Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Shattered Illusions ❯ Dirge of Shiva ( Chapter 47 )

XxXxXxXx

Shattered Illusions

Chapter 47: Dirge of Shiva

By: Melissa Norvell

XxXxXxXxXx

"Y-Your majesty..." All Horatio could do was stare at the horrific sight that took place before him. He could barely form words, eyes locked onto Copernicus.

Tsubomi watched in horror as blood dripped from the sword's blade and onto the ground, staining it in sanguine fluid.

Teru was aghast and speechless. Emotion boiled in his chest, and he had never felt as helpless as he did in that moment.

'I...killed...her...' Copernicus felt the possession give way, his soul reached a sanctity and freedom but at what cost? All he could do was stare, dazed and appaled at his own actions as he heard the dripping of the blood from his blade.

"Tsu...bo...mi...She musn't..." Shiva's words came out in broken, pained syllables as the sword was slipped out of her body. Blood splattered on the ground, being expelled from her ruptured organs as the dark-skinned vampire's form fell to the ground.

"Sh...Shiva..." Teru watched her fall, and it was as if she was moving in slow motion. Her long, straight, lavender hair blew int he wind and her dull, lifeless eyes watched him as her body hit the ground. "No...it can't be..." His voice reflected the disbelief he felt. There was no way that her life could have been ended that easily.

"Princess Shiva...why?" Millie watched the lifeless body on the ground as tears clung to the corners of her eyes. Again, she was forced to watch as someone she cared about died before her eyes.

"Why did you do that? Why the hell did you save me?" Tsubomi could hardly believe it. Shiva had spared her, but things didn't have to end that way. She didn't have to die.

"You will go on to become someone great. I am but a simple vampire who can use the powers of telepathy and telekenesis...It was my job to protect someone like you...even if it is to protect you from someone like him...Don't lose sight of who you are," Shiva smiled faintly at the tomboy as she bled out into the grass. The loamy soil below her provided a type of comfort that she had not felt before.

Teru ran over to the fallen woman and fell to his knees. His expression was frantic and his eyes darted wildly around. "Shiva? Shiva! Hold on! I can fix it! I can, I can, I can!!" The vampire wanted to save her. There had to be a way! His words were just as frenzied as he felt as he looked her up and down quickly, his brain running at a hundred thoughts per second.

Shiva's smile widened a little more, a gentle tug at her pale lips. "Not this time, Teru. I don't know who will keep you in line, now that I will be gone soon," her voice was accepting and kind despite her predicament.

"You can't say that!" Teru shouted in anger and pain. "You're supposed to be alive. You can't die! You promised that you'd rule with me."

"Teru, I love you."

"Shiva..." The anger vanished from his voice and gave way to sorrow, and a trembling tone that sounded as if he might weep.

"I'll wait for you..." She closed her eyes and her voice whispered out the last part of her sentence, "...in the afterlife."

Shiva was dead.

A solemn expression crossed Copernicus' face. 'Shiva...this battlefield will be painted in your blood. How unfortunate that things had to come to this. My body could not control itself. This possession...it still clearly has a hold on me. This is my cross to bear.'

"That's what you get for interfering," Hizaki let out a low chuckle to himself. They should all take that as a warning for what will happen to any of them if they continued to meddle with Hide's plans.

Copernicus turned his back to his comrades, blood staining the blade of the Rigatama, coating it in a deep viscera.

"How could you?" Teru shook with emotion, his head down and eyes covered with his tufts of red bangs.

"He doesn't even know that he did it," Millie tried to defend Copernicus, tears streaming down her cheeks as she wept for Shiva. "Please, don't be hard on him. Please...don't judge him."

Copernicus must have felt awful that he had accidentally stabbed her and got brought out of his possession only to find out that he had killed one of his dear friends. Millie could only imagine the pain he must have been going through.

"Despite this, he is still my king. As a knight, his knight, I am faithful until my dying breath. That is the true purpose of a knight," Horatio's words were solemn, but there was nothing that could have been done about the incident.

'Shiva...' Tsubomi looked at the dead vampire, then back up to her master in sorrow. 'Copernicus...'

"She was everything to me..." Teru continued to sob.

"Teru..." Millie felt her heart drop at his situation. She knew how it felt to lose someone she loved. After all, it wasn't that long ago that Prince Yale was assassinated during the party. Her heart still felt the tug of that loss. It was something that she would have never forgotten.

"We've had it so hard until now. Even in our own kingdom..." Teru's body shook with the emotion he felt as tears poured down his face. "Things were never easy. We struggled to keep our people from going to war. Things had been so hectic...If it wasn't for King Copernicus, our country would have been thrown into darkness. Nothing we can do will even knock him out of his possession. It's just...in vein."

He couldn't keep up with the facade of thinking things were going to get better. There was no way that they could beat the king, and he knew it to be true. They should have pulled out when they had the chance. If they had, he still would have had her by his side. It wasn't worth the cost of life that had been put forth.

"We can't think like that. He saved Tsubomi-" Millie tried to put his mind back in a better set, but Teru was quick with a rebuttal.

"No one died because of that."

"I nearly killed him," Tsubomi said lowly.

"If you take it as a whole, a lot of people have died." It wasn't just Shiva who had fallen in battle. Millie had witnessed many fall at the hands of Hide.

Zino glanced over to Copernicus, then looked to Hizaki. 'Look at them. That dog Hizaki is forcing Copernicus to watch us. Bastard...' Such things infuriated him beyond all repair. It was cruel enough that he made Copernicus kill Shiva, and now he was just making Copernicus watch his friends cry out in pain at their loss, the loss he caused.

It was awful.

"Excellent job, my little slave, let's head back to base and await Hide's next orders." Surely, the vampire would be most satisfied with the waste he laid to the king's little group of supporters.

Copernicus obliged by saying his usual 'yes master' and flower petals fluttered around the two of them, engulfing them as they faded out and disappeared from sight.

"They're gone," Millie stated.

"Damn it! I feel like we just let them get away!" Zino punched a nearby tree, releasing his anger as he gritted his teeth.

"What else could we do?" Millie looked at Teru with concern. "There's nothing that could have saved Shiva."

The red head sat on the ground, unmoving. Saddened, tear-filled eyes stared down at the fallen woman before him as he stared at the reminder of his error, the reminder of what this battle came down to. "I'll kill Hide for this," his voice was low and filled with sorrow. "Mark my word..." Raising his head up, his true expression came to life, one that was marred in malice. "I will destroy Hide!" Teru shouted vengefully as Shiva's form began to glow in an iridescent white.

Everyone turned to look at her as she was consumed in the light, which transformed from a white to a honey-color before her form exploded into little orbs that were no bigger than marbles. They hovered around everyone in the air, then fell to the ground.

"What the heck?" Zino was confused by that. He'd never seen anyone die like that before.

Teru kept his eye on the orbs that lay around him.

Millie held her hand out to the orbs, watching them with great fascination. "How pretty...Is this how vampires die? Prince Yale didn't die like this...Why?" It was really confusing to her. Actually, the gun slinger hadn't seen anyone die in that manner before. It was unique, that was for sure.

"Her body was created by magic. It wasn't her real body," Teru let the truth be known, revealing Shiva's secret.

"What do you mean by that?" Horatio asked, looking to the red head with confusion.

"When we were born as twins, she was the weaker one," Teru began to explain the story of the two of them. "Over time, she grew sickly but she practiced magic the whole time, working on a spell called Soul Transfer. It's a technique that allows you to transfer your soul to other objects or people and bring them to life.

"However, it can only work on corpses who have no soul or bodies created from magic. She died at the age of thirteen and transferred into the body that you all see."

"So, the real Shiva is dead?" Millie blinked in confusion, placing a finger to her chin in thought.

"Yes...but she still felt tied to this world. She transferred herself with the last of her life energy into the ageless body you all knew," Teru hung his head. He had no idea what they were even going to think about that.

"She was technically a zombie then?" Zino was a little confused as to how that worked.

"In a way..." Teru never thought about it that way before, but he guessed he wasn't completely wrong.

"If that was true, couldn't she just transfer her soul to another place or object?" It should have been as simple as that, right? Tsubomi thought that should have been the case, anyway.

"She wanted it this way," Teru closed his eyes as faint memories of the past infiltrated his mind of days long gone with his sister in her original body.

Shiva and Teru stood in the grass. The gentle, warm breeze of the night washed over them, causing their clothes and hair to dance in the wind as they gazed at a brilliant sky, stuttered in twinkling stars.

The dark-skinned vampire's gaze was tilted skyward and a pleasant smile on her face contrasted the inner turmoil of her heart. "After this body fails me, then I'm going to dissolve into the skies."

Her words were grim on her brother's ears, causing him to turn to her and cast her a gaze of concern. "What?"

"This body I have," Shiva looked down at her hands, "was given to me to make the most of this life with. It will serve as a hull so that I can free myself of the thing that bind me to this physical plain." She glanced to her brother. "Teru, you're strong in body, even if you are crazy. I am not. Right now, I am fighting against my fate."

She knew that it was only a matter of time before everything caught up with her and she could return into the skies once more. Every day she lived, happy that she was able to do so and leading the fullest life she possibly could.

"But I need you," Teru was worried. He wanted his sister to always stay at his side, no matter what.

"For what?" Shiva asked. He was very independent. It wasn't as if he couldn't live without her.

"Huh?" The red head was a little caught off guard by her inquiry.

"What do you need me for that you couldn't accomplish on your own?" She didn't see why he was so dependent on her to stick around. Teru accomplished so much. Shiva was certain that there was nothing he couldn't do.

"But...I love you," he didn't even want such thoughts in her head about stuff like this.

"Don't worry," she offered a reassuring smile. "I won't simply give this body up. I'll stay in it until my goal is accomplished. I just want you to know that if I am pierced in the soul, I will be gone from this world." As much as she didn't like talking about it, Shiva knew that it was the cold, hard facts of the world.

"Your soul?" Teru questioned.

"The soul is located behind the heart," Shiva gave clarification to her prior words, placing a hand on her chest as her brother nodded.

"Teru...you've lived with my condition for a long time. I was simply not meant to exist, even being turned at a young age to give me an immunity to it didn't work." Right now, she was battling against the odds and she knew that doing what she had was defying the laws of nature. By all meaning of the word, she should have been dead.

"I don't remember what happened then. I just know that I woke up and you were turned." Everything was a blur to Teru when it came to those events.

"You had snapped then, in the middle of a battle with those enemy Classicals. You killed them all, but you went mad. You even turned on your own guards and slaughtered them," her words were like painful daggers to his heart as she filled him with the information that he had lacked.

"I did..." Teru wasn't happy about that. Just knowing it upset him a great deal.

"No one speaks of it. I think they'd rather not remember it. We've both been through so much in this warring country. Father and mother were killed when we were young and ever since that moment, we were ruling alone. We made our own rules and our own judgments. It takes everything out of us to simply keep this kingdom in order," Shiva explained. "When I doe, make sure you're able to handle them. If you don't, they'll try and kill you off. If you have trouble, then go and seek help from Copernicus J. Wittenburg. With his advanced knowledge and genius skill, we can retain peace in this land."

"She believed that once she had fulfilled her original goal, then she could permanently rest," Teru spoke as the thoughts of the past faded out of his memories.

"So, you guys are friends with Copernicus?" Millie knew that their countries had peace treaties with each other but she didn't know they went beyond that.

"I don't know...I just...don't know...This whole mess...I know it wasn't really him but because of him, Shiva is dead," Teru wanted to hate him. He wanted to rip him to shreds, and take from him what Copernicus had from him. However, he knew that Copernicus was suffering under the effects of the possession. It wasn't something that he normally would have done.

"You're also in the Blue Rose Order-" Horatio reminded him of his servitude under the king, but was cut short.

"Stop it! Okay?" Teru snapped, then his vision hit the floor as his voice lowered. "Just stop it..."

The knight blinked in response, silent.

"Not everyone can be like you, Sir Pendragon. You're loyal to a fault, even though Prince Yale is dead," Teru glared daggers into his soul. "What's wrong with you?"

"What I do with my life is none of your concern," Horatio frowned, defending himself. "Shiva is dead, but it's not his majesty's fault. He's possessed. What if you were under the same circumstances? Wouldn't you want the same forgiveness? I know it's hard to look past death, but we must move on. She would have wanted this and she wouldn't have blamed him." Teru didn't need to be marred by the hatred he felt. He didn't need his vision to be clouded with what he felt in the moment. Horatio knew that Shiva wouldn't have been happy about that at all.

"I'm pretty sure when Copernicus comes out of the possession, he'll feel guilty. If you want to blame someone, then blame me. She died saving my life. I'm a weak-minded fool to face off against him," Tsubomi closed her eyes and frowned. She felt guilty about what had happened. It wasn't Copernicus' fault.

"It's not like you could have predicted this," Millie looked at her with sympathetic eyes.

"That doesn't mean that I don't feel bad. I should have gone home with someone...Hell, I should have been honest with him in the first place-" It hit her like a led weight on her shoulders. If Tsubomi had just told the royal that she was a woman then none of this would have happened. No one would have had to have died like this.

"Who is to say that it wouldn't have happened anyway? No matter what you do, you can't avoid some things," Zino knew that people couldn't escape the course of fate. If Shiva was meant to die then she would have, despite the situation.

'Shiva....You dealt with me all of this time...through good and the bad....Even when I went crazy after our parents died....When I slaughtered those armies. You're the only one who could ever understand me and now you're gone.' Clenching his fist, Teru's heart was heavy as he reflected on his sister's contributions to his life. Clenching his eyes closed, he trembled, emotion boiling up inside of him. "Damn, what do I do?"

Millie embraced him and smiled comfortingly. "It might not be the best to hear this kind of thing right now, but we can't just give up even though she's gone. I know it's not the same, but I loved Prince Yale so much, but he was assassinated and the reason I fight now is to make sure that he rests in peace. Shiva needs to rest in peace, too. We'll lay them both down and take the burdens from their shoulders."

When she looked at it, she and Teru suffered the same pains in different ways. They both knew the loss of loved ones. However, as hopeless as they both felt, they would have a new flame of determination in their hearts. Above everything, they had to overcome the adversity and tribulation that was placed before them.

"Yeah..." Teru said solemnly. Right now, it was hard to find hope.

"Shiva figured that it was her time to go."

"Yeah, she wanted to go out defending what she thought was worth it. Defending what she thought was right. I won't let her efforts be in vain either." That was a promise that Zino could keep.

"Then, we must stop Copernicus." To Horatio, that was the only way that they could call it even.

"I just don't want to kill him," Millie frowned.

"We can't," Tsubomi felt a sense of panic at the mere mention of the act.

"Then, what do we do?" Millie didn't know what else to do. At this point, Copernicus was just too strong for them.

"He retreated, right? So, let's think of something while he's away." There had to be a better way. Tsubomi wasn't going to give up on him just yet.

"We've tried this already and it just got Princess Shiva killed," Zino knew that she wanted to keep her master alive, but they were running out of options.

"Tsubomi is right," Millie agreed. "We can't give up. Come on, guys, think about the real Copernicus. He went through so much for us." Above all, they couldn't lose sight of who he truly was.

"We can't just kill him because he's possessed. It would be like killing one of us for breaking a leg. It would be like killing off Prince Yale because he was mute or killing Prince Teru because he was mentally unstable. It's a cruel thought," Horatio didn't want to slaughter someone just because they had a defect. He agreed with the gun slinger - they were losing sight of who Copernicus truly was.

"You're right," Zino agreed. "I wouldn't want anyone to think that way about me."

"The only problem is finding something that will weaken the possession. He was able to jar my memory by physical contact, but I know that Hizaki has the best hold on him that he knows how." It wasn't a typical possession case, and Tsubomi knew that it wasn't. She remained faithful, but she knew that it would be hard to try and help her master.

"It probably takes everything he has to even keep him possessed, so attacking Hizaki directly would be the best way of going about it," Millie thought that the psivamp would be the weakness and not the actual possessed doll. If the power was weaker, it would be at the one using it.

"How can we do that with the king standing in our way?" That was going to be the hardest thing to do. Horatio wasn't sure they could pull it off.

"Yeah, you know if we attack Hizaki, he'll just put Copernicus in our way," Zino sighed. The situation turned hopeless once more.

"What if we split up?" Teru suggested an alternative method.

"We tried that," Zino replied, "we failed. I don't think we're strong enough to defeat him in teams."

"Aren't there any other members of the royal court that are still alive?" Tsubomi thought that maybe they could utilize outside forces to help them.

"No, and at this rate, there won't be too many life. The Blue Rose Order is it," Horatio didn't like being the downer, but he didn't know how else to put it.

"I hate this," Teru grumbled, anxiety etching onto his face.

'We can't give up. We just got to go and get the king away from all of those freaks. Who knows what they're doing to him right now.' Zino didn't even want to think about such horrible things. He could only guess what their next move would be. No doubt they were thinking about their next decisive strike.

This was grim.

XxXxXxXx

Hizaki and Copernicus appeared in front of a massive, red door as the flower petals floated around them, swirling in circular motions before they fluttered to the ground gently. Laying there for a while, they dispersed throughout the room and vanished. Red lips tugged into a smile as the feminine male looked to his puppet in satisfaction.

"This is wonderful. Hide will be most pleased that his mission will be a success. With Copernicus under my control, nothing will stop me." They had already fallen so gracefully into his hands. Hizaki didn't have anything to lose and everything to gain.

The vampire behind him said nothing and merely stared ahead blankly.

"My wonderful, little mind slave," Hizaki's words were loving as he ran a hand gently down the side of his tool's chiseled face. "It's about time you heed to my word. It's about time that you bow to my feet. All blue blooded nobility are destined to fall and some fall harder than others.

"Next time you face off against them, you will be killing them. They are hardly a challenge to someone as skilled as you. The Rigatama has done more than met my expectations, then again, that's Hide's magnificent plans at work. No one in the world can create a more perfect killing weapon." Amused, the drag queen pulled himself away from the Inheritor, his words poured through his painted lips like velvet.

Casting him a seductive look, Hizaki placed a finger to his chin, "in both aspects. He raised you well, with a fascination for cruelty and an iron fisted rule. You've always been the candidate for the throne, if not for the murder of your parents; you'd probably still have been dancing to our strings. You were such an obedient child, thinking that your methods would please your parents. We had thought about putting you against them later on, but we had other methods in mind."

The door opened with a squeak and the two of them turned to see the blonde vampire, standing before them, tall and proud.

"Copernicus," a small smile tugged at Hide's black lips, "it's good to see you again. I wish to talk to you in private."

...To Be Continued