CHAPTER SIX

Complications

  The rockdust settled enough for Isaac to see Crassus’s face fully in the morning light that shone in from the hole in the church wall that Crassus had just blown in. The air smelled of earth and metal. Isaac thought for a fleeting moment about what would have happened to them had they continued standing where Crassus stood now. Isaac had connected the dots just fast enough through what felt like sheer luck.

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  For too long he’d been barely hanging on for every event that befell him, and now Aster lay unconscious in his arms. Crassus took a step forward, his whole body vibrated in indignation and anger. Isaac’s hand moved before the plan materialized in his mind. For some reason he felt more clear headed than ever. He winced as his broken arm fought it’s way past the fabric of his shirt.

  The pain was almost unbearable, but he gritted his teeth, there was no time and the other healthy hand cradled Aster. He moaned when his thumb snagged the collar on the way out but he managed to wrestle it free. There was no time. He held his silver key out between weak and feeble fingers, he had no grip strength left, but he couldn’t drop it, so he held on, somehow. Everything rode on this.

  “Here, I have the key. This is it, look,” Isaac said, and he couldn’t keep from gasping between syllables.

  The effect on Crassus was immediate. All anger drained from his face and once more he became a mumbling mess.

  “Ah! Thank you, oh, please, I need it, I just— please hand it to me, oh no no no, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!” He started crying.

  Isaac tried consoling him but Crassus didn’t respond to anything Isaac said. He just continued crying and moaning, completely inconsolable. He might appear more sane, but in the end it seemed to be a different kind of madness. That complicated things.

  “I don’t want to— I can’t— I just won’t.” Crassus started denying and refusing something. Maybe he was talking to a ghost again. There always seemed to be some voice or voices Crassus could hear that no one else could.

  The only times he had seemed to listen before was when it concerned the key. Perhaps Isaac could bluff his way out of this situation as well. But he clearly had the key right in front of Crassus this time, he couldn’t lie and say he needed to go get it like last time. Could Crassus even comprehend a more complex lie in his state?

  “I need it, it’s the only thing, oh have mercy— I’m so sorry!”

  Aster would pose a problem as well, he’d need to drag her with him. With his sorry state and a broken arm. Not to mention, once he got far enough away from Crassus, there’d be nothing to keep him from re-entering his enraged state of mind.

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  “You don’t understand, you can make it stop, it’s the only way.”

  Perhaps he could convince Crassus to leave them somehow, send him on a wild goose hunt. No, that would have the same problem as leaving, he’d just get a certain distance away, go full crazy again and simply turn around and head right back.

  “I’m tired of killing. I want it to stop. I don’t want to live anymore. Please, make it stop, we can make it stop.” Tears fell from the large blank and white eyes and nestled down between the dark hairs of his beard.

  Isaac’s blood chilled as he realized the coherent meaning behind the crying man’s words. His throat felt dry and leathery. “Would this key make it stop?” He gestured to the key in his hand by shaking it.

  “Yes! Yes, oh please end the suffering. I can’t go on— Forgive me!” He fell down onto his knees and started crying softly to himself.

  Isaac licked his lips. He felt very dehydrated all of a sudden. What use did the key really pose to him anyways. It did nothing whenever he tried to use it. He couldn’t come up with a reason for why he shouldn’t hand over the key. The only reason he hadn’t done so the last time was simply because he didn’t realize it was there to begin with.

  This one particular key didn’t actually mean anything to him. It was more the concept of the keys and the hope it provided him in surviving and finding Finn in this crazy new world he found himself in. If he gave the key to Crassus, and the obsession the man had with it continued, maybe they could crawl out of here, him and Aster, together.

  For every second that went by, Isaac’s conviction that this was the only right move solidified more and more. Yes, this was the solution to his conundrum, if the key never left Crassus, maybe the anger wouldn’t return either. The only reason he could come up with that went against his plan was the interest Aster had shown in the key. He realized with a start that her attitude towards him had completely shifted after that time she had reached for it to try and throw it to Crassus.

  As if she could read his mind, Aster closed a hand around the wrist of his broken arm.

  “Don’t— trust him— he’s a liar.”

  Isaac wondered at when she’d woken up, and how much she could’ve heard of Crassus’s rambling. He tried to think of the answers. The answers to why she’d changed her mind after touching the key. That was when she’d grown the grotesque display of feathers. But she claimed to not know what his key did. Perhaps she was the liar.

  But Isaac bent down to tell her that it didn’t really matter. They had no choice. Their only chance was giving up the key and crawl out of there with their lives intact. Maybe, if they were lucky, Crassus would stop chasing them as well. But he never got the words out, because in that moment the church wall opposite from the hole Crassus had made, exploded.

  Something large and black flew past them and collided with Crassus. The large black mass brought Crassus hard against a stone pillar and Crassus let out a pained moan that reverberated around the church. Crassus fell from the pillar as the black shape stepped away, and he collapsed into a crumpled heap on the floor.

  The dust once again settled and Isaac spotted two long hammer shaped lines sticking diagonally up from either side of the black shape. The man turned. He had a boyish face with stubble. Black insect like carapace covered most of his body. He stood shirtless and the carapace made it difficult to spot the pink skin beneath.

  From his forearms along his elbows and well up past his shoulders, stuck two thin horns that could’ve belonged to any oversized horn beetle. The man grinned.

  “That was easy!” he said, dragging out the last word. He laughed and brushed some rockdust off his shoulder. “When did you become such a pussy, Ronan?” He spoke to someone behind him.

  Isaac turned to see Ronan at the head of a group of people. They looked very similar to Ronan’s own gang from earlier.