Takes place after this solo
Word Count: 700
It was not death that greeted him, but a thriving world.
Lush greenery surrounded him — tall trees with thick branches and healthy leaves; low hedges dotted with flowers; a dense coating of grass. After the rot and devastation found on his own world, such obvious and abundant signs of life seemed jarring.
Tyr looked around and tried to place his location, but saw nothing familiar. At a loss, he looked up. Tiny pinpricks of stars speckled the night sky. Among them hung the silvered face of a single moon.
This was not Ymir.
This was not any world he’d ever seen before.
He wondered, Why did you send me here?
The voice of Ymir, if it existed at all, did not answer him. In its absence, Tyr could not be sure he’d heard anything to begin with. Perhaps this was all a dream. Perhaps he’d never woken from stasis, but remained trapped in that glass coffin — lost, alone, abandoned.
Or perhaps this was death, after all. Were there not those who believed that a paradise awaited them at the end of life? There must be some mistake, if he’d been allowed there. What had he ever done to earn the privilege? He was a failure. His dying world was proof of that.
When taking stock of the environment yielded no answers, Tyr finally took stock of himself. His wounds spilled blood onto the grass; the loss was not so much that it concerned him, but he thought it proof enough that he was not yet dead. Why would torn flesh carry over into the afterlife? Why would he continue to experience pain? In death, surely the frailty of an underfed body would not leave him so weak.
It was only then that Tyr noticed the state of his clothing — the simple collar at his shoulders, the fitted, shimmering trousers which encased his legs, and the bow low on his back where a pair of useless wings should have been.
Useless, but not meaningless.
That loss, more than any other, struck him like a slap to the face. Every bit of progress he’d made since becoming a Senshi, since losing himself to a duty he never wanted, all of it had been taken away from him as if his sacrifices held no meaning.
He was Ymir, but Ymir was nothing now.
When the power which dwelled in his world finally expired, what would become of him?
With a stuttering breath, Tyr — Ymir — forced himself onward. He made his own path through the trees until he found a trail of packed dirt — the first sign that there must be people here. He followed it past a pond full of croaking frogs, past a metal bench, past an area of mulch and large, colorful contraptions, attached to which he noted a tall, twisting ramp, and a set of dangling boards on chains. Swings, he thought, but they were nothing like the stiff wood and coarse rope he was accustomed to.
Above the trees which lined the horizon, a few lights glowed from distant shapes, stretched toward the sky. If he listened carefully beyond the mating calls of frogs and the low hum and chirp of insects, Ymir thought he could hear muffled sounds — a whoosh not quite like the wind, a honk not quite like a goose. There might be music, faint but almost traceable. A second more, and Ymir was certain he detected laughter.
He came to a stop, made uneasy by the thought of encountering people.
They were under no obligation to treat him kindly. At best, they would be suspicious; at worse, they would pose more of a danger to him than his own people.
Which was worse — to be vilified by a foreign clan, his only hope of shelter and safety on a strange world, or to be vilified by those he was meant to serve?
Before Ymir could decide upon an answer, another sound, sharp and sudden, split through the night.
Snap!
A low growl followed.
Ymir’s fingers twitched as if to call upon his magic, but in his weakness he knew it would do him little good.
