Chapter 157 – No Heaven, No Sleep, No Hell

John was robbed of his way out, his offensive elementals, Aclysia and most of his mana. There was a light at the end of all of this however: Thana was bleeding out. He meant that observation quite literally, the wings on her back were growing smaller as they burnt away.

She jumped at him. Gnome threw herself between them and miraculously she was there in time. Ungracefully, they rolled over the ground, coming to a halt with Gnome on top of the blood mage. Thana spread her clawed hands.

“Yes,” she giggled when Gnome threw a punch. “Struggle,” the stone elemental’s fist landed on Thana’s ribs, she spat out a bit of blood but kept grinning as she grabbed onto the stone elemental’s extended arm. “Hurt me… harder…. kill me, KILL ME!”

The inside of her burning wings suddenly grew spikes, chaotically spread and of varying length they were a sight straight out of a horror movie. They closed on Gnome, who desperately tried to get away but was locked by Thana’s grasp. Like inside an iron maiden Gnome was penetrated by hundreds of individual spikes.

“Seems like I found a fucking use for these useless shitwings after all,” Thana giggled as she got up. “I got so… excited there for a fucking second.” Halfway up, the blood mage was struck in the shoulder by a Mana Ray. John exploited every window of opportunity he could. “YEEEEEESsssssssss,” she screamed, between torment and delight.

The wound actually needed more than a blink of an eye to close, but she was still too quick to allow John to get a second shot in there. With Gnome, his way out had been obliterated. His mind raced, trying to find a way he could still extract her from the area, in that little bit of time between victory and her falling apart. “Why?!” he asked again, “Why won’t you let me save you?!”

“I DON’T WANT TO BE SAVED!” Thana shouted back, and jumped at him again. John was all out of allies who could block for him, Mono was too slow, Undine was made of easily blown-through slime, and so Thana now pressed him to the ground. John tried to conjure a Mana Blade but Thana had none of it. Grabbing both of his hands by the wrist she pressed them to the ground. Mono was about to fire another bolt from the Lesser Lance of Longinus but John stopped her.

‘Maybe she will talk,’ he argued.

‘Dumb reason not to struggle,’ Mono commented, then added. ‘Probably will work though.’

On top of him Thana was breathing heavily, the wings on her back mere sputtering flames now. Her white hair hung over his face, the blue tips almost touching him. He looked deep into her shattered eyes, the violet colour, the golden circle inside, now at a speed where he could barely make out the individual dots.

“Why?” John asked again. He needed an answer. “I just want to help you, why are you this bent on dying?” Her level was reducing at an abnormal rate now. It seemed her end was closing in. Yet there was no answer, only her eyes, her now expressionless face above his. “You could just stop, stop right now and make amends. You killed people, many of whom did not deserve it, but I still think you can make this right!”

“Amends? Right?” Thana whispered, then her smirk returned. “Who would I make amends to? The families of those I killed? You think the fucking cultists, the commies, and those fucking mercs you stumbled in with deserve anything? To God? Ahahahaha,” she burst out laughing, the mere suggestion making her little body shake. “If there is a God, once I meet him, he will have to ask for my forgiveness.”

“Then do it for a selfish reason!” John appealed to another side of her. “Live for yourself, there has to be something you want to do!”

“There is one thing….” Thana agreed, John was about to exploit that look of weakness in her eyes when she continued, a fire burning bright within her, “but it would be never worth going back to being a sack of emotionless shit in a corner of a room. You keep insisting ‘I CAN HEAL YOU, I CAN HEAL YOU!’ but you have no fucking idea what that means. Yes, this decay of my body you could halt. I could take my blood back from the storage of this fucking place. I tried it, it works. In a moment of weakness, I considered prolonging all of this for as long as fucking possible. I believe that you can cure my immediate death.”

She released John’s left hand from her grasp and tipped against her head. “But you can never fix what they did to me. Removing the device in my brain is the same as killing me.”

“What makes you so certain of that?” John had to ask, “maybe there is a way to…”

“There is none,” she said with certainty, “I am a blood mage you idiot, you think I don’t know my own body inside out? I’m broken. It’s either living in slaughter or dying on my terms.” She lowered her hand on his throat and started choking him with a scowl on her face. “Besides, you really think that is all that is fucked up with my head?! My first thought in freedom was not to thank you, it was to murder everyone in the room without giving any shits about their alignments. I am a monster, John. There is no healing me, there is only prolonging my suffering in this fucked up world.”

All of a sudden, Thana released his neck. John took a trembling breath, following the blood mage as she stood up. There was no way to know what that look on her face was. The only certain thing was that she took a step back.

“Well, this has given me enough kicks to go on until this life is over.” Thana simply walked away from him. She looked at her hands, then looked over her shoulder at him. Her eyes spelled a certain gratitude towards him, and she had an apologetic smile on her lips. “I’ll just go fizzle out in the corner over there. You can fuck off afterwards. Barrier control should change to you any second now.” The remaining flames on her back ebbed. “There goes the last of my blood.”

John got back on his feet as well. “No,” that was his answer for leaving her behind. ‘I am not losing anyone anymore.’

He still had one chance, one last chance to get Thana out of here. It was unlikely, it relied on Herman and Rave digging him out, it relied on Thana being kept alive by Undine until they could stabilize her and it relied on John not screwing up the timing but there still was a single chance buzzing around. All he needed was a bit more time.

And so he asked a casual question, “How are you still alive when there is no more blood in you?”

Thana burst out laughing. “WHAT? You saw me re-growing an arm, continue running with my head chopped off, set crystallized blood on fire and THAT is your question?!” she made a counter-question. “Okay, that just sweetened my last moments on this fucking rock, congratulations, I am not even mad about the incineration thing anymore,” she continued giggling.

‘Still too soon’ John thought and moved half of him into position. He checked his and Mono’s mana, they would likely have to perform first aid on Thana with the help of Undine. John watched her level tick down.

“Are you still up to something?” Thana joked. “My brain and senses seem to slowly turn to dumbass but even I realize that you staring intensely into the air means that there is SOMETHING about to happen, like what, did you have something behind me the whole ti-“

‘SHIT,’ John thought as Thana turned around and made direct eye contact with the bee. The possessed scouting unit’s stinger aimed directly at her. The blood mage had no illusions that there was something amiss here that was against her interest. She took a swing at the bee. Without Bloodburn, in her diminished state, John reacted faster.

The paralyzing beam hit Thana straight in the head. John, having concentrated on getting this and ONLY this done, was not too concerned about the Possession target getting crunched a moment later. His relief at the first step of the plan working was too big.

Thana stumbled and almost fell, moving sluggishly. “What did you do?!” she demanded to know, her emotions burned as hot as before. She grabbed her arms, shivering head from toe. “No… no, no, no… not this cold again…”

“I am paralyzing you. Just to get you healed,” John promised.

Thana growled with evident disdain. “I told you,” she spat out, swaying where she stood, “I don’t want to get healed.”

“I just want you to live!”

“YOU THINK I DON’T WANT TO LIVE?” she screamed. “YOU THINK I JUST WANT TO ROLL OVER AND DIE AFTER LIFE DECIDED TO HAND ME ALL OF THE SHIT IT HAD TO OFFER?! YOU THINK THIS FUCKING DISGUSTING ROOM IS WHERE I WANTED TO BE DONE?! YOU THINK I NEVER WANTED TO EAT SOMETHING? TO HAVE FUN?” she raised her numb hand, slowly as her body refused to react. “You dare think I didn’t make this decision with a BIT of sense? Bitch, I am so insane I loop right back around to being reasonable!”

She tried to breathe but her chest was just so heavy. Her legs were about to give in, her eyelids threatening to close. She wanted to die fully conscious, her emotions, even if they were only regret and pain, lulling her into the last sleep, the only sleep she would ever have. John could read all of that from her, but he wanted her to have more. For his own selfish reasons, and because of the last wish of a man he would have called his friend.

“The only way I can keep living how I want is if I can keep hurting people, I don’t want to live on an eternal manhunt for people who deserve to be slaughtered AND EVEN LESS DO I WANT TO MURDER MORE OF THE PEOPLE WHO WOULD HELP ME!”

John, alarmed, noticed her energy rising again. Her eyes flickered about the place, as the shivers were replaced by surging pulses. Half-lame muscles surged again with power. Thana raised her head suddenly and listened to something.

“They’re silent,” she whispered. “Ha…” A single, relieved laugh. “They’re… they’re finally fucking silent.” Then her haze fixated back on John. “This is my life, I get to decide how it ends, I get to decide whether I live or fucking die, I get to decide who takes my life. Not you, you get to mourn me if you are dumb enough to do so, but you do NOT GET TO TELL ME HOW AND WHEN I DIE! NOBODY GETS TO DECIDE WHEN ANY PEOPLE DIE! IF THERE IS A HEAVEN I DEMAND TO BE THERE, IF THERE IS NOTHING I AM FREE, IF THERE IS A HELL IT WILL BE BETTER THAN THIS!”

Blue, a new aura ignited around her. A pale, ghostly blue, like the tips of her hair and the tinge of her skin. Shrugging off the last of the paralysis, she straightened up.

John could not believe what he was seeing. Thana had formed new wings, six of them, although wings may not have been the best word. They were like pillars of pure energy, like the flame of a Bunsen burner, exploding outwards in a straight discharge. He had no idea what was going on but he didn’t need to decide that, the moment Thana pointed her hand at him, it was best to reactivate Mana Protection.

“Soulburn.”

Pale blue fire consumed John’s world. He could see nothing, hear nothing, he was isolated in a world of fire that clashed against his shield. His mana was gone in a second. Then he felt Mono’s mana, there was a comment attached to it but he didn’t hear it, he only knew the fire. Her mana was burnt away too and then John felt what it meant to burn. He was reminded of Salamander’s vision, the fire, the fire that burned so many people, only this time he wasn’t the flame, he was the victim. His skin scorched away, his HP reduced drastically, in the blink of an eye almost all of it had vanished.

A moment of relief, of cool, water itself had come to his aid in the form of Undine, she protected him with her own body, healing him at the same time. Even this was futile, as she evaporated only moments later. Even the window was consumed by the flame.

‘I am sorry, Jane,’ he thought and watched his HP tick down, something she could see as well and he knew that it broke her heart just like it had broken his. Gritting his teeth, he pushed against the flames. Exchanging his life for that of his girlfriend may have been acceptable. Death here would mean to take Aclysia with him. It meant to leave the elementals grieving. It meant Mono’s existence would have been brief and confusing. None of that could be allowed.

John set out in a direction, any direction. He pushed his body against the flame. Muscles burned away and regenerated over and over again. 100, 80, 68, 58, 50, 43, 37, 32, 28, 25, 23, 21, 20, twenty, that is when his head emerged from the flames. By pure instinct, he grabbed the arm in front of him and moved it to the side. The fire ebbed away.

Thana stood there, a wide grin on her face. A genuine one. She had burnt everything, her anger, her hate, her disgust, every last emotion. Everything but the joy of feeling itself.