Where the screams and weeping were most intense, the volunteers were less and few. In a place of deepest suffering, doctors addressed the worst to have come. Cutting into flesh to repair sub-surface injuries or sawing the bones of blackened limbs needed to be amputated. Diagnosing their patients before their subordinates filled records which were piled into stacks paces high. Nurses detailed their notes and provided the equipment required by their colleagues, holding down those in shock and in agony without a single injection to anesthetize. They were bested usually, impossible to talk the wounded into calm. Those who accepted themselves to be cared for after the cure or the treatment were not many, and whether the healers had succeeded or failed, it was all the same to them, in need to move on to the next as there were often hundreds more in queue. Proceeding further into the church, past the altar where the father would give his talk, they went into the chambers within the ruins of a bell tower. There, the luxury of beds and incense were once belonging to priests to dispel what evil spirits desecrated their holy house. But then, after the arrival of the devils in their steel birds and bombs of fire, there were too many to war against. The messenger to the heavens so that prayers could be heard was once a spire, becoming of their connection to the gods, that had been smited down. Though it was not as exposed from the ceiling half removed, the skies’ lights were focused rather than there being a blanket of warmth before. The sun broke over the ribs of the roofs and was telling that noon was fast approaching. Gone, the morning cool was, battling the embers that replaced it. In the town dried of electricity or gas, the air felt colder than it would usually be anyways in early winter. Yet, dispelling not the heat of his work, a surgeon was in his height of summer, wiping a coat of grease and sweat from his head despite the blood on his hands.
He had not changed for days and there was a stench surrounding him. His finger nails had been blackened by dust, dirt, ash, and dried fluids, graying his hands smudged with old medicines. Placing down a scalpel by a crate, on there he took a seat as he rolled up his sleeves and lowered his face mask covering the stubble of his facial hair around his mouth and teeth unwashed. His pair of shriveled lips cracked from the drought from his own wellbeing that was unkept. Without a need to shed a bead of sweat for himself, he seemed far too caring for his patients. Taking a sip of water that had been stagnant and shared amongst his many comrades, however diseased it was, it refreshened his mind. Come, he remembered, confronted by two boys. One’s expression was telling of anxiety and pain whilst another was like a soul overworked. The good surgeon saw, whose half-broken mind could sympathize with, and sought to inform them of what they sought. Releasing a heavy sigh, he put away his cup and looked up with dark circles darker than any before they had seen, which the children were unsure of whether he was awake from his eyes like slits.
“Sorry kid, but none’s sure if that’s her or not per truth.” The defeated man’s speech was slow and depressing as he apologized. “We were only able to identify her through a friend who brought her here.” Pointing down an aisle, the doctor directed them.
Arminius followed his finger that was shaking as it pointed towards the church’s interior which the stink of dying aura filled. He could not imagine what awaited him there. Afraid, a creeping fear was attached onto his back, shuddering from the thought of relying on a lost hope that somehow it would not be her and that it was another.
But the surgeon was not so reassuring when he mentioned secondly, “As for your mother…Setsuki was it…?”
Running through however short his memories were, it was forever trapped in his mind. Seared into his head, he knocked on his temple trying to clear an image. When it came to him that was as bright as day, he could shear no more effort to laugh at his own lack of thought. Of course it was Missus Reichner considering that she was one of the very few easterners who were local to Bristel that he could name.
“You’d be lucky if you could catch her before…” Drawing his words into silence, he knew it was not an easy sentence to word out, especially that to a child.
Though the boy and his mother had never been close, every memory they had together flashed before him. His hands twitched from bitterness when not a tear ran. A normal person would think it was heartless for him to have dismissed it from his emotions, but from the sinking breaths and his heartbeat that Julien could minutely detect standing beside him, that would have been a misunderstanding. For the chance that his sister might be alive, Arminius took it to see her, spinning away and yanking his friend along with him. Hurrying along, Julien tried to slow him down, but that moment called for their agility ahead of everything else. Time was running empty and his steps turned into incoherent shuffling. Tripping, he was lucky to have a friend recover him from a fall who failed to catch the rhythm of his march of dread. Almost reaching forward, clawing his way through the viscous air, his eyes watered and his vision became a blur. When it seemed that luck had fallen on his side, he approached the end of the corridor where he had yet to find his irreplaceable half. Then in the corner, on the edge of his sight, before the image of his punishment could have been processed, Arminius wanted for it to be a lie. Paused in his tracks, in complete horror, he had recognized the body simply from its shape.
Treading nearer to the bed at the world’s end, where nurses and doctors gave no more care than they could for it would not have done much even if they did, the boys entered a realm that was human no longer. Out of the dozens who were swapped out everyday, they were the final resting places of the dying who stubbornly clung on. There was one, laying on white sheets, a girl in a cocoon of bandages. Her body was wrapped from the top of her head to the tips of her feet, yellowed and pinkish from the pus of blisters and the blood of exposed flesh beneath. On the decaying edges, her skin had been charred through, and seeping, the liquids from within were free to leak from her, flayed by fire. Whose nerves had been damaged beyond repair, she felt no more pain from out, but within, everything must have been burning. Arminius approached, closer as he dared, towards the one still carrying a familiar scent of aura overlapping the coal-like pungence. Each breath was a wheeze through her mouth that remained her only path to her half-grilled lungs. Her brother suddenly dropped to his knees, feeling weaker by each minute that passed with him staring, scarred by the reality before him. Julien attempted to stand him, but knowing that he would not budge, he let go and let him kneel in grief. Having felt that there was a guest in her presence, that was none other than Arminius, the single eye that had been saved from the flames opened, weakly, to find him drawing falls of tears. In her stead, whilst her tear glands had been scorched, blood was all she cried. Even if she wanted to in her heart, her body would disallow her from saying his name. No voice came out. When her brother held onto her arm, she knew it was him but could not feel a thing. Not his lost sense of touch nor his tears falling onto her. Trying to subdue his own cry for mercy for his sister that he had failed to keep watch, Arminius wept helplessly. Providing nothing to his friend, not that he could, Julien chose to kneel beside him as well. Letting both be at peace. Under the roof of the church, the home of the gods who were supposed to help, in the sadness there was a frightening storm. The heavens were set in unease forecasting what was to come, in replacement of earth might there be hell. The thoughts of paradise were so distant.
51Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ56ooqiyOtd
