“I’m sorry, kid.. er, Seymour. I know she was a good friend of yours… I promise though, that prick will pay..”
Seymour brushes Trace’s hand off his shoulder, and without looking at him, whispers –
“Go after Solari.”
“Huh?”
“Don’t let him escape. Take Sakura and Gordon with you, go after him, and make him pay.”
“You aren’t coming with us?”
“I’ll be back in a minute.”
“What?”
Seymour looks up at Trace with a truly terrifying expression on his pale face, making him take a couple fearful steps away from him.
“Just get out of here. Now.”
Despite his confusion, Trace nods in agreement, still shaken, then gets Sakura to her feet, slings the unconscious Gordon’s arm over his own shoulder, and steps into the elevator. As the doors close, shielding the office from sight, Trace turns to Sakura, who is still clutching her wound in pain, and asks worriedly –
“What do you think he meant? He’ll be back from where? Will he be okay?”
“… Why.. Why would he shoot me?”
“Huh? What’s that gotta do with-”
Sakura backs into the wall of the elevator while it ascends, her visage a stark white, completely overwhelmed with shock as blood drips through her fingers. Her violet eyes wide and tear-filled, she chokes out while trembling violently –
“W-why would Vincent shoot me..? I.. I thought he would understand.. I-I thought that he would know it wasn’t my fault.. B-but he tried to kill our Commander…
A-and he shot me… What happened to him?”
Trace kneels down to Sakura’s level, takes hold of her wrist tightly, and exclaims seriously –
“You get it now, Sakura? The PRIME is dead.”
Sakura shakes her head back and forth despondently, her expression having gone beyond terror. She wraps her shaking arms around her legs, and buries her face in her knees. Trace stand back up with an irritated scowl, and suddenly, Gordon starts to slow stirs on Trace’s shoulder. Trace looks to him with a smile, shrugs his shoulder, and greets him cordially.
“Hey hey, welcome to the party, kid.”
“Ah shit… My fucking head…”
Gordon groggily shifts his gaze from Trace’s wrinkled face over to Sakura’s ghostly pale one, and asks uncomprehendingly –
“W-what happened? And who are you?”
“Call me Trace. Are you okay?”
“Yeah… Just a bit dizzy, but I’ll be fine.. Where are we..?”
“Don’t worry ‘bout that just yet. Can you walk, kid?”
“Y-yeah, I think so.”
“Good. Can you hold a weapon steady?”
“Huh? Why? What’s going on?”
“Well, to answer your previous question, we’re about to go hunt down that bastard Solari. If you wanna join in, you’ll need a gun.”
Gordon stares at Trace in confusion for a moment, then nods in understanding, and Trace hands him one of his combat shotguns. Sakura smiles at him slightly as the elevator grinds to a halt, and the doors slide open slowly. Gordon pulls out a pair of cracked glasses from his jacket pocket, straightens them on his face, readies his shotgun, and all together, the three step out onto the rooftop helipad of the military headquarters, perched high above the thick clouds of pollution, where Solari is scrambling into a helicopter waiting with its blades spinning on one of the pads near the edge of the roof. His revolver gripped tight in his right hand, and a radio in the other, his signature smug smile is once again situated on his incessantly infuriating façade as Trace and the others dash towards him; their guns raised in heated anticipation. Trace fires at the copter as it rises into the air, throwing huge gusts of wind all throughout the helipad, but his bullets just bounce off of the bulletproof surface. Staring after the helicopter as it flies away in disbelief, the rage building to extreme levels within him, Trace cries out wildly –
“That.. little… fucking… PRICK! Goddamit! I have had enough of his shit! We need to go after him!”
“Not without Seymour, Trace. We need to go back and get him.”
“… Right… Fine.. Let’s go back…”
Just as they begin to make their way back to the elevator, a row of helicopters rise from the edge of the rooftop, and a massive cavalry of heavily-armed soldiers slide down from cables and land in front of the elevator doors, ambushing the trio, and blocking their escape. Trace looks to Sakura and Gordon with a smile, and pumps his shotgun ostentatiously.
“… Heh heh… Alright, kiddies. Time to play,”
Kneeling on the ground of the now-empty office, still staring into Elena’s lifeless eyes, Seymour hurriedly shoves his hand deep into the gaping wound on her chest, and forcefully excises the bullet. He then reaches into her back pocket, his hand dripping with her blood, pulls out the little half-empty tub of Seraph Tears, and, wasting no time, carefully applies it within the bloody lesion, which instantly begins to heal from the inside out. After a few minutes of waiting in silent anticipation, Seymour observes that Elena’s wounds are almost fully healed, but she continues to lie still and cold; no trace of life within her empty eyes. Seymour sees no sign of revival, and is about to admit defeat, but his mind is suddenly seized by an unbidden idea as if from nowhere, and he seems only half-aware of himself as he says quietly to no one in particular –
“All people.. everyone who dies here will come to exist in that place.. Which means.. she must be there as well..”
Rolling up his coat sleeves slowly, revealing his long, twisted black brands, Seymour examines them fervently, his mind racing, desperately weighing his options.
“.. It’s extremely dangerous.. A total longshot.. But…”
He takes one last look at Elena’s lifeless face, feeling the guilt seizing his heart in a vice grip, and all doubt disappears from his mind.
“I guess I have no choice.”
Concentrating hard, still feeling strangely distant from his own body, he stands, and a sudden mantra flies through his mind. Where it came from, he has no clue, but he does not doubt it as he whispers to himself, while he forcefully gathers together all of his energy –
“Okay… Concentrate… Focus… Raise body temperature.. past a hundred and eight degrees.. i-induce tachycardia… k-keep p-pulse going… over.. faster..!”
Clutching his chest determinedly, his temperature rises while his heart starts to palpitate wildly. As the pain mounts in his heart, the world around him becomes enveloped in suffocating silence, and the milliseconds digits on the digital clock on the wall slow to a complete halt. The soft light of the office suddenly flickers into a harsh white one, and the panes of glass in the windows shudder in their frames. Seymour painfully focuses every ounce of strength within him while blood starts to seep from his eyes and ears. As his brands begin to leak black ichor down his arms, he refuses to give up even as a stabbing, icy sensation pierces every one of his nerves like liquid death, and the flesh around his stigmas begins to tear from strain. After what seems like an eternity of intense, agonizing concentration, his eyes suddenly turn from clear to black, and his heart finally becomes still. For a moment, everything seems frozen, and then he falls face-first to the ground, his strength spent, and covers his face with his hands, screaming as the skin upon his body begins to sting like pouring salt on an open wound. Very slowly, he takes his hands away from his face, to find himself surrounded by a sea of burning black ash, and looks up with ebony eyes to the newly formed onyx sky above. Solari’s office has completely disappeared, and now, he is surrounded by an endless stretch of stagnant, windblown wasteland swathed in a thick blanket of scorching ebony ash. Staring into the distance with burning eyes, Seymour beholds an enormous, fiery, black sun blazing high in the sky, its whitish rays searing his blackened vision. Seymour grips his pounding head; his tangled, incomprehensible thoughts are intensified tenfold in the maddening influence of the strange, foreign land, and scream inside his mind horribly
, like incessantly crying children.
Once again, Seymour walks the planes of Paradox.
~Sable Sunrise~
~ Paradox ~
Getting to his feet shakily, still clutching his shattering head painfully, Seymour uncertainly holds his hand up in front of his ebonized eyes.
It is flickering with a strange blurry distortion, as is the rest of his body. Breathing in the stagnant, ashen air around him, he tentatively rolls his coat sleeves down, covering his bleeding brands, which continue to painfully leak black, ichor-like blood. Gazing through the endless stretch of wasteland surrounding him, he sees not a single landmark in which to guide him. Deciding to merely head towards the massive sun burning on the horizon, Seymour gathers together all his remaining strength, and slowly walks off through the monochrome plane. As he trudges along the vast wilderness, he enters a stretch of wasteland where wasted human bodies are buried under the thick layers of burning cinders. Their faces are gaunt and twisted, eyes hollow and haunted, flesh torn, and covered in hideously infected welts and gashes. Some are so deformed, they can barely be called human. Some are screaming, some are crying ebonized tears, but most lie still beneath the blanket of sable ash, their faces completely blank, too entrenched in their sorrow and agony to gather enough strength to move. Keeping his eyes fixed on the sun hanging low in the sky, Seymour treads lightly through the necropolis, while the bodies of the living lifeless unknowingly claw at his ankles, screaming pleas for help in the air around him, which he tries desperately to ignore, though the farther he walks, the more demanding their cries become. His walk turning into a sprint, desperate to escape their crying, Seymour covers his ears, though it does nothing to shut out the din; as it slowly drives him insane, he simply keeps running until he reaches the edge of the living graveyard. With a sigh of relief, as the incessant voices in his head are slowly quieted, he sets his sights back on the unmoving sun - much closer now- and marches forward. After what feels like an eternity of trudging through the seemingly endless wasteland beneath the pallid glare of the colossal black sun, occasionally passing by shambling, husk-like corpses that stagger past him unknowingly, he suddenly reaches a sheer edge, where a gaping chasm spreads out below his feet, and massive cascades of onyx ash pour from the edge into its darkened depths. On the other side of the great, infinite abyss, sits what appears to be a man in a tattered black robe. Unable to cross, Seymour tries to call out to the mysterious man on the opposite side of the void, but no words come forth. As if the man has heard Seymour’s unspoken words, he raises his pallid hand, and suddenly, the immense cascades of cinders begin to flow straight across the chasm, rather than down into its depths. The ash abruptly erupts into a torrent of white flames, solidifies, and forms into a vast flat bridge made of smooth purple glass. Surprised, Seymour tests its sturdiness carefully, and treads lightly across its iridescent glass surface, trying hard not to look down into the dark, infinite abyss below him. Stepping off the bridge on the opposite side of the great chasm, Seymour nods at the man in gratitude, and tries to continue onward, but the man’s presence seems to keep him rooted to the spot. He is wearing a tattered black robe; a dark hood covers his entire head, with only a pale mouth visible from out of the hood’s shadows. His feet are bare, blood-stained, and caked with cinders, and he sports black brands upon his forearms, completely identical in shape to Seymour’s. Without opening his mouth, the man says to Seymour –
.. It’s certainly been a while… hasn’t it?
|Y-yeah…|
Once again inexplicably hearing his unspoken words, the man looks up at Seymour, and stares inquisitively at him with unseen eyes. He stands slowly, black ash falling through his fingers, and surveys Seymour with quiet curiosity.
Why are you here?
|I have to find someone, and you might be able to help.|
Help..?
|Yeah.. Because I… I think you’ll agree with me on this matter..|
And that is?
|The one I’m looking for… I can’t repay my debt without her.|
The man turns from Seymour with a slight smile on his pale lips, but remains silent and inscrutable. After a long silence, while the pain dulls his patience, Seymour asks edgily –
|So… Will you help me or not? I really don’t have much time here…|
The man stares at Seymour for a few moments, one hand caressing his own black brand, until he says quietly –
I suppose.. I’ll do what I can to help.
|… Thanks..|
Mm.. I even think I know who you’re looking for.
|You do?|
Yes, because she’s looking for you too. Or at least, she was. Last time I saw her, she was waiting underground.. She should still be there too.
|Then let’s go, quickly!|
Mm… Sure.
Together, both Seymour and the mysterious hooded man trudge along the vast, gloomy wasteland for hours; its heady, unearthly influence weighing heavily upon his thoughts, and through the anguished wailing drifting on the driving winds, he tries desperately to stave off his growing oppressive feeling of looming insanity. Looking over at the man, who strides confidently, almost carelessly, through the wasteland surrounding them, Seymour’s eyes are attracted to the black brands burnt on his forearms, and he stares at them with a pang of regret.
… I wish you wouldn’t stare at me, Seymour.
|Oh, sorry.. So, uh… how did you know I was looking for-|
The girl? You should know how I know, Seymour. After all, whose voice do you think it was telling you how to get here?
The man glances at Seymour with a slight smile, and something suddenly clicks into place inside his head.
|That was you? You.. told me how to get here?|
I can say that this moment has been pretty much inevitable since the day you two first made contact.. I suppose you could say I’ve been waiting for the moment when you requested my aid, and I’ve taken certain measures to make sure this goes.. according to plan..
|Plan? You’re saying you knew this was going to happen?|
Like I said.. It was merely an inevitability.
Without elaborating, the hooded man continues as if there had been no interruption, and Seymour follows in his wake, trying to figure out the mean of he had said, but he remains mystified. Through the torpid ebony haze, and boiling heat of the great black sun burning high above, a desolate, crumbling city soon rises on the horizon. As Seymour gazes upon the decrepit ruins in grim remembrance, the brands on his arms suddenly flare up with a frighteningly intense pain. The dim pallid light of Paradox momentarily flickers to the harsh yellowy light of Solari’s office, and the hazy distortion encompassing his body becomes much more distinct. As the pain slowly fades, so too does the light, ceding back into the dull white glow of the wasteland. The man grabs Seymour before he can fall to the ground in his pale, scarred hands, and sets him on one knee.
What happened?
|I-I don’t know how much longer I can manage being here. We need to get to her quickly..|
Mm.. Of course.
Seymour gets back to his feet shakily, and the pair continue traversing through the monochrome badlands in silence, and soon, they approach the outskirts of the moldering metropolis, which is covered in a thick blanket of blackened cinders, framed in the harsh ghostly glow of the onyx sun, with an enormous whitish tower rising from the very center of the decaying megalopolis, extending high above the city’s crumbling buildings. The two look at each other for a moment of mutual dread, and proceed into the dilapidated depths of the city.
Seymour and the hooded man trudge for what seems like hours along the cracked, worn-down, ashen streets, which are littered with huddled masses of dull-eyed, wasted, glaring people, from gaunt, elderly men, to tiny, once-innocent children. They all angrily turn their gaze to the man in the hood as he and Seymour cautiously pass by, their haunted, sunken eyes burning with a fierce hatred, and an ineffable fear. Drawing near to the pair, the denizens of the crumbling city back
away in fright, as cockroaches do when exposed to light, fleeing in terror of the sight of him.
|What’s with them? Can they see me?|
No, nobody here will be able to see you. They just hate me. They do this every time I pass by.
|Why do they hate you?|
… Well, you could say that I am somewhat responsible for their suffering.
To what degree, however, that is for them to decide.
While Seymour ponders over the man’s words as they maintain their trek through the decrepit city streets, the pair pass by a group of deformed, smiling women huddled in a tight group against the wall of a collapsed skyscraper. They are all completely bald, naked, covered with bleeding wounds, and all are holding large purple glass ewers tightly in their hands. They all stare wide-eyed at the hooded man as he treads lightly past them, and giggle in crazy, high-pitched tones, sloshing blackish water down their skin from their ewers. Sliding away from the wall, the girls draw close to the man, encircling him, holding their ewers high in the air, and all together, in eerie unison, sing softly –
Ohh, if it isn’t the liar,
standing amidst the ebon fire!
Will the day ever come when you recall,
that you used to love us all?
The man in the hood angrily swipes at them with a wave of his hand, as one would swat at a bothersome fly, and they quickly disperse, laughing anew as they all take off down the ruined street, and disappear into the ebony haze. Without a word, the man continues down his path as if nothing had just happened, and Seymour quickly catches up to him, his confusion getting the best of him.
|What was that all about?|
Tch.. They’re.. failed experiments..
Paradox: The Last Day - Seymour's Story Page 21