Chapter One - Having Never Seen the Sunlight
A World without Misery (Interitus 1: Book 0)
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Chapter One – Having Never Seen the Sunlight
“The
storm of screaming souls surrounds every thought and swallows the hollows of
this hopeless world. The tempest of the damned roars on even when my eyes are
closed.”
Hatasuko stared at the monster in the sky as flames roared all around him. Shouts echoed as helpless people ran through the dusty streets. He stood in the center of the panic as smoke lifted from the rooftops and shrouded the stars in the sky.
He whispered to himself, “It is a symphony of anguished
screams—an orchestra of broken souls. A storm that wages on, both when I fight
and when I am most alone. I hear every shriek of those who were lost to this
evil, and I can hear nothing else. Their misery is my curse and my fuel; it is
a reminder that it’s my destiny to bring this evil to an end.”
Hatasuko glared through the smoky air at the demon floating over the city. Its jagged feet hovered over the burning rooftops. Its body was built of the darkness and fueled by the shadows. Its massive arms glowed from the reflection of the fire. Its golden eyes pierced through the veil of smoke and starlight. A transparent layer of blackness blanketed the sky and shuddered every time the monster moved. Countless evacuees screamed as they ran away, but Hatasuko stepped forward when the last of them had passed.
“It is the most detestable being in the universe; it is the monster that cursed me with this symphony of screaming souls. It is the catalyst of agony and the emissary of darkness. Every heart has been scarred by its unacceptable existence. Every inch of this world has been soaked by the tears and blood left in its wake. It is the demon of flashing blades and shifting shadows—the nightmare known as the Interfectus.”
The Interfectus twisted
its massive body so that it faced a different street in the heart of the
smoldering city. It lifted its arm, its golden eyes glowed for a fraction of a
second, and then it unleashed the first weapon of the Interfectus. A
diamond-hard blade of shadows shot forth from the demon’s arm at an
extraordinary speed. It pierced through the smoky air and struck a distant home
with enough force to destroy it entirely. And though he could not see through
the smoke and the darkness, Hatasuko felt the crushing pain of a human life ending
in the wreckage. He could feel the tempest scream louder in his head, he could
see the black layer in the sky roll like an ocean wave, and he could hear the splatter
of the monster ripping its blade-arm through a victim in the distance. Another
scream echoed through the sky.
“I’ve known from the very start that this fight is
hopeless. I’ve known all along that resistance is meaningless. They say that a
human cannot scratch the surface of an Interfectus, but I have to do
this. I have to fight. I need to end this madness so that the storm in my mind
may finally fall silent. I need to end this madness so I can avenge the ones I
was too weak to save.”
Though his body demanded him to turn and run away from
the nightmare demon in a full-force sprint, Hatasuko refused. Instead, he
sheathed his sword in the holster on his back and then ran toward the monster.
His nerves screamed at him to stop running toward certain death, but his heart
had defeated his brain long ago. As he ran closer to the Interfectus, he
glanced to the side and saw the streets of the world as it was brought to its
knees—the hopeless world that he was now fighting to save. He could candlelight
pierce the smoky air in the homes behind broken glass. He could see smoke stains
on the buildings which were not yet destroyed; he could see bloodstains on the
walls of those which were.
“I used to hate the tempest because I can never rest. Even in my dreams, I am haunted by the anguished voices of those who were lost. I used to hate this world for being plagued with tragedy, and I hated myself for being too weak to change it. But weakness is temporary. It will pour from me like sweat and blood as I fight on, because I will become faster. I will become stronger. I will defeat the Interfecti and bring peace to the storm of screaming souls. Their lifeless eyes watch from the shadows and surrender a silent reminder of what I know I have to do. So with my strength as my weapon and their screams as my curse, I will banish all agony. I will fight until my last breath so that I can create a world without misery.”
As Hatasuko charged through a dusty road toward the
Interfectus, he heard the yell of a child up ahead. When he scanned the street
for the child, he glanced away from the massive demon which basked in the fiery
glow. A broken wagon rested on the left side of the street, just a few feet from
a smoldering building that had been blown apart earlier in the onslaught. The
young child was pinned beneath the wagon with his skin stained by smoke and his
eyes wide with terror. Hatasuko ripped his sword from its sheath, charged up to
the wagon, and knocked it off the child with a powerful slash. His sword
transformed the wooden wagon into shambles; the child scrambled to his feet and
then ran away. His leg was bloody and his body looked injured, but the child
dashed away from the Interfectus because he had no other choice.
“READY? FIRE!” a loud voice shouted across the rooftops
of the smoldering city.
The loud crack of a catapult sounded in the distance, and
in the very next moment, a boulder flew through the smoke toward the monster with
incredible speed. Hatasuko resumed running toward the Interfectus, but it was
not because this attack gave him hope. He knew from the moment he heard the
catapult that this attack would be worthless; he had seen people try the same
thing against other Interfecti in the past.
And
just before the boulder would have struck the dark body of the demon in the
sky, it deployed the second weapon of the Interfectus; it summoned a sudden
shield of swirling shadows. The boulder struck the shield, fell motionless, and
then plummeted into the streets below. When it crashed onto the ground, a cloud
of sparks and cinders flew up into the sky. The boulder did no damage only
because the people it crushed were already dead.
“This world is a paradox; I learned when I was young. Men
are meant to have morals, but reality only facilitates pain. Only the bravest
among us dare to fight the Interfectus, but defeat is the only outcome. Those
who fight back are punished with death, and then the monster takes a handful of
the innocent as the spoils. I’ve seen it too many times.”
As Hatasuko ran closer to the demon, he crossed onto a street
that was covered with ashes. Smoke lifted from the wreckage; cinders scattered
the street. The homes and buildings were nothing more than smoldering debris.
The continuous northwest wind had already spread the flames. While Hatasuko ran
on, his lungs cried for clean air and his feet begged for freedom from the
heat, but he ignored every plea. With a heartbroken grimace, he watched the
Interfectus unleash its shadow blade-arm once again. Just as before, Hatasuko
heard a man scream into the sky, and then he heard silence. The Interfectus
ripped its arm out of the man who had fired the catapult, and Hatasuko watched
as blood and veins fell from the blade of shadows. His gold-colored hair was
plastered to his face from a sudden rush of sweat, but he felt a coldness in
his heart more powerful than the flames.
In just seconds, Hatasuko ran beyond the edge of the
smoldering buildings. He was now so close to the Interfectus that every nearby
building had been flattened. He could see sparks and cinders fly through the
gusty air at a high speed, just beneath the monster’s feet. Its dark surface
flashed between orange and blue because of the fiery reflections. The heat felt
excruciating, but Hatasuko knew that he had reached the perfect place to launch
his attack.
Without
wasting a moment, he holstered his sword in the sheath on his back. As he heard
the crackle of buildings burning and collapsing, he pulled his bow off his
strong right arm and clenched it with his left hand. He quickly pulled out an
arrow and stuck it to the bowstring by its nock, but he was too slow. The
transparent layer of blackness in the sky started churning; the body of the
Interfectus glowed. With a deafening crash of noise, the demon unleashed the
third weapon of the Interfectus—its scattershot of shadow spheres.
“Please… give me your strength,” Hatasuko whispered as he
pulled back his arrow.
As he stared down the shaft of the arrow, Hatasuko tilted
his body and aimed his arrow at the golden eye of the Interfectus. He kept his
arms completely flexed so that he could sustain the force of his powerful bow,
and now that he was ready, he took the shot by releasing the arrow. His shot
would have been perfect, but the Interfectus was simply too tall. The northwest
wind blew the arrow off course before it ever reached the monster’s eye. It instead
struck the hard surface of the demon’s body and broke without leaving a
scratch. Hatasuko felt his heart skip a beat because this miss was critical.
The Interfectus now knew that someone had attacked, and its golden eyes pierced
through the smoky air until it found Hatasuko.
“I don’t have time for failure. I have to hit its eye!”
Hatasuko said as urgency overtook his shaking body.
Hatasuko quickly pressed the nock of a second arrow on
the bowstring. He could feel the sweat on his skin evaporate from the extreme
heat; sparks swirled through the smoky air as he drew back another arrow. But
before he could even tilt his bow and take aim, he saw that the Interfectus was
ready to fight back. A cluster of shadow balls now floated in front of the
massive demon, and its eyes glared directly upon him.
Despite
his overwhelming urge to aim for the monster’s eye, Hatasuko chose instead to
do the only thing he could to protect himself. He fired his arrow at the same
moment that the Interfectus unleashed its scattershot. The arrow struck a
sphere, and it detonated immediately; the burst of blue flames engulfed the
other spheres and forced a massive explosion in the sky. The air in between
Hatasuko and the Interfectus erupted with a bright blue inferno and a deafening
roar. A series of fiery shockwaves struck them both, but the flickering flames
did not harm the Interfectus. However, the same shockwaves knocked Hatasuko
through the ashy street and engulfed him with sparks and smoke.
Before he could tell where he landed, before he could
even stop his ears from ringing with the echo of the fiery bursts, Hatasuko
rolled around in the ashy street to extinguish every flame. Though his whole
body now ached in searing pain, he stared up through a thick cloud of smoke and
watched the Interfectus float overhead. It moved toward the citizens who
helplessly tried to escape it.
“I used to believe it’s a miracle that I’ve survived as
long as I have, but I stopped believing in miracles somewhere along the line. I
used to believe that God was protecting me so I could fulfill my destiny—so
that I could free this world from misery. But somewhere along the line, I
learned that my survival is no miracle. It is my penance for being too
weak to save her. It is the punishment for daring to save the world from this
nightmare, and my punishment is to see that nightmare again and again. My
punishment is to relive the horror of the Interfectus, and to continuously relive
the reality that I cannot save them, no matter how hard I try. I can only pray
that it is temporary.”
As
the smoke swirled around him, Hatasuko realized that his sweat had evaporated.
As he struggled to climb upright, he fought through a rough episode of coughing.
The powerful heat nearly singed his skin, so he dashed away from the searing
flames. His legs struggled to uphold his weight, but he had no time to falter
in any way. Instead, he chased after the Interfectus as quickly as he could. As
he ran through the smoldering streets, Hatasuko had to continuously jump over wreckage
or veer away from fiery debris, but he kept his eyes focused on the demon. He
watched it fly over the city of Bartric at a speed that no human could match.
The transparent layer in the sky looked as turbulent as the ocean in a storm,
but the light of the stars could still pierce the darkness. The starlight even pierced
the pluming smoke, though it was overpowered by the glow of the burning city.
The Interfectus suddenly stopped flying over the
smoldering rooftops. Its massive feet crashed down in a street that had already
been leveled by a scattershot earlier in the onslaught; a cloud of dust and
debris flew up around its legs. A collective shout went up from the people in
the distance as they scattered to save themselves from the monster, but their
bodies were weak and tired. Hatasuko knew that they had probably already
accepted their inevitable end. They had probably accepted it long ago. Everyone
in the world of Agrideī knew that this threat was looming in the shadows;
everyone knew that the darkness could take any one of them at any time.
Now that the Interfectus had set its feet on the ground,
it summoned a scattershot of shadow spheres. Though he saw this, Hatasuko ran
at full speed through the ashy streets with his bow in his left hand and an
arrow in his right. He managed to hook the arrow on the bowstring as he ran
through the smoke. He knew that he had to take the shot as quickly as possible,
so he crashed into a large wooden wagon just to slow himself down; the impact
knocked the wagon onto its side.
With
his golden hair glowing from the nearby flames, Hatasuko pulled back his arrow
and then shot it into the sky, but he was too slow. The Interfectus had
unleashed its scattershot of shadow balls at a crowd, but something miraculous
happened first. A projectile struck one of the shadow spheres before it approached
the civilians, and then every sphere exploded in the sky with an eruption of
blue fire. A sudden flash of azure light illuminated every building. Every wide
eye watched the blue flames fade away. Before the light disappeared entirely,
Hatasuko saw his arrow hit the roof of a building in the distance.
“I don’t know what stopped the scattershot, but this is
no time to celebrate. The people will be vulnerable now more than ever. In this
world of starlight, our eyes are adjusted only to the darkness. Light is
beautiful, but it is also dangerous. It blinds us to the reality of the
darkness, so now they’ll be left to stumble with half-blind eyes in wreckage
that they cannot see,” Hatasuko groaned as he forced his tired legs to dash
from block to block.
As Hatasuko ran through the dirt street while glaring at
the motionless monster up ahead, he saw something at the corner of the next
block. The building at this corner had been destroyed earlier in the onslaught,
but he knew that an Interfectus would never attack without a specific target.
As Hatasuko ran by, his golden eyes stared into the home and saw splashes of
blood stained across the walls and floor. There was a mother on the ground,
holding her bloody child in her arms. Both bodies barely looked human in this
state. Even in death, Hatasuko could feel their anguish. Even in death, he
could hear their lost screams.
“They are my curse and also my fuel,” he whispered as he
ran.
A shout of terror echoed through the sky as the
Interfectus levitated its feet off the ground. Waves of darkness rolled across
the transparent plane in the sky. At the end of the block up ahead, two
brothers hid in the street behind a wooden wagon, though their curious eyes
glared at the demon of flashing blades and shifting shadows. Hatasuko ran by
the brothers and hooked another arrow onto his bowstring, but he chose not to
shoot it now. If he did, he risked endangering the nearby boys.
“No, honey, please! Please get up! You can’t stay in the
street,” yelled the frantic voice of a woman, just a couple blocks up ahead.
Before he could even see these people, Hatasuko watched
the Interfectus unleash its first weapon—the blade-arm of shadows. It shot down
faster than an arrow and dismembered the woman in a single strike. Hatasuko
could feel rage and anguish flood his heart, but the Interfectus did not stop
here; it then slashed its blade through the man she called after with a lethal
speed. In the moment before the monster could retract its blade, it was struck
by a high-speed arrow that harmlessly bounced off.
The
Interfectus turned and glared at Hatasuko with its piercing golden eyes. And
though bruises and ashes scattered his body, Hatasuko fired a second arrow
straight at the eye of his enemy. This time, he had aimed perfectly with regard
to the monster’s height and the northwest wind, but the Interfectus blocked
with its second weapon; it summoned a shield of swirling shadows.
“I’ve drawn its
eyes!” he yelped.
Hatasuko could feel the symphony of screaming souls
inside his head fall quiet. Every lost spirit was paralyzed by the tension. A
new layer of sweat arose on his flesh as he came to understand that he had no
way to fight back. He had nowhere to hide. He was at the mercy of the
Interfectus.
“Do whatever it
takes to survive. You are the only weapon that humankind has left,”
whispered a quiet voice from the heart of the tempest in his head.
Hatasuko was stunned because he had hardly ever heard coherent
words from the voices in the abyss. He had never heard anything but screams. As
he stood in the ashes with smoke all around him, he glanced up at the
Interfectus with a defiant stare; their golden eyes glared into each other. But
as soon as the Interfectus started to glow, a small object flew by his face and
startled him from the certainty of his inevitable death.
“GRAB ON IF YOU WANT TO LIVE!” shouted a nearby voice.
Without looking around for an explanation, Hatasuko
grabbed onto the rope-like object in front of his face. It was his only chance
for survival. As soon as he grabbed on, he felt a powerful yank in the rope,
and then it jerked his body away in the moment before the blade-arm of shadows struck
the ashy ground. Hatasuko was stunned by how close he had come to dying in that
moment, but then his feet hit the ground, and he crash-landed with a roll.
After rolling once through the ashes, Hatasuko stopped at the feet of the two
people who had saved him. He glanced up through the ashy air and saw a glimpse
of a woman holding a whip—the same whip that had pulled him to safety.
“Lazaro, look out!” said the woman, though her voice was
quiet and shaky.
The blade of shadows suddenly slashed through the smoky
air and accelerated at the woman, but a large man stepped in the way and
blocked the attack with a shield. He had saved all three of them at the last
moment with this shield. But as the Interfectus retracted its arm of shadows,
Hatasuko stared up at his saviors with his eyes wide open.
“They say that its shadow blade can pierce anything in Agrideī.
How did you manage to deflect it?” Hatasuko asked as he stumbled onto his feet.
“I’ll tell you anything you wanna know if you can survive
this, boy,” answered the large man as he glared at the Interfectus.
Instead of attacking again, the Interfectus turned and
accelerated toward the crowd of frightened runners. Through the glow of fire, Hatasuko
saw that the helpless people ran toward the forest south of the city, but they
would never make it at this rate. At the same time, the large man and the quiet
girl both took off running after the demon. Hatasuko was still stunned by how
close he had come to dying, so he stood for a moment and watched them run. The
taller one was a monster of a man; every muscle in his body flexed with each
step. He clenched a shield in his right hand and a warhammer in his left. They both
held a whip and a strange-looking sack at their sides, though the woman had two
short swords holstered on her back.
Before they got too far, Hatasuko forced himself into
motion. Despite the damage he had taken, he forced himself to run through the
dusty streets and chase after the two who had saved him. He could tell just by
the way they ran that this was not their first encounter with the monster. They
were here for the same reason as him; they had come to fight against the
Interfectus. They had endured the Interfectus. So with every scream in the
tempest fueling his bloody body, Hatasuko chased them through the smoldering
blocks. He ran toward the Interfectus just as he had so many times before, but
this time for a different purpose.
“Hey! I never got the chance to thank you. Both of you,”
Hatasuko yelled out as he started to catch up.
Hatasuko had not noticed it before, but as he peered through
the dim glow of distant flames, he could see that deep scars scattered the
right side of the woman’s body. He could not see her face since it was blocked
by the flapping of her dark hair. She tilted her head slightly toward him, but
she continued running toward the monster.
“You thought you could fight the Interfectus, didn’t
you?” the large man asked him.
But before Hatasuko had the chance to respond, the
Interfectus suddenly stopped moving and deployed its third weapon. It created
several shadow spheres in front of its body once again, but Hatasuko was too
far away to stop it. The demon was several blocks up ahead. The large man and
the scarred woman both stopped running when they saw this, like a silent
surrender to the monster’s lethality.
As their wide eyes all watched with horror, the
Interfectus unleashed its scattershot down upon the evacuees who scrambled
through the smoky streets. Every sphere erupted with a burst of blue fire, and
every explosion claimed the life of another innocent person. Every death
unleashed an anguished soul, and every death added to the misery of those still
left alive. Hatasuko stopped running at that moment, but it was not because of
his pain. It was not because of fatigue. It was because the anguish only added
to the symphony of sorrow in his head, and the weight became too much for his
legs to carry.
“But you can’t just fight the Interfectus. It’s
all for nothing. Wasted effort. There is no winning, and there can be no
winning. The Interfectus is undefeatable, and all we can do is try our best
to survive,” said the large man as his weapons shimmered from the flicker of
fuchsia flames.
“You can say what you want, but this is my destiny. I am
the one who will end the whole concept of tragedy. I am the one meant to
crush the Interfecti, like a hopeless bloodstained apology to the souls I
couldn’t save, and so that I can stop more from joining those souls.”
“You are naïve, but it’s a nice reminder of something we
lost long ago,” muttered the large man, and then he started jogging away.
“I wish you the best,” said the scarred woman with a weak
smile, and then she ran away as well.
Though the scattershot of shadow spheres had just
obliterated a scattered crowd of hopeless citizens, the two warriors ran toward
the smoke and the screams. Hatasuko wanted to join them, but he knew that he
would simply get in their way; he understood that he was an amateur compared to
them. The large man possessed a shield that could block the blade-arm of the
Interfectus—a blade which could supposedly pierce any substance in the world.
“If nothing else, I can distract the Interfectus. I can
draw its fire… so that I can stop more from joining those souls,” Hatasuko
whispered.
Without hesitation, Hatasuko hooked an arrow onto his
bowstring and then charged toward the shadow demon. As it levitated over smoldering
rooftops, the Interfectus started to slowly spin its ugly head. Hatasuko knew
that everyone watched its golden eyes, desperately fearing that the demon would
turn its attention toward them. Even as people ran through the ashy streets
toward the forest, they also watched the monster. But before it could get a
chance to attack, an arrow struck the black surface of its stomach and
harmlessly bounced off. The Interfectus swerved to face Hatasuko with a
swiftness he had not expected.
A sudden rush of terror surged through his veins because he
had no time to load another arrow. Hatasuko was now just as defenseless as the ordinary
citizens, and therefore he finally obeyed the one command that his brain had given
all along. He threw his bow onto the street and then ran away; he used the
numbing force of adrenaline to overcome his fatigue and injuries. He burst into
motion so quickly that the Interfectus never got the chance to aim a second
time, so its blade of piercing shadows struck the street behind him with a
jolt. Hatasuko ran away from the blade at full speed, but when he heard the swish
of movement, he threw himself into the ashes with a sudden somersault. By doing
this, he narrowly dodged a swift slash of the blade.
But when Hatasuko rolled to his feet, he glanced to the
sky and saw that the Interfectus had summoned a scattershot of shadow spheres.
They all shot forth from the darkness and charged toward him with terrifying
speed, but now he had nowhere to hide. He had no way to block it. Hatasuko
forced himself to run as quickly as his body allowed, but even this was not
enough. A shadow ball struck the building beside him as he sprinted through the
street; it detonated with a blue blast of fiery debris. The shockwave of sparks
and shrapnel swallowed Hatasuko and slammed him onto the ground; he could feel
his body skidding to a stop. It was a miracle that he even survived the blast,
but it knocked him unconscious. And even in the depths of his tortured mind, he
could not escape the abyss of lost souls, all screaming for freedom from the
misery.
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