The fog thickened and stuck to Dahlia's lungs like black mold. She felt the itch in her throat but she held it in to keep running. Where, she didn't know. Her home was lost now. She belonged nowhere. She ran every which way, not really knowing where she was going. All she knew was that she wanted to get as far away from the City of Stairs as she could. This home that once held a special place in her heart brought only shame and grief and remorse. Her childhood, that was once filled with playful memories, so sacred and dear, are now tainted with the bleak blackness from this horrible, horrible day.
At last, her lungs couldn't take it anymore. She collapsed to the dirt-dusted street and coughed a wicked cough. Her lungs wheezed, gasping for air as she tirelessly tried to hack out whatever it was that's inside of her causing all this pain. She's always felt blockage but until now the feeling was unbearable. Her body has betrayed her like she has betrayed her home.
The world is forever doomed because of her.
She was too greedy, too tempted. She was chosen. And now she was nothing.
The look of disappointment on her mother's face was carved into her memory. The sight of her mother was all the more painful to think about. Would she ever see her again? She had to push the thought away. For now, she needed to clean herself up, get on her feet and start running. Run, until there was nowhere left to run.
Until the running brought her here.
Beyond–– more like below–– the City of Stairs was the Chemical Valley. She's heard rumors about this place, and has only seen it from a bird's view. This was where the rebels dwelled. A city of flattened streets and shadows and lost corners and twisted light. Unlike the City of Stairs, where the town built itself one on top of another and each progressing stone step brought you that much closer to the nearest teahouse, Chemical Valley was completely spread out. From above, it looked like a map come to life. She used to stand outside of her balcony watching the city below. She thought it strange then and thought it just as strange now that everything was walking distance, not climbing distance. The space between each place seemed wrong, like a smile with missing teeth.
She dared to walk deeper into the city, deeper into the unknown. Her lungs grew more tense by the second but she held in the urge to release it. Even though she needed to badly. She followed a cobblestoned street straightway, again not knowing exactly where it led to. She passed a tavern with a rickety sign with the words: The Banished Banshee, a worn-out building built from the same stone as the streets. It appeared empty. As a matter of fact, this whole town seemed eerily quiet. A ghost town. Where was everyone? The pizza joint not far from the tavern looked abandoned and so did the coffee shop and the deli. She walked a few more blocks until the buildings faded farther away and the stoned street turned into a dirt road. There was nothing and no one to be seen. She was just about to give up when she heard the echo of a distant scream. The first sign of life since she arrived.
A rotting bridge emerged from the fog. When she got closer she could see it had years worth of graffiti, new overlapping the old. As the fog cleared she noticed people were standing underneath it. Someone had started a fire in a tin garbage can. The closer she got the more she was able to see. Some people were clapping and shouting, while a few others–– she noticed–– were struggling. One man had shoved another and the second had the first in a headlock. The sound of a broken glass and a third man joined the other two, stabbing his makeshift weaponry into the second man's neck, disarming his headlock position and releasing his strangled victim. No one helped the injured man on the ground, but instead pointed and laughed.
Dahlia stayed at a distance and watched the fight unraveling before her. This was the most violence she had seen in a lifetime. It was frightening, but mostly it mesmerized her. This mesmerization will soon devour her, but for now she tucked it in a small pocket in the back of her mind. The shame still had a tight grip on her. The day she broke free from the shackles of her shame would be the day she would learn her true potential. But for now, she hid in the shadows and watched in horror.
She dared to move closer. She was careful to leave plenty of space between her and the bridge. She would have stayed a safe distance away and not drawn attention to herself if she hadn't heard the voice. This voice was strangely familiar and only took a second for her to realize who it belonged to. Then it clicked and she was furious.
The airy chuckle, which fluttered and flaunted, burned her ears. She could still feel his breath against her bare skin. The heat of his skin under the bedsheets. The memories bled through. All those years they'd known each other. She thought he was a friend, but it was all a game to him. A sick game.
"Hey, you!" Dahlia screamed. She couldn't believe what she was doing. She was certain she had lost her mind.
The others at the bridge turned to acknowledge her. They seemed confused at first. The three fighters had stopped wrestling midway to observe the source of the shout. Who was this woman, they thought, and where are her shoes?
She stormed to the crowded bridge, ignoring everyone's stares. She was fully aware of her bare feet and filthy, white dress, and judging by the way everyone here dressed she could not have stuck out more than she already was.
"Yeah, you!" She said as Blade pretended not to hear. "Hi–– hello, can I talk to you please?"
Blade grinned uncomfortably to his red-haired friend, refusing to look her way.
"Friend of yours?" The red-head awkwardly asked him.
Blade didn't, or rather couldn't answer for whatever reason, but instead chuckled airily and raked his fingers through his hair.
Impatient, Dahlia crossed her arms and said in her razor-sharp tone, "I know you can hear me and I'm not leaving until you talk to me."
Finally, Blade excused himself from his friend and dragged Dahlia by the arm to a more secluded part of the bridge. Night had fallen and the stars dazzled the sky. Midnight would come soon and the world would be swallowed whole. And it was all his fault.
She snatched her arm away, "Let go of me!"
"What are you doing here?" Blade hissed. "How the hell did you find me?"
"I followed the devil's tracks and they led me to you. I should've known all along. I hope you're happy. Everything I lived for is gone now because of you."
"That's bullshit and you know it!"
"How dare you insult my beliefs!"
"Will you keep your voice down? If any of these guys find out where you're from they'll crucify you!"
Tears swelled her eyes, "Don't you get it, Blade? Don't you even care? I've lost my home. I have nowhere else to go!" she sobbed.
"Alright."
"I thought we were friends––"
"Alright."
"I could have saved the world, Blade, and you took that away from me. I've been preparing myself for this day for the past ten years. Do you get that? Do you? Of course you don't. You punks are all the same. You don't care about anyone but yourself. You stupid, stupid, stupid.... Bastard!" Dahlia punched him for every stupid and when the last word slipped out of her tongue, because there really wasn't another word that best suited him, there was something about it that just felt right.
Blade grabbed her arms while she continued smacking him and pulled her into an embrace. She wiped the snot and tears on his shoulder as she hiccuped and cried. They stayed like this for a while. She hated him, but something about the warmth from his body soothed her and when the crying stopped and the tears were wiped clean by his calloused thumb, he held her hand and took her farther away from the bridge until they could see the night sky in its full glory.
"Come here," he said, gesturing for her to lay in the grass next to him. "I want to show you something." When she joined him on the cool grass he went on, "Look at that," he said gazing up at the sky. "Beautiful, isn't it?"
"Yes," she agreed, but she wasn't looking at stars.
"I do care, Dahlia. I care too much. That's why I couldn't let you go through with it." He turned to face her. "The world doesn't deserve your sacrifice."
He was wrong. Her sacrifice would have stopped the Himmelbeist from swallowing their world whole. Her sacrifice was her destiny. She would have gone down in history as a legend. A worldly hero. But now? She didn't know what she was now. A traitor, a mother's disappointment, that much was certain. Oh well, she thought, at least I get to spend my last few moments on earth under the stars with him. She couldn't take her eyes off of Blade. She remembered the night of her sixteenth birthday, when he climbed onto the balcony after midnight with a bottle of red wine he claimed to have stolen from the Sacred Speaker's wine cellar. He lit her first cigarette and they drank all night. So many secrets they shared, but none to be remembered. Only the feeling of a moment lost in time. Until tonight, that had been her favorite memory of him.
The moon was larger than life. Its glowing presence shined through the cloak of clouds and she waited for something to happen. She knew the sky went first, when the Himmelbeist opened his mouth, large and wide, around the great sky, and darkness would overcome them, surrounding them. Only then would the moon's penetrating illumination die out, even in the darkest sky.
Dahlia waited for this darkness. Almost welcomed it, even. She set aside her failure, knowing there was no way to undo her mistakes, and allowed the fate of the world to consume her, and soon, the world.
Her hand brushed against Blade's, at first gently, a little shy, even, until their fingers intertwined into an almost-but-not-really handhold. In the midst of their silence, Dahlia had forgotten how furious she was just moments before. She was ready to let him have it. Boy, was she ready! In just those few minutes of discovering him beneath this old bridge, she had her speech all planned out. Her speech, written in rage, fire for ink, by the pen she'd use to impale his heart, would have destroyed every fiber of his being until there would be nothing left in him. Only teeth, simply because her hellfire words would not have burnt them.
This was typical Blade; he always made her forget her frustrations, wherever her frustration lied, especially when it was he who made her feel that way. Somehow, he'd make up for it with his charming smile, his sapphire eyes, and his lips weaved by the softest silk.
"It's past midnight," Blade said, glancing at his wrist watch.
"It can't be," she said as she reached over to grab his wrist. But it was. She stared down the watch for a minute and a half in disbelief, despite that the evidence was right there. 12:01 flicked to 12:02 and it was true. Midnight had come and gone, with no trace of a swallow. The sky was still very much the same; moonlight and starbright. The Himmelbeist had not sunk his teeth into the sky, had not bit down into it like an apple, as the prophecy had stated he would if the ceremony was not properly done. If the virgin had not been sacrificed.
After all, she wasn't a virgin anymore.
Was it possible that someone else had taken her place?
No, impossible. In all those years of endless nights, memorizing scriptures line after line, bathing in the sacred milk blessed by the Speaker, practicing the many rituals to keep her soul safe and pure from worldly filth, she had been the only one. There would have been no other worthy enough to take her place. No understudy. No backup. No plan B. It was only her. She was everyone's one and only hope. The one and only sacrifice worthy enough to please the hungry beast in the sky.
Was he not hungry after all?
Had he found another world to eat?
"I don't believe it," she whispered. "It's not true."
"You see?" Lost in labored breath, Dahlia released Blade's arm. He sat up from the grass and crossed his legs. Blade so desperately wanted to say, I told you so, but instead chose a kinder approach. "If you followed through with the ceremony you would have been killed for no reason at all."
"I don't understand." Dahlia held herself as she watched the sky, still waiting for some delayed reaction. "This was supposed to be my destiny; to die a hero."
"You're in control of your own destiny. Make choices, make mistakes. Fail and fail again. I've been trying to tell you this for years now."
Dahlia sank back onto the grass. This was a lot for her to process. She's spent her entire life fearing this starving beast that lives somewhere beyond the sky. All those nightmares of teeth, and scales, and claws, and fur, and wings, and horns, had they all been for nothing? Every day was a gift from the beast and to thank him, she was forced to prick her finger and save the blood in a vial. Had that all been for nothing too? Did she just endure all those finger-prickings for a monster which has never existed in the first place?
Dahlia rolled onto her side, her head resting on the palm of her hand. She was deflated. Her mind was weak of thought. "Ah, Blade, what am I going to do now?" she asked, exhausted.
He turned to her, his eyes glistened in the pale moonlight. His face was soft, not strained from worry or darkened by disbelief, but relaxed, subdued. His eyes gleamed in such a way Dahlia recognized as empathy. Underneath all his rage that he claimed to have was a soft center of kindness and gentleness. This was the man she knew. Her best friend.
"I'll tell you what you're gonna do," he said. "You'll stay at my place until you get back on your feet."
"Thank you so much," She breathed, relieved and tired. She was craving a bed and a shower.
He smirked in that airy way, "Wait until you see the place before you thank me."