by M. J Kreyzer
Seraphine hugged her knees tightly to her chest and trembled. It couldn’t be from the cold, though; the fire was hot and she already had several blankets draped over her which had been donated to her from several members of the group. No, it wasn’t cold. Sable knew, when seeing Seraphine sitting there alone shivering in the darkness, that she was the last person who should be in that conflict.
Seeing Seraphine huddled almost by herself Sable saw why Alighieri put the Darks’ best warriors into one fortified group: Seraphine wouldn’t survive without it.
Sable caught herself staring and returned her eyes to the fire. Out of the corners of her eyes she looked Seraphine over.
Seraphine looked so pure, so innocent, yet here she was cursed with one of the most destructive gifts the world had ever known. She was walking proof that the world was not a fair place and even the most decent and moral of individuals could be weighted with such an abomination. But as Sable thought about it she came to realize that, had this power been given to anybody else, would it have been more dangerous? Maybe what appeared to be a curse was a gift after all, a great and terrible gift that had to be given, and in order for its holocaustic and terrible power to be balanced out it had to be bestowed upon somebody who was innocent and unwaveringly righteous. But even with that in mind Sable believed that the world was still pathetically unfair. The success of Lynch, Frenz, and the entire Commune was tangible proof of that concept.
But Seraphine sat alone, solitary, and Sable couldn’t imagine how she felt. She tried, substituting her most painful memories and experiences to try and match the feelings that Seraphine might be feeling, but she couldn’t do it. She had an entire mental warehouse full of painful and tragic memories, yet nothing she had was quite the same as having the fate of the world resting squarely on your back. Seraphine was their savior. She couldn’t feel alone.
“I’ve been with the Ditrinity for little over nineteen years.” Sable began. Everybody looked at her; she was the last person they expected to speak. “Came into it when you were first born, Tess. I wish I could tell you what happened before I came into the Ditrinity but I suffered massive exposure to raw Furo which wiped my memory blank, killed my hair pigment and gave me these.”
Sable pointed to her glowing eyes. As she spoke she looked into the fire; she was uncomfortable enough telling this much stuff about her as it was. She passed a quick glance to Seraphine and continued.
“When the Furo wiped my memory I still could do the things I had learned how to do like talk, walk, fight… and it’s not amnesia. Amnesia is just something that happens without warning. Exposing yourself to that much raw Furo will ruin your memory every time.”
“So the first time I woke up without my memory everything was cold and blue and I was tumbling across the bottom of a river. I panicked and swam to the surface. I grabbed onto the side of the river and was in the middle of a city.”
“Elysium?” Serenity asked, coming out of silence. She got wistful and smiled. “Sitting at the base of a lake and the basin is like it’s formed out of one solid waterfall…”
“Yeah.” Sable replied, Serenity’s reminiscence making her depressingly nostalgic. “…I climbed out and a bunch of people began to crowd around. At the time I had no idea that my eyes were like they were and wasn’t sure what they were all looking at.”
Sable paused, smiling at the memory and looking into the fire. “Then a man came through the crowd, knelt down beside me and made sure I was all right.”
There was a small smile that emerged on Tess’s face. “My Dad?”
“Mmhmm.” Sable said. “So he took me back to Miles’s place in one of his spare rooms and let me rest up. That’s where I first met you.” She said, pointing to Serenity. “You were only one but you already knew how to walk. I fell asleep, woke up and Luke had come back. He introduced himself, I got up, and we went out and that’s where I first met the Ditrinity. Back then there were only five members, Vyvyr, Pontious, Miles, Morlo, and Ayla.”
“Hendrick isn’t in the Ditrinity?” Pitt asked.
“Not then.” Sable said. “Back then Nate didn’t want to be a part of the Ditrinity. He fought with Luke during the wars that formed the Union but he wanted to keep it at that. After the First Legionnaire had been established he wanted to spend the rest of his life in Brún smoking and gambling with the loads of money the government gave him for his work with the Legionnaire. But then once Senators started getting knocked off Luke was finally able to convince him to join up with us until the assassins were taken out.”
“But I couldn’t remember anything. Nothing.” Sable nodded towards the rest of the Ditrinity. “They kept asking me and asking me about what had happened because when they found me I was dressed up in full battle gear and pretty bloodied. I had no idea what had happened and I would have had to wash pretty far and go over quite a few waterfalls. Especially in Elysium. I was just lucky I didn’t go any big falls or get smashed across any rocks. I told them that I got those gashes from hitting rocks and stuff in the river but they kept telling me that my cuts didn’t come from rocks. And this armor,” Sable looked herself over and shrugged. “I was told it’s extremely advanced. At least, more than the technology they had at the time. So once the Ditrinity was convinced that I couldn’t or wouldn’t remember anything they had Peter Scarsborough… That’s Trey’s granddad, read my past. That was his unique ability. Reading timelines. Luke took me to Peter and had him do just that.”
Sable shook her head. Feelings of frustration and regret swept over her as she spoke. “He only had to look for a few seconds before he decided he didn’t have to look any more. I begged him and begged him but he wouldn’t tell me or anybody what he had seen.” Sable stopped. It was difficult to contain herself. It wasn’t sadness that struck her; it’s just that when half of your life is a blank you start wishing that you had a past to remember. “I was so angry with Peter. But he was good about the whole thing cause he understood my feelings. That made things better, I guess. But he pulled Luke aside and told him that I had to be in the Ditrinity. I had only known Luke and the Ditrinity a few hours and Peter was already asking Luke to fill the vacancy in the Ditrinity that Alighieri had left when he became Senator. Luke kept denying it saying that there was no chance that he would take a complete stranger and put them in the Ditrinity. But… but then Peter whispered something to Luke –Luke’ll never tell me what Peter told him no matter how hard I try- and Luke pulled a complete one-eighty and put me in.”
Sable sighed and clasped her hands in front of her. “Everything after that is history.”
The group was engaged, a feat which Sable thought to be extremely encouraging. When she was trying to make more friends Ayla had told her that she had to confide in people and show them that you are a trusting person. Sable never really understood that until that moment. But the most gratifying part of the whole situation was seeing Seraphine’s face regain color as she scooted closer to the fire and made herself a part of the group.
“Pontious?” Sable asked in an effort to get everybody to say something. She hoped that eventually Seraphine would get comfortable enough to talk to them if they first shared something about themselves.
“Hold on for… just hold on.” Pitt said, readjusting his sitting position and looking at Sable with a confused and contorted expression. “So let me get this straight. How old were you when they found you in Elysium?”
“Nineteen.”
Pitt’s confusion mixed with surprise as he looked Sable from head to toe as she laid on her side.
“So… I can’t belie… You’re thirty-eight!”
Sable nodded casually. “Thirty-nine next month.”
“So you’re a Durant then?” Serenity asked.
“Yes…” Sable started before switching her gaze before correcting herself. “Well I’m half Durant. One of my parents was a Durant so I inherited the genes that prolong life while I actually got a unique power of my own.”
“Hyper healing.”
Pitt quickly added on. “I’ve heard about that. But I had no idea you were thirty nine. I just automatically assumed that you were twenty or twenty one.”
“That’s when my body looked and felt its best.” Sable said with a shrug. “Twenty one. My body just stayed that way and I’ve looked like that ever since. But Nate…” She paused, realizing not everybody was on a first name basis. “Hendrick... is around fifty five years. He comes from a unique line of humans with a life span similar to Durants. It’s different than somebody like me though. With Durant blood comes a different physical makeup. Any person with Durant blood has at least partial Furo sensitivity. I’ve also been told that our learning slows down and is proportional to human learning or something like that so that I might be older but I learn my lessons from life experiences as though I were going through them at the pace of a normal human.” Sable stopped, smirked to herself and chuckled. “Confusing, I know.”
“And I also heard that you were anatomically perfect.” Pitt said with amusing enthusiasm.
Sable nodded hesitantly. She hated when people brought that up: truly despised it.
“So that’s me.” She said quietly. “Pontious, what about-“
“My turn!” Morlo yelled. “I got mine! Everybody listen.”
Seraphine squeezed her legs tighter and giggled. Sable saw it and concealed a smile of her own.
“So I was one of the top leaders in the Arctanican Empire. Part of a militaristic triumvirate, right? En I was just sittin’ around in one of those big Quo-skin tents we had- you know, the ones with the big areas in the middle for meetings and stuff? We had those set up as a mobile military outpost. So my uncle Gamrik used to hate Durants- the Arctanican Empire had everybody but he really really hated Durants, and Unca Gamrik kept harassing one particular Durant town up in the Diamide mountains and kept doing it over and over and over.”
Morlo took a bite from his unreasonably small food ration and grimaced at his miserly portion. “I’m gonna die if this is all I get. Anyway, so this particular Durant town was the home of the Scarsboroughs and they had taken in a young stray kid who they called Mylo who had no idea who he was and thought he was just some pathetic little weeny. Well good ol’ Gamrik went in there, pissed off little Mylo, flipped some massacre switch and Mylo went completely apeshit.” Morlo took another bite from his ration and took a quick swig from his canteen. “Anyways it turns out it was Luke.”
“Now it’s six years later. So there I am, sitting inside my big leather circus tent thing watching some ugly women dance and people outside started getting angry and, when it comes to the Arctanican Empire I was a big deal. Okay? A big fricking deal. So anyway, a crowd came in all pissed off and surrounding three guys. One was Luke, one was Miles and the other was Sam.” Morlo looked towards Rush’s members. “Alighieri. So anyway Luke comes in, introduces himself and says he’s been sent by Peter Scarsborough as a part of some massive campaign to unite the clans or something. So Luke gives this whole ‘join us or be conquered’ speech which, you know me, it pissed me off pretty good. So I stand up and I yell at Luke like I was getting my kidneys removed with a rusty tire-iron and tell him that if he doesn’t get out of my town then I’d beat his bloody backside backwards. So then he tells me that I’m small for a Barbarian and I tell him he’s got disgusting chicken legs and call him ‘Wee Man Semprys’. So then I get down into the center of the tent and say that if he backs up his crap and takes me down then I’d join up with the Durants and even give Luke a full body massage if he could just bruise me.”
Pitt was completely wrapped up in the story and was enjoying it thoroughly. “…And then what?”
Morlo laughed and went to take another drink from his canteen. “I got dropped in less than ten seconds, that’s what. Lucky for me Luke didn’t want that massage.”
It was a story that Sable hadn’t heard, and from the look on Tess’s face neither had she. Tess smiled broadly, resting backwards on her hands and trying to detach herself from the group. Her smile faded fast and melted into an expression of regret and sadness. Sable couldn’t imagine what it was. All she knew was that she hadn’t had a solid night’s sleep in almost a week and she wasn’t going to stay up any longer than she had to. She rolled over onto her other side away from the fire and hugged herself for warmth. Settling herself on the cold, dense floor, Sable took one last look down the long, darkening hallway. The child in her couldn’t help but imagine some demon or ravenous monster skittering manically from the darkness to rip her apart and drag her away.
As she closed her eyes she saw Seraphine slip away from the group unnoticed and crawl into one of the small caves branching off of the main cavern. She slid herself into the hole feet first and spread her blankets across herself, laying on her side and facing away from the group. She pulled the blankets up under her chin and brought her knees to her chest and set her chin on them. And like Sable, she too hugged herself. But she wasn’t doing it for warmth. And, though she didn’t know it, somebody else was keeping an eye on Seraphine.
Pontious was concerned, though from the disconcerting ferocity he always wore on his face, that fact was lost on most. But through partially closed eyes, Sable picked up on it. She knew Pontious’s story. Seraphine wasn’t much older than his sister had been when she died. And seeing him give the occasional, discreet glance over towards Seraphine’s resting place, there was both sadness and resolve in his eyes. It didn’t take too long for Vyvyr to pick up on it. His eyes on the fire, Vyvyr gave Pontious a reassured pat on the shoulder and told him she’d be okay.
With the voices of those sitting around the fire echoing all around her, Sable closed her eyes and tried to sleep.
But she couldn’t.
The more she tried to sleep the more she thought about the coming journey, about everything that could go wrong; and there was so much that could easily go wrong. They were walking through monster infested mountain ranges with the First Legionnaire combing every last inch of it for Dark escapees. And sleeping at night out in the open would be unfortunately uneasy. Styklers, Hoppers and god forbid Razorbacks might be running around out there looking for something to either scarf down on sight or take back to their chicks or babies or whatever it was their young would be called. And knowing that that night’s sleep would probably be the best she’d have in a long time didn’t help matters.
An invisible vice closed around Sable’s stomach. She didn’t want to do any of this. She was tired of fighting and tired of war. She’d been doing it for almost twenty years and maybe even longer depending on what things were like before she became an amnesiac. Or mind wiped or whatever it was they called her. She didn’t want to kill and even more she didn’t want to worry about being killed. How many times she had wondered why she didn’t just join the Commune citizenry and forget that any of this stuff had happened.
It wouldn’t be hard to just buy into the charade. Everybody ‘participated’ in the political process. They voted, they went to debates and they went to those pathetic town hall meetings, and even though Sable knew that none of that meant anything it never hurt to pretend. She’d live without having to fight, without having to hide, and she might even be able to act or sing or do something like that. She might not make it but that was the beauty of it; she’d have forever to find out where her life could take her. It sounded beautiful. When the others fell asleep Sable could simply sneak off, evade the Legionnaire forces and find her way to a nearby town where she could stowaway on a freight train bound for Valhalla. She’d always loved that place. Clear blue water rippling gently over a white sandy ocean floor, clear blue skies, misty ocean air, warm nights sipping drinks at the cantinas… it was something Sable had always dreamed of and just the simple act of thinking about it made Sable want to give up anything she had to just for a taste of it.
Then she thought of Luke, of Hendrick, of the Ditrinity, and knew that that life wasn’t for her. She wanted it. She ached for it, but it wasn’t for her. Her place was fighting Lynch and the Commun
e, not spending night after repetitive night seeking cheap thrills and unproductive relaxation. She wanted to enjoy life and there were many times when she did. But a life where nothing was accomplished wasn’t much of a life, and what more important thing could she accomplish than helping those she cared about?
So with their conversations still going strong, with Pontious’s deep gravelly voice, Morlo’s loud, booming laughs, and Vyvyr’s dark intonations, Sable took a deep breath and relaxed. Her home was wherever the Ditrinity was, and wherever they went she’d go too.
Chapter 18
A young man, his face indistinguishable beneath sheets of blood and heavy swelling, sat baking in the center of a halo of intense light. His eyes blurred with pain, blood and sweat, made him incapable of seeing beyond that light through the darkness. And save for his harsh, ragged breathing, the room was silent. Sweat stung his eyes, seared the gashes all over his face, and the area on his arm where they had shoved that red hot needle down his nerve still felt like his flesh was melting from his bones. Wires ran off of his every limb, while heavy cables were plugged into a thin metallic device at the base of his skull. In the other room, out of his sight and hearing, Frenz stood side by side with President Lynch while scientists and technicians worked with a multitude of machinery. Lynch stood quiet, almost spiteful, as he looked into the room at the helpless man strapped to the chair. He was quiet, unemotional. He was in his mid to late fifties, his skin starting to wrinkle beneath his eyes and around his mouth while his hair grayed around its edges. There was something about his appearance that exuded strength and a surprising dignity that none of the others shared. Flanking the two, with their hands behind their backs, were several higher ranking Counts, Counts Remus Emery, Mason Richards, James Ryder, and the eldest of the group, Paul Valkner. They stood two by two on either side of Lynch and Frenz, taking the scene in with quiet intimidation, save Ryder, who wore a disapproving scowl. Frenz, on the other hand, had difficulty containing his pride and excitement.
