by M C Ashley
“You still don’t remember? Search your memories. Surely this managed to help some of them return.”
I frowned. “I don’t know. I don’t remember anything other than what I just saw.”
“You don’t know? Is something blocking them?”
“The last memories I have are from when I was twenty and…yet I know that I’m twenty-seven. Odd.”
I rubbed my chin and pondered the issue. How could I know that I was twenty-seven, even though my last recorded memory happened when I was twenty? Could that Nathan person have something to do with this? He was the biggest wild card out there.
“I’ve got it!” I shouted, snapping my fingers. “Mara! Can I have a look at some of the Archives? If they’re still intact then I’ll have a chance to figure out some of the gaps in my history!”
“I am sorry, Guardian Azarel, but that will not work,” Mara said.
“What? Why not?” Then I muttered, “My name is Blake.”
“Because I have already read the reports made during the years that you say you have lost and there is no mention of your exploits. I have an eidetic memory, so I never forget anything I read. It seems someone went to the trouble of erasing your work up until the moment of the fall.”
“Someone erased me from the records? Over a seven-year period? That doesn’t make sense. Administrator Vivas would never let that happen. She may have been a bit too impetuous when it came to, well, almost everything, but when it came to keeping her records intact, she never let anything by her.”
Mara smiled. “So you say, but yet your record has been tainted. One wonders how this could have occurred.”
I clenched my fists. “You think I erased myself from the Archives!” I yelled, my muscles tensing up. “How dare you accuse me of that!”
“I have made no accusations. Please calm down, Guardian Azarel. Hotheadedness will not help us figure out what has transpired here.”
I sighed and calmed myself down.
“Let’s try a different approach,” Zea said. “Why don’t we tell you what we know about the fall and see if that makes you remember?”
“Oh yeah? That’ll work about as well as being in the center of the death mark of one of my best friends.” I paused and calmed myself. “Sorry. It’s been one of those days. Please tell me what you know.”
“First tell me what you saw in the death mark.”
“Very well. I was in the garden here with one of my friends, Akemi Tyson. She was a Japanese Psionic who’d been orphaned during an oni attack, but was saved by one of our members who adopted her. She and I grew up together; we were best friends. We were here trying to run away from the vampires. She was protecting me, because I had somewhere else to be—to rescue a woman named Meredith. Akemi hinted that she wasn’t the only one I needed to save. I tried to tell her that we needed to leave together, but she wouldn’t listen. Some vampires attacked us, but she incinerated them. A couple of moments later this portal opened in the middle of the Silver Fortress and a group of tentacles came out of it. I blacked out for a bit and found that she’d put me in a teleportation circle to force me to get out of there while she covered my escape. I told her that I wanted to stay and help her, but she was attacked by vampires and used up the last of her strength to take them out in a final release, so I fled using the circle, which was when the vision faded away and I fell.”
Mara nodded. “The records do state that Akemi Tyson was there before the fall. I do not recall reading the name Meredith anywhere, so that information is not available.”
“Okay. Whoever she was, I knew that it was very important that I find her. Maybe she was someone we’d just met. Or…maybe something else.”
“What do you mean?”
“Akemi and I were a part of an unofficial group of Psionics and Sentinels called the Dream Team. I was the one who came up with the name. It was comprised of five friends I’d trained with during my childhood: Akemi Tyson, Brian Poole, Rica Sturm, Atanasio Mortis, and myself. Akemi mentioned something about not losing ‘our newest members.’ The Dream Team was exclusive. You know how kids are, well, even adults. If we’d let these members into our team then it meant we were close to them. Perhaps this Meredith was one of them.”
“Perhaps, but this is mere speculation at best.”
“‘Speculation is better than thinking about nothing,’” I quoted.
“Chapter four: entitled ‘To Train Your Mind.’ A piece from Learning How to Overcome Yourself by Nane Azarel.”
“My mother’s work survived the fall?”
Mara nodded. “As did all records left behind.”
I allowed myself a smile, but then remembered that my mother was most likely dead and grimaced.
“Your mother and father’s remains were never found,” Mara said, snapping me out of my woe.
“What?” I asked. “How? Who figured this out?”
“There were survivors of the fall. I am the descendant of one of them. Some of these survivors braved the dangers in the captive Silver Fortress and recovered the bodies of their fellows, so that they knew who had all died. Your parents, along with some other members were reported missing. Yours included.”
“Well…it’s not like they would’ve lasted long after that. The Sanguine Collective must have hunted them down.”
“Just listen to the story,” Zea said. “We’ll worry about everything else later.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m just mourning the loss of my entire family!”
I raised my hand involuntarily just as Mara grasped it gently. “Peace, Guardian Azarel,” she said. “You need to calm down and listen. Remark only when I tell you to. You are far too smart to be led astray by your own passion for the truth. Will you listen to me and not interrupt what I have to say?”
I nodded.
“Good. I will tell you all I know about the fall of the Gray Forum. First, we must talk of the state of the world before the fall. What do you remember?”
I paused, recalling everything I could muster. “The Gray Forum was in charge of the training of Sentinels and Psionics,” I said. “We were the peacekeepers of the world, but very few mundanes knew we existed, because we knew the general public needed to be kept unaware of the dangers that evil held, because they would overreact, and possibly get us all killed. However, we were in the middle of a cold war between every evil force out there, making sure they never got too powerful or tried to upset the balance of the world. The Sanguine Collective were in most of Europe and America. Resurrection held most of the northernmost and southernmost regions of the world. The Horde held control over parts of Asia and Africa. The Red Council had agreed to a ceasefire after we’d killed Aleister Crowley. The werewolves and werebeasts were disorganized after we’d killed Jack Fiddler. I was a part of the team that handled that.” I shivered. “Anyways, most of the fake gods and goddesses were lying incognito, as they knew our standard policy of dealing with them if they didn’t try to be productive to society. We hadn’t had any recent demon infestations, not since Neot HaKikar. That was a little before my time. I’ve never seen any myself. There were the usual rogue necromancers, or would-be despots that abused their powers and broke the Laws, but we were able to take care of them for the most part. Relations with the Fae were never what you’d call good, but neither were they bad. We even had a couple of them helping us out during our training of the younger Sentinels and Psionics. I was on speaking terms with Puck. The last mission I can recall going on involved stopping a necromancer in a barrow. That’s all I can remember.”
“And this was seven years before the fall?” Mara asked.
“Yes.”
“I see. That is the last time you are mentioned in the records before the fall. It does not mention what occurred in this mission, other than that Atanasio Mortis was subjected to psychological treatment for ‘forcibly induced Anima Sola.’”
“But Purgatory doesn’t exist. What happened to him?”
“I thought you promised not to interrupt,” Ma
ra chided.
“Sorry.”
“It is okay. You are lucky that we are not in a binding contract.” She cleared her throat. “Atanasio suffered from horrific visions after seeing something that he could not describe and there are no records of its cause.”
I grimaced. Even though I had mentioned earlier that Akemi was my best friend, it would perhaps be more accurate to describe her as my best female friend. Atanasio was my best male friend and we had been born seven days apart from each other. Our parents were old friends, so it was only natural that we spent a lot of time together. He was skilled in entropy invocation, even though most of the Gray Forum was against its use. There wasn’t anything inherently wrong with entropy invocation, except for the fact that most of its practitioners were what you could call apostate Christeners. Atanasio, though, had been nothing but a credit to the Forum, performing well with the Dream Team. If anything, I cared about his friendship more than the others, although I’d never admit that to anyone. To hear that he was suffering, even posthumously, was something I didn’t want to deal with.
“In the time after that,” Mara continued, “tensions rose between the Gray Forum and the Sanguine Collective, due to the fact that they discovered the Joab.”
I furrowed an eyebrow. Now this was interesting. The Joab was the Gray Forum’s covert black ops specialist. The one given a free pass by the High Court to do whatever they felt was necessary to keep the world safe. If needed they could even break the Laws of the Christened.
They were so named after Joab, who was a general in King David’s army. Joab was more ruthless than David wanted him to be, but he got results, so David decided to let him have his way for the most part. Against orders, Joab killed David’s rebellious son Absalom, to prevent further insurrection. However, as a serious warning to all others who took Joab’s path, David had Solomon execute Joab at the start of his reign, so everyone who became like him would know the path of destruction was an easy one to take and it had a price.
Technically, no one was supposed to know the Joab existed, so that the Court had plausible deniability if the enemy ever found them. But I did know, because my father and Zvi had told me they were planning on telling the Court that they wanted me to be the Joab. It was a tremendous blessing and a dangerous position to be in. I’d told my father that I would think about it. Zvi had revealed himself as the present Joab, but said that he was looking for someone to take his place should he fall in battle. My father had told me that there were two other candidates up for the position at the very least, which had made me wonder who else could’ve done the job. I hadn’t gotten the job, so clearly it was someone better than me.
“The Joab was captured by the Sanguine Collective when they attempted to free prisoners of the Collective,” Mara continued. “In response, the Collective tried to use him by offering the Gray Forum an ultimatum: Give them more control over the world or they would kill the Joab and any Forum member they found trying to save him. Your father sent them a letter with one word on it.” Mara laughed. “It said, ‘No.’”
I laughed. That was exactly like my laconic father to send a declaration of war without bothering about the niceties of writing the whole thing out.
“The Gray Forum launched an all-out assault on the Collective,” Mara went on, “saving the Joab and getting them to safety. It is recorded that they were heavily involved in organizing covert operations to bring the Collective down after their release. However, the war soon went bad for the Forum, as the Collective had assembled an army unnoticed by anyone thanks to human trafficking.”
I winced. The Collective and the Horde rarely agreed on anything, but everyone in the Forum knew that they were behind the world’s human trafficking problem. They would take lost or kidnapped people, turn or feed on them, and then make them a part of the Collective by training them in their empathic abilities. In my day, we’d done little to stop this due to the resources involved, but I surmised that the Joab must’ve been our answer to that. They must’ve gotten caught by the Collective when they tried to interfere. My father had been one of the most vehement people in the High Court when it came to this issue, saying that to allow it was an abomination.
“The sheer numbers used by the Collective managed to wear the Forum down and they were forced to cease operations that prevented the other groups from acting against them. However, in this time, the Joab managed to strike a deal with the Seelie Court, and the Fae joined the battle against the Collective.”
I nodded. The Collective must’ve done something incredibly stupid for them to earn the wrath of the Fae. Then again, the Fae weren’t well known for loving vampires in the first place.
“This was halted before the attack on the Silver Fortress. Queen Titania and King Oberon were attacked by madness, brought on through means unknown, and the Fae left the Forum to deal with troubles in Álfheim. Without their allies, the Forum considered letting mundanes in on the situation, since they wouldn’t have a chance without the Forum helping them. Although this would have aided them, the Forum never got the chance to contact any government, as they were attacked in their own Fortress.
“The records on this are small, as very few people were left behind to leave proof of what transpired there, so the rest of this must be taken with a grain of salt.
“On the same day that they attacked the Gray Forum, the Sanguine Collective also sacked the headquarters of the Horde, almost wiping them out. In fact, they were thought to be extinct until recently. Resurrection was likewise attacked, and they seem to have been completely destroyed. The Seelie Court was left in turmoil when Titania and Oberon killed each other in a fit of madness. The fairies soon entered a state of civil war.
“The High Court was attacked first, with half of it dying in an instant. No one there saw what did it, but several of the survivors were rendered mad by what had happened and claimed that something that couldn’t be explained had killed them. They kept repeating a single word: Interloper.”
She looked to me, as if hoping for an explanation of the term.
“What’s an Interloper?” I asked.
“I must confess to some confusion myself,” Mara said. “The Archives are vague as to the specifics of these creatures. Some say that they are beings out of time and that mere mortals cannot understand them. Others say that the Interlopers are the remnants of a strong race of beings that hail from another reality that they destroyed and they seek the end of all life. You may speak freely from now on.”
“Holy Hastur, Batman!”
Mara eyed me for a moment. “Oh, yes, the Lovecraftian creature and the comic hero. This was recorded in the Archives.”
“Well that’s Christened efficiency for you. We can let future generations know who Batman was, but we can’t keep a clear record on what I was doing for seven years. Classy.”
“So it would seem. Now in the attack, the remainder of the High Court was last seen fighting the leader of the Sanguine Collective, who has managed to keep his name a secret, save for the surname of Slinden. As this happened the Forum was wiped out by mindless vampires, a first for the Collective, as they pride themselves on their astute minds.”
“I saw them in the vision I had. I was talking to Akemi and I said something about the vampires selling their souls to something in order to gain power. But…vampires don’t have human souls after they die. A demon possesses them instead. Did I find out that they could actually sell their demonic souls to some higher power? How did I know this?”
“I do not know, but this is illuminating. It seems that your coming here is more of a boon than we had foreseen.”
“You…saw me coming here?”
“No, Zea did.”
I turned to Zea. She was simply standing by, absorbing the conversation.
“I’m not proficient in them, but sometimes I have prophetic dreams,” she said. “I saw a man stepping out of a portal and coming here to meet us. It seems that that man was you.”
“Well don’t sound so disa
ppointed, sweetheart.”
She rolled her eyes, but I saw the hint of a smile on her lips.
“What happened to the world after this?” I asked.
“The Collective revealed themselves to the world, declaring that they were going to master it all. However, whatever help they had received during the assault on the Gray Forum seemed to have vanished, as they never used it again. The nations of the world fought against not only them, but the other supernatural groups, who took advantage of the crisis to expand their empires. The Red Council took control of Europe and northern Africa. The United States was able to hold off the Collective’s assault for a time, but lost more territory than it gained until it was forced back to the eastern side of the nation. They signed a peace treaty with the Collective, which created the Feast, but allowed the nation to survive being annihilated. The remnants of the government folded and the people remade it into the Free-Zone. It maintains negotiations with the Collective, but poses very little threat to it.”
“What about the survivors of the fall? How many are left?”
“Three,” Mara said.
“What? How?”
“After the fall, they tried to assimilate into the world left behind, but were found out by trackers that the Collective sent out.”
“What kind of tracker are we talking about here?”
“Christened people who were used against their will to track down their former friends and family.”
I flinched. “How horrible. Those poor people.” I paused. “So who’re these three survivors?”
“Those who remained in Vice City learned to conceal their abilities, hiding out in plain sight and becoming just another vassal of the Collective. Some resisted for a bit and were killed, while others, like me, fled. I came here some time ago, and discovered that the Collective had left it behind because it held no strategic value anymore or perhaps they were so arrogant as to think anything left behind was beneath them. For whatever reason, I was left unmolested here for a time until I met Zea’s mother, who died and left her with me. Since that day, I have trained her in the ways, weak as I am, and we have been trying to live in peace.”