Chapter Eight – Plague of a Dying Star

     The Emblem of the Star-Crossed Lovers (Interitus 1: Book X)

Chapter Eight – Plague of a Dying Star

 

Sometimes I can see myself drifting slowly between the stars like I am locked beneath the sea. And in this space I struggle silently just to catch my long-lost breath, like I’ve been drowning for a lifetime in my own emptiness. I can see glimpses of myself as a silhouette clinging to shadows cast by wayward asteroids. In some ways, I always thought of myself as someone trapped in an infinite orbit, born beyond the event horizon of a celestial collapse set to unravel the very fabric of this universe. Perhaps that was my curse all along. Perhaps I got caught in a black hole in a past life and used what little power I had left to infect my incarnations with venomous tentacles that transcend time and space.

It was early on a snow-touched morning when I stepped out into the starlit street. Wispy clouds drifted quickly through the sky and shrouded the snow from the shimmering stars. There was a crack in the street not far from my house where no snow ever sought to settle. Where a thin layer of powdered ice clung to the rest of the city, I only ever saw water in this place. Sometimes steam would erupt and emerge through this crack in the street. On a cold morning like this, that burst of steam was enough to flood the air with fog. The heat would eliminate any snow and create a pocket of warmth in the frigid city, like an island of light in an ocean of darkness.

I have a theory that all this world was once a star, but not an arrogant star like a supernova that overwhelms its own limits and eventually collapses under its own gravity. I propose instead that this world was a simple star which slowly spent its stellar fuel until it had nothing left to burn. The surface crusted over to become the land on which we walk, but the remnants of the dying star smolder subtly beneath our feet. Its heat sometimes escapes to the surface like through the crack in the street or in the thermal vents which warm the ocean. Volcanoes and earthquakes are nothing more than the fallen star adamantly defying its own decay, asserting to reality that it will one day burn bright again. But back when this star was at its strongest, the nuclear fusion which supplied its power also conceived the elements that now compose this hopeless world. Perhaps two hydrogen atoms fused to make helium. Two helium atoms then fused to make beryllium. Two of those then fused to make oxygen, which then bonded to a couple hydrogens to make water. Perhaps this process repeated a billion times. Perhaps this star created the same oceans which eventually destroyed it. Perhaps I should have spent more time learning chemistry instead of filling notebooks with nonsense.

I explained this theory to Aeliana as we stood in the snow outside our quiet home. Every word I spoke sent a shimmering cloud of fog into the starlit air. Tiny crystals of ice danced and spiraled all around us. She craned her hazel eyes to the sky and stared at the stars as I spoke. Even without whispering a word, I could see her contemplating the possibility that the tiny lights in the sky once constructed the world beneath our feet.

She said as her smile seemed to come undone, “I read that other worlds revolve around a sun. It is the source of their light, their warmth, and even their life. It was said that worlds without a sun eventually freeze; they wither and die without a star to support them. I always wondered what was so special about this world that it never had a sun of its own. My sister said that we were kept alive only by the grace of God. This world was once His playground, and He rewarded our ardent love with enough warmth to uphold life. We were all alive only because we praised him for our lives. She was obsessed with God, and I think I’m starting to see why. Even when we were at our worst, even when we had starved for weeks with nothing to eat but the dead, she said that He would reward our faith. She said that He would come back one day to save this helpless world. She said that He would reward our pain in the end, and I think that’s the thing that kept her going all along. Even after we lost the little family we had left, she continued to pray; she would pray night and day. She would pray both to stay and to someday go away. She would pray with dismay, and she would pray to decay; she would pray to fix the problems she couldn’t allay. She would pray for tomorrow, and she would pray for today. She would pray when the stars sway, or when skies turned to gray. She would pray when she woke up, and she would pray just to say, ‘Please give me more time with her. I just want to stay.’”

“Do you believe there’s a God who watches over this land?” I asked Aeliana as I gently took her hand.

But she shook her head slowly and turned away as she said, “I think He’s either gone forever or dead. She said that even the heart which pumps blood through our veins is proof of His love. I think His love is long-lost and faded long ago. Our lives are the leftovers—not a miracle. I hope that doesn’t sound… overdramatic, but I think I’m finally seeing the enormity of my misery from my life outside the walls. But I don’t think it matters. Not anymore. And how about you, Asivario? Do you believe in a God who will save our sullied souls?”

I could see her steeling herself in an attempt to climb forth from the scars which still clawed at her heart. I said to guide her mind in a different direction, “You are the only one to whom I ever felt a connection. I don’t know if there is or ever was a God, but the stories to me always felt like a façade. Whether there’s a God or not makes no difference to me; He’s nothing more than a word whispered inside this city. All that matters in the end is that I have you by my side, and I’ll become God myself just to cast the shackles aside.”

Though at first she looked shocked, Aeliana giggled and said, “I love hearing the thoughts that pour out of your head! I have met people who would hate you for those words; some might even call it pure blasphemy. But in order to actually blaspheme God, I suppose there must be a living God in the first place. And… I just don’t think that’s something I believe.”

“Well, hell! This sure sounds like a heavy conversation! Sorry to interrupt, but it’s good to see you two again,” Donovan said with a big smile as he stepped onto our street.

I saw a glimpse of suspicion pass through her eyes, but Aeliana burned her distrust when she saw his familiar face. She still stepped closer to me, but she stood out front as if she intended to protect me from some unforeseen threat. I smiled and welcomed Donovan to our snow-touched sector of the city, but I could see a glimpse of unease beneath his friendly gaze.

Donovan cleared his throat and then started to talk, “I think we’ll look less suspicious if we speak while we walk.”

“Why would we look suspicious in the first place?” Aeliana asked as she tilted her face.

Though we both nodded and walked northward with him, Donovan sighed and explained, “Because you now both have secrets which must stay contained. Anyone can see the truth if they look too closely. Aeliana, please try not to take this the wrong way, but it’s more than just the scars on your skin. There’s a savagery in your soul that cannot be covered. If anyone knows what to look for, they’ll clearly see that you are an outsider unwelcome in this city. You betray the truth with your sorrow and your strength. If we pass quickly through the streets, no one will have time to notice, and right now you don’t want anyone to notice.”

“Why would right now be worse than any other time?” I asked as I took Aeliana’s hand in mine.

But after glancing around, Donovan muttered, “Just look at the street; look how everything’s shuttered.”

Donovan was right. I had seen the transformation in just inches at a time, but the city and its streets seemed different than before. On a market street which once boasted scores of stands and countless customers, I saw only a fruit stand and a pair of butchers. Two families quietly perused their wares. This market was a skeleton of its former self barely clinging to life. The two families cast distrustful glares at each other and kept a short distance; they even glared at us as we slowly stepped past. They kept their distance from the vendors up until the moment that they made their quick exchange. Both the customers and the vendors seemed to shy away from each other, coming close only for the sale itself. Up until then, they negotiated prices and haggled from a short distance.

Donovan laughed to himself and then said with a smile, “It’s just like new lovers to lose themselves for a while! I completely get it. You’ve got all you need when you’re with her, so there’s hardly any reason to even leave your house! Hell, if I didn’t have a family to feed, I think I could stay in with my Anna for six weeks straight! There’s nothing else in the world worth anything when I’m with her. So I guess I can’t blame you for losing track of current events! The problem is, this one’s a pretty serious issue. You see how these people won’t go anywhere near each other? Well, it turns out that the plague must’ve kicked up again, and it’s not just children this time around. A lot of people thought it was just a cough going around, but I hear it’s getting bad. They just burned a few hundred bodies and buried the ashes in the south. Anyone can get it, and… it’s actually pretty gruesome.

“I hate to be the one to tell you this, but the city leaders decided to blame the outsiders for bringing this plague with them into our walls. There are people protesting the policy to just banish outsiders back outside the wall. They argue that we can only save ourselves by killing and burning the invaders before they can further spread their disease. This is probably the worst time in the history of this city to hide an outsider in your home, so please do be warned. I don’t buy into their deflection, so your secret’s safe with me, but everyone else in the city has been hijacked by their fear. It’s a weird paradox that those of us who serve as pawns to the underworld are the only ones willing to see reason.”

This plague was one that festered from time to time in some pockets of Bones City, but it ebbed and flowed across time. The city archives suggest that this city suffered many epidemics across countless centuries, but the viruses of the past are impuissant compared to the plague that has ravaged this city for the last few generations. When it first appeared inside the city wall, it was a phenomenon that the doctors simply called the Children Locked in Stone. It primarily affected only preadolescent children, appearing at first as a simple cough and exhaustion. But except for the fortunate few who floundered their way free of its effects, it paralyzed practically all of its victims; these children were left in a waking coma with no control over their own bodies. Eventually, the paralytic plague would take their lungs as it had taken their limbs, and then their body would be burned to silence the spread.

We walked past a weary wanderer as I said, “We can see reason because we are already dead. You have seen the weapon Bellaina holds in her hand. It’s a matter of time before we’re buried under sand.”

“I’ve actually been meaning to talk to you both about that. I’m not entirely sure how she found about it, but Bellaina knows that you two had a run-in with Kalairo. From what I understand, this encounter wasn’t exactly under the best of circumstances. Apparently she hasn’t seen or heard from you since, so… she sent me to explain the situation,” Donovan said, stumbling to give his explanation.

Aeliana widened her hazel eyes as she heard the reality that Bellaina knew about our crime. Though I had never learned the name of the daggerman even after I devoured his soul and left his body scattered in that empty building, I quickly concluded that he was named Kalairo. I had not heard his voice any louder than a whisper in my head; Aziel overpowered him and held him in place. I had some theories about the reason that the spirits of my victims wound up entangled in my mind, but I dismissed the thought from my head now that Donovan and Bellaina posed to us an existential threat.

I said as I felt my muscles tense, “I swear that it was all in self-defense. Kalairo had-”

But Donovan interrupted with a subtle laugh, “Asivario, please, I’m here on her behalf! If Bellaina wanted you dead or sought punishment in any way, she wouldn’t have sent me! She knows how much I like you. It didn’t take the dark queen any time at all to figure out the truth. Based on the broken shackles and the… brutality with which you killed him, she figured that he must have taken Aeliana. She said it’s unfortunate that two of her pawns became entangled in the shadows, but she also explained it’s just the price of business. She said statistically sometimes this will happen. But at the same time, she has efficient rounders. The underworld can survive without Kalairo, but she says that isn’t true for you. More than anything, she wants me to ask you to come back to work. No one is upset with you; no one even knows except us. Besides, she mentioned a time or two that you fascinate her. The dark queen calls herself the cause of your collapse; she is the puppeteer of your moral descent, at least in her eyes.”

“She thinks that she is playing me, but she is only paying me. She and I have a business transaction and nothing more. It costs me nothing to bury her refuse beneath the shore. She calls herself the orchestrator of my descent, but I was civilized only when I had nothing to love or lament. The truth is that I’ve been a savage since the day I was born. She simply cast off a disguise that I had once worn. I will pay any cost to secure our eternity,” I said as we walked through the quiet city.

Aeliana gazed at me with a shy smile; she silently said that she was just as committed to our future as me. Though she found herself quiet in the presence of anyone else, I could see in her hazel eyes the true face of her emotion. She and I were both barbarians unleashed on a world which feigned civility. Even when Donovan mentioned that he knew the truth about Kalairo, I could feel her hand clench mine as if she would die to defend me. Had she found it necessary, she would have drawn her daggers and disemboweled Donovan in the street without any hesitation. It was only because of his words that he had sidestepped that heartless fate. It was only because of my reassurance that she retained her counterfeit civility. Because despite his role as a pawn of the dark, I knew Donovan was a kind man driven only by love. He had welcomed me back into the city when I was at my weakest. It was such a shame that that one act of kindness would inevitably spell death for anyone sent as a steppingstone for the destiny we declared.

“Well then, I suppose that that’s a sign you’re both businessmen in a way! As long as both sides believe that the trade is worth it, then it’s easy to exchange. Both of you believe in some way that you’re getting the better deal. Of course… that doesn’t mean you have any secrets from her. From what Bellaina told me, the evidence was undeniable. You killed Kalairo with black fire and burned his soul for fuel. So Asivario, please tell me, and I promise it’s for your own safety. Do you still have quintessence, even at this time?” Donovan asked as I clenched Aeliana’s hand with mine.

I nodded slowly and then confessed, “I used a power once and kept the rest.”

“I ask because there’s much more to this than you know. You already know that Bellaina possesses a power of her own—a power to summon a scattershot of energy blades. I’m sure you learned the hard way that Kalairo could create dummies as decoys. That means you possess a power of your own too, though I won’t bother to ask what it is; I can think of several reasons you might want to keep that to yourself. But if you concentrate upon that power you possess, you should see a number associated with it appear in your head. Is that the case?” Donovan asked as his intrigue enlightened his face.

I paused to consider the implications of his words. I had not thought about it at the time, but it was strange that Kalairo and I possessed the same power. Bellaina and Kalairo both had unique talents which did not resemble the other or even the powers from fables and legends. if everyone had a unique power, how was it that he and I just happened to both create dummies of ourselves? I did not have enough data to extrapolate the probability, but it was safe to assume that this was unlikely at best and anomalistic at worst. Either way, it was a secret worth keeping to myself. However, I closed my eyes as we walked and focused upon that power in my mind, exactly as he had said.

In that moment, I felt like I transcended my physical body on the snowy streets of Bones City. I awakened in some ethereal space deep inside my head. It resembled a hallway that spanned from dreams to a reality; it was a corridor which traversed life and death. In this space in my head, I could sense two presences locked behind closed doors. Starlight illuminated the door that led to Kalairo’s power, but darkness devoured the door beside it. Given that I had only ever killed two people, I quickly concluded that this second door belonged to Aziel. But since I had not killed him with black fire, I never stole his quintessence for myself. As I stared at Kalairo’s door with a grimace, I saw the number eighty-four appear in the wood.

“What exactly does that number convey?” I asked when I escaped the hallway.

Donovan answered though he still looked unsure, “You have to understand that all this is obscure. I don’t have quintessence myself, and I refuse Bellaina every time she’s offered to pay me in that way. I can explain it as far as I understand, but the truth is only entirely understood by the underworld’s patrons and the queen herself. I believe you’ve already seen that we deal in human lives. They’re burned on an Array of Black Fire to create quintessence, but the sad truth is that a human life doesn’t actually amount to much. Just four quintessence points, no more and no less. So if you just kill an ordinary person on an Array, then that number in your head would equal four. That means, for most powers at least, that you get to use them just four times. And as far as I understand it, that is the ultimate currency for the underworld.

“Even the city leaders themselves obsess over this fuel, but this quintessence doesn’t come without cost. I’m willing to bet that the number in your head is a bit bigger than four, because Kalairo killed many of his own captives over the years. If he had thirty quintessence points when you killed him, then you would seize the four from his soul and the thirty he had with him. This is actually one of the reasons why I refuse to take any quintessence for myself. It would simply make me a bigger target for someone else.”

“What is the other reason you choose to stay away?” asked Aeliana with a stare of dismay.

Donovan asked as he gazed at the city wall, “Have you noticed some people are unbelievably tall? Like our queen of the dark and her closest guards, or even the minister and some city leaders. Their height is a sign that they sacrificed their human heart for power. As far as I understand, anyone with quintessence can surrender to its influence, and then it corrupts them inside and out. Their bodies grow in size and durability; they become monsters unmatched by ordinary men. But in exchange for their strength, they must sacrifice their heart. They sacrifice their mind itself and become a slave to the quintessence, constantly seeking more no matter how many people they must kill to sate their lust. And in the end it’s never enough, just like the hopeless souls in this city who find themselves addicted to chemicals that let them dream. In both cases, they destroy themselves and everything around them just to service their addiction.”

I took a moment to consider the implications of his words. When I had first exited the walls and wandered the windswept plains, I saw a monster in the distance who did not see me. And when I made my way to the woods where I spoke to Alyssa’s ghost, I first encountered a towering woman who could swirl the sands with just her hands. I had simply concluded at the time that those were the monsters of which we warned; they were the reason we had a wall in the first place. But now by a coil in the thread of fate, I found myself a single step away from becoming the monster which wandered the badlands. The only real difference is that they had surrendered their souls to the fuel for their power. And perhaps a cynic or a skeptic would have realized it far sooner than me, but I realized in that moment that the city leaders had never built the walls to protect from predators. It was instead to secure a fuel source for the monsters inside the wall without the risk of outside interference.

Aeliana then said with unmistakable fear, “I truly believed I would be safe from them here. Out in the plains, they go by a name—those monsters of which we are so afraid. One is an Astrodeus, two are called Astrodei. They frighten us far more than the killers and cannibals. It’s sad to see that this same danger has also infected the city.”

Donovan nodded in concurrence and confessed, “This city is a purgatory pretending to be blessed. I denounced it when I first learned the truth, back when I was young and idealistic. But when I fell in love, my Anna became my only priority. All this world could die in dreary darkness as long as I had her hand to hold to watch the world erode. So when I realized what really mattered to me, I let my old ideals die. Hell, I became a cog in the machine that propagates the darkness. And when I first learned that these monsters are slaves to the addiction they call the quintessence curse, I at first thought Bellaina was nothing more than a high-powered addict seeking her next hit. I later learned that she could service her addiction whenever she wants; she instead uses the curse as a business model. She uses it to hold power over the other monsters in the city walls.”

I then said to placate my curiosity, “But you know the darkness that dwells in this city. Why would you contribute to it?”

“It’s all a desperate gambit to protect my family. The best way to defend Anna from the darkness is to give them a reason to keep us alive,” answered the man who only wanted his family to survive.

“I should have expected an answer like that; being needed breeds peace and impedes combat. They will keep you alive if you are useful, and they won’t ever find reason to burn through your soul. But Aeliana and I have a decision to make, now that our future in this city has become opaque. I think I will go see Bellaina later tonight, but first I must hide Aeliana from sight,” I explained as we walked beneath the starlight.

Donovan agreed to my terms, and then we went our separate ways. I turned at the nearest intersection, and I walked hand-in-hand with Aeliana toward the west. Occasional pedestrians passed us in the streets, but they kept their distance as if we were obvious carriers of the growing plague. I’m sure it seems antisocial to admit this, but I honestly adore the way in which the plague has changed our city. Where in the past people would walk uncomfortably close with no concept of personal space, they now cleared a path. Where in the past we would walk by the wayside just to avoid people in the street, they now evaded us. Aeliana and I could walk together through a crowded market and see strangers scatter and scramble aside for us. It was like people had adopted the self-imposed isolation with which I lived my life. Some families even went as far as to exile themselves inside their homes. But as much as we enjoyed this social collapse, the reality was unmistakable. Unless I could hide Aeliana forever, someone would eventually realize that she came from outside the city.

I said as we crossed upon a quiet street by the sea, “Perhaps we should set sail from the city. I want you to see how lava lights up the sky; I wish you could see how that light shines in your eye. In the end if we stay they will pull us apart. They’ll make me relive the death of my heart. But if we can steal a boat from the factory bay, then we can sail from here to the islands today. Every inch of this world is ours—both the land and the sea. Let’s run away to an island and finally live free.”