The small group entered Bolos village just before sunset, and for the first time they weren’t greeted by a crowd of excited villagers. Cen and Olus didn’t look surprised by this, having adopted dour expressions long before they arrived. Strangely Talnius walked with his head held high, looking more like a true Keeper than Kade had ever seen him. When a proud looking woman walked forward to greet them, she spoke to Tal with deep genuine respect, and Kade felt it was better to step back, curious what was different about this place for Tal.
“You are most welcome, Keepers. I’d heard you had been making your rounds more quickly than usual. I take it the hordes have grown too large to be ignored?”
“Lady Presla, you honor us as always,” Tal spoke formally. “And you have heard correctly; the beasts are no longer content to stay to the forests and ravines, their numbers are too great for the local food supply.”
The woman nodded, but appeared curious. “You’ve always said that the hordes were too powerful to be faced directly. In the past you’ve gone to great lengths to redirect them, has something changed?” She didn’t say anything, but her gaze flicked to Kade, who wasn’t sure if he should speak up. Tal gave him no chance, however.
“We’ve been given some temporary backup. Keeper Kadeus has joined us to push the hordes back; I’m afraid that the days of subtle tactics are now past. But he must return to Karthas soon, and so we’ll need to discuss evacuation; Bolos is too close to the border, and when the hordes come it will be undefendable.”
Presla smiled sadly, and took Tal’s hand in hers, “You know there’s nowhere left for us. No one has worked as hard as you have to create a place for the suffering, but when this refuge falls, we fall with it.” Kade watched the two in confusion for a moment, the emotional display being completely foreign to his understanding of the false Keeper, but when Tal didn’t release the hand for a long moment, the situation became more clear.
Kade looked to Cen and Olus, and saw the sadness in their eyes. Were these people truly so isolated? No one had ever implied that Chaos Sickness was contagious, why then were they relegated to this dangerous place, and to the point that they wouldn’t leave even in the face of certain death? There was more to this than Kade understood, not the least of which was that this woman appeared to be in love with a man Kade had thought irredeemable. He looked more closely at Presla as Tal gave what sounded like an often repeated argument as to why they should leave.
After a moment he narrowed his eyes, his vision captured by an odd play of colors inside her. While he’d mostly used his Energist vision on Keepers, Presla was hardly the first normal person he’d seen since his eyes had changed, and there was something undeniably odd about the energy flowing through her body. After a moment of what must have been rude staring, realization struck him, and he understood what he was looking at. Her body was tainted with Chaos; she had the Sickness.
Kade had met people with Chaos Sickness before, but not since his ability to see energy had asserted itself. He was lost in the interplay of colors and forces flowing through her…it was strangely beautiful, even as it was terrible. He knew the energy didn’t belong, and it was almost like it wanted out. He wanted to reach out and–”Oy, Kade, what are you doing?” Cen whispered while elbowing him in the side. Kade’s mind refocused, and he realized he’d been reaching a hand out toward the woman, who was thankfully still lost in her argument with Tal.
“Sorry I–don’t worry about it. It’s been a long day,” Kade said hastily, and Cen nodded slowly.
“There’s an Inn we usually stay at here, I’ll show you the way. These two have this argument every time, and it won’t be over any time soon.” Kade tried to smile, not sure why he felt so unusual. There was something about the pattern of the energies that pulled his mind in, like a puzzle. He tried to push the thought from his mind and followed Cen, with Olus apparently choosing to stay with Tal.
As Kade walked through the quiet streets, his eyes were drawn to every passerby, and he quickly realized the entire village was suffering from Chaos Sickness. He had to force himself not to stare, as each person seemed to hold another piece of the odd puzzle that was the storm of conflicting energies inside them. Tragically he noticed that Presla was practically healthy compared to most of these poor people, as most were more Chaos than not, and he suspected they weren’t long for this world. He stopped when they passed a surprisingly large building, seeming out of place in the relatively small village.
“That’s where they keep the sick,” Cen explained as he noticed Kade looking.
“What do you mean?” Kade asked. “I…thought everyone here was sick.” He caught himself before mentioning what he’d seen; he wasn’t sure if they all realized they were sick, and his ability to see Chaos wasn’t something he was comfortable with people knowing until he understood the implications better himself.
“It’s true they’re all sick, but those,” he indicated the ominous building, looming in the growing darkness, “those are the ones who are really sick. Not much time left.”
Kade couldn’t contain his curiosity. “I don’t know much about the Sickness, how long can people hold on?” Cen gave him an odd look Kade had gotten used to, it meant he asked about something everyone should know. Cen only shrugged and answered after a brief pause.
“Some last months, others last decades. There’s no way of knowing which it’ll be–unless someone has an extreme case, of course. Dragged in from the true Chaos or somehow exposed to a risen Elder. We don’t see many of those though, they don’t usually last long enough to make it to Bolos.” He kept walking after that, Kade following a moment after.
At last they arrived at a building that didn’t look much different from the small homes they’d been walking past, though it had a second floor which most lacked. Cen ushered him in and began speaking to a man behind a bar, who clearly knew him. Kade felt himself staring again as he saw the Chaos flowing through the man’s body. When Cen finished speaking Kade hurriedly followed him upstairs, not willing to trust himself to behave normally around the innkeeper, whose turbulent energy drew his eye like a masterful work of art.
Thankfully Cen led him to a private room, and he said goodnight before nearly slamming the door. He couldn’t understand his own behavior, or the strange hypnotic effect the energy patterns produced by these people seemed to have. He truly had to resist reaching out toward each one, not certain what he’d do if he made contact. With few other options he threw himself on the bed and tried to get himself to sleep.
***
It was the middle of the night when Kade finally gave up on sleep and made his way downstairs. The common room was dark, but his unique vision revealed that it wasn’t empty. He walked past Talnius, who stared out a window with a half-empty bottle in front of him, though what he could see in the pale moonlight Kade had no idea.
Finding a bottle of his own, Kade leaned against the bar, his mind still unable to focus. The two men ignored each other for nearly a quarter hour, both drinking and lost in private misery. At last Tal broke the silence, and despite the drink, his voice was strong and clear–maybe the most clear Kade had heard the man, the anger that normally colored his every word strangely absent.
“Forty years she’s been here, looking after the sick and the dying.” Kade turned at his words, curious what would bring the man to speak to his hated captor. “I was still pretending to be a Keeper back then,” he continued, and as if sensing Kade’s raised eyebrow, clarified. “Pretending to myself, that is. I still believed your Order was wrong about me then, and I spent every waking moment trying to prove that. Killing beasts, saving people, dragging the sick to this village, anything I thought the Keepers should have been doing, I did.” Kade just sipped his drink.
“When she showed up, she somehow knew immediately that I wasn’t what I claimed. She didn’t say anything, but I could see it in her eyes. She didn’t look at me like I was a Keeper, but didn’t look at me like I was a fraud either. Presla just saw a man trying to do good.” He took a long drink from the bottle, before leaning back and staring down at it in his hands. “I think I tried to be that man for a while. Gave up trying to prove a point, gave up thinking of myself as just a cast off that wasn’t good enough, or strong enough. I just tried to be good enough for her.”
Kade listened, grateful for the distraction from the strange urges that had assailed him since he entered town. He wasn’t sure if Tal even cared that he was here, he just seemed to need to speak, and Kade found that he wanted to understand this man who had fallen so far. “I failed my Trial, as you must know,” he said bitterly, and Kade didn’t correct him–he had no idea what happened if you failed and lived. “Failed my Trial and that was it; the Keepers trusted that filthy monster’s judgment of me and it was over.
“Then I was out here, with just enough power to help. Just enough to be somebody. So I did good…for a while.” He took another sip then went back to staring out the window. “It was five years before I realized she had the Sickness. She got it from being this close to the Chaos; she got it taking care of the people that others wouldn’t. Her case is slow. I’ve been watching it kill her for more than thirty years.” Kade turned back to the bar at that, not wanting to feel sympathy for this man.
Tal seemed to sense the movement and turned on him in fury. “You think I don’t know what you’re doing? I see your power and your ability, but you’re a child. I can feel your gaze on me each day, looking for something. Waiting for me to make your life easier. To either damn myself or redeem myself in your eyes.” He threw the bottle against the bar, and it shattered at Kade’s feet. “Well grow up, Keeper. You’ll find no easy answers here, just more death.” Talnius stormed up the stairs, as Kade simply finished his drink.
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“Answers…” he whispered into the darkness. “I need answers,” and with that he left the bottle and walked out into the street. He knew where he was going, even if his rational mind told him repeatedly that he should be heading back to bed. It was only minutes later that he found himself in front of the large sickhouse that he’d seen earlier, and he could barely make himself stop long enough to check to see if anyone was around before he quickly darted inside.
The moment he was through the door the Chaos assailed him. He could feel it on his skin, he breathed it in, and of course he could see it. For a moment he felt blinded by the sickly purple fog that seemed to permeate the building. The interior of the sickhouse seemed to be almost entirely one room, with a small area to his right he assumed was for those who looked after the patients, though it was currently empty. To his left he could see several dozen beds lined up against either wall, separated by curtains hanging from the ceiling.
When he’d visited the sick ward in Karthas, it had been the middle of the day, and the facility had been full of visiting family and healers. Now he was met with deadly silence, and found himself surprised by it. He had imagined a coughing, groaning cacophony as the many sick struggled through their final days. As he walked slowly and quietly down the center of the dark room, he saw that the reality was somehow far worse, as no one in the sickhouse looked healthy enough to cough or groan on their best day.
While most were covered in well-washed sheets, and bandages where the sheets ended, it was still clear that these poor people had been ravaged by Chaos. The exposed skin was torn and bloody, and Kade noted that many had familiar black veins standing out against their pallid skin. Even on those with darker complexions or deep tans the veins still stood out, as they glowed with a dim purple light to Kade’s eyes.
Eventually Kade was drawn to a woman near the back corner of the building. The Chaos inside her eclipsed the rest of the patients, and even when he focused Kade couldn’t make out anything but the deep purple energy swirling through her. He was certain that she wouldn’t last longer than a few days, even if he didn’t know where the confidence came from. He felt himself reaching out to her before he even registered the action, and this time he didn’t stop himself. He needed to do this, and as his skin met hers, he finally began to understand why.
The Chaos inside her wasn’t like the raw form that he’d slowly grown accustomed to. He realized now that he’d seen Chaos in different forms without really understanding it. When Chaos was absorbed by Keepers and even Elders like Karthas, it was expelled as Calm. Whether it was absorbed by native lifeforms, or monsters like the ape-creatures he’d slain so many of today, it was used directly as fuel, much like a Keeper’s body used Calm to create mana. But what he saw in this woman, and every other sufferer of Chaos Sickness was something different.
He could only assume it had something to do with the body’s attempt to metabolize a type of energy it wasn’t equipped to handle. He had already seen countless times that non-Keepers still absorbed energy, albeit more slowly and less efficiently than an Awakened. Apparently when a normal body absorbed Chaos in place of Calm, the energy was processed somehow, but remained trapped within the body. This was all interesting, but didn’t explain the almost chemical need that had drawn him here.
As his hand rested on the woman’s stomach, near where the Soul Core would be for an Awakened, he became increasingly sure that he did have some idea of what was happening. There were any number of insane moments all those months ago when he was trapped in Altera’s Chaos Fragment, but he had slowly come to understand most of them–if not the why, at least the how. His energy projection was tied to his Energist Class that he’d somehow gained from Altera, and the strange bracer he still wore had been responsible for most of the rest, but there was something else that he still thought back to in confusion. He had drained the Chaos out of dead monsters.
No matter what had happened since, that was one mystery he’d never been able to solve. He still remembered his shock as he pulled the rat-snake from his damaged shoulder, and felt it dissolve in his hand. That his body had healed after was another question he couldn’t answer, and yet standing here, over these poor doomed people, he felt there were answers to be had. He tried desperately to remember what he had done all that time ago, but he felt like something had changed inside him, and it simply didn’t seem possible.
He considered that many things about him definitely had changed, including his very body, and wondered if he’d somehow cut himself off from the mysterious technique. He thought back to the feeling and tried to hold it in his mind. He remembered that it was almost like he’d carved a path through his own body at the time, dragging the energy forcefully through his own burning veins into…into what? At the time he hadn’t known, but now he understood that it could only have been his soul. But now he had a Soul Core, and mana pathways, either one–or possibly both could be somehow incompatible with whatever it was he had done.
And yet he felt this powerful desire to use the ability, as if some part of him he wasn’t in control of was sure that it should be possible. He’d finally identified the strange need he’d been experiencing, the intense desire to understand the ‘puzzle’ that was the strange energy caught up inside these poor people. For some reason the Chaos in these people was similar to what he’d…fed on back in Altera, and the ability was hungering for it somehow.
But how to satisfy the hunger? If his mana pathways were truly incompatible with this type of processed Chaos, how was he possibly going to find another pathway into his Soul Core…he stopped short, as the obvious thought finally occurred to him. He had endless paths to his Soul Core; they were hanging off his waist even now. With a thought he brought up a chain up in front of him, and stared at it, considering. Did he dare try this? It was invasive, and risky, and…wrong? Somehow that thought was quieter than it should be, and a part of him knew his behavior was already straying well past the norm.
Yet the greater part of him was just hunger. He knew he wanted, maybe needed what was trapped inside these people, and he was just as sure that they needed the energy out. How could this be wrong? These people were doomed, and many would be gone within the month. Which among them wouldn’t choose a possible miracle when the alternative was death? He wasn’t even aware of having made the decision when he realized the chain’s final links had transformed into a small, razor sharp needle.
He didn’t hesitate, and didn’t question himself as the chain-needle speared into the woman’s middle. Thankfully she didn’t regain consciousness from the pain, likely long past being able to do so. Now that the connection was established, Kade let his mind follow the single chain’s path from his Soul Core to this woman’s soul, and he realized he could feel the Chaos trapped inside her. It seemed to vibrate and writhe as if alive, and Kade was immediately sure that it wanted out.
Once that thought took him, the rest was surprisingly easy. Just like the Chaos that he unleashed in combat, all it took was relaxing his control–the energy wasn’t meant to be trapped in this imperfect vessel. He realized his eyes had closed some time ago, and when he opened them he could see purple light pulsing upward from the chains. In moments the pulse turned from a drip into a torrent, and suddenly the Chaos was pouring out of the woman at an alarming pace.
Kade had no time to stop what he’d begun, and he found he couldn’t even will the chain out of the woman. This was happening, for good or for ill, and he watched the purple energy racing through his chain with equal parts excitement and fear. The moment it reached his body he felt it crash into his Soul Core like a wave, and it was as if he’d been burning in a desert, then fallen into a cool lake. He lost control immediately, and stumbled back to the center of the room, knocking over a table and chair as he did so.
He was shocked by how much Chaos was trapped in the woman, and realized she must truly have been absorbing it for decades, possibly even centuries before she realized she was sick. Kade’s mind was completely lost to the experience, and without hesitation dozens more chains burst forth, each one lancing into one of the sick people surrounding him. He was the center of a storm of purple energy as it rushed into him from every angle, and he could feel his Soul Core simultaneously begging for more while also feeling as if it was about to burst.
He didn’t know how long this went on before his chains began to withdraw from the bodies, and he realized with a shock that he’d drained them all. His entire body was shaking from the experience, and he looked around in panicked confusion as he finally seemed to be back in control of his mind. This was no miracle cure, and everyone around him was still a bandaged mess, now also sporting small wounds in their abdomens, but Kade was stunned to see no trace of Chaos in any of them. He’d taken it all.
He started to smile when pain tore through him. He fell to his knees and began coughing up blood, and reaching up found that it was leaking from his eyes, ears and even fingernails. Frozen by the horror of it, it took a moment to notice the now-familiar beeping from his bracer, and he looked down at the display.
Attention! Chaos Energy reserves exceeding maximum!
Chaos: 14,954/191
You should really do something about that!
He blearily stared at the number for a few seconds in disbelief, before he heaved his aching body off the floor, and raced from the room. The pain was extraordinary, and it almost felt like his Soul Core was cracking from the strain. He smashed into the door with a shoulder, sending it flying out into the street, and he came stumbling after it, desperately trying to gather enough concentration to use the only ability that might save him.
He had planned to run to the edge of the village, ideally over the wall and far from prying eyes, but he didn’t get farther than the center of the street before his legs collapsed under him. With the last of his will he pushed through the pain, and raised his hands toward the sky, the many moons of Iros turning into targets for his addled mind. With a scream he at last let go, and the Chaos exploded from his body.
Once more he watched the veins in his arms burn to black from the intense energy, which bathed the entire village in purple light. Soon the sight disappeared as the power became too much and started tearing its way out of his eyes. His scream cut off next as the energy poured forth from there as well, and finally there was an indescribable pain as he felt the front of his chest burst open, the Chaos now ripping its way through him directly from his Soul Core.
The last vestiges of his mind and will were focused entirely on directing the energy upward, as it could have leveled the village a dozen times over. After an eternity he felt the Chaos inside him finally begin to abate, and when his vision returned he was lying on his back, staring straight upward. He absently wondered just how much time had passed, as the moons seemed to be in different positions.
His body was nothing but pain, and he found that he didn’t have the strength to move, but he remained conscious just long enough to hear the horrified voice of Talnius nearby. “What in the name of all the Lost Gods are you?”