Chapter Thirteen – Usurper of the Underworld

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

Chapter Thirteen – Usurper of the Underworld

 

With each passing second, I begged spacetime itself to just let her rest. As the doctor quietly looked over her body, I held my hand against my chest. I could feel her struggle just to take in every breath, like her sickness was days away from dragging her to death. The doctor peered closely at the scarred skin on her leg; he searched her shin for signs that she had caught the plague. Aeliana cried as she kept her mouth hidden by her hand, she cried as if to confess that she could no longer stand. She had promised to fight with me for the future we would forge, but it seemed instead that she would fall victim to this world. I pondered if this plight was pareidolia or pattern, but I swore if I lost her then the stars themselves would shatter. They had proven to pry us apart by every twist of fate; they had dared to defy the destiny that we would create.

The doctor started to explain with a lurid stare, “Some say that this plague can spread through the air. I recommend that you both check yourselves for signs of sickness over the next few days. Back when I lived in Bones City, I saw many patients afflicted by this plague. I knew another doctor who detested the plague as if it were her mortal enemy; she detested the disease because it had locked her three children in stone. They all went from excitable childlike demons to motionless husks of flesh and bone. They could not move a muscle, and eventually they could not even breathe. She buried them herself and then swore to somehow defeat the disease. I thought that she had succeeded, because the plague had perished by the day I left that city. But now, I see that she not only failed to extinguish the epidemic that eradicated her family. It became stronger than ever before and now devours children and adults alike.”

Afraid that the same fate could befall Aeliana, I asked the doctor in a hopeless plea, “Is there a way to stop it that you can foresee? I know that even the highborn have lost family to the plague.”

The doctor merely shook his head and confessed, “Not a single medicine even passed the first test. My former colleague wouldn’t have had to go on her crusade if there were a simple answer to the plague. I thought that perhaps the hopelessness could have changed since I left, but if even the highborn are losing family, then there truly is no way to save the victims. Sometimes in the history of humanity, we have seen plagues so perilous that they simply kill everyone who isn’t naturally immune. It causes a massive gene shift leaving only those with genetic immunity. Perhaps in the end, they’ll say the same about this virus, at least if there is anyone left. But of course, it’s easy for an old man like me to abandon the world as if it is already dead. This plague has burned itself out before by devouring all those unlucky enough to catch it, so perhaps the same can happen again.”

I said to the doctor as I glared him in the eye, “I don’t care if humankind in the end will live or die. All that matters is that Aeliana can somehow still survive, and I will pay any price so that that future will arrive. I cannot accept failure or a simple deferral, and I will commit any crime it takes just to save my girl.”

The doctor took a moment to ponder as he lifted Aeliana into the air. I walked over to him and took her into my arms. She trembled as I held her and set her forehead against my chest. She smiled slightly when she realized that she was in my arms, and then the doctor poured a tonic into a plastic cup. He tilted back her head and poured the tonic into her mouth. She struggled at first with discomfort and a clear dislike for the taste, but she still swallowed the medicine with her eyes closed.

The doctor answered after taking a moment to think, “You have to understand that she is already on the brink. No faraway solution can possibly save her life. I gave her a potent medicine that should stave off the symptoms for a couple days, but she’ll be motionless within the week. It won’t be long after that.”

“I understand the severity, but I need a solution,” I said with an unwavering constitution.

“This island is inhabited mostly by monsters who left their old lives behind. I may not have powers of my own, but I am familiar with the powers people gain by slaying the innocent. I knew someone in Bones City—a doctor who called himself the apothecary of the dark. He possessed a power that could practically heal any wound or disease, but I’m sure you can understand that this made the apothecary very valuable. No one knows exactly how much of this is true, but the story goes that he wanted to escape the violent world into which he had stumbled. He said it was only a matter of time before the forces in the dark devoured him as they did anyone else. So instead of staying in the underworld, he destroyed his own body and then healed himself with his power. He sculpted himself into a different person, and then he burned his home to the ground. He disappeared into the crowded streets of Bones City where no one could find him. I imagine he could not have started over without help, so someone in the underworld may still know his whereabouts. I think at this point this apothecary is your only chance,” the doctor explained as he gave Aeliana a nervous glance.

I nodded and thanked the doctor for his time. I paid him all the money I had taken with me when I left my home, and then I raced off into the night. I knew I did not have a moment to spare—not if I wanted to save Aeliana from a horrific death. She groaned uncomfortably in my arms, but I tightened my hold on her and then activated the power I had stolen from Elijah. I raced through the village and in between small homes. I jumped between rocky ledges which were lit only by the flowing lava in the distance. Trees swayed in the breeze around us as we raced toward the ship we had docked on the rocky shore.

When I reached our stolen ship, I knocked it through the shallows and into the ocean with a single kick. I splashed through the shallow waves and then jumped onto the wooden deck with a mighty jolt. Aeliana struggled to say that she could stand upright, so I set her on her feet and then grabbed the paddles while I still had my strength. The steaming sea splashed all around us, but I overpowered the current and quickly pushed us away from the volcano. Every droplet of suspended water summoned a tiny fire in the way that they invoked the light of lava behind us. It almost looked like a scattershot of sparks spiraled around us like little fireflies frolicking in the light.

“I didn’t want you to have to go through all of this for me,” Aeliana muttered as she struggled just to breathe.

“It’s like you said before when you said that we’re a team. There exists no other way that we can carry out our dream. I don’t care if this sounds dramatic because we both know it is true: All this world means nothing if I cannot have you. That is why to save you I will cover any cost. I will pay the price no matter how many lives must be lost. At the very least, I know now where to start. This ends with Bellaina—with the queen of the dark.”

Aeliana nodded slowly but kept her nervous gaze. I could tell with one glance that she had no compunction with threatening or killing those who stumbled into our path. Her only concern was that she hated having to rely on me. After spending her life in the sands surviving only by the daggers in her hands, it was practically anathema to value her life enough to trouble someone else.

Aeliana then answered with a quiet voice, “I suppose at this point that we have no other choice. But if Bellaina cannot help us, then what will you do?”

“The queen of the underworld will help us in the end. All this time she’s served as both our enemy and friend. She has built an empire upon the backs of the dead, but if she dares to defy me than she can put it all to bed. The only question is whether she helps us now by choice,” I explained to Aeliana with a muttering voice.

Aeliana answered only with a nervous smile; her exhaustion had stolen her ability to say any other words. I could tell by the timid stare in her eyes that she feared the possibility that Bellaina could kill me if I were to threaten her. But despite her duplicity, the dark queen was disadvantaged in that she and her henchmen had powers strained by singularity. They all had only one power with which they could resist if I were to make a move against her, but I was unchained by their mundanity. And by the time I compelled our catamaran into a current which could carry us to the coast, I retracted my oars and unsheathed my sword. Aeliana watched with wonder as I inscribed an Array of Black Fire on both sides of my weapon.

I reiterated as I resumed rowing, “There is no turning back on the path we are going. I swear to you now that I will not let this end. I swear on the sky that you will not die again.”

My monomania still managed to materialize a tunnel between my eyes and a world where she and I still alone stood atop the cinders of the slain city. Often in the past, my tunnel-vision would sculpt the walls and footsteps between myself and my destination, but now it was nothing more than a trek across darkness toward a glowing goal. It was like shooting a single star in the sky without knowing the distance or details of the gravity that would derail it.

Somewhere in the study of math exists a class of problems called partial differential equations, and these are plagued by the same conundrum that faces me now. They are analytically unsolvable in a closed space; there exists no catch-all series of steps to solve the equation. You are instead left to try a few methods that work only some of the time but never all of the time—and often none of those work either. In that case, the equation remains unsolvable with only wasted effort to show for your time. You’re left with a notebook full of nonsense but no solution to your problem. I was almost in this same situation now, but with the one exception that I still knew the final result. I would exert my will upon this world and sustain her survival even if I did not know how.

“Hayatama probably has people looking for us. We need to hide that we ever came back to land,” Aeliana said as our stolen ship approached the starlit sand.

I realized in that moment that Aeliana possessed a light in her hand that overpowered the glow of lava in the distance. Even as swirling steam lifted from the sea and small rock islands passed on by, I saw the red glow of heat coming from a stick she had salvaged from the shore of the volcanic island. She had grinded it against her dagger hilt for a long time, leaving sawdust and woodchips on the deck of our boat. She continued to grind them against each other with all her feeble strength, and sweat soaked her clothes as a consequence of her exertion. Though she had not recovered enough energy to stand and steer the ship, she still found a way to contribute in her own way. It was exactly as she had told me before. She would fight at my side to forge the future for which we were working.

When the wind and the current carried our catamaran to the coast, we saw the silhouettes of beachgoers through the steam. I did not know where in Bones City we had landed, but I quickly dragged our boat beyond the edge of the splashing waves. Aeliana used her glowing stick to set fire to a folded sail which had never been strung up. Flames quickly spread across the fabric as I took her in my arms, and then I jogged toward the city streets before the beachgoers could watch us leave. We figured that Hayatama would wait for reports of our stolen boat surfing to shore, but because of the fire, he would have no way to tell if it were another boat. Just as I had buried his victims beneath the sand on another beach, the fire and the shallows would eradicate the evidence of the crime I committed.

Fire illuminated the fog and the waves which washed ashore; an orchestra of orange danced upon the world behind us. Bystanders ran over to watch the abandoned ship burn, but Aeliana and I reached the shoreside streets without anyone noticing us. I set her down but held her closely so that we could walk through the streets without sticking out, but we quickly realized that the deck was loaded against us from the start, almost as if the cosmic gambler could physically demonstrate his desire to reroll the dice of life. Before we even turned the first corner in our flight from the sea, we saw a poster taped to a wall with our faces sketched upon it. The words on the poster in this place read, “Two fugitives wanted alive or dead. They are outsiders guilty of conspiring against the people of this city. Sources suggest they may be taking refuge on a stolen boat or an island. We will celebrate their deaths at the gathering by the sea.”

A strong breeze swept through the dusty alley and carried the sound of flapping paper. Aeliana pointed at an intersection a block away where another poster danced in the breeze. I could see through the orange streetlight that it looked the same as the one we held now. These posters were strewn across the city, and with the gathering by the sea only days away, it seemed that the city leaders were confident they could catch us quickly.

“Do you think it would be best to invest in a disguise?” I asked Aeliana as I gazed into her eyes.

But she breathlessly answered by unsheathing her daggers. If anyone dared to deny our destination, she resolved that our best approach was to simply dismember them. I reasoned to myself that people were likely to keep their distance from strangers now that the plague had the city in its stranglehold. Even as we stood beside the poster, we saw the nearest pedestrians stand at a distance from each other as they made their way toward the market. Between their fear and the fog, we concluded we could complete our campaign in peace.

After walking for only a dozen blocks, we found a river which passed through the city and poured into the ocean. I remembered that the queen of the underworld lived primarily in a house at the edge of the riverbed, so we simply followed the water eastward. As we walked, I dipped my foot into the river and felt the icy shock of its frigid touch. The steaming seas had spoiled me away from cold water, but Aeliana happily splashed the water on her skin to mitigate the heat of her fever. I could not help but notice that she resembled an overworked engine expelling heat by liquid cooling, fueled only by the doctor’s medicine which would allegedly keep her upright for just long enough to see our plan through.

When we arrived at the unassuming lair of darkness which stood at the edge of the riverbed, I saw Donovan waiting outside with a half-eaten green fruit in his left hand. His right hand clenched a golden pocketwatch which was bound by a thin wire to his pants. He smiled as he stared upon the open pocketwatch, but I could tell by his motionless green eyes that he was not watching the second hand race around the clock’s circumference. As we approached the doorstep, Donovan heard our footsteps and swerved to search the foggy darkness. He recognized me with relief, finished his fruit in two swift bites, and tossed the core into the garden.

He said to me after gazing for one more moment at his clock, “Anna told me that she’s the key and I’m the lock. She has a way of seeing the world that transcends this physical space. To tell you the truth, I think she may be right. I can’t help but wonder if I were destined for the dark before I even met her. Sometimes I think I was born condemned. But she’s such a wonderful person that she changed me for the better. She pulled me from a destiny of darkness and delivered me to the edge of the shadows. One foot in the light and one foot in the darkness. My only regret in this place is that I cannot have her physically at my side; I wouldn’t want her to see the crimes I complicitly commit. She bought me this pocketwatch as an anchor and set a picture of our family behind the glass. I can see her beautiful face anytime I want. It reminds me both of the mistakes I made and the reality that I don’t have to make them again.”

I said to Donovan as he stared upon the picture of his wife, “I believe somehow that we were one and the same in a past life. I have known no other man who would pay this price for love. We can commit calamitous crimes that they could never quite dream of. The difference is that you stand in the light with one foot in the dark, but I was destined to devour this world from the start. You are a dear friend to whom I owe a debt I could never repay, which is why I ask now that you go somewhere far away. This city itself may be the sacrifice we require; you and your family must not get caught in the crossfire.”

Donovan closed his pocketwatch and set it away. He gazed upon my skin which shimmered with sweat beneath the starlight. He saw my sword holstered at my side, and then he noticed Aeliana standing at a safe distance behind me. I could tell that he had simply dismissed her distance as a detail of her diffidence, but when he gazed more closely upon her, he quickly realized that she was unwell. Her fair skin had practically turned pale from the plague, and her puffy eyes stared upon the world with obvious exhaustion. She struggled to breathe, and her legs trembled beneath her feeble weight. He understood in that moment that she had caught the plague for which we were all forewarned, and because he and I were once one and the same, he already knew that I would burn the world to ashes if it could somehow save her life. I would slaughter shelters filled with orphans or heroes if it could in any way free her from her sickness.

“I hope that in the end nothing can keep you apart from each other,” Donovan said as if he understood that we were star-crossed lovers.

I thanked Donovan and shook his hand for the last time. He chose to heed my warning and set out from Bellaina’s home. Now that she did not run the risk of infecting Donovan, Aeliana bounded up to the doorstep and set her trembling hands upon the daggers she kept sheathed at her side. I knocked firmly upon the door and took a backward step, though I prepared to summon a decoy dummy in case we were to come under attack.

When the door opened, I saw a henchman who had worked beside Bellaina when I met her for the first time in a different place. The henchman welcomed us inside with an unenthusiastic murmur, but he asked us to wait in the large kitchen for the underworld queen. He did not seem to react dramatically to our arrival, but he had recognized us enough to know that she would want to see us. He did not lock the door or assign anyone to watch us, which in a way served to settle our nerves as we patiently waited.

Bellaina announced as soon as she entered the room, “Hayatama is determined to see to it that this city is your tomb. I applaud the courage it must take for the two of you to return to a city where the ruling class wants you dead, but as commendable as it is, courage alone is not grounds for survival. I shouldn’t have expected any less from either of you. One of you raced headlong into the badlands while the other was born there. It seems that the two of you are familiar with a territory hostile to your very existence. The only question is, why would you come here? You aren’t an idiot, so I’m certain you realized that Hayatama found your home because of me. But at the same time, you aren’t a man motivated by revenge. I know you wouldn’t make the mistake of coming here just to settle some score.”

“What’s done is done, and I have to let that go—just as you cannot reverse an arrow from a bow. I cannot undo the knowledge that Hayatama attained, at least not until my sword has torn through his brain. But I came to your lair for a different reason, regarding a man who has been missing for seasons. I learned that this city’s underworld once had a healing man, and no doctor in this world could ever do what he can. I need more than anything to know where he is now,” I said to her as calmly as my distress would allow.

“After what I did to you, I figure that I at least owe you the truth. I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but the healer seeped into the city without a trace. He had practically left everything from his past life behind. I know he is still alive and still possesses quintessence, but I could never pinpoint his location. After his defection, I know he helped save the lives of two people in different parts of the city, but he gave them both a different name. If anyone would know his location, it’s Hayatama himself, but he never conferred that information to me. The unfortunate truth is that it makes no difference anymore,” explained the queen of the dark as two henchmen came in through the door.

In the moment that Aeliana and I became surrounded, we realized that she had intentionally used menacing verbiage. No one had yet drawn a weapon, so we resolved to push the peace to persist as long as we could. Aeliana turned and set her back against mine. Even through our clothes, I could feel her hair and her sweaty skin. She shivered despite the warmth emanating from her body.

I said to Bellaina as if her actions were absurd, “You betrayed us as soon as Hayatama gave the word. You claim that this underworld is your empire, but you answer him as if he is more than just a buyer. He is the king of the darkness that devours this city, and you are a pretender cursed to deny your mediocrity. You would not have sold us out if you had an ounce of integrity. You are a puppet without purpose or conviction. Your empire is nothing more than a work of fiction.”

But the underworld queen said with a glow in her eyes, “In the end all that matters is you’re worth more dead than alive.”