Chapter Fourteen – Extraneous Solutions

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

Chapter Fourteen – Extraneous Solutions

 

Without waiting or wasting a weary moment, the underworld queen activated her power and unleashed a high-speed storm of energy blades. Desperate to defend my disease-stricken lover, I activated the first power I had ever stolen. I summoned a substitute to serve as a shield, and I tilted it to bloodily block the blades which barreled through her kitchen. Though her attack dismembered my defensive dummy, the multifarious impact spun me around to face the two henchmen who blocked our escape. I then unleashed my second stolen power in the form of a fiery sphere which shot across the spacious kitchen. One henchman stood his ground and extended his glowing hands as if they could somehow interrupt my attack.

But in the moment that this henchman touched my high-speed fireball, he immediately reflected it in the opposite direction. The blazing sphere barreled back toward us so swiftly that I could only protect Aeliana by wrapping my arms around her and throwing myself in the way. The scorching sphere struck with so much force that we were both blown backward and through a wooden door which buckled on impact. I had mostly shielded Aeliana from the impact and the shockwave, but contusions and burns scattered my skin.

The other henchman then raced in through the broken door and lifted his left hand. Unaware of the power he possessed, I wrapped my arms around Aeliana and summoned a second substitute to shield us both. Through the corner of my eye, I saw only a generic blast of concentrated energy. It struck my shield with a restrained burst, but a surprising impact sent us flying at a high speed. The shockwave slammed us down the stairs which led to Bellaina’s basement, though we cushioned our fall with the smoldering dummy I deployed for defense. It was left in pieces by the time we reached the basement where we once watched the dark queen dismember helpless captives and burn them with black fire. Too exhausted and injured to fight back, Aeliana retreated into the shadowed space. I wiped the blood from my arms and drew my sword. I resolved to defend her even until my last breath. I promised myself I would save her even if it would spell my death.

A voice whispered from the darkness as if to warn us of our fate, “I’m afraid if you are down here then it is already too late.”

I retreated from the base of the stairs while heavy footsteps shook the ceiling. Except for the opening from which we had both fallen, the only light in this dungeon emanated from a dim lamp which swung from a chain. I saw through the dim light that a woman stood inside a cage on the other side of the shadowed room. Unlike the captives I had seen before, she looked like an ordinary civilian one would see walking through the streets. She was an elderly woman with long hair and a nice jacket. She could not have been farther apart from the victims whom Bellaina had killed right before my eyes. Aeliana eyed the caged woman suspiciously, but I quietly motioned her to stand near the cage if for no other reason than that Bellaina would be less likely to slaughter her captive without reward.

I said to the old woman locked behind the bars, “You are the only of her victims to not have any scars. Do you have a life outside of this hopeless space? Perhaps we could fight our way free from this place.”

But the woman answered from the edge of the light, “I’m afraid I don’t have the ability to fight. They promised to help me but deceived me instead. They’ll keep me here until I fulfill their purpose, and then they’ll bury me in the dirt like anyone else. And when that happens, all the secrets of black fire will follow me into the grave.”

I couldn’t help but detect from her words that she could in some way serve as a steppingstone for Aeliana’s salvation, but at that moment, I could not concern myself with anything other than the battle at hand. A large shadow fell upon the dusty stairwell from above, indicating that Bellaina and her henchmen had resolved to finish us in the same place where she had killed her countless other victims.

Bellaina announced from the doorway up above, “I knew on the day we met that you would die for love. Even when you asked me to help you escape the wall, I could somehow see the inevitable conclusion. I somehow knew you would return only to die by my hand. It’s fortunate that I waited so long. The time I waited will be paid back in full with quintessence.”

The underworld queen lifted her left hand as if she prepared to strike in that moment, but I outraced her by first unleashing a blazing sphere of spiraling fire. I launched my weapon diagonally up the staircase, but then Bellaina’s henchman threw himself in the way. I realized with shock that he would reverse my attack as he had done before, so I instantly employed another stolen power to raise a rock wall from the basement floor. My own reflected fireball struck the rock wall in the next moment with a shower of sparks; it shattered my barrier and launched gravel like shrapnel at a high speed.

As bits of rock flew beside me and tore shreds from my skin, I kicked the wall and launched myself away from the base of the staircase. I narrowly managed to escape a scattershot of energy blades launched by Bellaina in that same moment. Aeliana watched with wide eyes as her hands feebly clung onto the bars beside the caged woman. She appeared to struggle just to catch her breath.

Bellaina yelled down from the top of the stairs, “God Himself has repealed your prayers. Don’t pretend like your extravagant declarations were anything other than a desperate prayer. Even someone as self-aggrandizing as you had to know on some level that you were too weak to exert your will upon this world. Perhaps you believed that you could rewrite reality by reciting the same rhetoric, but I’ve found in my life that words are powerless compared to a weapon. I know you know that I’m right. I know you know that you are only a steppingstone unable or unwilling to understand reality. The only question is if you will die first, or if you will have to watch her burn in black fire.”

Every word she spoke infuriated the darkness that devoured me long ago. I could even feel Aziel and Elijah writhing inside me with a wish to strike her down. But at the same time, I could feel those same disembodied pieces warn me that she had said this merely to excite my temper. If I could steel my nerves and keep my cool, then I could perhaps concoct a campaign to crush her. For the moment, we were both at a stalemate. If I approached the base of the staircase, she and her cronies could attack from above. But if she were to descend the stairs on her own, I could strike her from a safe distance.

I shouted to the dark queen from the shadows below, “I suspect we’re more similar than you know. We are both cursed to aggrandize ourselves; we both believe ourselves above anyone else. But I inflate my future while you inflate your past. You delude yourself into thinking you made something that can last. But everything you’ve built is just a castle made of mud, and in the end you’ll have nothing to show for all your sweat and blood. You failed to make so much as a mark upon this land, and the worthlessness that plagues you is a truth you cannot stand.”

“Perhaps you’re right, and the underworld I’ve built could end at a glance. But even if that is to happen, I have lived my life in prosperity by sacrificing those who unlike me lived their lives in squalor. I know for a fact that many of my victims came from the same orphanage where I wasted my earliest years. Some were there even at the same time. But unlike them, I built myself into the queen of the dark and left a mark upon this world. For better or worse, I changed the course of history in this city, and that is the difference between us. You have delusions of grandeur about a fantasy future forged by your hand, but after I kill you, no one will remember your name,” Bellaina said as if I could not say the same.

I could tell by her verbal reversal that she would not fall for her own trick. Neither of us would let the other bait us or enrage us into making the first move. However, the shadows and the lamp which created them danced as if driven by a disturbance up above. This served as evidence that Bellaina and her henchmen had a strategy in the works. While Aeliana and I gained nothing as we waited for our enemy to make the next move, Bellaina had found a way to improve her own standing. She benefited from our motionless stalemate, and so it was a mathematical certainty that this moment was the best time to attack. Our circumstances would otherwise worsen with every passing second. I was therefore compelled to go on the attack.

Though I never cared at all about righteous reasons, I could feel Elijah’s remains roar on inside my head as if he were vicariously driven to defeat the dark queen with his own power. I conceded to his request and then activated the power I had stolen from his soul; I augmented everything I had as if I awakened in that moment. Even the darkness became clear as his power heightened my acuity. With my sword in my hand, I raced toward the staircase from the side and jumped clear over its edge. When my feet fell firmly upon the stairs, I steadied my sword and erupted up the staircase. With every stairstep to pass beneath me, I felt another emotion inside my churning mind drive me onward. I had become a living cemetery for lost souls—a chimeric polymerization of my many victims, and with what little they had left, they all shouted valiantly and vigorously as if to vindicate my vicarious campaign.

The underworld queen unleashed her storm of energy blades as I raced along the staircase, but with my augmented agility, I evaded eleven strikes. I knocked three more aside in a series of slashes which succeeded only by my doubled dexterity. Two blades struck my body with a burst of blood, but Elijah’s power had also amplified my durability. Her attacks were as powerless as the bite of an ant against a boot as it comes crashing through their castle made of dirt. She understood the urgency of her situation and threw herself backward with a glare of alarm, and then her henchman threw himself at me with two daggers in his hands. I could see both fear and hunger in his eyes as clearly as I could see an Array of Black Fire etched into each blade. He quickly steadied himself into a defensive stance, but his efforts were wasted because that was the same moment when my right foot reached the level floor at the top of the staircase.

Without the slope pulling me back, I erupted across the short distance between us and plunged my sword through the daggerman’s chest. It struck with so much force that blood and bone burst from his body. His eyes widened as black fire emerged from my sword and engulfed his helpless body. Blood leaked from the corners of his mouth, but I glared into his dark brown eyes as my soul devoured his.

“Your death is your own fault, and that is something you must see. Your death is your fault because you dared to stand against me. You are cursed by your power only to reflect someone else; you were cursed by your soul to have no power for yourself. Perhaps when you join the other victims in my head, you will realize in the end you are more valuable when you’re dead. Your power is a potent factor placed in my equation, and with your weapon in my hand I will rise to the occasion. It’s a shame you paid the price with your life for her lies,” I said to my victim as Bellaina glared into my eyes.

And though this victim could serve as a shield from her storm, I used the full extent of my strength to tear my sword through his lifeless body. After throwing her henchman to the ground as if he were nothing more than garbage, I swung my sword to face Bellaina. Though she now clenched an engraved sword of her own, she chose instead to invoke the power which had horrified me when I saw it for the first time. She summoned a scattershot of energy blades and then unleashed them at a high speed like hail in a vicious storm. It was in that moment that I realized that even Bellaina herself did not understand the power I possessed, and therefore I employed the power I had most recently stolen. With a tiny shift of my hand, I stole her weapons from mid-air and launched them instead at the other henchman just a short distance away. Bellaina’s blades barreled through his body in a bloodbath. He slammed against the nearest wall and fell to his butt, but he would never stand again. Her blades had pierced his neck, his lungs, his stomach, and every extremity.

“If you are the dark queen, then the dark I will devour. Everyone I kill surrenders their soul to my power. I am the human form of the demon which once haunted all this land, but you are nothing more than the queen of an empire made of sand. You lived your life to die as a mere drop inside my ocean; the blood and sweat you sacrificed will serve as nothing more than lotion. Your only mark upon this world will be your ashes in the mud, and I will forge your bones into a bracelet for my love. Everything you ever built is nothing more than my buffet,” I said to the dark queen as she slowly backed away.

“We all feed on lost souls, but in you they remain intact,” Bellaina said as if their souls had all been forced into a pact.

“It means at least you will join me in the moment of your death. This is a contract for immortality signed by your final breath. You can continue to flail in the darkness like a rodent, or you can join into me where you will be the most potent. I know someone with your business sense can predict the prognosis—that all this world will burn as fuel for our apotheosis. Aeliana and I will consume all other life in the end, so reality itself is something that we will both transcend. The only way out is to hitch a ride inside my soul, or else all you ever had ends when I burn this city whole. I would prefer that you not die and then just simply fade away, and this is because I still owe you a debt I never could repay. So will you die for nothing or live forever inside me?” I asked as I lifted my sword to show that her death was guaranteed.

Bellaina held her sword with both hands as she glared into my eyes. I could see that her confident authority drove her to reconsider, but she had only made it this far in life because of her realism. She saw reality as it was without wishing it away, so she could easily tell that she had no chance against me. She did not know before we fought that I had inherited the powers of my victims, and so she had trapped herself when she tried instead to trap me. Realizing that I was her only way to live on, she dropped her sword onto the tile with a clamor. She glared at me and nodded, so I sank my sword inside her stomach with my augmented strength. The Array of Black Fire activated on my sword and ignited her body with the dark flames which would burn through her soul.

I stood over the dark queen in stillness as small sounds scattered the shadows and shattered the silence surrounding us. I heard a quiet patter emanating from the basement staircase. The other henchman struggled to breathe heavily in the background as he watched Bellaina burn beneath me. I turned to watch his blood slowly spill from the countless lacerations which scattered his body. When I retrieved my sword from Bellaina and wiped her blood on the nearest doorframe, I realized that this henchman watched my blade in horror. He shivered as he watched me as if he were transfixed by the edge of my sword.

He whimpered out the words as if he doubted they were true, “You said a soul can live on forever inside you. I know I won’t survive the wounds I have, and… I just want to escape this pain. Can you do the same for me? Can you kill me with the Array?”

But I glared into his blue eyes and then answered with disdain, “I do not owe you any debt nor do I have something to gain. I witnessed the power you possess and felt it for myself, but to devour your soul with mine would simply compromise my health. Your power and your heart are just as worthless as your life; I have a sword and a gun so I have no reason for a knife. Bellaina was a warrior to whom I owed a solemn debt, but you are a sycophant whom this world will soon forget. So I refuse the request on which you wasted your last breath, but at the very least I will be here to watch your painful death. I will not devour you since I don’t eat tainted meat; I am a cauldron of lost souls becoming ever more complete. But Aeliana is no cauldron but a bright fire instead. She will burn your soul to ashes and leave it permanently dead. A lacky and a sycophant have no place within my world.”

Though the climb up the staircase had stolen the breath from her lungs, Aeliana stumbled into the room with a dagger clenched in her hand. Her sickness had sent sweat upon her skin which shimmered in the dim light of Bellaina’s home, but the brightest light came from the glow on her dagger as she slowly made her way toward the bloody henchman. He desperately writhed and struggled to stumble away from her, but his injuries defied his will more than the plague defied hers. As he cowered and pleaded for mercy, Aeliana sank her dagger in through the back of his neck. An Array of Black Fire ignited on impact, and he fell to the ground as black fire engulfed his hopeless body. I positioned myself so that I could watch the fire extinguish the light in his eyes. I watched his soul burn into an energy which then flooded into her.

I said to Aeliana as I pulled a pen from my side, “I must go into the streets and then slay everyone I find. I can already tell that we are running out of time. If we luck upon our target then his power will be mine.”

“How do you know that we are running out of time?” asked Aeliana as she slid her fingers into mine.

But I answered while she realized that my hand was cold as ice, “Because the time we wasted on this trap has paid a second price. The same sickness which burns in you has ignited me as well, and I know in just days I will become trapped inside myself. We no longer have the time to engineer a better plan. I need to find and kill the healer now as quickly as I can. I will use their power to save you and then I’ll save myself. I will save your life even if I have to kill everyone else.”

“There are too many people in this city, and we cannot kill them all. Not before our bodies break beneath us. Not on our own. But that woman in the basement said that she knows the secrets of black fire. Let’s free her and then find out what she knows,” Aeliana said as she tugged upon my clothes.

With no other alternatives, I nodded and then steadied my sword. Despite the sickness which slowly sought to steal my body, I could tell that I had a few seconds before Elijah’s power would expire. With the heightened power I had pilfered from the man who once saved us, I raced down the staircase and then slammed my sword upon the bars which locked the old woman away. She watched with wide eyes as sparks lit the darkness and sent shattered metal crashing to the ground. I could see an anxious stare beneath her eyes as if she suspected that I might kill her as I had killed so many others within her earshot, but I simply sheathed my sword and stepped toward the staircase. She winced as she stood upright and then crossed from the shadows of the broken cage into the dim light of the basement.

Aeliana asked the old woman from the top of the stairs, “Why is it that Bellaina first put you in there?”

The caged woman answered as she twitched her nose, “I am the one who taught the dark queen all that she knows. Before all this began, she gave shelter to me and my son when we sailed here from a distant land. She gave me the name Claire so that I could blend more easily with the people of this city. In exchange for her protection, I taught her about the powers and the fuel we possess. She was ruthless enough to build an empire in the underworld of this city with that knowledge, but I had no use for it myself. Black fire destroyed the island I come from. Countless souls snuffed out in an instant by a single woman—an island of empty homes and rotting corpses. To thank me for this knowledge, Bellaina helped me hide with distance from the darkness she designed. I lived a normal life for many years by way of camouflage… at least until recently. But a very short time ago, my dear son died in the bakery he worked at by the shore. He burned to death in the crossfire of a battle driven by the darkness she designed.

“I tried to reason with myself that death is natural, but you know as well as I do that no one wants to be bound by natural cycles when we see ourselves as strong enough to overcome them. I found Bellaina and begged her for quintessence. She had the means to give me more quintessence than I could ever take on my own. But instead of complying or answering in any way, she had her henchman hurl me into the cage. I never had the chance to learn her reason for this, but it makes no difference now.”

“How does quintessence have anything to do with losing your son?” asked Aeliana as she fought with herself to not come undone.

“The woman who killed my whole island told me my power when she left me alive. Somehow she could see the power I possessed ahead of time. She explained that I possess a power to bring back the dead, but the cost extends far beyond any other power in this world. It would take an ocean of death to bring back a single soul. I knew I could never kill that many people on my own, so I instead turned to Bellaina for help. That dream may have died, but still I thank you for saving me from this dungeon. I still don’t know why Bellaina chose to cage me,” explained the old woman.

I shook my head and said with a sigh, “That confirms a suspicion I couldn’t deny. You and I both share the same goal but without a way; we need to kill countless people in a matter of days. But we have no means through which we could achieve this goal, so my only choice now is to kill without control.”

But Claire shook her head slowly and said, “I know of a way we can come out ahead. The woman who killed everyone on my island had not killed them one-by-one in the streets, or at least not most of them. She killed them in a series of large Arrays set across the town. They were set as traps and completed only when enough victims gathered in each inscription. A single Array can burn more than one soul at a time. I always wondered why no one had bothered to sacrifice an entire city on an Array of Black Fire.”

I nodded slowly in concurrence. But even as my body struggled to fight the sickness that seeped into my bones, I managed to realize the reason why a citywide Array of Black Fire had not succeeded in the past. Everyone who had ever tried a large-scale Array had not studied enough math, and that was the reason their symbol would not ignite. It was a matter of differential geometry in a branch called geodesics. Those who had drawn a large Array in the past had drawn it as if it were inscribed on a flat surface like a table. But the shape of this world is spherical like that of a planet or a long-dead star, so a two-dimensional shape cannot be drawn upon it undistorted for the same reason that a flat map cannot perfectly represent a three-dimensional world. It would be like trying to draw a large triangle on a rubber ball; the curvature would warp its edges unless it was drawn very small.

“Others may have failed, but there still exists a way. I know that with our hands we can forge a large Array. If we are to do this then I need you both to help me. We will draw it on the beach before the gathering by the sea. People will gather in the Array while one edge is incomplete, as long as it is hidden underground and we are all discreet. Every soul in this city will get caught in our Array, and then the black fire will burn their lives away. It is then that I will seize the power that I seek,” I explained despite that my sickness made me weak.