The Final Cut

[Apollyon 224]

The Final Cut

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Night had settled softly upon the estate Lumia had built her while warm lamplight floated across those spruce floors and marble walls of her study, gentle and unintrusive as if afraid to disturb the quiet. Apollyon's harp stood proud where she had left it, in the corner beside the low stool, its strings still hummed faintly. A loose fold of her orange red robes fell across her lap, then, as she settled to the floor, knees beneath her, shoulders straightened not out of pride but habit. The raven-haired elfess inhaled, slow and steady the way she'd taught herself centuries ago.

She would no-longer need the flame to guide her. She'd lived long enough with it that she knew its rhythm by heart and so the spark that had once roared inside her had softened this last decade, gentler than it had ever been and she wondered if that had been mercy or something else entirely. Her fogged, golden eyes rose towards nothing in particular, then following a warmth she'd no longer had the desire to cling to.

 

Zephon, her spear would lay across her thigh. It had carried her farther than she ever meant to go and ever since she had it made, just less than half a century ago it had already taken its fair share of her in return. The ivory length gleamed faintly in the lamplight. Gold streaks of blightsteel flickered along the azhl head in quiet pulses as she drew it closer.

 

Those three trophies hung from its shaft, the last requirements she had spent years before collecting which would have been used to chase a revelation only her teacher before her had reached. Thus she'd lift them with her metal hand. Her black ferrum fingers clicking softly where they met the bindings.
 

The Zar'ei skull watched her with its dead shimmer of malflame, its tendrils frozen in a lopsided droop. It had once been a horror though now it only looked tired. A lesser trophy then hung beside it, battered and dim and another beside that. They swayed together gently, bone and metal tapping in rhythm like chimes in a breath of wind.

 

She studied them for a long moment as the last remaining proof that she had played her part exactly as she said she would, even when so many of Malchediael's own had forlorn theirs before setting them down, letting her spear rest across her knees again. Her hand rose then as she felt the way that radiant fire curled beneath her skin, faint and familiar like the final warmth of coals before they cool to ash. Then a single thread of it lifted from her chest, thin and luminous, swaying in the still air as though unsure if it wished to leave.

 

The Templaress touched Zephon's spearhead to the thread, its pale, golden light reflecting along its edge, soft as dawnlight against the black, polished metal. She'd guide the thread around the blade, weaving it with gentle, tender motions until it caught and pulled taut.

The radiant thread strained. The trophies besides her pulsed faintly as if sensing the shift. The dim glow locked inside the Zar'ei skull trembled and flickered.

 

Then she'd lift the spear, the thread snapping with a single, decisive motion. Light scattered like fine dust. the connection vanished. The warmth inside her chest quieted to nothing. The glow within the Zar'ei trophy winked out.

 

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But there had been no pain nor hollowing, only the sensation of something long overdue finally ending and so the Once-Templar exhaled.

 

She unbound the trophies from the spear one by one and placed them aside without reverence nor hatred. Then they'd lay still on the floor, neither burdens nor achievements. Just as remnants of who she had been. 

 

Zephon stood alone now.

 

Apollyon rose then and moved to sit by her harp. Her fingers, flesh and metal brushing against the strings with grace as a soft note trembled from them. Then another followed and another, not quite music just yet but the start of something that might someday become it.

 

The radiant fire had been her guide for fifty years but tonight she ended it on her own terms. Not defeated nor chased away, only finished.

 

She played a final lingering chord and lifted her chin. The golden twin-voids of her eyes softened.

 

The Angel had not survived nearly three centuries by clinging to the same shape and although the war was still out there she had now a life she'd carved out of the ashes of the abyss she'd endured.

 

Yet tonight she had let the fire go.

 

And in the quiet left behind she would remain.

 

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