Songbreaker

Chapter 21: A Memory for the End

In another life, there is peace and eternal bliss, where pain does not exist in one's vocabulary; but here, peace and bliss are the terms that don't exist

In the wake of everything that the Songbreaker had done, everyone must come to terms with the foul hand with which they have been dealt, and for some, it is more difficult than they expected. For Yvana, she has more yet to lose and she must sit with it until it is gone

For good, this time

Author's note: once again, did I mean for such a large gap between chapters? nope. have I been sat on this chapter completed for two months? yep. just roll with me on this one XD

bring the tissues, folks, we're about to get emotional

and no, I am not apologising for the ending XD

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How did it happen?

How could I have- I would never-

This isn't true...

Yvana scrambled to where Proxina laid with the tip of her axe wedged deep into her shoulder, and she tripped and stumbled until she landed right by her side hovering her hands over her, shaking and unstable as her mind fought to determine what to do.

There was nothing she could do.

The snow beneath them ran with Proxina's blood as she laid with her arm outstretched as if still reaching for the Aggressium Prime Song, just out of reach – as it always was. She gasped as she looked to it, her fingers twitching against the light glow and feeling the reverberation of the low hum through the air, through the snow still swirling around them. For the first time in over a century, Proxina's eyes watered with tears frozen in the prevailing winds, and they slowly scraped down her cheek, landing heavily on the snow beside her face. She had wasted so many countless years chasing something that destroyed her more than she ever could to anyone else. She had spent these years chasing something that she could never have – just as she knew from the beginning; but for so long, she had believed that she could prove so many people wrong and be the person she had been trying to be.

But in trying to be someone she wasn't, she lost herself in the thick void of revenge. In her quest to prove herself, she denied herself.

And so many others.

Yvana saw the pain littered on her friend's face and she broke at the sight of emotions that she had thought the Songbreaker incapable of. She had not seen Proxina cry even once in their lifetime. For someone so quiet, for someone so reserved, to see her break because of her actions – actions that could have been avoided – it brought home decades of feeling that had long since been buried without realising. There was nothing that she could say that would change things. There was nothing that she could do to turn back the clock.

Yvana had killed her best friend.

She whimpered and Proxina slowly turned her eyes to stare at the remorseful Kaltaris beside her, riddled with guilt. Through her laboured breathing, she steadied herself and opened her mouth, smeared with blood as it trickled across her chin.

"H-h-hold..." she tried.

Although it was the harshest, raspiest whisper to ever have graced the Kaltaris' ears, Yvana heard a voice that had not uttered a word in decades. Her eyes widened and glistened in the snow, and she looked to Proxina with a glimmer of false hope.

"What...?" she uttered in disbelief.

Proxina gulped hard and moved her eyes to her other hand twisted by her side. With a shaky breath, she tried again.

"H-h-hold..."

Without a second to pass, Yvana crawled round to Proxina's other side.

When they were children and either of them were nervous about something, anything at all – and whether they chose to show it or not – they would take each other's hand and share the nerves between them, to ease the feeling, making room for confidence to come later. The first day that Master Odysseus invited them both to training, the first day that Yvana took Proxina into Mendoria with her father, the first day that they crossed the river between Kaltaria and Northwind to explore a mountain cave...