The Sketch Survivors: The Enemy Among Us

Hope Dies

The last thing Soal could remember before falling unconscious was the wave of Whaliron striking him with intense power. Shards of debris were sent hurling straight into him, the pain scathing. Visibility quickly dropped to zero as the storm just became more and more terrible. He had reached for Irene. He knew she was reaching for him, too. He couldn't reach her. He had reached for Renyrocrattus, however unable she may have been. He couldn't reach her. He had reached for a sliver of hope, if he could reach anything at all.

He couldn't reach one.

The next thing he knew, he felt something touch his hand among the blackness, and the pressure of the rubble around him. Perhaps he had actually reached something. Was this the sliver of hope that shone in the light of death?

The sunlight was blinding at first, and Soal's vision was blurry, though he knew who had just took his hand. A surprisingly able Renyrocrattus had hoisted him into the world that he once knew. Irene was nowhere in sight. His eyes darted back and forth, scanning the landscape. There wasn't much land to see; it was blanketed entirely in rubble from Fort Whal. He scanned to the west as soon as he could.

No Wall stood proudly. A symbol of hope for the Revolution, dead in an instant.

And for the very first time since Soal entered Iminentia for the very first time, the sun was shining, and an uneasy breeze was blowing. It was as much a sign of relief for Soal as it was an omen of a brewing despair. It peeked from behind a partly cloudy sky that illuminated the bleak wasteland once known as the Great Shadow.

Renyrocrattus's face was wounded profoundly. To the dazed Soal, her speech was at first unclear, but it soon became much more intelligible. Somehow, her words sounded... familiar to him. "Soal, Soal, can you hear me?" she stared right into his fading eyes. "Everything's going to be okay."

"Irene?" was his weakened voice's natural response.

Renyrocrattus's cheeks shaded a deep red. She must have been thinking that he had mistaken her for the Green Phantom. "No, she left already," the former Articulus replied. "In our world. There's no point in staying here anymore."

"Happened...?" Soal managed to let out.

"Oh, yes," his friend attempted to explain. "I couldn't stop it. Articulus destroyed Fort Whal, and advanced to maximum power. But Articulus unintentionally burrowed into a Pure Light quarry, which greatly weakened him. Then the Revolute miners took him down with loads of Pure Light dynamite they had crafted. The storm cleared, and Irene fled to the real world. The Zillyroise that aren't Half-Characters are migrating beyond the severed Line to Craspon, a city in another country that's very accepting of refugees, especially from the destroyed Beleggose. We found you buried underneath the wreckage. They're still searching for survivors. Fenway was crushed, too, after a big gathering of Polygmians, so the civil war is largely over, now that most of them are probably dead. From what I know, Irene is worried sick about you. But I don't want you to leave Iminentia until it's safe. I'll take you to Craspon to heal in the coming exodus."

"B-but," Soal coughed, though he could hardly make a point without proper use of his speech. "Irene."

"She seemed very angry when she set off," Renyrocrattus described. "Just before that, she Knighted you, and then cursed under her breath. Must be her Paper-Brain antics. I wouldn't rouse her, if I were you."

Soal sighed deeply. Irene meant everything to him. And the destruction of Fort Whal may have been a major catastrophe in which hundreds, maybe thousands, were possibly killed, but he didn't want Irene to abandon him. Craspon seemed so far away, too. Hope had indeed failed them. And soon enough, the war would be the final blow dealt to the dying Revolution; if Cliasin was right about this in his cryptic "Loss" poem that Shepherd Staut had told them.

"Please," Soal tearfully wheezed to Renyrocrattus. "Just let me go."

He mustered the last of his strength, and a saddened Renyrocrattus witnessed a blue sphere envelop him, and ferry him into the newly-visible Iminentia sky.