The Bitter End

“When we last spoke, I told you that the next time we meet it would not be as father and son. It would be as the Hunter, and the prey.” He said, almost salivating. It was raining outside, still bright, but slightly dulled by the downpour.

I held the solution we had worked on all this time in my hand and made sure he could see it. He didn’t really react, “new toy?” He asked.

“A cure.” And that caught his attention. “Enough for Aiyana and me. We take this, and we stop all of this. We can make more, we can finally put this curse to an end.” I had hoped beforehand to convince him should he ever come to see us. Yet even with it all coming together, even with a way out, he just smirked. Without a word he raised his crossbow arm slowly so that it aligned with me. “It won’t mean anything.”

I felt rage boiling up inside me. “We did it, father, we found the cure! I can be human again! We can cure everyone!”

“There’s none left!” He shouted. “They’re all gone, Aster. Every piece of filth that called this place home. Every single creature that was there that day when she died is dead.” For 10 years he dragged himself across the world in search of anyone that managed to escape, and he put them in the ground. He didn’t rest, he didn’t stop for a second, he just kept going with the same words he muttered that day on repeat in his head.

“There’s only us left now.” He explained, almost whispering. “You…” , he pointed to Aiyana “her…”. The crossbow lowered, and he placed it against his forehead while reaching for something in his pocket. “…and me.” Out of his pocket, he held a strange looking orb. It glowed red and white like a wisp in his hand. “We’re the last ones. And right here, right now… we’ll all die”.

*-*-*

I leapt over the bannister, Zaharia’s blade in hand, and pushed off hard. Our swords clashed and sparks flew as his grinning face got closer. He pushed down with more force than I could handle so I let it flash past, choosing to back away and try a horizontal slash aimed at his throat. He was quick, shifting his shoulders enough for it to just miss his face and gifting him enough room to throw in a jab, then a shoulder tackle. It completely took the wind from me, and had it not had such power and knocked me away so far his next slash would have cut much deeper. Luckily it only nicked my arm.

It stung like he cut further though. And whilst I licked my wound it reminded me how good a swordsman he was even when I was a child. He was the best in the village, leagues below King Hector ever was, but good enough that a rookie like me would struggle to even get close. All I had was the vampiric blood, I was stronger, more agile and able to react quicker than I ever could but… he was even stronger than he was then.

I got back to my feet, trying to plan out my next string of attack but before I could even put in the first step he was on me. It was a wide swing, powerful but it left you wide open if dodged, and I managed to duck under. I couldn’t believe my luck, then I saw the crossbow mounted on his other arm, and felt the bolt cut through my ear. I swung wildly and managed to dig into his replacement arm but he even used that to his advantage and launched me across the room. I slammed through the wall and into the next room, with so much force I lost all feeling in my arms. He followed me in through the wall, slowly stalking me with that sickly grin on his face.

Not a second to breathe was given, and I just barely blocked his next strike. While every hit sent shockwaves through my body, he just seemed to be getting stronger and stronger.

He winded up for another wild strike but left himself open, all my strength went into a thrust aimed right between the eyes. Right as it was about to connect though, he was almost snake like, twisting his neck enough to watch my blade pass his eye and manage to pierce through my shoulder with a thrust of his own.

Every muscle in my body contracted and I screamed so loud I wouldn’t have been surprised if gramps and Myra heard it.

He put more pressure on the hilt and bent over to look me in the eye. “That’s one.” He muttered, mimicking our first fight.

The fight continued on. He would let me back to my feet, I'd be on the back foot but find an opening, only for him to get the better of me and mutter his infuriating count. After the fourth “death” I thought I’d seen through his ruse. I wasn’t seeing holes in his form, he was leaving gaps for me to fall into just so he could take advantage. Once I knew that I could use it. He aimed for my foot and I saw it coming, I could dodge and try another stab. Another reversal came as he spun past it and went for a spinning elbow, but again I managed to duck under and claw at his stomach.

Too bad it didn’t do too much, but it was the first time I had left a mark on him and while I could heal, eventually he would die. He looked impressed he was hit, “not bad… you’ve been training?”

I didn’t reply. I needed to get ready for his next attack. “Keep thinking, predict his next attack” I kept telling myself. He could clearly see I was focussing hard, I was practically thinking out loud. His smirk was gone, he decided to get serious.

It didn’t matter if I could read him, not if I couldn’t see it coming. He went from being halfway across the room to being right in front of me in the blink of an eye. I tried slicing about chest high but he was able to go under and slice into my back. Next came a boot that knocked me to the ground and then, the blade straight through the neck.

Though my body was vampiric and able to survive it, my mind was human, and having a sword in my neck left me in another realm of panic. The pain was more than unbearable but I couldn’t make a noise anymore, blood just poured out of the wound and I felt like I was drowning.

“I’m getting a little bored, Aster.” He said as one of his crossbow bolts pinned me down. I couldn’t feel it hit, just the jolt of the impact. He let go of his sword and leisurely cracked his knuckles. “It’s been a long journey. Finally I can give you justice, Sofia. Finally I can end this misery. And it all ends… now.”

I could feel him start to pull the blade harshly across my throat. But just before he could completely slice through there was a small sensation, like water dripping onto my face. It rolled down and I could smell it, blood. In the corner of my eye was Lucian with Liberator’s sword digging into his left side, and Aiyana holding onto it.

She swung the ancient blade and left a mortal wound on the enemy of her family, one of the reasons her father no longer lives… and yet he looked unfazed, almost like she had just hit him with a feather. He looked back at her, at her fearful face and smiled. He could see something in her, he returned to me and saw the fear I had, the fear of what he would do to her. It made him cackle, much to our dismay. “Young love…” he smirked. “Such a brittle bond.”

“So easily broken.”

The blade swung and sliced through Aiyana from shoulder to hip. Blood erupted from the wound and she fell back, smashing into the floor with dead eyes.

Everything I felt up to that point was gone. All the wounds quietened down, I crawled over over to her slowly, when I looked at my hand, it was drenched in her blood.

He dropped the orb he had before and it rolled slightly before the light inside melted away and became even brighter, cracking the glass. “Take me into your arms, Sofia.” He held out his arms to the sky. Her dead eyes sent me spiralling, was she… please no… no…

“AIYANA!”

The orb exploded and destroyed the manor, and everything inside it.

*-*-*

It sent out a shockwave and ripped the manor apart. We were jettisoned through the wall and over the cliffside. Aiyana was slightly lower and the Headhunter was further to the right. Time slowed, enough for me to see the two vials we had bet our lives on free-falling with us. They were above me and moving at pace, I managed to hook the closest one, but the other… I clawed at it, reaching with everything I had, almost ripping my arm off just to reach it but it was in vein.

The explosion was massive. Everything around us completely disappeared and the ground beneath our feet was obliterated. Our home was obliterated. Only a single tower remained standing, but it too wasn’t far from falling.

All three of us were sent spiralling down into the chaos, and all I remember was the ground swallowing us and the freezing cold outside when I woke again.

The headhunter had been taken in by the blast as well, launched down to the earth below but he was not moving.

We’d been blown off the mountain top along with most of the debris, and onto a bed of snow, the very same that Aiyana and I had fallen onto when we first met. The first vial was still in my palm and had survived the fall. The second… it couldn’t have been far.

But right now, we were outside in the early hours of the dawn with only the mountain shadowing us. Before long the sun would climb higher into the sky and cast us asunder. I needed to find Aiyana quickly, get us both to somewhere safe. I could feel a few cuts here and there but the fall didn’t seem to have affected me all too badly.

Yet when I tried to push myself back to my feet I felt completely numb, still coughing up pools of blood. I could only crawl forward, searching for her, I needed to know she was alive, nothing else mattered.

He was laughing, weakly, with coughs and splutters interrupting him. I came across the Headhunter quickly. The wound Aiyana had given him was bleeding like a river, but that was only half of it. The crossbow he had was broken to pieces. The sword he swung at us had snapped in half, with the blade falling to the ground under him. It had impaled him in place. The fearsome killer… he would die upon his own blade.

“Sofia…” he called out. “I got them, Sofia. I got, them… so you, don’t… have to, be scared…” with each word he got weaker and weaker and I stood over him and watched him. “You tried to kill me, father. Left Myra and me and now here you are… you look horrible…”. I felt a deep hatred, the pain he had inflicted, and what he had done to Aiyana… I wanted so badly to give in, take his life with my own hands and rip him to pieces, and yet…I remembered our first hunt together, how mad mother was when we got back. I remembered him singing a lullaby to Myra when she was just a baby. I remembered just how much pain his “death” caused…

Each time I felt searing hatred, I saw the other side of him… Lucian Hawthorne, an old man tormented by the loss of his love. Tired and dying lay before me, not some ferocious killer. He reached out his shaking hand and I gripped it tightly as he faded away…

“Take me… into, your… arms. Sofia…”

A warm rain fell on my face as he went. “Goodbye… father.”

*-*-*

The sun continued to rise and I could feel my skin burning. The old man was gone, I didn’t have time to mourn, I needed to find her, I needed to know she was okay.

Without my legs I just dragged myself further and further. Aiyana was against one of the boulders at the edge of the shadows barely moving, even just seeing the air come out her mouth gave me more relief than I could handle. “Aiyana…” I shouted as loudly as I could, but with the wound still open it barely made a noise. She heard it luckily and looked over into the distance to where I was. “Aster!” She replied, she too had a weakness to her voice.

As I got closer I noticed broken glass in her hands. Pain set in, she had already been sobbing because of it, “the vial… it…” she cried. It was the other dose, the only other one we had. “There’s only one…” I thought as I reached for it. There wasn’t enough of the serum for both of us, and I started to immediately think of the worst case. The right choice was her, she had it all to live for, and I was the reason we only had one dose. I didn’t deserve it. Yet, as every part of my life flashed by me, every mistake I’d made, the only permanent was her.

But that thought was shaken out of my head. “It’s alright, Aiyana, we just need to make more! If we hold out until we’ve healed we can try again, the Headhunter is dead-“

“Aster” she interrupted and pointed past me, to the edge of the shadow cast by the cliffside above us. It was slowly but surely creeping towards us. “We won’t make it back, not unless we go now but…”

“Then we will!”

“Aster-“

“I’ll carry you!” I interrupted her, panicking, holding out hope that I could save us both with grit yet… neither of us could walk, let alone scale the cliff. If we waited here, sooner or later the sun would find us. “I… I really thought I could change things, but now… I…” again she silenced me, placing her hand on my face. “You and I know what needs to happen. Only one of us can survive now, Aster.”

I hated hearing it, feeling so empty, pathetic and useless. I contemplated, thinking about everything, and the answer was as clear as the blue sky. I handed her the cure.

“Take it.”

She refused, pushing my hands back into my body. “Aster I can’t. You’ve got people, family to go home to…” she broke down. “If I die, at least then my can go back to them…”

My response slipped through gritted teeth, “I feel so much like a stone in an ocean, pushed around by the maelstrom and I’m done letting it take over me… LET ME CHOOSE MY OWN FATE!” I bellowed. “I’ve lost a mother, I’ve lost a father… and you’re not making me lose the girl I fell in love with! I can’t survive without you, Aiyana”

Tears fell like waterfalls for the both of us. “I can’t… please…” I held out the serum to her, hoping she would take it from me.

When she did, I watched every second, all until she drank the formula. It’s over… I don’t want to die, I don’t want to leave you but, as long as I can die with you at my side I…

She pulled me close and stole a kiss.

Nothing else mattered, we were in a space of our own. From the moment I met her I’d been changing, and every second I spent with her was a moment I couldn’t live without. Tears poured down my face.

But Aiyana had other ideas. She jettisoned the cure out of her mouth and into mine, forcing it down my throat. It went down, I had no control of it…

“It’s okay, Aster.” She spoke softly as I wept. “Aiyana… why?”

“Everything you said, every word, it’s the same for me. For so long, I was alone, hoping one day someone would come to save me, terrified I’d live like that forever. The day we met, was the day I thought it would be okay to give up. Yet there you were, holding my hand so tightly.”

“I spent so much time frozen in the ice but you…”

“You thawed me out.”

I couldn’t speak anymore, I wanted more than anything to stop time yet, the shadow’s edge closed in around us. Almost a spotlight in reverse…

“Thank you for finding me, for saving me… thank you for loving me.”

The light kissed the ice and enveloped her. She didn’t wince, she didn’t cry out. It was like a higher power was calling to her, carrying her to the beyond.

“Aiyana!” I cried out.

“Love…you…” her final words…

In the snowy mountains of Regalia, the last vampire was turned to dust.

The light covered me, and gave me proof the formula had worked. I cried out for her, staring up into the sky, hoping I could undo it all… “Aiyana…”

*-*-*

It killed me the first time I came to see your grave, Aiyana. I've lost so much in my life, and just when I found a reason to keep going it was taken away from me. I think if I hadn't done this, if I hadn't gone back and remembered what you gave me, I'd have wished I died the day we met. But, you saved me, even now you are the reason I am alive. And I'll keep living knowing you loved me. I’ll keep living knowing you gifted me this life.

In this life, the next and further, your memory will live in me for eternity. And when I die, I hope that we meet in another life, I hope I can fall in love with you all over again. I will never forget you.

My white rose. I love you.