We were all tired and worried. That much was obvious from our expressions.
I, like the others, had tried pretty much everything to break out of my glass box. Corrine had even wound up with minor burns in one of her attempts. There was no way out for us, not in these circumstances.
Ta’Zan had come and introduced himself, without giving us any crucial information. We still had no idea who he was or what he was doing here. We only suspected that he’d come from one of those cave pods, and knew that he had enough power and knowledge to keep us locked up against our will.
“What the hell did he mean by ‘I look forward to working with you’?” Lucas wondered, sitting on his bed and staring at the little stream passing through the floor of his cell.
“I doubt it bodes well for us,” Vivienne replied. “He was way too cool and clinical about this.”
“He creeped me out,” Liana murmured, resting her head on the glass wall that separated her from Cameron, who quietly drew invisible lines of her profile on his side.
Sofia sat on the floor, close to me. Despite the sheet of glass between us, we were virtually inseparable. I didn’t need to touch her or ask her to know how she was feeling. Her eyes, her delicate facial expressions, and her breathing patterns told me everything I needed to know: she was worried and scared, much like the rest of us, but she kept it all tucked away behind a faint smile.
Her gaze wandered around the cave, as she analyzed every single detail in sight.
“Okay, I know we don’t have a lot to go on, but let’s try to do a little recap,” I said. “Maybe there’s something we missed. Some detail that slipped through the cracks, and that could tell us more about Ta’Zan.”
Xavier cleared his throat, then straightened his back and leaned against one of the glass walls of his box. He ran his fingers through his hair, looking at me.
“Well, let’s start with what is now quite clear, though you can correct me if I’m wrong,” he said. “He was in one of those cave pods. Frankly, he strikes me as the mastermind here, the leader of whatever else was in there with him. We know that we may have, albeit accidentally, woken him and his people up. I think it’s fair to assume that Strava is their home, and it has been their home since long before we got here. Which would also explain these boxes, the clothes on his back and so on. This was all here already. The infrastructure, the resources, the protocols…”
I nodded, while wracking my brain and its fuzzy memories for more relevant information.
“We also know that he’s using this very weird combination of magic and technology,” Corrine added. “I have never seen anything so powerful and so absolute. Not on Earth, not in Eritopia, not on Neraka… Hell, not even in the Supernatural dimension. This is well beyond my knowledge.”
“However, it may not be beyond our capabilities,” Ibrahim said. “It stands to reason that, once we acquire the knowledge, we may very well be able to combine magic and technology the same way.”
“Honestly, just by looking at the symbols,” Corrine replied, narrowing her eyes at the nearest section of symbols engraved in her glass box, “I’m pretty confident that this is a different type of magic. I don’t recognize any of it. Our crafts are pretty straightforward, where charms and invocations and language used are concerned. My magic comes naturally. Druid magic comes from their synergy with nature, and they use a variety of drawn elements to perform it. Swamp witch magic, on the other hand, uses the written or spoken word. This stuff, from what I can see, is none of the above.”
That got me curious, so I looked up at a string of symbols etched into the glass, using the tip of my finger to follow the entire line. The symbols themselves were somewhat familiar, mainly because some of them were stylized depictions of natural elements, while the others were combinations of lines and circles. All together, they created a language that activated this strange type of magic, and it seemed to work seamlessly with the technology used to keep us trapped yet oxygenated.
“You’re right,” I said. “This is a different language altogether, and it has a specific effect on these boxes, for example. Whatever magic this is, it’s strong enough to override anything else we throw at it.”
“Exactly. Now, think about this: whoever Ta’Zan is, he didn’t learn this stuff yesterday,” Corrine replied. “It must’ve taken some time and considerable knowledge to be able to put it all together. I think it’s safe to assume that Ta’Zan is highly intelligent and advanced, well beyond what we saw in the two minutes he spent with us. It’s also reasonable to say that he’s not alone. The creatures in the other pods could be his underlings; his workers, craftsmen, tech people, whatever.”
“Therefore, we shouldn’t consider him to be just another hostile, or some mad king or overlord or whatever,” Sofia chimed in. “I think we’ll need a very careful and well-thought-out approach with this guy.”
Cameron shot to his feet, then banged his fist against the glass wall, startling Liana along with the rest of us. He was angry, and for good reason.
“Honestly, I am more worried about the others who will be coming here to look for us,” Cameron said. “If they’re not here already. They don’t know where we are. They have no way of reaching us. What if they can’t even track us? What if they walk into a trap? What if they get ambushed and abducted, then end up in glass boxes down here, like the rest of us?”
“You know that GASP will send an entire fleet to Strava if they have to,” Xavier replied. “Whatever Ta’Zan is planning, he’s highly underestimating us, our people, and our resources.”
A dark thought crossed my mind in that instant—the kind I didn’t want to voice, yet had to.
“I know you’re not going to like me saying this out loud, but what if he knows exactly what he’s doing? I mean, look at this combination of unknown magic and technology,” I said. “What if he has what it takes to do it on a larger scale, enough to counteract the assault of an entire GASP fleet?”
Xavier scoffed. “Your optimism is refreshing.”
“Consider it realism,” I replied. “We have to take the possibility into consideration. I think we’ve all seen enough over the years to accept the possibility that we, even as a massive group, even as an interstellar organization with hundreds of powerful supernaturals in our ranks, may not have everything it takes to bring Ta’Zan to his knees.”
Vivienne shook her head slowly. “I think we lack substantial information at this point in time, Brother,” she said to me. “We need to find out more about what this guy can do and what he wants from us.”
“On top of that, as far as we know, there are only five hundred of them,” Lucas interjected. “We need to understand what they are, and what they’re planning to do.”
Claudia chuckled, though we could all sense the bitterness in her voice. “You guys are really good at keeping it together. All I can think of is clawing my way out of here. I think I’m starting to get a little bit claustrophobic, and it’s only a matter of time before I go postal.”
“Babe, we are all feeling helpless right now,” Yuri said, placing his palm on the glass in front of her. She sighed, then put her hand against his. It was as close as they could get to touching one another. “We need to focus on what we can do, rather than on what we cannot. Otherwise, we will all go postal, and it won’t do anyone any good.”
She gave him a weak but soft smile. “You’re my voice of reason, as always.”
The door opened with a clang across the hall. A large rectangle of orange light appeared in the darkness on that side of the cave. A slim, feminine figure walked in, pushing what looked like a metal service cart. We all stilled, watching her as she came toward us.
As soon as she came into the light, my breath got cut off.
She was beautiful, but in a very strange way. Her long hair was the color of fire, and her pale skin was almost completely covered in metallic dark blue scales. Her eyes were big and yellow, with black slits for pupils, much like a snake’s. She wasn’t wearing any clot
hes, but that didn’t seem to bother her, or us, since the scales did a good job of covering up anything that might’ve made some of us blush.
I noticed her long black claws as she pushed the cart forward. She looked at me first and smiled. It was then that I saw her long fangs—two canines that once again reminded me of a snake. Her reptilian features were impossible to ignore.
“Hello, I am Isda,” she said. Her voice was sweet and soft, much like honey, in contradiction with her predatory appearance. “I’ve brought you food.”
A quick glance at the service cart made me realize that Ta’Zan knew everything about our unusual dietary requirements, at least where the vampires were concerned. On the bottom shelf were half-liter bottles of fresh blood, which I could smell from inside my glass box. I understood then how hungry I actually was. Stress had a way of making me forget about nourishment. Sofia had once said that it would be the end of me, which was fitting, in a way, since I had spent so much time battling my vampire nature.
The top shelf was loaded with a combination of grilled vegetables and fresh fruit, along with four large pitchers of water. They’d thought of everything.
Isda took one of the blood bottles and brought it over to my glass box.
“Do you serve Ta’Zan?” I asked her. She nodded with the passion of a child about to go on a fieldtrip to the zoo. “Where is he?”
She touched the glass with her index finger. The surface split open as if it were made of clear liquid. She slipped her hand through to give me the blood bottle. I was stunned. With mechanical gestures, I took the bottle from her hand and spent some time staring at the bottle, at the glass opening, and at Isda.
“I am not at liberty to say,” Isda replied. She pressed her index finger on the glass again, and the opening closed. Once again, the surface was hard and flawless. This was some crazy powerful type of sorcery. “Your meals have been portioned according to your size, your weight, and your biological structure. That blood is enough to keep you sated for at least twenty-four hours.”
I unscrewed the metal lid of the bottle, then sniffed its contents.
“What kind of blood is this?” I asked.
“We have plenty of deer and other medium-to-large sized animals on this planet,” she said, then moved the cart over to Sofia’s box and repeated the service process with another bottle of blood. Needless to say, Sofia was as shocked as I was. “We know that warm blood is what you need, and, therefore, we hunt your food for you.”
“Gee, thanks,” Claudia retorted.
I quietly watched her as she continued to dispense blood and food through the strange openings she created in the glass walls of our boxes. One by one, we were all given portioned food and water.
“You people have definitely done your homework regarding our dietary restrictions, I see,” I said.
“Well, I suppose that is true.” She sighed, then stopped in front of Lucas’s box.
Both Vivienne and I knew our brother well enough to anticipate an extreme reaction on his part. Lucas’s gaze was fixed on Isda’s hand as it came through the glass. His posture warned me that he was about to make a move and do something that might get us all in trouble.
“Don’t do anything stupid, Lucas,” Vivienne said, watching him like a hawk.
He gave her a brief sideways glance, then rolled his eyes and took the plate and glass of water that he was given by Isda. He scowled at the serpentine creature, then cursed under his breath.
Isda withdrew her hand suddenly, giving him a fearful look. She’d just realized what he’d almost done, and it seemed to scare her.
“You should all be nice to me and my father,” she said, her voice trembling. “If you behave, he may let you live with the others. I doubt you will fare well in these boxes over the years.”
Claudia exhaled as Isda gave her a bottle of fresh blood. “Sister, I doubt we will be here for so long.”
“You will be here for as long as you live,” the creature replied. “Whatever Father says, it is done. There is no way of stopping what’s coming.”
My nerves were stretched close to their breaking point. Her vague statements weren’t helping, either. I needed to find out more, and I had a feeling that, with the right words, I could get Isda to open up a little bit more.
“What exactly is coming?” I asked her.
She pushed the service cart back to my box, as she was finished with our food rations. She moved closer to the glass wall standing between us, then smiled.
“A new world is coming, Derek,” she said.
Whatever that meant, I had a feeling it wasn’t going to work out in our favor. I was becoming more and more convinced that something dangerous, if not deadly, was headed our way. The way she said it made me worry about more than myself, Sofia, my brother, my sister, and the others in our group.
The way she said it made me fear for the safety and lives of everyone back home in The Shade, on Earth, as well as in the other dimensions. Our captivity was no longer our biggest problem.
Sofia
Like Vivienne had said, there was still a lot of information missing, making it almost impossible for us to ascertain any risk or imminent danger. We had to get Isda to tell us more, without giving her the impression that she was betraying her father in any way.
What she had just said, however, sent shivers down my spine and amplified the urgency I’d been grappling with for hours. If something was coming, whatever it was, we had to know. On top of that, we still had to figure out a way to escape, before our people came looking for us and inadvertently got into similar, if not worse, trouble.
“Isda, please, tell us what is happening here,” I said gently. “If it involves us in any way, it’s only fair that we know what we’re in for. It’s bad enough we are stuck in these glass boxes; the least you could do is tell us what this new world is, exactly, that’s coming.”
She looked at me, seemingly fascinated in her strange, reptilian way. Her eyes fluttered black several times. She then moved closer to my box and inched forward, as if to get a better look at me. I didn’t mind, since her curiosity gave me the opportunity to study her physical appearance in greater detail.
“It will be a new age, Sofia,” she replied. “But you don’t have to worry. None of you have to worry. You did us a great service when you woke us up,” she added, smiling. “It took us a while to figure out what happened, until my father checked the awakening protocols and saw the loose cable. We realized that someone had been there. We caught your scent.”
“So you just came after us and kidnapped us,” I snapped, unable to hide my frustration anymore. She talked as if we had done them this huge favor, but it was a mistake that had gotten us stuffed inside glass boxes.
“Father said you are precious,” Isda murmured. “He said you will help him bring about a better future. A perfect future.”
Claudia groaned, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Ah, this vagueness is seriously getting on my nerves. Could you please, pretty please, stop talking in riddles and get to the damn point already?”
“And what point is that, Claudia?” Isda asked.
“Why are we here?” I replied. “Besides bringing on a new and perfect future, whatever that might mean, what is our purpose here?”
Isda thought about it for a while. Judging by the look on her face and the way her gaze darted from one glass box to another, she was nervous and most likely pondering whether she should tell us more or hold her tongue.
“It’s okay,” I said softly. “We just want to know. We deserve that much, since our freedom has already been taken from us.”
“Also, you should know that I’m the one who pulled that cable and woke you all up,” Claudia added. “So, maybe just in return for my gesture, you could tell us what’s going on here. Or, even better, let us go.”
Isda shook her head vehemently, then took a couple of steps back. We were losing her.
“I can’t do that,” she said. “Father will be furious, and nobody wants tha
t. Besides, he has great plans for you. No matter what comes next, you will all be safe and, eventually, happy.”
“You need to understand that once our people come looking for us, no one will be safe. Not you, not your father, not anyone else who is actively helping him keep us locked in here,” Derek said. “If you want to keep your newly awakened people safe, you need to let us go.”
“Isda, I’m asking you again because you refuse to answer, and it’s completely unfair to us. But what is coming? What’s going to happen?” I asked.
Before she opened her mouth to reply, the door opened again—this time louder and more abruptly. The tall figure standing in the doorway caused goosebumps to spread all over my skin. He stalked into the large room, stepping into the light and revealing himself to us.
I found myself holding my breath, but I was nowhere near as intimidated and as scared as Isda. He was beautiful, yet also frightening. His physical features would’ve made any Renaissance sculptor green with envy, for he was anatomically perfect. His skin carried an iridescent hue as it stretched over his toned muscles. His body was wrapped in white silk, more or less like a mummy, with gold plates covering his chest, his forearms, and his calves. Large gold discs, each with a diameter of approximately fifteen centimeters, were hung in two rows on thin chains around his waist.
His hair was short and black, though there were several curls that were longer and dangled over his forehead. His eyes were superb, albeit strange, as one was a deep emerald green, and the other was an ultramarine blue, framed by long eyelashes. His lips were soft, stretching into a lazy grin as he got closer to our glass boxes and took a better look at us.
He seemed intrigued, but dangerously confident and aware of his advantage, as he was out of our reach. With every step that he took, Isda cautiously moved back, her soft reptilian features crippled by fear.
“Abaddon, you’re not supposed to be here,” Isda croaked.
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