The End (Gaming)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Sunday, January 29, 2017, 18:10 (2855 days ago) @ Ragashingo

This is a look at a possible end I'd written for Sparks should she have been killed in game. Of course, the plan was for her to survive her adventures and earn enough money to buy a healing potion powerful enough to heal her mother. But, should the worst happen, she would have this little dream sequence as she faded from the world.

The End

Sparks was drowsy. So drowsy. It was all she could do to open her eyes and bear the aches in her bones and muscles and skin and soul each time the wagon, whose hay she was laying, on rolled over a bump or dip in the path.

The path… home?!

Sparks’ pained, blood shot eyes widened as she recognized the familiar archway of limbs and branches that lined the path to her home. She’d passed under them so many hundreds… no… thousands of times that she knew them by heart. She’d made it home! Somehow. Which meant there was just one last thing to do…

Her weak hands tightened around the flask she held between them, making sure to keep the red liquid with the shifting, inky black swirls as steady as possible.

Some minutes later the slow movement of the wagon stopped and Sparks gritted her teeth as she forced herself to sit… but that was all she could manage. Fortunately, her friends were there to help her. She… she could no longer recall their names… it made her head throb with pain to shift her thoughts to anything but the present… but she recognized them all the same.

There was the young woman, tall and thin… always talking so fast, thinking so fast. She’d… she’d become so much more than she had been when they first met. She helped Sparks move to the edge of the wagon and swing her feet so the hung towards the ground.

Then there, there was her strong, fair, protective, and kind half-elven friend. Still in his armor, though many pieces of it had swapped out and changed… hadn’t they? He helped her stand and held her up when it was clear that she no longer could.

And finally was the short old Gnome… always so cheerful and so wise. Always humming a tune or singing a helpful song. Always so compassionate even to a stranger like her, even at the times where he had no need to be so. He took her hand and led her towards the makeshift home that she’d set out from so many years ago.

Her other hand kept a strong grip on the flask… despite the pain the liquid it held drew from her….

As they neared, her father emerged, and her sister Inapita Sasa as well!

Her sister’s limp, though still present, had improved so much! They both greeted her with concern. With panic. But Sparks quickly hushed them with sharply spoken Elven words issued from her cracked lips and burning throat.

Another sentence or two and their faces fell, their smiles and even their concern swept away by grief as they led Sparks and her companions inside, to the room where her mother lay on a large, comfortable bed that had not been there before.

At the doorway, Inapita gave her sister a long tearful hug before moving aside. Sparks’ father did much the same, leaving her with whispers of love and of pride.

The others, too, held back to the safety of the next room as Sparks moved inside under what was left of her own power. Her steps were heavy and sluggish. Her labored breathing shallow and quick. But somehow she made it to the bed, then up onto the bed so as to stretch out alongside her still disfigured mother.

The sounds her mother made, her excited whimpers and her worried moans, they all saw Sparks smile and cry.

Sparks forced herself to sit up again, as difficult as it was to do so, then used all her remaining strength to pull the stopper from the flask of odd liquid that she’d been protecting these last few weeks.

She shakily ran one hand gently, lovingly across her mother’s cheek then, with the other, she put the open end of the flask to her mother’s mouth and slowly poured the frightening liquid across her mother’s lips.
Not much of it made it down into her mother’s mouth, but not much had to. It was the act of willful offering that mattered here.

The candles in the room snuffed out. The sounds of the outside world grew strangely quiet. Even the rays of the sun streaming in through the window to cast what had been bright patters across mother and daughter grew dim even though they still shown brightly everywhere else.

Sparks had only but a short moment to watch her mother’s eyes flash fear and alarm before her own eyes grew heavy and closed. Somehow it felt as if the room had begun to spin around her even though she could no longer see.

She put her head back down to the pillow and felt herself become wrapped tightly in a loving embrace even as everything… her pain, her fear, her thoughts, and even her love dulled down to a flat, deep, even numbness.

U'tulivu Nyeupe-nywele Malaika Njia’yawazi held the cold body of her first born daughter tightly with arms that she had not been able move in years, with fingers she had not possessed since the fire. Tears flowed down the renewedly smooth skin of her face as she gently rocked her daughter and wept and wept.

“My daughter? My Daughter? What have you done? What have you done?” she asked with lips that had not spoken a word since they had commanded the gods to cover her Mkali Moto Kipande with protection against the fire and smoke and crushing timbers that were soon to fall on them both so many years before.

“I kept my promise to you...” Sparks somehow whispered contently in reply before she gently drew and release her last and final breath.