by D. Fischer
A dwarf catches my eye, observing me with the same white, sparkling orbs the sandmen have, but larger, more rounded and disproportionate to his smaller, yet square and bulky features.
His lips thin into a fine line as he observes me, his eyes roaming my body, my make, with such wisdom. I swallow as he looks to my shoulders, searching for my wings. He knows what I am.
Wrinkles line his pale forehead, bunching his bushy eyebrows. His partner nudges him after briefly glancing at us, reminding him to keep focused on the task before him.
Dwarfs’ strength is in their hands and brute force as well as their minds. They’re sharp thinkers and obsessive inventors. Constant recalculations, for minimal effort versus maximum impact, describe them best.
For a moment, I wonder why they chisel by hand – why they haven’t invented an easier way to extract the dust. Perhaps the sleep dust must be removed with care.
They’re loyal to their work; this much is clear, but I wonder how loyal they are to their creator. They work as a team, as one unit, a family of sorts. One chisels, one catches the dust. They care for one another, and I wonder how. Love is an emotion. Perhaps working in such close proximity to the dream dust allows them to find the strength for loyalty and morals. After all, Sandmen are loyal to their charges.
The dwarf’s hands are as small as a child’s but thick with muscles roping up their arms. Every inch of his shirtless torso is lined with exaggerated strength. His brown hair is long, tied back at the nape with straps of leather, and his skin is white as snow due to lack of UV rays.
“They mine these?” I ask, the question obvious, but the need to fill the silence is intense.
Erma, who has stopped ahead, turns her body toward me. She closes her eyes in a brief blink of affirmation. Her long, red eyelashes fan her cheekbones, and I study her instead. She opens them, and we study one another, holding our ground in a silent battle of will and unvoiced communication. I look away, my jaw ticking as I remember my place, and I force myself to think of something else.
“How do the dwarves not hallucinate?” I ask, walking back to Erma while averting my focus from her.
“Dwarves were made for this and only this,” Erline answers.
I chuff.
Erma's teeth snap together, her nostrils flaring as she reaches the end of her patience. “Everyone is a slave, Tember. It’s just a matter of who or what is the master. No one is free. Not even from themselves.” Her voice drops an octave to a deadly hiss. "Not even you.”
AIDEN VANDER
THE VOID
If I could cry, I would. My tear ducts aren’t too proud. I don’t have any. There’s no bravado necessary to keep up my image when there’s no one to impress.
My mind, or what is left of it, conjures brief memories of Eliza and rotates through them like a restless TV scanner. She was my everything, even with the short time we had together.
In my mind’s eye, her hair floats around her head unnaturally, waving in a non-existent breeze like a flag on a pole, obscuring her features from my desperate eyes. Her face is pinched, eyes closed, but her image is blurred like a cartoon picture colored outside the lines by a careless hand. Something blue crackles along her skin - lightning, her body the center of a thunderstorm. It confuses me, and I try to grasp what my mind summons to save this distorted memory, to allow me a sliver of comfort.
The picture of her face reverses and changes. The blue electric tracery along her skin disappear, and her waving red hair stills. She opens her eyes. I can make out her tiny button nose and liquid green irises that sparkle with an underlying wit she tries to hide.
There is a crumbling, unidentifiable, stone wall behind her, and black smoke trickles in the picture, swirling in puffs traveling closer until it, too, pauses just as her hair. I can almost smell the smoke.
I panic. What’s happening?
Her face still moves, her eyes searching mine. She attempts a smile, but before it can reach past her teeth, it fades, deteriorating to a frown. Those eyes that have captured mine widen, fearful. I break inside. I died, gave my life to make sure she’d hold no fear. I sacrificed myself, to save her. I don’t want her to be scared.
Her lips move, but no sound comes out. The slight laugh lines at the edge of her cheekbones relax, her skin angelic, precisely as I remember. But she’s frightened, the sparkle within her eyes gaining the moisture of tears, and her lips move faster. She’s worried. Why? She’s safe. Right?
The prickling, tingling torment intensifies. I’m nothing, but I feel a tugging sensation. A yanking around me, a sudden, unexplainable pull, until my body is ablaze.
My body. My body.
Is this my new torture? A level of hell I haven’t reached yet, tormenting me by dangling the memory of touch?
Pain worth a thousand licking flames seeps through me. Heat courses along my veins, lines my organs as they solidify and reform. I feel it. I feel their regrowth. It’s slow, sluggish, taking its time in a whole new bane.
Thick, hot goop surrounds me, threatening to pull me further inside its depths. One minute I’m floating, and the next, heavy heat engulfs me. My leg muscles quiver and twitch, and I seize the moment, whatever this moment may be, and kick with all the force I can muster.
My head breaks free of a surface, the searing-hot liquid sliding down my cheeks and spilling inside my mouth. I take a large gulp of air before this pit swallows me again.
What is this?
As my head goes below the liquid once more, I thrash my arms side to side, desperate to remain afloat. Emotions I once had surface, one by one. Each time they do, they leave me, winking out of my body before I can even name them, until I feel nothing. No love. No sorrow. Nothing, besides the need for survival.
With everything I have, I kick once more, my arms forcing the goop down while I push for another breath. The possibility of self-preservation drives me.
This time, I hear my inhale. Like a drowning man, the gulp of oxygen is a gasp of relief to my burning lungs. Blindly, my hand reaches out in front of me, searching for an object to hold me afloat.
Something firm, hard, grasps my hand, yanking me from this pool that drags me under. I’m lifted in the air as though I weigh nothing but a feather. The goop drips from my toes before I’m placed on my feet.
“Aiden Vander,” a voice rumbles in front of me, holding my hand until I regain balance.
Swallowing, confused and desperate, I slowly open my eyes, seeing nothing but black. My eyelids flutter, blinking rapidly, expelling the goop that keeps me blind. Images, objects, and the person standing in front of me, come to light, taking shape, and confusing me further.
The creature before me releases my hand, and my eyes jerk to my newly reformed fingers outstretched in front of me. I still look like me – the knuckles are the same thickness, and the curve of my nails are exactly as I remember. I twist it, checking for abnormalities, testing how real this is.
This can’t be real.
The goop coating my skin is black. It slides off, dripping and splatting to the ground, but I don’t hear it hit. I’m too absorbed in the wonder of this impossibility.
I lower my hand and look around. “Where am I?” I mumble, my voice deeper, darker, void of emotion. I don’t recognize it, but I don’t fear it. Fear isn’t an emotion I can call upon anymore, even if I tried.
I’m standing on what looks to be black flowing lava, orange glowing veins slithering throughout the endless, dark body of liquid. When the veins reach the surface, they break and pop, creating a small puff of smoke which floats and raises in the air. It reaches my nose, the aroma as thick as the contents, and the smell of sulfur coats my tongue as it passes through on its way to my lungs. The black lava is like a river, held in by cliffs on both sides. Waterfalls . . . lavafalls trickle from the cliffs, sluggishly slipping back into the main body.
No one else is around. No one except this man . . . this thing before me, and the flaming black pits that make this landscape.
I t
urn back to him, and he smiles, a wicked, mischievous grin that would curl the toes of an innocent. I know I should care what his plans are; I know he’s up to no good. But the only thing filling me is . . . nothing.
He doesn’t answer my question, possibly thinking it obvious. “Aiden Vander,” he repeats. “The Thrice Born.”
His words are slurred, his lips moving carefully over rows of sharp, pointed teeth. Skin, sagging and shredded, hangs from each bone on his body, like fragments of a tattered t-shirt. His left cheek is missing altogether, showing the expanse of the razors inside his mouth. A black hole exists where his right eye should be. No clothes cover his body to hide the sight that would turn any stomach and leave nothing to the imagination.
“Who are you?” My voice is automatic, robotic, and careless. I only wish to know if he’s friend or foe.
The skin along his rotting-flesh arms flaps as he folds them behind his back. He hunches his shoulders, sagging toward me. “Power is within a name. A demon never speaks his name.” He narrows his eye. “I am a demon of Corbin, the fee of this realm. You, Thrice Born . . . You will be his ultimate weapon – his first experiment of many.”
“Weapon?”
He slants his head, jutting his chin to the side, and the wicked smile returns. “Are you ready to serve, Demon?”
Demon? Is that what I am? Is that what this is? This is hell. This is the Demon Realm.
I nod my head, no care for my well-being or of what is to come for me.
“Good,” he laughs, the sound like a child shrilling. “Follow me.”
He walks past me, and I swivel on the balls of my feet, following him to his destination.
“Corbin will be along shortly. His plans are mighty.”
CHAPTER FOUR
ELIZA PLAATS
DEATH REALM
Rounding the corner from the kitchen, I walk the short distance to the obscenely large formal dining area, a tray made of bones balancing in my hands with a goblet of black, shimmering oil placed atop.
As the goblet teeters, my nostrils flare, the smell rolling my stomach. It’s not that oil bothers me. It’s the fact that it’s held within a cup, its purpose to slide past crude lips and be swallowed by a man who deserves the worst of deaths.
My jaw snaps closed at the notion of him calling me his queen one more time, a whole new wave of revulsion.
There’s nothing formal about this large room. Some sort of dust webs cling to the high ceilings and the large candlelight fixture dangling over the table. A stone, round table sits in the middle, surrounded by chairs made of bones like the tray in my hands.
I’ve been through the entire Keep. There aren’t any pictures on the walls, and much to my dismay, there’s nothing to show that this fee has any soul or a sliver of care for love or life. A small part of me hoped there would be. Maybe, if there was any insight from this man I’m to marry, I could somehow find a way to understand him since I’m to spend eternity at his beck and call.
Instead of mementos, candles line the walls, sporadic and out of order, with flickering flames lit on their tops. A large fireplace, made of crumbling, white bricks, is embedded against one wall, though it doesn’t look like it’s ever been used. Kheelan prefers the cold, just as his soul. Black rocks sit inside, and I’ve often wondered why? Is it décor?
Shifting my shoulders, I attempt to relieve an itch from the tag along my neck. I’m still dressed in the scrubs I was wearing when I died not too long ago. Though it seems ages, it has, in fact, only been a few days. I’ve aged far beyond my years since the day the train hit my car, and I’ve been through more than I deserve since I’ve died. Life isn’t fair. Even a second life isn’t any better.
My mother is held prisoner below, my lover is gone forever, leaving my heart in shattered pieces within my chest, and his mother is held captive with mine. The man, who was forced to deliver my lover’s death, rots below my feet. In my eyes, it’s a small victory – a small repayment for the debt the murderer owes me. But, he and I have something in common. Kheelan forced us to remain human.
I wonder what’s going through Dyson’s head, locked below with no one to talk to. I wonder what that’s like - to feel. I wouldn’t know. Numbness creeps through my body, betraying everything I am with a chemical my glands produce, an anesthetic to emotions. I know what this is – the stages of grief - but I’m powerless to control or stop it.
My gait slows as I reach the round table, Kheelan watching my every step with his hands clasped and folded under his chin. A small smirk plays against his harsh, thin lips. He’s enjoying the fact that I have no wish to be anywhere near him – to have anything to do with the man, the fee, who holds me captive. When he calls me his queen, I hold back a gag. I belong to him, and he knows it, choosing to torment me with a title I want no part in. I’m human now; my heart beats. Humans don’t belong with the dead. Humans should never wed a fee.
His smile widens, more forced, as he reads my thoughts. I keep eye contact, refusing to show how much hatred is held within the chambers of my heart. I relish this emotion. It’s true, one I can trust in this shell which I’ve become.
“Sweet Eliza,” he sugar-coats. “There’s no need for such hostility. Come. Bring me my beverage.”
I swallow, glancing at the goblet rocking against the uneven surface that makes the bone tray. The shimmering black contents bubble with each sickening slosh. I don’t know why he drinks this stuff. Does he enjoy the taste? Or does he enjoy how much it nauseates me? My stomach rolls, and I gag.
Setting the tray down in front of him, I take a step back and fold my arms behind my back. He eyes my skin and the goosebumps that’ve been tattooed there since my new transformation back to the living.
His jaw ticks, his smile fading like a ghost in the night. “You’ll have to excuse my ignorance and insensitivity. I’m not used to the company of those who feel cold.”
One of the folded hands under his chin snaps, sending a bolt of blue electricity from his fingertips to the charred, black rock within the fireplace. He resettles his hand, propping his head once more. I barely notice the movement, my gaze on the fire instead.
I’ve never seen rock like this, especially rock which ignites. It engulfs in flames, the tips of each flame black mixed with bright blue. It sends a blast of warmth throughout the room. I scowl and bite my bottom lip, expecting black smoke to travel up the chimney, but no smoke comes from the unnatural fire.
“Inferaze,” Kheelan comments, following my gaze. “Useful rock. Extremely explosive.”
With a delicate hand, he swiftly reaches forward, causing me to jump, and grasps my bare wrist. “Your thoughts are unkind, Eliza. Shield them when you’re around me. I won’t tolerate insubordination from my queen much longer.”
My nostrils flare, and my top lip twitches. “I wouldn’t be disobedient if it weren’t for you uprooting my life and sending my thoughts into chaos. You’re a cruel man, one for whom I feel nothing but disdain, forcing judgements to cross my mind.” I quiet my voice. “I will never be your queen.”
I yank my wrist from his grasp while he uses his free hand to grip the goblet, bringing the oil to his lips. With a content sigh, he slurps a sip.
“Then perhaps, you should watch the company you keep, young one.”
Curling my fingers into my palm, I straighten my spine and blurt my next words. “What company? The company you slaughtered? Or the ones held in eternal prison? Do you think I chose this? Do you honestly think this is what I asked for?”
The oil leaves behind a stain on his top lip, his tongue snaking out to capture a drop before it dribbles on his black robe.
A chill runs up my spine.
He smacks his lips, savoring the flavor. “Of course not. No one asks for death.” His tone is chipper and misplaced for such a retort. “No one is in control of what happens to their fate. I know this as well as you. I have, in fact, lived for a long time, learning such insignificant lessons you mortals deal with.”
“
Then why do you keep me here?”
He twirls a finger over the rim of his glass goblet. “To remind you, to remind them – the rebellion that’s rising to uproot me from my very throne – that I am in charge. I can choose what happens to you, what happens to them, because this is my realm.” His fingers curl tighter around the spine of the goblet, the whites of his knuckles straining against the bones beneath the skin’s surface. “They dwell here by my say so. They walk that stone because I, and only I, wish it. They, and you, have no say.”
Kheelan lifts his eyes to mine, one brow quirked in challenge, begging for me to retort.
A soulless man hovers inside those black eyes. There’s no mask that hides his true nature. It’s right there, open for display, leaving the person who stares back in them lost, afraid, and unsure of what he’ll do next. He’s a man without morals. A man without a little voice in his head that screams when he’s tipped the scale to an unusual amount of unjustifiable cruelty.
I internally sigh. The scale doesn’t tip. It’s superglued to one side, cemented there . . . forever in his favor.
He continues, his tone a deep, deadly rumble, “I will do with you as I please. If I want to scrape the skin, inch by inch, from your bones with the dullest knife I can conjure, I will. I’ll watch the blood drip from your exposed muscle and puddle along the floor in a river of red. If I want to deliver a treat to my vampires, I’ll stick a bow on your forehead, and let them suckle from your neck. If I want to kill your boyfriend for my own entertainment and pleasure, I will. You have no choice. You have no say. This is no longer your life.” He reclines into his chair. “Best you grow accustomed to it, my queen.”
I swallow a thick lump inside my throat, my hands uncurling from my palms. “May I go?” I whisper.
“No.” He takes another sip.
Ticking my jaw, I watch him with disgust. He slurps obnoxiously, knowing it’ll make me gag, and this time, I can’t hold it back. I turn my back to him and away from the revolting sight he portrays, bending over with my hands gripping my thighs. Dry heaves arch my back and buckle my knees.
