C106: End to it all Pt13, Who am I?
9/30/26
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"I am but a helpless old man, a retired hunter. I have seen my fair share of horrors but all of it was necessary for the dream to end. You have instead delivered onto them a pain far greater than any before. I gave this one a merciful death." Gehrman spouts as he makes it seem like he has been through these cycles before, who knows how many times he has done this.
"Are you crazy? You killed Cherry, the final legacy of your own friend, a legacy I attempted to preserve. You monster. You killed an innocent child who wanted to survive one night. Yet deprived of that by your madness." I call out his idiocy as the proof of his actions rests beside his very feet.
"Mad am I? Yet it is you who does not belong here. You insolent curr, a vile abomination turned beast who believes himself good and noble yet death surrounds us all. You try to resist when we are naught but in a cycle of death and destruction."
Yet, what have you done? You, a foreign entity, who have desecrated my son's body. Impersonating him, continuing on his legacy in a distorted manner. You are the fiend here. Offering false promises and empty words only to wind up back here. To my judgment. And It is now you who shall pay the price for your hubris."
Gehrman takes out his hunter pistol…no, not his hunter pistol. THAT SHITS MINE. I reach out, rousing my magic to retrieve the personal artifact that I had completely forgotten about.
[Goodbye Host] The system suddenly states as I feel it enter its shutdown state yet even that would be a foreign feeling as I feel something closer to the hollow feeling of when I'm close to dying.
BANG crack snap
I feel the bullet pass through my extended hand and into my chest. I feel drowsy, yet a painful drowsiness as my vision blurs, my body feels heavy akin to lead. Makes you wonder if this is how Lady Deathstrike from the second X-men movies felt when she got stabbed with the adamantium nozzle in her fight against Logan.
I wobble and soon my legs give out, I fall to my knees but the injury to my hand pulls it backwards where I am knocked backwards to my side as I collapse with my hand extended outwards.
I only feel a buzzing sensation crawl over me. It's like fire ants crawling over my body, stabbing every inch. I'm fairly certain that I heard some sort of glass shatter when the bullet hit me. I'm certain I heard a variation of this noise before but I can't put my finger on it. Granted if I could even move my finger. A different form of darkness passes over me as I close my eyes and hope it is the last time.
…..
…..
"Hmm, you're finally awake gov'nah" I shamble awake as I look around me and simply find a singular lamp in an ocean of darkness. A presence rests beside it, crosslegged as they open the lamp to add more fuel to it before closing the latch. The light shines brighter for a moment as I make my way to it.
I had to drag myself over as my legs chose to not work for some reason…In fact, I can't even see my legs as if darkness wraps around my body, lifting that portion of it up so I can't support myself with them.
"So um, where is here?" I ask unsure as I rest my head on my hands. For some reason the first thing that flows through my head is that I'm doing an imaginary Jack-o pose before I shut it down as it's too embarrassing. I almost didn't even speak due to how bad that idea was.
"The crossroads mate, some people see their life flash before their eyes innit. They take in the details surrounding their death as if time was frozen at that moment. Not half bad but quite sad anyways". The longer he speaks, the more obvious the British accent becomes.
It felt hidden as even my own words seem to contain some sort of echo that distorts my words. Though maybe less of an echo and more of a distortion or fragmentation.
"Well, I'm only seeing you here. Does that make you the Grim Reaper?"
"Oh I've had my fair share of reapings, though I never touched what you call a soul before. cough. That was all..cough.. You. Sorry, the decay makes it hard to speak sometimes, sorry." The reaper coughs a few more times and during this time, I shamble a bit backwards to get a better angle on my so-called reaper.
"What the fuck did they do to your bones man?" I curse as I take in a half rotted man whose bones are growing wisps and new found bones from his bones.
"Oh don't mind me, it's not that bad, could be worse."
"How could it be worse that my grim reaper is suffering from some bone disease…and why do I know what it's called all of a sudden? What the fuck is Melorheostosis? Oh god, bone melting wax!" I curse in confusion of why words and images flow into my brain.
"Hehe, yea. You're a bit fucked mate. Mostly cuz you're dead while a part of you is still alive. So you have that connection which in certain times feeds back into you about random bits 'n bobs. I only know this cuz of you too, what a load of tosh that is. I'm pretty smart myself yea. Even before you came round." The reaper chuckles at my suffering.
"Wait…before I came here?" I question as the words 'I just got here' remain in my throat.
"Ay, you've been here for quite a while now." A few pieces of his decaying flesh fall of his body, pooling in his lap. I assume a part of his tongue also broke off as his words start to slur quite a bit. "Yoer jut not a-walk at da dime. (your just not awake at the time)"
"If I wasn't awake at the time then why am I now" I tentatively ask after a few moments of deciphering his words. I was never good at talking with people so having someone speak to me in a british accent and then further slurring on top of that made it fairly indescribable.
"Cuz oim dying" he says the three words with genuine struggle as I see the previous bone melting parts actually turn to dust as a portion of his jaw disappears, making speech even worse, not to mention seeing inside his hunter jacket and witnessing his lungs melt in real time.
'Wait, dying? Hunter jacket?' I pause as I take in his features a bit more and then I see it, on the other side of his melting neck is a symbol. A distorted hunter symbol to show what looks like a tear drop flowing from it.
"Your!!!!" I reach out to him, The Hunter. The real one. The Ones whose body I was using.
"Yah, it me fukah" The hunter chuckles but they grow hollow and empty as the decay continues.
"Ayy, have nevah bin in moar pain tan befor U avvivved. tank u foh sayin MARIA." The man insults my ways which have caused him endless pain but he is truly grateful for saving the one he had cherished most.
He calls out her name with all the force he could muster to say it properly.
"Mah gift." His boney hands extend out to me, grabbing me by the shoulder as he pulls me towards himself.
Crack
He sets me down just besides himself as he lies down. His hands move to his spine and it just snaps in half, smoothly rather than being forcefully broken. He rolls off and pulls me in to replace him on his legs.
"Odd codgah broke me spin wen ay die at da towah. U a pavasite but he rep Maria. Bake his regs for me for rea(l) dis tahme. U is U. Meh is meh. A huntah shud hunt. But Mah name es aso Huntah" He claps me on the shoulders as I regain connection with 'my' legs. The decay accelerates on him as he pushes me up and into the again opened lamp.
Tears streak down my face as the revelation of everything he has told me. I was only a fragment of my actual self. An incomplete soul. An incomplete personality. An incomplete self. Yet Hunter just gave me the rest of himself so that I could be whole again.
Once again, Death has been denied for me. Once again, I live. Once again, I rise. And once again, I shall hunt.
This time, once and for all.
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Word Count = 1557