by Jade Alters
Instead, however, it retains the gentle, pressing heat of a boiler room. This is from the giant stone torch that takes center stage in this underground sector of the Stronghold. Orange light glints off wide, rounded walls all around us in the reflection of the purest blackness. Obsidian glass. A spotlight cone of yellow sunlight shines down on the stony torch from above, where a split in the land lets in a flash of sun. I watch Cece in silent amusement as she struggles with the decision of where to look. She can’t decide between the torch, which outsizes her by double, the walls, the blade of sunlight from above, or the countless bodies flitting around it.
Scales of emerald, ruby, sapphire, and every stone, precious or dull, swing wide turns around the perimeter of natural black glass. The reflection of the torch and sun bounce between them in a prismatic light show like none other on the planet. Some spiral high, then sweep back down. Others build up speed and shoot off through the crack. Others still land and morph back to a human form, done stretching their wings for the day.
One of these is an enormous Dragon with scales impossibly blacker than even the walls around us. His wings stretch out to almost double the span of Cece’s until they fold behind his back. His transformation is so quick and crisp, a blink could hide it. At the very second his talons touch the rocky ground, they become shoes. His hazel eyes shimmer still in the torchlight, but they lose their supernatural glow. His dark skin is the shade of Cece’s. Her dark hair is his, swept back out of his striking, stoic face. At the first sight of her, though, his eyes round out, more than I’ve ever seen them before. They fill to the brim with a sheet of water. His voice echoes hollow, as heavy as a dropped coin in the last water left at the bottom of a deep, deep well.
“Cecilia?” I can smell a difference in the air, from the second she hears his voice. I hear her pulse miss time. I notice her shiver. All the distaste she had for this idea back in Thise’s office has evacuated her body.
“Yo-you must be Dorian,” Cece stumbles. She stands up straight, like he’s no more than the leader of an anti-Academy installment. But her voice gives it away. She sees herself in his tan skin, in his dark hair. There’s no mistaking the striking resemblance of who they truly are to one another.
“I…” Dorian freezes, something I’ve never seen him do, mid-step towards her. The great and powerful head of the Kyrie is reduced to a clumsy adolescent before my eyes. He shifts from one foot to the next, unsure what to do with his hands. I know full well he intended to put them around his daughter for the first time, from the way he all but demanded I bring her here. Now though, reading her body language, he knows as much as I do that it’s not an option. “I must be,” he eventually says.
“Well,” Lucidous startles me back to the reality, that this isn’t my family drama to witness, with a hard slap on the shoulder. “We should leave these two to get acquainted, no?”
“Let’s,” I nod to him. But neither Lucidous nor Dorian knows that I haven’t brought Cece here as a private matter. They have no idea how she’s been convinced. They understand Cece’s loyalty about as well as Thise does mine. So I put a gentle hand on her back, a quiet reminder that she’s not all alone in the Stronghold, even if our interests don’t exactly align. “Enjoy the afternoon,” I hum to her on the way out of the Dragon’s Quarter. She watches me go the whole way with a longing that almost makes me sick. I feel like I’m abandoning a child at daycare, but I keep walking regardless. If there’s any chance for Cece and us, this is it.
I disappear down a dark cave hall alongside Lucidous. Two VampKings trapped underground. I almost laugh at the irony. It’s everything we’ve been trying to prevent. To undo. Yet here we are, by no one’s hand but our own. Both of us know, though, that it won’t be much longer. Maybe that’s why Lucidous finally takes me down the turn for the ground floor of the key to our great escape. The Blood Farms.
Lucidous leads me back the way we came, then takes a branching path before the fountain atrium. Our path crosses an underground river over a thick plank bridge. When we arrive at the coded sliding steel door to the Blood Farm, he takes me forward, under the rising cascade of stairs to the viewing balcony. I’ve never been this way before. I’ve only ever seen the Farm from above. He’s been working on designs harder than ever since I began my reconnaissance at the Academy, but I had no idea it was this close to completion. It must be, or he would never walk me through those doors.Two sheets of steel grates accordion away from one another into the wall, revealing the crop. The fruits of lifetimes of work. Lifetimes of persecution. Lucidous steps aside to let me take the lead.
“Go on. See the future,” he invites me.
My shoes clack out onto the massive cement platform that acts as the topsoil. Every step echoes up around the high ceiling of the monumental cave. Big enough to fit several shopping malls, this might be the largest chamber in the whole Stronghold. I pace row after row of steel, egg-shaped pods. Through the translucent material they’re made of, I make out a few human details. Fingers. Noses. Toes.
Embedded in the cement topsoil that stretches for nearly a mile are roots of electric wire. Each pod has a network of them beneath it, to supply it the power it needs to run life support for the body inside. All of them are connected to a massive electrical grid underground and powered by wind turbines, gigantic solar fields and underwater hydroelectric mills, all hidden by a Magician’s trick. According to Horace, one of this scale has hardly been attempted since the Dalshaks hid the Academy in the skies of California.
And of course, inside the protective alloy eggs that fill every square foot of the underground Farm, is the precious crop. I stop by one to put my hand on it. To listen, with my eyes shut. In such intense focus, I hear the slightest thrum of rhythm. It reverberates through the milky fluid that suspends the being inside. A solution to keep sedentary sores from developing and keep skin healthy, Lucidous has explained to me in the past. Fascinating as it is, I’m more interested in the bass drum beat vibrating so lightly against my hand. A heartbeat. So slow, yet steady – I don’t think I’ve ever felt one so relaxed. Every tick is a haunting reminder that there’s a living thing tucked away inside each and every pod. Not just arms, legs and noses, like you catch a glimpse of through the thickness of the pods and the fluid. It’s a person – a thousand people. Maybe more.
True to Lucidous’ design, I can’t smell even a single one of them. Much as I’ve dissociated from it over the years, I’m all too familiar with the temptations that come with a whiff of fresh human blood. No young fool Vampire will be tempted here. Were they on the outside of the door, they’d have no idea the greatest controlled source of blood ever gathered was even here. Lucidous knows how rare it is for me to be impressed, and he revels in the look of it on my face. He spreads a massive grin as I bob my head at the pod with my hand on it.
Then the body inside shifts. It’s the slightest twitch, yet just enough to make me wonder. As the body bobs up and down, its face sinks down close to my hand. Between the breathing-feeding apparatus over its mouth and the fact that it’s been shaved bald all over, I have no way of telling if it’s a man or woman. But I can see in the way that it twists and turns so slightly in its soup, that there is activity in the nerves.
“Are they…asleep?” I ask. The sound of my voice, so crisp in the emptiness, highlights the stark silence inspired in me minutes ago.
“Yes. The slumber is medically induced. The dreams are magically so,” Lucidous tells me.
“You’re telling me…you created the Matrix so we could have a humanely farmed all-you-can-eat?” I chuckle in disbelief.
“Not quite the Matrix. The humans are all in their own personal dreamspace. But…it is a similar concept. They’ll be able to live full lives, as far as they understand, without any knowledge of where their bodies truly are, or the blood we take from them,” Lucidous explains.
“And the blood… Where does it go?” I ask.
“Straight from their necks, inside the pods, down into banks under the ce
ment. They’re down deep beneath the same material the pods are made from, so there’s no threat of envious, unsympathetic Vampires finding it,” Lucidous says. “We never take enough to harm them, and they’re constantly hydrated through the feeding apparatus.”
“So…they’ve all been tricked. By the Dalshaks?” I ask. I try not to sound too accusing. While I might not be the biggest fan of the oldest Magician family, I recognize that they do have a part to play in our design.
“Yes,” Lucidous admits. “I know it’s not sustainable. When these humans live out their lives and their offspring become the new crop, we’ll still be able to tranquilize them, but not induce dreams.”
“What of…isolating the effects on the brain caused by the Dalshaks’ tricks?” I try. He’s far too close now to turn back on this dime.
“Already on it,” Lucidous tells me. “We’re using what we have left from the Point Arena Labs here to try and recreate the effect of the Dalshaks’ tricks, in a drug.” My head bobs with a crack in my lips, almost like a smile. He’s done it. Our dream.
“Incredible… I mean it, Lucidous,” I tell him. For this, he deserves to hear it straight from my mouth. “Did you ever think we’d see the day? No more feeding directly on humans? No more persecution… No more hiding.”
“Once we calibrate the Runic Gate,” Lucidous reminds me. Right. The last great hurdle in our way, before we can finally leave behind this wretched Realm we never belonged in. Not in the way our predecessors believed, but the answer to our conundrum does lie in our Realm of Power, after all.
“I haven’t forgotten the purpose of my insurgency at the Academy,” I assure my old friend. “This is why we’ve reconnected father and daughter. If Dorian’s goal is a step to us achieving our own…he will have it.”
“I hope so…but I’ve known Cece a little longer than you. If there’s one thing she isn’t, it’s predictable,” sighs Lucidous.
“A little longer, maybe. But if I’ve been doing my job, I know her a little better. Just give her time,” I tell Lucidous. I turn back to the translucent pod to eye my reflection, layered over the face of the sexless being floating inside. I hope time is all she needs.
Cece,
The Kyrie Stronghold, Dragon’s Quarter
On the walk here, I couldn’t stop thinking about Bart. I didn’t want to admit it, but he took center stage in my mind. Why he was so damn polite? Why he was taking such a massive risk, playing double agent to two supernatural super-powers? Where do his loyalties really lie? The second I’m alone with Dorian, however, it all vanishes. All I can focus on now is how dry my throat is and how I can’t say anything. I haven’t been able to speak since Dorian said come with me, and led me around the outside of the obsidian cave. Say something, damnit!
“You must have ten thousand questions,” Dorian’s low tone booms over the ambient wing flap and roars above. To see so many Dragons, like bees around a hive, with such little restraint… It does things to my stomach I can’t describe. There’s no word for this particular combination of sickness, excitement, anxiety and wonder.
“I think I have more,” I get out at last, dry as a rake across the desert.
“Let me help you narrow it down,” Dorian says, only turning halfway to face me. “This…is the kind of freedom I envisioned for us, when I first hatched the idea for the Kyrie.”
“So…you really are the leader?” I ask after a hoarse gulp.
“In a sense. In another, I answer to more people than anyone. I approached the Dalshaks. Once I had them convinced there was another way, I talked to the old VampKing,” Dorian tells me. My eyes wander to our side, to watch a perfect black glass reflection of us. Me, a head shorter than him, but in other ways mostly the same, literally walking in his footsteps. I hate it at the same time that it feels…completing.
“Lucidous?” I ask.
“Older,” Dorian tells me. “Anyway. People tend to come back to the guy who takes initiative. So here we are.”
“You don’t…want to be the leader?” I dare to ask. This time, Dorian can’t bring himself to face me as he answers. I see the pain scrunch up his face only in the reflection of the glass walls.
“What I want is no longer a factor in the equation,” Dorian says, his voice entirely flat. Our shoes tip-tap along the glossy cavern floor for a few more steps without a word. There’s only so much I can take before the tension spins my mind too thin. It’s going to break if I don’t say something.
“What about separating races and self-governing… Isn’t that what it’s all about here?” I ask, before I can stop myself. Maybe, if I can shock him, he’ll actually be straight with me. Not like when he left me with an adoption agency without a word for over twenty years. But I can’t think about that here, or I will break. “Not having a Council to answer to? Isn’t this whole arrangement kind of counterproductive to that, anyway?”
“At its core, it’s something like that. The goal of the Kyrie is more to replace the old Council with a new one that has far less executive power. A loose rapport between races to keep one another informed, but not to supercede the decisions of each individual community,” Dorian tells me.
“More freedom for screwed up experiments like the ones at the Point Arena Facility?” I dare.
“The researchers running those labs were not under direct Kyrie supervision. What happened there was a tragedy,” Dorian lashes back with enough bite that I almost believe him. “Even finding the Realms of Power is not worth that price.”
“And why do you need to find them, exactly? Power to overthrow the Council, or keep everyone else down?” I dig in. It’s too good. He’s too good. There has to be something I’m missing, something he won’t say.
“Of course, in part. The Council and their resources vastly outnumber us. We need something to defend ourselves. But also answers. Draconic history is vague on so many things. We still don’t know if we were a human mutation, or if we, too, came from another Realm in the distant past,” Dorian says.
“But-”
“Take a break, Cecelia,” Dorian chuckles. Cecelia. Hearing it like that, like he’s known me all along…it’s too much. Especially because the last person who called me that was also a parent who left me behind.
“Cece,” I correct him, trying not to sound like a snapping jackal as much as I can. “It’s Cece.”
“Sorry. Your mother and I… We always used to call you Cecelia. It’s…what I’ve always called you, in my head,” Dorian says.
My mother. He must mean the body that carried me around for nine months, because my mother was the last and only person to call me Cecelia, and she still lives on Scott Street in San Francisco. I do want to ask Dorian about the woman he means, though. The one who gave birth to me. The one who gave me up. Where is she, and why is she not involved in the Kyrie, or this tour? I open my mouth to ask, but I can’t bring myself to spit the words out. Not when Dorian looks like he’s already been stabbed, and the knife twisted. Why do I care? I try to remind myself. So what if she’s dead or gone, some other way? I don’t even know these people. And yet, the curiosity isn’t strong enough. I struggle with it all the way around the obsidian cave, to the other side of the stony torch.
“Here.” Dorian stops me with an arm out at his side. I look to the right – our reflections – then the left, the torch. I turn to find Dorian waiting with his hands on his hips. For once, a smile has crept across his face.
“What’s here?” I give in.
“The launch pad,” Dorian says. He turns around with a finger pointed down at the little crater we’re standing in. “You fly clockwise from here to the top, if you want to get out for a little. I figured…it might be a good way for us to get to know one another.”
“To…fly together?”
“Yeah. What do you think? Are you up for another flight?” Dorian asks. “I know you had a bit of a tiring trek here, so if you’re too tired…” He trails off as a silent invitation. Now how did he know to do that? Unless, of co
urse, my distaste for being underestimated has been another gift from him all along.
“Let’s fly,” I challenge him right back.
Wide Open
Cece,
The Sierra Nevadas, Illusory Reach
No later than I give Dorian the challenging signal, his body is engulfed in searing red flame. I almost shield my eyes from how stunning it is, as I wonder if there’s anything left of him in there. Just when I’m sure there can’t be, Dorian’s wings burst from inside the fire. Heat spirals out around him in a perfect wave as he billows the last of the smoke across the cave. His black-scaled Dragon form is already double the size of mine. He towers over me with his shimmering hazel eyes, watching, expectant.
I answer him with a smaller fireburst of my own. From within the tempest, I shoot straight up for the curved, glassy ceiling. I sweep with my wings stretched wide, along the obsidian wall. I follow Dorian’s instructions with or without him, and spiral clockwise for the roof of the cave. I circle the bright opening to the daylight at the center. A black blur shoots past me faster than a bullet. Before I can even realize he is that fast, Dorian’s wind tosses me around by my wings. My draconic eyes open wide at the display of wing muscle and coordination. He even spins around to glide backwards, facing me. I don’t know if there’s ever been a more efficient way to make me pick up speed.
I pull my feet and arms in to zip upwards at greater speeds. I follow Dorian into the mass of rising Dragons in a spiral for the roof. A million colors bounce around me from the reflections of hundreds more Dragons than I ever thought I’d see in one place. Orange light from the torch. Yellow light from the crack in the earth. We move up together, as one, toward the gigantic mouth of the planet’s surface. I keep my eyes fixed on Dorian as he flaps between others to beat them to the top. I dive and cut around who I can to keep up. I grit my fanged teeth to fight the wind in his wake. Then he circles the rim of the crack and shoots up into the light. I’m still a few hundred feet behind.
