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 4 different directions afterall.
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 finds the inner strength despite the pain to move.
As Osprey moves his hand right above his left eye he covers it.
As his eye shows the number 0.
A bird flies over the area. The bird's eye changes 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 leaks out of his nose and his eye sockets, the level of stress he puts himself under with his focus and injuries burn him of 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 Presidents 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 pooling in his skin as the sludge slowly drips.
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 only fired 3 holy arrows and they all hit me. While the random arrows with no symbols almost all missed, hundreds of them.
Mori, slightly disappointed in himself, wonders how its possible for Osprey to have improved this much over the years. But his thoughts faded away from the battlefield slowly thinking about his personal life.
How much he missed his people and his family, maybe he should have been kinder. Maybe I should have bought her those flowers instead of thinking it was corny, because I was scared of how people would see me. Little regrets start biting back at him as he starts to fall asleep.
An arrow flies through his chest it wakes him right up.
"Impossible."
He coughs. As he starts to crawl, he panics 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 misses a vital organ it lands in his neck missing his artery.
An arrow falls in front of him he stops crawling he tries to go left, however arrows like rain trap him in a circle.
He exhales dying. Osprey shot a communicator arrow close, you can hear the hitch in Osprey's voice. Osprey , overwhelmed by emotions, breaks down speaking to his old friend for potentially the last time.
Mori chokes on his blood as he whispers for help.
Osprey yells "SHUT UP, Don't cry! Do not beg. The choices you have made brought you here!"
Osprey goes off "You knew this would happen. You know you can't defeat me! I TOLD YOU!"
Mori dying has nothing to say as the light leaves his eyes.
Mori coughs his last breath, life flashes before his eyes, his last vision appears.
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 breaks down further
She reached out, her hand warm against his cheek, as her tears fell onto his own.
Mori responds 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 rolls down his cheek, he dies.