He transformed into a minion of Hades before her.
Echoes of the alarm grew distant inside the harbor of the cave. Only her own inhalation rang in her ears. Her breath became more erratic through his fingers as she stared upward. A few shards of light illuminated the cave. The light retreated from the world above, however the quietude of above did not last long, as sudden explosions replaced the chorus of the Chaots. The soldiers had come. Only their heroic inspiration to free her led them. And though they were brave, this place was the territory of the infected. The Chaots had the advantage in the dark, dank corridors of the forest.
The fair-haired Chaot pulled his catch closer to him, as if she were the doll at his whims. He had no intention of releasing her or bringing her to the Pathfinder. She had to fight. Without her hands free, she did what Hector taught and rammed her head into the Chaot’s. Another tooth shattered and broke away from his jaw as if he were actually made of porcelain. His hold loosened for seconds, and she was able to free one hand and go for his collar. But he rammed forward himself, grabbing her around her head as if to decapitate or smother her. Tighter he pushed his arm around her face, she could not breath. She struggled against him, but soon that struggle just became an uncoordinated fight wanting air again. All she could think to do was bite him; she clenched her teeth down on the Chaot’s arm in hopes to free herself from the death grip.
Iron bitterness poured within her mouth as her teeth cut through his flesh, but no screams answered her act of insurgence. Instead laughter escaped from her captor as he shoved her aside. The laughter seemed to continue though he had stopped, for she then realized the full repercussion of her act. Of what would happen. She was exposed to the disease. The prion was now in her system.
She knew she did not have long. Mere minutes until the sickness ravaged her body. The soldiers had drilled her with the epidemiology of the prion and she knew it would overcome her sanity without remorse in moments.
What does one do when they know they only have minutes to live? Cherish memories of long ago, reliving childhood delights and dreams? Yet she had none. Treasure moments of passion, a first kiss … a first touch upon another’s flesh? But she had never experienced love nor lust. There was no ‘other’ who she had shared life with. Even to look to the sky and bask within its splendor for the last time, she could not do. She only saw black, the bleakness of the underground. A beauty though overlooked by too many. The aberrant was what captured the grandeur of life itself. What would come from the cookie cutter scenes, the seemingly attractive all but the same? In consonance we find stagnation. In dissonance we find true beauty. And so she braced for the prion’s takeover, ready to become a Chaot. Ready for the discordance that would come.
Outside she heard the horde of Chaots surrounding the soldiers. The Thalassic warriors continued to assault the gathering with no regard of their outnumbered situation. In her mind’s eye she saw their faces pinched in sick delirium; they moved to destroy those who threatened their existence, threatening the Chaots’ in turn. She could do nothing, only hope that the soldiers survived this ordeal. Only to pray to the ancient gods that Leander, Hector, Dio and Megaira would endure. But to what end? She still awaited the infection’s repercussion. Then she would be a Chaot, and if the soldiers survived this ordeal, Hector would be forced to break his one promise to her. He would be forced to kill her.
The Chaot was on her again, this time pulling her through the maze, leading deeper and deeper into the caves. Twisting throughout the channels—rights followed by sharp lefts—finally he slowed. He pulled her around to face him. His motive ever present in his limbique stare. In one abrupt movement, his hand came up to wipe away the bloodied slime that streaked her mouth from her act of rebellion. A thumb moved downward on her chin in a brutish caress. He looked toward her with an animalistic sensuality in his claim; did he even wonder if his disease would work into her, warping the girl into his Bride of Frankenstein. One finger, almost rotten to the bone, came up to his mouth. His lips puckered and blew signaling her to remain quiet. Not that she would obey if she had a choice, but even if she did yell out no one would hear in the turmoil above. But his act: it separated him from the mindless descriptions that the soldiers had told her of the Chaots. What were they truly?
She nodded in understanding, knowing in a few minutes it may not even matter what he would do to her. The contagion hovered over her, like a dark cloud threatening to burst. It was irrefutably in her bloodstream due to her bite. Why it did not take her yet, she did not know. She could only wait and see if the fate would come or if only uncertainty would follow.
Her gaze came to the Chaot. Her attention captured by his unnatural eyes, haunting her with questions. With answers.
He pushed her down to the floor with sudden force. Edging near the corners, she searched for a weapon but found nothing. Her will and determination pivoted greatly between one moment and the next. Courage loomed within her, waiting for release. She should not curl in fear, hidden behind shadows. She had to escape. For moments though, she allowed dread to overpower her mind, unable to plan an attack.
Who then was the more despicable: the Chaot who stared with gaping repulsiveness from without or the girl whose soul broke within, unable to take control of her own fate.
It was a wanderer she was ... but a wanderer lost.
“Why?”
Voice shaken, lips smeared within the rancid blood of the infected, she grasped for an understanding as why her fate should be tainted by cruelties and anomalous defects. But before the answer could be posed on the monster’s tongue, she turned her head away, disgusted not with the face before her but with herself. She never wished to question ‘why’, or to query what was before her. Yet her own voice had just now betrayed her spirit. Why she had asked, rather than simply accept what was before her and act.
She did not look off into the blackened solace for long, for the Chaot crept forward and pried her filth-covered face toward his. He made her stare at him, made her see the fate of what she would become. Or was it something else that persuaded his actions? Stare. Stare into the beast, stare into the eyes of the maker. Stare a wild beast in the eyes, and become it or die. And she would not surrender. Only inches lay between them, and she forced her eyes to meet his soulless gaze.
A voice came outward from him, not human in its tone, but an unnatural stunted hiss of decay which seemed to say ‘You mine’.
Teeth bared under the festering lips as they pulled upward. Hunger for flesh written upon the face of the Chaot. Breath hinged as terror began to chill her from the inside out. She could hardly focus or move or even steady her increasingly panicked exhales as the teeth came closer still. She would not plea though; she would not crumble to the ground in defeat. Not yet and not now. Somehow she had to prevail against the odds. Hopes of overcoming the mighty drove her to search the dirt-covered ground again. Her touch came to a splintered outbreak of wood that kept the cave walls from folding in. She grasped it, allowing the dark to cover her actions, and waited for the optimal moment. This time she would act not too soon nor too late.
The Chaot’s hand trembled in unconfined anticipation as he reached out and tore at her pants, ripping through her clothes. With a section of skin exposed, he touched her thigh. Fingers came up along her body; grotesque worms as they slithered upon her flesh. Dirt mingled with blood smeared across her as he pressed his hand to between her legs. His actions were driven by urges beyond his control; the Chaot sought to bring impurity to the perceived innocence laying before him. A shred of desire hid behind the mound of hatred and fear, though she could not understand her fascination in these creatures. Disgust that should have shown, as the soldiers had toward the Chaots, did not materialize. Rather, she felt an unbalanced revulsion and yet feeling that this was where she belonged.
The disease did not bring these thoughts, she told herself with complete certainty. Though it should have happened, it had not yet come. She had her will, her wits, her mind, and was no
t ready to submit to the infection nor this Chaot. She would never be ready.
She smiled through clenched teeth. Deranged as her captor, her smile glimmered white against her dirt-covered face. The Chaot could no longer withhold as he pulled her to him in an attempt to meet his unsatisfied desires. She felt the weight of his body press close to hers. Holding the wood slice, she shifted as he pushed toward her. Hector’s wisdom returned to her, reminding her to use her opponent’s momentum to her advantage. To not let fear dictate but rather instinct. And the Chaot did not see her as a threat, wherein she found her edge. She would not become a marionette to his liking. She tore the shard up into his oncoming torso, sinking the piece deep inside him.
He screeched. The sound was unearthly, almost as Frankenstein’s monster’s cries cross the Arctic snow. He did not die yet though. The pain manifested as increased lechery, even if her attack did serve to weaken his overall strength.
The Chaot grabbed the stick, pulling it from his wound. A sucking sound emanated as the weapon came out; the engorged blood poured down from his injury onto her body that lay below. He hit the wood shard hard against her cheek, striking her for her disobedience. No screams came, only a silent urgency. Trying to get away from him, she struggled underneath his form. His hand clenched her neck. He pulled her to him as if she was a toy to tinker with, dragging her mouth to his. His lips were not puckered to elope hers in a tender first kiss, instead teeth raged open with one intent—to bite her face off. Then he would have her.
A sudden bang interjected, bringing silence. The quiet interlude gave her hope, for the alternative was her own screams if the Chaot succeeded in his feast. But the gunshot caused the monster to stop from his calamitous path. Though unlike before in the forest, the shot missed. Delivered in darkness, it was doomed to fail. It did succeed, however, in causing a distraction and in that she found her opening.
With no weapon except her own fortitude, she took advantage of the wound she had caused from the first assault. Striking hard and quick for the moment of redemption was fleeting, she rammed her hand inside the gaping hole of his abdomen. The hot juices of innards surrounded her fingers as she entwined them in his organs. The fair-haired porcelain pawn of Chaos turned to her—in pain, in surprise, in angered wrath. But too late, as she tore his insides out, pulling her hand away and bringing his intestines with it.
He fell on her, desolate in his embrace. Eyes still open as if looking at her, in an everlasting accusation of what she had done.
She rolled his weight off of her. The infected fell with a thud to the ground. She did not stay to welcome the one who caused the gun shot diversion. She could not trust herself for she had tasted the sweet apple seeds of the underworld, the blood of the Chaots. Now she believed herself doomed; no one could save her. She did not want to risk hurting the soldiers if her mind should suddenly go. Fueled by not wanting to harm them, she found steadiness within her feet and began to run deep into the underground.
She did not get far. The bronze-eyed Pathfinder stood in the shadows, stopping her way.
He stood alone, looking from Nyx to the crumpled Chaot behind her. He had witnessed everything. The outcroppings of light found his face as he stepped toward her, lighting up his features so she could see. He was arrestingly divine, even if clearly a son of Chaos. It was not retaliation of his fallen comrade he sought in his coming, rather the act contained an expression that she had not yet seen in a Chaot. The desire to understand, and perhaps to be understood.
He reached his hand out to her, in an unarticulated gesture to join him.
She was not ready.
She ran from him. Doom stepped its course alongside her. The prion contaminated her. The direct contact between the contagious blood and her own was unquestionable, leaving doubt in her knowledge of the disease. Maybe the time between exposure and symptoms were longer than the soldiers had warned. The prion therefore could still come to take her now, or minutes from now. Was her fate to become a Chaot? Even the Pathfinder seemed to know that she was a part of them.
“No,” she said.
An answer to her silent questions. Spoken aloud to represent her conviction that she would not become a monster, if ever the Chaots truly were monsters. Whether monsters or gods, both took a form similar to each other. Beauty and abhorrence under one guise. Even mortals could not see Zeus in his true form, for only death would arise from the sight. This left the question if his beauty caused such death, or was it a monstrosity of the gods that roused the end to the spectators.
Within the distance, she heard several grunts from other Chaots. They appeared as a constant cloud ahead through the darkness of the cave, but she realized their movements had a goal: to surround her. To finish what her now-dead captor had started. To ambush her and show her the only alternative in her rejection of the Pathfinder’s offer would be death.
One noise bore a familiarity; it was from the one who had saved her upon the sun-drenched streets of above. Hector. Though this would give others cause to approach, it only caused panic in her for he presented no exit to escape.
You have my word I will not kill you. His previous words of valiance endured throughout her thoughts. She could only guess if they were still valid now that she had contagion upon her lips and scratched body. She knew what he would see—a threat. No longer a person, but a shell containing infection. And he would kill her. Or she would him if the chaos took her.
So she ran through the darkened corridors, through the catacombs of the cave.
Away from the Chaots. From the soldiers.
From herself.
Chapter Ten
Nyx ran further into the tunnels. She ran from Hector for his protection, the threat of infection ever present. The only way to escape, the only way to see the light of day once more, was alone. But the deeper she went, the darker it grew. The further she ran, the possibility dwindled of finding an exit. It felt as if she would be lost forever in the complexity of the cave and her mind. But what the sight of Hector could not do, the sound of gunfire did. She stopped.
The shots were not directed at her, but towards the Chaots filtering into the cave. Hector must be surrounded, she believed, at the mercy of their inclinations. She should be by his side and realized that what truly trapped her was not the threat of infection. What trapped her also defined her: her fear. The phobia of being captured under another’s will had become a self-imposed harness. She had to unleash the binds of her fear and not be hindered.
Do not run away from the reaper, for that allows death to dictate life even before your time, and that was what she was doing. But the disease did not transform her, it should have already if ever it would. It would not serve to protect herself or Hector if she continued the spiral downward into the cave, concerned about a fate that may never be realized. And so, she turned from the oblivion to follow Hector’s gunshots. To help him as he had her.
Through the darkness and uneven rock formations, she retraced her steps and came upon Hector. He did not see her, his back was turned and he was facing the Chaots. In moments she assessed the situation, realizing a dire outcome. The soldier took arms in an impressive display, though he focused on what was in front of him. She could see a hidden figure to his side; coming up from his left edged a vile creature. It crept through the shadows, presenting the true threat to Hector. Nyx’s angle allowed her to discern the attacker. Shades of grey and black made it impossible to speak of colors, but the Chaot’s silhouette painted a picture of long hair tresses and curves unmistakably female.
Nyx ran her hand along the cave wall in search of a weapon. A rock loosened, and she took it though kept her attention on the Chaot. The predator of Hector became the prey as she stalked the stalker. When she drew close enough, she brought the rock down in one swift hit. The stone’s edge pounded against bone in a devastating shrill, implanting itself in the Chaot’s skull. An excruciating screech melded of surprise, pain, and death sounded as the skeletal pieces shattered. Though that screech ended
abruptly and the infected she-beast fell in a heap, spasms animating her body as death came.
Hector turned; he looked from the Chaot at his feet to Nyx standing near with the rock in her hand. It was Hector who now expressed a silent gratitude to her. He put his gloved hand on her shoulder. The soldier’s touch was coarse through the glove yet warmed her spirit. Did he realize that she had been exposed? He did not see the blood on her through the dark, she thought, wishing to tell him, but she could not yet.
Through the interlaced tunnels, the two ran from this hell. He cleared the way through the demons’ hole to freedom. Gun blasting, she heard nothing save for the deafening thunder of his weapon. She just saw. Carnage, death. The gunshots tore through the Chaots with ruthlessness, killing many to pave the way. The grim applause of death’s sirens finally sings to those who should have traveled across the River Styx long ago as the Chaots died.
Daylight came in splotches as they almost escaped the underworld in order to stand once more in the forests of the living. But before they exited the caves, Hector paused. Turning to her, he could only murmur her name. “Nyx ...”
No longer did his voice reflect the hardened tenor of a warrior. Something else haunted his tone as his gaze came across her body coated in blood. Her lips caressed by red rivers. Did he mourn her passing already? Or feel sorrow in the weapon he would pull, the bullet he would fire to save her from a fate of the beasts?
Wiping the blood away from her own mouth, Nyx looked to him. She wondered if she strayed from normalcy, would Hector still be by her side.
“I am not infected,” she said. A lie. Though was it deception if the reality held true. She did not turn into a Chaot; the prion did not torment her as it did with the others. The contagion was inside her, but the symptoms had yet to ensue. “But ...”
She was going to tell him everything, how she was exposed. He stopped her though, shaking his head to stop her confessions as if to show her he understood. Or maybe it was a show of obstinacy, he did not want to understand, he wanted the lie. At least the result of her words rendered what she wished. The uncertainty disappeared from his features; it became replaced by the belief that together they would survive this mayhem. Though behind that dream flickered a reality. He knew what she was about to say to him. But now he needed the fantasy rather than face the truth. If his decision would be fated to haunt him, so be it. He will embrace the consequences.
Crashing Tides Page 11
