Cycle 10
Season 4 Extra - Epilogue
Luthien’s dialogs with the barely conscious researcher were met with muffled and pained groans as they headed to the squeeze where Levi and Mizuki’s vines were on the other side. Once Luthien and Ordnung were within his reach, Levi pulled them through before he wrapped Mizuki’s vines around them and gave them each a yank to alert the Caenis that she there were two more people on her rescue lineup after she hurled the tigress and the snake into the elevator.
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With the sound of the collapse ringing out in every which way, Accelerator found himself shoved into the elevator, making him lose his glasses amid the chaos. The magia instinctively bent down to reach for them, but the stampede of people rushing into the elevator crushed his lost item. Despite the deafening sounds of everything that went on around him, Accelerator could hear the sound of frame twisting until the glass shattered. That wasn’t the sound of his spectacles breaking, that was the sound of his heart, if he even had one.
Something broke inside Accelerator in that moment, or was it Ahylios? But, in the countless figurative fragments within him, not a single one told him of what he lost as reality set in. Szofrit had really gone and became an inescapable dark hole inside his heart, the void that threatened to swallow up every fiber of his being. What was the role of the actor named Ahylios? Was he even Ahylios anymore? In order for magia to live, they need a purpose - what was his purpose? Does he even need a purpose anymore? In the million shattered pieces of the being known as Ahylios were shards of Accelerator mixed in. The blending of identity, purpose, and now a child in his arms created such dissonance inside that collapsing psyche.
When he closed his eyes at that moment, he could feel the cores Ordnung had hastily spliced together were collapsing. In the end, there was no way any mortal could synchronize disharmony. The two tunes in his broken core battled, discord bursting at the seam. Since his tune was the quieter of the two, Ahylios was brought to the tribunal of humanity, where the evolutionary concept of pathos was wrought into the fabric of existence. There, he opened the pandora’s box Szofrit had brought into their crew, but instead of dissonance, his source came from humanity itself.
With everyone inside the deathbox, the emergency doors shut with a deafening slam, drawing curtain on Accelerator’s silent soliloquy. With a barely functioning arm holding onto the sleeping child, he extended his remaining arm out of some unknown reflex, pressing his palm against the cold and steely surface that had completely cut the survivors from Level-V. The closing doors were the finality of his choice. He will no longer be able to return there once he leaves. Though Accelerator was among the throng of people, he stood alone, attending the funeral of the last of his kind. Szofrit will remain alone and buried beneath this rubble, while the being named Ahylios will be buried in his subconscious. He only wished that they were able to talk a final time, unshackled from the goddess chain. He had finally understood the concept of freedom, and regret.
As the sound of pistons filled the cramped space, Ahylios made his final wish, that the next iteration of himself would hold onto this one regret, so at least one person would carry the best memory of her.
A deafening crescendo played across the metal deathbox as it prepared to launch.
BOOM. WHOOOOOOOSH!!!
With a mighty roar, the metal contraption ascended, carrying the survivors to safety as the MITHRA compound collapsed in on itself. Both metal and earth folded inward like a dying star imploding under its own weight. But amid the destruction, the collapse was not at all absolute, leaving the once-great structure a tomb of itself.
The moment the elevator breached the surface, the box exploded from the pressure, depositing its injured occupants outside the ruins of the compound as the MITHRA’s massive collapse howled into the deep night.
The cold summer winds came to greet the Starcalled, carrying with it the silence of alarms and the sound of hope as the baby in Accelerator/Ahylios's arms let out her first cry, drawing immense panic to his face as the dawning sun as red as the baby's cheeks ascended from the horizon.
- Fin -
