YEARS PASS, Kerriquane climbs the tower. The first five floors in six months, the next twenty within the year. The foreign, unknown power surging through her veins urges her: faster, faster it whispers as its hunger for the top becomes her own. The power gives her abilities, makes her able to perform miracles, makes her writhe in bed for days at a time from unspeakable, phantom pain in her limbs.
Whispers about her begin. About a lilac-haired woman passing through the tower at a speed akin to Urek Maizono. Was she another Irregular?
Anemone, they call her. The one who can read the future, the one who tangles its preys using the webs of time and eats them whole. The voice had laughed and took her to a room sometimes full of bones and monsters, other times the landscape of lush trees, dewy leaves or the memory of home — the sea and the sunlight shining on golden sand with the calls of seagull echoed by invisible walls, the only hint that it was not real. There are doors too, ones that she does not open.
Eventually, the adrenaline becomes fleeting and the promise of the top grows dimmer. She slows.
Two years pass again: she's learned to cope with the shadows' whispers and to block out the angry murmurs of the voice inside her head.
But she doesn't forget those shadows. The spiralling lines and the deadly flowers. The stories of a boy who will become great and the tales of a woman who made a deal with Gods. Her dreams are what she shouldn't see— The past, the future, the present. What can happen, what will happen, they are all at her disposal but rarely at her convenience. They whisper a name, one that she knows but can never remember.
But they also whisper a name that she does remember.
Thalassa.
"Regulars on the forty-third floor," a cheerful voice sings. "I am your administrator!" A blond man with an eyepatch appears. His right eye opens. "My name is Drah," he declares brightly in a light voice, right eye closing and left eye opening, "and my name is Az," a lower, scratchier voice announces.
The reverse of Zahard, Kerriquane glances around the forty-third floor with a veiled discomfort. A shrine of a martyr, and the obsession of the masses with the King of the Tower. The forty-third floor seemed to house, if nothing else, a cult. Cults are dangerous, and Kerriquane wanted to get out of this floor as fast as she possibly could.
Do not worry, little mortal, I won't let you die.
Kerriquane ignores the voice and chooses instead to listen to the tinkering of her bracelet, the only remains of her home. But the metals of this power are stained by blood, and the memories of the ocean forever ruined by what came out of it and what is deep under her skin.
"Your first test is to cleanse the cave of vermins," Drah says in a bubbly voice. His eyes seem bright and fit right into the vivid texture of the landscape. Kerriquane thought it looked feverish.
"You will need at least three to pass this test. You have until dawn," Az finishes in his voice, something that sounds akin to dark amusement in his voice. But his eyes do not lose that sickly passionate shine.
Seems simple enough, little rat, the voice muses, picking up none of her anxiety and stress. Shall we begin?
At times like these, Kerriquane prefers the shadows over the voice, but as usual, they are absent from her conscience at the most crucial moment.
"Excuse me," a woman with silky dark curls raises her hand. "What do you mean by vermins?"
Murmurs of agreement spread through the crowd. The manhunt tests usually included some methods of Regular elimination at the hand of other Regulars. The voice, with the power it held, might think that the test was a simple game, Kerriquane doubted that the administrator(s) would simply assign Regulars who have been climbing for at least fifty years to simple pest control.
You worry too much, she can hear the eye roll of the unsatiable god and she wants nothing more than to tell him that he does not worry nearly enough for his fragile and very breakable vessel.
"Well," Drah says, rubbing his chin. "Let's say that you'll know it when you see it," he finishes innocently. Drahaz then moves toward the gong situated in the middle of the platform he stood on and raised his hand to bang the metal.
Kerriquane readied herself, Shinsoo beginning to sink into the muscles of her legs as she prepares to propel herself forward into the cavern before them.
Clang!
The flashes of metal and screams began, and none came from the so-called 'vermins' that Drahaz introduced them to. Kerriquane had learned that lesson quickly— Above the thirtieth floor, Regulars learned that the easiest way to win was to kill each other, regardless of whether or not the test required it.
Leaping over rocks and ledges fluidly, a scent of wet mould assaults her nose as she steps deeper into the caverns, silver eyes watching the glittering blue current by the path she's sprinting on carefully. There's something strange about the water, something oddly transfixing that's in the air as much as
How much further? she asks.
There is nothing of interest in these caves, that reptile was hiding something, you best make quick work of it.
Aren't you supposed to be an Axis? she retorts veering to the side and out of sight, back pressed against the cavern rocks. Talking to a God is tiring and Kerriquane is better off not talking to him—it while she's in imminent danger of falling off a cliff.
You are too, the voice replies in amusement. Or the vessel of one at the very least. When you hold the divine in your soul, your body no longer belongs to only you. You will see what I can see, feel what I feel, know what I know— And most of all, accomplish what I can. Open your mind and it will lead you—
Protest bubbles in her throat— The screams at the back of her head and the clans of metal she can still hear makes her pulse flutter. Close your eyes and open your mind.
She takes a breath and reaches out for the rocks behind her, fingertips tracing the ridges. Focus, little mortal, on what you want to see. The shadows sink deeper into her skin, making cold sweat roll down the back of her neck. In all the thirty odd years she's been in the Tower, this is most she's talked to that voice. Focus.
Kerriquane thinks of the current and the strange atmosphere. She reaches deep, ghostly hands reaching through the air and into the current: curious, silver eyes without a visage peering into the water.
What do you see? it asks.
I see— Screams erupt. Something's happening.
Don't you dare open your eyes, little flea, the voice warned.
All of a sudden the colour comes rising up, thick and metallic, disgusting and wretched in her face, covering her eyes—
Red, red, red.
The show begins, it mused, the cold beginning to retract slowly from her skin as does its presence from her mind. It leaves— The shadows melt from her skin until it is only a mere impression of a tattoo, the voice does not whisper. But the fear does not go with it. The fear spreads like a fire, the smoke grasping her lungs and leaving her lightheaded and dizzy.
I have to get out of here. That thought spurs her to rise and selects spear from her armoury. Reason trickles back into her mind slowly as she begins to run once more, dodging falling boulders and blocking out the screeches. The light blinds her as she is coming out— But what stops her in her track is that aura— One she has not felt in thirty years, not from administrators, not from rankers, not until now.
The sky darkens, a heavy red blush spreading through the once blue mirage. Power crackles in the atmosphere, the chaos reigns over the masses as the shout and weep and plead.
"I give you all one final chance to escape," a rich baritone voice says from the sky to the fleeing crowds. "And those that worship the false king will fall for the sin of tainting sacred land."
The shadows are in a frenzy. They sing foreign hymns in sighs and propel her to watch. Messenger, one says. Angel, another replies.
Drahaz yells, rage clear in his voice as do hundreds of others that have remained, bloodthirsty for the one that dares to mock their King. The Fake King. They rise to the sky as one, like a hive of angry bees protecting their homes and charged at the figure in the sky. The man whose name the Shinsoo sings.
Enryu.
She knows they will not win. The shadows do too, as they spiral into vivid designs on her forearm.
And Kerriquane watches in morbid fascination as they fall to the red rain that splatters to the ground like dying stars and raging fires like vermin— the true vermin. Then the Administrator itself, as it transforms from monster to monster, trying to defeat that single figure in the sky who summons the wrath of Gods and beckons to death with his fingers.
Death responds, as does God.
And so the ground singes with ashes and the currents turn red, the figure descends to the ground slowly, beige coattails fluttering and lands slowly. Behind him, the red currents roar, lashing out at the now sharpened crags of the cliffs violently. Crimson hair frames a handsome face and eyes the colour of blood pin her down. Stopping before her, he towers over her lithe figure.
"You," he says in a tone of musing, "the Shinsoo chose to protect you. Who are you?"
thank you for dropping by! i'm incredibley honoured by the interest in this fic and the person who has written a comment :)
as you can see, kerriquane and enryu meets during the fall of the Floor of Death and she is a vessel of an axis — a literal god. SIU has stated that even the weakest axis could defeat a non-axis and that they had a form of power that could manipulate time and space, which was why enryu's bang's didn't harm kerriquane.
thalassa is the titaness of the ocean in greek mythology, it will play a role but not a major one. this fic won't be very long and chapters will increase in length as time goes by.
xx V