Apotheosis : Ashes of the Arcana

The night was dark and thick with the wet of storm, but there was another, something that slipped beneath skin and scuttled across boards as if it had a life of its own. The orphanage creaked and groaned always like some aged monster with arthritic joints working its bones loose, but these were taut. Starving.

Rion's eyes flew open, his chest tightening.

The room was quiet, with the exception of periodic soft breathing of sleeping children and sounds from outside that came from the wind. Thin silver line of moonlight separated the wood floor across cracked shutters, erasing shadow and silvery light in the room. He is not sure what had awoken him, whether it was the growling of his stomach, the ache of the burn on his hand, or perhaps something more. Something that was real.

He came awake slowly, ruffling the sleep from his eyes. The quiet was too heavy, too still, it weighed on him like the fever perspiration. The other children in the cots, their faces lax, their chests moving and falling in stiff, unnatural rhythm. As if they dreamed the same dream.

Rion's fingers ached. His palm pulsed with a dull soreness that started days back, when the stranger came. When the dark marks first showed up on Jak's neck.

He groaned and woke out of the bedfoot on cold floor. The passageway leading to the bedrooms was chillier than was necessary smoke penetrating the joints and sticking to one like a curse. Boards creaked under his feet and he felt fogging himself with the chill as he stepped toward the lavatory. The boards creaked beneath his feet as he walked, his own breathing misting softly in the chill. Every step made shudders of fear course through him. Never had the orphanage seemed so large, so hollow, as if walls were expectation, waiting their turn to breathe. He was done quickly, the sound of water too harsh in the stillness. But when he came out.

He fell silent.

There was noise.

Distant at first, barely more than a breath. A ripping noise, moist. Like to rip cloth. or skin.

His breath lingered behind.

It come from the other side of the hallway, behind the library. Beyond the jammed door in the empty rooms, the part of the orphanage with sloping walls and groaning boards that leaned with rot. Where the air always smelled of wet and something sweetly metallic.

"Turn back," his head screamed. It's only Sister Olma. Maybe she is making soup for the ailing.

But his feet continued anyway.

One step. Two step.

The voice was nearer. A munch, slurp rhythm interspersed with episodes of inaudible, gurgling noises interrupted by gulps. Flesh on teeth. Then the odour came up to him. The reek of metal and reeling and strong, the sickly sweet smell of blood, and something sweetly sickly.

He felt a sick roil in his stomach.

He stood in the doorway.

Through the bottom slit seeped a thinned out smear of shuddering orange light which cast spasmodic distorting shadows on the floor. Shadows of unnatural and spastic movement.

Rion felt his heart pounding his throat. Bit by bit he advanced, drawing his face near the crack that existed between the jamb and the door.

What was on the other side of the door was of another world than his own.

Jak, Pell, and the other four, five of the orphans huddled on the ground like beasts.

Red on lips, jaws too wide, teeth too prominent. Lella, the quiet girl who would share her bread, had a jaw that projected, wider than one would have in a mouth, grinding bone in molars.

These were children who resembled animals. The black spots, the same ones Rion had noticed previously, had scurried up their necks and arms and throbbed like veins just beneath the surface of the skin. Worst than the spots, though, was the shifting. Jak's shoulder turned to be the leg of a desk, wood and flesh blurring beautiful, his fingers turning into splintered claws. Pell's foot on a candlestick, his toes running like wax, metal stuck in his meat. Their eyes are slanted, too dark, too wet, like oil in the sockets.

And below them are bodies.

The kitchen, the gray Herrin, stretched out on the floor, his throat ripped wide apart, fingers frozen in rigor mortis. Beside him, the groundsman, Mistress Vey, her face half-eaten away, her ribs torn wide open like a slaughtered beast. The floor was slick with blood, its blackness glistening in candlelight, accumulating around the knees of children as they sat down to share their break of fast.

Rion's belly felt sick. Bile formed in his throat.

He retreated too quickly and his shoulder hit the door.

CLACK.

The sound is echoed like a scream in the silence.

Within, the chewing ceased.

Rion's motion halted.

The dancing light stopped.

Something stirs.

Slow. Measured.

A step.

And then another.

He retreated, beating heart, constricted gasp of breath. The very air was thick with the acrid smell of iron and death, fouling his mouth, choking him.

A scream screamed out. Jak's voice, no longer Jak's. Warped and twisted, somehow, as if there were several mouths trying to force a word through.

"Rion."

Rion wheeled to run.

He charged down hall, his shoes beating open slats, his own heart beating quickly. Footsteps behind. Not one, not two, but dozens, a reeling, shuffling pursuit. Walls curled as he turned corners, shadows snaking out to catch him in grasping hands.

He turned a corner, reeling, his burning lungs. Sister Olma's office corridor lay before him, the door open.

He staggered in. "Sister! Sister!"

She stood already, robe tugged close around waist, candle gripped tightly in shaking hand. The fire blazed hotly, throwing hot shadows on her face.

"Hey, Rion?" She wasked while trembling. "What is it?"

"That, they are eating people!" He roared. "Jak and Pell, They been turned into beasts!"

The face of Sister Olma turned paler than the face of a ghost. Her knuckles were white as she held the candle hard in her hands. She run past him and closed the door slamming it.

"Stay here!" she commanded, in shuddering voice.

"No! Don't go!"

But she was already gone by then, turning the key at last.

Rion waited in the shadows, his face twisted, his burned hand throb as if the fire within him screamed to escape. The office was a mess, books, bookshelves, an unlocked drawer on the desk of sister Olma. It smelled like ink and wax candles.

The words of the visitor were ringing in his ear.

"They're infected. Anchors. Vessels. Purify them or lose everything."

And Rion had held him back.

They were monsters now.

His fault.

Rion clenched his fists, digging his fingernails deep. He had no idea what is going on, but he know one thing.

He had to correct it.

A shriek ripped through the orphanage.

Sister Olma.

Rion's blood turned cold.

He seized the closest object, a French puffed candlestick, and threw himself at the door. The lock refused to yield. He struck at it once, twice—

CRACK.

The wood split.

He tossed himself out into the corridor in time to catch sight of them. Jak, Pell, Lella, the others, pulling something along the corridor. Something unmovable. Something covered in black.

Sister Olma's face before him, eyes wide and staring, mouth open in silent scream. Outstretched hand, trembling fingers, as though she still might catch him.

Rion's vision blurred. His hand burned.

The flame exploded senselessly, out of control, a wall of fire and fury, thundering out of his hand, incinerating the air. The children, the animals that children are. Hissed, shaking, their bodies burned as much as the fire. Their mouths too wide, stretched wider, screaming in a requiem of not their own.

Sister Olma's body collapsed onto the ground.

Rion didn't think.

He ran.