Chapter Eleven - Echoes and Consequences

       A World without Misery (Interitus 1: Book 0)

Chapter Eleven – Echoes and Consequences

 

“An uproar of anguish now overwhelms my senses. Have I fallen into the tempest? Or have I become a part of it? I always hoped that death would be more fulfilling than this,” Hatasuko whispered, but he could not hear his own voice over the endless cries and shouts.

“You are not dead, Hatasuko. You were nearly killed by the Interfectus, but you escaped at the very last moment,” said an unfamiliar voice from within the storm of screams.

Hatasuko could feel the presence of someone else inside the abyss of his own mind. There was no light in any direction, so he could not see the face of the newcomer.

              “Forgive me, but I don’t think I remember your voice. Have we met?” Hatasuko asked.

“We have not. I am Kurt, and I put myself back together while you were healing. But I am not important. What is important is that this world still needs you alive. You have to wake up before anyone else is lost,” said the man in the tempest.

“But what am I supposed to do? The last thing I remember is hitting the ground outside the forest city. I remember that the whole sky was blocked by smoke. The Interfectus killed Lazaro. I haven’t even tried to wake up since then. I’m starting to believe that I couldn’t even if I wanted to. I’ve been locked in here between the tempest and my memories; I can’t even decide which one scares me more,” Hatasuko confessed.

“I know that. I’ve been standing right here beside you, right at the edge of the tempest. I saw what happened to your mother. I saw what happened to Lazaro. That can’t be an easy thing for anyone to handle.”

“It isn’t easy, Kurt. I still have all these mixed feelings about Lazaro, and I never got the chance to sort them out. I feel like he died way before anyone was ready, but I guess that’s the thing about death. I know that’s a selfish thought. Besides, the world and its monsters don’t care about sentiment. They take anyone and everyone, regardless of how crucial their victims are. I just wish I could have found a way to reconcile how much I hate him with how much I need him,” Hatasuko explained.

Since he stood at the edge of the tempest and his memories, Hatasuko could hear the lost screams and his own shouts of agony. He could feel his anger from the day he fought Lazaro, but he could also feel sympathy from when Lazaro explained how he become who he was.

Kurt said, “I know that closure means a lot to people, in fact I’m haunted by the reality that so many people crave it. But to tell you the truth, I don’t think that’s one of humanity’s better traits. The one good thing about Lazaro’s death is that you don’t need to decide if you hate him, since it won’t change anything that matters. I know this isn’t my place to say this since I’m dead and you’re alive, but I really think you should be more solution-oriented.”

“But what am I supposed to do now? All the volunteers are dead. Lazaro is dead. Everyone had hope, and now it’s gone. Even mine is slipping away. I still sense the aftertaste of destiny, but it’s fading away from me. Maybe it was all an illusion from the start. Maybe I was just shrouding my eyes with false hope to ignore the humbling truth that I never had a chance,” Hatasuko admitted to the man in the tempest.

“I’m not in a position to make you feel better; the truth is that there’s probably no one in the world who’s better off because they knew me. All I can do is offer you a solution.”

“I’m sure that isn’t true, but I suppose you probably don’t want to talk about your problems any more than you want to hear about mine. So let’s just get on with it; how am I supposed to change anything after all that’s been lost?” Hatasuko asked.

“Back before the Interfectus killed me, I lived as a seafaring merchant in Bones City. It took me some time to collect all my memories in here, but I’ve rebuilt my memory of the Isles of Aether. The first three isles are near the shore of Bones City, but I would often venture to the farther archipelago. There are many scarce resources in those islands—resources that other merchants have not discovered,” Kurt explained.

            “But what resource could possibly help me now?”

“It’s not the resources that matter. Those are just spices, exotic berries, and other trivial things. One day when I was at sea, I discovered that the fourth isle of Aether, the one that rests apart from the others, harbors a dangerous secret. It looks different than the other islands because there are no plants at all. It looks like a giant gray rock floating in the sea, so few sailors ever approach, but it is no mere rock. There is a cave on the fourth isle of Aether. That cave is the home of Caelicola. You do know who that is, don’t you?”

Hatasuko recalled back to when Madeline still lurked inside the tempest. She had said that she was once the servant of Caelicola—the man who possessed the powers of God. She said that he had the power of creation, destruction, omniscience, and omnipresence. But for some reason, he refused to stand against the Interfecti. Hatasuko remembered that she had severed her ties with him because of this dissonance.

“Kurt, do you mean the man who can control anything in this world? Is that the Caelicola you speak of?” Hatasuko asked with urgency in his voice.

“That is correct. I had spoken to him a few times back when I still had a living body. He told me that he understands why everyone who knows him is furious; he agrees that he’s just sitting idly by as the Interfecti bring our world to ruin. But he said there was a reason for his abstinence—a reason he couldn’t tell me. Surely he’ll still abstain, but perhaps he will give you something that can save this world. If he can do anything, then this is a road I know you must travel. That is the only help I can offer,” Kurt explained.

Hatasuko took a moment to consider the possibility of meeting this man face-to-face. Now that he knew that Caelicola, the most powerful man in the world, was hiding in silence on the fourth isle of Aether, he finally had a lead. The metaphorical dead-end in his head finally opened.

“At the place of my last defeat, in that forest city that’s surely gone now, I truly let myself believe that hope is gone. I came to accept that my first victory was just a fluke. Even the power of an Astrodeus is not enough to overcome an Interfectus. This legendary body, my incredible power, my gift and my curse—none of it can save this world from darkness. But if I can access a power even greater than this, then we may see the day when all misery ends. Thank you for this information, Kurt,” Hatasuko said with a mystified tone.

“You’re welcome. I know that pessimism and emptiness feel natural after failure, but you don’t have time to fester in defeat. I want you to know that I’m not accusing you of acting childish; it’s because I want to help you, since I am guilty of the same thing. I could have pulled myself together in the tempest years ago, but my subconscious wouldn’t let it happen; I was too afraid of confronting my failure. Because I was afraid and weak, I missed the chance to tell you this long ago. I can’t help but wonder how many lives could have been saved if it weren’t for my hesitation,” Kurt confessed.

“Don’t beat yourself up over it. Even if I knew about Caelicola earlier, it wouldn’t have changed anything. Though I’ve been beaten bloody by the Interfectus, I’m still the only one who has ever driven one away. That means that I have credibility; he might actually hear me out! Before then, I had only known defeat. Besides, there’s no point in trying to rewrite the past with a hypothetical. That said, Kurt, can you tell me about your failure? There might be a way I can help. I am the envoy of the afterlife, after all.”

Hatasuko realized that his hold on the tempest was fading. It started to get hazy, suggesting that would soon wake up for the first time since he fell unconscious. Before he left, the tempest grew quieter as Kurt began speaking. Kurt said, “I was a merchant living in Bones City, but I went across the land and seas to gather my merchandise. My wife and her sick parents lived comfortably because of my business, but I missed important moments since I was always away. One day, one of my messengers came and told me of rare spices for sale in the city of Occasa. I immediately set out. I never got the chance to tell her where I was going, and as fate would have it, Occasa was attacked by an Interfectus. I was killed, and all my associates died in that attack. No one ever told Lena where I went or that I wasn’t coming home. She has every reason to believe that I gave up on that life and ran away from Bones City. It torments me, but there isn’t anything I can do about it here.”

Hatasuko whispered, “Kurt—the husband who never said goodbye.”

            Hatasuko finally opened his eyes for what felt like the first time in ages. His chest still ached from the lingering pain of the weapon which had pierced him, but he no longer felt the hole through his body. As he slowly gained awareness of the starlit world around him, Hatasuko realized that he floated in a body of water. He detected a slight current, but it flowed too gently to pull anything; this certainly was not a river or ocean. Hatasuko glanced down and saw that a rosy color stained the water. He moved to set his feet on the underwater ground, and before long, he felt the gentle sensation of tiny pebbles between his toes. He straightened out his back and felt several joints crack at once, but the cracking was not as painful as it was soothing. Hatasuko noticed that the wounds on his body had healed, and he knew that this was because of the water.

“I’ve always heard of the Fons Vitae and its healing waters. This fountain can heal wounds, repair organs, and soothe the soul that’s trapped inside human skin. Perhaps the legend is true. Even if it’s a lie, the beauty in this place is remarkable,” Hatasuko mumbled, though his voice was groggy since it had not been used for days.

Hatasuko pulled his golden bangs off his face and stared at the center of the rose-colored lake. A small cascade poured water from the sky into the center of the pond. The waterfall was so magnificently tall that he could not see where the water flowed from, and since the desert was a flatland all around the lake, no river fed the waterfall from above. 

             “There’s a rumor that the water trickles down from the heavens. They say that tiny particles of water crash together at the very edge of space, and then it all pours down here. I love it so much; I just think it’s so pretty. I really believe that these waters saved your life,” Vaida said from the edge of the oasis.

As soon as he heard Vaida’s voice, Hatasuko felt something awaken within himself. It confirmed that he had truly reentered reality. He was finally free from the hopelessness of the tempest. He quickly jerked his head so that he stared at Vaida, though the powerful wind pulled his hair in front of his face. Between his wet strands of flapping hair, he saw her standing between the water and a large sail-rana. Though he noticed that this ship looked larger than the two that they had used in the past, he cared about nothing other than his reunion with Vaida. She stared at him with a smile and a glint in her uncovered eye. Hatasuko pushed himself to march through the pinkish water until he met her in the shallow water.

She said to him, “You had me so worried. At first I was angry because we just left Lazaro to die, and I know that’s not fair… but I guess I just wasn’t ready to lose him. But then you took so long to wake up, and I really started to worry that I lost you too. I’m so sorry I was angry. I’m so sorry we couldn’t beat the Interfectus. I’m so sorry-”

Hatasuko wrapped his big arms around her and said, “Vaida, please try to relax. I’m still here, I promise, and it’s all because of you. I’m only alive because you saved me again, just like you always do. I’ve lost count of how many times I would have died if it weren’t for you. You’re like a guiding light or a guardian angel; you’re a beautiful star in the sky, shielding me from my own recklessness.”

            Vaida flinched when he touched her, but she quickly relaxed herself and embraced him. Her strong arms could not reach around him. She let out a little sigh as her breathing slowed back down to a healthy pace. As they stood in this embrace with rose-colored water falling from their skin, Hatasuko reached his hand onto her face and held her eyepatch with his right hand.

            “May I see the face of my angel?” he asked in a whispered voice.

Vaida pulled her arms away and then took a step back. Hatasuko let go of the embrace and pulled his hand off her eyepatch, afraid that he had done something wrong. But when Vaida stepped back far enough that the wind blew her hair into a frenzy again, she grabbed the band on her eyepatch and pulled it off her face. She held it in her trembling scarred hand and opened her other eye. It stared hollowly ahead as Hatasuko gazed at her full face for the first time since their trip to Bones City. She held a stoic expression for several seconds as he looked across her scars, but then she broke and used her hands to shield her face.

“Vaida, please don’t hide yourself. There’s no need to-”

“I’ll let you see my face, but, um, I still don’t want you to stare. I’ve done it a thousand times. The longer I look at the burns, the more grotesque I become. All these ugly little details start to appear,” she confessed.

“How do you even look at your face to begin with?” he asked.

“I always carry a mirror in the sail-rana. Well… no, I used to always carry one. But then I had a bad day and it made me upset,” Vaida answered, crossing her arms and giving a pouty expression.

Hatasuko glanced down and saw that shallow cuts scattered her right hand and fingers. He struggled to see the cuts since they camouflaged with the dark color of her scarred skin. He sighed and pressed his face into his hand.

“Your mirror made you upset, so you… punched it and broke it?” he asked.

“Well, yeah. It made sense at the time! I didn’t have much else to do on the long trip here. It’s a desert for half the journey,” she explained.

“Why didn’t you put your hand in the water? If it can heal me getting stabbed through the chest, it can definitely heal a few cuts,” Hatasuko suggested.

Vaida scratched her head for a moment, contorted her face like she was thinking, and then jumped toward the deeper water. She crouched down and stuck her hand in the rosy water of the Fons Vitae. The sensation of her healing wound felt so wonderful that she closed her eyes and smiled brightly. Ripples of water rolled across the pond from her little hand; every ripple shimmered from the light of the pulsing stars. Every tiny drop glistened in the starlight.

“Since the wounds heal so quickly here, they almost always leave behind some scar tissue. But I guess that doesn’t affect me, since my hand’s already so scarred,” Vaida said with a timid giggle.

“Not gonna lie, I kinda regret saying this even as I’m asking it, but… did you ever come here to heal your burns? I still don’t really know anything about how you got them.”

“No, I didn’t. I’m sorry, um, I really don’t want to talk about it,” she mumbled.

“That’s fine! I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t have asked. Just forget about it. Anyway, we should really get going. I know this place is beautiful, but-”

Hatasuko stopped himself because he realized that it sounded like he was about to announce an Interfectus attack. Vaida pulled her hand out of the water and stared at the lake. Her eyes were both wide with terror. Her knees trembled as she crouched in the water. He said with a reassuring smile, “Don’t worry, Vaida. It’s not an attack or anything; it’s the opposite! I actually want to find someone I learned about in the tempest. There might be another way we can defeat the Interfecti.”

“Really? You mean there’s something else we can do?” Vaida asked.

“That’s right! I’ll tell you about it on the way, but let’s get going. We have a long journey ahead of us. We’re going to an island off the coast of Bones City,” he explained.

“But, Bones City… doesn’t that mean-”

“Yep. We’ll have to sail north by wind, boat east by river, boat really far south, and then sail west by wind. It’s going to be a long trek. I hope you packed a lot of fruit!”

             “Of course! You do remember who you’re traveling with, don’t you?” Vaida teased with a shy smile.

Hatasuko and Vaida walked toward the large sail-rana which lay on its side in the hard desert sand. Hatasuko used his strong arms to pull the ship upright, and then he climbed into the backseat. Vaida climbed into the front seat and opened the sails. The powerful northwest winds struck the sails, inflated them, and then pulled the boat along the ground. The new sail-rana did not pick up speed as quickly as the last two, but in just a matter of minutes, the boat moved almost as fast as the wind. Once the ship was up to speed, Hatasuko looked around at the floor where they stored their many belongings. He saw a large sack of rocks at the back of the sail-rana with two smaller sacks in front of it. There were two whips in front of this, Hatasuko’s sword, Vaida’s two swords, and countless fruit rolling around in the back. Hatasuko noticed that Lazaro’s belongings were gone, but he expected this since his possessions were with him when he died.

“Do you like the new sail-rana?” Vaida asked in between bites.

Hatasuko looked over her shoulder and saw that she held an aterpomus in her left hand. He did not even notice that she had picked one up.

“I like it a lot! It’s a lot bigger, so I’ve finally got some leg room. When I became an Astrodeus, I thought I would get squished to death in the old one, but this is great! How did you get one on such short notice?” Hatasuko asked.

Vaida laughed quietly as she finished the last of her fruit. Once she ate all she could, she tossed it out onto the desert sand and then picked up a ruberpomus. Hatasuko’s eyes lit up when he saw the fruit; a layer of saliva washed across his mouth. Vaida giggled again and then handed it to him.

“This one is actually made from the old ones! I’ve always liked to design things with interchangeable parts. That means that the old sail-ranae could be disassembled and reassembled. It runs the risk of the ship taking on water if there’s a lot of weight, but I designed them to be pretty watertight,” Vaida answered with enthusiasm.

Vaida looked at the vehicle around her with a sense of pride. Hatasuko watched her as she ran her fingers along the side of the sail-rana, but as he watched, he saw her eyes swiftly switch from happy to somber. She then added, “While I was waiting for you to wake up, I took apart the old sail-ranae and basically combined them. I had to carve some wood from a fallen tree to make the base wider, but I had a lot of time. You were out for a really long time.”

Hatasuko said, “I know. I’m sorry about that, I hope I didn’t make you worry too much.”

Vaida dropped the albapomus in her hand and grabbed the steering wheel. It had been locked so that the wind would not blow them off a straight-north path, but she unlocked it and steered very slightly to the left. This meant that they would have to travel farther along the river, but this new direction more closely matched the direction of the wind, meaning they could roll faster through the desert. Once she locked the steering wheel again, Hatasuko realized that her silence was her response; it served as a wordless confession of how worried she had been.

“I don’t want to face the possibility any more than I have to, but we’re destined to die if we fight the Interfecti. That’s a fate we just have to accept,” Hatasuko added.

“I can’t, um, I can’t agree with you. You sound too much like Lazaro when you say things like that. I’ve come to understand that I will die on this quest, and I can accept that because I am expendable. But you are not! You’re not meant to die, and you know it! Lazaro thought you were crazy when you said this was your destiny, but then you became the first Astrodeus. You did things this world has never seen; that isn’t a coincidence! You’ve been given this power because you are the key that will unlock our salvation. You are still the only hope we have left, so you can’t die. It’s just not your destiny,” Vaida responded.

“But how do you know that? How are any of us supposed to know our destiny?”

“You already told me the answer to this. I asked you when we first met, and do you know what you told me? You said, ‘Have you ever felt something so powerful that you know it has to be true? Even if you can’t see it, even if you can’t describe it, you just know that it’s real. You know that it must be real. I guess that’s the only way that I can explain it. I’m not giving reality the choice to disagree with me.’ I don’t know if you lost sight of that, or if it just slipped your mind after our disaster, but I want you to remember who you are. I want you to remember that reality doesn’t have a choice,” Vaida said in her quiet voice.

Hatasuko glanced up and saw that the starlight glistened on the northern horizon, reflecting on the distant river. He narrowed his eyes and looked more closely because he saw a dark object move across it. Another sail-rana drifted eastward along the river at a fast speed. He knew that Vaida could not see the boat with her one working eye, but he decided to tell her later; he knew she would like to know that her invention made life easier for so many people.

“I guess I’ve really forgotten who I am… and I’m sorry. You’re right, I’m not gonna give up on this! I’m not expendable, but you sure as hell aren’t either. You’re a lot stronger and a lot smarter than you give yourself credit for, and it’s not just that! The tempest in my head has been flooded with new souls who only know the pain of forlorn hope. Their screams are the loudest. If it weren’t for you calming the abyss, then I would surely be devoured by their pain. You are the only thing keeping me from self-destructing,” Hatasuko explained as he reached his fingers into her dark hair.

Since the wind gusted northwest as the sail-rana rolled north, the wind appeared to blow directly west. Because of this, Vaida’s hair flew to the left side of her head. Hatasuko brushed his left hand through it several times until he finally rested his fingertips against the side of her head. She turned her head slightly so that she could see his face with her left eye, and he smiled when he saw her. Vaida quickly looked away, but then she turned back again and showed a shy smile on her face.

            Vaida folded in the sail and pulled down the mast now that they approached the river’s edge. A warm steam lifted from the water and gently wafted into the sky; the starlight illuminated the swirling steam. Once the boat decelerated enough, Hatasuko jumped onto the hard desert ground. He grabbed the sail-rana and slowed it down so that it would not roll right into the river. When it came to a stop, Vaida crawled over to the hatch and opened it up. She switched the gears so that the steering wheel would turn the rudder instead of the wheels, and then she climbed into the backseat. Hatasuko remembered that he would have to sit in the front for stability, so he rolled the sail-rana forward until it reached the riverbank. He ran around to the front, jumped into the boat, and used his weight to make the boat roll down the slope. It dropped into the river with a mighty splash, so then he sat in the front seat and steered the ship to the middle of the river. The river flowed faster than usual toward the east.

“I’ll do my best to stay alive, then. Even if I couldn’t calm your tempest, I guess I would still want to live because it’s only fair. I, um, hope this doesn’t sound weird… but I would completely break if I were to lose you now. Dealing with death is really hard. I thought I was safe from it when I chose to chase the demons with Lazaro, since… I didn’t have any friends. I couldn’t lose anyone if I didn’t have anyone. But even a man as awful as Lazaro… I still miss him so much. I feel empty without him. I hate feeling like this,” she whispered, looking down and away so that he could not see her face.

“I’ve had a hard time coming to terms with his death. I never thought that he would be the first to fall. But I guess that in the end, he was ready to die more than any of us. I think that in his heart, he felt more pain than anyone I’ve ever known. He told me once that after he lost his family, after he lost the only thing that gave his life meaning, he considered suicide but decided against it. He said he could waste his life in a better way. I wonder if all along, he was waiting for a chance to die like this. But it doesn’t matter, and I don’t care about his reasons, and I don’t care if he felt ready to die! I didn’t want him to die. It’s so hard to get used to someone just suddenly being gone,” Hatasuko responded.

Vaida muttered, “I just thought it would be easier. I don’t really want to get into it, but I lost a lot of people when the Interfectus attacked my city. There was so much pain all at once, and I guess… I think I became obsessed with my own pain. I got addicted to that sense of desolation. All I could feel was sadness. When I finally forgave the world and came out from that dark place, I thought I would be battle-hardened. I thought I would be stronger. I thought I would be strong enough to lose friends. But Lazaro was hardly a friend, in fact he reminded me of my own worthlessness every chance he got. But I still can’t stop myself from crying! I hate how much this hurts. I should feel like a weight’s been lifted, but I just miss him more than anything. I just wish I understood why.”

            “Because even though he was an awful man, he had a good heart. We respect him for doing something that everyone else is too scared to do, but I don’t think that’s all there is to it. It doesn’t matter. I know that it hurts to lose somebody. I don’t think I ever recovered from losing my mother. But in a way, our sadness is evidence that we once had something wonderful in the first place. Everyone we’ve lost is someone who had a positive impact in some way, and their impact doesn’t disappear as soon as they die. The sadness we bear is like a trail of their footsteps, showing the marks of every heart they touched,” Hatasuko said as he watched the steam lift off the river.

Vaida watched the desert floor as they floated on by. She set down the aterpomus which had been in her scarred right hand, and then she set her hand on the back of his big right shoulder.

With a faint twinkle in her teary eyes, she said, “Thank you, Hatasuko. I think I really needed to hear that.”

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