Chapter Fourteen: The Array of Black Fire (I1B0C14)

 Chapter Fourteen: The Array of Black Fire

 

            People dashed through the crowded streets of the island city Procella. It was once a calm island in the steamy sea, but now ash and dust tainted the ocean air. The wind was weaker than on the Agrideī mainland, but the pressure in the air had never been this strong. Though people dashed through blocks of homes and rows of trees, they understood the grim reality that a simple escape did not exist. The city of Procella sat upon a lightly-forested island, meaning that people could only evacuate reliably by boat.

As helpless citizens flooded the streets, relying on speed to save them from the monster, Hatasuko and Vaida raced toward the Interfectus. They were the only line of defense. Vaida kept her twin swords sheathed in an X-shaped holster on her back. Both fighters kept a whip clipped to their sides; they both dangled a sack of rocks from their right shoulders. They each wielded an Interfectus shield, though he refrained from drawing his sword.

“Hatasuko, are you alright? You look like you’re hurting,” Vaida whispered.

A grimace fell upon his face, but Hatasuko glared at the golden eyes of the Interfectus. The monster levitated in silence over the rooftops as smoke lifted from the buildings. The layer of transparent blackness hung motionlessly over the city, but the Interfectus seemed to be deliberate its next move.

Hatasuko answered, “I am hurting. I think the tempest can sense how I feel. It knows that I feel more vulnerable than ever. They know I’m still scarred by my failure. The lost souls know that I probably won’t win. They know that their deaths will be in vain, and they know that their sadness will never end.”

“Is that the only reason you feel vulnerable?” she asked in her quiet voice.

“Well… no, no, it doesn’t matter. The Interfectus is exposed; let’s go.”

            A golden shimmering symbol suddenly appeared on the dirt beneath Hatasuko. As he glared at the monsters from blocks away, black fire erupted from the ground and engulfed him. This array poured energy into his glowing body. Once the black fire faded, the glow and the symbol disappeared.

            “I didn’t feel it before, but I feel it now. That restored my Astrodeus power,” he said.

With a mystified gaze, Vaida watched Hatasuko launch a rock he had received from Caelicola. This bullet-shaped rock was harder and smoother than other rocks in Agrideī. It blasted through the air, unleashed a sonic boom, and nearly struck the Interfectus, but the monster blocked with a shield of swirling shadows. But since the Interfectus had summoned its shield, it could not deploy its other weapons. Therefore, Hatasuko seized the chance to approach the monster.

Vaida tried to keep up with him, but they both struggled to run since the crowd fled in the opposite direction. Once they broke through the crowd, Hatasuko reached out with his right hand; Vaida grabbed onto it. With their hands clenched together, they ran between a tall building and a group of three small trees.

“Vaida, throw backward!” Hatasuko yelled, letting go of her immediately.

Vaida did not try to slow down; she simply pulled a rock from her sack. At the same time, Hatasuko stopped running and threw another rock into the sky with a supersonic crack. The Interfectus launched a cluster of shadow balls right after it had summoned them. As soon as the shadow spheres shot off into the sky, his high-speed rock struck the monster’s hip and shattered its black armor.

Before the Interfectus had a chance to roar, Vaida’s rock struck a sphere which would have otherwise hit a crowd of evacuees. As the scattershot detonated in the sky with a massive flash of fire, Hatasuko spun to face the explosion. He and Vaida both clenched their shields as the fiery shockwave struck them. It forced her to stumble, but he caught her with his left hand before it knocked her to the ground. The flames diverged harmlessly around their shields.

“Oh! Catch me!” Vaida yelled with a sense of urgency.

Before Hatasuko realized her plan, Vaida jumped off the ground, jumped again off his hips, twisted in midair, and pulled her shield upright to block a sudden lunge of the shadow spear. He dropped his shield and threw his arms in the air. The monster’s blade-arm struck Vaida’s shield with so much force that it hurled her backward; he caught her in his arms before she flew too far. He stumbled as he caught her, but he quickly stabilized. He then let go of Vaida, unsheathed his sword, and counterattacked with a mighty slash. His body glowed from the force of his power as his sword tore through the air; it struck the shadow spear and shattered it without slowing down. He shattered a tremendous section of the demon’s arm, so the Interfectus hurriedly retracted what remained of its weapon.

“You just saved my life!” Hatasuko exclaimed with a surge of adrenaline.

“And you just saved mine,” she said back, but then a loud sound startled them.

The Interfectus tried to attack again with the jagged remainder of its broken arm. As the arm tore through the air, it transformed into an extremely long spear, so Hatasuko prepared his Astrodeus power and pulled back his sword. Vaida stepped aside, but she watched carefully with her good eye; she wondered why the Interfectus would attack into an obvious trap.

Despite his curious trepidation, Hatasuko activated his power, slashed his sword, and destroyed the monster’s arm with an extraordinary crash. The slicing impact reduced the monster’s appendage to falling shards of shadows. He then bent down and picked up his shield with his left hand.

“I’m out of quintessence again! I hear your screaming voices as you yell into my skull; I can taste every drop of your misery. Please, please give me your strength! We’re all in this together,” Hatasuko said, speaking directly to the tempest.

            A shimmering symbol appeared in the dirt beneath his feet. A sudden burst of black fire engulfed Hatasuko and illuminated the nearby trees, but the Interfectus unleashed its next attack. Vaida equipped her hands with a shield and a rock, but the Interfectus did not target them; it instead launched shadow spheres at the island’s north shore.

Since her one eye struggled with depth perception, Vaida knew she had virtually no chance of striking a shadow ball from this angle. She tried anyway, but her rock missed. As the black fire faded from his body, Hatasuko saw countless bursts of blue fire; the northern sky illuminated with a bright flash of light. He and Vaida heard this attack destroy numerous ships in the distance. Countless screams rang out into the sky, but they were too far away to intervene. As a surge of pain and terror invigorated the tempest, Hatasuko and Vaida charged toward the Interfectus. Once again, he held her hand as they raced toward the monster.

Vaida asked, “Where does that energy come from? What fuels the array of black fire?”

“The energy comes from the lost souls in the tempest. I know I said it before all this, but the tempest has always been my curse and my fuel. Just now, it’s my fuel in a very literal sense! I think that symbol uses the energy of a lost life and transforms it into quintessence. I know that the voices in the tempest feel hopeless ever since we lost, but I guess they’re still willing to work with me. I think they still believe in my dream,” he explained.

Hatasuko suspected that this would confuse Vaida since she usually dealt with energy in a physical sense, but she thanked him anyway. They continued running between the trees and through the blocks toward the Interfectus.

“Wait, stop!” Vaida said, letting go of his hand.

Hatasuko stopped running and glared at the monster’s golden eyes. It remained still so that it could regenerate its broken left arm, so he looked back over his shoulder at his friend. Illuminated by the starlit smoke and the glow of distant fire, Vaida stood beneath a tree with her whip in her right hand. She rapidly glanced around.

“Vaida, what’s wrong?” Hatasuko asked.

“Someone’s here! I know I heard someone. But they shouldn’t be here; everyone should have evacuated by now! What if someone’s trapped?” Vaida asked with a frantic look.

Hatasuko recalled Vaida’s story about the night when the Interfectus took everything from her. Since she glanced frantically for someone who might be trapped, he wondered if she imagined it in her head; he wondered if she wanted to save someone else from the same fate she suffered. Nevertheless, Vaida gave up searching for the voice and kept running.

“Never mind. The wind is strange when we’re off the mainland. It was just the wind,” Vaida muttered with a troubled stare.

“It’s coming down!” Hatasuko shouted, pointing the tip of his sword straight ahead.

As she started running through the street, Vaida glanced up and saw that the Interfectus had stopped levitating; its giant armored feet fell toward the city. She knew that the crash-landing would cause an earthquake shockwave, so she searched both sides of the street for signs of danger. With only trees up ahead, she noticed an old belltower at the corner of the block. Hatasuko would run past it in a matter of seconds. The Interfectus had planned this carefully. Her whole system flooded with fear when she realized that he was in danger, but she fought through her trepidation.

“Hatasuko, the belltower! Look out!” she yelled in the moment of impact.

The feet of the Interfectus crashed down in the street and shook the city. While it struck the ground, the Interfectus summoned and launched a scattershot of shadow spheres, knowing that its attackers would be preoccupied. As the fragile tower crumbled from the shockwave and collapsed like a rockslide, Hatasuko lifted his shield to block the rocks, so it was up to Vaida to stop the scattershot.

As the city streets shook violently, Vaida jumped off the ground, jumped a second time by pushing off the wall of a house, and threw a rock with all her strength at the top of her jump. The shadow ball cluster had almost flown overhead, but her rock struck the second-slowest in the cluster, and then every sphere detonated with a blast of blue fire. The fiery shockwaves struck Vaida in midair and slammed her down into the street. She crash-landed on the hard dirt road at a disorienting speed, so she started rolling. Even though none of the flames had ignited her clothes, she kept rolling until she bumped into a tree.

When Vaida looked up at the Interfectus, she saw that the shadow demon had locked its golden eyes on her. She let out a quick scream and tried to pull her shield forward, but she was lying on top of it. The Interfectus noticed her inability to defend, so it transformed its right arm into a shadow claw. Its shadow arm of flashing blades shot down from the sky, but then Hatasuko unleashed his power from beneath the rubble of the belltower.

With a single swing of his supersonic sword, a storm of shambles and broken stone shot into the shadow claw’s path. Though this did not dent or break the Interfectus’ weapon, it knocked the claw off-course. As a result, the shadow claw struck the street on the other side of Vaida. She stumbled to her feet, hooked the shield’s prongs onto her back, and then dashed toward Hatasuko. A cloud of ash and rubble had nearly hidden the smoke-stained Astrodeus, but Vaida saw his silhouette despite her dizziness.

            “Vaida! Look out behind you!” Hatasuko roared.

But she was too slow. Hatasuko watched with horror as the Interfectus ripped its shadow claw out of the street; it swung its dagger fingers so swiftly that it tore straight through the ground. The shadow claw shot through the air, struck the shield on Vaida’s back, and sent her flying through the smoke. The sudden impact caused several joints in her body to crack. Vaida flew toward the cloud of debris with a yelp, so Hatasuko flung his whip in her path.

“GRAB ON!” Hatasuko shouted, though his voice was hidden by the crack of his whip.

In midair, Vaida grabbed onto the whip with her little hands. Hatasuko used all his strength to yank the whip inward. She changed direction so quickly that she feared the whip might snap. But before she realized her own speed, Vaida crashed into his chest with her forearms. Right after impact, as Hatasuko stumbled backward, he wrapped his arms around her so that she would not fall onto the street.

“I’m dizzy, I’m so sorry, I’m dizzy, I can’t see,” Vaida stammered.

In the background, the Interfectus slammed its massive foot into a row of four homes. Three buildings crumbled on impact, but the fourth both crumbled and flew into the sky as a storm of debris.

“Vaida, it’s alright! I’ll protect you. Every time the Interfectus tries to kill us, everyone else has a chance to escape! People are fleeing the island constantly. Once they’re safe, we can fight the Interfectus without playing defense. We’ll win for sure!” Hatasuko said.

“Wait, I have an idea! Can you try to hurt the Interfectus? I need it to regenerate,” Vaida said when she saw a pen in the dusty rubble.

“Yes! Try to run after me but please stay safe!”

Hatasuko burst forth from the dusty cloud and sprinted between the trees, racing toward the Interfectus. When their golden eyes met, he swung his shield and hooked it onto his back. With a mighty stomp, the Interfectus slammed its giant left foot and shook the city, but he ignored the jarring ground. He extracted two bullet-like rocks as he ran, so when he came within three blocks of the shadow demon, he spun his hips and threw his left rock with all the force his muscles could supply. Though he had not launched it with his power, his left arm still sent the shimmering weapon sailing through the sky.

When the monster shifted its gaze toward this first rock, Hatasuko activated his power and threw the second one with so much force that the recoil knocked him down. This second bullet-like rock blasted through the armor on the Interfectus’ left thigh; a burst of shadow shards rained down as a shockwave echoed in the sky.

As the Interfectus let out an earthshaking roar, Hatasuko exhaled with an ambivalent sigh. He celebrated his successful attack, but he also knew that the monster would not fall for this again. Still, he had thrown the rock with such incredible speed that it seemed to have pierced halfway through the demon’s body.

With a chorus of still-screaming voices in his head, all overloading his senses, Hatasuko hardly noticed when Vaida ran up to him from behind. When she reached him, she reached under the shield on his back. She pulled his sword out of its sheath and handed him the pen which she had taken from the rubble.

            “I think the black fire array is like a catalyst! I think it’s the real source of your quintessence energy. Do you remember what it looks like? Draw it on your sword, quickly! Maybe you can steal energy from the Interfectus itself,” Vaida hurriedly explained.

            Hatasuko nodded and grabbed the tip of his sword with his left hand. Vaida steadied his blade so that he could write on the starlit metal just beneath the tip. He closed his eyes and recalled the shape which had appeared under his feet five times now. Once he remembered it, he drew it on his weapon.

“I don’t know if this works, but I’m sure we’ll get the chance to test it. The Interfectus almost has its whole left arm back. As soon as it tries to attack, I will destroy it!”

But before Hatasuko and Vaida ran closer, the shadow demon slammed its right foot on the dirt road before them. The shockwave destroyed two small homes and shook the ground, throwing the two fighters into the air. Vaida let out a startled scream, but she pulled off her shield and held it tightly as she fell. The trembling island sent a cloud of smoke and dust over the city.

Above the cloak of smoke, the Interfectus summoned a scattershot of shadow spheres. Hatasuko prepared to throw the rock in his left hand. The Interfectus then launched its shadow balls at the east side of the city, so he activated his Astrodeus power and hurled the rock with supersonic speed. He watched the bullet-shaped rock fly between two shadow spheres and shoot off into the sky, missing altogether.

Wasting no time on his failure, Hatasuko raced forward, but Vaida stood frozen in the street. She watched with anxious terror as the scattershot fell upon the east side of Procella; an orchestra of explosions echoed across the sky. The cluster was so widespread that the nearest blast hit three blocks away, engulfing a tree and a house. A jolt shook her body when she heard a screaming voice from the nearby flames.

            Holding her shield in her right hand, Vaida ran toward the shouting voice. As she approached, she heard the scream become louder and more urgent. It was a scream of unparalleled agony; it was the scream of a human body burning to death. Before she reached the blazing home, the voice had gone silent. Ash and smoke drifted in the wind, and another lost soul fell into the vortex of misery.

Hatasuko felt this soul and several others as their screams echoed in the abyss, so he grimaced as he ran at his maximum speed. While the Interfectus regenerated the damage to its left thigh, it lifted from the ground and started to levitate. Determined to knock the demon down from the sky, Hatasuko jumped on top of an overturned wagon; he then jumped a second time onto a building’s roof. As he ran and jumped from rooftop to rooftop, he glared at the floating foot of the Interfectus. It quickly lifted away from the ground.

Hatasuko glanced ahead, finding a chimney which stuck out of the roof of a half-crumbled home. As he closed the distance between himself and the chimney, he threw his sword directly upward, and then he jumped with all his strength. This jump launched him upward while his momentum pulled him forward. His hands grabbed the chimney’s edge, and he pulled his body up before he slammed against it; he then jumped again by kicking off the chimney. As he flew into the sky with impressive speed, he caught the golden handle of his sword in his right hand. He then activated his power and swung at the monster’s massive foot right before it flew away.

            The glowing sword in his hand instantly shattered the Interfectus’ foot. The recoil of this strike sent Hatasuko flying backward at a diagonal angle. Before he went too far, the shield on his back slammed against a tree branch; the branch snapped on impact. He fell a short distance and landed clumsily on the street, though he was dazed from this high-speed motion. His joints ached deeply, but he had not suffered any major wounds. When he started to regain his senses, he realized that the Interfectus went silent; it had not made a sound after losing its left foot.

“It didn’t work,” Hatasuko grumbled as he climbed to his feet. The golden symbol remained on the edge of his sword. Even after slicing through the shadow demon’s foot, the array had not triggered. He wondered if this meant that the symbol only functioned because of his hold on the tempest. A moment later, he dismissed this idea; it would mean that only a person touched by the darkness could become an Astrodeus.

“I’m out of quintessence. Tempest of lost souls, please hear me and know-”

But before Hatasuko could finish, the levitating monster attacked with the first weapon of the Interfectus. Its shadow sword slashed so swiftly through the sky that he could not grab his shield; he merely swerved so that the shadow blade struck the shield on his back. The clash was startlingly loud, and the impact slammed him onto his knees at a high speed. He skidded so quickly that the dirt street tore the fabric on his pants and skinned his knees. At the end of the skid, he somersaulted forward and dashed away from the Interfectus. He heard the whoosh of the shadow sword swinging at him again, but without any quintessence, he had no way to fight back. Right before his shins would have been ripped from his body, Hatasuko jumped up and over the slashing blade. It instead tore through a home on the left side of the street.

“I can’t recharge if I can’t stand still,” Hatasuko exclaimed, but he quickly realized that the Interfectus had figured this out first.

The Interfectus transformed its right arm into a shadow claw and attacked again. Hatasuko jumped away from it and spun in midair so that he could block the claw. But the claw’s blades were curved, so two reached around his shield and tore gashes in his stomach. He let out a startled shout as two scraps of bloody skin fell to the ashy street. When he landed on the ground with a stumble, he glared at the outstretched blade-arm and tried to recharge his power. However, he was too slow; the monster’s shadow claw lunged at him again. This time, the weapon struck his shield and threw him against the door of a smoke-stained home.

Hatasuko hit the door so quickly that it blew open. He fell onto his bloody knees on the dirt floor, wishing that the array of black fire would appear beneath his body, but there was no time. The Interfectus stomped its left foot elsewhere in the city. Everything shook from the shockwaves; they threw Hatasuko off the ground before he caught his breath. As the house shook from the tremors, he noticed another person standing in this room. A middle-aged man clenched a wooden table with both hands.

Since the Interfectus knew his hiding place, it unleashed another attack with its sword of shadows. Hatasuko knew that the nightmare demon would try to strike, but he could not see through the wooden walls of the crumbling house. With a desperate dive, he threw himself to the floor since he anticipated a burst of blue fire, but he was wrong. The high-speed sword of shadows sliced swiftly through the wooden walls without slowing down. It tore through the air above his head and sliced through the middle-aged man. The wind from this attack launched the table and the man’s bottom half into the wreckage.

“The Interfectus will surely strike again to finish the job. I need quintessence, and I need it right now. But there’s no time! The roof is collapsing; I’ll die if I stay.”

Hatasuko suddenly remembered Madeline’s words—that quintessence comes from the spirits of the dead. He could not access the lost souls in the tempest because he could not stand still, so he only had one other choice. He would have to use the spirit of a person at the edge of the afterlife. He had no time to think about it. With countless screams roaring on in the abyss, Hatasuko charged forward, dodged parts of the falling roof, and tore his sword through the top half of the middle-aged man’s body.

            The symbol on his sword triggered even though he was in motion. He carried the glowing array with him, and black fire ravaged the corpse of the man left in his wake. The quintessence recharged him as he threw himself out of the crumbling home. However, his body protested with a layer of cold sweat and a pulse of adrenaline. On a subconscious level, he knew what this meant. He knew that he had just killed a person. Though the victim was seconds away from dying anyway, they still never had a choice in the matter.

Since the array of black fire quickly faded, the shadow demon had not seen it; the Interfectus still believed that Hatasuko was defenseless.

In the next moment, when the Interfectus struck again with a diagonal slash, Hatasuko pulled his shield forward while pulling back his sword. Right before the shadow sword would have struck his shield, he used his power and swung his sword. Glowing with energy, he shattered the monster’s right arm into a shower of shadow shards.

The Interfectus roared and appeared to stumble as it stood on one foot. Without its left foot and right arm, the monster struggled to balance its own weight, so Hatasuko took advantage of its vulnerability. He pulled his right sword back, activated his Astrodeus power, forced his body to glow with a mystic aura, and then threw his sword into the sky. The weapon pierced the smoke and unleashed a sonic boom that echoed across the city. Countless eyes watched as his sword struck the monster in the chest.

The demon’s armor shattered as the sword blew through its body. Despite its massive size, the Interfectus stumbled backward from this one attack. In slow motion, Hatasuko watched as it appeared to start falling. The transparent layer of blackness in the sky trembled and slowly receded. As it retracted, the black armor on the Interfectus grew translucent. It was fading away.

Though he had not killed it, Hatasuko knew he had defeated the Interfectus. It was seconds away from retreating from existence. He watched with pride in his golden eyes as the shadow demon faded into nothingness. Once the monster and its transparent layer disappeared, a cheering roar bellowed from the distant crowd.

             “I know I have no right to sacrifice anyone else for my reasons, but I sure can’t say I regret it. He may have had no choice, but at least he died for the greater good. There’s no telling how many lives I saved because I used something that wasn’t mine,” Hatasuko whispered as he fell to his knees.

Hatasuko set down his weapons as his sweat poured into the dirt. His body felt terribly exhausted. His bones and joints ached from the many impacts and injuries.

“It feels wrong, but it feels justified. Even the voices in the tempest, even they seem to support me. They should. I defeated the Interfectus. It’s a steppingstone to freeing this world from misery.”

Though his pounding head concealed the distant cheers of Procella’s citizens, Hatasuko realized that he had not seen Vaida since he went on the attack. His body heaved from exhaustion and ached from injuries, but he climbed to his feet and stumbled toward the place where he last saw her. As he walked through an intersection which was strewn with debris, he realized that many buildings continued to smolder; the steamy air hung heavy with ash and smoke. He stretched out his back, using the full extent of his height to search the ashy streets for his friend.

“Vaida’s really an amazing girl. She’s more afraid of the Interfecti than anyone I know, and yet she still does this. I’ve seen her take off running just because Lazaro cooked some agilus meat. The poor girl’s haunted by the memory of fire, but she still fights the Interfecti. She fights them in a battleground that’s rife with ash and embers. She runs headfirst into her nightmare just so she can save lives—so that she can stop the monster that created her nightmare.”

As Hatasuko thought about this, he pushed his semiconscious body to a jogging pace. His shoe nearly slipped on a thick pile of ashes, but when he regained balance, he saw a woman crouching in the street up ahead. Though the starlight illuminated her dark hair, she was just a silhouette as she knelt beside a burning home. The smoke in this area smelled especially foul, but he recognized this odor with ease—it was the stench of burning flesh.

             “Vaida, are you ready to go? The Interfectus is gone,” Hatasuko said.

Vaida threw her head over her shoulder and looked back at him. She could not see him with her blind eye, so she turned a little more just to see him. Ash lightly coated her face, and a trail of dried tears meandered down her cheeks.

“I’m so sorry; I didn’t want to shut down. I didn’t mean to shut down. I just heard the scream, and by the time I got here… it was already too late to save her,” she said.

Hatasuko knew that no words could allay her pain. Instead, he walked up to her, crouched beside her, and opened his bruised arms. Without a word, Vaida pushed herself into his arms and nuzzled her face into his chest.