Souls Of The Fateless (FGO x God's Wrath OC Series Story)

Of A Feather

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It was asphyxiating, so strangulating just the essential labors it took to gather air in my lungs to breathe was an insurmountable task. 

There was no Typhoon.

Riessa also had forsaken me.

In this wasteland I'd been sent to, there was only I, and I alone within a thundering sea storm of fog. ...The lonesome yet inevitable conclusion that lingered at the recesses of my mind for how I knew I'd find myself in my final moments, just like I prayed for.

I strode on the path ahead, keeping my eyes tightly closed. I didn't need to see how the bloody-worn path winded for my steps to navigate me down its course knowingly; the winding path felt imprinted in my mind,  already all too familiar and well-known to me. The bladed gusts staggering me where the strongest of attacks failed even to leave a scratch, screeched with wails of havoc, taunting me with regrettable voices as they feasted off the blood they strived to draw from me.

Don't look. I internally convinced myself, the moments I found myself nearly giving in to the temptation to open my eyes and recall the events of my life a second time. You already have so many regrets. What's one more to the endless train I have steering behind me? If you can carry the earth on your shoulders, you can persevere through the pain—the heavy toll of carrying the burdens of everyone you've ever cared about.

That was the cold truth I believed in. Until the day I died, I'd hold firm to those words because that lie was my only salvation.

...They were, weren't they?

My feet ceased moving, skidding to a sudden halt against my wishes as though a god had always patiently waited to hear those words to test the limits of what resolve lay behind those words. The cursed language transformed into barbarous laughing and fiercer threats with their goading.

A dream, this is all an illusion. A mere dreamscape meant to prey on me. It must be so. I refuse to let my feet stall now because what was just ahead were my delusions.

Another figment of darkness shielding what had eluded me for years.

What I reached for felt closer this time around, yet still elusive enough to fumble through my fingers.

I sought to change the past; I wanted to do away with it; I was desperate to. For what expectantly waited at this road's end was worth having to push everyone away, worth all the irredeemable acts of betrayal I incited.

The moment I was forced awake in this finite world, the innocuous light of the future was too blinding, too deserving for me to look ahead towards. Any future for me only existed in the past, where my grief and remorse lay unburied.

The accolades I'd accomplished in my lifetime that became the envy of others meant nothing to me. Slaying Khaos, even the nine dragon clan's eventual acceptance of me held no place in my heart. I let myself down where it mattered; I came up shorthanded in my lonely ambition; my lone regret was the huge blemish of being unable to bring about the utopia I told my friends I'd create for them with the power others revered, only for it to be insufficient.

But now, this chance, this second calling to challenge destiny and bring about eternity, I felt closer now than I ever had centuries back during the Greek Age.

How foolish I was to forget that reality hardly ever handed out happy endings; fortune always evaded those who most needed it like the plague.

My eyes, which couldn't stand the wait, gave in, greeted by the sight of the mist retreating, exposing a view I wished would crumble before me. A terror I kept close to my chest, forever hoping it would stay there instead manifested becoming more than just the nightmare that haunted me. What I wanted to keep myself from experiencing again the pain of the trauma came back all at once.