“The Last”

I go to her in our Mother’s final hours. How long has it truly been since last we’ve seen one another? Neigh eons at the least, but then, what need do beings such as us to meet and interact with one another? Our kindred, while not enemies, were not the best of friends either and each kept to their territories. Trees are crumbling below me, either from the winds lifting me high into the reddened sky or from their own deaths I do not know nor do I wish to. Why did we not see this coming?
No. That’s a witch’s lie. We saw it coming, when we were old and They were still young.
We merely wallowed in our arrogance that blinded us towards death’s door.
I can remember the first of us to perish to Man’s spread on Mother’s surface. They whom had taken the foolish oath to protect man in the hours of Nox while They, Man, would protect them during the times of Lumos. Alas, the gargoyles were betrayed by them as were the rest that were foolish enough to associate with man.
The dwarves were crushed under Man’s tunnels and undergrounds and the few that survived were driven to live less than Man’s worst. The elves, by far the arrogant of us, thought themselves above such things as Man and hid themselves away in places where man would not go. Too bad that where Man wouldn’t go didn’t mean that it was a place that Man couldn’t go.
The Trinity.
Our Haven.
Our destruction.
Those of us who had not the ability to hide in plain sight hid themselves there, Mother’s largest focal point of magic on her surface. The gryphons, the fawns, the satyrs, all manners of creature that was a blend of two resided there and so were slaughtered in Man’s last, and final, War.
War… It cost us so much…
The seas were the first to be fought upon and have since boiled away into nothing from Man’s solaris bombs. The mermaids, the serpents, even their patriarch Kraken…
None survived…
Islands of various sorts were next but the destruction upon them was made to be the kind to only wipe out whatever poor soul resided there, so the land could be used for whatever forces would use such underhanded tricks as poison that even the Basilisk succumbed to. Those of us of the Elder Kindred tried to meet in one final council but a disaster the likes of which none could ever dare to imagine had occurred.
The Phoenix, the one true immortal creature out of us all, that which could die and be reborn again in an instant, had been slain with her ashes spread to the four winds.
It was then that all the Kindred began to feel that which none of the Elder Kindred had rarely felt in our long lifetimes.
Fear.
We tried our own methods then, keeping to ourselves still in vain attempts and hopeless wishes that, separate, we would have a greater chance of survival.
In the end, the Kindred, a race of beings so vastly different that the closest numerical range would be amongst the thousand’s range.
Now it was down to two.
She and I.
We were all that were left alive on this dying world, our dying Mother… Man had truly done its best in proving itself the ultimate creature of death, a race so cruel, so sadistic as to be the only one who would kill other races, even members of their own kind, for the simple act of doing so.
As a wizened faye once said, “What fools these mortals be…” Old Puck was right… what fools we were.
A flash of white amongst the black and gray. I land softly and still the ground trembles and dead trees fall away into the winds. I spread my wings for balance and watch as she steps towards me, the winds being no bother to her, until she and I are staring into the eyes of the other.
In her’s, I see a forest of everlasting spring, of once ordinary woodland animals learning the basic magics that the Kindred learned upon birth, and I see something else. Something that I know is reflected in my own.
Resignation.
She and I both turn to the horizon, where a still golden sun tries to shine through the black clouds of smog and poison. We are alike, she and I. She the Matriach and I the Patriach of our own Kindred, she who has seen her children die and watched as grandchildren’s grandchildren lived. She and I were the first of our Kindred but now were all are that is left.
Before, had there been perhaps others here with us, even a dying tree, we would have been called something more proper. For her, she would have been the Last Unicorn and I, I would have been the Last Dragon, but in a world that consists of only two living beings there is but one word that describes them best.
Alone.
Rocks are tumbling heavily into the crevices of glowing red light and acidic rain starts to fall on the horizon. The storm will have died by the time it reaches us but, then again, so will we.
“Do you have any regrets?” I lower an eye towards her, surprised that she is the first to break this silence of death.
“I have. Too many in fact. Though I would admit to one thing really. I regret… having to be the one to say goodbye to my children. A parent should never have to bury their child. And what of you, Unicorn? Your kind are not famous for feelings of love or regret?”
She smiles almost sadly. “Of all the Unicorns there were in the world, I was the only one to know of love and through it, regret. I learned it long ago when the magic of Mother was wrapped around us.”
“Ah yes…” I stare out to the husk around us, images of spellcasters, knights, and maidens dancing across my mind. “Our golden age it was…”
“Yes.” She pauses. “Do you blame them? The humans?”
I snarl but shake my head. “I blame our kind for not having better sense about ourselves when it came to the humans, but no, I cannot find blame in a race as mad as they were.”
“Madness…” She tests the word on her tongue. “I was turned into a human once, in my quest against the Red Bull…”
“… And I in hunting he who saught to wipe out my kindred. The sorceress who cast the spell… she gave me a name then… Humans and their names, what use is it? Why must everything have a name to be what it is? It exists, what more is there?”
“Amalthea.”
“What?” I look down at my gleaming companion to see her smiling sadly up at me.
“Amalthea… that was what he called me.”
I know there is more to it than she says just as there is more to my own story. It’s not just a name to her, it’s a memory so precious, so rare to her that she has kept it unspoken in all these centuries since as I have with my own.
“Carolinus… that was what she named me.”
Her smile reaches her eyes as she tilts her head. “It’s a nice name.”
I smile sadly, magma is rushing upwards now and what little ground there is left is occupied by the two of us. “As is your own.”
She looks out to the magma fields, watching as the life’s blood of our Mother flow upwards into the blackened sky towards the stars. “Do you think, after all this, that there is something left?”
“In the After, there is always something. However we perceived it is how we’ll see it. I can only wait for the gates of Paradise to open. I miss them and in this past decade of years, the relief will be most welcome.”
“So you want to see them at least. Your kin.”
“No.” I smile down at her and she returns it, she knows what I mean.
“Our Kindred…”
Oblivion. So quick is it that the pain does not strike us but so slow is it that we are allowed a moment’s relief in acknowledging that no longer are we the Last of Our Kindred.
Now… we are…
Nothing…