A Lost Soul

I am never one to not have a second plan. In the event of my death, I have put precautions into place to ensure that, should I be dead when my plan begins, it shall continue without any trouble.
That is, of course, assuming that I can get the LampLighters to perform their task.

Ophelia dropped to her knees in the water, not caring that her clothes were now soaking, or that her chest burned with a horrid head. It all seemed so distant now, so insignificant to what lay before her.

A boy. A child. A single, tiny flame. Dead.

She felt her hands shaking, her lower lip trembling with sadness, her heartbeat falling still as time stopped.

He watched the young girl scream loudly.

“Nataniel!” she roared, fighting free of Faulkner’s embrace to sit next to the corpse of the boy she had loved. She pushed the Architect’s hands free of the body, throwing her own hands over the boy, as if she hoped that holding him would keep his soul, his fire, earthbound. She let out her agony into Nataniel’s chest, rising up for a moment to place her hands either side of his face. Through her tears, she managed to whisper something quiet and sweet. The girl then leant down slowly, kissing Nataniel on the forehead. For a second Ophelia hoped that this would be like the stories, and that the kiss would wake the sleeper. But he wasn’t asleep, and this wasn’t a story. This was life.

He was dead. Gone. Nothing could bring him back. Not even a soft, loving kiss.

“Oh, Nataniel,” Ophelia murmured, as she sank more deeply into the waters, feeling sadness finally grip her completely. She tried to sigh, or cough, or even breathe. But she could manage none of that. So instead, she cried. She cried into her hands, bent over in the waters of the Tyndibar Well, as the young girl across from her cried into Nataniel’s blood-soaked shirt.

*

In her mind, she could still see them both dancing about the ballroom, dressed in their most beautiful clothing. She could still feel his hand about her waist, still see the way his misty eyes reflected the room about her and the lights in the room. It may have been a dream to some, but to her it was reality. They had been united in a reverie by fate, destined to be together before they had even met.

And now her true love was dead, shot with a bullet that she had fired.

That was not what hurt her most. It was not what she had experienced that brought pain to her heart and caused her to cry. It was not that she had fired the bullet, or that she had been part of the reason he had shunned away his hearthfly. It was all the experiences she would never be able to share with him. The kiss they would never have, the conversation they would never exchange. Never would they hold hands as they walked down the streets of Castore or Pollror, never would they have children. They would not grow old together and they would not die together. Never would they dance together in real life, like they had in dreams. It was what she hadn’t been able to share that hurt most. It burned, like a stake of ice through her heart.
The ground began to shake beneath her, and she lifted her head to look about, wondering what was happening. The quaking came in mighty waves, like explosions to her chest, one after the other. For a moment, she thought it had been the explosions coming from the Castore side of the wall as the Architect’s plan had gone into motion, but it wasn’t distant, and nor was it like the sound fire made when it created a infernal plume. This was like a wave of stone crashing against the wall.

“What’s happening?” said the dark haired girl, who stepped through the Well carefully. She stepped out of it, and turned around just in time to see a section of the wall explode outwards, joined by a brilliant, fiery light. For another moment, Elenor was sure it had been a lamp exploding, but once again she was proven wrong.

*

They were hearthflies, all carrying their cauldrons of flame. They had smashed their way through the wall, revealing an opening to the other city. Ophelia was pulled from her sadness, and let out an epiphanous sigh. “I can stop this,” she said. “I can stop the explosion.” She still felt pain at Nataniel’s death, but also a sense of hope that perhaps his death might not be the end of everything.

“How?” asked Faulkner.

“Castoro said that he intends to use the gas-powered lamps to burn the city down. If I can snuff out all the flames before the gas is forced into pipes, then there will be no explosion. The gas will rise into the air, and we’ll be fine. I think.”

“But you only have an hour!” Faulkner said, as the hearthflies began to scatter once more, spreading about on the four winds. “Less than, in fact.”

“But I know the gas lamp locations better than anyone,” she said. “I know every street with one, and every street without. If I go fast enough, I can stop this.”

Faulkner looked from Ophelia to Nataniel and then back. “We’ve already lost one person. Don’t be stupid.”

“I have to do this,” Ophelia retorted. “I have to save everyone, for Nataniel.” She turned away from the group and began her way through the hole created by the hearthflies. They want me to do this too, she said. That’s why they made this hole.

“Wait!” yelled Faulkner. She spun around quickly, watching and waiting as Faulkner spoke quietly to Elenor. She nodded in reply, and let him continue on to Ophelia.

“We have to save this city,” he said. “If we can get everyone out, if the explosion happens, no one except the fiends shall die. At least it will take some of the pressure off you.”

She nodded. “Very well, but hurry. And also, get my mother. She’ll need help. She can’t leave the house herself.”

“I promise,” he said, running ahead of her, brave even as he dashed between the fiends that had gathered.

She expected to see guards surrounding the Tyndibar Well, which was now ankle-deep with water that had seeped through the rubble in the wall. But there were none. Even the gates were wide open, seemingly in preparation for a mass exodus.

Did the hearthflies do this?

She didn’t waste time wondering the question over. She ran ahead, beginning her way into the city, protected by the fire from her gas-stick.

The fiends were unusually ravenous tonight, less fearful of the flames than they normally were. It was almost as if they were aware that something was going to happen tonight, that they needed to be present for some great event.

“I have to hurry,” Ophelia murmured to herself, as she left the Tyndibar courtyard, entering the dark, early morning streets of Castoro, the sky above close to unleashing another torrent of rain into the already flooded streets of a leaderless city. In the distance, though, there was a deep, rumbling sound, like thunder from below the earth. The draining had begun.