The Dawn of Destruction, Chapter Eleven (Clean)

                        The Dawn of Destruction

Interitus 1 – Book One

            Chapter Eleven

 

            “You know the best thing ‘bout bein’ in the mountains and snow and shit? There ain’t no police! We free to do whatever dumb-ass shit we want! It’s about freedom, man! I can do whatever I want, I can say whatever I want! Ain’t never really had that freedom before, y’know? Even George Washington himself once said, ‘I may not agree with the dumb-ass shit they sayin’, but I will defend they right to say it with my life,’” Phil said, looking over the snowy grandeur of the Himalayas.

            “I don’t think that was George Washington.”

            “That’s exactly what yo problem is, man! You disagree with everything anyone ever got to say! You a real downer, Seth. You a real downer,” Phil retorted.

            “And another thing! When’s the last time the cops actually arrested you or pulled you over, anyway?” Seth asked.

            “Well, it all happened like four months ago. I was ridin’ downtown on a pink bicycle with tassels and baskets and all that good shit while watchin’ porn on my laptop. And then one of them fascist pigs stopped me and said I be breakin’ the law and shit, man. First of all, they said the bike was stolen property or somethin’, but I know they lying ‘cause I bought it cheap from some homeless dude! And then they said some shit about me watchin’ Mexican bareback bondage porn in public like that, but really it’s ‘cause I’m black! I know how they do.”

            As Phil told the story, Seth remembered the unfortunate phone call that he received from the police station several months ago.

            “So, you’re saying the police should have just left you alone for all that?” Seth asked.

            “Yeah man, I ain’t hurtin’ anyone or anything, no harm done! Victimless crime!”

            “Well, speaking of things we shouldn’t really admit in the first place, uh… that Naomi really is something, right? I mean besides her being a crazy psycho murderess,” Seth muttered.

            “Well, well, let me jus’ clear that up right now. If it weren’t for her tryin’ to kill me and deep-tongue my best friend’s chest wound, I’d be all up in that bitch all night long! Maaaan, that hoe so fine that it makes me weak. I don’t know how we ever s’posed to beat her when she look like that,” Phil laughed, exhaling on his shivering hands.

            Seth agreed with a light chuckle, though it hurt to laugh because the cold air had settled in his lungs. When they had first landed, snow blanketed only a portion of the nearby mountains. But now it seemed like they could not look in any direction without seeing snow. Seth knew they were lucky to have not landed somewhere with a more fearsome altitude. Nevertheless, the cold air and their aimless travel were not the most pressing problems; it was instead that they had not eaten anything in over two days. And when another loud rumbling came from Phil’s stomach, Seth knew they would have to deal with this soon.

            “Man, I’m so hungry right now, I could eat a whole-ass whale right this minute! Shamu ain’t got nothin’ on me,” Phil griped, hungrily looking over the landscape.

            But after a brief pause, Phil pointed toward a peculiar smudge on a mountain slope and exclaimed, “Wait, Seth! I think I see some food!”

            “Phil, I think that’s a bear. I really didn’t know they had black bears out here,” Seth said, rubbing his eyes.

            The sheer size of the massive creature caused adrenaline to pump through Seth’s veins. It was a much larger creature than he had first realized.

            “So? I’m hungry,” Phil replied.

            Phil unsheathed a knife and quickly approached the animal while trying to stay silent. Seth sighed and ran up to Phil’s side. As they crept closer, they watched the creature move from its sedentary position into a clumsy bipedal stance. The bear watched suspiciously as Phil and Seth precariously approached it. After several seconds of stillness, it released a deep roar but did not step closer.

            “Phil, this is a really bad idea; that thing is tremendous,” Seth said.

            “Alright then, I’ll get out a second knife,” Phil compromised, reaching into his pocket again.

            Seth groaned, but the bear did accept its role as prey; it commenced a full-force sprint toward the two friends. Phil threw his two knives quickly, striking the hind legs of his prospective meal. The bear stopped running and bellowed with fury, and this roar nearly sent Seth running. But because Phil was too controlled by his hunger, he walked swiftly toward the wounded beast. Seth stood only a few meters behind Phil, when suddenly the animal lunged forward and outstretched its enormous arm; its claws dealt a skin-piercing blow to the side of Phil’s body. He dropped onto the snow and held the three shallow gashes with his hand.

            Because its back legs were injured, the impact caused the bear to fall back to the ground. Immediately thereafter, Seth launched a swift counterattack on the bear before it could attack Phil again. Seth closed his eyes and pressed his right hand against the animal’s furry coat, effectively Destroying the beast. After it disappeared, Phil’s two metal knives dropped into the snow.

            “What’s yo problem, man? That was s’posed to be dinner! There no food out here,” Phil whimpered, his voice cracking because of his hunger.

            “Relax, Phil. This is the most beautiful place we’ve ever seen! Just feed your soul with the view,” Seth said, gradually pulling his hand across the distance as if he were revealing the panoramic landscape.

            Phil stared with disinterest at the mountain peaks which pierced the sky. These mountains sent shadows across the lowlands and valleys. As Phil and Seth stood upon what they believed to be the snowy slope of a mist-shrouded hill, they realized that it was just a simple ledge near the foot of another tremendous mountain. The shroud of mist was merely a snow-covered mountainside. The dampened sunlight sparkled across the loose snowflakes that fell with the wind. Seth thought it was beautiful, but Phil could not care less.

            “Man, how you gon’ tell me to eat this shit? I know some starvin’ artists out there be eatin’ they own paintings and shit, but I don’t think we can gormandize some punk-ass landscape,” Phil retorted.

            “Gormandize…?” Seth asked.

            “It means to be eatin’ some good food all fancy and shit, like wearin’ a handkerchief and bein’ all professional while stuffin’ yo fat-ass face. You needa read a dictionary, Seth. All this time away from school has made you stupid. Tired of always dumbin’ my ass down for you,” Phil said.

            Seth chuckled lightly at his friend’s tease. Phil retrieved his knives from the snow and placed them back into his jacket pockets. However, Seth soon noticed that he could hear an aircraft, and it gradually came closer by the second. He looked up and watched a helicopter creep through the gray sky, though it seemed to come dangerously close to the tops of some mountains. The roar soon became overwhelming, since the soundwaves bounced off the mountainsides in all directions; the mountain range had practically created an echo chamber for the helicopter. Seth and Phil placed their bodies against the snow and held their ears with both hands to dampen the roar. Vibrations thundered through the ground, and as this went on, the shaking softened the weak grip between sheets of heavy snow and the damp mountainside. Before long, the soundwaves hit resonant frequency and caused an avalanche.

            As Seth and Phil watched a growing wave of snow erupt down the mountainside, they instinctively grabbed arms; they had decided this without even saying a word. They exchanged an anxious glance, hoping that they could hold together when the avalanche engulfed them. If the snow were to separate them, the first one to escape would have to search for the other. And since Phil did not have the Destruction power, the avalanche could easily kill him.

            When the avalanche swallowed the two friends, its impact was overwhelming. The mountainside trembled beneath the shockwaves of the white dragon barreling downhill. For the twenty seconds he spent tumbling inside a wave of wet snow, Seth held onto Phil with all his strength. And when the avalanche stopped, Seth opened his eyes and saw that he basically could not see anything; the snow had completely buried them.

The temperature was unforgiving, and the wetness of the snow quickly pierced through their jackets. They could barely move through the stiff snow once it had settled; they were practically underground. Despite the inconvenience of their location and the frozen wetness around them, Seth devised a temporary solution. He pressed his right hand against the snow and imagined a crevice-like air tunnel—one which went all the way up to the surface. He then opened this tunnel by activating Destruction, though he quickly realized that they were thirty feet underground. Seth and Phil could only escape if they were to climb this narrow corridor. However, the snowy wall provided no slope or footholds that could be used for climbing. And because this space was boxed in by snow and ice, Phil’s claustrophobia took the form of homophobia, as it often had in the past. By now, Seth had taken to calling it Phil’s claustrohomophobia.

            “Alright man, don’t you go tryin’ any of that gay shit now that we stuck in a cozy place or something,” Phil whimpered.

            “Phil, it’ll be alright! Don’t get scared yet. We still have plenty of time before the hypothermia sets in,” Seth encouraged him.

            “Man, yo ass needa stop hittin’ on me! This is gettin’ real weird, man,” Phil shouted, squatting against the wall.

            “Just curious. Why do you always use the phrase, ‘Yo ass,’ when talking about someone else?” Seth asked.

            “’Yo ass’ is representative for a person as a whole!”

            “I don’t know, man. I think it’s kinda odd that when you think of a person as a whole, it’s really just an ass that comes to mind. And to think-”

            “…Shut yo ass up. Why we even out in this mountain range anyway? You got some real strange hobbies, Seth,” Phil retorted.

            “I told you not to come with! Besides, it’s kinda embarrassing. Honestly, I wanted to come here so I could meet with Harold. He’s the guy that taught me how to use Destruction, back when I fought off Naomi’s paralyzing wolf thing. But when we were flying out here, I had a dream that made me think I maybe wanted to come here for a while, like subconsciously. This dream reminded me of a fairy tale my mom told me when I was little—some story about a lonely traveler trekking through the Himalayas. I think the guy was looking for an ancient alien crash site, but I can’t quite remember. Anyway, according to the myth, that crash site would bring him eternal happiness. As it goes, he slipped while climbing and fell a really long way down a mountain. His body was bruised and injured, but then he was found by a guy from a temple, and I guess they sheltered him until he was strong enough to leave. But when it was time for him to go, he chose to stay in the temple with his new friends. He decided that that was actually the eternal happiness he wanted,” Seth explained.

            “…So, you tellin’ me that we out here ‘cause of a fairy tale…?” Phil asked.

            “Well, not directly… but yeah. Don’t they say all fairy tales start somewhere?”

            Phil shook his head but said nothing. After looking around the crevice walls for several moments, Phil rose to his feet and then helped Seth upright. Without any words passing between them, Seth and Phil turned their backs to one another and pressed the center of their upper backs together. As their weights and centers of gravity gradually changed altitude, the two men pulled both of their shoes up against the icy walls. They were held up entirely by the friction of their shoes on the icy walls, amplified by their backs being pressed together. In this manner, they worked together to slowly move their feet up the walls, gradually climbing the ice crevice. This slowly went on for many minutes, and they had to start over four times due to slipping on ice.

            About two-thirds of the way up the wall, Seth felt his left leg strike an extremely slippery section of ice; his heart raced because he knew he was about to fall yet again. Within the thought of a split-second, he threw his left hand on his leg and Destroyed the falling energy—holding himself in place while he moved his foot. The Destruction of energy quickly became a reliable fallback for every slip, and so the two friends proceeded with confidence. After about six more minutes of this, Seth and Phil had their feet up at the very top of the crevice. Their heads poked out over the edge, but they had not yet decided how to lift themselves out without causing the other to fall back down.

            “Seth, push yo weight backward, then forward, then back, and push all yo weight on my back. That time, I’ll push with my feet and yo push gon’ throw me into the snow. I’ll grab yo arm right now so I can swing you up, and then we both gon’ be up!” Phil said.

            “You came up with that pretty quickly, do you really think it’ll work? I mean… I’m sure it will; you’re great at this kinda stuff.”

            Phil nodded in thanks, and then they began. Everything went according to plan, and in just a couple seconds, they both clung onto the edge of the crunchy snow. And even though their arms were starting to crush the snow, they managed to pull themselves out of the cylinder and up onto the precipice.

            “Seth, was that dude there jus’ a few minutes ago?” Phil panted, exhausted from the climb.

            Seth glanced over to see a somewhat elderly man with a discontent expression glaring at them. His attire was almost entirely black, which especially stood out on the snowy background. His left hand held an object which resembled a pen, but a peculiar glow radiated from its tip. In his other hand, he wielded a light shield adorned with an intricate symbol. The symbol possessed the same peculiar color as the tip of his pen. His face was covered with a few light wrinkles, although his eyes were the most unusual; they were not at all frantic, suggesting that he had been in this situation before. His skin was only slightly darker than what Seth would expect from a Chinaman. At the same time, his eyelids and hair also resembled that of a man of western Chinese descent.

            The man gradually closed his eyes and returned his pen to his pocket. From within his coat, he removed a thick chain and passed it into his right hand while transferring the shield to his left. Even with his eyes closed, Seth and Phil could feel the intensity of the man’s focus upon them. Suddenly, one eye opened.

            “Intruders!” he yelled in an incredible bellow. Although the air was in motion with nothing more than a slight breeze, an inexplicable intensity overtook the atmosphere. While covering his mouth with his sleeve, the man added, “I have been ordered to protect the Temple of the Skies from intruders! You shall not pass without permission from our people.”

            “What this dude’s problem? We ain’t lookin’ for no church or nothin’! I don’t know what kinda shit you smokin’ out here, but why would we try to trespass on some snowy-ass mountain temple? Ain’t nobody wanna be ‘round yo ugly-ass, that’s for damn sure. We just stranded here!”

            The guardian let out a shrill shriek and then threw his chain upward. Immediately after, he ripped his arm through the air in a downward-forward whip. The chain responded to his yank with a sudden lash toward Seth. Having never seen a chain used as a weapon, Seth was transfixed by its speed. As a result, he was too slow to move out of the way. The steel chain struck him and stung his skin with both a sharp and blunt trauma, sending waves of terrible pain through his left arm.

            “Maaaan, Seth, how you gon’ let the Asian Indiana Jones hit you with his damn whip?” Phil complained.

            Seth dropped to the ground, rubbing snow beneath his left arm’s sleeve so that his wound would stop throbbing. But because the guardian was distracted, Phil managed to unsheathe some throwing knives with his numb fingers. Seth watched as the chain looped behind the guardian, and then he whipped it forward once more, but this time, Seth was prepared. His left hand grabbed the weapon, Destroyed its energy, and pulled with enough force to spin his whole body. Seth then tried to grab the chain with his right hand, but it was ripped from his grip by a powerful yank. Seth accidentally Destroyed a small portion of air, causing a small sound of rushing wind. Since Seth had accidentally revealed his power to his opponent, the guardian began spinning the chain in a circle.

            As the steel chain shot through the air in a counterclockwise circle, the guardian adjusted the center with a forward-downward swoop. This shortened the chain’s length, causing it to swing much faster. However, Seth was ready to react. He planned to fake the same block as before, except this time his enemy would expect the chain to get Destroyed. When Seth’s left hand caught the chain and again Destroyed its energy, he then threw his right hand upon it. The guardian expected him to Destroy the chain in that moment.

            But Seth did not activate Destruction, and the chain did not disappear. Instead, Seth pulled back with all his strength; the enemy did not expect this, and so he was ripped off his feet. This sudden yanking motion caused the guardian to drop his shield. Seth let go of the chain and sprinted forward while pulling back his left fist, and then he punched his enemy in the chest—knocking the wind out of him. The man tumbled back into the snow, and he scurried away in search of breath. Seth ran up and knocked him down. He then threw himself onto the guardian’s back, effectively pinning him in the snow.

            “Look, I don’t know who you think you are or who you think we are, but we did not come here to hurt anything!” Seth yelled at him, feeling a peculiar touch against his wrist.

            The man said nothing. He just rested against the snow, twisting his hand around as his strange pen inscribed a symbol on Seth’s wrist. It was the same symbol as that on his shield. Seth glanced at it, curious about the man’s obsession with the insignia. Because of this curiosity, he allowed the guardian to complete his symbol. When the shape connected, an unfamiliar sensation overtook him.

            It was like nothing Seth had ever felt before; it was an irresistible current—an inundated surrealism; an ascending grasp—an inescapable disconnection. Seth dropped into the snow, alive and unconscious, allowing the guardian to wrestle himself free. Seth watched this exchange from an external perspective, as if his spirit were no longer attached to his body. The trigger of this reaction was radiant and luminous; the symbol on Seth’s wrist unleashed the same glow as the substance with which it was drawn.

            The scenery in this out-of-body place looked the same at first. But upon second glance at the landscape, Seth realized that he could see with a more profound perspective. It was like he could see deeper than before—almost as if he had attained spiritual equilibrium between his body and his disconnected soul. As Seth’s consciousness darted across the skies and through the hearts of mountains, he discovered that in this state, he could travel anywhere without the drudgery of moving his body.

            But when Seth levitated his spirit beyond the mountain peaks, he felt like something pulled magnetically upon him. He let the pull take him, and then in very little time, he passed the Pacific Ocean and drifted toward the shores of San Diego. The pull was strongest here, and he followed it over the city toward a luminous building.

            A huge crowd stood around a magnificent church. Just from the way that they chanted for Naomi, Seth confirmed his worst fear; Naomi had claimed to be an emissary of God, and that was the reason for this crowd’s celebration. As his spirit drifted through the roof and into the building, he realized that the pull emanated from something deep beneath the surface. He let it carry him through the ground for a short while until he reached an underground chamber.

            In this hidden place, Naomi painfully rested in an enormous bed. Her eyes were shut, and her skin was covered in burns and welts; her body had clearly suffered incredible damage in the recent past. Seth figured that while most people celebrated her as a prophetess, someone powerful disagreed. Even in her slumber, Naomi clasped a deep burn wound on her arm with her disfigured hands. And though she had been devastated by fire, Naomi still looked more beautiful than just about any girl he had ever seen. Seth wondered if in some way, her soul had the same captivating beauty even in his ethereal state. Or perhaps, like her body, it was stained with smoke and fire.

            For the first time, Seth considered the possibility that Naomi’s madness was not intrinsic; he had only taken her at surface value up until now. He wondered if lust had caused him to make that mistake, since in the past, he had noticed a peculiar attraction to women with psychopathic tendencies. It was like a primordial piece of his brain sought an intimate union with a woman of unbound passion. But perhaps his subconscious felt this attraction because he wanted to find the light in the darkness. Maybe he was meant to Destroy the madness which poisoned their hearts.

            And Naomi was beyond mad—she was absolutely maniacal. She was practically the epitome of his unspoken sexual fantasy, but this blocked him from realizing that there could be a reason for her darkness. It was not set in stone; it did not have to be intrinsic to her being. Until now, he hadn’t even realized that his attraction to her was anything more than physical. However, he dismissed these thoughts when a discomforted shudder ran through Naomi’s body. Her face contorted as if she were disturbed by something in her sleep. With curiosity, Seth used his spiritual form to step into her mind and inspect her dreams.

            In the dream, Seth saw a girl of very young age; she was the center perspective of the dream. The house was pitch-black, and the only faint smell came from a scented candle. Naomi crept through the darkness in the form of this young girl. She heard a running faucet, a rhythmic patter, and the thump of her own heart. Only a small fraction of light penetrated the solid wall of darkness. Naomi screamed silently to herself, and then she ran backward through her steps as if she had dropped something. As she scurried through the house, she collapsed over her own clumsy feet and smashed into the wall, but she did not make a sound. She was not even discouraged by her clumsiness. Instead, she sprinted through the corridor to her room in the house. When she arrived, she slammed her fists on the adjacent door until it started to open.

            “Harumi! Harumi, where are you?!” Naomi whispered loudly, flailing her arms through the air as she searched for her younger sister.

            The sound of the running faucet disappeared now. Naomi slammed the door shut with a surprising force and then ran back onto the tile floor. Along the way, she slipped in a puddle of cold water, but even the pain of falling did not destroy her determination. She grabbed a butcher knife from the table and began hacking away at the door to the kitchen. She eventually gained access despite her weak arms.

            “Naomi, sweetheart, I need to know what we do from here,” her father whispered, hiding the stove behind him from view.

            “Where is Harumi?” Naomi demanded as she ran toward him.

            “I didn’t want you to see this,” he said.

            Naomi’s father stepped out of the way, revealing a sight that would forever haunt the poor girl. Her sister’s body bounced and splashed in a large cistern of boiling water, caught helplessly between the ascending bubbles and steam releases. Harumi was barely alive but certainly conscious. Her tiny, tender mouth gasped open in a series of wails and pleads, but the scalding water rushed in her mouth and scalded her throat. Her drowning body then sank to the bottom of the clear tank; the convulsing girl pressed her face against the glass. Her tender skin was scalded to a crimson color. She didn’t even look human anymore. She separated her lips for a breath, forced to inhale the boiling water. As she coughed profusely underwater, her crying eyes began to swell against the glass. Before long, the heat tore her eyes and leaked a scarlet liquid into the boiling water.

            Naomi dropped to her knees beside the body of her beloved sister. Even at her young age, she understood the gravity of the trauma she experienced. She knew that nothing could ever make this right.

            Seth could not bear to see anything more. He forced himself to exit Naomi’s dream, but when he rejoined the astral plane, he returned to the mountainside where Phil and the guardian were still fighting. Despite the danger of battle, this came as a tremendous relief after what he had just witnessed.

The mountain guardian stood over Seth’s unconscious body and wildly flailed his chain at Phil. Every chain strike missed, though Phil was on the defensive. He counterattacked by throwing a knife at the man, but it harmlessly bounced off his shield. Immediately after, Phil charged his opponent by ducking beneath the spinning chain; he bet everything on winning a close-quarters fight. After running up to the shield at full speed, Phil crashed into the guardian’s knees and hurled him into the snow. Now that Phil stood over his grounded enemy, he drew his arm back and prepared to throw a powerful punch. But when he hurled his fist forward, the guardian pulled up his shield to block. Phil’s knuckles crashed into it, and the symbol activated again.

            And though Seth suspected that Phil was about to split away from his body, he could not waste any more time exploring this spiritual world. Therefore, Seth touched the symbol drawn upon his wrist, and then he bonded with his body as if he were merely waking up from sleep. The symbol that caused his separation then faded into nothing.

            Having decided that the fight was more important than exploring the astral plane, Phil returned to his body just seconds after the trigger first activated. But when he emerged, none of the three combatants seemed compelled to keep fighting.

            “Master Liu would never forgive me if I allowed invaders to lurk in our holy lands,” the guardian told them more calmly than before.

            “Look, we’re not trying to hurt anything! I just wanna find someone who can help me make sense of my power,” Seth explained.

            All was silent for several seconds, and then the guardian’s eyes lit up with recognition.

            “You… you are Destruction! I should have known from earlier. Master Liu said he was told that there is now a human who defies the laws of the universe! He wants to meet you more than anything,” the guardian said, sheathing his chain.

            “I don’t trust this. How we know this ain’t some trick where there be some old mountain dude tryin’ to steal our shit or play with our balls or somethin’?” Phil asked suspiciously.

            “I have nothing to offer you but my word. And this may be hard to believe, but we are pacifists,” he said.

            “If you so pacifist, why yo punk-ass be hittin’ dudes with chains?”

            “If you would notice, I do not carry a single weapon that can inflict mortal wounds. I dissuade invaders through intimidation.”

            “I trust you,” Seth began, “and I would love to see what’s at this temple.”

            Seth gave Phil a reassuring nod, but they both knew that Seth was in a state where he would agree with anything. After all, every time he allowed his mind to wander for even a second, he could see nothing but Naomi’s soul-shattering collapse. He saw nothing but the memory of her dying sister. He could hear nothing but the screams of an innocent little girl, watching something so terrible that it stained her forever.

 

Equilibrium Trigger: