Notes1: I said I would get this out on Monday night after work, but usually when I have those long shifts I'm pretty much wiped and just want to relax. So I apologize.
Notes2: The title is inspired by Nena's 99 Luftballoons and the title of ncfan's The Silmarillion fanfic, Cities in Dust, which is one of the better fanfics I've come across in my time on this website.
Notes3: I had the first sentence written down on a scrap of paper and the rest planned out since the first episode of the anime aired, but as part of my modus operandi I decided to hold off on adding more to this piece for more episodes to come out and information on Tales of Berseria to be revealed. So far I haven't read up on anything significant that hasn't spoiled me, but with the game going to be released in Japan in two weeks I'm considering more or less to go on a self-imposed "media blackout" until it comes to the States.

The apocalypse has already come and gone, but for some reason the world remains the same.

She wonders why the trees are still standing, with their crowns full and green and their bark brown and carpeted in lichen.

She wonders why the grass is still verdant and springy with every step she takes, crushed underneath but bouncing right back to their ramrod, curlicue positions.

She wonders why the sky is so bruised and heavy that it sees fit to empty its burdens and rain, rain, rain, why it must provide for the grass and the trees and the seeds that grow in between and the fish that thrive in their rivers and the animals that must sustain themselves of those rivers and ponds and puddles to survive and the humans that collect the water in their barrels and pots and pans and boil them for their food and gorge themselves until they are fit to burst out of their buttons and seams.

Why is it that this land is still so…peaceful? Why does it remain pristine, untouched by the flame?

Does the sun still shine behind that bloated sky? Or is it the moon that tries to cast its pale, cold light through it? Would they be the same, as well? Gold and fiery, blue and subdued? Would the stars still have enough fuel to shed what little light they can throughout the night?

She stares at her feet as she walks, mouth agape and eyes going in and out of focus. Why does the earth not break into massive chunks? Why does it not wilt and shrivel into straw and dust, leaving only hardpan and sand? Why doesn't it rise forth in eddying whirlwinds and carry her off into the heavens where the others await? Why does it not simply swallow her and enfold in its dark, crushing embrace?

She comes to a stop. She is a stooped creature, already weighed down and crippled—not by her armor nor by the passage of time. She is still so young and still so…there. Just there, in the here and now. She doesn't want to pick herself up. She wants to lie down on the grass—be prostrate, become fetal, and drown. She wants to return to the womb, the earthen tomb, the stuff that all humanity is made from.

She doesn't want to see the dragon standing right behind her.

She doesn't want to look into that gaping abyss that is its open maw, doesn't want to see the furnace smoldering deep, deep down its throat, sparking and waiting to catch in the cockles of its heart.

She wonders what she would really see. Heaven? Hell? But no, that couldn't be, she was already dead, wasn't she? That had to explain why the weather was so lively and the land so colorful and quiet, broken intermittently with the chatter of birdsong and animal chatter. It sounds so much like heaven, but perhaps, she thinks wildly, perhaps this must be what hell looks like. Not a place where all the world is consumed in fire and eternally resonating with the cries of the tortured and the damned, but an immaculate reservation of unchecked nature. Life, death, and rebirth; dormancy and stagnation, germination and regrowth. A never-ending cycle locked into a realm without humans, all save for her, and this would be her punishment—to wander forever alone, sustaining herself and defiling the land and waiting for that serene grey-blue sky to be swept aside and blaze a nightmarish red, the earth to wither and rot, the waters to evaporate and dry to husks, and the wind to choke on a gasp and a whimper.

It's going to happen.

It's still happening.

It hasn't caught up yet but it will. It will, and when she turns around she will finally see it—the storm, the dragon, the apocalypse—come bearing down on her in an onrushing tide of blood and bodies. She would see them caught up in the waves—Tao and Bolta and Ganette and Clem, Professor Drake, the people of Griel, the little girl and the old man that had come to greet her on the road—tumbling, tumbling, tumbling, limbs tossing and flailing every which way but always, always reaching out for her, grabbing her, make her one—

She wants to see.

She has to see.

She whirls around.

Nothing's there.

Nothing but the puddle-soaked road leading back where she came from, into more trees, more grass, more hidden wildlife. Something wooden snaps, goes off like a firecracker in the stillness, and there is a rustle of wings and a whisper of disturbed shrubbery. There is water pooling in the impressions of her footsteps.

She grasps for her spear, and jumps with a start when she realizes her hands are catching only air. She stares at them for a moment, wondering. She knows she had it with her when the storm had hit. She knows the mist was still hanging in the air like an unholy funnel cloud, knows the earth bucked and heaved beneath the galloping steed and the cracks growing larger and wider and coming closer and closer the harder and faster she urged it to go. She knows Griel was naught but sticks and kindling and already blanketed in grit and sawdust. She knows the dragon was there, a black and red shadow of doom tearing through the sky and bearing down on her. The winds were screaming, the skeletons of the houses being uprooted from their foundations and being tossed aside, and she was on the ground, clinging for purchase and digging deep, deep furrows.

She knows something else happened afterwards. She knows she's still here…alive, or maybe dead, or somewhere caught in between. She knows the memory is there, buried and waiting to be forgotten.

She tries to remember, tries to recall every little detail even as it makes her heart jackhammer against her chest and the blood in her face to heat and the sweat to burst in little clear pustules beneath her gauntlets.

She can't.

She lets them drop to her sides and stares through the fog and the rain.

There's supposed to be a Shepherd. A Shepherd to appear with a retinue of seraphim, come into the world to cleanse the darkness and deliver unto humanity the balm of salvation. A Shepherd to arrive in Ladylake on the day of the Festival and wrest the Sacred Blade from its ancient throne.

Where is he? Where is she?

Is the Shepherd unaware?

Is the Shepherd even born yet?

She looks over her shoulder, wills her feet to awake from their needle-stippled stupor and turn around. There are still more trees lining the road, still more mist and still more shadows plunging deeper into the forest.

What lies therein? More of the same? The dragon, lying in wait? A resurgence of the apocalypse, having not finished the task it had set out to do? Or perhaps a nice patch of dry grass to lay upon and close her eyes, only to open them again in a single blink and see the world as normal as she is so used to seeing and believing?

For a while she stands there, shivering and unblinking and uncaring.

Then she takes the first step. She takes the second step. A third.

She presses onward.