Vice and Virtue

Chapter - 17

   I woke up to a thatched roof, out of which rays of light penetrated through, over my head and a woven bed under me. I vaguely remember cold, hard concrete before I passed out but I had not a single clue as to how I got here. I got off the bed and sat upright, a bit perplexed about how I was covered in bandages and felt awfully good for the first time in quite awhile. Out of the sheets and on my feet I walked out of the room while looking at all the minimal but weird stuff. The cold breeze and the sudden change of surroundings felt oddly comforting and as my eyes slowly adjusted to the bright light, I half expected to find myself staring at cozy plains, full of green and life but instead I did see green and it was full of life but it was a rundown and abandoned city that was taken over by the wilderness. I took a few more steps forward and turned around, only to see a little thatched hut, I just walked out of, standing in front of a thick jungle, bordering over the ruins of the city and the unknown. ‘Took you long enough to wake up, son’ I was greeted by a booming voice that fell from the sky, nearly killing me on impact. ‘Harold? Why are you here? where am I?’ I asked him surprisingly. ‘A series of events took place last night, son. What you experience before you now is the miracle of Leviathan’s grace’, I instantly knew this wouldn’t go anywhere if I try to get any reasonable explanation from him, so I just went with ‘Oh, where’s the rest of you knuckleheads then?’. ‘They’re already enroute to the phoenix grave, so, you better dress up son. We got a long day ahead of us’. I didn’t know how to react so I chose lame sarcasm, ‘Aye aye captain’.

My body ached a bit but I could move around as usual. ‘Umm, Harold? Since we’re going to be on the road for a while, can you describe what exactly happened last night?’ I did have to try it again if I wanted to have at least a vague idea of what happened. ‘Sure kid, now where do we start? Leviathan’s retreat or what happened to Jason or…’ and he explained it in an obscenely detailed manner. Apparently, the moment we bailed, the Triad had quite a rough time themselves. Their fight spanned the whole night and somehow Max was blown away into the distance, right at the beginning. Tricia was severely tried for her patience and ended up exhausting her very life essence.  Harold was juggled between holding back Jason while also trying to control Leviathan. Theo was stuck between preparing their escape and defending them from the purple flames using his barriers. They were barely able to get away with their lives nor were they able to critically wound him. All the damage he endured healed at a rate that was superhuman even for Cyan and even the supposed fatal wounds didn’t bother him. Although it was as if it was hopeless, their saving grace was that the purple flames not only were able to kill us but they slowly caused irreparable damages to Jason himself every time he used them. It was quite uncanny for him to be using so something so recklessly when it was clearly a double edged blade that has such risks. With each passing second, the whole area turned into a warzone like no other, the laws of physics were insignificant and the intensity of the battle formed a circle of rubble around them with every building they got on top of collapsing in mere seconds. It was in this stage that their black dragon found me in the middle of a collapsing building and flew in and saved me. By this point, Jason already lost his senses and went berserk. It was physically impossible to get near him, so they quickly fell into a retreat, trying to put as much distance they can between them and him but it was a little too late to flee because before they’re past the blast radius, the sudden surge in the heat was enough to scorch the skin off a mortal human being. Shockwaves pulsed through the sky, toppling the few buildings that were left standing. Even Leviathan was affected by this and disappeared into the higher skies. All of us were caught in the blast but Theo’s quick reflexes saved us from being burned alive but impact was too much to hold our ground midair, so we were thrown quite a ways away. Harold left us as soon as the dust settled and shot up again. The weather was still unstable but I guess there was still work to be done. Harold told me that he wasn’t able to find Leviathan for hours after and when he finally did, he had no idea as to how it appeared in front of him. Apparently, it just appeared out of thin air, straight after a long, loud bellow, right in front of him, in a nosedive. Electrical charges covered the span of its body, a slow and addictive humming, filled the air. Leviathan showed no signs of slowing down, instead it was speeding up. What happened next was a mystery to Harold too. All he remembers was him going blind and then he was back on the ground. So the weather got stable and all the chaos disappeared and in the place of chaos, life took its place. He witnessed cracks in the concrete being filled by the bright, green flora and plants turned to trees in minutes and the steel and concrete settlements built by humans, crumble back into the thick wild jungle. As soon as he snapped out of it, he found the rest of us at the edge of the ruins, exhausted and dead tired. I was unconscious as usual and Tricia tended to me a bit and Theo was resting inside the hut.  After a short rest and a simple strategic meeting, Theo and Tricia flew off to find Max and Harold stayed back for me. Then I woke up, when Harold went out to check out how the ruins of the city kept changing.