TBATE - What if Tessia was the legacy ? - The legacy of it all

An ending

{Ion Camus}

Pushing my dagger deeper in the solar plexus of Unity I felt the tip of my blade touch her core before piercing it.

Cracking, then completely shattering under my pressure, Unity's core was reduced to rubble as her eyes grew wide open in what I could only imagine was pure pain.

Then, as her arms lost their strength before loosely falling to the side, the large, complex pattern of thousands of stars that covered her body dissipated revealing a lone, defenseless elf girl covered in bruises and awful injuries that were making her slowly bleed out.

Pulling the dagger out of her body I stood there, motionless as the blood slowly dropped down to form a small puddle under her body.

The moment was painfully silent as I contemplated what I had done, what I had been forced to do, what I would be forced to finish now.

I had wished for her to kill me; I had prayed to whomever would listen to just kill me before I could harm anyone else under the orders of that greedy pig of a king.

The faces of all those people I had met and killed against my will flashing in my mind, again and again. How long has it been since I started this meaningless fight for a worthless ideal against the innocents and dissidents, how many lives had I taken in those decades since the war?

Even the war itself was something I had come to regret, to despise with all my being. A younger me had been fooled by the promise of the old king, the prospect of power, protection for my family, for my loved ones.

I accepted the deal, got exactly what I had asked for, but only came out a shallow husk.

Now I stand, sixty years later, alone, all of my friends either died during the war, killed themselves as the guilt of all the horrors we performed caught up to them or gone of old age.

I have no friends, no family, no cause to defend, no country to fight for, no motivation to keep going, just the endless, absurd repetitive struggle.

Being given a target, observing and analyzing them, planning a strategy, putting everything in place, swinging my sword over and over again, coming out, repeat.

At some point it felt no different from pushing an increasingly heavy boulder up a steeper and steeper mountain, only to push them over the edge, forcing me to go down and pick up a new one to push.

The process had been engraved so deep in my body that I could go through most steps without having to think about any of them. It had all become so dull with no hope for change.

No matter how many fights I got into, how many enemies there were, I always came out on top.

Even Unity, the antithesis of my current self, a beacon of hope of strength and equality for people of all ages and races wasn't enough.

I had pushed the boulder that was this mission, the largest and most sturdy I had faced yet, up the hardest path I had to take, and yet, even as I flinched for the first time in decades while holding it in place, it hadn't been enough.

I always came out on top.

As I wallowed in my own hatred, silently cursing the earth and sky for my torments, I felt the artifact that bound me to the Glayders start to take a hold of my mind.

The job wasn't done yet. Despite being crippled and losing the ability to use magic, she wasn't dead yet.

The boulder was precariously standing on the tip of the mountain, ready to swing either way and fall down from the tiniest of pushes all the way back down.