It had been Hiro himself who had taught Liz to wield the Spiritblade Sovereigns. She had used them as she had seen him do against the primozlosta at the High King’s keep in Fierte. Had he been working toward this moment even then? Or had he been resolved to die long before that? Had everything he had done been intended to hasten his end at Liz’s hands?
His words on that day echoed in her mind: And Lævateinn, the Blade of the End, lays all to waste.
The Spiritblade burned with azure fire. Crimson flames coiled along its length. Lightning lent its strength in a shower of sparks, wind’s urging stoked the blaze, ice sealed off its target’s escape, and gleaming light endowed it with blinding speed. All was one, united in a thrust of immense power.
Hiro’s black mantle flung itself in the way, but the blow tore it to shreds. The crimson blade broke his skin, pierced his flesh, and scorched his innards, raging inside his body like a storm...
And something inside him shattered.
A gout of blood burst from his mouth, splattering across Liz’s face. Her tears mingled with the crimson droplets as they trickled down her cheeks. He sagged forward as his strength left him, his head lolling onto her shoulder.
“This is for the best,” he murmured.
Liz’s shoulder twitched, but she only stepped away. Hiro fell to his knees, Lævateinn still protruding from his chest. He smiled faintly. His face was bloodless, his lips were tinged purple, and his breathing was vanishingly shallow. Fire steadily consumed him, a pure, azure flame that spread in utter silence. Burning embers began to flake from him, the remnants of something that had once existed within him. The power of the Lords had dissipated as the blood burst from his mouth.
Liz narrowed her eyes fondly. She crouched down and laid a hand against his cheek.
“Just hold on.”
How long ago was it now when Hiro had confronted Stovell as she lay half dead on the ground? As they fought, she had heard him claim that Lævateinn had a second Graal: Mikhael, Purification. She had dared to hope it could burn away the malevolence within him and leave the rest unharmed. Fortunately, it seemed she had been right.
Over time, she had begun to suspect that Lævateinn’s crimson and azure flames played different roles. Fire burned all it touched, but it could also be the seed of new life. However, it had been Artheus who provided the key—he had bidden her to walk her own path, to cast down all in her way, but also to see Hiro safe. He would never have desired his blood-brother’s death. If not for those words, Liz might never have found the courage to push forward. If not for her promise to Rey, her heart might have faltered before she came this far. Because they had wished for Hiro to be saved, she had found the resolve to pursue this slim hope.
But her relief distracted her for a fatal moment.
“What has become of you, my Lord? Why do you not strike down your foe?”
Behind her stood Ceryneia of the primozlosta. She spun to see two hollow sockets staring back, the mutilated face in which they sat twisted in revulsion. Ipetam’s bloodred blade thrust out toward her. Belatedly, she realized he must have been waiting for her to let her guard down.
Faced with imminent death, she raised a hand in the path of the blade. The world rocked as something shoved her aside. She lost her balance and fell onto her side, but curiously, she felt no pain. Still a little shell-shocked, she checked herself for injuries, but she was unhurt.
She looked back up and her eyes widened. Hiro stood before her, run clean through. The scarlet blade had passed into his chest and out through his back. Freshly drawn blood flowed from the tip.
“Ah...”
A cry hovered on her lips, but another voice immediately drowned it out.
“Bastard!”
She turned, eyes still wide, to see Meteia, her face twisted in fury.
“At last, it’s over, my Lord! Our battle is won! Our ancient foe, vanquished at last!” Ceryneia raised his arms to the heavens like a holy man praying to his god. “The primozlosta have been avenged! The War God is slain—”
His head sprang from his shoulders in a spray of blood. His body collapsed in the dirt. Meteia planted a foot on top of the corpse, shoulders heaving with rage.
Hiro staggered as his strength began to fail. Liz caught him in her arms. Her lungs cried for air. Her vision flickered. She struck herself hard in the thigh, ordering her body to stay conscious.
She withdrew Ipetam and tried to staunch the bleeding, but the hole in his chest continued to weep. At any other time, Hiro’s regeneration might have preserved him, but with Lævateinn’s purifying flames still burning in his chest, he was not as immortal as he had once been.
“Gandiva! Heal him!”
A gentle wind enveloped Hiro’s body, but it had no visible effect. There was no time to waste. Liz reached for Lævateinn. Before she could yank it out, however, Hiro’s hand closed around her wrist.
“It’s okay.” He smiled up at her, his eyes glassy.
“It’s not okay!”
“It’s over now. Your curse is broken.”
“Stop talking and let me concentrate.”
She invoked Gandiva’s power again and again, trying to heal him, but in vain. The blood would not stop. If anything, it flowed faster than ever, as if it was being actively sucked from the wound.
As she stared down, wild-eyed, Hiro reached up to cup her cheek. “I’m sorry for everything.”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
He smiled, raising his hand to the sky. “But I think I might have finally earned a little forgiveness.”
“Shut up!”
There was nothing she could do. His life was slipping away right before her eyes, and she was powerless to stop it. Saving him should have been so easy. After so long, she finally had the power to do just that. And yet the miracle she sought stubbornly eluded her.
“Your life is your own now.”
“Shut up! Just let me...”
His body began to fall apart, cracking and crumbling like it was made of sand.
“Thank you.”
He smiled one last time, broad and full, and his face turned to particles of light that scattered on the wind. His end came almost too easily. It left nothing of him behind, as if he had never existed at all.
“Aaah... Aaah!”
Liz reached out, trying to gather the motes of light back together, but they slipped through her fingers. Her curse took from her those she held dear. While it haunted her no longer, there was no restoring the lives it had claimed.
Rain began to fall from the last of the darkness in the sky—a veil to hide her tears, one last gift for the girl who had so often wept unseen. Yet she only allowed herself a wordless howl, unwilling to the last to let anyone see her cry.
＊＊＊＊＊
A battlefield stretched all the way to the horizon. Broken swords protruded from the ground. Shattered spears rolled in the wind. Empty suits of armor lay in toppled piles. There were no corpses, nor was there a stench of blood. Swords hung in the sky above just as they littered the earth. This place was a graveyard—not of people but of instruments of war.
Hiro wandered through the eerie landscape in silence. “Is the afterlife?”
“Close, but not quite,” said a voice behind him. “This is the final stop before Valhalla.”
He spun around in alarm but then lowered his guard as he saw who it was. A fair-haired, golden-eyed youth stood before him.
“It has been far too long, my brother.”
The man broke into a smile as he flung an arm around Hiro’s shoulders. It was none other than Artheus, the first emperor of the Grantzian Empire—Hiro’s brother by oath and onetime comrade in the turbulent world of a thousand years prior. Hiro wanted to ask him what he was doing here, but Artheus spoke first.
“Are you satisfied?”
Hiro did not ask for clarification. There were many things Artheus could have meant. He only nodded.
“Then you are ready?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be. I’ve kept you waiting long enough. And I have no more regrets.”
“Are you certain about that?”
Hiro nodded. “And besides, it’s about time the past was laid to rest.”
Even if Lævateinn’s purifying flames had managed to prolong his life, nothing good would have come of him remaining in the modern world. An entire battlefield’s worth of soldiers had witnessed him leading the Demiurgos’s armies. They might not have registered as much in the chaos, but now that the fighting was done, they would realize it was Surtr they had fought and demand he face justice. Liz and his other allies would undoubtedly argue in his defense, but that would risk sparking a whole new conflict. It would be better for everyone if he simply faded away.
“Again, my brother, you suppose you will fail before you have even begun. You cannot resist assuming the worst of your own actions.” Artheus struck him on the back of the head with a heavy hand, knocking him to the ground.
Hiro looked back up at Artheus reproachfully. “What was that for?”
Artheus only crossed his arms, staring down with characteristic arrogance. “You were ever thus. You insist yours is the best and only way, oblivious to the feelings of others. That is foolishness, nothing more.”
“But it’s always been the best—”
“Silence, brother. I will say my piece.”
Artheus’s eyes permitted no refusal. Hiro’s jaw clamped shut.
“I shall never know what my sister saw in you.” Artheus crouched down and looked into Hiro’s eyes, cocking his head. “Through the reshaping of her form, through the transformation of her very soul, she sought to be with the man she loved. She turned down Valhalla for the dream of a future that she did not know would come.”
He sighed and reached out to tousle Hiro’s hair, looking at once angry and sorrowful.
“You are a child. A petulant child stomping his feet when he does not get his way. But it is said that the most demanding children are the most endearing. I have never loved your pessimism, but you are still my one and only brother.”