Book 1: Sancta Labyrinthus

Chapter 1

   “Vic!”
   Nineteen-year-old Victoria Knowles sighed from where she lay in her bed, staring at the smutty comic she was reading on her phone. She could hear her brother hollering her name outside in the living room of the apartment they shared. Upon starting university, their father had purchased an apartment for the two of them to live in which happened to be located near enough to their university. Alistair had started three years before her and was in his final year in Business Administration already, while she had just started her course in Art and Design this year.
   Since Alistair despised university dormitory rooms due to the apparent lack of hygiene that came with sharing a living space with a stranger, Father had gotten the apartment just for him, and Victoria had moved in as well since starting her degree herself.
   Since then, they would visit their father during the holidays and occasionally talk on the phone with him, but he was always busy with his work and was overseas most of the time. If there was one thing Victoria knew about her father, it was that he was a workaholic.
   He had been more so since the demise of his wife.
   “Vic!” Alistair screamed again from the living room, and Victoria sighed, dumping her phone onto her pillow. If he was onto her because she hadn’t washed the dishes again, she was going to punch him in his sorry face.
   Grudgingly, she got up from her bed, shaking her long auburn hair behind her, and treaded to the door of her bedroom. Oh well. She was feeling peckish, and decided to order some fried chicken. Alistair could stuff his homemade baked potato salad up his arse.
   She opened the door to see Alistair standing right in front of her, and beside him, a man that looked like an older replica of Alistair, with ruby hair the exact same shade as Victoria’s.
   “Father!” Victoria burst out in surprise, running one hand through her unruly red tresses, her fingers tangling amongst the frizz before she gave up and flung her arms around the stately male. Her father looked taken-aback, but stood his ground as sixty kilograms of elated girl came hurtling towards him.
   She missed Father. It had been months since they had last met in person, and their curt phone calls never managed to fill the gnawing emptiness in her heart.
   “Vic,” her father laughed, his firm yet gentle hands rising up to return the hug. “How are you, sweetheart?”
   “We're all good,” Alistair answered softly. He was hovering diffidently around them, his expression one of longing and internal conflict, and then, with a determined bite of his lower lip, he put his arms around Father as well.
   “Are you going overseas again, Father?” Victoria asked, pulling away from him slightly.
   Father nodded. “I'm returning to Granite.”
   Victoria was used to it now; her father frequently travelled around the Continent of Stone for his business, barely returning home to their Nabrit hometown in the Country of Marble.
   And why would he? It had been the place where Mother had been taken, and his large empty manor only served as a gloomy reminder of what had once been.
   The country of Marble had been Victoria’s home all her life. It was vastly different from the other two countries making up the continent. Most prefectures in Marble were devastatingly beautiful, with a great deal of focus in preserving its ancient architecture, including old palaces, churches, clock towers, and other gorgeous landmarks like museums as well as old-fashioned street houses and lamp posts that lined the cobblestone roads. In Marble, it wasn’t uncommon to see imperious buildings that looked like it came straight out from another era right next to more chic and glossy edifices, the latter which were similar to those found in Granite.
   The country of Granite was the powerhouse of the entire continent of Stone. It housed the largest power plant in the entire world, and almost all the factories in the continent were situated in the rural northwest of Granite. The rest of the country was a modernised place with towering skyscrapers, where gleaming glass windows reflected the greying skyline which would otherwise be obscured by the sheer colossality of the surroundings. Victoria hadn't gone there enough to remember a great deal of it in spite of her father's travelling. Unlike Marble which consisted of different languages spoken by the citizens in the respective four prefectures, everyone in Granite spoke English, and the folks in that area were all a mix from the other countries.
   The final country in Stone was Jade. Citizens there were of different races altogether from those in Marble. They had dark hair and eyes, with usually contrasting pale skin, and smaller, more delicate features. Corruption was known to pervade a great deal of the country, including drug trafficking, smuggling and other activities pertaining to the black market. Ironically, Victoria's favorite comic originated from one of the five prefectures there: Nasikaga. The architecture in Jade ranged from being dilapidated to old-fashioned with certain unique furnishings – such as rosewood – depending on the race and culture of each prefecture, to being utterly modernised in other areas.
   “I'll be back from Granite soon,” Father said. “It won't be a long trip. I'm looking into renovating an abandoned terminal in Eclipse Airport.”
   Eclipse Airport was Granite’s only airport.
   “Why was it abandoned?” Victoria asked.
   Father’s face darkened. “There was a bombing years ago by the runway of that terminal,” he said. Then, without elaborating further, he added, “I have to go now or I'll be late for my flight, you two. I thought I’d drop by along the way and see the two of you before I leave. Call me if you need anything.”
   “We will. Have a safe flight, Father!” Alistair uttered, almost mechanically, at once. Victoria echoed his words after him, giving her father one last hug.
   Their father waved farewell at them, then shut the door behind his suit-clad figure.
   And just like that, another of their infrequent meetings had concluded.
   A minute later of calling the restaurant hotline without receiving any answer from the other end, Victoria decided to go out instead for her fried chicken, spurred on by her rumbling stomach. She could do with some fresh air, and it beat listening to Alistair's nagging about how her room was in disarray.
   When she returned home that evening after having had lunch and then going to an arcade all day to play, she found him sitting on the sofa alone, his body slumped against the leather backing and his face buried in his palms.
   Upon seeing her, Alistair's head jerked up and his already pale complexion turned another shade of white.
   “What?” Victoria snapped, wondering if he had had a fit because of the state of her room. It was then when she noticed one tiny strand of his brown hair sticking up, and alarm streaked through her body. Alistair would never allow his usually immaculate hair to look like that. For some reason, even without looking at the mirror, he always knew when there was so much as one strand of his hair out of place. Ever since their mother's death and the sight of her disfigured corpse in the morgue, Alistair had developed an obsessive-compulsive need to avoid germs and to maintain a semblance of tidiness as much as humanly possible.
   “Did you see the news this morning?” Alistair said in a low voice. He was clutching his smartphone tightly in his hand, and just then, the screen lit up to signal low battery.
   He never let his phone go below twenty percent.
   “Er, no,” Victoria said slowly, apprehension mounting in her chest. Something was really wrong with Alistair. “I haven’t checked my phone at all.”
   “F–Father… He was supposed to go to Granite today…” Alistair murmured.
   She noticed that he had gotten that vacant look in his eyes once more, and her stomach knotted. “What is it?” she barked impatiently.
   “There was a bombing,” he said faintly. “At Eclipse Airport.”
   Victoria's blood turned cold. Father had been headed there.
   “H…” Victoria swallowed the lump that had risen up in her throat. “How do you know that Father was involved?”
   Alistair met her eyes, his hollow blue eyes the exact replica of hers.
   And their father's.
   Wordlessly, Alistair turned his phone screen towards her, the glowing crimson battery icon on the top right uncomfortably striking on his otherwise bare phone.
   “It states here that the bombing happened at Terminal A,” he said, as Victoria read the exact same words on the screen. “Eight businessmen who had been in the area to discuss possible renovations were caught in the blast.”
   The one that Father had been speaking of. She opened her mouth, but no words came out.
   “Maybe Father had gone to the toilet, or something,” Victoria finally said. She realised, with a jolt, that she was doing the very same thing Father had done five years ago. Denial.
   As if right on cue, the doorbell rang. Both Alistair and Victoria froze, and their sapphire eyes darted to the door of the apartment.
   They didn't want to move. They knew, that once they opened the door, they would have to face a whole other reality that lay beyond a couple words published in a news report.
   Once they opened the door, they would have to face the same reality they faced five years ago.
   For a wild moment, Victoria wondered if she should pretend she didn't hear the doorbell. Sometimes she'd petulantly wondered what would have happened if Alistair had never answered the door five years ago and she'd never had seen her mother’s remains in the morgue.
   Perhaps she could have hidden from the truth for a blessed minute or two more.
   Then, the moment passed, and her sanity returned. Marshalling her resolve, Victoria pushed her way past a still-paralysed Alistair and undid the latch on the door. This time, she would take control of the moment herself.
   It was the only thing she could hold onto.
   The familiar gleaming badges on the sickening blue uniform swam into her vision once more, and she had to resist the urge to rip them all off. Those cursed badges that came back time and time again to ruin her life.
   “Don't.” Victoria held up her hand, before the policeman could utter a single word. “I know. Father is dead, right?”
   Saying the words first gave her a sense of power. I know. I'm already ahead of you.
   The policeman, though not the same one that had reported her mother’s death, gave her a sad, resigned smile. He didn’t appear surprised that she already knew. Firstly, the news of the bombing had already proliferated media platforms, and secondly, he’d probably already dug into her family’s records and read the details of her mother’s mysterious death.
   A death that wasn’t so mysterious as much as it had turned out to be fantastical.
   One year ago, news had broken out that there had been an incredible attack in the Obsidian Hotel, the most famous hotel in Granite. Victoria had seen the slew of pictures of a gigantic man-sized crimson snake that had been taken, as it lain on the asphalt at the ground floor of the ebony hotel. According to news reports, the snake had been taking humans as hosts to masquerade as people, and had been doing so for seven years prior.
   For a while Victoria had wondered if her eyes had gone wrong. The article had been like something right out of a deranged cultist’s blog. How did this even make sense? How could a snake have taken human bodies as hosts? It sounded like the storyline of a horror movie. Yet the truth – as far as news articles were concerned, anyway – was right out in the open.
   The evidence had gone like this: for a period of seven years, people had gone missing for weeks to months. When their bodies had resurfaced eventually, they had all been found in a decomposed state that was far worse than they should have been considering the span of their disappearance.
   Just like her mother.
   Reports had stated that the snake responsible for these gruesome corpses was a supernatural monstrous anomaly, and that investigations into its origins were still underway, headed by the Investigation of Extraordinary Creatures – the IOEC, for short.
   There had also been a photo of the snake’s apparent accomplice: a Jade male with bleached light brown hair.
   Him.
   The man whom her mother had kissed, the man who had taken her mother away. The police had reported that besides pure conjecture, there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him as the killer of all the past victims. Only eye witnesses at the hotel had stated that they had seen this man working for this... snake-like creature.
   His name was Park Jae-Ki. That was all Victoria knew from the news that had broken out. The police officers in charge of her mother’s case had visited her home one night and told them that they believed, despite the lack of concrete evidence, that her mother had been consumed by the snake for a brief period of time, which had led to her gruesome death.
   Park Jae-Ki had handed her mother over to the snake.
   He had taken advantage of her vulnerable state – feeling unloved by her workaholic husband – and seduced her, in order to lure her to her death.
   It was sickening.
   Victoria wondered if the police force felt sorry for her, and Alistair. Two kids who had lost both their parents in the span of five years, both of which had been unnatural and grisly deaths.
   “You are Alistair and Victoria Knowles, children of Roy Knowles, correct?” the officer asked.
   Victoria nodded numbly.
   “I don’t understand,” Alistair murmured, in such a soft voice that she almost couldn’t hear him. “Why would anyone bomb the airport?”
   “It’s still being investigated, but there are lot of strange circumstances to this case,” the policeman said quietly. “Right now, we don’t have much evidence yet, so I shouldn’t be saying anything conclusive to you, but… The police are deeming it as a terrorist attack—”
   “No, I don’t understand,” Alistair repeated, much louder this time. “You don’t get it! I’m saying, why would anyone bomb the airport when Father was there?”
   Victoria stirred to look at him. “Allie—”
   “Father was kind, and he was loving, and he was—” Alistair wiped at his eyes fiercely. “It doesn’t make any sense to bomb a place where someone as good as him had been. It doesn’t.”
   “I’m sorry,” the policeman answered gently. “I really am.”
   As if that would bring Father back.
   “What has Father ever done to deserve this?” Alistair continued fervently. “How could anyone have held a grudge against one as kind as him?”
   “Allie,” Victoria said, more sharply this time. Alistair stilled at her words, but she could tell he was still crying.
   “It's hard for you. I understand,” the policeman said in a taciturn voice. Victoria looked at him then. He had soulful brown eyes that were brimming with tears, with slight crow’s feet along his eyes and cheeks that would crinkle when he laughed. He was just the messenger, she realised. He had nothing to do with how her father had died. It didn't make sense to scream and cry at him.
   “Was the culprit found?” Victoria pressed gently. She didn’t know how she was holding it together compared to her older brother who was falling apart, but she knew that if Alistair crumbled, she would have to be there for him.
   Someone had to be strong.
   “The police are still investigating, but as of now, we have no leads,” the policeman answered with stark honesty, wringing his hands together. “I’m not sure if you already know, but some years ago a religious madman bombed the very same terminal in Eclipse Airport.”
   “This has nothing to do with—” Alistair began, but Victoria shot him a poisonous glare.
   “Religious madman?” Victoria turned back to the policeman, and narrowed her cerulean eyes. “What religion?”
   The policeman hesitated, then answered.
   “Devil’s Angels.”

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