The Rokkaia Chronicles

by Rhys Thomas

  She rolled the sleeves up and I saw her gaara shift into a sphere and move up her forearms beneath the rolled-up sleeves. Pulling back on my long sleeve-undershirt and tunic and opening the door I stepped aside as Ariana walked past slipping a small knife, I’d seen her use on an apple before into her boot.

  Shutting the door behind me, I locked and warped the key away. The starter and meal were presented by Calista.

  Weldon was nowhere to be found, he just stayed in the kitchen cooking for us as Calista served.

  The buxom waitress then came through kitchen door carrying a small tray, she placed on the table between myself and Ariana. Her wide hips bumping my shoulder as she leaned over and presented two thick slices of baked bread with melted cheese on top.

  “Excuse me, Calista. Can you something?” I ask the barmaid and she nods with small smile, “most certainly.”

  “Why is this inn called the Fourth, or Weldon’s Fourth?”

  Her smiled slipped to a small sad one, “ah, yes. You see this is Weldon’s Fourth Inn, as in he’s had three before. I joined on as a barmaid just after he lost his second inn, then we lost the third early this cycle.” She unconsciously rubbed the area to the left side of her belly, “the place burned down after Weldon refused to welcome Venyin travellers. They didn’t take kindly to being left out in the freeze snow. So, they burned us out,” She finished softly.

  “Shit, I’m sorry to hear that. I can understand why he’s so grumpy and wary of strangers then,” I said softly to the waitress.

  She nodded at my words with a frown, “from what I understand, he wasn’t always hateful towards the Venyin. But something happened to him, something about the cause of his wife’s death. But he’s looked after me, after the fire, no one would take me on.” She blankly stared off into the middle distance.

  There was a loud curse and then the sound of hollow, metallic clanging against the floor. Calista came back to herself and with a small shake and a wave at us. “I better make sure Weldon is alright. I’ll be back with your meals in just a moment.” With that she left, retreating back behind the bar and through the door. I heard the crunch and joyous moan as Ariana ate at her own melted cheese on toast.

  ~*~*~*~

  “Come morning, we’ll see about supplies, clothing and hopefully someone I can exchange one of my gold coins with,” I said shutting the door behind us.

  Ariana immediately slumped onto the bed full up from the excessive amount of food that had been piled into the main course. “And see about working on as hired guards for the Venyin heading north.” I was speaking more to myself I realised as Ariana seemed to be in a food-coma and Marisa was well... Marisa.

  Moving over to the Valakharian scout I unlaced her knee-high boots, being careful to remove the small knife there first. Storing her boots back under the bed, to the sound of her soft snores; I stood with a sway. My head felt flushed with blood and pressure.

  Sweat dotted my brow as I felt myself becoming marginally weaker, not sick just dizzy and disorientated. Swaying over to the bed side table I slid down the shutter on the candles cradle. The candle wick had burned pass the 7th mark. Good news. I’m not utterly god tier, I thought. The evening is just literally my kryptonite.

  Laying down beside my soul-bonded partner and the incredibly attractive scout. I sank off into a feverish dream. Except this time, it was a familiar nightmare. One I had occasionally growing up.

  I stood within the dark plane.

  The ceiling and floor were the usual reflective obsidian glass barriers as before. Except now; I could actually see myself in their reflections. Where only before I used to see a mirror of the contact my feet made; moving over the surface that flowed like black water. Now, I saw two copies of myself and it was disorientating as hell.

  I was completely nude and a lot younger, maybe 10 or 12 years old. Not so long after Michael and Louise died, came an errant thought.

  Another secret and one I wasn’t fully willing to share with anybody yet. I kept it so tightly wound that I suspected not even Marisa knew about it.

  Which is why the thought of them still haunted me. The thought of what I did to them at the end. Something bumped against the glass and I froze; knowing exactly how this nightmare went, but still going through the motions as if it were new to me. Utterly unable to change or stop what proceeded.

  Looking down in my frozen and fearful state I saw what could only be an enormous slithering dark purple tentacle. Small suction cups with thin bone-like hooks at their centre, slid eerily and nosily along the dark glass floor directly beneath my feet, each gulped at the glass like mouths seeking air.

  An ear-piercing screech, like a birds caw rumbled the entirety of the plane. And a sharp splitting scrape as those hooks skidded along, marring the obsidian mirror proceeding its passage.

  Pain blossomed deep within my skull at the bone chilling sound. Inch deep divots trailed behind as the tentacle moved between my feet. I could see small thin black coloured hairs wavering within the ominously black void, and I knew that each were a limb of their own.

  Piss soaked down my legs in my frighten child-like state, it splattered wetly onto floor pooling above the tentacle. The fluid slightly magnifying its grotesque image.

  Thick bulbous varicose veins lined sinuously around the limb, pulsing with a black and vile lifeblood. I thought of Ariana and bile rose in my throat, an unceasing pressure built behind my eyes, bugging them outwards as I then bled from my ears and nose.

  I could see my own image above and below, as well as the gruesome monstrous limb, that marred the ceiling as well. A specular reflection, seeing countless images of myself bleeding my brains out through my face, as piss splashed and coated my lower half with a wet un-warmth.

  Then a thunderous booming laugh rolled through the black plane, in its mocking laughter more tentacles pounded against the glass. Against the barrier of my dreams.

  I screamed into the chaos of that malevolent laugh.

  I was just a child cowering away from the monsters hiding beneath my bed. Cracks formed and the grew, cavernous gouges breaching through the obsidian.

  Within it’s dark godly laughter, it spoke.

  It’s voice whispery and distant but also very, very, present. It shattered my mind and spirit alike, as it roared: “YOU CANNOT OUTRUN ME, ROKKAIA!”

  A scream woke me, sweat pouring off my body as if I had been lying beneath a shower of rain. The entire inn and our room groaned ominously, black smoke bloomed and leaked out through the thin gap in the floor boards, obscuring most of the room.

  An inhuman squeal of either pain or annoyance, echoed through the walls. I could hear the pop and cracks of musket fire as people shouted in terror.

  Rolling over and coughing, my body heavy with the weakness, I nudged my arm roughly against Ariana’s shoulder trying to wake her. “Aria! Wake. Up,” I rasped hoarsely, followed by more coughing.

  “Marisa!” I said helplessly through a thick inhale of the building smoke, it felt like I had been swallowing burning hot needles with every breath.

  Realising Ariana wasn’t waking, my hands shot out blindly grapping for anything I could on her. My left grabbed at the dirty tunic; tearing it with my grip. My right though, curled within her luscious black spilling hair and I pulled screaming for strength and a clean breath.

  A deafening boom shook everything and the I felt the inn’s structure become unsteady and tilting at a precarious angle, mine and Aria’s body bounced off the bed and onto the floor.

  Through the haze of delirium and smoke I saw fire creeping along the edges of the room, the wall and curling under the door. Still coughing and choking on my thick foggy lungful, I stretch my hands and grabbed anything I could, my hands quickly sweeping under the bed where the floor was growing hotter.

  I warped away the scouts boots. The rest of her belonging having already been warped before going to dinner, all except her axe I realised.

  My hands still sweeping as I practically did a star angel
in the middle of our burning room, the floor directly under me groaned and grew hot, rolling quickly to one side, something thumbed solidly into my left hand, grasping the shaft and pulling it towards me.

  I recognised the black half-moon axe head, I warped it to my inventory, except it wouldn’t go, trying again but to no avail I couldn’t understand what was happening. I tried once more when I heard a pain filled scream from directly behind me, “Aria? Aria It’s-” I started but then began coughing more violently, slumping forward and along to the scout at a crawl, the distance though short felt immense.

  Dragging my soot and smoked covered body along, I came to the terrified Ariana clutching Marisa to her chest. My heart dropped at the sight of Marisa. Tears started to swell in my eyes making seeing them harder, and wiping didn’t help either, as I just smudged my face black.

  “What’s, happened to her?” I croaked hoarsely and Aria’s tear streaked head immediately swivelled to my raspy voice.

  “Alaric!” She exclaimed with some relief though her attention drifted to the axe in my hands immediately.

  “Give me Thion and take Marisa, she won’t wake up no matter how much I try,” she demanded. I slid her axe to her and she gently placed Marisa down in the exchange. Crawling over to my soul-bonded partner, I curled up over Marisa’s small form protectively.

  Aria took Thion in a firm hand and raised herself up and then swung at the nearby wall. The axe exploded through violently, shattering and snapping the wooden structure outwards in a spray of 2-inch-long splinters that showered out into the infernal streets.

  She did this twice more and made a small opening through which we could crawl out of. The sound from outside became more intense and focused. The endless screams of women, men and children scurrying about in horror.

  More gunshots and the authoritative tones of someone commanding people to fire, or to put out fires. “I’ll drop down first and catch Marisa once at the bottom, then you follow quickly after,” just as she finished explaining the whole inn dipped and I slid across the floor as everything tipped to our right.

  “GO!” I shouted to the scout and without further pause Ariana sprang through the gap she had created, grabbed a hold of the lip and swung her body downwards.

  I heard a distant muted thud and immediately shuffled over to the gap without even knowing if she was ready, I dropped Marisa outside. *Sorry chick.*

  I moved to position myself backwards at the gap, “Alaric move!” came Aria voice but it was too late. The whole building twisted and broke as something impacted into and cannonballed through the window of our room. My legs slipped out from under me as everything crashed and tumbled inwards.

  A fiery wooden beam from the ceiling swung down and hit something with a dull squeal of pain. I saw red raw muscly flesh and thin grey semi-transparent membrane like wings, shaped like a moth’s through the chaos of tumbling walls and ceiling.

  I held to a charred plank as I fell through, I was hit, battered and bruise by several falling beams but none thankfully thick enough to do much permanent damage to me. “Fuuuuccccckkkkk,” I shouted with my trademark scream as at the same time I fell, the wooden plank came away with me.

  Below was a mass of broken, fallen and burning Jenga blocks. And I was heading face first for that pile.

  Thinking quickly and trusting to my intuition, I curled my body and flipped bringing myself upright. My bare feet slapped angrily against an unbroken yet burning wall and quickly without pause I beat feet downwards. Across from me and falling towards the strewn pile of flaming lumber, were two 12-foot long thick beams standing vertical and parallel to one another.

  As they fell towards, I timed my jumped off the edge of the burning wall, my limbs coiling as I sprang out.

  My body was ridiculously weaker, but the fact that I was acclimating to how I performed during daylight hours was steadily showing even now. With my arms out stretch over my head and still with the plank in hand I shot up just between the two beams, and just shy of the top. But it didn’t matter, using my trusty plank I swung my arms up and over the beams so that the edges of the plank skidded along the surface of the hewn lumber as I kind of zip-lined over the majority of the burning wood pile below.

  Coming towards the end and feeling the beams nearing the end of their own fall also.

  I swung myself back and then kicked out with my feet and propelled myself forwards and out the press of fires and the crumbling building. My momentum carried me through the burning smog, smashing into a wall and then out through into a hellish scene.

  But first my world turned ass over end as I flopped, bounced and tumbled over and over, ending with me crashing into a nearby buildings wall. I was upside down with my head between my legs and my ass pressed to the stone foundation of said wall.

  In a daze and utterly spent, I just stayed there like that for several seconds. Wondering how the hell I managed to survive that, and why there was smoke literally everywhere, and why everything was upside down.

  Through all that I began to shiver, not from the cold or the light snow—or ash for that matter. No, the roaring fires that were burning numerous structures around the area, pulled at me - at the core of my being. Like tiny grasping hands, feebly trying to hold onto me. Tug at me. I slumped to and hazily moved myself up to my feet. Partially naked I walked propped up against the wall, my sweat soaked and battered body was sluggish and very heavy.

  The smoke making each and every breath harder, people ran past, some carrying children others carrying buckets of water in their fumbling attempts to douse the furious flames engulfing their homes.

  To me though a house opposite from where I stood against the wall caught my eye and attention. A woman carrying a small baby screamed as another small smoke-stained boy of about 13 years; tried desperately to re-enter their burning home.

  My hearing was muffled and drown out, every sound coming to me in a different echoing octaves.

  I’m not entirely sure why, but my arms began to burn with a rapacious heat as the runes on my arms flared with a tiny jade green glow. Then I was remembering when I had been at the Honeyed-Bear inn and had somehow; accidentally, willed the flames.

  Taking a quick and short choking breath, I pushed myself off from the wall and faced towards the burning building the boy was about to enter. The fires licked hungrily as they whittled away throughout their home. Raising both of my hand’s, palms facing towards the house, I willed my entire being and intention outwards. Forcing as much of myself as I could out like it was it a tangible thing. Like it had a physical substance.

  The heat in my arms grew searing hot, the slight jade light emanating from my runes became increasingly brighter and tinted with gold around each runes edges.

  Gritting my teeth through the flaring pain I pushed forth with my will. And a wave of force rushed down my arms and the runes grew even more heated, and thin lines of wispy smoke trailed the outline of my runic covered arms.

  It was a lot like when you were a kid and your friends would tell you to try and shape an imaginary ball in your hands like you would a snowball, and the motion of doing so almost made it feel as if you actually were.

  Then the pressure of that unseen but definitely felt force became stronger and fought against me, now it seemed more like someone was stood in front of me and pushing my arms outwards as I did the opposite by opposing and forcing my hands inwards.

  The struggle twisted my hands inwards, so they faced one another, with my arms still outstretched I hissed through the agony roiling within them, the heat felt unending and unceasing.

  With a shout and a cry, “this- fucking fire!” With my intentions firmly cemented, I brought my hands together in a flash of green and gold light and a thunderous clap, that rattle my already shaky bones. My eyes squinted sleepily ahead as the stench of burning flesh smack into my senses as the edges of my runic arms burned like liquid gold lava on my skin, thin grey lines of smoke trailed off from my arms in numerous locations.

  Dropping
instantly to my knees and huddling over, I fell face forward clutching at my arms. “Ooh guh!” the pain made me shake violently.

  Lifting my head just an inch I saw that the house no longer had any burning fires, only smoke now billowed through the window.

  I couldn't see the boy anymore, just the crying mother and the wrapped bundle of the baby she carried cradled to her chest. A second later the kid came through the front entrance of the smoking home, his back to me but as he turned towards his crying mother, I saw that he was pulling another boy bigger than him.

  With a breathy and hoarse cough and gritting my teeth; I forced myself to stand once again. I saw at a glance the second where the smaller boy looked my way, but I was already starting for the town centre at a sluggish pace.

  “Need to find Marisa...” I mumbled hazily, already out of breath. My arms smoking and fiercely burnt I moved along as people rushed by, some still trying to water the flames as others clutched to what meagre belongings they could managed.

  “What the hell did this?” I growled in disbelief. A man in the guard’s tabard stood off to one side his whole body shaking with fright, he clung to his musket rifle like it was a branch to hide behind.

  Moving through the acrid raw stench of houses and people, I walked at a shuffle over to the guard. “Hey- what the hell is going on?” I said pausing briefly to cough, his stunned shaky gaze swung to me as he blearily focus on what I had said.

  “I-I-its, some kind of f-f-fire breathing m-monster. J-J-just s-swooped down and killed... a-and killed,” he began to mutter and mumble, insanity edging his voice. Then he suddenly shrieked and dropped the musket, fleeing.

  “Where are you going?” I called out after him, but my voice was lost in the screams of frightened people as they combatted fires.

  Coughing ruggedly and shrugging my shoulders at the coward, I bent to tentatively retrieve the rifle. My whole body ached something fierce, but I had to find my women, and nothing would stop me from getting back to Marisa.