The Meaning Of Eternity (TMOE #1)

Chapter 10: Eliminations and introductions

Lucius slowly dragged his feet to a nearby alleyway. His mind was numb, but a pressure inside his head seemed like it could burst and kill him at any time. Would it matter? What did he have left now? Most of the Hydrina dwellers were gone. He had no idea where Samueli and the others had run off to, because they certainly wouldn't go back to the theatre after all this.

He finally wrapped his arms around his scraped, mud covered knees and leaned his head against them, uttering the most inaudible whimper. Why did he even bother with life at this point? He'd already been at the bottom of his luck yet somehow he'd managed to sink even lower. It was as though one bad experience consequently led to another, and there was no way to stop it.

"You really should get further away than this," Lord Hargreaves said as he entered the alleyway. Lucius had barely noticed him approaching. "People are still riled up after... That. And I wouldn't put it past some of them to think they can take justice into their own hands."

Lucius' eye twitched. Justice, was it? Did people actually believe that? Because the rich considered people from the Entrails to be miserable vermin they were suddenly in a position to decide murdering them publicly equaled justice? He turned his head away. He had nothing good to say. Had the situation not been what it was he would've thanked him for saving his life, but at the time he just wanted to tell him to fuck off. In fact he really wanted to, but why risk another rich person being upset by the existence of a poor person?

His silence seemed to get the message across anyway, and Lord Hargreaves sighed.

"All right then."

Lucius watched from the corner of his eye how he walked away, and his rising fury quickly faded to be replaced by grief again. He was alone. He had no one, and nowhere to go.

Again.

A young couple passed by the alleyway, seemingly in process of discussing the recent event. Lucius didn't want to listen, but he inevitably ended up doing so as they talked about where the bodies would go.

"It just seems so... You know, gross to litter our sacred burial grounds with them," the young lady said, and Lucius had to hold back from strangling someone. "Or are they thinking of using the abandoned one?"

"Ha. Not even that," the man replied with a loud scoff. "I heard they're just gonna shove 'em all into the Siren's maw and be done with it."

In the midst of his once again rising anger and unwillingness to think ahead Lucius had to look up. The Siren's maw? They were just dumping the corpses down a rift? He reluctantly stumbled onto his legs. It was the last thing he wanted to do. The thought of seeing them again after what happened almost made him fall to his knees again, but he couldn't let them go like that. They had to be buried properly.

Wiping his tears away with mud covered hands certainly didn't make him cleaner, but at least he could see better for a moment. He knew where the rift was. It was located just outside of town, not too far from the Entrails. They'd been told to steer clear of that place of course, and a seemingly bottomless rift sure didn't sound nice so Lucius had obeyed and never actually gone there.

Now he had no choice.

Getting anywhere proved more difficult than he would've thought. He did his best to avoid the crowd by walking up to the bridge levels and used the gangways to reach the Entrails, but his knees wanted to give in with every step. He didn't use these routes alone. There was always someone in front of him to follow, or someone behind him to look back at now and then during conversations. Now there was nothing. It was just him and a haphazard collection of wooden boards.

To his great shock and truly unnecessary misfortune a rotting plank suddenly broke underneath him. He cursed as he grabbed hold of a window ledge and pulled his leg up. It was sufficiently scraped and there'd definitely be a bruise or two soon enough. Worst of all were the splinters stuck in his skin, but he couldn't quite seem to care. Instead he moved forward, hardly checking for other suspicious looking boards.