An Aftershock of Hope and Fear: Chapter Three

              Interitus 3: Short Story #1: An Aftershock of Hope and Fear

Chapter Three

 

“You made an irreparable mistake in coming here. This is a miscalculation which will cost your lives. With your hearts and your stomachs torn from your bodies, the ice will preserve you for generations to come,” announced a deep voice from the swirling snow.

Ophelia and Abraham stood side by side on the icy mountainside, clinging to each other for warmth as they scoured the blizzard for a sign of their enemy. The snowfall transformed the visibility to a bare minimum; it was all they could do to see a rocky ledge ten feet ahead. Abraham clenched his sword in his left hand as he tensed every muscle, but he still saw no sign of the Taenarius. When the wind intensified, they separated from each other and swerved around so that their backs would insulate them from the snowstorm. Ophelia crouched at a short distance so that the buffeting wind would not lift her from the mountainside.

“This was a terrible idea. I was too eager to redeem myself from the crimes I committed; I failed to anticipate our enemy’s power. There is no redemption in a pointless death,” muttered Ophelia.

“It is my fault we came here. The island of Gavara may be large, but nowhere else is cold enough for snow and ice. Only on a mountain where no one dares venture. There’s only one explanation. It is my fault we’re here, but this is not where we will fall. Together, you and I can crush the Taenarius,” said Abraham with a pained grimace.

But as the snowstorm strengthened all around them, an enormous shape appeared on the mountainside. It charged along the snowy slope at a solid speed, and every thundering footstep shook the ground; its fast approach echoed across the cold sky. Ophelia grabbed onto Abraham until she saw the silhouette of a quadrupedal creature barreling toward them, and then she threw him downhill with all her strength; she pushed him just far enough to evade the snapping jaws of a tremendous black wolf. Its jaws snapped shut with a frightening fury in the place where its bite missed, and snow clung to its pelt as it swerved to face Ophelia. Even on all fours, the monster stood at twice her height. It was so powerful that she could practically feel his impulse from a distance, and so she responded in kind. Ophelia illuminated in that moment with a fiery light, and then a circular stream of scarlet sparks spiraled around her feet.

“It was only a matter of time before the other Taenarii came to claim my territory. The problem is, you cannot have it. You are too weak to overcome a demon blessed with the power of ice,” said a ghastly voice from the snowy fog around the wolf.

In that moment, the black wolf bolted toward Ophelia with its massive jaws open wide. She jolted back and launched a pair of high-speed fireballs from her stream of fire, but the enemy deflected both strikes with a sudden barrier of ice. The barrier shattered in the moment it was struck, but the wolf charged beneath the explosion of ice and fire.

Before the wolf could complete its attack, the entire mountainside trembled violently. A sudden spear of icy rock erupted from the mountainside, blocking the Taenarius from reaching Ophelia. It instead slammed against the outcropping, but Abraham’s intervention had an unforeseen consequence. The vibrations resonated snowbanks further up the mountainside, and the tremor summoned a sudden avalanche. Ophelia sprinted to Abraham’s side with her eyes open wide, but before they could take off running, a thick wall of ice rose to block their path. They were trapped in place, so Abraham swerved to face the wolf and the avalanche with a look of terror.

Since she felt his fear vicariously, Ophelia closed her eyes and allowed her power to transcend her human body. Abraham watched with wonder as she suddenly tripled in height, pulling in ice crystals and broken gravel from the mountainside around her. As she entered her Taenarius form, blades covered her extremities, and then they all burst into fire. She threw herself at the ice wall with every scythe swinging. In a burst of cinders and ice shards, she tore her way to safety. Abraham desperately sprinted through the opening and clung to Ophelia’s side with his silver sword in hand. A moment later, when the avalanche crashed into the ice wall, it shattered in countless places. Bursts of flowing ice erupted through the cracks, but it primarily poured through the crevice she created. Abraham and Ophelia stood on the mountainside in a pocket of safety, perched precariously between two high-speed flows of snow and ice.

The blizzard continued to rage around them, and when the avalanche passed, the towering wolf stood at a short distance. Its ghastly voice pierced the snowstorm and said, “Is that truly all the power you possess? I can sense your impulse from here. It is clear that you surrendered to our inexorable desire; you are a victim of forbidden fruit forfeiture. But for you to be this limited even after the kill, I can see you are amateur killers begging to contend with an angel of death. You relinquished yourself to the bloodlust because you would destroy yourself if not. But as for me? I embraced the madness and stepped neck-deep into the abyss… and this is the power it affords me.”

The ice Taenarius forged a powerful frigidity, summoning swords of ice in the sky above his enemies. The ice blades then fell so quickly that Ophelia had no choice but to respond; she unleashed a swirling firestorm to destroy the falling ice. But as fire and ice transformed the mountain sky into a battleground, Abraham tore across the mountainside with his sword held high. His feet thundered across the earth, but the wolf retaliated with a pair of high-speed ice javelins. They shot forth from the snow beneath the monster, and Abraham hurled himself aside while ducking beneath the first javelin. However, the second spear shot across the slope and struck Ophelia in her lanky leg with a burst of blood and ice. The impact was so powerful that she half-collapsed, her firestorm dissolved, and two frozen blades struck her from the sky.

Abraham desperately wanted to help his friend, but it was too late. He had already stepped perilously close to the ice Taenarius, and there was no turning back now; any slight distraction would immediately spell his end. He let out a valorous shout as he prepared his sword for battle, transparently trying to broadcast a confidence he did not possess. But before he got the chance to come within striking distance of the wolf, a spike of ice materialized from the mountainside and pierced though his left shoulder. The impact stopped him in his tracks, and the pain threw him to the ground on his hands and knees. Blood dripped quickly from his deep incision, dyeing the slope red beneath him.

“We exist only because an ancient sorcerer cursed this world to suffer this scar. We are the stain. Humanity is better off without us,” whispered Abraham.

The wolf snarled as it unleashed a pair of high-speed ice spikes, but Abraham jolted backward and upright; he narrowly dodged the pair of spears and nearly stumbled over a rocky ledge. As the snowstorm swirled with greater strength, he threw himself forward despite the pain from his wounded shoulder. He swung his sword as he sprinted toward the wolf, but before he even came close, a sudden barrier of ice interrupted his attack. Six sword slashes shattered the shield, but the wolf had summoned it only as a distraction. For at the same time, a downpour of falling ice crystals cascaded from the sky.

As if he were struck by a waterfall of frozen blades, the icy impact threw Abraham to the ground and flung him backward with countless wounds. His clothes and skin were torn in countless places, and his body rolled downhill for a short distance until he crashed into a tree.

“Why the hell does it matter where we came from? Sorcerer or not, we exist as an unmatched power. Humanity or not, we exist as an unmatched power. Why would you run from strength instead of embracing it? You are going to get yourselves killed,” said the snarling voice of the ice Taenarius.

“Because I have seen first-hand that these powers breed agony and nothing else. When I first awakened, I killed everyone I ever loved and wallowed in my own misery for years. No one is better off because of it,” Ophelia retorted, stepping slowly through the snowstorm.

Abraham weakly turned his head and saw that Ophelia had reverted to her human form. Her dark eyes were narrow with terror, and her black hair danced in the wind behind her. Tiny snowflakes clung to her dark hair and danced through her curls. A stream of scarlet sparks spiraled along her arms as she approached, illuminating her olive-colored skin and her tattered sleeveless shirt. Tiny bumps covered her arms, and she stumbled with a shiver as she approached; her body was clearly unprepared to fight the frigidity of the mountain blizzard. Even her spiraling serpent of sparks was unable to overcome the onset of frostbite. Regardless of her disadvantage, Ophelia intrepidly approached the black wolf.

“With what little power you possess, I am impressed that you dare to stand against me. Especially when you fight with a power which has hardly been fed. You weaken yourself on purpose and step into battle despite your self-afflicted handicap. Perhaps if you succumbed to your craving for carnage, your power would manifest more than mere sparks. Ha! It’s almost a shame that your weapon isn’t half as strong as your blazing spirit,” taunted the black wolf as she approached.

“That is a miscalculation. The incendiary serpent is an immortal flame which knows no extinction; it exists as sparks only in its dormant state. But do not underestimate it; this fire is strong enough to wipe structures from the face of the Earth. Allow me to demonstrate,” Ophelia replied as steam lifted slowly from her skin.

In that moment, the stream transformed from orange sparks to blue fire; it spiraled along her arms as a serpent of searing flames. Though the buffeting winds of the snowstorm battered her body, every flying snowflake transformed from ice to steam. The heat radiated from Ophelia’s fire, and then she planted her feet firmly on the mountainside.

Sensing that he was under immediate attack, the ice Taenarius forged a massive barrier to protect itself. A second later, Ophelia unleashed the incendiary serpent from her flexing arms. A series of flaming spheres fired forth from her fists and thundered across the blizzard gusts. Each time a fireball crashed upon the icy barrier, it detonated with a forceful burst. Cracks scattered the shattering wall, and by the fourth fireball, the entire ice barricade came crashing down. However, Ophelia continued her onslaught without restraint; she continued to launch fireballs at the towering wolf.

Now on the defensive for the first time in the fight, the black wolf took off running. It sprinted across the mountainside so swiftly that it narrowly dodged the shockwave of the first fireball, and then it ducked beneath the second. It charged toward a rocky outcropping and jumped from it to dodge the third fireball, but it was struck by a fourth in mid-air. The explosive shockwave threw it down onto the mountainside with a fiery slam, and then another fireball struck it in the side. Embers covered its black pelt, and scattered snowflakes shimmered in the blazing glow. When the beast slammed upon its stomach, the impact was powerful enough to shake the snowbank beneath it.

Ophelia stood proudly with another fireball perched in front of her right fist. Emerald fire spiraled along her arm and danced across the blazing sphere. The snow around her feet had melted, and every nearby snowflake glistened in the blizzard winds.

“My incendiary serpent possesses more than enough strength to melt your only weapon,” Ophelia proclaimed as she locked eyes with her enemy.

“That may be, but your serpent is limited by its visibility. The same is not true for the glacial specter which manifests my might—a truth you are seconds from seeing for yourself,” retorted the gruff voice of the ice Taenarius.

Abraham watched with shock as Ophelia suddenly stopped in her tracks. The stream of emerald fire quickly retreated from the snowstorm; it reverted into a tiny spark which practically disappeared as she fell onto her side. To his terror, her body was rigid in the same position as earlier. It was like her entire body had frozen completely, and he could see the shimmer of sunlight upon her frozen skin. He cursed under his breath as he realized that Ophelia had been assailed by an attack she had not seen coming. He could not tell if she had frozen to death, but it was evident that she had lost the ability to fight. And so, despite his own injuries, Abraham peeled himself off the tree and lifted his sword. Unwilling to waste any time, he glared at the black wolf and weakly pushed himself into motion.

“If a full-fledged Taenarius could not stop me, then how the hell could you? My glacial specter will bury your body beneath the blizzard,” taunted the monster.

A series of ice javelins suddenly erupted from the mountainside, directly in the space before the towering wolf. They raced across the snowfield, but Abraham shouted aloud as he unleashed a pinpoint earthquake. The epicenter was directly in the space between the two combatants, but it manifested as a rocky protrusion through the surface. The rock protrusion and the ice javelins shattered each other in a burst of gravel and ice, but Abraham propelled his tremorous shockwave. It tore across the mountainside and toward the wolf. The creature jolted back and aside, dodging the violent strike, and then it counterattacked with a scattershot of falling ice. Abraham glanced up to see ice daggers falling through the snowy gusts, but this was merely a distraction; a distant tremor revealed that he had triggered another avalanche.

But for the time being, Abraham focused only on the cascade of ice daggers. He sprinted back and forth, desperately diving away from each projectile, and he crashed his sword against the ones he could not evade. However, the high-speed descent quickly overcame his defenses; he was battered and torn by four consecutive strikes from the sky. He then fled the aerial barrage and nearly tripped over a rocky outcropping, but this caused him to glance at the avalanche. It was an enormous juggernaut of snow and ice devouring everything in its path. The avalanche destroyed and swallowed entire ledges, so Abraham narrowed his blue-green eyes and took decisive action.

By concentrating all his impulse at once, Abraham unleashed an earthquake so powerful that the mountainside itself fractured. The fissure was so intense that it caused the large wolf to fall a short distance with a thud, but the magnitudinous tremor had a second consequence. The crevice and the breakage diverted the thundering avalanche, steering it off of its previous track. The icy juggernaut pounded against the rocky walls as it changed direction and engulfed the Taenarius. It accelerated downhill and then slammed upon a rocky outcropping at a dangerous speed. Like a river of snow and ice, the avalanche diverged around the precipice; it continued to cascade down the mountainside in different directions. It was a deafening cascade, but Abraham sprinted along the slope despite the destruction. He arrived on one side of the fissure as the avalanche drained away, but he accelerated and jumped clear over the crevice.

When Abraham landed on the other side of the fracture, his feet fell partway through the snow. With a texture close to quicksand, the ice seemed to slowly swallow his legs; Abraham had to hoist himself out of the ground with his sword. He then dashed across the glistening field left behind by the avalanche, closing in on the outcropping where he last saw the wolf. Tiny crystals of ice and snow danced in the air around him, but he saw no sign of his enemy. When he finally arrived at the rocky ledge, he found black fur and dark blood stained upon it. The ice Taenarius had been crushed between the avalanche and the precipice, but its body was nowhere to be seen. The snowstorm’s violent winds slowly subsided, but snow continued to spiral down from the sky.

The deep voice of an ordinary man announced, “I lied when we spoke earlier; I accept the reality of our curse. We are seeds of a dark sorcerer scattered upon this land. He fractured this world once before, and he means to return to this world by using our vessels as his conduit. In the end, one Taenarius will eventually overpower the others. That inconceivable strength will catalyze the resurrection—the apotheosis. Or so the story goes. It may be a legend mixed with a lie, but do not pretend that your reasons are righteous. Every last one of us is hardwired to kill the others so that we can fulfill that condition. So that we can command the most powerful force in this world. You can pretend that you hunt us down to spare the innocent, but the truth is that you hunt me for the same reason that I hunted three of our brothers. Because it is a drive and desire that we cannot fight, so intrinsic to our sordid souls that we could never restrain ourselves. Lie to yourself all you like, but I know your rationale better than you know yourself.”

Abraham searched the spiraling snow until he eventually found the silhouette of his enemy. A short distance behind him, a pale man stood in the snow with an ice javelin clenched in his right hand. And though Abraham wanted to retort, he felt the air around him plummet in temperature, so he threw himself forward while pushing off the ice with his sword. In the moment he escaped, the air froze solid in the place where he once stood. It was the same attack that had incapacitated Ophelia earlier in the fight. Ignoring his fear, Abraham charged toward his enemy, and he slashed his sword as he made his full-speed approach. However, when Abraham and the ice Taenarius crashed their weapons together, the icy javelin severed into two pieces.

The enemy grabbed the broken shard of ice before it fell, and then he jolted forward with a swift left jab. Abraham jolted backward, narrowly dodging the lunge, and then he braced himself for a cascade of icy daggers. But as ice blades tore gashes along his arms and back, Abraham pressed forward and slashed his sword with all his strength. His enemy defended with a thick barrier of ice which partially shattered. Tiny shards of shredded ice flew out in all directions, and then Abraham unleashed a small tremor beneath his enemy’s feet.

When the Taenarius began to fall, he threw himself backward and forced a pair of ice spears to rise from the mountainside. Abraham narrowly deflected each spear with a slash of his sword, but then the air behind him completely solidified. The dry ice imprisoned the back half of his body, forcibly holding him with fierce frigidity. Tears surfaced in his eyes from the pain of the extreme cold.

“You were a fool to think that you could devour other Taenarii, especially before you managed to take down humans. Your impulse is so undeveloped that you have no true form; you have no conduit with which to project your power! I possess the glacial specter, just as your dying friend has her incendiary serpent. But as for you? You serve no purpose other than as food. A catalyst. Perhaps it will be some solace to you that I will continue to kill with your heart in my stomach. You will be a cog in the machine that serves the same goal for which you set out in the first place,” whispered the ice Taenarius as he forged a dagger of ice in his right hand.

But Ophelia shouted from the other side of the fracture, “So it was never just me! We are all cursed to devour the hearts and stomachs of those we kill… or at the very least, of those who are not burned to ashes. Well, you can believe what you want. You kill to sate your sick desires, while we want only to slay monsters that feed on the innocent. But whether or not it is right, we are not above devouring you to empower ourselves.”

“How the hell are you alive? I froze the blood in your veins!” shouted the ice Taenarius.

“I know, and it truly felt worse than the day I died! But I am a Taenarius blessed with a soul on fire. You can call it an elemental advantage if you like, but the truth is that my incendiary serpent is stronger than your specter. And after driving that snowstorm for all the time we were fighting, your impulse is down to a trickle. Your reign here is over! Your life here is over,” answered Ophelia with a glare of disdain.

As blue fire and indigo sparks set sail to the sky, a spiral of searing flames engulfed the ice Taenarius with incredible force. Shockwaves forced the ground to shudder, and every falling snowflake evaporated before it hit the ground. Steam swirled around the inferno, but Abraham watched with wide eyes as the fire consumed his enemy. The ice slowly melted behind him, and in mere moments, Abraham found himself freed from his prison of ice.

From across the crevice, Ophelia yelled out, “This is your chance! You are too weak to fight a full-fledged Taenarius in your current state, and today’s fight has proven that. But by eating the heart and stomach of your fallen foe, you can steal his impulse for yourself! Please, Abraham. I want to keep fighting for the innocent in this hopeless world, but I cannot do it without you by my side.”