Summer Garden

Summer

Summer had collapsed to the ground.

Her anger had burned out, leaving her as hollow as the shell that was failing to contain her soul. As flaky as the skin of this thing, slowly peeling away, letting her bleed out into the world, slowly fading. She would fade away. Cease to exist. She could feel it. She knew it. The lifestream was gone. It wasn't just weak anymore. Her connection to it had been severed. If she died, then she was dead. There was nothing to resurrect if she died here and now.

She was trapped. Not just tired and exhausted. When Trei had died... When he died she'd lashed out and destroyed Calis. She'd burned every brick, shattered every stone. She'd unleashed a catastrophe the human world had never seen onto the city. Thousands of mortals died screaming. And it wasn't enough. None of it was. They took him from her. They hadn't even cared when he died. He'd been dumped in the bloody Pit for crying out loud.

Trei had never meant anything to any of them.

But he had meant something to her.

He still meant everything to her.

Tears dripped silently down the mass of muscles that struggled to resemble a face, and more ash drifted away from it, joining the air. Without Trei, she didn't fear death. She welcomed it. She didn't care that Vastras had the last laugh. The witch had set a trap, and Summer had activated it. A self-defence spell, designed to go off in case the entire city was destroyed. A weapon designed to bleed the magic out of the attacker, forcing them onto the ground and then binding them in place. It was a pointless spell. A way to trap someone in time exact a vengeance, but nothing more.

It was exactly the kind of vindictive thing she should have expected the bitch mage who wanted to kill the gods to use.

She couldn't fight the spell. Any effort made it stronger.

Summer knew she was wasting time. She could give in. She could push all her magic into the spell, and die. Be free.

But she didn't want to be free.

She just wanted Trei back.

Summer just wanted to be alone with him in the garden. To be the two of them, and let the entire world fade away. She didn't want any of this. She didn't care. Why couldn't they leave her alone? Why did humanity have to be such a pox on creation?

Her face went white as she felt the world shift and looked up as the gateway opened, and the black-eyed figure stepped through.

The gateway shut behind him, and Summer flinched.

The Fae stretched his arms, and then his wings, as if testing himself out. As if he wasn't entirely comfortable in the body he was wearing. In a way, he wouldn't be. He'd been outside the flow of time. He could be billions of years old for all that she knew. He'd only ever observed. And now... Now he'd freed himself from his curse. Re-entered the world he had been denied.

He crouched in front of her, "Ooh. Youch. That's a spider trap and a half, isn't it?"

Summer glared at him, blood pouring from the broken shell covering her essence, pooling on the ground around her, "What do you want, Tyr?"

"Nothing." The Fae shrugged, sitting down properly, "Seriously, Summer. I now want... Nothing. Nothing at all. It has been so long. I have been hunting and fighting for this one goal. I don't know how long it has been. I did try, at first. To try and keep track of my own personal timeline. To count the hours of time I moved through. But after a certain amount of time... What does it matter if it has been a thousand years or five hundred thousand? I've been pushing and pulling every little figure in every timeline for so long, coercing all the pieces to get in line. It has been my life's work, and now, finally, I'm done. I want nothing at all. I came to see you, Summer, because... You're it. You are the only reason I've finally managed to escape my living hell."

She struggled, trying to stand up, but collapsed, striking her chin on the rough pavement.

Tyr smiled at her tiredly, "Oh, Summer. You don't realise it yet, do you? This was all about me. I do mean that. All of it. I made Vastras into what she is. How else do you think a stupid freaking mortal was able to stumble upon the path to eternity? They are clever, but not that clever. Not by half. It takes more than will and intelligence to become as powerful as that mage did. I taught her. That's why she was so far beyond all the others of this world. I cheated. I taught her magic that wasn't supposed to be discovered for a few thousand years. She was leaps and bounds ahead, a complete genius, because I made her that."

Summer didn't want to accept it. She'd watched him, talked with him. How long had Tyr been her enemy? Plotting her death? Did he plan to kill Trei, long before any of this began?

"Trei was my idea." Tyr grinned, "He was made just for you, Summer. Vastras assumed he had something to fuck with all the gods, but it was about you. Because, to put it simply, you are the lifestream. The only way for me to re-enter this world, or any world, was to break my connection to the lifestream. I kept getting ripped out of existence by the damn thing. It would draw me, try and absorb me. And it would fail. It would spit me out, as some kind of corruption, but fail to break the connection. Then it would draw me in again. Time after time, beyond memory. The only way for me to live, was to destroy the lifestream."

Summer didn't respond. She was too weak to. She could feel it. With Tyr sitting there, she could feel it. The lifestream was still attached to him, but too weak to draw him in... Too weak... Because she was. It was her. Her own soul was all that was left of the source of all magic. The source of all Fae. When she died, so would they. Piece by piece. The only Fae who would survive is Tyr. Because he wasn't Fae. Because he had been resurrected and became something self-sustaining. Something beyond mortality and immortality. Something beyond even the celestials. Tyr was breaking free of the cycle of life and death. All cycles. He was breaking free of time and space and matter.

"I just wanted to die, Summer." Tyr sighed, "Was that too much to ask for? How long did you try to help me before you gave up? A few hundred years? I have spent millennia in this hell! You gave up in a shorter timeframe than it took for me to learn to interact with the world. Isn't it fitting, your death will bring me life."