CHAPTER 128

  GRAZYNTH, GUARDIAN OF THE FAR END (III)

  Years passed swiftly . . . then it was decades . . . and centuries . In a single mull, a single blend of colors, a single blur, a single blink of an eye, tens of years flashed before Lino’s eyes . It felt both breathtaking and terrifying, how quickly can life escape you unless you pay attention to it . All the while, nothing had changed; Grazynth fought, over and over again, obtaining more and more scars on his quickly aging body .

  From robust, black hair, he went wholly gray; from handsome, chiseled face of a middle-aged man he’d become a wrinkled, wholly exhausted elder . From a voice brimming with authority, with defiance, with pure passion and desire, he’d become a silent soul, his words scarce and low . From a warrior hellbent on diving into the fray, cleaving apart his foes with reckless abandon, he’d grown slower, more cautious, meeker, wary of it all .

  Lino, however, couldn’t grasp the depth of that change, no matter how hard he tried; what he was witnessing was a wholesome isolation of a man for thousands of years, forever beset on fighting foes and former friends every day, watching the world he was once a part of die out slowly, bit by bit, bleeding like a gashed animal . Just how lonely Grazynth felt? Lino couldn’t say . All he saw was a man slowly waning before his eyes, outliving the tragedy of mankind’s — or, in his case, angelkind’s — existence .

  " . . . hey, little one . " Grazynth suddenly spoke as the wind blew his now waist-long hair sideways . "Yer’ still here, ay?"

  " . . . "

  "Ay, you are . I can feel ye . " a rare and faint smile crept upon Grazynth’s face as he took a deep breath . "I can’t say what ye shall take from my little story . . . but, at least, I wish to thank ye . For being here . With me . Sticking it out . Bearing witness to my little story . I have been buried in the sands of time for so long . . . now, I feel I can finally breathe . ’Cause of ye, little one . I should be ashamed . . . ashamed of seeing my successor witness my blade growing duller, my heart meeker, my soul losing its flame . But I ain’t . I’m glad yer here . " Grazynth loosened his muscles, as though he was freeing himself of a burden that had been weighing over him since the dawn of times .

  "I’ven’t always been the sharpest of tools," he said . "And it would always take me a long time to comprehend what Ataxia was teaching me . Chaos . . . Order . . . Void . . . Eldritch Realms . . . the Beginning . . . Singularity . . . these concepts, till this day, elude me . For a long while, both of us knew I ain’t the man to fulfill his dreams . I wasn’t strong enough . I wasn’t clever enough . I wasn’t driven enough . " I get it now . . . Lino thought, faintly smiling inwardly . "But . . . he stuck with me . Through thick and thin . Through the lows and the true rock bottom . He accompanied me all the way here . . . to stand atop this platform and overlook the Edge of the World . The Far End of it all . Of all our desires, all our dreams . "

  " . . . " Grazynth grunted lowly and slowly got up, barely standing .

  " . . . till the day I died," he said, his eyes growing slightly moist . "He was here . " he clutched at his left-side chest . "Always . Right here . " he bumped it as his voice grew coarser . "I didn’t care about what he wanted to do with the world . What he wanted to do with Angels, with Gods, Devils, Humans, Dragons, Gaia herself and what have you . " Yes . . . this is it . . . "I’d done all he asked not because I believed in what he believed . . . not because I knew what he knew . . . not because of any of that crap . I’d done it all . . . simply for a friend . " Grazynth smiled freely, almost as though he was once again a young man who was cast out of his land and was befriended by an strange entity . "He reached out his arm to me and grabbed me from down below and pulled me up and every time . . . every time I began falling back down . . . I’d feel his hand pressing against my back, pushing me up . If you take anything from my little story, Empyrean, take this: what you give him . . . he’ll repay . More than you can ever imagine . "

  Grazynth leapt off the platform one last time as only six people arrived at the far edge of the valley . All six were clad in different armors, yet all seemed as old and as exhausted as Grazynth himself . Four were women and two were men, and they walked slowly as they approached toward the central point where Grazynth was waiting for them .

  "Yer’ came . " Grazynth said with a faint smile, rising up his ax which by now had one blade entirely gone, the other being clipped in half . "Ye all look like shite . "

  "You don’t look much better yourself, old fart . " a woman replied, stepping forth . Though Lino was unable to distinguish any of the facial features of six, for some reason he was fairly certain this woman was Elana that Grazynth mentioned .

  "Ha ha, always with the flowery tongue," Grazynth laughed innocently . "I’m goin’ to miss you the most . "

  "You don’t have to . " Elana said, drawing back slightly .

  " . . . but I do," Grazynth grinned . He reminded Lino very much of Q’vil when the latter was at the far end of his own life as well . Both . . . so readily accepted their reality without showing a shred of doubt in their choice . "I was bested . . . but time shall come . . . it shall come . . . "

  "Every one of you says the exact same thing . "

  "And by gods do we all mean it! Ha ha ha!"

  " . . . "

  "Cheer up lads," Grazynth said, taking a battle stance . "How many times in yer lives will you get to say ye felled an Empyrean?! Once, ay . . . once is more than enough . "

  The battle did not last long; rather, it was better to say that there was no battle . Unlike Q’vil, Grazynth didn’t go out like a dying star, in one final blaze . He barely managed to stand on his own two feet before Elana slowly walked over and stuck a sword through his heart . He fell down, by all accounts looking like an old, enfeebled man, onto his knees . Yet, he was smiling . Broadly . Wholly . Innocently .

  " . . . isn’t it beautiful, Empyrean?" he mumbled meekly into his jaw, drawing one last, final breath . "To be able . . . to die . . . for a friend . . . "

  With his fall, Lino felt as though a strange arm reached from the nether and grasped at him, pulling him back from the dream into reality . He once again found himself back in the familiar tunnel, surrounded by ghastly things trying to eat away at his mind . He felt slightly dulled for a moment as he tried to recollect himself . He then smiled bitterly and shook his head . That sort of heroism while standing in the face of death . . . Lino was certain he didn’t have it . He very much feared death, though he never openly admitted it; there was an ocean of difference between braving a front . . . and being brave .

  Both Grazynth and Q’vil were simply two brave men who faced death in the eye and then welcomed it with smiles of readiness and acceptance . Lino didn’t believe for a second that it was because the two of them had nothing worth living for any longer . It was simply that their Wills were strong enough to overcome the fear of death . Lino’s . . . wasn’t . Not yet, at least, he thought .

  "Master?" Felix’s voice jolted him from his brief dream as Lino looked sideways at the curious expression of this youngster . "Why’d you suddenly stopped?" he asked .

  " . . . just remembered something . " Lino said, smiling lightly . "Sorry, let’s move on . "

  "What did you remember?" Felix asked, still curious .

  " . . . an old friend," Lino said . "And how he died . "

  " . . . oh . Sorry . " Felix said, feeling guilty over asking . "I didn’t know . . . "

  "Don’t worry about it . He died . . . happy, I suppose . "

  "Eh? Is . . . is that even possible?"

  "Apparently," Lino shrugged . "If you’re dying for a friend . "

  " . . . oh . "

  "Eh, his friend’s kind of a dick, though . " Lino added with a faint grin .

  "M-master . . !!"

  "You really need to take that stick out of your ass . " Lino said, rolling his eyes . "You take everything too seriously . "

  " . . . "

  "Or maybe it’s actually me, making jokes out of anything and everything?! No, it’s the young that are wrong!"

  "You were having a moment, Master . . . " Felix said, sighing .

  "What do you mean? I’m having a moment right now . And now . And what do you know, even now! Moments are everywhere and everytime!"

  " . . . "

  "What? I think it’s funny . Laugh you bastard!"

  "Ha . . ha . . . "

  "Yeah, no wonder you couldn’t make it as a proper Noble," Lino said . "You suck at small talk . You should learn a thing or two from your Master . As the matter of fact, while these ghastly morons are trying to scare us, let your Master teach you the art of tongue-lashing, the art so beautiful there are no official books to teach you because it needs to be acquired via, you guessed it, tongue-lashing! Isn’t that just a beauty? Anyway, so, it goes like this . . . " and thus, in less than two hours, Felix would come to know that his Master . . . really liked tongue-lashing .