Chapter 14C: Extraneous Solutions

Though the climb up the staircase had stolen the breath from her lungs, Aeliana stumbled into the room with a dagger clenched in her hand. Her sickness had sent sweat upon her skin which shimmered in the dim light of Bellaina’s home, but the brightest light came from the glow on her dagger as she slowly made her way toward the bloody henchman. He desperately writhed and struggled to stumble away from her, but his injuries defied his will more than the plague defied hers. As he cowered and pleaded for mercy, Aeliana sank her dagger in through the back of his neck. An Array of Black Fire ignited on impact, and he fell to the ground as black fire engulfed his hopeless body. I positioned myself so that I could watch the fire extinguish the light in his eyes. I watched his soul burn into an energy which then flooded into her.

I said to Aeliana as I pulled a pen from my side, “I must go into the streets and then slay everyone I find. I can already tell that we are running out of time. If we luck upon our target then his power will be mine.”

“How do you know that we are running out of time?” asked Aeliana as she slid her fingers into mine.

But I answered while she realized that my hand was cold as ice, “Because the time we wasted on this trap has paid a second price. The same sickness which burns in you has ignited me as well, and I know in just days I will become trapped inside myself. We no longer have the time to engineer a better plan. I need to find and kill the healer now as quickly as I can. I will use their power to save you and then I’ll save myself. I will save your life even if I have to kill everyone else.”

“There are too many people in this city, and we cannot kill them all. Not before our bodies break beneath us. Not on our own. But that woman in the basement said that she knows the secrets of black fire. Let’s free her and then find out what she knows,” Aeliana said as she tugged upon my clothes.

With no other alternatives, I nodded and then steadied my sword. Despite the sickness which slowly sought to steal my body, I could tell that I had a few seconds before Elijah’s power would expire. With the heightened power I had pilfered from the man who once saved us, I raced down the staircase and then slammed my sword upon the bars which locked the old woman away. She watched with wide eyes as sparks lit the darkness and sent shattered metal crashing to the ground. I could see an anxious stare beneath her eyes as if she suspected that I might kill her as I had killed so many others within her earshot, but I simply sheathed my sword and stepped toward the staircase. She winced as she stood upright and then crossed from the shadows of the broken cage into the dim light of the basement.

Aeliana asked the old woman from the top of the stairs, “Why is it that Bellaina first put you in there?”

The caged woman answered as she twitched her nose, “I am the one who taught the dark queen all that she knows. Before all this began, she gave shelter to me and my son when we sailed here from a distant land. She gave me the name Claire so that I could blend more easily with the people of this city. In exchange for her protection, I taught her about the powers and the fuel we possess. She was ruthless enough to build an empire in the underworld of this city with that knowledge, but I had no use for it myself. Black fire destroyed the island I come from. Countless souls snuffed out in an instant by a single woman – an island of empty homes and rotting corpses. To thank me for this knowledge, Bellaina helped me hide with distance from the darkness she designed. I lived a normal life for many years by way of camouflage… at least until recently. But a very short time ago, my dear son died in the bakery he worked at by the shore. He burned to death in the crossfire of a battle driven by the darkness she designed.

“I tried to reason with myself that death is natural, but you know as well as I do that no one wants to be bound by natural cycles when we see ourselves as strong enough to overcome them. I found Bellaina and begged her for quintessence. She had the means to give me more quintessence than I could ever take on my own. But instead of complying or answering in any way, she had her henchman hurl me into the cage. I never had the chance to learn her reason for this, but it makes no difference now.”

“How does quintessence have anything to do with losing your son?” asked Aeliana as she fought with herself to not come undone.

“The woman who killed my whole island told me my power when she left me alive. Somehow she could see the power I possessed ahead of time. She explained that I possess a power to bring back the dead, but the cost extends far beyond any other power in this world. It would take an ocean of death to bring back a single soul. I knew I could never kill that many people on my own, so I instead turned to Bellaina for help. That dream may have died, but still I thank you for saving me from this dungeon. I still don’t know why Bellaina chose to cage me,” explained the old woman.

I shook my head and said with a sigh, “That confirms a suspicion I couldn’t deny. You and I both share the same goal but without a way; we need to kill countless people in a matter of days. But we have no means through which we could achieve this goal, so my only choice now is to kill without control.”

But Claire shook her head slowly and said, “I know of a way we can come out ahead. The woman who killed everyone on my island had not killed them one-by-one in the streets, or at least not most of them. She killed them in a series of large Arrays set across the town. They were set as traps and completed only when enough victims gathered in each inscription. A single Array can burn more than one soul at a time. I always wondered why no one had bothered to sacrifice an entire city on an Array of Black Fire.”

I nodded slowly in concurrence. But even as my body struggled to fight the sickness that seeped into my bones, I managed to realize the reason why a citywide Array of Black Fire had not succeeded in the past. Everyone who had ever tried a large-scale Array had not studied enough math, and that was the reason their symbol would not ignite. It was a matter of differential geometry in a branch called geodesics. Those who had drawn a large Array in the past had drawn it as if it were inscribed on a flat surface like a table. But the shape of this world is spherical like that of a planet or a long-dead star, so a two-dimensional shape cannot be drawn upon it undistorted for the same reason that a flat map cannot perfectly represent a three-dimensional world. It would be like trying to draw a large triangle on a rubber ball; the curvature would warp its edges unless it was drawn very small.

“Others may have failed, but there still exists a way. I know that with our hands we can forge a large Array. If we are to do this then I need you both to help me. We will draw it on the beach before the gathering by the sea. People will gather in the Array while one edge is incomplete, as long as it is hidden underground and we are all discrete. Every soul in this city will get caught in our Array, and then the black fire will burn their lives away. It is then that I will seize the power that I seek,” I explained despite that my sickness made me weak.