Chapter 5: ACT I, SCENE 2.5

ACT I, SCENE 2.5Day 115 Minutes Since the Ash FellMarket Highline Rooftops“What did you do?!” Her body is warm in Vespar’s arms. One rooftop. The screeching and weeping are already distant to Vespar. Except for Kendra’s breathing, everything feels quiet. Too quiet for the chaos he can still see consuming the market below. Two rooftops. “Vespar?!” Her voice keeps echoing that moment on the ground. Vespar locks onto the belfry of the Cathedral. Almost there. Three rooftops.People push, trip, and trample one another toward the Cathedral while the guards force the gates closed. Four rooftops. “What is happening to him?!” She hasn’t said anything else since that moment. Just her ragged breathing. She lets him shift her from beneath one arm into a cradle. Actually, she has barely resisted him at all since they left the ground. Vespar misses tracking the fifth rooftop; now they are at the sixth. Only a handful more to go.They reach the belfry; he puts her down. Her feet touch the ground, and she looks at him... again. “We can’t just leave him.” Her voice sounds almost like a child. It echoes through Vespar’s body. He turns and scans the Cathedral courtyard.As Vespar looks out over the horrific scale of the market, even he has trouble recognizing it. A labyrinth of suffocating grey ash swirls across the entire square. Even though the bakery is within an arrow’s range of the Cathedral, Vespar can’t locate it through the ash. He can barely make out the short bridge that spans the market to the Cathedral. It looks like the blizzards he encountered on his hunts, where he had to navigate distances in feet, not miles. There must be so many people down there whom he knew.The Cathedral of Light.A Sanctuary.But at its gate, Vespar sees a blue glow shining through, casting the refugees in eerie shadows. With the sun’s leaking viscous violet rays dimmed, shadows seem to be growing everywhere. Vespar sees the shadows of guards pushing the shadows of citizens back. The shadow of the gate closing. To reach those gates... they would have to brave that chaos. Vespar thinks, Can I get her through that? Will I lose her? Then he sees the couple he was watching push to the front and become a single figure in the throng.Survival.Vespar can see that the ground is a bottleneck—choked by overturned carts, frozen silhouettes of trampled commoners wedged into every gap. The living slink away from the cold and the ashy fog.There must be another way. A safe way. A secure way. Which way?He could smash through the stained glass, but there is no guarantee that someone—even Kendra—won’t be injured. He could try using his status to get them in...No.Vespar remembers.There was a game his father used to play with him. Using their skills to find each other. Vespar had snuck into the crypt of the Cathedral through an old runoff channel while trying to win.Vespar can feel Kendra completely frozen behind him. She doesn’t repeat herself. She hasn’t even shuffled. It is time to find somewhere safe, Vespar thinks. He picks her back up, still meeting no resistance, and navigates his way down to the channel.A grate.Vespar grabs the grate and pulls. The ice-cold metal bites into his fingers. It won’t budge. His fingerprints remain on the grate where the skin used to be on his fingers.Try again. Vespar grabs hold. Nothing. Then, with a sudden jerk, it flies open. Vespar opens his eyes and glances to the side to see Kendra’s arms extended above her head, her blue fingers still resting on the bars. As their eyes meet, Vespar catches the faintest hint of a smile flickering across her face. Together, side by side, they head underground.