Hell's Greatest Weapon

Chapter 40: The End

How long did you fall?

Who knows? Seemed like years.

You thought you might have been like 90 by the time you finally felt the ground beneath your stomach.  Part of you was afraid falling was how Chuck was going to make you spend your years, which only made you angry and slightly vengeful.

But when you felt the cold, damp dirt on your cheek along with the scratchy, buggy plants and alfalfa that were sticking to your hair, you couldn't have been more elated.  You opened your eyes and, after your pupils took an irritatingly large amount of time to adjust to the high-noon sun, you looked around to see that you were in the same field as the one you had been in prior to meeting Chuck.

Or at least you thought you were.  As you stood you felt yourself grimace at the feel of your own body, at your joints that seemed to grind together rather than works smoothly like they had before, at your muscles that felt more like jelly than the strong, powerful slabs of meat you were used to.  Your clothes felt different than they had, they fit the same, but weren't as rough and it was then that you realized your senses were extremely dull; you couldn't feel the stray threads rubbing against your flesh because you couldn't distinguish the feel of the fabrics very well at all.  Your smell was dulled and you could hardly even smell the alfalfa that had overwhelmed you wen you first arrived.

You turned toward the road, lifting an arm to bring a hand to shade the sun from your eyes; it was especially bright, you realized, and your eyes weren't adjusting to it very well.

It wasn't until you started walking toward the road, having to go slower at first while you got used to your truly mortal form rather than the well-oiled and —tended body you had before, that you began to truly feel the effects of the decision you'd made.  Not only were your physical senses dulled, your hearing poor, your eyes irritatingly slow to adjust, you felt the void in your stomach where you knew the power used to be. 

Or, your stomach was where you first noticed the emptiness.  As you walked, your pace slowly increasing as you grew closer to the road, you noticed as different parts of your body began to realize the absence of the power you'd come to be so dependent on; your chest, your arms, slowly your neck got gooseflesh as the emptiness sank in, your legs, your feet.  Every cell in your body felt that void, that nothing, and when your heart began beating fast as the panic from the change set in, you knew you were in over your head.

You stopped, your breathing suddenly shallow and fast and you bent over, all at once at a severe loss in oxygen; you tried to catch your breath, tried to get your breathing back under control but the only thing you could hear was your heartbeat in your ears, the dull and deafening pounding that echoed.

Thub-dub.  Thub-dub.

The emptiness was overwhelming, far worse than you had felt when you were in the trap with Cain.  At least then you had the Mark which was some sort of supernatural ability that stuck with you, but now you were entirely on your own; where power once clung, you now had nothing more than empty cells and average bodily functions.  Your muscles weren't superhuman, your bones weren't the perfectly-oiled structures they had been, and the change was tremendous; regret flowed into your heart like water from a broken dam and all at once you were on your knees, your head pressed to the ground in front of you with your arms stretched ahead of you.

Regret.  That's all you felt, that's all you could think about.  What a stupid idea this was; you were the most powerful creature, you were on top of the world.  You could have done anything, and you gave it all up.  For what?

You looked forward, your mind finally finding something to cling on to in order to function, to find some reason to stop freaking out and focus.