SWW 01

Scáthach: World Walker 01

This is How the World Ends

It all started with an influx of souls into the realm.

This was nothing new in the Land of Shadows. While the mystic realm no longer had the connection to the land of my birth, it still siphoned off a few souls here and there, from the grand cycle of souls to the root from the mortal world.

The only thing remarkable about the newer arrivals sinking in the Land of Shadows like all the other dead was the level of despair hanging over them. While normal for death, it’d been unusual, harsh, even. It was enough to make me emerge from my meditation to interrogate them.

After all, they were modern souls, from a modern world with pleasures and luxuries the likes of which the girl I’d once been would never have imagined. There must have been a cause for this level of unrelenting despair.

I’d grabbed one of the falling souls before it could be drawn into the crags and wastes beyond, holding the tiny thing in my hand. It was so, so much less than the ones I knew in my youth, even less then the most common farmer, but such was the way of the progression of time and the gradual weakening of humanity the further one went from the Age of Gods.

It weakly twisted and trembled in my grasp, barely enough to form a wisp.

“Shh...” I spoke, peering into its soul. “Reveal to me your final moments...”

As I focused, as my existence supplemented its own meager remnant, a shape gradually formed: a mother, broken, lying in a cold, empty house.

“No food...my baby...please.” the mother spoke plaintively, but little else remained. The despair of its final moments was the soul at this point and little more.

I’d frowned, letting the soul go to what limited peace it might find in the Land of Shadows. I’d repeated the process a few times, snatching souls and peering into their depths.

“Drafted and sent to die on the mainland...”  a grim soldier who’d died too young said.

The third, more bitter than the others, had the most energy. “We had food, we had water, but the bastards kept the fuel. We froze.”

Taken individually, each remark, each expression was not necessarily unusual. Someone always starved. Someone always died fighting, even in the modern world. Some unfortunate faced the end in the cold, alone.

But this wasn’t just three. The stories repeated. It would’ve been frustrating in other circumstances as it painted only a very limited insight into what was happening in the modern world beyond my sight, beyond the realm that had long trapped me.

Yet, that influx went from a scattering, the equivalent of a few drops, to an all-consuming deluge.

Before, my realm, disconnected as it was, might wrench a soul or two every week from Alaya and Gaia’s grasp? Now, they poured in.

With so many souls, even fragmentary as they were, it was child’s play to learn what happened in the wider world.

Crops failing. Life failing. Everywhere. Endless winter, summer a sweet dream. Catastrophes unending.  Unrelenting war for the scraps that remained. Newborn suns that did nothing but burn what little remained. Death. Death. Death came for all.

With one trembling hand, I set my spear aside on the stone floor of my castle’s entry hall, where I’d long waited for visitors that would never come.

There was only one realistic conclusion.

Gaia and Alaya were dead and dying.

The reason for their deaths were lost, if outright meaningless. The truth was simple enough.

Without Gaia, Alaya was dying. Without Gaia, the magical energy that enabled life withered and died. First the plants, then the animals, and then...

There was no grand action of the counter force to save the world, to right some wrong. After all, the Counter Force solved problems like a body’s defense against disease, but here, the disease had already won at the core.

I could do nothing but watch. The same as I always had.

The flow of souls increased for a time, and then, like a switch had been flipped, it peaked, and rapidly dwindled.

Their stories were the same. The conditions of the world worsening, the collapse of civilization, of all life, until even those in their bunkers sickened and died, mountains of food stores untouched.

The last soul was a magus.

“It failed, then,” the magus said with a long sigh. His soul was substantive enough to almost look like himself. His face was lean, but had a cold handsomeness to his features complimented by his short brown hair. His foggy eyes turned to me. “In other circumstances, I’d have been ecstatic to meet you, Scáthach, the Queen of the Land of Shadows, but...”

He seemed to shrug, almost self-aggrandizing. “Lord Solonea, most probably the last lord of the Clocktower to die, at your service.

I nodded, noting the name out of nothing more than courtesy. Few magi of the clocktower had ever received my respect, but given the circumstances, I felt it was earned. “What was your plan?” I asked.

Solonea sighed. “Near the end, every department was trying their own thing and borders became warzones. My department was no better, but we tried to focus on severance from Gaia and granting independence to the soul based on a combination of analysis of heroic spirits with independent action and creating codes focused on applying that trait to individuals. Useless in most conditions but with Gaia dying, it had potential, but...”

I nodded, thinking. Severance from Gaia, the world, would be to mark oneself as alien, and that was even before the lack of sustainability and verification of existence from Gaia and Alaya come in, but...

It was improbable, not impossible. “I see. My condolences. It had potential,” I said.

Solonea sighed. “Hearing that from you... well, it is reassuring, but too late. No second place when it comes to extinction, I’m afraid,” he said with great sadness. A few moments later, “I’m sorry, Queen Scáthach.”

“I’m not sure why you are. It’s not as if you have wronged me, specifically,” I said. “You failed one of the most difficult challenges possible. To have even gotten a viable concept is impressive.”

The soul shook its head. “No, not that. I meant I am sorry for you,” he said. The air, already chilled even at my castle that stayed loosely habitable compared to the rest of the realm.

“My department and I used specialized mystic codes and resources to sustain ourselves long past the point even most microbes died, but, well, as you can see there was a limit. The last I checked the surface was bare of all but the wind. I am afraid I am the last soul you will meet. I wish I could’ve been a proper warrior to greet you at last, rather than a magus whose countless hours of research amounted to nothing.”

“Shh,” I said, even as my vision pulsed at the truth of his statement. “You faced impossible odds and tried. That is something I can respect.”

For the first time, Solonea looked something other than resigned. Surprised? He smiled. “I see. Recognition from the Immortal Witch? That is something to be proud of,” he said.

We stood in silence for a time. I wasn’t sure why I kept him. I could feel the realm pulling on his soul, to draw him into its depths, but...

You know why. He’s the last person you will ever speak to, the sensible side of me spoke.

Eventually, Solonea spoke once more. “A request, if you would. May I tell you about my daughter, Mary?” he said, pulling a picture of his daughter from an ethereal pocket.

She was a pretty, brown haired young woman in a white coat caught mid pose, stuffing a cookie into her mouth. Her gray-green eyes were comically wide. “I would like someone else to remember her, as long as that may last.”

“She’s lovely,” I said, smiling as I imprinted the young, now dead and gone woman to memory.

With that, Solonea spoke.

Some hours later, I finally let his soul go and the wispy fragments were pulled into the Land of Shadows’ crags and wastes with the millions of others.

~~~~

With that, I was alone.

No one was coming.

There was only me and the countless ghosts drawn here.

Visitors were infrequent since my own culture faded into myth and legend. Nothing more than an occasional and very talented magus once every few hundred years interrupted the tedium in my realm.

But even that was gone. There would never be anyone, ever again.

Even the memories of my students...

Well, what happened to legends when there was no one to remember them?

“Sétanta...” I whispered with a tremble, eyes moist.

Not even he could kill me. Now, no one ever would.

I could stab myself, bash myself, drown myself, burn myself, and more in this realm. I would simply rise again. More effort might see it take longer, but only marginally. Even total incineration would see my return within 24 hours.

The realm was intertwined with my soul.

I would only die once it finally unraveled. Unfortunately, being so close to death, it was far, far more resistant than the mortal world.

By my calculations, that would take far longer than I’d lived, cumulatively, by several orders of magnitude.

This was my Hell.

My scream shook the sky.

~~~~

Opening my eyes was surprisingly difficult.

I was not sure when I’d closed them. It was less an issue of ability to open them and more remembering how.

Gradually, ever so faintly, I remembered how to move. Feeling returned to my skin and the chilled air registered for the first time in so long.

Finally, I opened my eyes.

The destroyed remains of my castle surrounded me, covered in thousands of slash marks. I ignored them, tilting my head as I looked to what remained of the entryway where I used to welcome visitors lifetimes ago.

There was a fat man standing before me. He looked to be in his fifties, had rings under his eyes, short brown hair, brown eyes, and had ruddy skin. His jaw was covered in dark stubble. He wore a wrinkled, white collared shirt, black slacks, and a tie the color of soot.

“I did not expect more visitors,” I said, the words strange, my voice almost rough after lack of use for so long. Truthfully, I did not expect to ever speak again.

The fat man shrugged. “And I didn’t expect to find a soul that wasn’t a gibbering nutcase in this ruin. Funny how that turns out,” he said. He pulled a cigarette from a pocket and lit it with an old, engraved silver lighter. He breathed out a puff of smoke.

“You aren’t human,” I said, studying him. He had the look, but the energies flowing through him, into him, were fundamentally different.

“Nope, never was. Name’s Sam. Smoke?” he offered, thrusting the cigarette box out my way.

The mere offer of something was enough to stir me. I cared nothing for the drug itself, but this was the first time, the first interaction, I’d had in a long, long time.

I rose to my feet, dust falling from my form. I took the cigarette. He politely offered his lighter, which I accepted, and soon had the cheap, harsh smelling cigarette lit.

I inhaled the smoke in a long puff, the warm air filling my lungs with harsh bitterness. I exhaled. “This is surprisingly terrible,” I said, taking another draw.

“Yup, but the brand is sentimental to me,” he said. I noted the blue and white box had a name: Arcadia.

“I see,” I said, taking another draw. It was just as terrible as the first. I finished the cigarette.

He offered another.

I shook my head.

“Ah, guess it is that time,” Sam said, walking around and looking at the destroyed surroundings. “Your world is very dead.”

“I am aware,” I said with a raised brow. “Yet I remain here and will for some time.” If I said the number, I was afraid I’d have another breakdown.

“Well, I have an offer, then. I—”

“I accept.”

He blinked. “That was fast. I had a whole pitch. I was going to explain my organization, how we fix worlds on the path to ruin, how we could use you, the works.”

It was my turn to blink. “That is nicer than I expected, but I have nothing left. If you can sever my bond to this realm, then I would leap into the most appalling pit.”

Sam laughed. “Fair point, but word of warning, this job offer would involve unimaginable dangers, long odds, and monsters that break comprehension.”

I laughed. “Please, you only make it more appealing.”

“Well then,” the fat man who was not a man said. He held a hand up and a doorway appeared. “Simply step through the door. I will handle the rest in the in-between, but it will be painful.”

“I would expect the alteration of my soul to be so,” I said. I’d considered stepping into the void, but the Land of Shadows simply drew me back in. Hopefully, he had the ability. The prospective job sounded pleasing as well.

I was almost ready to step through when I paused. “I have one item to retrieve before we leave.”

Sam raised a brow. “Well, can’t object to that. But do return, I don’t have all day,” he said, but there wasn’t feeling in the remark.

Finding what I wanted took some time on account of the sheer destruction visited on my castle, but I did find it eventually, beneath some rubble.

“Aífe,” I spoke softly, pulling the painting out. It was intact, thankfully, the runic formation holding up even after all this time. I stared at my sister for a time and then pulled it into the space between created from the rune in my soul.

I returned to the entryway.

“Welcome back. Ready to leave this shit hole?” Sam asked.

“Gladly.”

With that, he gestured me to go.

I stepped into the light.

~~~~

AN:

HiddenMaster: Not gonna lie, that entire chapter saw me channeling a lot more emotion than I was initially expecting, but here we are. This is the start of what I hope is to be a long running fic starring everyone’s favorite immortal witch and trainer of Irish heroes, Scáthach.

Just starting up the adventure, but I hope everyone enjoyed that start.

This is a commission for FunGame2.

Fungame2: Aye, and you stab me in the feels on the fifth page in. Bastard! Why would you do this to me!

But still a wonderful start to the fic and there will be definitely alot more to this fic.

HiddenMaster: Sounds wonderful to me. I’ve got ideas here, and there is a lot more that can be done with this scenario.

Now, if you want to support me making my living by writing stories like this, or you would like to commission me to work on a fic of your own, check out my support link below. Patreon and KoFi are the go-to’s to see my work, and I post all over the place.

https://hiddenmasterarchive.carrd.co/