ODE TO THE END: A BALLAD OF BROTHERS

CHAPTER 41

ADLAI

Adlai awoke to a sky screaming. Having perched himself atop the leading pinnacle of that tattered cathedral, the eldest Arbitor saw a church yard at the rim of the sea. Salt water ebbed onto the path as the ocean encroached with the howling winds.

The church was not the only structure standing before the storm squall, but it was the safest. In contrast to the holy home, an entire neighborhood sat in a sunken slosh that extended for miles. This was a region within the walls flooded shortly after The Divide ripped the region in two. In it Adlai could see the abandoned pleasantries of a population that once contended with the rising tides.

Cars, clothes and other common goods floated between those streets like a soup of decay. The water-logged sight was hazardous and doubly disgusting, but the maelstrom only worsened the risk of traversing the coast. As the winds shook every structure above the water line, the foundations of each building swayed at the root. Stores and shelters bopped in the sea sludge like trees against the gust and atop of these precarious structures stood a figure across the yard. On this lightless night he blended against the black, but Adlai saw him clearly. Achim had come.

Adlai stood up on top of the pinnacle as his ink-ladened eyes burned into his brother. The look on his younger brother's face was wrung with regret. The wrinkles sunk into the elder's mind and stirred his heart until it beat with wild pace. The brothers locked their gazes for only a moment, but, when the younger lowered his head before his elder, Adlai stood triumphant for the first time. He smiled a little, laughed even, but he quickly realized that his fear had not gone far.

When Achim leapt from his vantage, Adlai was reminded of his terrible power., His little brother blasted through that wind swept distance and landed atop of a crumbling fountain without disrupting the weakened rock. So much strength, yet so much control. The younger was before the elder now, below him in advantage but not in skill.

Adlai's faith wavered before his kin but Achim hopped off of the fountain after a moment's pause. The boy lowered himself by trudging through the flood and bending his knee amid the filth. With a face parallel to the rolling waters, Achim submitted utterly and relinquished his fate to his sibling. Power was Adlai's to take, but the eldest Arbitor knew that it was not his by right.

Spitefully nervous, the eldest Arbitor stared at Achim. Knowing what he knew about the difference between them, he refused to relish the moment any more than he already had. Adlai simply went to inspect the dark boy by leaping off of the pinnacle. A craterous splash sprung from the flood as he landed, and Adlai walked toward his brother with eyes leering. He halted just short of treading upon Achim's back, but he could confirm the submission on display as he read every opening for what it was. Achim was defeated, so why did Adlai feel so agitated?

"A-adlai. I'm sorry," said Achim. The dark boy lowered his head further, seemingly eager to drown himself amid the drink. "I know there's nothing I can do to ever make it up to you or our family, but I'll do anything to"--

Adlai stomped his foot into the nape of Achim's neck and plunged his face into the filthy flood water. Hefelt the recoil of Achim's face meeting solid earth, but the confirmation simply encouraged him to pin the dark boy down. Achim struggled for air for a short time, but Adlai soon saw that his writhing was the stuff of instinct. Once enough time had passed, Achim ceased all resistance. A dozen or so air bubbles emerged from beneath the drink and popped against the surface, but the dark boy did not attempt to free himself from Adlai's weight. He just sat there, unresponsive beneath Adlai's heel.

When multiple air bubbles were reduced to a few, Adlai ground his teeth and yanked Achim up by the hair. The boy wheezed with reckless abandon, breathing in all the air his lungs had lost, but the eldest Arbitor found himself waiting despite the steam that beveled from his body. When his younger brother finally opened his eyes, the heavy gaze he gave only boiled Adlai's blood. He dropped Achim with his only arm and wound it back to deliver a fist to his face. The punch sent the dark boy blasting into the fountain at the center of the cathedral yard and the stone imploded upon impact. It was then that the eldest Arbitor walked back into the cathedral. "I'm going inside. Let's just—Let's just get this over with," Said Adlai. He did not see his little brother rise, but history proved that he would, in time.