Dimensional Descent

The last moments of Gervaise’s life seemed to last an eternity. He could feel his life slipping away from him, but all he could do was sigh. It seemed that in the end, he hadn’t been able to accomplish what he had promised.

He had carried this weight on his shoulders for so long, that guilt.

He could still remember every moment of the destruction of the Fawkes family, how many people sacrificed their lives just so that he could survive.

Not a single one of them acted out selfishly. Even though it was all his fault, even though they would have been just fine if he had never been born, they still went above and beyond, sacrificing themselves to the last man...

And then he remembered his own father.

Prometheus Fawkes.

That broad back, those shoulders that seemed to hold up the skies, and that stoic sort of smile that rarely came out and yet carried with it the grace of an Emperor.

He was such an arrogant man, a man who deserved to sit atop the world and call it his own, the one man who was actually worthy of ruling Existence like Gervaise hoped

to...

But that man, who had pride running into the very depths of his bones, had actually lowered his head for the sake of his son.

The inaction of the Pluto was always something that had filled Gervaise with endless amounts of fury. But it wasn’t their inaction itself that truly made him so filled with wrath. It was the fact his father, the man he respected most in the world, was forced to ask for their help in the end.

Gervaise knew his father well. If it was only for himself, Prometheus would have preferred death over asking the Pluto for anything, even if the Pluto owed them.

However, for the sake of finding a path for Gervaise to survive, that prideful man had lowered his head, making a trip to the Pluto.

Gervaise hadn’t been present, but he knew the ways of the world now that he had long since matured. He could imagine the sorts of humiliation his father had had to face that day, how the Pluto had likely made him feel like he was asking for a handout, how they had debased him and turned their noses up at him,

His father shouldn’t have had to go through that. But because of him, because of his stupid talent, their lives were completely upended.

He had really wanted... to be the one who corrected all of that...

He had really wanted... to be the man who brought the Fawkes back to the peak of the world, that destroyed the Void Race, and pressed the Pluto beneath his heel for their arrogance. He wanted to wipe the Four Great Families out to their last man, and then face off against the Northern Star with a happy smile on his face.

Every second of his life, he had pushed himself to the extremes... but as he neared the end, he realized, ironically enough, that the very talent that had destroyed his family wasn’t enough to help him rise above it all.

In the end, he wasn’t as good as this grandson of his. And maybe he needed to see it. through to the end to finally be accepting of that.

It was just that... he didn’t want to accept that the talent that was the reason for the destruction of his life, his family, his mother... his father...

Wasn’t the best there was...

Because then... what was the point of it all? They had gone so far, and he couldn’t even justify it to himself like this.

It only filled him with more anger.

He had to be the strongest. He had to be the one that lifted up this mountain. He had to be the one who justified both the pain his family had suffered, and the one who pulled them out of it.

Even facing his death, this will burned so fiercely and strongly that he wanted to find a way to struggle...

But it was in vain. There was nothing to hold onto, nothing to push against, nothing for him to even apply pressure on or with for that matter.

His body was gone. His soul was dispersed. All that was left...

Was death.

In the end, it wasn’t enough. No amount of will, no amount of rage, no amount of hopeless begging or pleading, would change much of anything.

As prideful as his father was, he had to lower his head to the Race he hated with every fiber of his being.

And now, he, Gervaise Fawkes, the Emperor of a Generation, would have to accept his loss much the same way his father had.

It was just that he had wished... that he could have done so with as much purposeful drive as Prometheus had.

Gervaise found himself frozen again after having this thought. He couldn’t remember having ever had it before, but now, facing his death, he felt that he finally had.

His words before were right. The one thing that would always be uncontrollable were the thoughts and emotions of others. If you could, then they would no longer be their own person.

The world had too many variables in it, but it was precisely these variables that

allowed the uniqueness of every individual. You couldn’t separate a person’s experiences from who they were...

This was why reviving someone would never be easy. Even if Gervaise could revive his father, what then? Would he make that prideful man live out his life knowing that he failed to sacrifice himself for his son and was instead now only alive thanks to the sacrifices of this child of his?

Even if Prometheus was happy for a few days, maybe in a few years, the worthlessness of his existence, or at his perceived worthlessness, would turn him into a completely different person... a man more jaded by life, more filled with hatred, less prideful because then...

What would be the point of everything he had done.

Life was always a road of assigning arbitrary value to things. This was what Leonel had to realize himself... he had to come to an understanding that maybe life itself wasn’t any more special than a rock laying by the side of the road. Maybe life was only valuable because the living said it was...

And that was enough of an answer in itself.

It was because of this that Leonel had chosen to have children even though it felt like an objectively foolish decision. It was why Aina had abandoned the thought of reviving her mother. And it was why Gervaise was spending the last flickering embers of his life

in a daze.

Prometheus had decided the own value of his life, believing that what gave it worth was allowing his son to live the life he deserved to... to give his son a chance to be the Emperor of a World...

Before he died, Prometheus never said a word about revenge. He just wanted his son to live.

Unlike the challenges Leonel faced, Prometheus hadn’t believed that Gervaise’s clash with the God Realm was inevitable. The Demoness wasn’t avoidable, but Gervaise’s

enemies were.

It was left up to Gervaise to take the position he had and did the things he did. But in doing so, he had lost his purpose along the way.

Was revenge really all he wanted?

No. If that was true, then he would be fine with Leonel taking his place so long as it

got done.

Was it the satisfaction of revenge dealt by his own hands?

Somewhat... at the very least, this would justify all the pain, suffering, and humiliation

he had put his family through...

But that answer in and of itself seemed to prove that there was a deeper underlying

V

reason.

It wasn’t because he wanted the satisfaction himself, but because he wanted to retroactively justify everything that had happened... only by being the best could he justify the pain he had brought to the Fawkes family... only by proving their enemies correct about the threat he was could he finally set the weight on his shoulders

down...

But by virtue of that, from the very beginning, he was chasing after an ending that

would allow him to finally shrug this mountain off of his shoulders. He was trying to climb to a mountain peak, not for the ends, but so that the ends would justify the

means...

In those last moments of his life, Gervaise found himself asking himself a question he never thought he would...

Had he ever truly wanted to be an Emperor...?

Or did he...

Just want his family back?

The last embers of Gervaise flickered out, his thoughts drifting into the wind on a

current into silence and solitude...

Until a hand wreathed in violet suddenly reached out, pulling him out of the darkness.

Gervaise gasped as though his head had just broken the surface of water.

The first sight he saw was the pale face of his grandson staring at him with tears

streaking down his face.

”I really hate you, old man, Could you have waited any longer?”