Chapter 12 #5
A splintering crack formed through the center of the scaffold. Netherworld Jesstin leaped just in time to avoid falling through. Terror-filled shrieks resounded as the ground rumbled, tearing several chasms into the field.
He searched for Elloven and found her straining against Taven’s efforts to guide her down the steps. Her screams followed Past Jesstin.
Look at me. See me, Elloven. See me. Jesstin ignored the world coming to ruin and waited. See me, Elloven. See me!
Elloven stopped squirming. Confusion interlaced her panic. She breathed in, and her mouth hung, bewildered, on her slow exhale. Her attention turned to where Past Jesstin had fled, then back to him. Behind her, Taven was anxious but waiting.
I love you and I will find you, Jesstin mouthed and waited only long enough for her expression to reflect her understanding. He nodded at Taven to get her the hell out of there and jumped off the scaffold just as it caved in on itself.
The sky darkened and pummeled the earth with hail the circumference of small cannon shots. One smashed into a man’s head and knocked him to his knees. Another sent a child into a crevasse as wide as a trail.
Jesstin ducked beneath a tree to reorganize.
From there, he could see the totality of the pandemonium.
The field was unrecognizable, half of it rent open, the rest marked with craters.
Bodies were strewn everywhere, blood painting the dried grass.
People were running, sobbing, and crashing into one another.
One hurled himself into a chasm after kissing the mouth of a dead woman.
He’d upended the Conductor’s game, but had he actually changed the future by running before the bond was sealed?
Roots from the tree ripped from the ground like they were climbing out.
Jesstin scrambled to his feet, looking for his next move, and found the Conductor striding his way, its lips peeled back in a lethal snarl.
It was no longer the elusive gamemaster, the cryptic riddler, or the duplicitous merchant.
Whatever the eventual consequence, Jesstin had gotten under its skin and had upset the outcome, and the savageness sizzling in the creature’s eyes made it clear it was not merely surprised but apocalyptic.
It was a grim victory though. The Conductor had fashioned a maze of death and destruction that left Jesstin nowhere to go. He darted to the next tree, but it unearthed itself, and so did the next. His only chance was to keep running.
Jesstin shot out from the safety of the boughs with both arms over his head.
Hail slammed the ground on his left and right, another landing right where his boot almost had.
Instinct screamed at him that he must find a way out, that his death in the illusory world would become canonic.
He pivoted onto a diagonal path that cut far too close to the Conductor, but there wasn’t a better way, nor the time to find one.
A man slammed into him, hard enough to slow him, but it was the disruption to his balance that betrayed him. He hit the ground hard, his face inches from the edge of a chasm that smelled of scorched sulfur.
Pain split him as he shoved upward, but he stopped midway.
What was he doing there anyway? He’d never actually stood a chance, battling an ancient demon—one man against an unstoppable force, a man who was just vainglorious enough to believe he could not only resurrect the woman he loved but free millions of dead people.
Jesstin closed his eyes, and his thoughts drifted from the massacre.
He could die there. Maybe he should. He could simply roll into the abyss and be done.
The Conductor might find him when he returned, but assuming it would have any interest in him after he was stripped of his necromancy was just as arrogant as believing he could have won.
Rough hands tugged the back of his collar and flipped him onto his back. In a clap of pure instinct, he didn’t fight it, instead pretending to be unconscious.
The Conductor tried to rouse him with a rough shake, but he had nothing to fight back, nothing with which to defend himself. His heart pumped faster and faster as the creature slapped him, ground its boot into his side, then, exasperated, fell to the earth for a closer look.
One final, avaricious idea took shape. He’d get just one chance. Only one. If the creature’s angle was off, or an arm was positioned wrong...
Fuck it. Jesstin opened his eyes, zeroed in on the target, and launched himself forward with a roar that seared its way out of his gut. His hand sliced the air and connected with the Conductor’s flame. With a triumphant howl, he closed it in his fist and yanked with all his might.
Everything stopped. Hail halted midair. Blood from a nearby woman’s neck streamed sideways and hovered in place. The wailing and cursing and mayhem muted.
All except the sharp ping of a chain breaking.
The Conductor’s mouth hung unnaturally askew. Its tongue moved in crazed lashes, its eyes following the same pattern. Up, down, up, down, and around, like an animal in the forest who’d been surrounded. It batted its chest and screeched.
Jesstin crawled backward until he had enough distance to stand.
He took one dazed look at the pulsing diadem in his hand before shoving it deep into his pocket, where he’d put the talisman Elloven had scolded him for being careless with.
It wasn’t there, but he didn’t need it anymore.
He had the only thing that mattered now.
He waited for the Conductor’s transformation into a fiend, but what happened instead was far more disturbing.
Its lips were the first to go. They tore away from the creature’s face and dissolved, the resultant dust floating in place.
Its eyes went next, its sockets spitting them out in pops, then the fingers, shredding into stringy strips, and half of the architect of the biggest prison in history was no more.
The scenery faded. Colors dulled to dreary browns and grays. The people disappeared one by one.
Jesstin turned back to confirm Elloven had left, but he didn’t feel her at all.
His senses had returned in the aftermath, and he knew absolutely that she was not there, not anymore.
The trial had been his alone, and the past was still the past. Elloven and Taven had slipped in, somehow, but it wasn’t for them.
“I found you before. I’ll do it again,” he said and launched himself at the edges of the tableau.
As he crashed into the crimson snow, a discordant warbling sounded behind him, and he looked back just as the entire scene retracted inward.
He waited, his hand fixed in his pocket, until Mythgarde was gone.
Only then did he realize he’d lost his chance to retrieve his second vial.
The Conductor’s sacred flame warmed his leg through his thrashed trousers. He could destroy it. Should destroy it. But something bade him reach into his pocket and fold it into his palm instead.
The snowy scape dissolved into the ruddy, dun ochers of the spiral. It wasn’t where they’d lost each other but somewhere deeper, closer to the center, and he knew this not from any landmark, or even the map he’d lost in the turmoil, but from hard-earned wisdom.
Geysers of molten liquid sprayed the distant sky. It seemed a lifetime ago he’d leaped over the lava like a daredevil, Elloven latched to his shoulder.
Two doors appeared directly ahead in his path.
They were both a plain, muted gray, not a stripe on either.
There was nothing decorous about them at all, save a for single word carved on each.
The first read THEM. The second, YOU. Between them was a sign, crooked and stuck crudely into the clay earth. ALL ENDS BEGIN HERE.
Jesstin surveyed the cursed hellscape. There was no sign of the Conductor, and though he’d started to feel Elloven again, he didn’t see her either.
What each door offered was clear. The one on the left was for the dead, the one Mon had poured all his faith into.
On the right was Jesstin’s way home, his means of saving Elloven.
If he wasn’t careful, it was also the door that would offer entry to Ryquin.
He’d never promised the dead deliverance, but his conscience couldn’t carry the weight of knowing he’d damned them to worse misery.
He’d open THEM first, then he’d find Elloven.
And pray like hell he could actually do what he’d crossed worlds to do.
Jesstin approached THEM and reached for the handle, expecting a shock or a sting, some sort of response.
It felt no different than handles he’d used a thousand times before though: cool, metallic, smooth.
No one was there to explain whether there were rules, or what exactly would happen next.
He was on his own. The task, and its consequences, belonged to him alone.
But when he tugged, the door wouldn’t budge. He tried again with more force, but it was soundly stuck, like the frame itself was sealed with mortar.
Jesstin backed up until he had enough runway, then vaulted forward and slammed his entire body into it, but it didn’t even budge. He went sprawling onto the dusty earth.
With his shoulder on fire, he climbed to his feet and searched for a key. He looked under rocks, dug in the dirt, and patted along the door’s frame. But then he noticed there was no keyhole at all.
He mopped the sweat from his eyes. Guardians, he was thirsty. Parched. Their provisions could be anywhere. He doubted there was water anywhere near the lifeless span. There had been no animals, plants... not even desert shrubs. It was a place where nothing could thrive.
The Conductor’s flame throbbed in his hand. He’d almost forgotten it was there.
Jesstin tied the broken clasp into a knot and slipped the diadem over his neck. He waited to see if anything happened, but there was nothing, just like when his own flame had been stolen.
But this time when he reached for the door, it opened.
Flew open was closer to what happened, and the light... The sheer incandescence was indescribable. There was an opposing polarity to it, driving him away step by step. Not for you, it seemed to say, and the longer he fought it, the dizzier he became.
How long it would take for the dead to come, to even realize they could come, he couldn’t guess, but he’d fulfilled his promise to Mon and the rest. He could be selfish again, and all he wanted was to find Elloven.
Jesstin walked beyond the doors. The same nothingness painted the end of the Infinitum’s known world. Explosions boomed in the distance. Volcanoes erupted with greater frequency, as though calling to the dead to hurry, hurry.
The ground rattled, and his balance faltered. It happened again, even stronger. What had Asterin called that phenomenon again? He couldn’t reach far enough into his mind to remember. It was too scattered for anything more than the primeval need to find her.
Sun breached the horizon of the once-dark Ignis. A new day.
A new era.
A passage to the east, toward the molten bedlam, curved into the start of the foothills. On the path, there appeared to be a scattering of something that didn’t belong there. He tempered the hope building in his chest as he wandered over.
Elloven lay on her side, an arm extended above her head.
Hope turned to fear when he rolled her onto her back and she didn’t respond. Her flame was still there, still intact. She was breathing, the low and shallow inhalations and exhalations of someone in deep rest.
“My heart.” He choked out the desperate words as her flame kissed his cheek. The ground tremored as he held her. “We did it. We’ve done it, El. Elloven, it’s done. Elloven!”
She didn’t stir, but she would. She would when he opened the door marked YOU. He knew she would, and until then, he would keep her safe from a world turning on itself.
Jesstin gathered her in his arms and carried her to where the land rose into the hills.
Nowhere seemed safe from the dismantlement, but it was the best he could do without losing sight of the doors.
He settled them against the rock face, Elloven’s head in his lap as she continued her deep slumber.
Behind them, the atmosphere erupted with even greater intensity.
He brushed the hair away from her face, leaned against the rock in exhaustion, and waited for the dead to begin their passage.