Back in the present
Under the rubble lies a man gutted by a pipe.
Eleven, six, five....
Moving side to side.
Close your eyes and feel it. Think, count, count, guess where he is.
Rain. Blood like rain. Bones. Bones. Bones.
"The one who... trusts the ceaseless wheel... will never die," he whispers.
As the man struggles to raise his arm, his "arm"... if it can even be called that anymore. It was bent in four different directions, after all.
Osprey, however, chose to ignore it. Contusions, dislocations, complete breaks. Such an arm could never recover. However, the man known worldwide for his durability and endurance still found the inner strength, despite the pain, to move.
As Osprey moved his hand right above his left eye, he covered it.
As his eye showed the number 0.
A bird flew over the area. The bird's eye changed form into human.
Also morphing into the number 0.
Osprey lifted his head, gasping, his body trembling. The shattered column lodged deep in his abdomen made every breath torture. He pressed his hand to his stomach, trying to hold his spilling intestines in place.
"I'm… bleeding hard…" he muttered, voice rough with pain.
Forcing his back off the ground, he bit down on a broken arrow shaft and loaded another to his bow.
Each breath came ragged, each heartbeat a hammer of agony. With his mangled right hand, he steadied the bow, closed his right eye, and drew aim, seeing everything from above, a bird's-eye view through the haze of pain.
Blood leaked out of his nose and his eye sockets. The level of stress he put himself under with his focus and injuries burned away his life force.
Roughly 800 meters away, Mori lay slumped against the cracked remains of a collapsed wall.
His uniform was soaked in blood, thick, dark, relentless.
His hand trembled as it pressed against the wound in his shoulder. "The President's Elite Guards should be here any second now to rescue me."
As Mori stabbed himself with another "stim," a drug to help healing properties, boost adrenaline, and keep him awake in an effort to stay alive.
"My blood… it won't clot," he rasped, voice thin and hoarse.
Desperate, he reached for the God Stick, activating its edge with a faint hum of energy. He pressed it to his wound, trying to cauterize it.
SSSSSST—
He didn't even have the energy to scream.
But it was no use. The blood didn't scab over. It melted into a sludgy mess, the burn failing to stop the haemorrhaging.
He fell back, panting. His blood now awkwardly pooled in his skin as the sludge slowly dripped.
And then he noticed something—
The wounds closer to his vital organs bled uncontrollably.But the arrows lodged in his extremities had relatively less damage.
It clicked.
"…These weren't random shots."
He looked down at the arrowhead still stuck near his lung, its glow faint, but present. He had only fired three holy arrows, and they had all hit him, while the random arrows with no symbols almost all missed—hundreds of them.
Mori, slightly disappointed in himself, wondered how it was possible for Osprey to have improved this much over the years. But his thoughts faded away from the battlefield, slowly drifting to his personal life.
How much he missed his people and his family. Maybe he should have been kinder. Maybe he should have bought her those flowers instead of thinking it was corny, because he was scared of how people would see him. Little regrets started biting back at him as he began to fall asleep.
An arrow flew through his chest.
It woke him right up.
"Impossible."
He coughed. As he started to crawl, he panicked. One last burst of adrenaline hit as he clawed at the dirt, dragging himself inch by inch—
Trying to live.
Or at least, die trying.
As another arrow missed a vital organ, it landed in his neck, missing his artery.
An arrow fell in front of him. He stopped crawling. He tried to go left; however, arrows like rain trapped him in a circle.
He exhaled, dying.
Osprey shot a communicator arrow close. You could hear the hitch in Osprey's voice.
Osprey, overwhelmed by emotions, broke down, speaking to his old friend for potentially the last time.
Mori choked on his blood as he whispered for help.
Osprey yelled, "SHUT UP. Don't cry! Do not beg. The choices you have made brought you here!"
Osprey went off, "You knew this would happen. You know you can't defeat me! I TOLD YOU!"
Mori, dying, had nothing to say as the light left his eyes.
Mori coughed his last breath.
Life flashed before his eyes.
His final vision appeared.
A woman, blonde, short, beautiful, stood in a flowing silk dress, her smile soft, trembling through the tears in her eyes. She was there, in his mind, not as a memory, but as his final thought, a final piece of comfort.
"I'm so proud of you, dear," she said, voice breaking. "Everything you've done for us, our children, they will grow up knowing their father was the bravest of the brave. The best of the best, who gave everything to build a country safe enough for them to live without fear. Not a single fear, you hear me?"
As she broke down further,
She reached out, her hand warm against his cheek, as her tears fell onto his own.
Mori responded with his dying breath in real time.
"You're right."
"I was a good man. A good father."
"But I could have been so much more."
As a final tear rolled down his cheek—
He died.