. “Come with me. To the Empire. Your power is too significant to be left to fester in this backwater nation of monsters. Under my guidance, under the Emperor’s banner, you will achieve your true potential.”

I stared at her, disbelief warring with a rising tide of fury. “You want me to betray everything I’ve helped build? Protected? Everyone I… care for? Everyone who died for me? Are you stupid enough to believe that I would actually do that?”

“I prefer dying,” I told her honestly “before betraying them.

“Betrayal is such a mortal word,” she waved a dismissive hand. “This is an evolution. A shedding of unnecessary skin. You think you’ll hate me for it. You’ll rage and scream, I’m sure. But in a century, two at most, you will look back and thank me. You will see this for what it is: the only logical choice. The proper decision.”

At that moment, it clicked, what she wanted to do.

My choice here didn't matter.

It was ironic really.

I had created something to not feel and it would probably be something similar that she will make, use of me to make me obey.

Still, the sheer, unadulterated arrogance of it was to be commanded.

The casual way she spoke of overwriting my will, my memories, my very soul.

The last reserves of my energy coalesced into a single, pure point of defiance.

I had lost.

I knew that yet it didn't mean I couldn't show some resistance even when paltry.

I looked her dead in the eyes, my own blazing with what I knew was a final, futile fire.

“Go fuck yourself, Velgrynd.”

The air stilled.

For a heartbeat, the smug amusement on her face flickered, replaced by something colder, sharper.

Then, it was back, wider than before. She placed a hand on her chest in mock affront.

“Is that any way to speak to your older sister? After all the… personal attention I’ve shown you today? Such ingratitude.”

It was then that I felt it. A slow, insidious drain. A flicker in the cold, blue circuitry of my mind.

The Stillness was running out.

The magical dam I had built against the ocean of my own emotions was cracking.

I could feel it, a spiderweb of fractures spreading through my consciousness.

The numb, clinical void that had protected me was receding, and in its place, the tide was returning.

First, it was the pain. Not the physical agony of broken bones and burned flesh, but the deeper, more profound ache.

The memory of Klik’s lifeless eyes.

The weight of 300,000 souls I had called ‘collateral.’

The ghost of a doll in a father’s hand. It crashed over me, a wave of pure, concentrated guilt.

The millions I had killed.

The want to only want to be nothing.

I gasped, my body trembling.

Then came the despair. The utter, soul-crushing certainty of our defeat.

The knowledge that every sacrifice, every life spent holding this line, had been for nothing.

This was the end.

Tempest would suffer because of my failure.

Rimuru’s dream would be drowned in even more blood and fire, and it was my failure.

And beneath it all, the oldest and most familiar feeling of all: the want to die.

The simple, desperate yearning for it all to just stop.

The silence.

The peace. The end of the pain.

It was a siren’s call, more potent than any magic, more seductive than any promise of power.

The world narrowed to the dirt beneath me and the triumphant form of the True Dragon above.

The sounds of the distant, mopping-up battles faded.

There was only the roaring in my ears and the crushing weight of everything I could no longer suppress.

I couldn’t fight her.

I couldn’t save my people.

I couldn’t even save myself from the torrent of feeling now drowning me.

There was only one thing left to do. Let go.

My vision blurred with unshed tears.

I looked past Velgrynd, up at the smoke-choked sky, and spoke to the only family I had left, a world away.

“At least I tried,” I whispered, the words a raw confession to the uncaring air. “It matters, right, Rimuru? I tried living. In this shitty, painful world… I really tried.”

A single, hot tear traced a path through the grime on my cheek. It felt like a betrayal. A sign of the weakness I had fought so hard to conquer.

“I know you’ll win in the end. You always do. You’re the protagonist, after all.” A sob hitched in my throat.

“I just hope you’re not too broken by it. I hope you, Veldora, Milim… I hope you all live a long, happy life. I hope Shale, Lyra, Borin, Kael… I hope they get away. I hope they live.”

It was a prayer.

A final, desperate wish sent into the void.

I felt Velgrynd’s presence shift. The time for talk was over.

I saw her hand extend toward me, wreathed in the complex, golden light of a teleportation spell.

This was it.

The end of my freedom.

The beginning of my erasure.

Had it been only me and would it not result in me hurting the ones I was supposed to protect, I think that maybe I would have even been happy.

I closed my eyes.

I let the darkness take me.

I welcomed it.

And then the world erupted in sound.

My eyes flew open. The golden light around Velgrynd’s hand sputtered and died as she turned, a look of mild, irritated curiosity on her face.

The sound was a roar.

Not of fear or pain, but of defiance.

A unified, thunderous cry that shook the very ground.

And then I saw them.

They poured over the crest of the shattered hill, a tide of broken armor, bloodied fur, broken fangs and scales and determined faces.

Thousands of them.

Dozens of thousands.

The shattered remnants of my army.

The soldiers who were supposed to have retreated, to have fled to fight another day.

And at their front, leading the charge, were four figures that made my heart stop dead in my chest.

Shale, his massive form a moving mountain, his great-axe held high, a guttural roar tearing from his throat.

Borin, his beard matted with blood, a war-hammer in one hand and a shimmering, half-shattered shield construct in the other.

Lyra, her face pale but set with an unshakable resolve, her hands already seemingly weaving a complex protective spell.

And Kael, his scales chipped, his spear held tight, his eyes not on the god-like being before him, but on me.

His gaze was not one of fear, but of fierce, unyielding loyalty.

His gaze was one saying everything would be alright when we both knew it was not the case, when we both knew it was a lie.

No.

The word was a silent scream in my mind.

No, no, no, no.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?” The scream that tore from my lungs was raw, shredded with a terror I had never felt.

“RUN! YOU HAVE TO RUN! YOU CAN’T WIN THIS! YOU KNOW THAT! THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO!”

My voice broke. I was begging. “Please… just run.”

Velgrynd let out a soft, delighted laugh. It was the most horrifying sound I had ever heard.

“Well, now,” she mused, her voice dripping with mock admiration. “And I thought your little bugs would have been smarter. That they would have fled with all you did for them. They may be beastly things, but they are loyal, at least. How… quaint.”

She cracked her knuckles, a sound like splitting granite.

A predatory smile graced her lips. “I think I can play a little more.”

The world descended into a nightmare.

Shale was the first to reach her.

He moved with a speed that belied his size, his axe coming down in an arc, one probably strong enough to cleave a mountain in two.

It was the most powerful blow I had ever seen him strike.

Velgrynd didn’t dodge. She didn’t block. She simply raised a single finger.

The obsidian edge of his daughter’s axe met her fingertip.

There was a sound like a universe dying—a high, sharp ping.

And the axe, that sacred relic, that last piece of what he had told me had been a loved one, shattered into a million glittering shards.

Shale stared, dumbfounded, at the broken haft in his hands.

He didn’t even see the casual backhand swipe that followed.

There was no grand explosion, no flash of light.

His head simply snapped to the side with a sickening crack that echoed across the suddenly silent battlefield.

The Ogre fell to the ground, his massive form as still and silent as the stone he was named for.

“NO!” The scream was Borin’s.

The dwarf roared, slamming his hammer on the ground.

A dozen of his finest war-constructs, masterpieces of rune and steel, erupted from the earth, their crystalline cores glowing with lethal intent.

They surged forward, a phalanx of magical engineering.

Velgrynd sighed, as if bored by a child’s clumsy drawing.

She snapped her fingers.

A wave of invisible force, pure, compressed acceleration, rippled out from her.

It didn’t strike the constructs; it simply passed through them.

And as it did, they un-made themselves.

Gears dissolved into rust. Steel turned to flakes of iron.

Crystalline cores blinked out of existence. In less than a second, everything left of Borin’s constructs was a pile of fine, metallic dust settling on the mud.

Borin stood, his face a mask of stunned comprehension.

Velgrynd flicked her wrist.

A shard of what had once been one of his constructs, now superheated to a plasma, shot through the air and punched clean through his chest, leaving a fist-sized, smoldering hole.

He looked down at the wound, then up at me, his eyes wide with surprise.

Then, he toppled forward.

It was a slaughter.

A systematic, effortless dismantling of them all.

She moved through their ranks not like a warrior, but like a reaper.

A glance turned a platoon of harpies to falling cinders.

A stomp of her foot sent a shockwave that pulverized a century of lizardmen.

She was playing with them, demonstrating the absolute, meaningless chasm of power that lay between a True Dragon and the rest of creation.

And through it all, my eyes were locked on Kael.

He was trying to get to me.

He wasn’t attacking her. He was dodging, weaving, using his agility to bypass the main carnage, his spear used as a vaulting pole.

His eyes were fixed on mine, desperate and determined.

He was almost there. Twenty feet. Ten.

Velgrynd noticed. She finished immolating a squad of ogre mages and turned her head.

She saw the young lizard man scrambling toward his general.

She didn’t even gesture. She just looked at him.

Kael’s body suddenly glowed with an intense, internal heat.

He stumbled, a look of confusion on his face.

He looked down at his own hands, and I saw his scales begin to curl and blacken.

He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out, only a torrent of superheated steam and blood.

He crumbled, his body collapsing into a charred, smoking husk, the sketch of his mate and unborn children still tucked in his pouch.

Something in me broke.

The dam inside of me, that I tried to get a hold on, even without Stillness shattered completely.

A raw, animal keen ripped from my throat. I curled into a ball, my body wracked with sobs I could not control.

I cried for Shale. I cried for Borin.

I cried for Kael and his stolen future.

I cried for every single soldier being butchered around me because of me.

The tears were hot, endless, and they felt like the only true thing left in the world.

The sounds of battle died down.

The roaring faded, replaced by the moans of

the dying and the crackle of distant fires.

Velgrynd had finished her game.

I lay there, broken and sobbing, in a field of corpses that had once been my friends, my soldiers, my people.

A soft rustling sound reached my ears. So faint, I almost mistook it for the wind.

I forced my head up, my vision swimming with tears.

Through the carnage, a figure was crawling.

It moved with agonizing slowness, a broken, bloody thing dragging itself through a carpet of the dead.

It was Lyra. Her left arm was gone, torn away at the shoulder.

A deep gash ran across her face, and one of her legs was bent at a sickening angle.

She must have been using some form of elven magic, making her life-signature blend into the earth and death around her.

This could be the only reason why she was still alive.

What was she doing? I thought.

Her eyes met mine. They were glazed with pain, but in their depths, there was no regret. Only a fierce, unwavering light.

She needed to leave.

She needed to escape.

Maybe to play dead but not come toward me with that expression screaming I would save you.

She clawed her way the final few feet, her one remaining hand closing around my wrist.

Her grip was surprisingly strong.

“Why?” I choked out, the word a wet, broken thing. “Lyra, why? Why didn’t you all escape? Why didn’t you leave? Why did you… why did you do this… for me?”

She smiled then. A soft, gentle, heartbreaking smile that held more strength than any of my draconic power ever could. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth.

“Because,” she whispered, her voice a ragged breath, “you are someone worth dying for.”

The simplicity of it, the sheer, unassailable truth in her words, shattered what was left of my heart.

She coughed, a wet, painful sound. “My Lady… Nanana… can you… will you listen to my last request?”

I could only nod, my sobs reduced to silent, shuddering tremors. “Of course,” I breathed. “Anything.”

Her one hand tightened on my wrist. “Live.”

The word hung in the air between us, simple and impossible.

“Go on,” she pleaded, her eyes boring into mine.

“No matter how hard it gets. No matter how much it hurts. Don’t you dare give up. Don’t give up on your emotions. Don’t give up on yourself. Don’t give up on feeling. The pain… the pain means you’re still here. It means you still care.”

With a final, monumental effort, her other hand fumbled at her belt.

Her fingers closed around a small, crystalline device, a single-use teleportation beacon.

The kind used for high-value asset extraction.

They were rare and expensive things.

Her having this also meant that she could have left since the beginning of this all yet she had chosen to stay, to suffer.

Why?

“I want you to live,” she gasped, her strength fading fast. “For all of us here… who won’t be able to.”

Her thumb pressed down on the beacon.

A blue light enveloped me, cold and sterile. The world began to dissolve into static.

And at that moment, Velgrynd noticed. She turned from surveying her handiwork, her eyes narrowing at the faint magical signature.

A flicker of annoyance crossed her face.

“A final, stubborn little bug,” she said, and with a casual flick of her wrist, she sent a ribbon of pure, white-hot fire snaking across the battlefield.

There was no time to scream. No time to react.

The fire engulfed Lyra.

I saw it all in horrifying, crystal-clear detail, framed by the shimmering blue field of the teleport spell.

Her clothes vaporized.

Her skin blackened and cracked. Her silver hair became a torch.

The stench of burning flesh filled my nostrils.

And through it all, as the flames consumed her, Lyra kept her eyes locked on mine.

And she smiled.

It was not a smile of pain, or of fear. It was a smile of absolute, unshakable faith.

A final, silent smile that seemed to scream to the world that she was satisfied that her choice had been the right one.

That I was worth the inferno.

Then, the world wrenched itself inside out.

The last thing I saw was her burning form, a smiling martyr against a canvas of death, before the teleportation spell snatched me away into the void.

The last thing I saw was infinity shining in different shades.