The Last Goodbye

  The bright auroras had almost faded when he finally reached the clearing. All the Ancients were already gone. Even the queen. Even Darius. There was nothing left.

  Except for a single figure in the center. Hands still gripping tightly onto her sword that was two-thirds into the ground, her entire body was enveloped in a soft and warm, rainbow glow that blended seamlessly into the ruined world. The Earth Mother had already taken her legs, yet she continued to smile and face forward with tears in her eyes.

  “Ty!” he called, brushing the tears out of his eyes as he ran to her with trembling legs and crying her name over and over again.

  “Theo,” she responded quietly once he finally collapsed to his knees in front of her and her torso was all but taken by the heavens. “Thank you for helping me keep my promise.”

  “Of course,” he sputtered before lifting his hands up to reach her. “I love you, Ty,” he sobbed as his hands went straight through, as more and more of her disappeared by the second. “I love you so, so much.”

  Her heavenly smile wavered as she repeated the words through her own tears. “I love you too, Theo. More than anything. My favorite person in the whole world. I hope you live to see the world full of love that I leave for you.”

  “I will,” he barely uttered, shuffling closer even though he could not feel her.

  “That’s a promise, okay?” she smiled, finally lifting a hand off her sword to reach out to him.

  Theo turned to the disintegrating hand that she hovered over his face and cupped it. “I promise.”

  “Well then, Theodore val’ne Emrys…”

  He shook his head, face still streaming with tears as he watched the lights disappear from her hands and her neck. “No, don’t say it. Please don’t say it.”

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  She smiled. “Goodbye.”

  “No!” he yelled as her smile faded into the night sky along with the rest of her, desperately trying to catch the lights that drifted away and failing, sobbing when it was all gone and all he could do was clutch her soft tactician’s robe and the scarf that he had gifted her that first winter. “No,” he repeated, hugging what was left of her, sobbing into it as if he had learned nothing from the past few months, as if he hadn’t heard her speech before she left. As if he were a child again, hearing that he had been given up by his family and would likely never see them ever again.

  He cried until his voice went hoarse and his entire body ached, without caring about the rest of the world—his surroundings, the threat of danger, where Moriya or Chelsi could be at that very moment, the still-burning sky. Because nothing mattered more to him than the warmth in his hands, the faint scent of winter flowers that lingered on her coat and scarf, the image of her before she left the world still burned into his mind. Mere memories across time that he knew were infinitesimal, ephemeral; memories that would grow blurrier and blurrier with each passing day.

  He knew. He knew, and yet he cradled her clothes, eyes shut tight as if opening them meant starting the timer to the end of his memories of her. To the day he’d wake up and forget exactly how she looked. How she sounded. How she felt. He’d move on with his life, living another day in the world she helped save, a hopeful world that she wished for him to see. A promise he could not break, a promise that would one day fade into a memory.

  I hope you live to see the world full of love that I leave for you.

  Little by little, each movement full of aching, he opened his eyes and stood up on quivering legs. Lightheaded, body cold and about to collapse, he steadily put on the tactician’s coat, draped the scarf around his neck, and looked around him.

  In a red world, he alone stood at its center.

  Gradually lifting his weak arms up to the sky, he opened his mouth and began singing a spell that no one else in the world knew now but him. Shakily, out of tune. Wanting to reach her, even if in spirit. Knowing without a doubt that she was still out there, that she had not died; that she still lived in him, in all the people she had loved, in all the lives she had touched. That he would see her again.

  And as he watched a million beautiful white lights burst from his hands, each one pulsing like the parts of the world he had lost, falling all around him and into his hands, he whispered his own parting words to the wayward stars—the proof of her existence, the proof that she had been here, that she had lived.

  “Goodbye, Ty.”

  — End of Book 2 —

  on a weekly basis instead of two times a week. I'll keep to Fridays until I've finished writing and editing the book, and then I'll see if I can post more often! I'd also like to take a little one-week breather before Book 3 starts. I've been going through a pretty rough patch recently, so it would really mean a lot to me. ;v; (I am but a weak little hermit)

  March 13th!! (I will hopefully be doing a lot of writing and editing during my absence and not just tearfully rotting away....I also have to fix the description blurb after I wake up because you bet I'm sleeping in on a Saturday heh)