Age of The Void

[Warning: Themes of blood and violence]

The darkened sun, known as the Everwatchful Eye, peered through the veil that draped over the world in eternal night. Its gaze fell upon a mountainous basin where a battlefield raged, and a vagabond was left to die. Blood trickled onto ashen soil and congealed with remnants of dust and bone.

The vagabond, Helia, sharply inhaled through clenched teeth as weary lungs expanded within a fractured rib cage. Tanned skin was tinted purple as a coolness crept into her wounds. The wind nipped at the scar across her chest and prominent bridge of her nose. Helia’s hazel eyes peered through choppy blonde bangs, a shaken breath drawn as attention fixated on the slain beast before her feet. 

Its thin ulcerated wolven-esque form slowly dissipated into fumes of smoke, almond-shaped eyes rolled into the back of its lopsided head. An iron sword marked its grave, pierced through its once unhinged jaw, starting from the bridge of its nose. The sword pommel bore the Crest of Crane, two wings neighboring either side of a sword stretched outside a vine coiled wheel; the same crest carved onto Helia’s leather bracers.

The sight of the grave marker caused Helia to realize the iron taste on her tongue as blood escaped through her nicked lips. Helia’s vision became a blur as her legs buckled, the roars of beast and men drowned out by the rapid thumping of her heartbeat. Her eyes peered onto the three jagged lacerations across her leather-bound chest plate, skin and underlying muscle ripped apart. Helia fell to her knees, gasping for air as she desperately clenched the bleeding wound, and the Everwatchful Eye watched her body fall down the hillside. 

“Helia!”

A desperate cry pierced through the barrier of whistling wind, yet Helia couldn’t respond, she couldn’t breathe. The deep wound across her chest was tainted, corrupted with a poison that plagued the midnight lands and the creatures that walked in shadow. Five centuries of eternal night reigned when the Age of Shards met its end, the sundered world overtaken by the First Flood, the bringer of the corruption that festered and ate Helia from the inside out. Upon the breakage of the world, the races of men split into three aspects: Flesh, Bone, and Soul.

Helia was born of Flesh, soon to rot and feed the ashen soil below.

“HELIA!”

Helia’s body grew cold, yet dim light blanketed her body as a distant voice called. The last light of the starless sky brought comfort to the fallen as the veil started to part, one of the reasons this war raged, and the midnight creatures grew violent in retaliation. Their fearful howls echoed through forests of spindle trees and across frozen oceans, thus awakening the giants. Born from the depths of mountains, metallic and oxidized bodies crawled towards the surface, revealing themselves as ancient machines that many believed were alive. Some believed the giants were mere husks, once elemental manifestations of nature torn apart, grounded up, and melded into silver and iron, welded together again in the effort of stopping the First Flood. Whatever they were, they now fought alongside the kin of Flesh and Bone.

Helia remembered the days spent in underground markets beneath ruined cities, where she walked amongst merchants and haggling artisans. Helia used her collection of nicknacks to patch together the disassembled body of a giant, its life would’ve faded if not for a new power cortex being crafted and gifted from Helia herself. She manufactured a new energy core from elemental shards; inorganic catalysts of aether, a natural wavelength like light or sound, able to resonate with the soul and be exhausted through the body into spells. Her giant friend could tell a thousand stories, and perhaps a thousand more if the Void didn’t consume all by dawn.

Whispers of morning's rise was a myth passed down by the hopeful, where the sun and moon would birth an eclipse, a mark of the first dawn. The Crest of Crane, branded upon her armor, represented the occasion. Helia once didn’t have such hope, she believed a starlit sky was an idea dreamt by ancients longing for a world long gone. However, as her purpled skin turned black, blood vessels in the whites of her eyes expanded due to lack of air, the dim light of the darkened sun reminded Helia of her, the woman who brought light, hope, and love into a life once forsaken.

Helia’s arms grew stiff as she lay stretched across muddied ground. She wanted to watch morning's rise together, yet as her body became cold and the world grew dark, she was comforted knowing her love was safe in the arms of an old friend…

“P-Please....please work.”

Bloodshot eyes widened as wind swept through Helia’s lungs. Her back arched, toned muscles clenched, and her nose flared as a bubbling black liquid was extracted from her open wounds. Helia took a moment to breathe, the dark corners of her peripheral faded yet vision remained unfocused, objects split into two and slowly came together again. 

Her chest was covered by cloth as her stomach bare was being repaired. Torn connective tissue and skin were stitched together by a seamstress of magic, whose sniffles caught Helia’s attention. Helia recognized the dexterous hands that weaved the particles of aether within the air, with the right hand replaced by a prosthetic made of metal. Air was exhausted through erected valves across the upper forearm, interlocking joints glistened as the minerals forged within the metal reacted to the healing spell. The runes branded into the arm were aglow in blue light, alongside the silvery blue gaze of the caster. As the spell ended, Helia’s examined her wound, sealed and ridden of corruption, yet intense bruising remained as oxygen and red blood cells were carried to the damaged capillaries.

“W…W-Willow…” Helia hoarsely called out as her arms extended upwards. Helia’s fingers were interlocked in the palms of another, whose tears and snot continued to flow down round cheeks. “I’m here…gods above, I-...”--she hiccuped-- “I-I’m here.” Willow kissed Helia’s bruised knuckles, her face soon cupped by Helia’s cold and calloused palm. Helia stared into Willow’s downturned eyes in disbelief. 

“Y-...ah, you…you saved me, right in the nick of time, I might add. I was so worried about you and I…sigh, what would I do without you, hon?”

“You would be just fine without me,”--Willow insisted-- “b…but I’m here. Gods, I thought…I really thought I wouldn’t make it in time.” 

“You did amazing, sweetie, you hear me? You really did, we both did. If it makes things easier, we don’t have to dwell on what could’ve been.”

Willow tried to formulate a response, yet she gave a defeated sigh with a nod. Both leaned forward, pressed their foreheads together, and interlocked their fingers. Helia listened to Willow’s heartbeat, the most beautiful music she ever heard, accompanied by the gentle melody of Willow’s soft giggles as their noses rubbed against each other. 

Those silvery-blue eyes were akin to the moon within the veiled sky, a light amongst the darkness. As their warm breaths met, hearts beating as one, their lips locked together as the lovers drifted into a moment of shared serendipity. “I missed you, Moonlight.”

“I missed you more, Firefly,” Willow replied.

Helia slowly pulled away as she wiped her own stray tears, a small chuckle released under her breath soon after. After they parted, Willow wrapped Helia’s upper body in bandages, then draped a blanket over her partner’s shoulders. 

Her hazel eyes examined Willow’s attire, black leather armor complimented by a pear-shaped flowing white dress. Helia’s muscular form was riddled with scars, while Willow was relatively unharmed, aside from bandages wrapped around her right calf muscle. Willow’s dark brown skin softly glistened due to the residual flow of aether within her system, a soft blue aura, which Helia acknowledged with a smile and directed her gaze towards Willow’s hair. 

“I love the new look.”

“Oh shush,” Willow sniffled with a small chuckle, “just pinned up my hair is all.” She gestured towards her kinky black hair styled in a halo braid. 

“Gorgeous as always.”

“Speak for yourself,” Willow replied as she pushed aside Helia’s choppy blonde hair from her tanned complexion. Helia’s face became aglow in a soft reddened blush.

“By the way,”--Helia coughed--“excuse me, how did you find me?”

“You were in the middle of Reverend Hills, Flux spotted you from a mile away.”

“They did?”

“Yes, sweetie, heh, have you wondered why we haven’t frozen to death yet? Flux can exhaust warm air through its pipes.”

Helia looked around, face scrunched in confusion, then crawled towards the edge of the metal platform. 

They sat fifty feet off the ground, overlooking the mountainous basin where the mountain peaks, dipped in a midnight ink, were seen across the horizon. To the west, those of Bone, known as the Dwarves, pierced through the materialized flesh of the Void Sent with swords heated in the forge of the determined. To the east, those of Flesh, children of men, ran into battle on the backs of the ancestral giants, the ground torn apart by heavy footsteps. Those of Spirit died long ago, their civilization cannibalized itself due to the overwhelming influx of energy the First Flood brought, yet their elven blood carried through into this darkened age, where children of Flesh and Spirit released bellowing cries that echoed through the wind.

Helia pulled away from the edge and realized she sat in the palms of an old friend. A smile stretched across her face as she arched her head skyward. “Flux!” 

Two flickering yellow eyes beneath glass panes peered into the vagabond. Willow and Helia stood upon the gauntlets of Flux, a robotic giant with moss down its copper shoulders, a chipped metal underbite, and two large ‘horns’ or pipes on its head that exhausted smoke. The metal plating of Flux’s torso was branded with forgotten runes, warm to the touch. Flux’s neck creaked with every rotation. “We have to oil your neck, don’t we buddy?” Helia said.

Flux’s bright gaze flickered, almost rhythmically, as if speaking in a form of morse code.

“.-- . / -.-. .- -. / .-- .- .. - / - .. .-.. .-.. / -- --- .-. -. .. -. --. ... / .-. .. ... . --..-- / -.. . .- .-. / ..-. .-. .. . -. -.. .-.-.-”

“Indeed, and wait, why isn’t everyone retreating by now?” Helia said as she turned towards her partner. Willow fidgeted with her hands, “you fought during the first and second wave of attacks, it didn’t hold the beasts back completely. Everyone is trying their best to defend and get into the underground bunkers before the sky shatters.”

“Well, what about us then?”

Willow's lips stretched thin as she looked towards the ground. Helia raised her brow and looked towards the horizon once again. “We…We won’t be getting back in time, will we?”

“Flux can only travel so quickly, we spent so much time trying to find you and maneuver around, but the second breakage of the sky already happened. Morning comes when the third breakage occurs…”

Helia bit her lip as her blanket folded in the wind, her boot kicked the floor and created a metallic shudder of a sound. She pinched the bridge of her nose and let out a long sigh. After a moment of silence, Helia looked towards her partner.

“You didn’t have to save me.”

“Don’t say that,” Willow replied.

“You and Flux could’ve made it back in time-”

“We wanted to watch mornings rise together, remember?”

Helia was taken aback, her lips shut as Willow walked forward. “We might not survive daybreak, but neither of us knew we’d survive this war anyway. That’s the responsibility we both chose, and the choice I made was to find you. And I’m not leaving you, Helia.”

Both stood atop Flux’s hands in silence, the wind nipped at their skin and brushed against their clothes. Willow slowly stepped forward once again, a small distance between them, and Helia closed the distance as she wrapped her arms around her partner. 

Flux traveled across the mountainous basin as the sky further chipped. They walked over rivers, explored the ashen hills and dales that speckled the terrain. Thin trees stretched towards the dim light, desperate to receive nutrients, their spindle branches leafless and without color. Armies grew smaller within the hour as people escaped underground and giants returned to the mountains. Many continued to fight till the very end, waving nationless flags in support of one another. The sound of rusted joints creaking caused the journey to meet its halt, the group soon found refuge next to a frozen lake. 

“Do you think we’ll see each other?” Willow asked.

“You mean in another life?” Helia replied.

Willow nodded in response. Helia gave a small smile, pulled her partner closer, and slowly lifted Willow’s prosthetic hand to lightly kiss the knuckle. They interlocked their hands together as Willow nuzzled closer. Helia sighed, “when I was younger, I’d probably say no. I didn’t think this day would even happen, and the mere thought of living underground again and again, every life I may lead…scared me.” Helia smacked her lips as she looked towards the distance. “But if I believe reincarnation is the stories we tell, then after we die, those stories continue into infinity. And those stories can be written, oral, or even remnants or influences our lives left behind. If that all makes sense.”

Willow nodded, her gaze looked up towards her partner. Helia looked down and smiled, “but to make it clear, I want to be with you forever, Willow.”

“I do too-”

The couple were interrupted by the loud whistle of wind, their ears rang as their backs landed on Flux’s palm, quickly knocked over. Flux’s hands clasped over their friends, all eyes drawn towards the third and final breakage of the sky. The ground rumbled beneath Flux’s feet, the frozen lake splintered, and the midnight creatures of unfathomable horror looked up in awe. Roars of war ceased in an instant as the veil of darkness parted to reveal a silver ring above. Shadow-like beasts released shrill screams as white, pure snow fell from the sky. The eclipse’s silver ring was accompanied by an array of speckled lights. Stars, real stars.

Spindle trees bent backwards, frozen oceans cracked, and mountains trembled underneath the eternal gaze of the eclipse. No one could hear themselves over the howling winds, screams of Void-Sent beings, everything in awe of the grand magnificence of a starlit sky.

Helia turned towards Willow, both clasped each other’s faces and proclaimed their last words. Their voices were unheard as a beam of concentrated light engulfed the world, rock and soil torn apart and caused a wave of cleansing destruction in its wake. 

“I love you, Moonlight!” Helia cried.

“I love you, Firefly.” Willow mouthed, both of them held each other close and kissed each other deeply as the world tore apart beneath their feet. Flux held their friends close to its chest, bundled into a ball as mornings rise came, marking the end of the Age of the Void.