A Shade of Vampire 83: A Bender of Spirit

by Forrest, Bella

  Lumi and Sidyan were quiet as well, while Morning and Phantom kept a close eye on Valaine from across the table. Seeley stayed close to Nethissis. Soul and Kelara bickered somewhere at the far end, and Night and Widow snickered whenever Kelara threatened to cut Soul’s head off. I’d been told the Soul Crusher had some psychopathic tendencies and a pretty bizarre sense of humor, while Kelara was a respected Reaper with a propensity for following rules and protocol. In that sense, their pairing seemed odd, but also fascinating.

  We spent a couple of hours discussing the raid on Dieffen first. A plan had been laid out, and the equipment and supplies had already been prepared. We would leave in the morning and take the town quickly, while the Darklings were still basking in their bloody victory.

  “Have you heard from your scouts?” Sofia asked Kalla.

  “Not yet. I think they’ll be back in the morning with news,” she replied. “I had them circle around Dieffen before they spread farther north. We need to see if the Darklings are trying to take any other remote towns.”

  “I hope we’re all ready for tomorrow,” Trev said. “There’s no telling what the Darklings will do once we go in.”

  “You’re expecting traps, I suppose,” Caleb replied.

  “And extra-hungry ghouls. After what happened in Laramis, I’m positive they will go to great lengths to stop us from taking over.” Trev sighed, shaking his head in dismay. It was hard to believe how vicious the Darklings were, especially with their pretext of noble intentions.

  Esme turned to Kalla. “Do you have any insights about Dieffen? About how we might attack and sustain the least damage possible? I imagine you saw your share of violence while you were a Darkling.”

  “Why not ask Ansel or the other Visentis boys?” Kalla shot back, slightly amused.

  “Because they’re kids. They don’t have your experience or your hindsight,” Esme said. I had to agree. Out of everyone here, Kalla had the most to share about her time with the Darklings.

  “Unfortunately, I didn’t have that many aggressions to deal with,” the Nalorean replied. “But I can help you in another way.” She took out several books from under the table and passed them around. One volume made it to my hands, and I marveled at the smooth feel of the leather cover. The pages were old, yellowed by the passage of time, but the black ink script and illustrations were still clear and vivid. “I stole these books from my Darkling base. From my Whip’s study, to be specific,” Kalla added with a devilish grin. “I’ve studied them intensely, and I think you’ll find them extremely useful for what you’re about to do.”

  “What are these?” Amal asked, flipping through the pages of a journal.

  “Notes. Diary entries. Legends that have been around since the emergence of the Aeternae,” Kalla said. “We didn’t give much credence to many of the stories in there before you brought the Unending to Orvis.”

  “Oh, wow!” Esme exclaimed, currently engaged in reading a volume similar to the one I held. “This one is called ‘The Arrival of Eternity’.”

  “That’s why I wanted to show them to you.” Kalla leaned back into her chair. Her gaze wandered across the table, analyzing our expressions and reactions to the ancient Aeternae mythology.

  “Listen to this,” Esme said, and she proceeded to read a passage aloud. “‘Eternity came to Visio in the form of a beautiful woman with long black hair and blood-red lips. Her skin was white. Her eyes held the stars, and her heart had been broken. Her lover, whom she’d blessed with immortality, had been viciously murdered. She wallowed in grief, while our forefathers comforted her.’”

  “Are they talking about… me?” Valaine asked, earning herself a collective nod from around the table. “Go on, Esme.”

  Esme kept reading. “‘Her maker wanted to take her power away, Eternity claimed, but Eternity had other plans. To avenge the death of her lover, she made all the people of Visio immortal. She gave them life forever, but she also gave them the option to die. The conditions were simple. One would have to forsake one’s head or heart in order to leave eternity.’” She paused, frowning as she tried to process the words. “What I don’t get is how did her lover get killed, if she’d made him immortal?”

  “Keep reading,” Kalla said.

  “‘Eternity confessed that she had never given absolute immortality to anyone. She could do it, but she feared the repercussions of leaving a creature in the world who not even Death herself could reap,’” Esme continued, her eyes growing with a mixture of awe and concern. “Oh… so her loved one could still be killed.”

  “That’s right. His assassin only had to figure out the right way to kill him,” Kalla said. “Go on, Esme. There’s more.”

  “‘Our forefathers wanted eternal life, even if it could not be guaranteed. It was given to them by Eternity, and it was theirs to do with as they pleased. She never revealed her true name or purpose, but she chose to stay on Visio for years on end. She was loved and celebrated by her loyal subjects, who named her Lady Supreme. But the happiness was short-lived,’” Esme read.

  “Uh-oh,” Soul muttered from the opposite end of the table, as he shifted his gaze from my sister to Valaine. “I think we all know what’s coming.”

  Esme sighed and turned the page. “‘The Spirit Bender announced himself as soon as he set foot in our world. He was proud and noble, eager to give our people even more. However, Eternity did not want him here, although he had offered to be her Lord Supreme. He spent days and months worshipping her, but she rebuffed his affection. The Spirit Bender grew angry one day, his patience running thin, so he confessed his most heinous crime as a means to unnerve Eternity. He revealed himself as the killer of her beloved, claiming that Death had ordered the murder. Our maker was so sad, so brokenhearted, that she did not leave her bedchamber for years on end.’” Esme paused, her voice wearing out.

  “The Spirit Bender killed your lover,” Phantom murmured. All eyes were on Valaine, who wasn’t sure how to react to this revelation. She glanced at me.

  “I think I’m supposed to feel some sort of grief, but… I don’t remember him. How can I?” she asked. No one had an answer, so Esme finished the story with a trembling voice.

  “‘Embittered by Eternity’s refusal and threatened by her impending retaliation, the Spirit Bender took precautionary measures. On the eve of the last day of winter, he lured her into the Garden of Enkil, where he struck her with his scythe. The mark became the first seal, which bound Eternity to Visio. She would never leave. Eternity was furious. She tried to fight her way out of the seal, but the Spirit Bender’s power was unbreakable. Unable to release herself, Eternity turned her sights on our people, cursing them with the Black Fever. She released the plague, and it killed many of our forefathers in a matter of days,’” Esme continued. “‘Taking pity on the Aeternae, the Spirit Bender struck Eternity again. This time, the magic forced her to disintegrate and infiltrate Visio itself. Eternity became the land, the water, the air, and the fires that burned whenever lightning struck. Yet the Black Fever still found its way back to the surface.’”

  “I’m guessing there’s a third strike coming,” Night said, his eyes closed as he listened.

  “‘Upon a third strike, the Spirit Bender’s scythe cast a curse on Eternity, forcing her to be born as one of us. Her memory was wiped clean, and she lived among us. The Black Fever was gone, and we, the Aeternae—powerless before the Spirit Bender and his magnanimity—went on with our lives. We built our cities, we plowed our lands, we raised our children, while the memory of Eternity faded. We did not know who or where she was. We only knew she was among us,’” Esme read. “‘But as the tenth millennium since the making of our species drew near, the Black Fever returned. Our forefathers were at a loss. The curse took longer to spread and claim lives, but it claimed them, nonetheless. The Spirit Bender granted us the weapons and the knowledge we needed in order to keep the curse at bay. And so, the Darklings were born. Secret keepers of the Aeternae life and defenders of our species.’�
�

  Moore cursed under his breath. “This is so wrong.”

  “Right?” Esme replied, looking up from the book. “My skin’s all prickly just from reading it.”

  As I looked at Valaine, I saw her in a different light. She couldn’t remember any of this, but I felt the dormant pain. It lingered in her black eyes, hidden beneath the thousands of lives that the Darklings had taken, solely for the purpose of keeping the cycle going.

  Whenever they killed the Unending’s Aeternae form, they reset the clock on their species, buying themselves another ten thousand years to grow and thrive. The Unending had come to Visio to seek refuge and peace of mind. Instead, once she’d given the Aeternae their immortality, she found herself bound to this world, the victim of an interminable curse, doomed to forget who she was and what she could do.

  It pained me deeply to see her like this, especially since I now had a much better understanding of what she’d been through. I also knew the Spirit Bender must’ve tried to appease her, to impress and woo her in a bid to draw her farther away from Death—at the time, he’d already begun his machinations against Death, and he’d needed the remaining First Tenners out of the way. Whether his feelings for her had been genuine or not, it didn’t really matter to me.

  What had happened to Unending here was truly heartbreaking.

  Esme

  Everything we’d just learned about the Unending threatened to overwhelm us. I could see it on our faces. It was a lot to take in emotionally. Tristan put an arm around Valaine and held her close, pressing his lips against her temple and whispering reassuring words.

  But Valaine wasn’t as rattled as I expected. Probably because she couldn’t remember any of it. We could imagine it as much as we wanted and let the savagery of Spirit’s actions get to us, but Valaine seemed to have a better perspective.

  “I guess I’ll be really pissed off when the memories come back to me,” she said. “But I’m curious about something… was the blood-drinking always a part of the deal for immortality? It feels unnatural.”

  Kalla opened a journal and passed it around for all of us to read. “This is the only theory I have on the matter. It’s based on skimming some of these books, and it involves a recurring myth about one time when the Unending almost regained her consciousness,” she explained. “The seals that Spirit put on her held her in place, but the third seal—the one involving her rebirth and lack of memory—was something the Unending could break by herself. That’s why the Darklings are always in a rush to kill her Aeternae manifestation. It’s not just about the Black Fever wiping them all out. It’s about the Unending remembering her true self. The Spirit Bender trained the Darklings well.”

  The journal reached me, and I took a moment to read through the scribbled text. “It says here she almost remembered during her third reincarnation.”

  “Yes. That’s when she lashed out,” Kalla replied. “She had regained memories of herself, of her abilities and death magic knowledge. The Darklings struggled to catch up with her, as she’d gone into hiding. When they found her, she was minutes away from a full regression. They chained her up first, her darkness out of control, and that’s when she uttered the curse. For leading such bloody lives, the Aeternae would need blood to survive. It brought great shame to the species, of course, but… they adapted. They learned to live with it.”

  “So if I manage to remember again, I’ll have enough knowledge and power to inflict harm upon the Aeternae?” Valaine asked.

  Kalla nodded. “Enough to wipe them all out. It’s something the Darklings want to avoid. Imagine you being stranded in this world, all alone…”

  “I believe I’d be a danger to the Rimians and the Naloreans too, right?” Valaine replied.

  “It’s definitely possible,” Night said. “You always had a temper. You didn’t lose it often, but when you did, you were beyond our ability to control. And since there is about five million years’ worth of pent-up rage inside you, I would not want to be around when we do set you free.”

  “Well, that’s not exactly encouraging,” Trev muttered.

  “Tristan here might help,” Morning suggested, flashing a smile at my brother. “His presence has already proven to be beneficial. We might manage to pull it off without incurring much damage against the innocents.”

  Releasing the Unending was still risky. All our options carried risk of collateral damage, though none were as gut-wrenching as keeping the Unending in her current state, forced to live in such a painful cycle.

  “You never told us any of this when we first came around,” I said, looking at Kalla. “Why?”

  “I had to see if you were worthy,” Kalla replied. “Do you have any idea how many times I got my hopes up, only to see my selected champions die before their time?”

  Sofia gasped. “You’ve tried to set the Unending free before?”

  “I wanted to, but the information I had was insufficient without Reapers who knew the Unending on a personal level,” Kalla said. “I have tried to summon rogue Aeternae who might help. Most of those I spoke to believed their species was unnatural. That it’s not right to feed on blood. It’s not right to cheat death by living forever. Sooner or later—as they age—all the Aeternae will feel the same way. But in the meantime, eons will have passed, and it’s not right to keep the Unending in this state purely due to the whims of the Aeternae.”

  “Do you really believe the Aeternae will all come to feel this way? Immortality is the main reason why we, as vampires, chose this path,” I replied. “Why would anyone get tired of living forever?”

  “Because there is a rhythm to this world,” Phantom chimed in. “A temporal sense of things. A beginning and an end. Immortality is not for the living, though our sister obviously tried to make it so. Time wears you down, and exhaustion sets in. You see so much; you live through so much. Years turn into decades. Decades into centuries. Before you know it, you’ve lost track of how old you really are, and you’ve witnessed the death of entire galaxies, the birth of new ones, and so on. It’s all the same after a while. The joy in living will eventually subside, and all you’ll want to do is put your head down and sleep for the rest of eternity.”

  Tristan frowned. “If that were the case, then what difference is there between being alive forever and existing in the afterlife forever, as a spirit?”

  “Time no longer matters when you’re dead,” Soul replied, smiling. “It doesn’t weigh on you anymore. It feels… different. I cannot explain it in words, but you’ll know it when you get there.”

  “I don’t feel different,” Nethissis said. “I’m the same, just angrier.”

  “You’re still emotionally attached to life.” Seeley gave her a sad look. “The feeling wears off in time. Especially if you move on.”

  Kalla poured herself a cup of mead, laughing lightly. “See, this is why I thought you all would be capable of actually pulling this off. You’re able to discuss such things on a higher level. You understand your condition. You ask questions. You’re relentless, even in death,” she said, looking at Nethissis. “Most importantly, you managed to bring the Unending’s brothers and sisters to my village. With your help, I finally believe we can succeed and restore Visio to its original form.”

  “It will be bloody, whatever we do,” Trev warned us. “The best we can hope for is a minimal loss of life.”

  “Out of curiosity, Kalla, why are you so eager to release the Unending?” Widow asked the Nalorean village chief. “Is it because there’s a high chance the Aeternae will be rendered mortal again once our sister is free? You must’ve considered that possibility. I mean, I personally doubt that Unending would leave such a gift to people who participated in her torture and cyclical imprisonment.”

  Kalla smirked. “That’s exactly why I wish to see the Unending walk. The Darklings have exploited my world for too long. Nalore and Rimia have forgotten what it was like to be free, to have our own forms of government and laws. All we know is that we’re born to serve the Aet
ernae with blood in exchange for remuneration, but what sort of life do we have if we barely make it past a century?”

  “I take it your lifespan used to be longer?” I asked.

  “It’s something I learned from these books, actually. The Rimians used to live for up to five, six hundred years. The oldest Nalorean recorded before the rise of the Aeternae was a thousand years old,” Kalla replied. “Look at us now. Did you think all the blood-giving was without consequences?”

  “The Aeternae have shortened your lifespans,” I realized, my blood running cold as I looked at Kalon. He seemed just as disturbed.

  “I had no idea. I always thought we evolved as Aeternae. There isn’t any record of life on our planets before five million years ago,” he said.

  “Naturally.” Kalla scoffed. “The empire would never reveal how it built its strength on the backs of our people. But it’s fine, Kalon. I’ve learned a lot in my time here in Orvis. Most of it came from the books, but also from other travelers. Which brings me to something else I wanted to discuss with you as a group. I suppose you’ve been told about the Seniors, right?”

  “The Seniors?” Sofia asked.

  I studied Kalon’s elegant profile for a few seconds, wondering what his thoughts were on everything we’d just learned. He was still here. He wasn’t running for the hills, though there was a pretty high chance the Unending would strip him and all the Aeternae of their immortality once she was free. He was still eager to make this happen. To make things right.

  It was just one of the many reasons why I’d fallen in love with him. His determination and fearlessness combined were truly inspiring.

  “The oldest among the Aeternae. The dreamy retirement communities,” Kalla replied. “Come on, the Lady Supreme and the others must’ve sold you that pile of crap!”

  “Right. Yes. The islands where the senior Aeternae retired to live,” Sofia said. “I take it that’s all a lie?”