A/N (Aroihkin's Notes) / Chapter originally written on 11.23.2004. Re-polished on 01.12.2006 for the arowrites dot net archives.
Review-replies can be found now on arowrites dot net.
Formatting repaired on 04.13.2010 -- thanks, ffnet, for eating all my scene-dividers sometime in the last four years!
05.02.2010: All scene-dividers have been eaten, again, on all of my stories. I give up. Please just go read this story on arowrites dot net where it hasn't been made incoherent; I am unable to keep up with this site's stupidity.
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Requiem for the Dream
( entry 09: bones and ashes )
It was night when they found it, and the Delphinus lay broken.
The warship was a charred husk. Warped support beams thrust into the dark Valuan sky like the ribs of a decaying animal corpse. The blackened tatters of a curtain still clung desperately to the starboard side, flickering stiffly in the wind as it hung outside its shattered window.
Shards of melted glass glittered like freshly-spilt tears in the glare of the search lights as the Armada warship lowered, carefully, toward the half-crushed wreckage. Taking in the horrible scene from the bridge of the approaching Monoceros, the Silvite Admiral felt the briefest flicker of unexplained emotion.
It was almost as though, for that fleeting moment, it didn't matter to him that the crew had been his enemies. Nobody really deserved to die that way...
--the search lights shone through a gaping hole, and for a split second one lit on the grisly remains of a nameless pirate--
He shook his thoughts away deliberately, like water droplets from his fingertips, and regained his mental footing. Ramirez could philosophize about it later all he liked, but now was hardly the time or place.
"We'll lower over there, to dropping range." he said, pointing, his voice showed no sign of the unease he couldn't shake. "No one else leaves this ship until I tell them to."
It was doubtful that this order would bother his men, no one was eager to venture into that disaster zone.
Ramirez's helmsmen obediently eased the Monoceros down closer to what had once been the Great Valuan Gate. The bottom half of the massive defensive and offensive tunnel had survived the Rains, and this was where the Delphinus now lay, in its chosen grave.
"Vice-Captain Serak," the Admiral addressed one of the men on the bridge, knowing him from all the others even though they all wore the Valuan helmets that hid their faces. "Keep charge of the ship until I return." and with that, he exited the bridge.
Even without the extra stripes on his uniform, Ramirez would have known his ship's Vice-Captain by the way he always leaned on one leg heavier than the other--standing slightly lopsided. The Silvite made it a point to find ways of recognizing the different soldiers, if only for professionalism's sake.
It certainly beat yelling 'hey, you!' every time he needed someone's attention.
Finally arriving on the deck of his ship, Ramirez grasped and vaulted over the cold railing without hesitation. A moment later and he had landed lightly on the last of the Great Valuan Gate, his legs taking most of the shock for him in a practiced, graceful bend.
Ramirez took a precautionary moment after straightening to draw his sword from his side, and to get a feel for the footing, before beginning his walk. The Delphinus lay not at all far from the edge, its decimated tail end turned toward his approach, warped propellers and melted puddles of ash-dusted steel reflecting dimly on the ground along his path.
This same ship had reportedly navigated the dark rift, and he knew it had also followed De Loco into Deep Sky. An engine of that size and strength, turned unstable, was mind-numbing. The explosion would rip through the toughest of materials with a heat and force unknown in even the deadliest of spells.
He could almost see it, flowering up and outwards in a screaming gust of heat, smoke, and death... it had split the back of the warship open like an Ixa'takan melon. Such brutality, and yet the results were almost beautiful in the pooling of what moonlight managed to fight its way through the constant cloud cover of Valua.
There was a sweet smell in the air, it finally penetrated his awareness as he grew closer.
This was how one would ordinarily describe ash in general... but this was far worse. It was cloying, sickly, and so potent that it made the back of Ramirez's throat tighten in revulsion. He had smelled death many times before, and even death under flames... but never after it had been exposed to the elements.
The Admiral reflexively tightened his grip on his sword, though he logically knew there was nothing living left here to fear, and continued his advance.
Ramirez could almost feel... heat... emanating from the burst engine room as he neared it, and he peered cautiously inside the gaping wound of the hull. It was just his mind playing tricks on him, though, and he released the breath he hadn't remembered holding, green eyes un-narrowing.
What had once been the top hull to the proud ship was now a wide, yawning hole to match the port side... a thin-looking strip of warped metal between the two gashes was all that separated them from being one gigantic wound. The port side had been slashed open by something massive, probably the same thing that had crushed the middle of the ship, and the top... seemed to have simply vanished.
Ramirez found himself staring through the gash, up through the top, and at the cloud-obscured yellow moon...
The searchlights from his ship began sweeping obediently along the Delphinus, not having anywhere specific to focus for him, and one blinded him for a second as it passed him over.
Resigning himself to a grisly investigation, the Admiral grasped one warped, rib-like support beam, and stepped into the ship through the side wound. Here he waited a few moments, trying to tune out the smells and ignore the amount of ash still in the air. Ramirez gazed upward again, noting that the huge hole in the ceiling coincided with the amount of ash on the floor, covering the glass and... other things within that direct path downwards.
"I see." Ramirez mused aloud to no one, using his voice to distance himself. The heat must have made the top extremely brittle, and it would have turned to nothing shortly after cooling again. He turned his gaze to the giant windows left nearly intact, their glass had shattered inwards, and melted to the floor...
"The glass was broken before they arrived here, and those were dead before the fire reached them." a cold voice said from behind him, causing the Admiral to spin on one foot and bring his sword up to attack--
--the doctor.
He paused, lowering his guard only slightly.
"I ordered that no one else would come down before I signaled." Ramirez said evenly.
"Lord Galcian," said the doctor, tone as cold as the Grand Valuan Gate beneath, "told me to investigate anything falling under my specialties, Admiral, whether -you- specifically ordered me to or not."
Ramirez had known of the order, of course. Determination, his Lord had told him, was what he wanted to test here. They had known there would be some grisly findings in the blasted city, but, none of them had known the Delphinus would be here as well...
"Dead people," that cold voice continued as though speaking to a simpleton, "and the way they became that way, fall quite obviously under my specialties."
He kept his expression neutral as one of the lights swept over them, then nodded shortly and lowered his blade.
"Continue, then."
"So glad to have your permission, Admiral." Megan Jones said evenly, stepping past him and then pointing clearly to one of the dark forms near them.
The Monoceros' crew had obviously been aware of her departure, because one of the search lights obediently came to rest where she indicated... on one of the charred, blackened bodies.
"The glass isn't on that body, or any of the others from what I can see." She began, holding the air of one explaining something very basic.
"Get to the point." Ramirez said coldly, earning an impatient glance from the doctor. Jones herself walked to the body carefully and bent her knees, coming to a crouch beside it.
"Roll it over."
"What?"
Another impatient look was flashed at him from freakish golden-amber eyes.
"...fine." Ramirez, too, approached the body. He hid his distaste carefully as he rolled the corpse over, using the flat of his sword. There wasn't all that much left of the thin cadaver, various sky fish and the elements had taken their toll rapidly. The Admiral didn't find anything particularly special about the other side of the body, there wasn't even an identifiable face left between the fire and the rest.
A stray lock of brown hair was all that hadn't been burnt beyond recognition on the entire head. The yellowish-white of skull showed through more often than not, the flesh pecked off by sky fish and most of what had been left decayed in the nearly-constant rain.
"See."
"See -what-, doctor." the Admiral sighed in annoyance.
"You don't. Fine, I will try to use as small of words as possible." Jones said, not even bothering this time to lace the caustic words with sarcasm, "Glass under the body means they fell on top of the shards, which means they died after the glass was broken."
"That still doesn't prove that the fire didn't kill them." he replied, watching as she removed a thin case from her left boot and opened it. Inside were a variety of scalpels, and she used one to pry some half-burnt blueish cloth scraps away from what remained of the chest. Beneath, the remaining flesh was darkened and sticky.
"No. But then, what I've told you thus far -should- have been obvious to anyone." she snapped, slicing into the body with disgusting precision, sawing a portion of the fire-brittle rib cage apart and then using a long pair of tweezers from the scalpel case to remove the bits of bone.
There wasn't much skin left, but the rib-cage had apparently protected the internal organs and tissue from what had to have been a fast fire.
It made sense, Ramirez thought, hurriedly thinking of the ceiling of the ship that would have still been intact. Without anything to burn outside of the ship, the fire would have been contained inside... and would have smothered itself even with the side and rear gashes. This had to be the reason the entire thing hadn't burned to ash... the fire hadn't had time to consume everything.
What little fire would have been left over, fueled for air by the gashes, would have been left wide open for Valua's regular rain once the ceiling went...
Sure enough, the cloth on the front of the body was damp with ash and water, creating a dark but thin sort of mud. He was trying -not- to look at what the doctor was doing, though, as she sliced into what had to be a lung.
"There, see?"
He was trying hard not to.
But... apparently she wasn't waiting for a reply, anyway.
"This body never inhaled any smoke, which means it stopped breathing before the fire started." Ramirez looked down at the crouching doctor with distaste as she continued her report, "The lung is compressed but not burst. I'd say this ship was in lower sky when the hull was ripped apart." if she found it at all strange that a ship had been in lower sky to begin with, she didn't show it as she stood back up and gestured to a much bigger form closer to the rear of the ship.
"That one, I would think, was killed by the blast." the searchlight moved accordingly, lighting on a large, similarly burnt body, and glinting off of a massive metal arm. There was shrapnel, clearly from the nearby engine room, imbedded deep into the corpse. The areas that had been hit showed that it had to have been standing at the time.
It had been over mercifully fast, Ramirez surmised, because the body obviously hadn't lived long enough to do more than land like a rag doll.
"You're extremely observant." he noted, grudgingly.
"And you are -not-." Jones said in her monotone voice, turning to go back to the lift ropes dangling from the Monoceros.
"Just what sort of doctor are you?" Ramirez demanded. Shock, he supposed, had set in from the carnage of the wreck. Otherwise he would never have bothered to ask, and he would have at the very least reprimanded her for her disrespect by then. Megan Jones wasn't taking her orders directly from him, but, regardless...
"A coroner, Admiral," came the reply, before she was gone.
Ramirez reigned his impatience in at the answer, telling himself to ask Lord Galcian about it when he next had the chance. Right now, he had more to find out about the crash, and so he resolutely climbed out one of the windows to get a look at the other side.
It was certainly easier than walking around the entire ship just yet, anyway.
Ah, and now here was something interesting. Shining dully, a steady trickle of old, dried blood led him around toward the back of the ship again, and the searchlight followed him. Only moments later, Admiral Ramirez found himself standing on the edge of the Gate, staring out towards what was left of Lower Valua.
The ruins were nearly invisible from here in the semi-darkness, but, within lifeboat distance across the chasm... if barely. Certainly a ship as big as the Delphinus would have a large crew, and a few survivors out of so many casualties wasn't at all improbable.
It was time to pay Lower Valua a visit, Ramirez decided abruptly, turning to head back to the Monoceros.
The dead... would wait.
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Skies of Arcadia Legends belongs to someone else.
All here that is not found in the canon... is mine.
Never steal if you value your spleen.