The building had begun to collapse from the chain of explosions that hadn't even ended yet.

Desmond and Abigail were trapped on the roof. They had run out of time to escape, if they had ever had a chance to begin with. Had they set this up, on such short notice? Abigail stood up. She tried, he corrected himself. The woman fell forward, onto her own blood. It hadn't disappeared, forming that mysterious circle. But as soon as the blood came in contact with Abigail's body, it disappeared without a trace as usual.

Abigail was weak right now. Perhaps she wouldn't have been able to stand up on her own even if the building wasn't collapsing.

He ran toward her.

Desmond crouched down in front of her, wrapping his arms around her.

"I didn't expect them to go this far," she said against his shoulder.

Yeah. Neither did he.

It seemed a drastic measure.

But no doubt fucking effective. If he failed now...

Not even half an hour ago, he'd had no recourse in a situation like this. He could only have braced himself and accepted the inevitable.

But now he had it.

Now he had wings.

He couldn't fail.

-Hold on tight," Desmond said, squeezing her tighter.

Everything around him was going to shit. The roof, the whole building, was shaking.

Clouds of dust were rising, covering the roof in something that looked like fine mist.

The walls and floor were falling apart.

There was no safe place.

If he failed here... But he wouldn't fail.

Desmond took flight, Abigail in his arms. He pushed himself to the right to avoid the falling building.

It's working, he thought, his heart pounding.

Feeling the wind in his wings.

Feeling, for the first time in life... free.

I want wings, he thought. A fragment of a memory.

His heart was beating painfully. As if it wanted to force its way out of his chest. But...

It's working, it's working, fuck yes, it's working!

That, unfortunately, turned out to be a premature celebration.

Because he couldn't stay in the air for long.

Desmond fell onto the collapsing building. They both dropped, rolling together towards the edge, towards the void. Down to certain death.

He shrieked in an undignified manner that would in no way give anyone reason to trust him.

Quite the contrary.

At the last moment, he managed to grab hold of one of the devices on the roof. It had been ripped out of the ground, but only halfway, so it hadn't fallen yet.

He was hanging precariously from some wires.

And he depended on those wires, so fragile, that could....

No, that they would snap at any moment. Beyond any doubt. They were already snapping, in fact.

With every second. Every heartbeat. In front of his eyes.

Instead of looking at that...

He looked down. At Abigail's face. She was depending on him, for the first time in his life. And he was going to fail her now?

What had all his effort and sacrifice been for, then?

No.

No.

Absolutely not.

He couldn't fail.

Desmond took a deep breath... and willingly let go before he was forced to fall. Better that way.

He slid over the edge, into the void.

On the way to the ground, Desmond screamed at the top of his lungs as if that was going to help him take flight again.

As if that would do any good.

But he believed he could do this.

That, one way or another, he would be able to do it. Not even having failed and fallen the first time managed to break his faith.

Too bad faith alone meant nothing.

This time he couldn't even take flight.

Like a bird that had been shot, he spiraled downward, flapping his wings uselessly.

The last sound he heard before the darkness claimed him was like the end of the world.

——

Desmond regained consciousness.

Like a man on the verge of drowning, he lunged forward as soon as he emerged, exhaling sharply, his eyes widening like saucers.

It was pitch black.

The first thing he felt after awakening was pain all over his body.

Especially in his chest.

It had been pierced by a rebar. His heart...? His heart was fine, at least now. Otherwise he wouldn't be alive.

So much blood. The flow wouldn't stop.

A red carpet was being rolled out, endlessly, under his body. As if something was trying to wrap him in a shroud.

Desmond felt a shiver.

His mouth tasted like blood. If the rod hadn't shattered his heart, it would have at least pierced a lung, otherwise he wouldn't have been spurting blood from his mouth.

On second thought, it didn't take the rod to shatter his heart.

All it would have taken was the fall itself.

An impact from such a height would surely have caused his heart to explode directly.

What hurt the most were his wings, they were being crushed. It was a distinct sensation of pain, but at the same time it wasn't normal. He couldn't say why.

He hadn't had any luck.

He was pierced by a metal bar. In addition, he ended up buried under the rubble of the collapsed building.... And what was more important. What should have come to his mind from the first conscious second. Abigail. He couldn't feel her. She wasn't in his arms. He couldn't see her near either.

He reapplied physical reinforcement, all over his body, but starting with his eyes. Even with that he couldn't see her. But he did see a crack in the rubble. In other words, an exit.

How long had it been? Just because he was buried under the rubble didn't mean it hadn't been a long time. Removing the rubble and getting him out was something that would take time. So he hoped Abigail was somewhere under the rubble as well. If they had taken her away while he had been dead.... If he had failed to such an extent.....

Desmond gritted his teeth.

He gripped the metal bar with one hand. He twisted it. Pulled at it to wrench it away, almost snapping it instead. He dropped it to the side, it rolled as far as it could go, which wasn't much.

Desmond turned away. He crawled between and under the rubble.

Into the crevice, the dim light.

Desmond stepped out into the light, into the chaotic, bustling street, full of discordant sounds.

Those cars, going to and fro, in the distance.

Absurdly wide, forest-like streets.

The voices of the citizens. Gasps. Shouts.

The ruined corpse of the building behind him.

Smoke rising skyward like a spear aimed at the heart of the sky.

Flames crawling across the corpse of the building.

Spreading, spreading even outside of it.

A different world.

It wasn't the first time Desmond had had the feeling that he had stepped into a world different from his own. In a way, it had been literally true ever since he set foot off that ship. But now was when that fact hit him. A fact, yes. It wasn't an exaggeration, but a fact.

This place had nothing to do, and should have nothing to do, with the world he had lived in all his life.

There was nothing for him here.

Supporting himself on the ground with his hands, Desmond sat up.

He took a few staggering steps forward, looking around. In search of Abigail.

His heart felt like it was going to jump out of his throat.

The creatures of the Empire were startled to see him approaching, of course. It was like splitting a sea of people in half.

"A monster."

"One of those monsters, here."

"What's the army doing?"

A monster.

A monster.

Okay, I'm a monster. But...

He saw a hand sticking out of the rubble. Abigail's hand. He knew it in his gut. He felt it, as surely as he felt the second set of heartbeats in his heart. Because that's how it was, period. The fall could have killed her, but she was ready again. Of course.

She would have recovered long before he did, that was for sure.

He removed said pile of debris, confirming what he thought.

Abigail was underneath.

Unconscious. But alive.

Desmond scooped her up in his arms and lifted her. Although he had failed twice in a row, catastrophically, the third time was the charm. The third time he managed to rise, reigning over the skies, with the natural ease he had noticed at first. Not long after, the soldiers finally arrived.

They didn't immediately turn their guns on him, firing.

Some simply stared, dumbfounded.

Others...

Others went about getting people out of here. Cutting off traffic, redirecting it.

Desmond frowned.

But he didn't have much time to contemplate those actions and spin his head futilely, as was his habit. He heard something. The noise of an engine much louder and much closer than any of those... automobiles.

Helicopter.

A helicopter had arrived and was heading straight for him, but then it stopped.

It stopped and its door was opened.

Behind it, of course, were soldiers at the ready. They had taken position at a cautious distance. But not so far away that they couldn't hit him without difficulties.

They fired at him and Desmond immediately dodged the bullets by flying away.

But he didn't run away.

He went straight for the helicopter. Moving sharply left, right, up and down.

Spinning.

Doing whatever he had to do, however he had to do it.

Suddenly, everything was extremely easy for him.

Like this. Desmond went through the open door to the other side. And on the way, with a single swing of his sword, he practically split the helicopter in two.

He watched as it fell, tracing a spiral, just as he had not so long ago.

It crashed into the front of a building. Many windows exploded at once. A huge explosion that created a deafening rain of shards of glass.

But it didn't stop there.

Something inside it ignited.

As always, the fire spread rapidly, feeding on everything that came its way. Its appetite was insatiable.

The thing's tail snapped and it fell.

Into the street it fell.

Almost everyone below managed to get out of the way in time.

A thing and its spawn....

She got her legs snapped off.

A child...

He exploded like a piñata, scattering his entrails all over the street. He died instantly.

The woman began to scream.

A wordless scream. But he could hear the unspoken words.

My son, my son.

Desmond watched that horrible spectacle with wide eyes, trembling, his face covered with sweat.

Shadows of war (3): FIN