Chapter Two - Ceremony of the Broken
A World without Misery (Interitus 1: Book 0)
Chapter Two – Ceremony of the Broken
“Can anyone out there hear me?” yelled a voice
from the tempest that roared in Hatasuko’s mind.
Though
his body was fast asleep, Hatasuko still could not find peace from the
orchestra of souls in his head. As soon as he heard these words, he tried to
mentally sift through the endless darkness in search of the voice. He rarely
heard coherent words in the tempest, and even then, it was almost always an
exclamation of agony. It was almost always the sound of a lost soul screaming
for someone who meant so much to them that even in death, they could think of
nothing else.
“Yes!
Yes, I can hear you. I can hear all of you! I can’t hear anything else,”
Hatasuko answered into the emptiness.
“I
don’t know how, but I managed to piece myself together in that massive storm of
souls. I remember screaming even when I had no idea why! But I found my
memories, and I found pieces of the man I used to be. Please tell me, how can
you hear me? Are you another soul in the tempest?” asked the frantic voice.
“I am
not. I am Hatasuko, and I am the one cursed to carry the weight of the lost
souls. Their endless screams are my burden to bear.”
“Are
you God? Are you a ghost?”
“I am
neither. When I was younger, I believed I was a ghost left behind by the
Interfectus. I can hear the voices of their victims; I carry the weight of the
dead on my back. I really thought I was one of them, but in time I came to
accept that I am still alive. I am haunted by a chorus of screams and stuck
inside a tempest of souls, but I am alive for a reason. I am alive so that I
can kill the Interfecti and end the misery that created my curse,” Hatasuko
explained.
Though
he was still asleep and cursed to hear nothing other than the countless voices,
Hatasuko heard the tempest grow quieter in the background. This conversation seemed
to have a calming effect on the restless abyss.
“I
can’t tell if you’re a fool or a hero. Maybe you’re both!” said the voice with
a friendly laugh.
“Is
this your first time trying to speak? When I last fought the Interfectus, I
heard another coherent voice in the tempest. Was it you? Who are you?” Hatasuko
asked.
“I
don’t think that was me, sorry. My name is Sokaido, and the monster got me on Catena
Island Four. When I was still alive, I was a fisherman who saw beauty in
everything! I could look at an empty net and smile; I could see a rising storm
and sing a happy tune! I’m sure it drove my family insane, but nothing could
get me down. Even now, I can appreciate the solace of this hopeless state. If
nothing else, it gave me the opportunity to meet you. I’ve been given the
chance to make a new friend!” answered the voice with an upbeat tone.
“But
are you really content in here? It’s like a dungeon for severed souls.”
“I
can make the most of it! I’ve always said that seventy-five percent of life is
how you handle situations. We’re the artists of our own happiness! But the
truth is that my heart is not strong enough to defeat fear. As soon as I pieced
myself together in here, the first thing I thought about was my family. I don’t
even know if they’re still alive,” Sokaido whispered as his voice started to
fade.
Hatasuko opened his eyes as the tempest grew quieter in
his head. The pulsing light of the stars in the sky illuminated the tree over
his head. Every green leaf shimmered because the moisture upon them reflected
the starlight. Hatasuko stared between the leaves and saw that the sky was a
beautiful canvas of flashing lights. The stars pulsed with shades of red and
blue, though they illuminated the land with only white light. It was the same
white light that lit this world in every place and at every hour.
“That’s not good. I lost my bow in the fight,” Hatasuko
groaned as he struggled to his feet.
When he glanced around, Hatasuko saw that he stood at the
boundary between the meadow and the forest. He could see the silhouette of
broken buildings in the north, though the city of Bartric was most likely
abandoned. After the Interfectus struck the city, all the citizens were either slaughtered
or scattered. It would take many days for the survivors to emerge and crawl
back to their homes, now that the nightmare had fallen silent. Hatasuko looked
the other way and saw two people sitting beneath a tree, though they did not
look at each other. They did not talk to each other.
“I can’t believe it. I think that’s the big guy with the
shield,” Hatasuko whispered to himself.
After verifying that he still had his sword in a sheath
on his back, Hatasuko started jogging toward this tree. As he approached, he
saw that the large man sat in the grass with his warhammer in his right hand.
He continuously curled and uncurled his right arm while lifting the weight of
the warhammer. Hatasuko then noticed that the girl snacked on a small fruit
while staring listlessly at the meadow.
“Is that an albapomus? That’s my second favorite fruit,”
Hatasuko said when he reached them, though he immediately second-guessed his
introduction.
The dark-haired girl looked up at him with a nervous gaze.
She tossed the core of the fruit aside and grabbed another white fruit from the
ground beside her.
“Would you like one?” she asked with a shy smile.
“Would you like one?” she asked with a shy smile.
Now that it was not hidden by her hair, Hatasuko noticed
that the right segment of her face had the same dark scar that stained her arm
and leg. It was a massive scar, certainly a burn scar, and it went as high up
as her eye. Her right eye was clearly dead; it stared forward but saw nothing.
Her right eye was sea-green, but the other was blue. The girl noticed him
staring at her face, and then her smile immediately disappeared. She quickly
covered her face with her hand.
“I’m so sorry, um, I didn’t mean for you to see that,”
she said with a quiet voice.
“No, I’m sorry! You don’t need to hide. I just woke up,
so I’m not entirely lucid. I really didn’t mean to stare,” Hatasuko apologized.
“Tch, Vaida knows that. No one wants to look at her,” said the large man.
Before turning around to greet the large man with the
warhammer, Hatasuko accepted Vaida’s gift. He picked the albapomus out of her
hand and gave her a warm smile as thanks, but she did not return his smile.
With her hand hiding the right side of her face, her blue left eye looked at
Hatasuko and then looked down.
“Vaida… that’s a nice name! My name’s Hatasuko. Thanks
for the fruit!”
“You’re welcome. I like picking fruit,” she said. As
Vaida spoke, a smile briefly flashed on her face again, but it quickly
disappeared. Her left hand clawed at the dirt beside her leg.
“Hey, Vaida, you know that doesn’t actually help
anything, right? Your hand’s been burned as dark as your face, so it just looks
the same,” said the gruff man as he dropped his warhammer and climbed to his
feet.
Hatasuko scratched his head at first; these two had
seemed like friends when he first found them in the smoky city, though he knew
it was too early to make any assumptions about them. Nevertheless, Hatasuko
finished his meal in three bites and then walked over to introduce himself.
“Are you the one who pulled me out of the city? I can’t
thank you enough. You saved my life twice,” Hatasuko said with a gracious glare
in his golden eyes.
“Don’t mention it, boy. That’s what I do. I save the
lives of idiots like you. I’ve been doing it for years, and I guess I’ll
just continue until an Interfectus finally takes me down. It can’t be much
longer, right?” he retorted with a hint of apathy.
“Please don’t say that, Lazaro. This world needs you,”
Vaida muttered quietly.
Hatasuko looked over his shoulder at the girl sitting on
the ground. She had moved her hand, and her dark hair danced in the wind. Her
eyes both stared at Lazaro with a pang of sadness, though her right eye looked
slightly off-center.
“If you two run through cities and save people when an
Interfectus attacks, then where is everyone else? Did they leave already? Was I
really asleep that long?” Hatasuko asked.
Lazaro shook his head and explained, “I don’t stay with
the people I save because I don’t want to hear their worthless bullshit. I
don’t like to hear people cry about the victims, and I don’t need people
following me around like that stray girl over there. I carried you with
me because you have potential. You’re naïve and you’re weak, but you have
potential. I can tell that that wasn’t your first meeting an Interfectus. I’m
willing to take you on as an apprentice, but only if you understand that
they’ll kill you in the end. No other conclusion.”
“I’ve accepted long ago that pain is inevitable. I’ve
come to welcome it.”
“I’m not talking about pain, boy. I’m talking about death,”
Lazaro retorted.
“That won’t happen to me. The universe won’t let me die,
at least not until I slay the Interfecti,” said Hatasuko.
Without any delay, Lazaro crouched down and picked up his
warhammer. He was still equipped with a whip and the odd sack, though the sack looked
smaller than it did in the city. Lazaro kept his whip and his sack fastened to
his clothes so that he did not have to hold them. When she saw Lazaro preparing
to leave, Vaida scurried to gather her belongings. She picked up her short
swords and sheathed them in the holster on her back. She hooked her whip to her
left side, slung the sack over her shoulder, and then picked up the juicy white
fruit with both hands.
“What is a sail-rana?” Hatasuko asked Vaida as she rose
to her feet.
“It’s a vehicle we built. I think it’s really cool,” she answered
with a cheerful voice.
Hatasuko glanced over so that he could thank her, but he became
distracted by her dead eye. He noticed with intrigue that she could make the
same movements with both eyes. They both stared together at an object, and they
both created the same expression, though they still looked very different. But
when Vaida noticed him staring at her scarred eye, she flinched and covered her
face with the albapomus in her right hand. Her fingernails almost looked
unnatural because of the dark scars that stained her fingers; her hand became
sweaty as she stood there.
“I’m so sorry. I’ll, um, I’ll try my best to hide it,” Vaida
said with a quiet, shaky voice.
“Hey! Are you coming or not? I’m not gonna slow down for
you,” Lazaro yelled as he walked between the trees.
Hatasuko quietly said to her, “You don’t need to hide
anything! It’s my fault. I haven’t talked to actual people in a very
long time; I haven’t heard anything but the screams of lost souls. I don’t mean
to stare, and I know I shouldn’t. I will try to stop. It’s just that your eyes…
they’re really pretty.”
Beneath the light of the pulsing stars, Hatasuko could
see a faint redness appear upon Vaida’s cheeks. Her eyes looked confused and
grateful at the same time, but then they turned cold. As she walked swiftly
into the forest, she replied, “I don’t believe you.”
Hatasuko wanted to explain that his words were not a lie;
he wanted to explain that he could not tell a lie because he could not think clearly
for any amount of time—at least not without an interruption from the tempest of
screaming souls. Even now, as he jogged behind Vaida and Lazaro through the
forest in the starlight, he heard the voices of restless spirits shouting
inside his mind. He was tormented by their anguish, but they sounded calmer
than usual. The tempest often fell quieter in social situations, though those
were few and far between.
As Hatasuko dodged the low
branches while running between the trees, he looked ahead and saw that Lazaro
now carried the shield with which he had blocked the Interfectus. Hatasuko
struggled to see the shield since the trees partially shrouded the starlight,
but it looked like a rectangle of black-stained glass. He had never seen
anything like it. By the time he caught up to Vaida and Lazaro, several tiny
creeks scattered the area. They walked through the starlit forest in silence,
though they occasionally hopped over these small creeks. This went on for many
minutes until they found two vehicles that were hidden in the woods underneath
a tree. Hatasuko guessed that these were the sail-ranae that he had heard about
earlier, but they surprised him. They were both about the size and shape of a
canoe, each with four thin wheels on their undersides. Each boat had a foldable
mast with a wide sail at its bow, though the sails were not in the upright
position. In the back of one sail-rana, Hatasuko saw a long whip identical to
the one that Vaida had used to save him.
Hatasuko asked, “Is there a reason you carry whips with
you? It doesn’t seem like it could hurt an Interfectus.”
Lazaro and Vaida exchanged an uneasy glance, and then
Lazaro let out a heavy sigh. He dropped his weapons into the sail-rana and retrieved
the whip from the seat. With a swift flick of his wrist, Lazaro swung the whip
against a tree from over ten feet away. When the whip cracked against it and
unleashed a burst of wood and bark, Lazaro pulled back his weapon and whipped it
again in the opposite direction. He aimed for a closer branch, and when the
whip struck it a moment later, the whip enwrapped the branch instead of hurting
it. Lazaro sighed again, and then he pulled his weapon back into his hands.
“Did I say something wrong? I don’t mean to underestimate
your weapon, it’s just… I can’t even pierce the Interfectus with my sword,”
Hatasuko admitted with a hint of nervousness.
“Tell me, boy. Why do you think I chase the Interfecti?”
Lazaro asked with a firm voice.
Hatasuko scratched his head and glanced over his
shoulder. Vaida returned his glance with an unreadable expression, but he
quickly looked away so that she would not mistake his confusion with staring. He
anxiously answered, “You chase them so you can fight them, right?”
“That is wrong. As I said before, this campaign is one
that can only end in suicide, but at least my sacrifice won’t be meaningless. I
may be surrendering my soul to the Interfectus, but I’m not doing it for
something as pointless as hope or revenge. I run into the fray
just to pull people away from certain death. I don’t bother to fight; I gave up
on that long ago. My only goal is to save the lives of those who get
caught in the crossfire. It’s as simple as that. If you have no interest in
saving lives, then I want you to run now and forget you ever met me,” Lazaro
sternly explained.
Hatasuko briefly looked over his shoulder once again.
Vaida met his eyes and nodded, though he could sense confliction in her bright
blue eye. She had accepted Lazaro’s conditions long ago, but Hatasuko could
feel that she hated the Interfecti as much as he did. Vaida shyly glanced away
and looked again in another direction; the northwest wind pulled her hair in
front of her face.
After a short breath, Hatasuko said, “I still want to
fight the Interfectus, but I can accept that I’m not strong enough. At the very
least, I’m not strong enough to defeat it now, so fighting would be pointless.
I’d probably just die. I want to help the two of you save lives.”
Lazaro smirked and then tossed his whip through the air.
Hatasuko caught it by the rubber handle and watched the weapon bounce around
him. The tip of the whip dragged across the forest floor behind him.
“Yes, sir. I will practice as soon as I have the chance.”
Lazaro nodded, but then he walked past Hatasuko with an
ominous scowl. His large muscles tensed every time his foot fell flat on the
forest floor. As Lazaro stepped closer, Hatasuko tried to see where he was
headed, but he was too nervous to turn his head and look.
“Do you need something?” Vaida asked the large,
middle-aged man.
“I never asked for your input, girl. This doesn’t concern
you.”
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry. I, um, didn’t mean to annoy you,”
she mumbled with a shaky voice.
Lazaro stopped walking as soon as he stepped behind
Hatasuko. He reached over and unsheathed the sword from the holster on his
back. Lazaro held the sword up to the stars overhead and twisted it in his hand
so that he could examine the glistening blade. Though it was stained with soot
and slightly banged from several slashes, Hatasuko knew his sword was in great
condition. Lazaro nodded, placed the sword back into the sheath, and then walked
back over to the sail-ranae.
Lazaro went on to explain, “In times of disaster, our
achievements become the instruments of our destruction. It’s a cruel paradox,
but that is the reality of our world. Our buildings become prisons. Whenever
the Interfectus attacks, countless lives are lost because people get trapped
beneath the wreckage of their homes or wagons. You may be skilled with your
sword so that you can fight, but you must focus on using it to save anyone who
gets trapped. Vaida uses her swords for this same reason, as do I with my
warhammer. A single strike of my hammer can blow a wall to pieces.”
Hatasuko glanced over to the massive weapon sitting in
the boat. In a way, it looked like a brick of steel fused onto a long shaft,
but one end of the hammerhead was cone-shaped. The steel in this place came to
a sharp point.
“I’ll prove it, too. Just make sure you stand back, and
don’t let the stray girl follow me.”
With another sigh, Lazaro leaned down and picked up his
warhammer. He looked around through the starlit forest for several seconds
until he saw a dead tree in the nearby clearing. Lazaro swung his weapon back
like a bat, and then he charged toward the tree with a speed that was
impressive for his size. As soon as he came close, he swung his muscular arms
and crashed the warhammer’s spike into the tree with so much force that its
trunk blew apart. A huge storm of wood and sawdust flew out from the broken
tree, and then the trunk came crashing down. Lazaro held the warhammer over his
head for protection as broken branches slammed into the grass around him. The
sound of splitting wood echoed for several seconds until the dead tree had
fallen entirely. Hatasuko had never seen anything this powerful in his life,
other than an attack from an Interfectus itself.
“I can’t believe how strong that is. You’re incredible!” Hatasuko raved.
“As far as I know, it’s the only weapon that has ever
hurt an Interfectus. I was nearly killed in the process, but I once broke the
surface of that bastard’s leg. I don’t think any other weapon could have dealt
that much force,” Lazaro said as he set his warhammer down in the sail-rana.
“Are you serious?! You hurt an Interfectus? I didn’t
think its skin could even be pierced! That’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever
heard.”
As Hatasuko stared on at his mentor, he could hear the abyss
of howling voices grow louder in his mind. They could feel the sense of hope
which now surged through his system, and they grabbed onto this energy. Some of
the screams grew hopeful, although they were still unintelligible. Some of the
screams cried on as ever before.
“The Interfectus is a demon which wears its shadow skin
as armor. There is a spot on its ankle which is essentially the boundary
between two plates of armor, and that is where I struck. I snapped the plate of
armor and made a shield from its skin,” Lazaro explained.
Hatasuko glanced over to the shield inside the sail-rana.
It looked like a black, semi-transparent rectangle, though as he looked more
closely, he saw that it resembled the skin of an Interfectus. It shimmered
slightly from the pulsing starlight that pierced the trees above.
“Only an Interfectus is strong enough to block an
Interfectus,” Vaida said as she walked up to his right side.
“You don’t know how incredible this is! You two must be
the most powerful people in Agrideī,” Hatasuko raved with his golden eyes open
wide.
“No… I wish.
Lazaro may be the most powerful man, but not me. I’m pathetic. I don’t know why
he even lets me come with. I probably just slow him down. I’ll probably just
slow down both of you,” she confessed with her eyes half-closed.
“Vaida, how could you say something like that? You saved
my life back when we-”
“I don’t have time for this. We need to finish up
quickly. I have a few contacts in Lumipyla whom I haven’t seen in ages. There’s
no sense in wasting time here,” Lazaro ordered.
Lazaro walked over to the sail-rana and grabbed the only
weapon which Hatasuko had not yet seen. It was the strange-looking sack that
Lazaro and Vaida had carried during the attack. Hatasuko watched curiously as
Lazaro finally opened the bag, but to his dismay, the sack was only full of
rocks. Lazaro picked up a rock that was half the size of his big fist, and then
he tossed it over to his apprentice. Hatasuko quickly passed the whip into his
left hand and caught the rock before it hit the ground.
“So what is this for? Breaking windows?” Hatasuko asked.
Lazaro simply scoffed and shook his head. After he
dropped the sack of rocks into the boat, he asked, “Boy, what do you know about
the third weapon of the Interfectus?”
“That is correct. Over sixty percent of the people who
die in an Interfectus attack are killed by the scattershot. But just as you
said, the shadow balls explode if they hit something, and that includes a rock.
Hatasuko, you’re gonna need to work on your aim and your throwing arm. In time,
you’ll use this weapon to strike the scattershot in the sky, make the bombs
blow each other before anyone gets hurt. Sometimes you’ll miss,
sometimes you won’t. Sometimes the explosions will hit the others,
sometimes they won’t. But over time you’ll save some lives, and that’s the only
thing that matters. Do you have any questions?” Lazaro asked.
“That’s brilliant! You’ve really thought this through.
Thank you for taking me under your wing, sir. I’ll do my best to make it worth
it,” Hatasuko graciously said to his mentor.
Lazaro nodded but said nothing. He quickly looked around
to make sure they had gathered their belongings in the sail-ranae, but he froze
when he looked over at Vaida. He started walking toward her with an ominous
expression; Hatasuko could see by the way she slunk and hid her eyes that she
was afraid of him. Hatasuko had already noticed that Lazaro treated the scarred
girl terribly, but it was not his place to intervene. He was new to the group,
and therefore he could not question their relationship. When Lazaro finally reached
Vaida, he ripped the albapomus from her scarred right hand, took a huge bite
out of it, and then dropped it on the ground.
“Vaida and I have something to discuss. In the meantime,
I want you to roll the sail-ranae toward the river. Just follow the creek. It
shouldn’t be far,” Lazaro said to Hatasuko.
Hatasuko nodded and ran over to the two boats. Though they were both the size of canoes, he managed to easily roll them over the forest floor by pushing them from behind. Each boat had a steering wheel at its front, though it looked to be locked in place; the boats did not veer off course as he rolled them away. And though the tempest of souls screamed inside his tortured mind, Hatasuko narrowed his eyes and focused instead on the gentle sound of branches swaying in the wind. He could hear the patter of his own footsteps moving across the forest floor. He could hear the quiet movement of water flowing through a tiny creek. And even though he quickly walked away from Lazaro and Vaida, he heard it very clearly when Lazaro smacked his heavy hand against her face. He felt a shocked confusion at first, but it quickly morphed into a flood of sudden anger; he immediately stopped pushing the boats. When he ran into the clearing, he saw Vaida half-crouching beneath the starlight. She held her hands on her cheeks, but he could see starlit tears stream from her blind eye.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Lazaro shouted.
“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry. I just froze… I was so afraid.
I’m sorry,” Vaida whimpered.
As Hatasuko watched on with anger, he squeezed his hands
so tightly that he warped the wood at the back of a sail-rana. Vaida dropped
onto the ground, but she did not use her hands to hold her weight. Her jacket
had fallen open in the commotion.
“Do you think he
gives a shit about your fear? A man died in there, and you didn’t do a goddamn
thing to save him! What do you have to say for yourself? That it’s not your
fault? That you’re just afraid of fire? It can’t hurt you any worse. I
should just leave you here right now,” he yelled.
As Vaida lifted her hand and covered her dead eye, Hatasuko
watched with an onslaught of conflicting emotions. When she realized that she had
hidden her scarred face with her scarred hand, she slapped her left hand on top
of it.
“I know I’m useless. I know I’m ugly and weak and afraid.
But please don’t cut me loose. I know I can become better. I have to. This is
all I’ve got,” she said with her quiet voice.
“You have one more chance. I’m tired of dealing
with your shit.”
Hatasuko was hidden from their view by the trees which
shrouded the starlight, but he watched on for another minute. In this time, no
words passed between the two. Vaida stayed on the ground in a pool of her own
misery, but Lazaro stood apathetically with his back against a tree. He stared toward
the treetops with his cold green eyes. Hatasuko sighed and continued pushing
the sail-ranae toward the river.
As he pushed, he whispered to himself, “I haven’t even
been with them a day, and I think I already hate my mentor. I think he might be
an awful person, but he’s also strong. I can’t let an opportunity like this
disappear. Not since I’ve been given the chance to save souls from the
tempest.”
For many minutes, Hatasuko jogged alongside the small
creek while pushing the boats. He watched with intrigue as several starlit
creeks converged into the mouth of a narrow river. Though the river was not
very wide, it was surprisingly deep. The sail-ranae could easily enter the
river, and the current appeared to flow quickly southward. Hatasuko remembered that
Lazaro wanted to travel to Lumipyla, which was almost halfway across Agrideī.
This meant that they would have to boat south until they eventually reached the
massive east-flowing river, which would carry them most of the way to Lumipyla.
Once he parked the sail-ranae at the riverbank, Hatasuko turned and ran back
over to his new friends.
He said to himself, “I don’t know if it’s an affront to
the tempest, or perhaps a betrayal to all the promises I’ve made to the
screaming souls. I know that I swore to slay the Interfecti, and that has not
changed. That will never change. But until I become strong enough to
fight the demons that put them in this place, I will save as many lives as I
can, so that I can stop more from joining these souls. Even if I have to work
beneath a monster that disguised himself as a man, I will do everything it
takes to fight the misery in this world. It’s the only way I can apologize to
everyone I couldn’t save.”
When Hatasuko returned to the clearing where he had last
seen Vaida and Lazaro, the starlight shone slightly brighter than before. He
looked at the sky between the branches and leaves; the stars shimmered brightly
in the endless sea of darkness. Lazaro stood in the same place as before with
his back against the tree. Vaida stood at a short distance with an aterpomus in
her hand. She held the black fruit closely to her face, but she had only taken
a few bites. There was a clear sadness in her eyes, but she gave a small smile
when she saw Hatasuko.
“Everything should be ready,” Hatasuko announced to his
new friends.
Lazaro nodded and muttered, “Alright. Then let’s get out
of here. I’m tired of smelling smoke.”
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