Ever After...What Comes After?

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The world stunk of sulfur and brimstone, a stench customary when war draws near its end.

This error in time was inbound to cease, the distortion of human history it created erased—a befitting end to something that shouldn't have existed in the first place, yet it felt like I was gazing upon this land for the first time in a new light now that my eyes were clear of the anger and hatred that'd stained them.

Spanning across the blank heavens, like a comet you could make a wish on, an unmissable silver streak as striking as the stars punched through the hemisphere as the light transformed into surging red torrents of energy that devoured everything in the distance—the whines of distress escaping Tiamat drowned by the sword capable of splitting heaven and earth.

Aftershocks kept shooting through the ground. Smoke billowed from the ditch where gravity and space took the liberty of crushing Mesopotamia's Earth Mother where she last stood.

With every step, the land melted under my feet, crumbling and dissolving as I edged near the eye of the massive crater.

An airstream mimicking the sad roar of a beast rushed up from the well, tossing my lengthy hair and bangs about frivolously. Pink petals danced past my eyes, gingerly slapping my cheeks when I insistently let my gaze peer into the darkness and see what picture awaited below in the abyss.

The wind picked up, howling fiercer as I reached the point where I felt my body had forgone solid rock. It was easy to fool myself into thinking I'd been cast on ice the way I slipped forward. The weightless air felt better now than it had any point before as I quit tottering at the fall point and let gravity do its work...to feel my hand taken as I dived.

A smile battered and worn with weariness yet still retaining a caring radiance came in the shape of Okita as I gazed back and met her questioning eyes.

"...Take me...down with you?"

The tone of her voice, the way her grip relaxed ever softly while still keeping me aware that she held my hand, each action Okita did that seemed so irrelevantly small showed how she saw through me like a sky without clouds as her soft and consolable pupils reflected the anxiousness in my heart I tried to mask.

Thinking it too soon to say anything to the sakura-pigmented saber, I balled my fist and greedily took more of her hand before pulling the girl into me and jumping down the rabbit hole large enough to fit a giant.

The loose bedrock shifted under the united weight of us effortlessly. How the permeable substance fell away and splashed at our sides made the ride through the tunnel parallel the action and feel of sliding through fierce rapids with even the tiny jumps Okita made in my arms each time we ran over a bump adding to the experience.

Sounds of others' voices began to echo ahead the further we delve into the earth. Soon, the sights of our perimeter shifted. A wall of the same flowers that blew up from the crater's mouth impeded our vision as the momentum we built plowed us into the barricade.

The sensation of my back rubbing against the cushiony feeling of the soil vanished. Jetted out like waste, a sixth sense ingrained into me during the days I first learned how to fly instinctively had me twist myself, my feet level and ready to face the challenge as they intercepted the solid ground.

A landing without error.

"Big thanks for the lift." Clambering from my arms, Okita hopped free and took the lead, but there wasn't much to walk toward as I could already see much of the picture without the suspense behind it.

Hell looked ethereal. The lives of too many flowers to count lit up the Babylonian Underworld with the luminescent pink plants covering every inch of the dull blue landscape.

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