I just had an evil idea. What if one day Gilgamesh finally had to make good on his promise to kill Thena if the Mahd Wy'ry ever took over her completely? Maybe he deals with it alone or one of the others finds him, up to you. I know you're good with angst so this should be painful
Gil's chest constricted. He felt like he couldn't breathe. He just stared, trying to wrap his head around what was happening. "No...n-no, I-"
The Deviant--the demonic entity facing him dropped its shield onto the jungle floor. Its vines had reached around the Strongest Eternal and retrieved something to serve as a defense. It was a wall of flesh, used only to absorb the shock of a punch.
The body rolled and tumbled, limbs dead weight, blonde hair falling lightly in comparison. Her eyes were still open, and the white colour that had been fogging them cleared to reveal their usual green. It was dark, and they no longer held their shine. The Warrior Eternal was dead.
Gilgamesh's chest puffed as he tried to breathe. He couldn't. What he was seeing didn't make any sense to him. The face of Thena, his lifelong partner, was staring up at him. But it wasn't her. It didn't look like her. His powers dissipated, sparks of gold disappearing into the still and heavy air, a minimal light in the growing dark.
"That is truly a shame," the devil lamented. "Her powers would have been one of the most useful to me."
Gil couldn't understand the words it was saying either. He knelt--fell to his knees. He reached slowly, delicate as he grasped the shoulder of the woman he loved. "Thena?"
She had no response. Her body was heavy as he lifted her into his embrace. He had snapped her spine, destroyed it in a way even an Eternal wouldn't survive. Maybe it was the most merciful way, with Mahd Wy'ry clouding her mind and that thing holding her, maybe she hadn't known it was he who had landed the killing blow.
He didn't know if it was better if that thing was the last she had seen, or if it would have been better for her to see him, only for him to end her life the way he had. As violent as the nature of their powers were, he never wanted to turn that force unto her. Even in all his years thwarting the attacks of her episodes, he always did his best to protect her and himself.
"Oh, Thena," Gilgamesh whimpered. His breath still came sparingly, his throat constricted far too tight. He cradled her head against his chest, the way he would if she were merely having a terrible dream. He ran his fingers through her hair as he watched the golden lines of her energy pull away from her skin, leaving the grey remains of the physical body.
Gold glittered the air again as the Warrior Eternal's life left her in the last way possible. Their own took cautious and unbelieving steps towards them.
"Gil!"
He felt the vines of that thing at his back. Horrific appendages made to do worse than end life: made to steal it. He set Thena down gently, unwilling to cause her any more unrest.
The trees quivered as he turned, roaring out the energy building up in his body. Rage and grief coursed through him as he turned and grabbed the creature. His hands were more than capable of crushing through its flesh, no matter what being of natural make or nightmare of the stars. He ripped its arms from its body.
Gilgamesh arched his hands up. He watched the shadow of his sledgehammer fists stretch over the beast's face before he brought them down. The forest blew back from the impact, even more than the last time he'd landed a punch like this. And he kept going.
Every hit, every strike, every scream he let out of his lungs for a loss of what else to do, that thing would suffer. He would make something incapable of death experience the loneliness of pain. He would make it understand what it meant to be alone--what it meant to fear.
The ground impacted from his strength. He continued. He swung his fists, the air bending around him, compressing and bursting, gold streaking through the dusk as he swung at it like an animal fighting for its life.
The thing was dead. He didn't care. He wanted it to be no more. He wanted to beat it down so small that it disappeared into the wind or bled into the core of the earth. His strength would prove that it was still good for something. Now that he had failed to protect his greatest love, he would enact the greatest punishment he could.
"Gil, stop it!"
They were calling him, but he couldn't hear them. He couldn't understand what they were saying. He kept seeing Thena's lifeless face, the feeling of her Cosmic Energy fading into nothing. Now that there was no more Thena, he didn't even feel like he was on Earth anymore. There was nothing to center and anchor him. He felt as if all of his senses had been shut off and there was only pain remaining.
He had never been without Thena's energy to match the rhythm of his, not in all their millennia together. And now, all the air in his lungs was gone, his blood was no longer flowing because his heart was empty and void. He was afloat, trying to follow what remained of Thena in pure stardust.
Gilgamesh roared one last time as he tore the thing apart. What was once its body cavity was forced open with his fingers like an agate, revealing its jagged insides. Its arms were strewn and its head simply was no more. And yet still looking at it only made him want to do more.
"That's enough," his brothers attempted to pull him away, out of the crater he had created.
He turned away, throwing them off of him. He walked back to Thena, laid where he had left her. Her sisters were leaning over her precious body, but he waved them away.
He picked her up again, cradling her head and her poor, broken back. He held her delicate shoulders, which used to curl into him, seeking his warmth. His fingers slid into the depths of her thick blonde hair. She already felt cold.
His tears fell onto her. Once her hand would wipe them away, but now it lay limp beside her. He rocked them back and forth, his body now unsteady without anything real at all for connection. He pressed his cheek to her hair, "my Thena."
He could hear their family moving behind him. They were building a fire, to release her body, to follow her Cosmic Energy back to the stars and their home. But he held her tighter.
You may have to kill her; that was what they once said. And he had said that was a chance he was willing to take. Because he would take any chance in the world to be with his Thena even one more day. And for beings without natural death, he didn't take it lightly.
But this wasn't right. He didn't want to build her a funeral pyre. He didn't want his eyes to watch a fire consume the life of a woman whose every second and minute and hour he would weave into a beautiful tapestry of if he could.
They should have been home. They would have been in Australia, at the home they had built together. He would bury her in the warm, red sands, under the tree she liked. Life without her would be pain but at least he could continue his mission.
His mission was never to protect earth. It wasn't to kill Deviants or serve some far away god. His mission was to protect Thena. It was to love and cherish the woman who had been by his side from the moment he opened his eyes. And he would have spent the rest of Eternity protecting her, until Earth ripped itself in half to mercifully swallow him up into oblivion.
They expected him to give her up. But this was the woman he loved. He held the body of his wife, as preciously as he would on any day, or any night.
Thena had once said that she didn't want to be the one to kill him. She had begged him to kill her first. He had never agreed, because he didn't want to lie to her, but he didn't think he was capable either. He didn't want to endure the pain of living without her, something surely even his strength couldn't weather.
"I kept my promise," he whispered against her forehead, pressing a kiss to it. What a terrible promise it was. He had taken the chance, but to live with it was something harder.
"Gil," Sersi's soft whisper reached him, her hand on his arm.
"Just wait for me, sweetheart," he cooed to his ever-sleeping wife. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and under her knees, picking her up for the last time. The pyre was ready. Even if it was already lit, he would lean into the fire gently, just to lie her to sleep the way she liked. "I'll come and find you."
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Bingqiu AU where Luo Binghe's the chosen village sacrifice to the evil deity who lives up the mountain.
Normally the village sends maidens, but they've more or less run out of expendable girls of the right age and, ahem, "virtues". So of course Luo Binghe's early life bad luck kicks in. In the wake of his mother's death there's no one to really care about what happens to him, he's fairly pretty, and the village leaders decide that if they dress him up like a girl the teenaged homeless kid should pass well enough. And hey, y'know, he's probably got a hard life ahead for him anyway -- dying in a brothel of some venereal disease or on the streets of exposure or starvation. At least as a sacrifice, everyone else gets to benefit from his loss! And the kid will get added to a shrine and be remembered as a hero! If anything, he should be happy about this!
Binghe is not happy about this.
But he's also a skinny underfed nobody who is easily overpowered, dressed up like a bride, and tied to a post. So. Not much he can do but wait for the evil deity to come and do whatever horrible thing he's gonna do to him.
Meanwhile, Shen Yuan is pretty sure he's been isekai'd into the over-powered hero of some kind of supernatural adventure story? He's not totally sure because he doesn't recognize the setting, but the signs are there. He's got a shrine-like base of operations (though it seems to have become corrupted/ruined, probably he has to restore it somehow), he has a very resilient and handsome new body with spiritual energy of some kind flowing through him, and a very clearly magical sword. Plus lots of neat starter powers! Though it feels like he has other abilities that have been blocked somehow? Probably he has to level up in order to access them.
When he treks out of his "base" and finds what seems to be a distressed maiden, he takes it for his beginner hero mission. The girl claims that she's been doomed to be sacrificed to an evil god. That sounds a little above Shen Yuan's pay grade for dealing with, so he unties her and decides that they had better just get out of the whole region altogether. He already packed up anything useful from his base, anticipating he might get caught up in an adventure once he left, so they follow the river away from the settlement until they reach another one.
While they travel, Luo Binghe tells Shen Yuan about the cursed deity, Shen Qingqiu, who was cast out of the heavens for slaughtering one of his brethren and has apparently being do-who-knows what to maidens from the local village in exchange for his "protection" ever since. Sounds like a real asshole! And also mid-level boss type bad guy at least. Shen Yuan hopes he doesn't have to fight him, but he probably will.
Thank goodness he found Binghe, though! Clearly the helpful little sister type! He's definitely going to require her assistance if he's going to figure out how to navigate this world and level up his skills enough to take on a god.
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