My friend did not die a quiet, comfortable death. She did not fade into the nothingness, on her deathbed, surrounded by loved ones who sent her off. She died in the heart of the monster, filled with sorrow, pouring her heart into the open maw of the Grief Engine until it could swallow no more. She died brilliantly and brightly. She died lighting up the sky.
My Friend, The Traitor — A Biography of Ka Hanabi, by Ka Zhengming, 2252
GETHSEMANE Complex, root access, Corpus Christi, Texas, Axis Mundi, Earth, UCF 05/20/454, 1510 hours
The door seals shut behind Hanabi.
Outside, her friends, her comrades, wait respectfully. The timer counting down on her remaining moments of life.
Hanabi walks forward towards the core. The violet, grasping tendrils of energy flaring off, pulling her closer, like some great tentacled beast. Hungering for her grief.
Hanabi watches as a tendril lashes out, wraps itself around her arm, caressing her gently. Immediately she’s struck with an unnameable kind of pain — profound, searing, physical — but made of grief. Like a weapon made of sorrow has cut her open. She grits her teeth. Steps forward, deeper, into the reactor.
As she approaches the core, more tendrils reach out, drawn to this strange source of doloric fuel. The core hungers for her. A mindless force of severing and consumption. She approaches it with conviction.
One by one, Hanabi allows her defenses to fall. Merges closely with her emotions, her sorrow, her pain. Lets them press up against herself. She smiles, and weeps.
This is it. This is the end.
Goodbye.
The core erupts with energy, reaching out to grasp her, folding her within its blazing embrace. Hanabi screams. Light begins pouring from her body, her own doloric energy flowing out as it’s extracted by the core.
Memories flood her awareness. Every moment of pain, beauty, horror. Her life burning brightly as it is consumed by the fire. Hanabi has no more words. She allows her life to flow through her and out of her, fueling the core’s collapse as it eats itself to death.
The core continues to drain her, more and more, swallowing up her life force as it extracts her suffering. She screams. Her flesh burns, chars.
The core suddenly begins to tremble and shake. Losing its capacity for balance. The metastable state begins to break down. The energy feeding on itself, its own substance, burning itself down faster and faster. Violet flames burst out, racing up the lines feeding into the reactor, consuming the fuel it produced, filling the entire facility with incandescent light. The core eats itself alive until it can no longer eat anything else.
The core shuts down, inert. Darkness.
Hanabi collapses, charred, dying. Her remaining life force slowly sputtering out. She is distantly aware of the sound of the seal breaking, PLAA soldiers rushing into the chamber, picking her up.
Ka Zhengming carries Hanabi, in their arms, out of the facility.
“We will not leave you here, comrade.”
Outside, the afternoon sun searing. Hanabi fades rapidly. Her body nothing more than a blackened mass of charcoal.
Ka Zhengming reaches their objective — Venus, kneeling, awaiting her pilot. Ka Zhengming offers Hanabi to her. Venus gently cradles Hanabi’s body in her hand, places her inside of the cockpit. Closes the entry plug.
Venus?
Hanabi wakes in the psychoscape, barely holding on to the ounce of life she has remaining. Venus is kneeling in front of her, her reflection, her own body burned and crumbling. Venus looks up at her, weeping. Protect. Protect Hanabi.
The two of them embrace, as they both crumble into dust.