Wings - An Ending. [ Come have a look! ]

[__MyScreamingHeart]

D R E A M E R

These are the final chapters of my story currently titled Wings. You can find the first three chapters in the Arenas if you wish to read from the beginning.

"I understand now..." her voice came weakly. There was a shriek and a thud, and then the beast named Lord fell dead. The child Lauren pulled her blades from it's bleeding corpse and stared out into the blackness as she cleaned them. Allen held his hands on Maggie's wound, crying, trying in vain to keep the blood inside.
"Allen... It's too late for that," she said softly, with that trademark drunk happiness that he had not seen for almost half a year. "But I understand now..."
She was so pale. Allen was shaking with emotion. First Chester had leapt from a building because of some stupid vision in his head, and now Maggie had saved his life by giving up hers. It wasn't fair.
Maggie raised her hand and held his face. She was calm, almost serene, and happier than she had been for a long time.
"That dream that I had... It was all the other way round. You were never the one that disappeared..."
He was frozen as she forced her head upwards, pulled him down to her until their noses almost brushed.
"...In the dream you vanished, but I see now..." the girl murmured, and then he felt her kiss him. He did not return the gesture. He merely squeezed his eyes closed and wished that none of it had ever happened; that he had talked Chester out of suicide, that Lauren had never found them, that he had never survived that plane crash when he was six...
"When you open your eyes, I'll have gone," Maggie's voice whispered, growing fainter and fainter. Allen should have kept them closed. He wished with all his heart that he had, but he had to see her one last time.

Allen opened his eyes and she was gone.

There was a shriek and a thud as the beast named Lord fell dead. On her knees, Lauren panted, one hand clamped firmly on her side. He watched with disbelief in his eyes as she pulled her blades from the corpse and cleaned them before limping over to him. His eyes were no longer filled with tears, but the pain was still there.
"Come on, Hotshot," Lauren said, patting his shoulder as she moved past him. The blood had already stopped flowing from her wound as the undead flesh rapidly knitted back together.
"Where'd she go?" he asked no one in particular. Allen was in a state of total shock. Maggie had always been there. There hadn't ever been a time when she wasn't more than a phone call away.
"Stop messing, boy, I've got a tight schedule..."
"Lauren, where is Maggie?"
He couldn't accept it. She couldn't be gone. Maggie had been the one who had stood by him throughout the entire journey to find Chester...
"Who the ******** is Maggie?" Lauren replied, getting edgy. They had to move before the walls closed in again.
Dumbstruck, he stumbled after the girl. Ahead of them was a door into Gaia's immense fortress; it was a whole world inside, not just some stone castle, and Chester was in there. After a long two years Allen was finally going to see his dearest friend again. Lauren had promised.

...But what was seeing Chester's smiling face again if he couldn't share the moment with Maggie?

[__MyScreamingHeart]

R E C A L L

Following Lauren, Allen was numb with a mixture of shock, loss, excitement, and denial. The girl really couldn't remember Maggie at all...
But Chester was right around the corner. All they had to do was open the right door.
"Here," she said, stopping suddenly so that he almost walked into her. "He's here."
Allen smiled his thanks, and then she left him alone outside a solid wooden door. He inhaled shakily before placing his hand on the knob and turning it. The door swung open without complaint to reveal an outdoor space.
Allen found himself standing in a small ,wooden, medieval-style fort with crossbows and torches and swords set up along the walls. With a WWII helmet on his head, Chester looked as well as he had ever been. He couldn't tear his eyes away from the boy, and it was only when Chester turned around that he was able to greet his friend.

They stared at each other for a long time until Chester ran to him and flung his arms around his neck. Allen held him tightly, tears stinging his blue eyes.
"I've missed you, Allen..." a voice said. It was undoubtedly Chester's, but it came as a shock to him.
"You can hear?"
"Of course I can! Here I can do or be anything I want," Chester said to him, stepping back but not letting go. His gray eyes were full of love, full of sadness. "Maggie told you everything, didn't she?"
Allen looked away, eyes downcast. Maggie had indeed told him everything...
He loved you, you know.
Maggie. She was gone.
"She died in the Void," Allen said softly. He began to cry silently. Chester hugged him again, then laid his forehead against Allen's.
You should have told him, bro.
"The living may forget, but the dead will always remember," Chester quoted. His smile faded, and after a while he spoke again.
"...You love her, don't you?" he said quietly. Allen met his eyes, and was surprised that they were neither sad nor angry. They still just held that irrepressible liquid love.

In truth, Allen did not know. He had spent so much of his life loving Chester that he no longer knew what was what. When Maggie had died, he had been ripped apart. When Chester had died, he had eaten ice cream and played with falling leaves...
He would never turn you down...
When he did not answer, Chester smiled softly. He placed his hands on Allen's shoulders and kissed his forehead.
"Sometimes it takes losing one to realize another."
Allen was shaking again, but this time he had someone to hold him while he wept.

[__MyScreamingHeart]

A L L O V E R N O W

Thank you Twilight Love for removing your post. (:

Chester waved them off at the gate to Mother Gaia's fortress. Allen and Lauren had a long trek ahead of them, but at least this time the Lost Souls would aid them in their travels and they did not have to worry about Lord and his mindless black creatures.
Chester's smiling face, with just the hint of a tear, was the last thing that Allen saw before the gate's swung closed - seemingly of their own accord. It was not the strangest thing that had happened in the last two years.
This time, instead of little Lauren being as heartless and cruel as she had at the beginning of their journey, she spoke with him, laughed with him, and uncannily reminded him of Maggie. The living would not remember, but the dead would never forget - and he wasn't all alive, was he? He remembered everything since the day of the plane accident with perfect clarity.

"Allenprince," a voice said, undoubtedly female yet with a bass undertone that made it soothing upon the ear. Allen stopped in his tracks and turned towards the woman who had spoken. She was much taller than even the Lost Souls, at the very least ten feet, and not entirely human. She had things growing from her clothes, from her skin; plants and trees and animals and rivers. Her hair was a tumbling wave of ivy and from her head rose a pair of magnificent antlers. He found that he physically could not meet her eyes, could not look at her face, for something told him that he would lose his mind if he did.
Lauren gasped and dropped to her knees, raising her hands in a V-shape above her head.
"Holy Mother, Goddess divine..." she chanted quietly. It was the one time Allen had ever seen her bow down to someone.
"...Gaia," he said quietly, his eyes wide and fixed on a point round her left shoulder. A tree stump grew there, home to a little nest complete with chirping baby birds. The resounding laugh of the goddess bounced off of the silence of the void, reverberating through every fibre of his being.
"Allenprince... Which are you really? The boy Allen or the...," she said something in some language that hurt his ears to hear, but he knew what she meant in the very essence of his being. "...Prince? The likes of you has never before been known in this realm or any other."
"I am Allen Marshall, neither man nor Lost Soul," he replied with a slightly wavering voice. The mirth of Gaia once again resounded in the emptiness. Allen imagined that the forest might sound like her if it could speak, for her voice was so deep, enticing and devastatingly beautiful, full of every noise that the earth could make; the creak of timber, the crash of the sea, the sound of the wind that howled with the wolves.
"...I am D'haerlen," he stated, with a furrow in his brow. He did not know were the words had come from, but his time spent with the two breeds of witches of the earth told him to trust them.
D'haerlen. He finally had a Name.
The Goddess Gaia leaned down and observed him closely, staring deep down into the very core of his soul, before sighing as she spoke.
"You know not of the words you speak, you know not where they come from; yet you trust them completely. Why, Allen Marshall, did you choose D'haerlen?"
Lauren had cut off mid-chant, and was staring at them. She knew the name D'haerlen. Every witch did; but she did not know it's meaning.
"The skies whispered it to me as I slept, Mother. The skies came and they sang in my ears."
There was a silence broken only by the sounds emitted from Gaia's body. It was a dangerous silence, full of staring eyes and suspicious souls, and Allen braced himself for the wrath of the goddess.
But then Gaia laughed. "There is hope for you yet, Mage Allen Marshall."
And then the goddess vanished as swiftly as she had come, leaving behind nothing but a small bird who had flown from the nest on her shoulder.

[__MyScreamingHeart]

E P I L O G U E

Allen sat alone on a park bench not too far from the place that Maggie and he had encountered Lauren on the day of Chester's funeral, four long years ago. Where he used to wear a simple silver hoop he now wore a tiny slice of watermelon, a gift he had once thought ridiculous. He had a checked rainbow-coloured fedora on his head and a thin ponytail at the nape of his neck. A pair of white earphones were fitted snugly into his ears, attached to the same iPod he had had all those long years ago - albeit held together by only the sellotape across the screen.
All these things had been gifts from his dear friends; the earring from Maggie, the hat from Chester, the iPod a gift they had both saved up to buy for him. But none of those items could ever add up to everything they had done for him. He was a better person thanks to them. He knew the true value of life, of the earth and the planet, how the people should be treasured no matter what they did...
And sometimes, when he slept at night, he felt like he was flying and the song of the wind whispered in his ears...

"Hey, Hotshot," a familiar voice called to him. Startled, Allen twisted around in his seat to see a girl, much taller and older than he remembered, with shaggy blond hair and animal yellow eyes.
"Lauren?" he asked, mouth agape.
"Course it's me you moron. Now come on, Gaia's realms need you."
And she turned on her heel and walked away, just like the day he had met her. He hurried after her, marvelling at how much she had grown since she was twelve.
"What do you mean Her realms need me?" Allen asked, catching up to her.
"You ******** stupid Allen?" Lauren laughed. He remembered the first time he had seen her laugh. "You said yourself, you're D'haerlen, and then the Mother anointed you Mage."
Ah. He had known that one would come back to bite him in the a**.
"Yeah but what does that mean?"
Lauren rolled her eyes, halting him in his tracks as she sliced a portal into the void.
"You're the go-between, the High Hand. D'haerlen is the link between Gods," she said, then stepped through the rip in the air.
Allen tried to poke it before stepping through after her.
"Huh. That's a new trick, witch."
And then: "Wait. There's more of them?!"

[__MyScreamingHeart]

T H E E N D

...Or is it?

[__MyScreamingHeart]

F A N A R T S;

None yet. ):

[__MyScreamingHeart]

F E E D B A C K

Keep it coming. (:

"It's good. I like it."

"The concept is amazing. It takes a true artist to come up with something beautiful. [...] It was a pleasure to read."

[__MyScreamingHeart]

Anyone out there out there out there?

[Sally Spearow]

I loved this story. Definatly something you could make a sequel out of. (hint hint) 3nodding

[xDark_Realityx]

Left align as stated in the rules, plz.
Other than that, not bad.

[__MyScreamingHeart]

@ Sally: Glad you liked it. (: And there is the beginning of a sequel in the process of being written... ;D

@ Dragonstar: o.o Oops. Sorry bout that.