Chapter 8: And all thy bones with beauty shall be clad

A dark room, illuminated only by the dim lights from faint candles lit upon brass sconces, with furniture scarce but exquisitely tasteful. An otherworldly fog washed through the small confined space, as the hubbub of those gathered at the room’s centerpiece banquet table gradually grew louder. At the head of the table sat a man, his face a specimen of ethereal beauty, with his long hair tied into a high ponytail. He looked onward at his subordinates who sat in front of him on either side, the cheekbone of his head rested against his fist, his elbow holding his weight, as he looked at the clock on the wall.

He is late…, the man thought. He turned to one of the four henchmen who stood beside him, the closest on his right. He leaned over to face the androgynous youth, whom he gestured to come closer. The youth chuckled as the leader whispered something into their ear. They then proceeded to pull out a pencil and a notepad from their pocket, scribbled something in it, and handed it to the man heading this meeting. The man glanced at the note and nodded lightly. The murmurs of the seated group, now starting to grow impatient from the wait, had evolved into loud grumbles. However, just as the man was about to silence his followers, a pair of glowing eyes slithered its way through the thick enveloping fog. The feeble lights illuminated the one who stood in front of his leader, bowing.

“Go take your seat,” the man with the high ponytail said, as he slightly adjusted the robe he wore. The entire room fell into a complete silence once their leader spoke. The new arrival in the room quietly took his seat at the table, as the lord of this superhuman dimension continued, “Now that we’re all here… Let’s begin the meeting. I’d like to thank you all for taking time out of your busy schedules and coming here. We have a lot of catching up to do, I believe.”

This was the Realm of Corrosion or Corrosia, a parallel world that exists alongside the one we’re acquainted with, and many others. These are the residing grounds for the undead monsters that haunt the world of the living. Throughout human history, there have been several humans who’ve come in contact with it, some that have set foot into it, and an extremely few that made their way back to the human world. Those who did, dubbed the place by many names, most recognisable of them being “Hell.”

Now, travelling back and forth between realms is essentially impossible for the average person or creature. There are specific gateways that lead to specific dimensions, and to even locate one — much less actually use it — you need to have immense mastery of Vitalis manipulation. Luckily, or rather unluckily for us, the gate that leads directly to the heart of Corrosia lies…

—

“...In the crater,” said Jacob.

“So he disappeared into the crater, and…?” Captain Marl asked expectantly, raising an eyebrow.

“That’s all I know, ma’am.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I waited there for hours. Nothing. I couldn’t sense his energy anywhere. And then, at about 5:20 in the morning, I receive word that Faust was spotted at the 17th block in the Metropolitan Area, walking up to his clinic.”

“So he teleported?” Marl scoffed slightly, rolling her pale green eyes, as she looked at the man in front of her, expecting a better explanation.

“We could be dealing with an expert Vitalis manipulator here, Captain. Matter of fact, we most definitely are. He’s been administering V-suppressants to Korspole, along with some other substances whose effects R&D still haven’t been able to identify, so-”

“So, nothing. I’ve read the reports too. What I need you to do is take your job more seriously, Islodo,” the blonde woman said, exasperated. “Do you take me to be a moron? And I would certainly hope you aren’t one either, given the rank you hold, Second Lieutenant. There’s virtually nothing that can evade Division Five’s surveillance. Even if your target were to have used some sort of teleportation ability, we would’ve been able to trace their energy”

“And yet we didn’t. So that means–”

“That means you weren’t careful enough with your scrutiny. You had him at the throw of a stone. You could’ve traced his steps even if he had remitted his Vitalis to hide his presence”

“Or, he was somewhere entirely undetectable to anyone!” Jacob insisted. However, seeing his superior unmoved, he turned to leave. “Good day, Captain Marl.”

Kristen Marl sighed softly, as she sat back in her office chair, as her number three hurried out of the room. She turned to the heap of papers that stood on her desk, and began half mindedly sorting through them. It was then that her eyes laid on one particular letter, unsigned and with no address. As she read through the dot matrix print, her eyes widened in horror.

—

December 15th,1997. It was 8:00 in the morning on a Monday, like any other. Children were on their way to school, adults to work. It was then that a set of discoveries would suddenly cause the busy streets during the first rush hour of the new week to devolve into complete pandemonium.

The problem with the conspiracy theories of some big supernatural event happening on Christmas Day has gotten way out of hand. It’s now beyond the control of anyone really. What used to be limited to internet forum posts of fearmongers, has seeped into the real world since last week. There’s been flyers distributed on the streets by some unidentified party that talk of the same old prophecy — “The Death’s Gate or Shinsakimon shall spring to life on Christmas Day and doom Crater City.”

Authorities had been trying their best to bring the situation under control, however after what transpired today, that seems to be impossible. We’re past the point of no return. The entire city is now drowned in panic and terror.

The central stations in every major district of Crater City had been trashed in the blink of an eye. Eye witnesses report, at exactly 0800 hours, the Central Metropolitan Station, the Old Cratoria Central, the Bespian Port Station, The Industrial District Station, the Town Square Station, the Commerce Square Station, the Riverside Central, the Gulf City Terminus, and several smaller stations in the suburbs simultaneously “exploded”. Extensive investigation found evidence of no real explosives used, and there were no injuries, much less casualties among those present at the scenes of the several attacks. “The stations just magically disappeared,” said one of the witnesses, “The place just came tumbling down… There was no one injured either... It’s like some perverted version of a miracle!”

Curiously enough, across all the attacks that reportedly happened simultaneously, police have found engravings burned into the ground. “𑀫𑀾𑀢𑁆𑀬𑀼𑀁𑀫𑀳𑀸𑀤𑁆𑀯𑀸𑀭𑀫𑁆” — Death’s Gate. Strange graffitis made out of unknown material have also popped up in various locations throughout city, with the Kanji characters “死崎門” — Shinsakimon.

Needless to say, mass hysteria is at an all time high right now. The perpetrators of this string of mass terror attacks are yet to be identified. And one can only dread of what Christmas Day might bring–

“Wow, your writing sucks. No wonder you got fired from the journalist job” I jumped as I heard the sudden voice behind me.

I turned around to see Mr. Liahan behind me, craning his neck over my shoulder to read what I’d been writing in my journal. I quickly closed it and shoved the book inside my drawer, before I stammered out, “When- wait no, how did you get inside my room?!”

“Ain’t the thing y’should be worrying about,” said the man as he glanced at his watch, “C’mon, it’s your first day on the job.”

“N- now”?!” I asked, disbelief clear in both my face and voice.

“Wanna know more, doncha? I wouldn’t pass up on this, if I were you.”

And with that, he turned to leave. I hastily got up from my chair, as I scrambled my way across the room to slip into a pair of trousers and threw over a jacket as I said, “Wait a sec! Yeah I’m coming too”

—

As I walked the streets of the busy Town Square Fourth Avenue, I couldn’t help but notice the sheer panic that had almost every Crater City resident in a chokehold. My thoughts lingered back on the conversation I’d had with Kristen earlier. Had the idea really not crossed her mind even once, or was she hiding something?

Perhaps she really didn’t know. After all, it isn’t common knowledge. Vitalis manipulation might be an incredibly versatile skill, but many of its applications are largely gatekept by experts due to its extremely abstract nature.

One particular application that Han and I had discovered some years ago was that by aligning your Vitalis Flow with that of another individual, it’s possible to selectively Emit energy to them, in a way that’s undetectable to those on the outside. That’s what we termed subspace manipulation. While we only ever used it to establish conversation with each other, in a way that’s untraceable even by the agency’s surveillance team, it’s definitely possible to use something similar to teleport between locations through an extra-dimensional subspace. It would require some high energy artefact to align your Flow with, as opposed to an individual. But it’s quite possible.

Hypothetically, if I was in Kristen’s position, I wouldn’t let my subordinate in on this relatively niche application of V-manipulation either… Even if I was aware it could be a possibility. I mean, after all, there’s no real way for Surveillance to detect it anyway, and it’s a much safer bet to pin the blame on a lower rank, than it is to risk the higher ups figuring out the bug I have been exploiting.

So what’s my job now? If Faust is as skilled of a Vitalis manipulator as he seems to be, it would be a good idea to eliminate him. But we still need to figure out his motives. He could very well be linked to the terror attacks in some way. If so, he’s probably backed by some group, and killing him wouldn’t solve a thing. Capturing him alive is our only option… But how?

Directly visiting him could be dangerous. I could use William Korspole to bait him, but nah… We can’t put the kid at risk either. Nor can I predict what the outcome of a confrontation like that would be. If he ends up pulling some crazy stunt, I’d be the only one to blame… The risks are far too high, but I need to do something!

—

“AHHHH! THINK! DO SOMETHING! ANYTHING!!” Timothy Kyd screamed as he tugged at his hair. The Captain of Division Three who was comically short for his age, strutted around the room in his moment of panic.

Kristen Marl, the Division Four Captain sat in her chair, wiping her glasses clean with the fabric of her undershirt that she’d untucked. She looked up to him as she said, “So you think there’s a rat in the system?”, putting her glasses back on.

“Not just in the system… Among the higher-ups! I’m sure of it.”

“And that’s because…?”

“How could Faust possibly escape surveillance? Even if he used some sort of Vitalis whiz, he must’ve left some traces! And further more– How come every single major station in the city got rigged with… whatever they rigged it with, and there have been none, ZERO reports of any suspicious activity around the stations before it happened… How do these things just keep on happening and we find zero evidence?! There’s only one real possibility, which is that these terrormongers have some accomplice working within the upper echelon of the agency. I mean, we looked through every surveillance footage we could find of ten kilometers around every station that was attacked yesterday, and we found NOTHING. We went through hundreds, thousands of hours of footage, over and over and found absolutely naught.”

“What about some advanced application of Vitalis that can’t be detected by surveillance? That ever cross your mind?” Marl asked.

“Yes, and I’ve ruled it impossible. Markus brought it up, but it’s unlikely. I’ve still sent out multiple teams to investigate every major artefact in the city that’s out in the open… Doubt we’ll find anything of value though,” Kyd said, as he settled down into a chair, and grabbed a bottle of water before he chugged it all down in one big gulp.

Marl stayed quiet for about a minute or so, before she said, “Awfully confident to rule it out. May I ask why?”

“You may,” Kyd replied as he wiped his lips dry with the sleeve of his suit jacket. He turned to face the woman both older in age than him, and taller, as he continued, “And I’ll answer. Teleportation by subspace is only viable in theory. It’s only when you attempt to put it into practice, that you realise how ridiculous it actually is. Using subspace to send small amounts of energy is easy enough for skilled Vitalis manipulators. However, to use that to teleport yourself would require you to either shrink yourself down to photonic size, somehow sustain energy, sentience, and voluntary mobility, in that state, and then put yourself back together once you reach your destination — all of which would create enough of a disturbance in the environment around you to be impossible to hide. Or, you’ll need to have enough energy and skill to create an entire subdimension of your own and use that for trouble. Which are both equally as implausible.”

“I know a big bird who uses intradimensional manipulation. Is creating a subdimension to teleport, that improbable?” Marl said, clearly disagreeing with Kyd.

“With the amount of energy that would be spent creating one, there’s no way we wouldn’t know…”

“What if they used an already existing realm to travel to and through?”

“We have the location of every major gate.”

“Not for every realm…”

Kyd sighed as he looked at Marl with a you serious expression, “The only major existing realm that isn’t under surveillance is YL:4YFH.”

“Corrosia…”

“That’s the outdated term, but yes. Corrosia, sure. While the realm itself is impossible for us to maintain tabs over, every gate has been blocked and is under our supervision.”

“Every known gate,” she corrected him.

“Well, do you reckon there’s a gate to YL:4YFH here that we aren’t aware of?”

“And, I think I might know where it is…” Marl said, a slight smirk playing on her lips.

> To be continued

Author's Note:
See, I can write a chapter without having the characters swear a million times! 

Anyways, here's to hoping I can get the next chapter out sooner. I intend to finish this novel before 2025 ends.