Chapter 67 - A Collapse of Remnants

Adam’s chafed fingers closed around another cold stone edge. About twenty feet beside Emily, he climbed along the feathers on Aves’ huge wings in the direction of the far end of the cave. As a man who’d sworn off the worship of the owl god years ago, Adam had to admit there was some special kind of irony in that he relied on Aves for his survival once again.

Meanwhile, deep below them, the ravine was growing wider and wider. Aside from the destruction it wrought, there was something… off about it. It took a while before Adam realised that no matter what stones, stalactites, or statues fell into the dark depths, there never came a sound from any of them reaching the bottom. It was like they were swallowed out of existence. Into oblivion.

A cold shiver travelled down Adam’s spine. As he climbed from feather to feather, he couldn’t help but glance down behind him now and then. The ground around the ravine didn’t just break out of brute force. It seemed like the boulders around the ravine crumbled and fell by themselves. It was like the chasm grew by gradually destroying all around it through some strange effect within the Realm of Remembrance. When Adam peered more closely, he could’ve sworn he saw the blurry shapes of tendrils spreading over the ground from the ravine’s edges. When they neared the statue of a young priest, seemingly chanting the words on a roll of parchment, the vague shapes of tendrils crawled up along his legs. The man’s face and the letters on the scroll were first to disappear; all identifiable or remarkable features washed away until a nearly doll-like statue remained. It didn’t take long before the whole statue was swallowed by the gaping abyss.

Is this… whatever causes Caine to forget?

Adam blinked, pulled himself back to the here and now, and looked down. Apparently, the humongous statue of Aves had been built on a cliff to overlook a pre-existing ravine. And, far below them, there was what seemed like a tiny surviving structure. It led to a tunnel in the side of the cave which hadn’t collapsed yet. “Wait, there’s an intact bridge all the way down!” Adam yelled over the grinding of stone and the tearing of wood all around them. “Can you get us there?”

Emily pressed herself against the statue to dodge falling rocks near her. “Really? Can’t you find anything a little bit lower so we’re actually sure we’re gonna drop dead?! Err, I could swing us that way with chains of Ironglass. Maybe slow our fall with a Gaolom Invocation…”

“Sounds good! On three?”

“No, wait!” Emily shrieked.

Adam craned his neck sideways and his face paled. A giant statue of Louis—Emily and Caine’s father—was toppling over towards them. At this rate, they’d soon become like squashed bugs somewhere in the stern expression between the moustache and the curly hair.

“Adam, get closer!” she shouted.

Adam hastily climbed up to her. “What are you—”

Holding on with one hand, she threw away her lit torch and fired a surge of Shrike at the statue. Adam felt the warmth drain away from the air as she transformed the Oquira around her into an almost invisible Invocation. It appeared as though the air in front of her hand merely quivered—as if heated by fire—and was slightly bluish in tint, but the power was enough to bite right through the stone. Hissing in effort, her teeth bared, she blasted a broad hole in the eye of her father’s statue.

When the giant face finally made its impact—making the stone Adam and Emily held onto tremble like another earthquake—the hole was wide enough to encapsulate them. Adam’s torch, which he’d clamped down between his teeth, was practically the only light source as the stone of Louis’ eyesocket was all around them. When Louis’ statue fell to the right, its giant face scraped over the wings of Aves. To Adam and Emily’s left, the side wall of the eyesocket got closer and closer.

Emily stretched her arm to the left and fired another mighty surge of Shrike. By blasting the side of the eyesocket and part of the statue’s nose apart, she prevented it from dragging them down into the abyss.

Adam saw how Louis’ ruined likeness tumbled down into the darkness. Oof, savage.

“It’s just a statue, okay?!” Emily hissed between her panting as she looked away from Adam’s expression. Aware she preferred to speak as little as possible about the troubled bond with her father, Adam merely nodded.

However, the statue of Aves was wobbling after the impact. The giant wing they were clinging to even grew cracks high above them.

By the night… “Emily, we’ve got to jump to the bridge!”

She peered down, face pale in the light of their flickering torches. “I’m exhausted!” she wheezed. “I’m trying to gather Oquira… but it won’t be enough!” Her arms trembled, Adam wasn’t sure if she could even hold on to the damp stone for long.

Adam’s mind raced as he judged the distance. By the dim warmth coursing through his veins, he knew he didn’t have that much Inner Fire left after the ordeals to reach this cave. Furthermore, not only was the bridge quite far below them, there was a respectable horizontal distance they had to traverse to reach it.

More and more cracks appeared above them as the stone began to give. No, no, NO!

“Stay alive,” Adam’s left heart hissed. The organ filled his mind’s eye with visions of how Adam had jumped while using the Invocation from Osaehin. It surely had made him nimble back then, light as a feather. The heat coursing through Adam’s veins eerily pulled his gaze towards stalactites he could jump towards.

However, no matter how focused his left heart was on motivating him to survive, it didn’t seem to care about others. While helping her, he’d never be able to pull off the stunts it showed in the visions. And Adam doubted it was safe to try and save anyone in the hare-brained state of fear and survival Osaehin’s Invocation would bring him in.

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As a crescendo of splintering stone sounded above them, there was only one option. “Emily, climb on my back!”

“What?!”

“I’ll take us to that bridge!” Adam said. Meanwhile, he turned his head left, to the massive stalactite with memories of him and Caine. Although his left heart was beating like crazy, filling him with the primal need to reach safety, he single-mindedly focused on him and Caine. More specifically, on how it made him feel. To realise Caine had truly always been there for him. And how Adam could’ve avoided this nightmare if he hadn’t let himself get Tainted and manipulated by Oliver.

Even though Emily avoided touch wherever possible, the prospect of sudden death was enough for her to nimbly climb on Adam’s back. From the way the heat drained from the air around him, he could tell she was gathering more Oquira.

“Make sure you give my arms and legs some space…” he mumbled.

“Like this?” her hands interlocked on his chest, while her legs clamped sideways around his waist.

Adam swallowed. The last time she’d embraced him, back at the Green Hare, had been in a slightly different context. He quickly suppressed the memories of her warm breath on his neck and how her lips got closer that day, as he tried to keep all his attention on evoking quite a different emotion.

“Sure hope you’ve got a plan,” Emily said matter-of-factly.

“Sure, as long as you take care of the landing…”

“Wait, what—”

With a deafening crunch, the wing broke off.

Emily screamed something, but Adam couldn’t afford to listen and focused on that cold, painful feeling that always clung to him like a chain. The one he could never be free of: guilt. Instead of suppressing it or distracting himself from it, he forced himself to acknowledge it. He’d entered Caine’s home. He’d scared Caine’s young son, who he thought to be his own.

I… messed up. I’ve made a lot of mistakes and I accept the pain of the consequences. He exhaled as the wind brushed his skin. Let it help me be a better man. Let it fuel me, guide me, to finally set things right!

“Schultora,” Adam’s left heart hissed. And about damned time.

The pain of guilt erupted all over his body; Inner Fire was extracted from his bodily tissue, squeezing out power far beyond its normal limit. As if a volcano had erupted from within him, heat surged through his veins like magma. Like a geyser of boiling water.

He could do anything; right now, he even felt closer to the power he used to have in his prime.

Below them, the bridge was drawing nearer. If they would jump too far, or not far enough, they’d quite surely be history. They had one shot. Despite the pain, or even the threat of being forgotten by Caine and probably erased from existence, Adam couldn’t help but notice a spark of excitement; he felt more alive than ever.

He threw away his lit torch to free his right hand and grabbed the stone feather. Falling at the same velocity as the giant wing, Adam set both his feet against the surface. Instinctively, he gathered as much Inner Fire as possible in his limbs. His mastery of the technique wasn’t nearly advanced enough to gather all of it but it had to do.

Feeling for the right moment, Adam gave one last glance behind them, judging the distance. “READY?!”

“Are you trying to deafen me?!” Emily hissed. “I’m right here!”

And on that high note, Adam used all the strength he could muster to push off from the statue. Like a coiled spring that finally released, Adam generated as much sideways momentum as possible. Emily’s arms and legs tightened around his torso, making him feel oddly safe.

Then Adam felt the colour drain from his face; they weren’t going to make it. If they continued to soar in this trajectory, they would miss the bridge leading out from the tunnel by falling roughly twenty feet left of it at top velocity.

“EMILY!”

“What did I just say?!” She unclenched her arms, stretched them out above Adam’s head, and held both her hands in the Gaolom gesture. “Urgh… stupid Invocation… COME ON!”

Below them, a dark blue sphere of Gaolom appeared. Although it definitely wasn’t the strongest version of the Invocation he’d seen her perform, the gravitational force pulled his body, slowing him down and changing his directory. Slightly. Now, like some mockery of a deranged bird on a suicide mission, Adam and Emily flew towards one of the pillars at the side of the bridge.

Regretting all the life decisions that had led him up to this particular moment, Adam braced himself by pulling his arms and knees up in a guarding position. You know, maybe this is gonna hurt just a little—

The impact hit him like a charging rhinoceros. His bones were rattled all the way up his spine before he fell from the wall. Baring his teeth, he bit through the gruelling agony and clawed at the broad stones like some mad rodent to get a grip. His hands clenched around a splintery wooden beam but Adam and Emily’s velocity caused his arms to stretch. He screamed as his arms, damaged from the inside by Schultora’s Invocation, had no choice but to hold on; a ripping pain erupted all over them. Splinters bored themselves into his quivering fingers as they were slipping from the damp wood. Emily’s weight had disappeared from his back; two hands were now holding onto his ankle for dear life.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Adam felt the remaining heat from his Invocation surge to his tortured arms, soothing them, healing them, but it wasn’t nearly fast enough. For Emily, for Caine, for your child… DON’T. LET. GO. With all the strength he had left, he bored his fingers into the wood and pulled Emily and himself up. The torn muscles quivered, red-hot with the Inner Fire that strengthened the muscle fibres that had remained intact.

The pull of Emily’s weight disappeared from his ankle. He gasped and glanced down, but thankfully she had grabbed the broad stones of the bridge beside them to climb up herself. He could see the outlines of her face in the dim light of the stalactites high above. He could feel her trusted presence beside him. Even though she was way lighter than Adam, only having to hold his own weight did make a difference for his hurt arms. With a shiver of relief, he closed his eyes and sighed.

Soon, Adam and Emily pulled themselves up one last time and sprawled on the bridge like shipwreck survivors on a beach. Finally, his poor, poor arms were free of exertion. And, of course, they thanked him with horrible stings of pain. The soothing trail of heat from his nearly depleted left heart did help a bit, though.

And, above all, they were still breathing for now.

As hazy thoughts swam through Adam’s slow mind, a vague smile was forming on his lips. “You know…”

Emily panted, lying on her back beside him. “Hmm?”

“For just a minute there, I thought you were yelling in my ear as well.”

Emily laughed shakily, closing her eyes in a happy but tired smile. “Shut it…” She blinked a couple of times. “We really should get moving though.”

Adam squeezed his eyes shut and groaned wholeheartedly, reminding himself of the times when he had complained in the mornings as a teenager. Affronted he had to leave the comfort of his bed for breakfast. How cruel. And how sorry did Adam feel for his past self, now that he had to force his bruised, battered, and torn body to run from tons of rock about to fall on his damned head.

Adam looked up. Although this part of the Realm seemed relatively intact for now, it would only be a matter of time before it, too, collapsed. High above them, the ledge which supported the broken statue of Aves and all the indiscernible constructions began to crumble. One by one, the worshippers and owl god Himself returned to rubble and dust, hopefully prophesising the end of the Starwing Order.

Adam frowned. If these statues symbolised something about this ‘Project Deliverance,’ is Caine forgetting it because someone doesn’t want him to remember? Or is he forgetting most things in general?

As soon as he got to his feet, Adam grabbed one of his unlit torches and hastily followed Emily into the dark tunnel. The only way out of the Realm was to keep going.