Alma 87 Judgemen

Should it fall, that'd be it. There wouldn't be a second chance.

Not against that. There were so many of them it didn't seem even real. It felt like someone had played a cruel joke on him. There was no winning against that eldritch monstrosity out there.

Hundreds of millions of lives were on the line, maybe even more than that.

He could not fail. Could. Not. Fail. If there was ever a time to not fail, it would be right now.

The pressure continued to mount on his shoulders as he stared at the mind-numbingly colossal tendril of darkness head towards him.

At a distance, it looked like it was a uniform pitch-black but once it got close enough, Reed gasped silently.

It was made of Infested. Hundreds of trillions of Infested — likely even more than that — had been fused together into a single… appendage.

The words length, width, and height could not be applied to it because he could not find anything comparable to it despite all he knew.

Continents. Planets. Stars. Planetary systems. Galaxies. All useless.

He wagered that the tendril likely held enough Infested that it could drown an entire universe with them. The worst part of it all was that the tendril was just one of the smaller ones.

Far, far away, several thick brush-strokes of darkness could be seen coiling around a multiverse as they strangled the life out of it.

The sight of it was too much to bear for a normal person. He fell over and retched up everything in his stomach. It was too awful to witness…

That was what he had been tasked with holding back — the ultimate manifestation of despair, decay, and loss.

The Grand Swarm.

He could hear his companion saying something to him but it didn't register in his head. Her voice seemed faint and fleeting like a whisper in a thunderstorm. She sounded concerned — that much he could tell from the tone of voice.

Reed shakily got up from his knees and said, "I-I'll be fine. I won't run away so stop jabbering in my ear, Lacrima."

Not as if I could even run in the first place. My feet won't move.

The aegis he had created needed a constant supply of Anima in order for it to function. That meant that he would have to remain beside it for the entire duration of the process.

Whether Reed liked it or not, he'd given himself a front-row seat that couldn't be exchanged anymore. He stood a couple of hundred meters away from the hole itself, behind the transparent aegis as he waited for the inevitable.

The closer the tendril inched towards the hole, the larger it became. Slowly but surely, it was blotting out the surrounding space until nothing could be seen aside from it.

That was when Reed finally heard it — the low, rumbling laughter in the distance.

It was laughing. Thoroughly amused, it cackled even louder than before when it finally saw the piddling wall that Reed had put up.

Hundreds of trillions of voices — unwilling participants — laughed in unison as they approached the hole.

They did not want to do this. Not to the boy, nor his home but they could not stop. They would violate and destroy this reality until nothing was left. Nothing. Such was the will of their masters…

Reed's heart throbbed wildly like an out-of-control piston as he watched them close in on the hole. It would only be a matter of minutes until they would arrive.

He turned around and looked Lu'um who had sealed all of her senses in order to focus on her side of the job. She couldn't afford to become distracted. Not now, at the final stretch.

Neither he, nor she could afford to make any mistakes. They were on their own from here on out.

"⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛," said Reed. That was all he wanted to say to her in case they failed.

The laughter had grown so loud outside that his voice had been drowned out. Still, he had told her. That was enough for him.

He turned back toward the aegis and put his hands on it. Direct contact would enable him to channel Anima into it even faster, at the cost of becoming linked with it.

The aegis had become a direct extension of himself and shone brighter than before as if it had suddenly been reinforced. Its twelve layers glittered like shining diamonds in the dark as the tendril closed in on it.

Hold. Please, please hold. Don't break. Please…!

Endless, scornful snickering filled the void when they saw what Reed had done. A futile, meaningless gesture. It would not change anything, as far as they were concerned.

Reed grit his teeth and planted his feet down into the ground as firmly as he could. He would hold them back even if it cost him everything, even his life…

And then, after what seemed like an eternity-in-waiting, the time had come for him to prove what he had promised to himself.

They had arrived.

"You poor, miserable child. Look at you… Still struggling even in the face of the inevitable."

A foreign voice had intruded into his mind the moment that the swarm had struck the aegis. An indifferent, deep voice spoke in a disappointed tone as the swarm continued to assault the aegis without end.

"What are you even hoping to accomplish? For what purpose do you resist?"

Reed couldn't block out the voice, no matter what he tried. It was as if the voice had a permanent, direct connection into his mind.

"For your lover? For your family? Your people? The world?"

Despite his efforts, the first layer had already begun to break. Large cracks formed on its surface as the Infested smashed into it with even greater intensity than before.

"No."

Reed groaned in pain and bit his lip when the first layer broke. Its destruction had rebounded back on him in full. The force of the rebound had traveled up through his arms into his entire body. It felt like a super-cruiser had struck him at full speed.

"You fight for no one but yourself… like the miserable, little boy you are."

His bones rattled dangerously as the Infested continued their assault on the second layer. The voice had grown even louder in his mind as well, booming like thunder every time it spoke. Reed despised the voice but there was nothing he could about it, other than ignore it the best he could…

"Same as always. You'll never change. No matter what you name yourself, it'll always be the same."

The Infested crashed into the second layer and the shock-wave traveled into Reed. The force had traveled down into his legs and he let out a harsh grunt in response. It felt like someone had dropped a mountain on his back for a split second. His legs screamed in pain as they trembled precariously back and forth. The second… and the third layer had fallen.

"Forever blind to the bigger picture because of your immaturity."

Noticing that the hole had already begun to close faster than expected, the Infested regrouped into an abnormal formation. Millions of Infested gathered into a sphere of flesh and then… screamed in pain as they turned into dust.

They had been granted the honor of finally dying. A true, final death.

Their souls had been crushed into pieces and turned into fuel for what was to come. Dark, chaotic energy coursed the tendril and gathered at its tip as roaming Infested back away in preparation.

A concentrated beam of energy shot out and instantly vaporized the fourth, fifth, and sixth layers away. The rebound struck Reed and shattered his arms almost instantaneously the moment the beam struck. The heat had nearly melted him alive in place — his hair and skin had melted away in but an instant...

Charred, broken, and half-dead, Reed had only survived the attack because Lacrima had intervened half a second before the beam had struck.

"You lack the resolve and clarity. You know this to be true."

He couldn't scream, even if he wanted to. His mouth… had been welded shut because of the heat, his lips fused together. The pain was unbearable and the worst part was he knew that it was not over… t

There was still more to come. He had to endure. 

"Give up. You are unfit for the job. Let go and lay down the cross you have been forced to carry."

Tens of millions of Infested screamed in horror as they turned into dust. The next strike would be several orders of magnitude stronger than the last attack.

The tendril was preparing to end the 'fight' with the next move.

A massive, mangled arm formed out of chaotic energy and struck the aegis mercilessly. Sharp, poisonous claws stabbed deep into the aegis shattered the seventh through eleventh layers in a single strike.

"It was never supposed to be your responsibility, to begin with. That's why it isn't your fault."

The rebound struck him, shredding him into pieces and had shattering whatever had not been broken inside of him.

He looked completely unrecognizable… he no longer even looked human.

Like a poorly constructed meat puppet that had been randomly put together in a vaguely humanoid shape. The only thing that had survived the attack had been his heart and his brain because Lacrima had sacrificed all of her remaining Anima reserves to protect them…

"Come and be with me, where you will be able to rest at ease for all eternity. All you need to do is submit. Bend the knee and end your suffering…"

A half-crumpled mess of flesh stood in front of the final, wavering layer between it and the inevitable, absolute end.

It jiggled in response when it heard the voice had said and then with immense difficulty, slowly forced its fused mouth open.

Hoarse, distorted laughter escaped its mouth when it finally managed to rip its charred lips apart.

Genuine, condescending laughter rung clear for all to hear from the burnt half-corpse. It silenced the Infested swarm outside when they heard it and a hush fell over them.

The corpse painfully laughed until it could no more and then said, "I...will…never...bow…to…you."

"Fuck you."

The final layer twinkled just a little bit brighter in response, even in its half-shattered form.

It would not fall. Just like its creator.

The Grand Swarm did not respond, nor did it laugh. It simply stared at Reed's unsightly figure as if it wanted to remember how he appeared.

It wanted to record the appearance of the figure in front of it for an unknown reason.

Billions of Infested screeched in pain and turned to dust as their souls were converted into raw, unstable energy. The Grand Swarm would thoroughly atomize him until he was less than nothing.

That was what they had decided upon. They would respond in kind to the boy's final decision.

An unimaginable amount of energy converged into a single point less than the diameter of an electron as the Grand Swarm prepared to judge the half-corpse for its sins.

"Farewell."

Blinding light enveloped everything when the Grand Swarm's singularity exploded outward. An unstoppable flood of light, heat, and energy swept past everything.

Oh no… So…bright... Ah, I can't…see...…

The flash of energy had been so bright and hot that it had burnt his retinas in an instant. He couldn't see anything anymore. Everything had gone dark.

He bitterly smiled when he felt the heat from the explosion and closed his eyes. His senses had begun to fail him.

He could not feel his arms and legs anymore.

He couldn't feel pain anymore.

His mind had begun to fail him and it became harder and harder to think until…

He stopped.

Chapter end