Chapter 58 - Forest

Iris

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Trees.
A forest, built of wire and string, tangled and frail, yet persevering nonetheless, hardened and callous, yet so brittle.
Valkyre hadn’t seen trees before, hadn’t seen such a forest. And, to be honest, he wasn’t too impressed.
The trees were thin, hardy things, gangly and misshapen, like tangled bits of spiderweb spiking outwards and upwards. They seemed hollow and rough from afar, like a breeze could cripple them, topple them to the ground. There was but the sparsest, dried crackle of leaf cover, and the ground underneath was black and cracked.
The crossbreed stared down at the dusty, dark soil, boots scuffing at rough pebbles and tiny clods of dirt decorated with pale, white roots, shriveled and grasping at clumps of earth.
Too little water. Too little sunlight, too cold, too thin air, too windy. Not the right kind of trees, from what Valkyre had learned; soil too weak.
In the end, the forest was dying, like all others.
Valkyre stepped down, the sides of mountain rising to either side, enclosing him in this tiny, bottled valley with its dying trees. The gaunt, thin trunks were emaciated, but soon, there were enough to crowd out visibility. The crossbreed took it all in, glancing between branches and around slanted, toppled logs. He didn’t like the way roads vanished here, didn’t like how all sense of direction would be lost once one entered. He didn’t like the feeling of exposure, didn’t like all of the hiding spaces he saw ahead.
But Iris was here, and that was all that mattered.
“Valkyre.”
The voice was low and soft, intending not to startle. The crossbreed glanced over his shoulder, where Raguel stood, a black shadow rising from the ground, sharp and silent.
Valkyre felt his body stiffen nonetheless, fingers twitching, ready to grasp a blade, tense.
The other walked over, slowly, relaxed yet alert, each movement carefully gauged. Raguel stopped, averting the other’s wary eyes, staring out into the dark gray shadows of the forest. When he spoke, his voice was the same measured, low tone, barely audible.
“…So now you know.” A pause, the unmatched eyes flickering back over to the crossbreed, judging for a response. Valkyre gave him none.
“…What do you plan on doing, Valkyre?”
Raguel turned his attention fully onto the other now, eyes sharp, demanding.
Valkyre held the dark red and pale yellow gaze unblinkingly.
“I don’t know,” he replied, words simple and short, almost choppy. “I’m not sure what to believe in now, or what to follow. I…”
“You don’t see what I see, do you, Valkyre?” Raguel cut him off, glancing away, what could’ve almost been a sneer on his face fading into thin, set lips. The half-breed stared out into nothingness, into broken branches and shadows that danced and flickered though the light hardly changed, breathed into life by something else.
“You cannot tell me you’re blind, Valkyre. Do you see all of this death?” Raguel waved a pale, thin hand, shrouded in black, at the gangly trees and the caked, dusty ground.
“He can change this. He has the ability to.”
The half-breed’s eyes were sharp, accusing. “Iris. He can end if all. This decay, this is what all of the sorrow, all of the pain, all of the hatred and coldness and broken bodies come from. This is why the labs existed, why you were born, why humans have become mere shells, insignificant and worthless, why angels and demons are stranded on this wasteland. And… he can change all of this.”
Valkyre said nothing, merely listening. Raguel was staring solely at him now, eyes accusatory, fingers clenched.
“He can do this. Iris. He can bring everything back, he can restore the world. And he knows this. And yet… He doesn’t.”
Raguel glanced away again, unsettled, eyebrows drawn.
“He’s… He does not, because he is afraid. He is selfish, as all beings are.”
“No.”
The half-breed looked up, sharply. His eyes were defiant, angry. “Oh?”
Valkyre shook his head, slowly.
“No,” he repeated. “Iris is not afraid of dying. He’s not a coward.”
Raguel bared his teeth, nothing more than a flash of an angered snarl. Yet, in that instant, Valkyre noticed for the first time the raggedness of his looks, how his eyes seemed just slightly sunken into his face, his features lean and gaunt. He was tired, and had probably not fed in quite of a while.
He had the look in his eyes, of someone resigned, knowing he was at his end. Just as they all did.
The half-breed scowled at Valkyre, pale fingers clenched tight, veined in sharp blue.
“Oh? Then why does he continue to run away?? After Eire told him what he was created to do, why did he disappear, even from you?”
Valkyre frowned, eyes dropping from the other’s pale, furious face, staring down at nothing. The crossbreed paused, contemplative, then shook his head, sighing.
“How do you know he’s been running away at all?” he asked, calmly. “How do you know he’s not come here… …to save this world, if he can?”
And yet, Valkyre felt that distant, lonely something stir inside of him, something he couldn’t name, yet felt so familiar to him, like a lost fragment of himself. Would Iris leave him now? Did he really want… to die? For a world, for an assumption, for a myth and a false, fairy-tale story? Reality did not work like that. Stories didn’t have such brilliant, self-sacrificing endings here, in this bleak wasteland.
Raguel was silent, blinking, thinking it over. After a pause, the half-breed glanced over at the other again, eyes calm and collected once more, distant.
“But what is your role now, Valkyre? Would you truly let him die, if he himself chooses to?”
The hint of something akin to a smile flared for an instant on the half-breed’s lips.
“Perhaps,” he murmured, almost inaudibly, “It is you I should be wary of, instead.”
Raguel took a step away, shaking his head.
“And not only me,” he added, glancing up, unmatched eyes meeting the crossbreed’s dark violet, locking on to them. “Perhaps you need to be wary of yourself, as well. What is it you want after all, Valkyre?”
Valkyre shifted, one hand running down to his waist, fingertips brushing against the reassuring feeling of a leather-bound dagger hilt, but Raguel was merely shaking his head, stepping backwards.
And then, he flared his wings, sending the dust on the ground whirling and crumbling, the black webbed wings enormous compared to the thin, wiry black body. And then he was gone, leaving Valkyre alone with the dying forest and broken trees.

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AN: Blah blah blah, trees. 8O Sorry it's so boring, really. Couldn't come up with anything better. God, Iris is like a lagging computer as of now. XD;
I've been kinda busy as of late, and I've got other things to work on (in particular, scratching up a decent work of art SOMETIME in the next month or so, jesus) so I'm afraid things might be a bit slow. Then again, I tend to make a brilliant hypocrite.
Sorry for the crap-tastic chapters. I'll try to really draw my thoughts together and solidify them, then hammer out the rest. We're so close to the end, guys!!! :O
Thanks for everything, and for a new reader!! Yay! 8D ::bow::

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