Chapter CI: The Wrathful and Sullen
6 April 1610
Zeren managed to pull out another bag from the sleeping merchant’s purse before tossing the leather bound material out of the nearest window where, down below, Abdullah would be waiting to catch the loot. The wealthy merchant was one of those who had the luxury of living on the second floor. It was harder for Zeren to get into the building, but the second floor also meant that this particular merchant had enough money to make any stealthy incursion worth it.
Zeren was not mistaken considering how many of the pouches he now had put down of the window. Tip toeing into the next room, Zeren decided to scout the final chamber in the upper floor just to make sure there was nothing else that the particular merchant was hiding from the rest of the community. To his surprise, however, the moonlight illuminated not another room of riches, but a feminine figure sprawled out between ruffled sheets.
He stopped himself midstep and, for some reason, a moment of hesitation overcame him. A woman, he thought to himself. For some reason, he was half hoping that it was Leyla that had snuck into the room for an evening to rest, but he immediately shook the thought out of his head lest any of the more vile excuses why such a girl would be in the same house with a wealthy merchant froth forward to his brain—Leyla would never do something like that. “Probably his wife,” he said to himself quietly, though he found it strange that she was sleeping in the next room.
He let out the bubble of anxiety with a sigh coincidentally with the flow of the wind through the window. He turned his eyes towards the portal to the skyline of the city which was now darkening in the clouding of the moon. He moved towards it and looked out. Abdullah was a few paces to the right of the window where he was now going to make his way out of and he moved his rope into position to let him down. That’s when Zeren froze. Wait a minute! he thought to himself. He turned quickly again towards the bed and his eyes narrowed. He waited impatiently, waited for that cloud to move away from the line of the moon.
There it was; that little hint that stopped him: hidden underneath the sheets was the colour of the moon reflecting back onto itself. The woman’s throat was bruised and a slide of saliva was trickling onto the pillow. The body didn’t move and the liquid around her nose and mouth did not stir except downward-- there was no air coming from those nostrils or lips. She was dead. No! She was murdered.
But why? Zeren thought to himself. It was no matter, he recalled. Although he wanted to see justice done, this was no place for those who had not the luxury of being known by the local enforcers of justice. Zeren would have to make his escape and leave it in Allah’s hands. Another shift of the clouds above and the hint of the moon revealed more.
“She was here!” Zeren almost gasped out loud. Just this night! was reserved for his thoughts. Leyla had… but wait… why did she kill this woman?
“Who’s there!” growled an angry voice from the other room. “Thief!” erupted from the old man’s lips. “Thief!”
---
When the stones collided, the hallway reverberated enough to snap bone. Dust precipitated from the ceiling and the darkness of the hallway appeared paramount. But a source of light still shone. For those not so close to the giant spheres, it was like the corona around the moon when the sun hides behind her celestial partner. Coughing followed and signs of life cast shadows along the rim of the giant spheres.
Like an hourglass that permitted no sand to travel between its strait way were the two rocks now touching leaving a cavity above and below. From above, Madeleine imitated the ceiling with her feet on one end and the end of her parasol on the other in between a crack in the rocks. Below her, past the little spot where both boulders halted each other were Riku and Raul both holding their heads and being as flat on the floor as possible.
It was not just the little partition due to the roundness of the spheres that saved them; it was also calculating the exact point where both would collide. Any mistake on either end meant an arm or a leg that would have been sacrificed. Madeleine unhooked herself from the walls and placed both of her legs on one sphere and the end of her parasol on the other before heaving her back against the ceiling and prying them apart.
Below, the two boys recovered themselves slowly and shivered off the adrenaline and dust. “I don’t think we were supposed to come in like this,” Madeleine quipped as she shoved the stones further ajar.
“And how do you figure that?” Raul coughed away his sarcasm before starting to help Madeleine roll the two boulders apart.
Regardless of Raul’s rudeness, Madeleine knew she was right just from the very fact that if it had been her uncle, the old man was too portly to fit in between the stones. Although they narrowly avoided being crushed, it was most likely not the proper way to get through that circle.
Then again, ever since they left Willem behind, nothing seemed to be going correctly. When her feet reached the floor once again, all three began to quietly roll the stone closest to the next corridor down the path. Even as they strained at the weight, they refused to say words to each other.
Eventually, the boulder made way for the hallway downward and each took their turn to enter into it. “The Wrathful and Sullen,” Madeleine announced flatly, “occupying Styx.”
“Another river?” Riku asked.
“And a marsh,” Madeleine corrected. “In Dante’s vision, Styx is amplified to be a bog on which the wrathful must fight each other for Eternity. The punishment’s symbolism is obvious. The Sullen, however…” here, Madeleine had to gather some courage, “they shunned the happiness that God could give them in life and so they themselves are shunned—at the very bottom of Styx’s murky water and dirt. They all try to speak in their depressed state but only bubbles come out. Just as they never sang hymns of joy in life, so in death they must perpetually gargle their sorrowful mock of a song for the rest of eternity.
When Madeleine’s explanation ceased, Raul pushed aside the doorway that opened into this next circle. The smell of earthiness and decay gripped their noses, but it would be safe to say that the three had already prepared themselves for more offensive smells. The hall in front of them curved like the others and the walls had more rocks and stone built into its framework than the previous circles. The floor, on the other hand, was a damp mixture of black and green that refused to be penetrated by the upheld torch.
“Styx…” Raul repeated as he tested his footing on the substance. The surface gave way easily and beneath was a soft goo that sucked at his boot as he pulled it back. “How are we supposed to get through this?” he asked.
“Over there,” Riku pointed. Dotting the path like miniature islands, small patches of brown zig zagged on both directions from the doorway. “I’m guessing we need to go from solid point to solid point,” Riku suggested.
“It seems too easy, just like the other ones,” Madeleine noted. “It might make sense if it were just about the sullen and the danger is underneath the water, but Dante grouped the Wrathful and Sullen together with the wrathful fighting above the surface to signify how their hate was external or ‘above the surface’ while the sullen turned that wrath into themselves and thus theirs was ‘below the surface.’”
“We’ll just have to find out,” Raul grunted and leaped onto the first patch of brown. Almost immediately, his foot slipped against the mud and a small panel crushed downward before a ghostly figure leaped out of the still surface.
As if a manifestation of the green pool erupted in the shape of a man, a figure lunged forward from the water next to the miniature island and brought a rusted sword in Raul’s direction. Daggers flashed as Raul instinctively crouched and sliced at the incoming figure’s wrists with so much ferocity that the attacker’s blade was flung to the far wall of the circle and stuck against the stone with a crackling smash of its brittle metal against the solid surface. Not even waiting for the next move, Raul then quickly entrenched his daggers onto where the kidneys would be of the assailant but only to find that his daggers sunk into the submissive mass of green weeds and decaying black matter.
Looking up, Raul could make out in the glint of Riku’s enraptured torch the hint of copper coloured armour underneath the swamp growth and a metal frame holding up the caricature of a dead man. “So I’m guessing we have to fight above the waters too,” he said with a tortured sigh as he kicked the mechanism off of its trigger spring below.
“Then we should be car—”
“There’s no time,” Raul interrupted Madeleine as he made the leap onto the next island. Another click of a switch and another parody of a body came out of the water only to be dispatched by the ready Raul.
Madeleine’s face grimaced. “Have you already forgotten about him?” Madeleine wanted to say. Riku stood next to her and let the dullness of his torch-lit greens try to pull her blues up to him. Looking at the taller man, Madeleine couldn’t help but say, “I used to think that it was a little bit charming of him to be so dedicated to his cause, but now… especially after—”
“I think you’re misunderstanding,” Riku responded gently before pulling his eyes up to find the figure of Raul fighting across the islands, “Raul’s life has always been filled with loss. If he stops to think about it now, he will suffer the fate of those buried underneath the Styx.”
Madeleine watched Riku for a second before the Finn jumped to the first island carrying the light with him. Madeleine gripped her fingers together in a fist. She almost felt herself cursing. “We’re all hurting, Raul,” Madeleine thought to herself. “Don’t be so selfish.” She leapt too.
---
Raul could see the entrance to the next corridor as he hopped the little plots of land one after the other. It seemed like a simple task to him. Each hop meant a switch triggered and from somewhere around the little stepping place, a mock-corpse would come out to deliver some potentially killing blow. Just a simple dodge before disabling the trap was all it took. Tiring, but then again that’s what these circles were for, right? Endurance.
By the time Raul jumped closer and closer to the opening in the inner wall, his hands were already being covered in the muck of the swamp from each strike at the dummies. He could hear Riku trailing behind him providing him light. But despite the potentially deadly landing, the simplicity of it made his thoughts wander.
“The sullen, huh?” Raul thought to himself after another jump. He let his eyes wander across the water as he moved through the air. He had no time to be sad, he thought to himself. The murky polluted water was still underneath him and it seemed to retain solidity from the organic clumps holding onto its surface like some film… or membrane.
The more he looked at the strange water, the colder it seemed to get around him. The light behind him that was trailing somehow felt like it was being eclipsed by the back of his head and refused to let any light filter through the peripheries. That idiot, he told himself. There was a strange sensation along his eyes as if they were suddenly stinging from the rotting atmosphere around him. Why did you have to get yourself killed he repeated.
The murky water relayed back to him that memory of the Mediterranean when Willem and he were escaping from the Levant. Somehow, he thought he could feel something touching him, but he let it out of his mind almost violently.
The next jump was the third to last but his vision was blurry. The light behind him must be getting a bit far… I thought we were friends he couldn’t help himself from thinking. Why did you leave me alone again. A metal figure popped out once more and he dodged the low slice of the blade by jumping upward. Axel…, he thought to himself as he sliced off the gunk covered helmet from the contraption.
“Roxas…” He thought he heard out of the darkness. It was enough that he gasped and pulled his head the other way. His footing slipped hard and his body came crashing against the miniature island. In Riku’s approaching light, he though he could see some drops of liquid following his face downward—was he crying?
The splash was like the sound of some infernal cauldron boiling over and the dark vestiges of organic material lapped onto Raul with hungry slime. Bubbles of trapped gas escaped from below and ghastly pops cascaded around Raul as he slowly sank into the entrapping mush.
“Raul!” Riku shouted as he made the next jump onto where Raul had just recently been standing. A hand reached out to try and defray the muck and gunk off of the body but slowly and steadily, layers of slime and mud started to overtake Raul’s form. The bubbling of slime increased in intensity as Riku’s claws tried to scrape away towards Raul’s body but the more he pushed forward, there always seemed to be a final layer of film that separated the end of his fingers from Raul’s body and what seemed like transparent portions of air was actually a wall of goo that only pushed Raul further down into the gunk. “Raul!” Riku called out again but even the young man’s face was now obscured.
It was strange, Raul thought as he protested the swampy substance from entering into his nose and ears while his eyes held away the offensive water as best as he can; he thought he could feel the scars underneath his clothes burn even in the coldness of the water. What was stranger was that it was as if he could feel a hand pulling at him. It was a gentle welcoming hand… a familiar one. So you’re here too? Raul asked as he bubbled air out of his lungs and slid deeper into the embrace of Styx.
Interlude
“A gathering of angels appeared above my head\ They sang to me this song of hope, and this is what they said\ They said, come come sail away, come sail away,\ come sail away with me,” entered into Pablo’s ears and his head swayed slowly in the tune. The mark of inebriation was still somewhere along those beautifully marred lips. The hood which he wore over his head covered up his wild hair and extended a shadow along his eyes.
“Excuse me, sir, may I help you?” the nurse at the front asked him. Pablo took off the earphones that still blared his Styx album before placing them in his pocket.
A slip of paper was slid across the counter towards the young lady. “If you could help me out with this,” he said quietly.
The nurse took a moment to look at the paper while, at certain intervals, she would look up to examine the strange figure dressed in a hoodie and gloves. “It’s right down the hall,” she replied with a forced smile.
He couldn’t help but smile back at her while wiping his nose with his covered knuckles. He snorted up some phlegm before placing his hands back into his pockets and treading down the hallway. It was one of those jackets that both pockets connected to the same miniature cavity within. It was within this little place that his favourite blade was kept ready.
---
Tom waited anxiously in one of the maintenance rooms of the annex building to the hospital. “Wait for the man to take you from the janitor’s closet on the first floor,” the voice had told him the other night. The sound of that voice still made him shiver against the cool wall of the dark room. Perhaps it was also that he was barefoot and wearing only the hospital gown that he felt chilly.
Escaping the guards was not a major problem. He had followed the instructions on his text messages: “We know the layout of the hospital,” was the message, “When you go for your walk on the ground floor courtyard, go into the first bathroom of the west wing and exit out the window. It will only take you to the annex but wait for the man there who will be posing as a new janitor.”
It seemed simple enough, but the more he waited the more anxiety he would have that the guards that he had left outside of the bathroom were going to suddenly find him cowering inside of this room. “Where did you try to run off to?” he could just imagine Rodrigo being angry.
“I don’t care,” was the whimper in Tom’s mind. “I’m nothing but a pawn to you,” he wanted to say to Rodrigo’s face. “I thought he were friends!” his mind shouted despite the cold shell of his body.
“No… we can’t be friends,” he could imagine Rodrigo saying back to him. “How could I ever trust you,” Rodrigo would continue, “how could I trust the fate of the world to a heretic?!”
Chapter CII: The Heretics (coming soon)
