Chapter 13B: Usurper of the Underworld

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 manifest a tunnel between my eyes and a world where she and I still stood alone 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 the details of the gravity that would derail a projectile.

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 had no idea 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.

Note: There is still one more part.