Rituals, Regrets, and Really Dumb People

Chapter 12: The Brotherhood of Outcasts, Part 2

I got to finish my plate and put it away before the majority of my forces came into the somewhat large meeting room. I was sitting at the head of the table, talking with Lilly here and there, getting caught up on things. It seemed we passed the Barrier and its sentry towers rather uneventfully.

As soon as Jo came in with the final set of warriors, I stood up and motioned to the back of the room. "Jo, can you bring pictures up of the island we're heading to?"

"There's old pictures of it, but there's no reason to think any of it has changed," she told me, walking to the back and going to a computer station. The projector began to light up as the room darkened, to give us a better visual. "Here's the Ashen isles from thirty or so years ago."

We all looked at the grainy footage of the island, something I hadn't seen yet. The name was apt, a near-completely whited island covered in sand or ash or something. There were remnants of burnt bodies here, ones that'd fell to their knees when they died and remained in place. If what Reinhardt and She said was true, then that could have been leftovers from battles ages ago. Even more so; how was the island so unbothered that for thousands of years cremated bodies were undisturbed?

Everything was white. Everything was ashen. Even the trees were covered in the soot or fine dust.

"Hey," I said, pointing out towards the photos. Something had caught my eye there. It was a building. "What is that?" I asked, circling it with my finger, until I was given a laser pointer. I shot the laser point at Corbin's face to annoy him before circling the building again.

"We don't know," Jo said.

I stepped up closer to the projection to get a better look at it from the side. "Are there any more pictures of it? Closer?"

"Not that I can recall; in fact, I never noticed it."

Something was off about the barely visible little building. It stood without ruination, though it was ashen white as the rest of the island. It seemed far too advanced for any previous civilization, small hints of being metal from coloration bleeding through the white. I think this is where Ishmael and Typhous were heading to.

"What are we going to do with Ishmael, Mathias?" Lilly was the one to ask it.

I turned my head and looked at Lilly. That question has perplexed me since I seen Ishmael's powers. I was not able to beat him, not in this shape, or even before when I was at my best, and the only hint I got was to have faith. What kind of faith? In who? The Radiant and the Darkness? This was a troubling question as Ishmael was deadly, and he'd shown it multiple times now.

"Dimitri," I called out. "Did you notice anything unusual with Ishmael?"

He shook his head at first before thinking real hard on it. "Him and Typhous—they just—they're inseparable. I did notice once that Typhous took to a headache when he was interrogating me one night on the way to Nebuchadnezzar's. When he struck ill with migraine and had a nosebleed, Ishmael took to it as well."

"Coincidence," I said. I didn't like coincidences, rarely was it the case, but I shouldn't assume too much with little proof. "Maybe Typhous and Ishmael are linked in some fashion."

"Maybe," Lilly said. "But that isn't something to rely on, we don't know for sure if that was the case."

"Yes," I said, rubbing my stubble-bound chin. "If we can't fight Ishmael, we need to just get the kid and retreat."

"Didn't you ask Reinhardt of it when you talked to him?" Dimitri asked.

"They said something of faith, that our ancestors held faith and beat them back, but no one elaborated on it. I don't know why; if they wanted me to defeat this, they could have been clearer."