by Jade Alters
“I...don’t remember.”
“What are you so worried about then?” I ask. I wrap a hand tight around his thigh to ground him back in the real world. Part of Serge, it seems, it still lost in his dream. He looks up at the sky and chews his lip.
“I don’t know,” he says.
The Stronghold
Cece,
The Sierra Nevadas, Illusory Reach
The next time I visit the Academy Training Grounds in the Sierra Nevadas is alongside Bart. We haven’t come to spar and there’s no reason to stop and talk, so we breeze right on through. We talked out everything we needed to in Dragonlord Thise’s office yesterday evening. When Serge is right, he’s right. Beating the piss out of him did help. I went straight to Thise before I had a chance to rethink my decision.
I’ll meet my “father”, if it means getting an inside look at the Kyrie’s plans. If it means stopping them from splintering the supernatural community into super-powered, separate states. But I’ll never forget who my family is. The one I left behind in the Norman world to find. Serge. Lee. Bryant. Stephanie. Even River. There’s no spot for Dorian, and he’ll never push one of them out.
“Go on,” Bart says, suddenly. I raise an eyebrow at him over my shoulder. It’s the first thing he’s said since we came through the Tether Teleporter. He nudges his head up at the gray sheet of clouds that slides over the sky. “You keep looking up. You want to stretch your wings.”
“Well, yeah,” I admit. How closely has he been watching me? I don’t know anyone who’s been able to read me like that after knowing me for so little a time. “But isn’t the guide supposed to lead the way?” Bart shrugs. There’s an oddly whimsical expression in those scarlet eyes of his, set between two wings of shoulder-length brown hair.
“Eh. I’ve done my time enslaved to tradition,” Bart says. “I’m pretty done with it. Go on. Straight east, over this peak – follow the line of charred trees. You’ll see them from above. Cross the meadow with all the streams and plank bridges to the other side. Aim for the two tallest mountains on the other side. The Stronghold is in the forested valley between them.” I cross my arms and eye him up and down as we walk.
“What about my pack?” I ask. We both have one on, though mine outsizes Bart’s two times over. It must be because he already has a room at the Kyrie Stronghold.
“I’ll take it,” Bart offers with a shrug so casual, I start picturing him practicing it in a mirror.
“You’re going to carry both our packs…so I can fly?” I ask. Bart lowers his head to stare at me with the very tops of his eyes. The look implies a comically overblown have I lied to you yet? I squint back to imply an equally potent I don’t know you well enough to know that, yet.
“Let’s see… Third year… You must be in Advanced Transformation now, right?” Bart tries instead. I can’t help but frown at him, but not because I’m upset. It’s more that my face is unsure how to translate such a pure feeling of confusion toward someone.
“Now how does a first-year know something like that?” I counter. I’ve turned so fully towards Bart now that I don’t notice the encroaching short wall of rocks that marks the edge of our summit. My toes smash into it and my chest almost goes right over. I save myself with a short hop and two heels dug in while the rest of me curls like an armadillo. Bart leaps to the top of the rocks behind me. He withholds his laughter at least until he sees I haven’t tumbled off the mountainside. Then he belts it out full-force. “Shu-shu-shut up!”
“Would you rather stay, interrogate me and break your legs?” Bart asks. “Or test out what you’ve been daydreaming of this whole hike?” I shoot him a sheerly maleficent look, but he has the perfect armor to diffuse it. That ridiculous shrug. Those scarlet eyes that look like they’ve been filled with too much blood already to ever be surprised again.
I sigh and reach for my chest. My breasts pop gratefully free from the strap of my backpack. I unclip the one from my waist and toss the pack uphill to Bart. He snags it in both hands and slings it over his shoulder, right over his own.
“See you on taller mountains, girlie,” Bart waves me off.
“Don’t call me that,” I warn him.
I put my arms down at my side. Flame dances up from my ankles to my shoulders, then back down me again. My flame-resistant clothes suffer no char, and stretch with the pronunciation of my mauve scales. Two sapphire eyes glint out from my armored head as it rises up on my muscular neck. My wings shoot out from both of my shoulder blades. Bart hops the barrier of rocks with both our packs and hikes on downhill, into the brush like there isn’t a marvel of nature happening right next to him. Even when I throw my head back and roar, he only puts a hand up to wave goodbye. Absurd. I slam my wings down to launch from the side of the peak.
Frustrating as it is, Bart was spot on. Ever since I got through basic review, Advanced Transformation has been one engaging new technique after another. I scarcely waited more than a day before I rushed out to the Sierras to test them out. I had the heart neither to test any of them on Serge, nor tell him I was holding back. There’s need for no such restraint here.
I pierce the gray veil of clouds and flap higher to the sky. I envision the change in my form, down to the cellular level, just like Professor Yertugh taught us. I exude a screen of gas from the seams of my scales to ignite around me. The cloak of flame that strikes up outlines my target size, about two feet bigger in every direction. The heat catalyzes the growth of muscle under my scales. I screech with the unexpected surge of pain that comes from unraveling my muscles. I strain between flaps of my enormous skin-and-bone scales to force myself to change. To grow.
I give out at the ceiling of my pain threshold. I look down at a flexing claw to find it swollen, talons jumping from a more muscular grip. When all is said and done, I’ve grown by something closer to a foot in size, all around. I let loose a shrill note of victory.
Below me, the meadow sweeps by. I’m too high up to track the bridges and creeks, so I sweep down lower. My bladed toes tap against the stiff upper branches of dried out bushes. My violet reflection zips by in the reflection of streams almost too small to notice. Whether or not there are plank bridges over them, I can’t tell. I lift my eyes to focus on the tallest two peaks across the field.
I ride the wind up higher, to the underside of the sea of gray wisps above. I turn to cut a long slice through the clouds with the edge of my wing. Damn it’s a good breeze today. If I didn’t have an insurgency mission involving my biological father ahead of me, I might just screech across the sky all day. As it is, I’ve got to pack in all the thrills I can now – I’ll have to descend any second. I open my jaw wide. Smoke froths through my jagged incisors, followed by a burst of bright crimson flame. I turn chest over back in a flaming corkscrew. I flap the last dregs of fire and smoke out with my wings and dive towards the forested valley.
I fight with gravity over a few cautionary sweeps, until I near the outer wall of pines. I extend my feet for the ground as they revert to their cloaked, human form. My draconic greaves change back to shoes as my claws turn to feet. They sink in the dirt. My wings fold closed behind me and vanish. I’m a woman again when I take my first step into the forest.
“Have a nice flight?” I turn and swing on instinct at the sound of a voice so close to the side of my head. Bart leans back to let my knuckles whiz past his nose. “Whoa, secret operation mode: not reengaged yet.”
“So-sorry,” I cough once I regain my balance. “If you’re going to do that…don’t stand so close to me.” I don’t feel like explaining to him, with my heart thumping so loud, how badly it turned out the last time a Vampire appeared behind me like that.
“Noted,” says Bart.
“And yes…I did have a nice flight,” I tell him. “I didn’t expect you to get here so fast.”
“Fast?” Bart laughs. “I’ve been waiting for you for ten minutes.” I don’t remember the last time someone made me blush the way I do now. He slings my pack free from h
is shoulders. “It’s alright. Not every Vampire is as fast as I am.” He sends the pack to me in a chest pass. I hug it beneath a pair of shocked eyes. How much of my display did he see? More than that, what else has he seen, to be so utterly unaffected? Bart doesn’t give me the chance to wonder long. He starts off deeper into the forest.
“So-sorry,” I tell him again, following close behind. I throw my pack over my shoulders and trot under the trees in Bart’s wake. We make it about thirty paces into the shade of the woods before we cross through the hanging veil of an illusory curtain.
Not four steps later than that, a clear disk sails over my shoulder. My head jerks to follow it back, where it strikes a tree. A perfect orb of bark disintegrates instantly, teleported elsewhere if I’m not mistaken. A Magician’s trick. My eyes jump back in front of us, where two young men in long robes hold their hands up with the threat of more. My eyes fix on the one on the left, the one I recognize from the incident in my first year. It’s one of Serge’s cousins.
“God damn guys! I didn’t come flying in! What more do you want?” Bart demands. The way he speaks to them with such familiarity is all that keeps me from lunging. I feel my blood steam hotter in my veins the longer I lock eyes with the Dalshak boy who obviously remembers me, too.
“You brought an Academy student here?” the other of the doormen cries out. Oh shit. Hindsight; now that’s real magic. I didn’t bring any clothes from home when I first came to the Broken Academy, so grabbing the school colors for the day is all but an instinct now. I hardly considered the impression it would make on the Kyrie grunts guarding the door.
“Not just an Academy student,” spits the Dalshak boy I recognize. “That’s the Dragon bitch that tried to torch us all!”
“I’ll do more than try,” I warn the boy with a little spit of flame from the palm of a flicking hand.
“Take it easy, both of you,” Bart tries to defuse. He steps between the boy and me, two arms pushing the air to motion stop. I let my hand halfway down as a peace offering. I will if you will, I tell the boy with a warning glare. But it’s neither him, I, nor the other doorman who sets off the bout. It’s some other Kyrie idiot who comes running from the mouth of a cave in the ground.
“The Academy’s here!” the pale, gaunt woman screams. A Vampire by the look of her.
“No, no, Cece’s not-”
He tried, but Bart’s reasoning just can’t overpower the sheer panic in the woman’s voice. She disappears back inside instantly, though not before pushing the Dalshak boy over the edge. He looses another trick, some kind of illusory grenade. This time, it’s not a warning shot. I dodge to the left, and it vaporizes the rest of the already damaged tree’s trunk. The next thing I know, my world is a blur of color. I feel a hand around my waist for about a second, then it’s gone. Bart lets me go about thirty feet from the entrance to the Kyrie Stronghold.
“Where are you going?” I gasp before I have a chance to catch the breath he stole. He’s already turned back towards the two Magicians giving pursuit. He freezes for a second to answer:
“I’ll go talk to them. Your face is doing us no good over there.”
“Too late,” I tell him, finger pointing back towards the stronghold. The Magicians shoot between tree trunks to sling tricks at us with both hands. Illusory disks stick in trees. Glassy little daggers slice leaves just inches away from me.
“God damned Dalshak rockheads,” Bart shakes his head. “It’s a wonder they haven’t warred their bloodline into the ground.” I grit my teeth and brace my legs hard against the ground.
“Get back,” I warn Bart. He shoots me a mortified glance, which I calm by assuring him, “I’m only going to block them.” If they know when to back down, that is.
I leap into the air, flung higher than any human could by the flap of my emergent wings. This one I didn’t learn from any class. I learned it from watching Dragonlord Thise. My wings throw my human body up high, to perch on a thick branch high over the Magicians’ heads. I open my human mouth wide enough to let fly a condensed cannonball of fire. The impact blasts a crater in the earth between the two Magicians. Flame jumps from it to the dry shrubs all around us, spreading into a wall between Bart and I and the Kyrie.
“That’s enough!” I shout down over the roar of the flame. “I didn’t come here to fight anyone! I came…to meet my father.” My voice cracks when I force it out, but it has the intended effect. The Magicians freeze, eyes up at me as they shrink back from my flame.
Then, just when I think they’re ready to listen, one of them lets loose a glassy razor-dish. It rips through the base of my branch like butter. I plunge twenty feet before my wings suspend me in the air. I suck down a deep breath to unleash the steam I’ve been caging in my chest. All that prevents the two Magicians from becoming a mound of magical ash is the sharp clip of a voice I recognize. A voice I haven’t heard in over a year.
“Stop! All of you!” Lucidous, formerly the VampKing, screams. The Magicians’ hands freeze instantly, mid-snap. I hold my breath to see if they’ll stand fully down. My wings let me slowly to the ground, near the Magicians and Lucidous. A haze of color shoots to my side. Bart.
“Lucidous, thank God. Would you tell these idiots?” he wheezes.
“The girl is here to see Dorian,” Lucidous announces. “And no one is to lay a hand on her until she sees him. Are we understood?” The Magicians glance to one another, then to me. There’s not an ounce of hate lost between them, but their hands lower to their sides.
“Understood,” they growl. Lucidous then strolls over to Bart and I.
“Welcome back, Bartholomew,” says Lucidous. He puts a hand on Bart that’s far too familiar for mere acquaintances. He puts one on mine, too, to say, “And welcome, Cece. To the Stronghold. I’ll take you to your father.”
The Tour
Bart,
The Kyrie Stronghold
Cece’s eyes glow huge in the lamp posts that light the underground atrium at the entrance of the Stronghold. I remember that same wonder filling me the first time I stepped down into its endless stony walks and separated subterranean districts. I don’t remember, however, the last time my eyes lit up the way hers do. She can’t stop looking at anything and everything. The shrubs and small gardens around the huge central fountain. The little creeks that run down every branching pathway. The bodies that wander to and fro, not unlike a day at the Academy, deep beneath the surface of the Sierra Nevadas.
“Is…this whole place underground?” Cece asks as Lucidous leads us around the fountain. He turns down the first branching path, for the Common Grounds. The clever dog. It’s a strategic scenic route to get to Dorian, which will take us through several districts exemplary of the Stronghold’s appearance as a paradise. If I know Lucidous, he won’t so much as mention where he and I will go when this little tour is done. The Blood Farms.
“A vast majority of it,” Lucidous tells her. He steers our group down the long stony walk into an even deeper, chiller part of the earth. We pass by several unlabeled steel doors along the way. Dorms, I know, of course. But for Cece, on her first visit, they could be anything. Then the right-hand wall on our right falls away. In its place is a precipitous stone staircase to a massive, open cavern, and something quite spectacular. I hardly blame Cece when she mutters:
“Wha-wha-what the hell is that?” She refers to the enormous chamber of wood stalactites pouring down from the rocky ceiling. A million dangling tree roots. Or perhaps she means the cloud of fireflies floating between them. She could, of course, also be talking about the conglomeration of Fey hundreds of feet beneath the roots, calling them down towards themselves.
“The underside of the Fey Forest,” Lucidous says. “They are practicing a recreation of locations more suitable for their own living. Places more like their home Realm of Thornegarde.”
“Oh,” is all Cece can manage to answer as Lucidous leads us on. The wall returns to the right side of our rocky hallway. The way turns upwards from there. Our
shoes echo down with each hard step up, until finally we burst back into the abrupt light of day. We leave another discreet cave-mouth behind for the grassy top of a rolling hill. Cece’s eyes turn immediately to our right, to see the topside of the Fey Forest. “Oh my God.”
“It’s even lovelier inside,” I assure her. My visits there have been rare, but treasured. The trees of the Fey Forest grow three times the height of those anywhere else. Their branches arc, twist and rise in patterns and formations that make all others look dull and unintentional in comparison. The wide, hanging leaves that weave together as a canopy glisten a deeper jade than even the sun can penetrate, all the way through.
“This,” Lucidous calls Cece’s eyes back to the world in front of us. Several miles of tall grass waver in the flow of the wind between us and the valley between the next hill. Clay walking paths cut out in an elaborate web over most of it. “Is where we like to stretch our legs.”
“Vampires?” Cece asks.
“Well, if all three of us took off for the next hill at the same time, I doubt you’d finish first,” I answer for Lucidous. If I hadn’t proved it earlier, Cece might have been quicker to strike back. Or perhaps it’s her sheer wonder at the outdoor portions of the Stronghold. Lucidous follows the most worn of all the paths about half a mile over soft blankets of grass, before we turn back down through another opening in the earth. The cool darkness of another cavernous staircase takes us in.
Lucidous leaves Cece to reflect on what she’s seen in silence. He does truly know how to give a tour. If only she could reflect on what she hasn’t seen, Cece might be a little more apprehensive. The very thing that keeps me so firmly grounded here would chill most humans to the bone. Our narrow stair twists around and down, to a chamber that should be rather cold and dark, by nature’s dictation.
