71 | sinners; here beckons death's gates

The kitchen was a disorganized mess, one that only noisy children could cause, or a horribly messy youth. Giggling to himself, appearing like a true antagonist in a child's fairytale, Elliot sniffed a ladle of deep brown sludge.

He turned around, hearing the door swing open, as four adults stepped inside. Lucas remained unbothered, while Kane's nose scrunched in disgust at the waft in the air.

Elias simply raised his eyebrows and pulled out a seat, tapping on a chair beside him while Lucas glared over with reluctance, and finally walked and sat down. Wren wriggled her eyebrows at the pair, earning a look of suspicion from Kane.

In the corner, by the stacked plastic crates, Eshe curled up with his legs to his chest, staring at the group with his wide, innocent eyes devoid of emotion or life. Whenever somebody looked at him, a silly and wide smile would spread across his face.

"Your beautiful, stunning and wonderful companion has made you all soup for lunch!" announced Elliot with a wide-spread smile, scooping a pile of bowls.

For some reason, Lucas felt that those words were more terrifying than any announcement made in the Stories.

Rome was already seated, swinging his legs as he peered over warily.

"Careful... I watched him make it, and I think he poisoned it."

Elliot shot him a look. "Excuse me, the only poison in this is my love—which isn't poison at all, but a potion of healing."

Rome's expression distorted. "Ew! I don't want your love!"

"That's too bad, eat it!"

Lucas tilted his head and pushed out his seat, walking around to peer into the boiling liquid, filled with things he couldn't make out, melted in the water. He snatched the ladle, and poured himself a bowl.

Before anybody could stop him, he blew at the suspicious liquid and tilted his head back to take a sip.

Kane's eyes widened in fear as he rushed forward. "Spit that out! That didn't look safe for human consumption." He hurried to fill a glass of water and handed it over. "Quick. Any signs of nausea, stomach pain, discomfort?"

Elliot smiled thinly. "Hey. I'm right here?"

"I am speaking because you're right there. I have no trust for you."

"Even after you did... that for me the other day... you gave a part of your body to me..." Elliot muttered as Kane sighed in exasperation.

"Do not word it like that. Secondly, I did what was necessary."

Elias had sauntered around the counter at some point, lazily leaning over Lucas' shoulder. He reached out to pull Lucas' hand, still holding the bowl, towards his lips and took a brief sip.

Lucas tilted the bowl more, forcing more liquid to spill into his mouth as the man's face went pale. The proud businessman, in that moment, decided that he'd never felt more like death. A taste more terrible than all his battles.

"Alright, that's rather disgusting." said the man, grimacing.

Lucas shook his head, finishing off the rest of the bowl in a swift gulp. "You're over exaggerating."

"No, I think you simply have a stomach made of steel."

"And yours is made of?"

"Regular stomach lining. I apologize for being so weak, darling. I'm sure other parts of me can make up for my weak stomach." smiled Elias shamelessly. "I'm rather well-endowed in my—"

"Arrogance, ego? Persistence?" finished Lucas as he calmly scooped another bowl of the concoction. "I don't care for a person who can't finish a bowl of soup."

Lucas glanced over, seeming to scoff in mocking at Elias' inability to stomach Elliot's creation, and the latter felt a vein tick in his head. "Do you find amusement in my suffering?"

Lucas nodded without hesitation. "Naturally."

Elias smiled, grabbing a bowl for himself as he took a seat beside Lucas. Out of sheer pettiness, a ridiculous thing that he hadn't done in many years, Elias glanced over and remarked, "You're a little shorter than me, aren't you, darling?"

Lucas lazily glanced over. "And what of it? Is the only thing you have your height?"

"Well, would you like a means of growing taller?"

"What?" The man decided to indulge in the weed's rambling, moving a spoonful of the brown sludge to his mouth.

"I could put some inches in you."

Soup dribbled out of Lucas' mouth, and Elliot, who was being hounded and interrogated by Kane for his cooking ability let out a puff of laughter that dissolved into a fit of amusement.

Kane paled, looking worse than when he assumed that his younger brother was having a life crisis about growing older.

Lucas swiveled his head to Elias, who sipped casually on the soup with a bit of disgust, and raised an eyebrow. "What's the matter? I thought you liked the soup—yet there you are, spitting it out."

"I'll cut off those inches as soon as you give them." said Lucas crudely.

"I'd rather you didn't, actually."

"There is no greater joy than your misery."

As he spoke in a dull tone, he glanced at Elias' bowl that had barely manged to be half-emptied. With the kindness of a saint, Lucas tipped the half of his own bowl, filling the soup back to the top.

Elias, spoon hovering over the bowl, smiled in silence. "....."

"Speaking of which," interrupted Elliot, recovering from his burst of laughter. "Some of the ingredients I added, other than my love, was honey, chili paste, chocolate, jam..."

Kane who'd already been struck once by fear, felt his mentality collapse. As a doctor, the combination of those items plus whatever else Elliot added were terrifying, and simply asking for illness.

He shook his head with a solemn and grave expression, hurrying out of the room to search for stomach medicine.

A golden haired woman glanced at the doctor who quickly left, entering the kitchen as she looked around. Without speaking to anybody, she walked over to the suspicious boiling pot, took a bowl and sat down.

Calm as a still lake, she elegantly tucked her hair away and blew softly on the liquid, placing it into her mouth.

She ate it with such calmness, the watching Rome, had to wonder if the soup actually tasted decent. He prodded at his own bowl, then at Lucas' steady expression and Sylvia's calm behaviour, and confidentially took a bite.

His small face went green in an instant, looking as if he'd swallowed a bug.

Lucas raised his eyes, coincidentally meeting Sylvia's impassive and cold gaze. She nodded at him, and he nodded in return, as if reaching an odd comradeship over the meal.

Lucas then turned to Elias. "You're familiar with her."

Elias was reluctantly drinking the soup, which had doubled in volume thanks to his darling sponge. "I'm acquainted to her master. A perfect example of a pervert."

"Doesn't the saying go, birds of a feather flock together?"

"If you're implying that I'm a pervert, then what does that make you who agreed to follow this pervert's whims?"

With a straight face, Lucas answered, "A poor victim."

"...I have to protest my innocence—"

A roar through the earth shattered Eilas' sentence, shaking the entire building in loud, chaotic rumbles. The earthquake continues as Rome yelped, his own bowl clattering to the ground in a mess of brown slop.

Wren, who had briefly left earlier, followed by a worried looking Nora, burst through the swinging kitchen doors. The white-haired woman saw Eshe, and rushed over to gather the small boy into her arms, shielding him from any flying objects.

She knew that as an object belonging to the apocalypse, he likely needed no protection. But seeing the skinny and frail curled up body, she couldn't help but react.

Seeing his unresponsive state that behaved like an inanimate object, her heart sunk to her stomach, but she held him tighter against her body.

Plates clattered to the ground from where they were organized on high shelves metal bowls and whisks alike spilling from their own compartments. Elliot howled as he hurried to protect his dear concoction, twisting the fire shut as he held onto the pot.

Kane stared at him with an unamused look of, 'are you stupid?'

Elliot shot back with his own look of, 'I'm protecting my baby!'

At the doorway, Wren swung her wild head of hair over to the end of the room, sitting between tall metal shelves. Red spun in her vision, a swirl of darkness dripping from the ceiling.

"Hey... I don't think that's normal!"

Lucas turned, jumping out of his seat as he watched the darkness knit together, forming a grand shadow that rooted into the ground.

The earthquake gradually subsided, and the shadows dispersed to reveal a standing red gate, weight chains of pure silver tangled over the entry. What lied beyond the narrow slits in the gate went unseen, a murkiness that only told of death and despair.

Violently, the chains rattled as whatever it was on the other side fought to break out, with a penchant for human flesh and blood.

The messy chaos of broken plates and scattered cutlery suddenly didn't matter.

The previously peaceful hours like a dream spirited away.

"Lucas." said Wren slowly, as if carefully choosing her words. "Do you know what that is? The better question is, what do you intend to do?"

How could she, a Teller of the world's making, not know? When she'd seen glimpses of it through the many cycles, watched the strong and weak alike pass through, perishing or surviving.

Those who returned from the blood-red gates never were the same.

Lucas took an unsteady step, drawn to the power that pulsed off the closed bars of deep crimson. Power that would guarantee his success, power that would ensure that he could protect—protect what?

Confusion stopped him in his step, before Elias grabbed his arm and pulled him away harshly, as if simply laying his eyes on the gates would burn his skin.

Kane, standing by the stove top, listened to the woman's words and processed them slowly, as he'd learned to do in all his years studying. To observe and then to react, to decipher and gain an understanding of the situation.

All he could think was that the strange standing gates reeked of death, and that Lucas, the most important person in his mundane life, had walked towards it.

Beckoned by it, drawn to the allure of dangerous promise seeping underneath.

Lucas turned his head back, held in Elias' unyielding grip that refused to release, and stared straight at Kane.

Lost and speckled with confusion, mixed with a determination that the man himself didn't understand. All Lucas knew was that he'd always intended to go through those gates, and that he needed to become stronger.

"Lucas." said Kane, with uncertainty, with fear. "Do you intend to... enter?"

Then he shook his head, neat locks of hair coming undone over his face. "You're not going through those gates. I won't allow for it—it's dangerous, and you've just returned, and you're still ill, or injured, whatever the case—"

"I always intended to enter that Story." interrupted Lucas, feeling a tug of pain at Kane's horror. "There are many benefits."

"Benefits worth risking your life?"

"Benefits that could save me. Benefits that will allow me to accomplish my goal. Abilities, increased strength, and—" His voice lowered to a whisper, heard only by Elias who stood behind. "My lost memories."

He dared to think, to hope, that the disordered and faded memories that he couldn't quite place would return in the Story that disobeyed order and law.

"You can't." insisted Kane, his tone rising and fluctuating with anger and sternness, as if scolding. "And you're speaking as if you planned to enter alone, which is ridiculous, Lucas. Stories are dangerous, you shouldn't be seeking them out!"

Lucas pulled himself away from Elias, ignoring the warning in the man's somber stare that flickered to the gates with deep disdain. He collected his thoughts, turning his back to the others.

He'd satisfied Tartarus' requirements by killing those children—the irony of it all, when he'd almost given up the idea of the grand Story because he didn't want to kill.

Nevertheless, he wouldn't abandon the opportunity.

And how could Kane not recognize that familiar glint of resolution, in those pale and impassive eyes? He took a step forth, reaching out to stop Lucas from moving.

"Your life would be at risk—"

"And what business is my life to yours?" snapped Lucas coldly with irritation at being held back. But at the sight of Kane's lost hand, frozen stiffly in the air, he felt all his anger recede back into his chest.

The doctor was quiet, the sort of quiet that made one uneasy and uncomfortable.

Then, he retracted his hand and raised his chin calmly, studious and steady. As he always was, as he was used to being. "You're right. It's none of my business."

He swallowed, a harsh and grating breath. "But I do owe you a debt of gratitude for protecting the children, and your sacrifices. For that, if you choose to go, then I won't stop you. But I'll be coming with you."

There was a forced formality weaved into his words, unleashed emotions tucked away and smothered.

Wren watched, sighing in deep frustration as she raked her nails through her hair.

No longer the bystander, no longer simply watching. She'd taken a step with these fools, destined for either ruin or salvation. And if there was no turning back, then she wouldn't allow for them to die a worthless death.

"Tartarus, my wonderful link. What did that protagonist of yours think about Tartarus. It's important. Because the events of that book may carry important secrets of this present."

Lucas turned to her, though his eyes strayed back to Kane with uncertainty. She hadn't thought that the man could even feel uncertain about anything.

"Why do you want to know—"

"Just answer. Now."

Lucas furrowed his eyebrows in thinking, drawing up old memories. The more time passed, the more the words that had once flowed from his mind to paper disappeared, becoming distant and unclear.

"I can't remember clearly—"

"Then tell us what you do." snapped Wren with urgency, never removing her two-coloured stare from the gates. "Because either we go through through that door or we don't, but know you won't be entering alone."

The tension along the man's jawline told of his unease in her words. He'd planned to go through, alone, from the beginning. It was far too dangerous to force the others.

But seeing Kane's stubborn and furious gaze, a wildness of protective nature and terror of losing something, Lucas couldn't protest any further. He didn't think he could win against a person insistent on arguing.

He closed his eyes, a flutter of dark eyelashes against his cheeks, and pulled up the pages of writing that seemed to have been from decades ago, a blur of memory in his disorganized mind.

Kane. The protagonist, his hero. And Tartarus.

Remember what he did, and what he saw. Because that would determine whether it was worth the risk, or if the Story would ruin them all.

[I stepped through the blood-hot gates of hell, and faced a nightmare I hadn't, couldn't even dare imagine. Creatures dripping with blackened blood, twisted bodies along the streets and a wild, shrill laughter that echoed behind the skies above.

For the sake of protecting the world, I knew it was necessary to survive these gates and ordeals. I needed strength, needed power.

I thought that, as my body felt chilled and glued to the spot, stuck in a shuddering terror drilled to my core, burning cold horror ghosting over my skin.

All I knew in the instant was dread, a dread that crawled up my feet and snaked up my limbs until there wasn't an inch of me that wasn't weighed down by biting devastation.

More than the Stories of cruelty and deception I'd witnessed, more than the dozens of torn corpses sprawling at my feet, I—]

Lucas' words were a faint, hoarse whisper, as if it were himself witnessing the terrors that had shaken his important hero to the core.

"...have never been more afraid in my life."

Then, the gates shook again, rows of words curling in the darkness.

Wren stood in front of Nora cautiously. "Looks like we might not have the time to debate our choices."

As if responding, loud laughter twisted between the bars.