After several uninterrupted, perpetual seconds, the screaming stopped. He looked up from his genuflect and stared upon Nyx, the vessels of his eyes throbbing red. He was about to attack her, but noises came from behind causing an interruption. Several crew members had hurried to the commotion, becoming their new targets.
He attacked. Nyx attacked by his side. A siren calling, surrendering all to death in her wake.
And the transformation had begun.
The second apocalypse. The phoenix will rise from the flames. The Chaots time has come.
Over the Scipian’s ship, clouds grew dark and dry thunder punctuated by lighting echoed through the sky. On board the maelstrom continued, the disease spreading through those who had facilitated its widespread entry to the world. Those aboard had believed they could harness the power of chaos and use it for their own ends. However, you could never tame a wild beast, and it now turned to bite the hand of its proclaimed yet false maker. Some changed, their frontal lobe altered under the convergence with the disease. Others died.
Through the mayhem, Nyx began her search. She needed to be assured that one person would suffer: Triton. Triton, the one who had procured the prion, the one who had used her as a weapon against the Thalassic and all humanity.
Screams chorused her hunt. She walked, no longer untouched by memory and tragedy but as a predator in search of her prey. Where was he, she hoped he was aboard this lone Destroyer but perhaps he stayed with the bulk of the fleet. She struggled with the impending defeat of her purpose, though knowing it would not be a lingering defeat. She would find the other ships, she would find him.
But then another found her.
The Fisherman.
Nyx stood, wondering if he was the figment that she imagined him to be. Her guide, her savior, her anchor to humankind and to her journey. He looked at her and the blood that ran down her mouth. She wasn’t sure if he knew all along what she was, the harbinger of the disease, and what seeing her now brought to his thoughts. But he said nothing, he led her silently as if untouched by the chaos surrounding them. They came to a door and he turned to her with the key in his hand.
“I asked you once if you came from the dragon’s mouth to devastate or bloom. But it was not a choice between them. I see now you have done both,” the Fisherman said.
“Why are you here?” Nyx questioned. Was he even there? She was still not sure whether he was fantasy or reality. Two things were definite: he was her guide, he had the key.
“Soon you will have your answers. But promise me you will find peace behind those doors. I unlocked the room you were contained in once before. Now it is your turn to unlock the barrier in your path. Finish what you came here for.”
It had been the Fisherman who had unchained her and unlocked the doors when she was captured last; it was he who had allowed for her escape from the Scipian. Her fingers wrapped around the metal before putting it in the keyhole. It turned; the door opened. She stepped in to face Triton.
But no one was there. She turned to see if the Fisherman knew where he had went to, but the Fisherman said nothing. He walked pass her to the desk. He sat down behind it.
“No. It can’t be you,” she said, not willing to admit her hatred was to be focused on her protector and guide.
“I am sorry I used you.” Sincerity was in the Fisherman’s voice. In Triton’s voice. “I used a voice changer when I spoke to you over the intercom aboard the Scipian. I did not want to shatter what we spoke of on the beach for you.”
“My son’s last words were of freeing you and I fulfilled them,” he continued. “I am sorry it took me so long to get here.”
Nyx said nothing in reply; instead, she focused on him, trying to understand that he was both the good of her life and the evil.
“I let you go on the beach, half wishing for you to take down what remained of the Bavarian Coalition: the Thalassic. That was the original plan, and I was there to make sure you crossed their path. But I also hoped that instead you would carve your own destiny. I let you go again aboard the Scipian, wishing the same. But I also knew that it would not only be the Thalassic, but the Scipian, that would be affected ... whether it be in destruction or salvation ... or both.”
Still silence came her response. Blood streaked her features, her hair stained with red, the line between human and Chaot, good and evil, blurred in her as well in the Fisherman. Though the dichotomy that she represented did not favor the humans.
“You are not one of them, Nyx,” he said. Did he believe his own words? “You do not belong behind locked doors. I regret so much. However, you should regret nothing.”
With ease, she could turn him into a Chaot. To take away his intellect to see what really laid underneath it all. Or she could kill him. But she could do neither. He had been her captor, and for that she hated him. But he was also the Fisherman, the one who freed her, who taught her and saved her. It almost felt he had always been her teacher, her mentor, her guide—even within her forgotten life.
“But in the end I destroyed Thalassic and my friends,” she said.
“Maybe at the heart of it both Thalassic and the Scipian, the Bavarian Coalition and Uprising, were remnants of a dying age and not meant to continue. Maybe civilization is at its end and now it is time for a new era. Or maybe there is hope somewhere, but just not in the corrupted hearts of those that fell to ashes under your touch.”
“Even if that new era is the Chaots?” she questioned, looking toward the Fisherman. Though she now knew his name, he symbolized an enigma that would always remain a puzzle to her even as he sat before her.
“Society, at its core, is self destructing to begin with. Corruption. Apathy. Most of us forgot how to live. I forgot,” the Fisherman said. Silence followed. She waited for him to explain more, however he offered nothing.
“Come with me,” she said to the Fisherman. She wanted him to. To be by his side, for he was a hunter. Like Hector had been, his soul that of a wandering predator which would never succumb.
He looked at her, the confusion clear. He had expected death from her.
“I have my own path now, separate from yours,” he said.
Nyx had killed both Leander and Hector. The pain in her heart struck deeply as she thought of them. If the Fisherman did follow her, she would be his undoing as well. She could not suffer through the heartbreak that came when she walked besides those she did not belong with.
“Be safe, Arethusa,” he said, calling her by the orchid he had once compared her too. As he said the flower’s name, she saw a sadness and lost pass within his gaze.
“You too, Fisherman,” she said, calling him by the endearing epithet even though she now knew his true name. For his true name brought hatred to her heart, and she did not wish to feel that.
The Fisherman nodded; farewells left unsaid as she walked out of the room. But an implied sentiment was exchanged, one he had said days ago. Back upon the beach, the Fisherman had left her with one piece of wisdom: That life is driven by death and madness. Despite these horrors, there stands one thing. A trace of hope withstands the environment that destroys all else. The orchid Arethusa grows and even flourishes in these impenetrable swamps. It is a piece of lasting dignity where no other can be found. Can she be the Arethusa and bloom even within the devastation?
And now he let her go again. She stepped out and returned to the pandemonium unleashed on the ship. This time though she understood the guidance he had given her when they first met.
She would bloom as the orchid did. She would destroy as the swamp did.
Triton watched as she turned and left. He was alone. This had always been the state of things for when was the last time he could remember he was not? And now he knew that he had lost, and it was not now that he had been defeated. It was when his son died. When his wife died. He had focused on death as an equalizer, but what did that give him now, he wondered.
He closed his eyes and thought of the last time he was truly not alone:
The sun felt warm, but the ocean breeze brought a chilled contrast. Sand caught in the wind came across his notes and books, and he rashly brushed it away, annoyed at the inconvenience of trying to study at the beach. But then he heard laughter. He looked up for a moment from his notes and saw the silhouette of his wife and son back when he was just a baby. The orange soaked sky was a backdrop to them playing on the shore. The glee that came from Glaucus’s chubby pursed lips matched the happiness in his own smile. His wife waved at him, then motioned for her husband to join them.
He had to finish up though. He smiled and waved back but then focused once more on his notes.
How he wish he had joined them then.
Hours before daybreak, the night was at its darkest. Promises of a new dawn lingered with the knowledge that the sun would soon rise. Nyx brought oars in and out of the water in stride as she headed toward the shore. Behind her a distant glimpse of the Scipian’s Destroyer rode the horizon. Fires rose in a vivid orange and red. Screams of chaos played out a distant symphony of the bedlam.
Another stronghold of humanity fell.
The moon shone over her and lit her way to the shore. Back to the beginning. Herself and the sea. Even the peregrine falcon circled above.
If only the Fisherman could be with her too.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Fisherman
There is one thing that is real. One thing which holds no bounds and brings life. One thing that never ceases to bring us awe. One thing that lets us know we are alive.
The fight.
The battle raged forth, man against sea.
Each wave slammed against the ship, spraying water on the deck and on the Fisherman. Fisherman, ha, if Nyx were still besides him he may be renamed the Sailor man.
No, he told himself, you hunt not simply sail. And now you hunt for safe ground. For survivors. He wondered if Nyx would be by the Chaot’s side when he returned. Would he be forced to oppose the one he both damned and saved?
Or would the fate of the Earth no longer be a battleground between humans and Chaots: the Chaots replacing mankind. Himself, the only one left, an old man on the sea, the last one of his kind. If that were to be, then he would accept his days. Perhaps he was more similar to the Glaucus myth than he claimed his son was. If the Earth fell in darkness as Scylla did in the myth, he would still be devoted to her for evermore. He would still fish by the shore, a fisherman over all else.
Another wave crashed against his boat. Lightning clapped, thunder bellowed. He could not tell if it rained, or if the water pouring down was simply the sea in its ire. He neared the shore, in hopes the gods would allow his passage, but would it be for monsters or heroes whom they sided with? He knew he was the monster in this myth, but hoped to find his redemption. No. His actions were unforgivable. He knew that. But he would still search for penance.
However, it seemed that the gods allied against him as his ship became beaten by the iron clad fists of the sea. Waves were as walls, colliding violently into the wooden hull of his sailboat. He stayed on deck, securing lines, steering the sail himself when all else failed. One wave boomed. It lifted from the sea to form a claw over his boat, coming down and taking him in its stead. It knocked him off his feet, and pulled him to the deadly waters. He dug his hands into the planks, skidding cross the surface. He fought to stay onboard; he grabbed the railing before all was lost.
Lightning struck the mast. Zeus joined Poseidon in this travesty. Flames rose, the explosion tore his grip from the rail and pulled him overboard into the ever tempestuous sea.
Now it was he alone against the gods. No ship, no solid ground to stand on. As Odysseus, the sea threatened to break him. He swam, bringing one arm over another in stroke, reaching as far ahead as possible, before bringing his arm back, carving through the water as if he were a sculptor, and it stone. Waves turned him to and fro, battling him down.
The Fisherman felt the flush of rapids around his body; a pull downward in a tidal whirl. Weighted to the bottom by the waves, it took him to the abyss.
He would not wait to see if he emerged as the Greek sea god Glaucus did, torn of his mortal coil to live within the ocean’s depths.
Fight rose in his body as he sunk. But no more was the fight against Triton, or against a world turned sour, but now against the brutality of the ocean waves. Swimming upward, he opposed nature itself to again breathe in air. From the sea he came, the warrior rises.
He endured. He won. Not the final battle, but he won a small token for humankind: Hope. Hope that despite the odds, humans could prevail once more.
To the shores he came, coughing to spew the water forth from his lungs. Hands grasped into the wet sand, grasping the earth between clenched fists. He was home. The battle with the sea tore his clothes from him; and now he felt the wind against his bare chest. He understood what Nyx had always knew, what it was to feel free. His hands left the sand. He stood, steadying his feet. He looked out. Vision clouded, but it came to a sight bringing forth such muted harmony.
Land.
Not only land.
Survivors.
Chapter Thirty
Sand boundlessly reached out over the expanse in front of Nyx. It was as it had been in the beginning, but so much more. Each step planted itself in the seashore, leaving a print that would not last. The winds, the tide, time, would see to that. The breeze caressed her skin; the salt of the air touched her lips. And the daybreak heralded new possibilities to come with the new day.
The Fisherman was gone, off to the oceans from which he had came. Leander’s heart and Hector’s spirit burrowed into hers, never to be forgotten and always missed. They were a weight, but not simply that. They had become a beacon of hope to her.
The peregrine falcon flew above in the clear skies, following her path. She smiled up at her familiar and in response it called, resembling thunder from the heavens.
This time the destination of her travels was not unseen. Her desires were not unknown; her past not a clouded image. She walked towards a future. She walked with a past. She walked to face the last string of old, in order to begin anew.
Chaots stood on the rocky shores ahead, watching Nyx step toward them. In front and center, stood the leader Jason, the Pathfinder. He stood silhouetted by the hue of the sea and the timeless sands. His skin was a copper shimmer in the sunlight, beautiful as a sculpture yet to be fashioned in the rock. She saw the final design in the uncarved masterpiece and understood now the order beneath the chaos.
Eyes colored in red and black, passion and violence, life and death, stared out from the gathering of Chaots. They did not attack; they accepted her as one of their own. Nyx joined by the side of the Pathfinder. His hand came out to her and traced down her arm, in wordless acceptance of his new queen.
She smiled. Reaching down to the holster Leander had given her, she took what was inside. And then she sliced the Fisherman’s knife across the Pathfinder’s neck.
He fell to the sand, dead. Surprise tarnished his lifeless eyes, but aside the surprise was the realization that he had indeed found the queen of the Chaots. But she stood alone.
Bringing her hand to his throat, she soaked her hands in the Pathfinder’s blood. She brought her fingertips up to her forehead and painted the red down cross her features, down to her chin. A warrior now exposed underneath. She looked out at the Chaots.
Would they attack?
No.
They bowed. Harsh, uncivil, and callous were their genuflect, but it signaled that she was now their leader. Kill the old and become the new, as in the days before the constrictive rules of society.
Would she stay? Would she be the new Pathfinder of the Chaots—their creator and guide? Or did fate call for her to continue the walk down the shores of time, to see what lay ahead?
The sun proclaimed mastery by her side, as it burned down on the sands, burning what once was, and now ready for her to choose. Ready for the new era to begin.
Epilogue
Years Ago
; —————————————
“I have one!” she said, lopsided smile plastered on her lips as she looked toward him in excitement. It’s funny how something that should be so boring was instead turned enjoyable, just by her smile. He looked at her, but only for a moment, before his gaze rested on the curving roads ahead of them. The interlocking branches of the canopy created a natural tunnel for the road and shade for the two of them on their journey.
“Let’s hear it,” he said, knowing this game was pretty lame, but at least it passed the time. Now in New York, though definitely not the city people imagine when they hear that state’s name. Instead they were in upper New York, where trees dominated, rather than the concrete of the city’s jungle.
“Ok. What is one thing that you found out about me after we moved in?”
“Well,” he said after a moment thinking about the question. “It definitely has to be the way you use toothpaste. What kind of barbarian squeezes it right in the middle of the tube?”
“You’re such a savage,” he continued. “If I knew what I was getting into ...” He laughed as he spoke, looking out of the corner of his eye at his girlfriend’s reaction. “How about me?”
He saw her look up to the sky as if racking her brain for the perfect comeback, looking up at the canopy of leaves around them. Sunlight broke through the crevices of the trees, lighting up her face as she spoke to him. “Oh I know—”
But he never got the chance to hear the rest. He slammed on the brakes, but too late.
The car slammed to a stop. Her vision was blurred, her heart pumping as if the adrenaline was readying her body for fight or flight.
“Are you ok,” her boyfriend frantically asked. She felt his hand on her shoulder and that brought her back to the present.
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