Chương 171: 84 - DYING OF THE LIGHT

It was German who found them the next morning, tied up and petrified. He'd sensed the disturbance when he activated his hypersensitivity loot as he usually did every morning. At some point, Acelin had regained consciousness enough to see the two adults still in their chairs, staring off into blankness. He was the only one with a working mind to tell of what happened. They were attacked by Monan, and when he tried to fight back, he was easily knocked unconscious.

When he woke up, Monan was gone, and blood was spilling from the bedroom. The funeral was 2 days later. She had a Christian funeral led by Abbot Kilgrove. Though the entire city was shaken at the news, it was a private affair with only the Redeemers and their close circle there to mourn for T'tania the thinker. As Arthur read a bible verse concerning loss and faith, Martha held Ellie by the arm, dressed in black. The old woman did her best to comfort and to give her a shoulder to cry on, but Ellie didn't cry.

She stared at the casket with the same blank horror as the day she died. Some would've said all of the life drained from her or that she was still locked in a perpetual state of shock. But whatever it was, not a soul was able to bring her out of it. T'balt stood solemnly in the chilling, murky air of the morning. No one tried to console him. They knew if they had, he would've rejected it. Though many of them there desperately needed to know what he was thinking as if their lives depended on it.

When the service ended, he continued to stare at the hole in the ground containing the remains of his meaning. To that end, it might as well have been an empty. But still stared, unblinking and unwavering, that this was a pain he must wholly and without interruption. Though it was interrupted. Uriel Grace put a hand on his shoulder.

"It won't help to blame yourself. None of us knew this was what Monan was planning. But I urge you. Come to peace with it. Otherwise you'd be doing exactly what he wants you to do." He saw that his words weren't getting a response. Not agreement or disagreement. Not even an acknowledgment. But he continued on anyway.

"I've dealt with Monan for a long time. The only way to win with him is not to play the same game he wants you to. If you give in and give him the fight he wants, you'll only encourage him to continue doing things like this. So please just take some time to think before you—""Uriel…" T'balt didn't take his off the casket.

"I'm mourning my daughter." There was no malice in the words—a statement of fact and at the same time a threat, veiled in ice. Tyene found a space away from people, under loot-grown oak tree in Graceland's graveyard. It had been a long time since she had attended a funeral. The last time must've been before she even became a Redeemer. People in the new world hardly cared about respecting the dead and she was sure she didn't either, which made this gathering all the more uncomfortable.

It was like someone had driven a stake through the very atmosphere. She needed to de-stress. She unfurled a carton of cigarettes from her dark robe and put it to her lips.

"Since when did you smoke?" Gerrman asked, standing stiffly behind her. He always hated the smell of cigarettes. She held it with her mouth and lit it with her one hand regardless.

"Since this life was forfeit…" she blew a small ash cloud into the air.

"It's been fun and all, but if I'm being honest, I can't wait to get my leg back." She patted the form of the plastic and metal that barely allowed her to walk for the past five years.

"Among other things." German was silent as he tried to process what would happen next. As he entered their minds, he could see that all three Redeemers had concluded the same ending to this story. And there was nothing he could do. So he just walked away without uttering another word. Uriel found Tyene, frustration twisting his lips.

"This situation is much more serious than you're taking it, Tyene. If things get out of hand, it'll be a long time before any of us will be able to live longer than a week."

"We've gone through it before. It'll run its course like everything eventually does." Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

"But I'm afraid we'll lose something much more than a few lives… I respected T'balt because, despite everything, with him around, I could look at the world through a new set of eyes. A curiosity that could keep me going. Because he still cared and the people around him cared. If Monan gets his way, then… it feels like the remaining light in this world will shut off for good."

"Wow… thanks for the compliment."

"You're prey to it too. Don't pretend otherwise." She looked up at the cloudy grey sky.

"I know. But at this point, what are we gonna do about it? The ship has sailed. We're just in for the ride now." As she spoke it, T'balt walked up to her with the focused but at the same time despondent look on him that she could only describe as apathy. Then she realized he wasn't looking at her but the cigarette in her mouth. Without saying anything, she flipped it in her fingers and offered it. T'balt took a long, deep drag and breathed it out like dragon's breath.

"Tastes like dirt." He brought the cigarette home and continued to burn it until the burning ash singed his fingers. When he was done, he sat on the couch next to Ellie. Despite everyone telling them they shouldn't go back home, to the place where it happened, they had anyway. There weren't many who could stop a Redeemer from doing what they wanted. She was horizontal, clutching a pillow as a child would a stuffed animal in the dark, hoping and failing for it to give some sort of comfort.

"Is Acelin around?" T'balt asked.

"Arthur's…"

"You didn't wanna go?" She shook her head.

"I can't…" He sighed heavily.

"I know."

"I… Do you… Pe…"

"It's alright. You don't have to say anything."

"People must think I hated her… I haven't been able to cry. At the funeral, all I could think was how everyone probably expected me to fall on my knees and try to throw myself in the ground with her, screaming to God. But I can't… I can't do anything. I can't think. I can't breathe… It's just… nothing works anymore. I thought we were good people. I thought if we were good people, God would protect us from terrible things. So that means either 2 things…

either he doesn't exist, or I'm a terrible person, and I deserved this."

"Ellie, that's not—""Even now I can only think about myself. How can I go on in a world that would do such a thing? … How can I go on in a world where I would do such a thing?"

"It isn't your fault. You know that."

"I didn't have to play. I didn't have to do anything. Then it wouldn't have been my fault… she had the thinker's loot still. Probably up to her last moment she could spend a long time thinking about how her own mother forsake her." Her voice was breaking under the pressure of the words.

"My own little girl… she was just… a little girl." T'balt grabbed her, trying to fight his own tears, and he pulled her close. She didn't hug him back, but she cried. For a long time, she cried in his arms. But then he remembered the futility of it and got up.

"You don't have to think about any of that anymore. I'll take care of it." He walked straight towards the kitchen, an image she would've seen before, though she wouldn't have known it.

"You're going to reset things?"

"Yeah…"

"Good… Good… We'll go back to a place where I never heard of this. I don't know what Graceland and none of this ever happened." She was speaking frantically, like the words weren't hers. He silently nodded.

"Can I… go with you?"

"I don't understand."

"I want to know what she felt." T'balt shook his head.

"Ellie, please, don't ask me that."

"I'm not actually asking…" She snuck by him, rattling around in the drawers before finding two unmarked bottles of pills.

"I took these from the clinic. There'll be some pain but not a lot." She handed him one.

"I can't let you do that. It won't even change anything, just let me—""DON'T ROB ME OF MY CHOICE! NEVER AGAIN! Do not take this one thing from me…" she trailed off. She opened the bottle. Tears watered T'balt's eyes.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry I couldn't protect you or our family." Before he could say anything else, she took the pill. He wanted to stop her. He wanted to stick a hand down her throat and make her throw it up. But suddenly he felt he didn't have the right. After all, he would be asking her to do the same she was asking him to do. So he paused and took his pill. She felt a strange sense of relief then, a confidence even that eclipsed his own. Knowing that even this problem had a tangible solution thanks to the Redeemer.

She caressed his cheek.

"Don't worry. I know you'll make this right. You'll make him suffer in every single way imaginable…" He felt the warmth in her hands, even as the blood stopped circulating within them.

"If we should meet again… please… never tell me what I've done." She kissed him then.

"I will always love you." There were those terrible words… never tell me what I've done. It wasn't the first time he'd heard them. It would not be the last, but it was a burden only he could bear. Because of what he was and what everyone else wasn't. A terrible curse, and he found himself wishing that this time, he wouldn't wake back in his grandparents' home. But he did. He was clean-shaven, thinner, and younger. But none of that mattered.

He felt the urge to write and grabbed his little brown notebook to scrape a poem into its blankness.

"Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Rage, rage against the dying of the light… rage rage… rage. Rage… rage…"