Out of the water, Into the Storm

OUT OF THE WATER, INTO THE STORM
JONNAH Z. KENNEDY

The sea is never full, it is forever hungry as it swallows up fisherman after fisherman. But, it is the storm that chews them up for the sea to swallow. It is a co-op. ---Theonardan Fixhocke, 7 Chambers Society Foarth Brother, Alchemical Scientist
Thunder.
Vèolité sat on her father’s bed, staring out the window as the rain showered down over the city. Lightning crackled, but she didn’t take note of it.
“We should be going now.” Alfisch said from the other side of the room. Vèolité turned to him, a snarl on her face.
“That’s all you have to say? That’s all you think? You just want to leave?” She snapped at him and shot to her feet. She swept her hair out of her face and jabbed a finger at him. “Just because you didn’t know the guy doesn’t mean you can just leave him stranded! You can’t just leave like it doesn’t matter!” She continued. He shook his head and looked at a strange item on the dresser.
“It doesn’t hurt me. I’ve done it many times before, and I can do it again. Father or no father, he is but a dead body now.” Alfisch said and put the item down. Vèolité punched him hard in the arm. It didn’t seem to affect him.
“How could you be so heartless?!” She screamed at him. Thunder shouts, breaking into the conversation. They both stand there staring at each other, or at least Vèolité is staring. Alfisch is looking at the ground, but he is content.
“Because I have no heart. And it is one of the things you learnt to do. To feel for the dead is to be of the dead. To mourn those whom we have lost is to become lost ourselves—it is to hold the world on your shoulders like Atlas.” He said and looked at her dead in the eyes as he did so. “That is how.” Vèolité turned away from him and she put her head in her hands. She pushed her fingers through her hair and held back angry and despaired tears.
“What do you mean you have no heart?” She said not turning to him, but interesting herself to the picture on the wall. It was of the city at night, with all the lights lit up like a thousand fireflies.
“When I reached the Society, my heart was weak from so many days and hours in the Deserts and Interim. When I reached the Society I was not showered with love or honor, but pity and resentment because I could not survive the perilous journey across the Interim. Yes they brought me water and biscuits, but none of them said much more than ‘Are you here to deliver the mail?’ and when I shook my head no and told them ‘I wish to become part of the Society’ they didn’t speak to me for more than a month, they were deliberating. There was a single little boy, probably the offspring of one of the younger Societers, he came up to me and said, ‘Mister, why do you have a death wish?’ I will never remember that moment. He had asked the question I had been asking myself for that entire month. And even today, I wonder if Todd can read people’s minds or read their pasts. Good kid.” Alfisch turned back to her and spoke once again just as thunder rumbled. “Do you understand now?” Vèolité nodded and Alfisch began to the door.
“Let us go now, please.” He said with his hand on the door knob. Vèolité swallowed and stood. She nodded even though he could not see her.
“Yes, yes we can. I just need to say goodbye once more.” She said.
In the bathroom she drained the tub and covered her father’s private area. She cleared the sickle and placed it on the counter. Alfisch was on the elevator leaning on the mirror wall. He stared at himself. Did he really look like a ghost?
She drug his body across the floor of the room and she pushed him on the bed—a dead person wasn’t as light as one might think.
Alfisch sat on the floor of the elevator with his arms wrapped around his legs. Somewhere, thunder rumbled and something struck his heart. He swallowed something hard, and a tear suddenly slipped down the side of his face.
Vèolité placed undergarments on her father, then she placed his favorite shirt on him and his favorite pants. She kept his feet bare. She opened the window, water being thrown on her arms in buckets, and grabbed one of the flowers from the vines. She placed the single thorn-ed flower in his hands and then kissed the tips of her fingers and she placed them on his forehead.
Alfisch wailed in sadness and he pushed his palms against his eyes. Why did he feel this way? Why did he feel like something had just been broke inside of him? Why? Why when he had barely known his father? Why?
“And when thy soul is set to either Isés or Regadex, their body shall be lain to rest, their blood set to a flower, and thy’s loved one—if there shall be such a thing—will set the final tear to one’s head.”
He leaned on the wall in the hall, the ghost children were gone, or hiding in a corner. He beat on the wall and hollered out in rage. He didn’t even know him, but why did he feel this way? Tears drained down from his eyes like an overflowing sewer pipe. His cheeks were scarlet, and he shook with both despondency and fury. Fury at his sister, fury at his father. Despondency for his sister, and at his father.
“Whether there is silence or storm, there shall be tragedy that follows those who have been tormented by the lost, and so let them be at peace so that their soul as well may be at rest, and so that the lost will not return to haunt them in the dark life. There shall be a perpetual peace between the living and the dead when this deal is made.” She swallowed and let several tears run down her face and onto his. She wiped them away and smiled at her father, smiled a weary smile and she whispered through the thunder, “Goodnight daddy. Goodbye.”
She found the book of matches in the kitchen. She went back to the room. The match-head and the flame was a mellow golden flicker. She threw the match.
The room is set ablaze.
She stepped off of the elevator sniffling. Alfisch looked at her with red eyes and a tear streaked face. She wanted to smile, but she could find no strength. All she could say was, “I thought you had no heart?” He wiped the tears away and without thought, they met each other in the middle and hugged. They walked out of the front doors in this position. Vèolité didn’t look back as she felt the heat of the burning apartment on their backs. She then remembered the ghost children. She looked back and they were standing at the door, illuminated by the flames that had eaten the building in a matter of seconds. Their eyes hollow and black like night. They held hands, the boy held the teddy bear, the girl held a doll. In between them was a ball.
She turned away and cried in the rain. More thunder.

________________________

“Do you have a horse of some sort, or some kind of teleportation device, something that will get us out of the city without being noticed, seen, or just quickly?” Vèolité asked. They had walked over thirty blocks from the apartment, still Vèolité still saw the burning ghost children, and he could still smell the fire from here.
The buildings were quiet in this wing of the city. All of them made with the same brown and grey bricks, columns in front to look ornamental. There were the broken and moss covered statues in the park. The Oak trees were stuck in between two buildings, there were ancient edifices that were no longer habitable that stood as decoration to the city. Soon they would be diminished to nothing but a pile of rubble.
“I do not,” Alfisch said after a long minute of both of them looking at their surroundings. “I came to the city through the Labyrinth.” He said. Vèolité looked up at him with amazement.
“The Ancient tunnels? How did you get through it without coming face to face with a Vampyre? Or a Ghoul?” She asked. He would have smirked, but he wasn’t in the mood to be arrogant.
He tugged a small stick from his belt and then whispered “Almòr èllè.” And then the stick extended into a five foot long stick that was nothing more. He slammed the butt of it on the ground and they stopped.
“This is Serendipity, my Helix Staff. This staff may look like just a piece of wood, but it can rip open portals to other dimensions, conjure the forces of lighting from the sky, and fire from the Planes of Regadex. It also summons your Hérum, which is your true warrior. When you get to the Society, and if they accept you, then you will also receive one. I will teach you how to use it.” He says. Vèolité nodded and they turned on the street.
He whispered the same word that caused it to open and it returned to just a stick. He clicked it to his belt again and she continued to stare it or some time.
Interestingly primitive for the Society, or at least from what I have heard, she thought. She did not voice this, but went along with him as they came to an ally where the sewer lid was thrown against the wall, and there was a dead hobo leaning against the thirty foot fence that divided the ally.
“Oh my goodness! What did you do to him?” Vèolité snapped and turned to Alfisch quickly. He shrugged nonchalantly.
“He was in my way.” Vèolité gawked at him with astonishment. She had never heard or seen such a thing.
“So you just killed him? What is wrong with you people in the East?” She snapped. He was casually climbing down the ladder that led into the sewers. He spoke as he went, she stood there gawking and not making a move.
“You have to do what must be done sometimes Vèolité that is the first lesson you will need to know for the East. Sacrifices must be made, and because of that casualties will not be spared. No one man is different from any other, so why should I care if one man dies when there are billions more just like him? Become wise, dear sister, look abroad and understand.”
“Yeah, and have a more positive outlook on life.” She said and began down the hole into the sewers.
When they reached the bottom Alfisch pulled out a small metal object and he flipped a switch on it. An orb of light exploded and made Vèolité cover her eyes for a moment, before the light dimmed and became manageable. He held it out. Vèolité stared at the light. It seemed to be neither plasma or fire, nor bulb or electricity. It seemed to be purely magic.
“What sorcery?” Vèolité asked as they began to walk. Alfisch now seemed to be in the mood of smirks and grins.
“It is called Enori Light. It can last four hundred thousand years, so long as the sun burns for so long. It was invented by a Society member in -1313, in which time the Demon Lord Oberon rose from Regadex and shrouded the entire Country in darkness. The Society member rode for many weeks, far west he went. He reached Mount Tallis and climbed it, his horse had been killed by a Beastly. When the climbed up the mountain he began to notice that there was lighting in the clouds that shrouded the west. He found that if he got high enough, he would be able to collect lighting and use it as light to defeat Lord Oberon. He had nothing to harness the lighting save for a jar and a piece of tubular metal. The jar would do no good so he took his chances with the tubular metal. When he rose it up, lighting broke from the sky like a crack ripping apart the earth, and it spiraled into the tube. He fumbled to turn it lengthways and when he did this the lighting shot out against the black backdrop of the sky and lighting branched out across the sky in a rainbow of effulgent colors. They caused a large area of clouds to dissipate and break free—sunlight showered in like rain.
“He hurried down and for nearly a month he ran bad, always running. He never stopped, not even to find water. By the time he had reached the Society again, he was nearly dead. He lived long enough to tell them about his idea he had come up with, and he lived long enough to pass on his tale. The Society worked quickly and on their best horses they rode far west, and they saw the little pool of light that cascaded in from the sky, the hole the member created was nearly gone. Quickly they rode to the top of the mountain, or as far as they could go, and with the new device they created, the tube inside of it, they harness the next bolt of lightning, but there wasn’t a single one, but many as the electricity was attracted to the conductors. The quickly closed the caps on the devices and rode back to the Society. Once there they called Lord Oberon to the Society and released the lighting it destroyed Oberon in a great storm of incandescence and brilliance.
“After Oberon had died, they celebrated the member whose name came to be known as Enoch. They created the light so that whenever it was dark, a member would use Enoch’s light and burn it bright. And thus, the Enori Light.” Alfisch finished the story just as they reached the end of the long, long hall in the sewers.
“Sounds much like a fantasy. From what I have learned in my past studies, such things would never be possible. How was he able to turn the tube so quickly?” She asked querulously. Alfisch did not smile but put a hand on the metal bars in front of them.
“Well, I don’t know. The Nan at the Society who told me the bedside tales never told me how such things were possible, she just said they were. She said the people of the Civilized East questioned too much and believed to narrowly. She said that the people of science were too dug up in their studies to ever believe in such tales of fate. I would say it is one of the reasons you feel so bored with these people. Bored because you have heard no fantastical tales of extraordinary feats to give you some hope that nothing is impossible.” Vèolité pondered this. When was the last time she had heard such a story? She read novels very seldom, and she heard stories much less. There were few novels of any kind in the cities, and those that were there were thin, and un-extraordinary. They were about rich men and their rich ways, and poor women, and their poor ways. Nothing that particularly captured her interest. Unlike science. Science and Mathematics was something that made much more sense to her. It told her how things worked: Why Stars died after such a relatively short period of time. Why something did what it did, and how to find x in an equation and why x was x.
It was somehow instilled in her mind that this was right, and that these fantastical stories were blasphemy and for children. Fantasy was nothing to be proud of, nor something to be proud to know.
“In the meanwhile, come along.” Alfisch said as he threw the Enori Light through the bars. It sent up a storm of dust where it landed. The light orbited several feet off the ground, lighting everything around it. Alfisch put his hands to the bars and wrapped his fingers around the bars. They were cold as ice, but he ignored this and closed his eyes. “You will have to allow me to lean on you when I do this, for it will sap me of a great amount of mana. Do you understand sister?” Vèolité nodded and then spoke up. He nodded himself and then began to poetically and fluently spill the lines of the Intra Tralit cast.

Ún alis Aeolus saphros
kadril on taeallè tedril morphasè
Mirvoùs y Terous pillitintra

Suddenly he fell straight through the bars and hit the ground hard. Vèolité inhaled sharply and she tried to put her hands on the bars but she too fell straight through as though going through water.
She groaned as she rolled from the top of her brother. He was exhaling hard and his chest rose and fell like an inflating and deflating balloon.
“Alfisch! By the Gods!” She said and quickly scrambled over to him. He looked at her and his eyes were paralyzed. She didn’t know what to do as she stared at him, gasping for water like a fish. Then she got it.
“Water, yes…” She then slapped her forehead. Why had they forgotten to get water? Why didn’t he have water?” She growled and scrambled around for something to do, but then she heard him give a loud whooping cough. She whipped around just as she was about to scream for help, even though it wouldn’t have come anyways.
He shuttered and looked at her. “What a valiant effort to save me my dear sister.”
“Oh shut up and let’s get moving.” She said. She helped Alfisch to his feet and he leaned on her with his arm over her shoulder, though she was much shorter than him. She picked up the Enori light and they moved forward, Alfisch shuttering with every step.
But, it was Vèolité’s turn to shutter when she suddenly heard a pair of extra footsteps.

TO BE CONTIUNED IN EPISODE 3
LABYRINTH PART I OF III