Return of the Fallen Volume 12 Chapter 134
Kazuki appeared directly in front of the purplish-black jewel. All he needed to do was reach out and grab it. His hand extended forward when Gardius arrived. Kazuki’s hand was already closing around the Artifact when Gardius roared in anger.
*(*(*NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!*)*)*
Gardius’s hand stretched outward like a demonic claw. The moment Kazuki grasped the Artifact, Glacious’s hand pierced through Kazuki’s chest and out of his back. Gardius infused every ounce of power in this attack and it spread through Kazuki like a raging storm of infinite destruction.
Once again, Kazuki was in the clutches of death.
Darkness filled his consciousness and everything went blank.
A familiar connection was brought forth…
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…
Just as quickly as his mind went empty, it just as quickly returned, or rather a mind returned.
A feeling of warmth on his skin was pleasant and cozy. A cool breeze swept past and carried with it a refreshing air and the sweet scent of flowers.
His eyes opened and he was greeted with a beautiful smile. Angelic was the only way one could describe this smile, for it would be blasphemous to compare it to anything else.
“Daddy, hurry hurry, mama said lunch was finished.”
A small child, a girl no older than 6 or maybe 7, was struggling to pull him up from the ground. Finally, she got tired and jumped on his stomach playfully.
A slight pain in his stomach caused confusion.
(Since when could a child harm me? This pain, it feels real.)
Just as this thought formed, it vanished as if it never were.
“Daddy, if you don’t get up right now then I’m just gonna have to sit on you all day.”
“Oh, since when have you ever missed a meal from your mother?”
Sitting up quickly this person began to playfully pinch the small girl’s sides. The girl pouted before she began to burst out with joyful laughter as her father changed from pinching her to tickling her.
“No no hehe, stop it my belly, hehe.”
The man and girl laughed before the man shot up to his feet and threw the child high into the air before catching her and spinning her around one good time. The girl laughed and smiled before she hugged her father tightly and kissed him on his cheek.
“Daddy you’re the one who eats too much not me.”
“Is that so? Then how do explain these big arms?”
He began to flex his arms causing the girl to laugh some more.
Just as the two were lost in their own world, a gentle voice called out to the two.
“So you were both having fun without me. Guess that means more food for me then.”
The father and child turned around to see a beautiful woman with long bright hair and specks of freckles around her small nose. She had a look of love and care as she came over and embraced her husband and daughter together.
The man picked up the scent of flowers on her skin. Just like the meadow, they stood in, only slightly sweeter.
(This woman and this child, I know them.)
Once again the thoughts appeared and faded before they could settle or be questioned.
The small family of three walked to the top of a hill where they lived together in a small but comfortable home. They lived in a village of just a few hundred people. Nothing too bustling nor too quiet, it was just enough to call home. A village like many others. One of peace and tenderness filled with other families big and small made up this land of abundance.
This family lived happily and spent their days with each other in bliss.
This peace though, did not last.
Time seemed to flow forward without control before stopping when the first snow fell upon these lands. All the men had been gathered in the village as a man of order and nobility brought news and with it an ill fate for many.
The man was sent to war and separated from his family, just as every man of age was. He could not refuse nor run or his family would suffer. Because of this, he took up the sword, an unfamiliar object to him, and left for the battlefield.
The man saw many horrors and many tragedies as the men he arrived with, the men from his village, die one by one. Friends, neighbors, people he thought of as brothers fell again and again. Never to rise again.
Sleepless nights were brought about by a war that drug several countries into the pot, and with it, the pot boiled and overflowed. Bandits, plagues, blood spilled mass migration, famine. Through the mindless slaughter, the man changed. Every day he killed and marched, marched and killed. Every day he lost a piece of himself and began to change into something else in order to survive.
Still, he held on, for the two people he loved and cared for the most in the whole world. Looking into the eyes of the men he killed, he recognized that same look as the one his fellow villagers had before they were taken from this world. His enemies, just like him, just like his friends, all had their own families. Mothers, fathers, children, siblings. They all wanted to return home just like him but instead, all they could do was fight and kill each other.
Stabbing, slashing, gouging, biting, kicking, bashing. Desperately doing anything they could to go back to that place of sweet peace. The man could not hold onto such thoughts, nor could he stand for ideals, or take pity on those who aimed their blades at him. All he could do was kill and hold onto the image of his wife and child.
He fought and fought and fought. The more he fought, the more he lost. He had been fighting for so long that he could no longer remember, the taste of milk or honey. He could not remember what the air in his village smelled like after a fresh spring rain, nor the smell of blooming flowers. The old granny down the road, the uncle who collected firewood. He could not remember their names or faces.
kill kill kill.
He forgot the sound of his village and soon everyone in it except his wife and child but even they were beginning to fade from memory. He awoke one day from a nightmare and he could no longer recall the sound of his daughter’s laughter or his wife’s voice.
In his mind, their smiles were unrecognizable and foreign and even their faces became fuzzy.
Long past this forgetful curse, finally, the last battle was won. His kingdom, his country had come out victorious. For the men he killed…the lives he took…he received a small paltry sum and a little bit of land. He did not care about this at all. All he wanted was to return home as fast as possible. All he wished to do was hear his daughter’s sweet laughter and hold his wife and child once more. To shut his eyes in their embrace and sleep away the horrors he endured.
The day he returned home…Everything he fought for, everything he wished and hoped for, held onto…All of it was gone.
His house over atop a hill, above the meadow of flowers, all of it had been burned to the ground. War had reached his home and he didn’t even know it. The village now was a dilapidated mess of broken homes and scattered loss. He rushed to the man who was supposed to take care of the village, the one person who should have protected them.
He found the chief of the village and demanded answers. The chief had tears in his eyes.
“Out of all the men to return, I had hoped and prayed it would not be you.”
These words should have been insulting but the way the chief said it, there was sorrow in his voice and deep sadness.
“What do you mean? Where is my wife, my child?”
Tears flowed like a river from the chief as he pointed in the distance.
The man threw the chief to the ground and rushed out in the direction the chief pointed. The chief’s words were already fading as the man’s speed carried him swiftly but he still heard everything the chief said.
“You should have died early on the battlefield. At least then you could have joined them and they would have not had to worry and suffer for so long.”
As soon as the chief said this, the man had arrived at a small plot. Small stones piled up here and there, overturned dirt…this was the one place he did not wish them to be.
The man collapsed to his knees and screamed his lungs out and pulled at his hair. He clawed his own face seeing the names written at the top of these small stone piles.
The chief walked over slowly but eventually arrived to find the man heaving and slamming his now bloodied fist repeatedly on the ground. The chief had no words and could only shake his head.
(WHY!? WHY HAVE THE GODS FORSAKEN ME!? WHAT HAVE I DONE FOR YOU TO TAKE MY BABY GIRL, MY WIFE!? WHYYYY!?)
“WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!”
The man had forgotten their faces and voices, their touch and smell. He had fought and killed for so long in a war that should never have been and in the end, he lost not only himself but everything he cared for.
In the lowest moment of his life, life was a maddening joke. The man pulled his blade from its sheath and without hesitation, he plunged it directly into his own heart.
As blood spilled from his mouth, his words were almost incoherent.
“I’m coming…I…i’ll…join you both soo
Before he could finish his sentence, the man fell over on his side and died. His last thought was a blurred image of the two he loved with all his heart.
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