War For Underworld

The Death Of The Warrior

First, she notices that the world around her is cold and dark, but not completely absent of heat and light. A small light in the darkness, a flame burning in a bonfire, provides some warmth. She's drawn to it to escape the frigid, dark environment, then she pauses as she sees the seated figure. It's her dear friend, shivering in the light. "Jaymes."

"Oh, he cannot hear you." A voice echoes in the darkness, accompanied by soft footsteps. It comes from behind Jaymes. The first thing she sees as the figure enters the light is a pair of black leather boots, then black pants that stem from the inside of the boots up his waist, covered by the bottom of a red tunic. The tunic covers the entire torso on top of a black long sleeve shirt that runs down the length of his arms down to black leather fingerless gauntlets on each hand. On his left shoulder is a plate of steel, the only piece of armor on his body. And the head...bears the features of Jaymes, albeit a few years younger dictated by the lack of sideburns the seated Jaymes possesses.

Medina has seen this armor before, at the end of the Clamp Crisis and the Otherworlder War, but it always disappears later. She never asked him about it before, but if the body wearing it is a younger him, this must be an image of him from one of the other worlds. His words, too, make Medina think. "What do you mean?" The younger Jaymes gestures down to his older form, tapping him on the head. Jaymes doesn't respond again, neither vocally nor with movements. His body is stiffly focused on the fire.

"You see?"

"He... You have to stop. You're going to kill Kirito and Asuna."

"...So what? I won't actually kill them." Younger Jaymes faces the flame, a dark grin growing on his face. "While they get to be happy, all he's known is loss and pain because of them. I want them to suffer as much as he wishes they would. After all, I know him best, for he's me."

Medina shakes her head in disbelief. Having gone through something similar with Eydis, she knows that the person speaking, while possibly true to his feelings, is not truly her friend."I don't believe that."

"Why?"

"Because the Jaymes I know went through hell just to save Kirito once before. That same Jaymes fought to defend lifeforms I thought he didn't care about from people just like him. He fought the dark god to defend Alice. He fought the Pontifex to protect this world."

"That's... Not true. I am the Crimson Warrior, and he only fights for himself."

"Then, if that's true, why did he bring me back to life?"

"Because of his pile of delicious regrets." The Warrior, as Medina decides to call him, chuckles and holds up his fingers in preparation to snap. "I wish I could show you them all, but watching him bitch and moan against our father is boring. So let's get to the good stuff... Ah, there's no better day than his most suffered one." The Warrior snaps, and the flame bursts.

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"Oh, I skipped so much and got straight to my favorite part," the Warrior giddily states as the pair appears on a grassy plain not too far from a walled town. She doesn't believe they're anywhere in the Underworld, at least in Norlangarth, and the Warrior's words of the past mean this is somewhere in Jaymes' memories. But which one...is "his most suffered"?

"Koharu!" Medina immediately turns to her left, seeing a differently armored but certainly Jaymes running from the direction of the town towards her right. He swiftly moves past Koharu and the Warrior as if they're invisible, heading for a person in a dark cloak. That person vanishes, leaving behind a fallen body. Her feet move her after him but keep her distance as Jaymes slides to the ground and props the prone figure up.