Darklight 6: Darkbirth

by Forrest, Bella

  “Let’s try,” I said and reached for Dorian’s hand. I concentrated on the image of Gate Maker’s estate, knowing Dorian was doing the same. We began to walk, but neither of us focused on the void we were passing through. Moments passed. I clenched Dorian’s hand harder in my grasp, letting my gaze go slightly unfocused as we kept moving forward. Finally, the ground beneath my feet changed. When I looked to the left, our party of three stood before the shell-shaped castle. The sky above us suddenly lightened, devoid of red or blue.

  “Gate Maker,” Dorian called. There was no reply. I strained to listen. No sound came from inside the walls. A sour taste entered my mouth as I considered what Gate Maker’s absence meant. He’d left. Was I even surprised at this point? Even though he was clearly upset about something, my tiny spot of anger at him still burned for all his lies.

  Dorian focused for a moment, head tilting a little as though listening to a frequency I couldn’t pick up. “I can’t sense his aura, not really. I think anything I’m picking up might be from those extra copies of himself that he has in his laboratory.”

  “Jia, is Gate Maker inside?” I asked, wondering if the proxy could clarify for us.

  “No, the arbiter known as Ruk is no longer here.”

  Dorian and I stared at one another. That plan to talk was shot.

  “Shall we at least try to get back to the place where we arrived?” I suggested. “It was gray and vague and misty, but we can try.” It was either that or wait inside the creepy labs until Gate Maker decided to come back. Maybe there would be clues or the same beings from before passing through the area.

  “I’ll try to think of the spot and the memories of those beings,” Dorian said. I nodded. We held hands again. I had no idea if that helped the process or not, but it made me feel better. Jia stayed silent. This time, our transportation was nearly instantaneous. There was no long wait; we merely took one step. I looked up and somehow recognized the spot where we’d arrived.

  The sky above us was dotted with blue, but it was much lighter. Dorian gave a small grin.

  “Are we getting good at this?” he asked me.

  Jia, perhaps thinking the question was directed at himself, gave a small, crude smile. “You are improving at the task at hand.”

  I studied his stony face. Was I merely projecting my feelings of hope onto it? I wanted to like Jia, even if he was spying on us. Was that odd? He was an emotionless husk, and yet other than Dorian, he was also my only helpful companion since we arrived. He’s like a magical robot, Lyra. Calm down.

  Dorian took a step forward, his eyes darting around. “I can’t sense anything,” he said after a moment. “I guess Jia was telling the truth. I can’t feel the barrier, much less try to phase through to the Immortal Plane.”

  Well, at least Jia seemed to be honest.

  “We can keep trying our hand at traveling to figure a way out of here,” Dorian said. “Maybe there are other places in the plane that have weak spots. Didn’t Gate Maker say he left a few back entrances so he could slip back into the plane without being detected?” Determination sparked in his blue eyes.

  I stepped forward and put a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

  He let out a hollow laugh. “No hiding it, huh? I’m just a bit disappointed, is all.”

  I could understand that. Our location idea was a bust. I turned back to Jia, remembering how he had mentioned that we could travel to individuals we’d met. That list was currently very short, but could hold some potential. “Can we imagine the arbiters and find them?”

  “Yes,” Jia replied mechanically. “You must concentrate on the color and size of the orb or the face of the figure. Picture it very clearly. Try to remember the voice if you can.”

  “There was a big white one,” I said to Dorian. “Remember? It seemed uninterested in dealing with Un, which means it might be a bit more sympathetic toward us. Un was certainly memorable, but he doesn’t seem likely to help us, given his general attitude.”

  Dorian shrugged. “Let’s go for it.” He paused. “And yes, Un is the last resort.”

  We stood next to each other. I closed my eyes and tried to focus—really concentrate—on seeing that orb of white light. I recalled its voice. I remembered my feelings when I heard it speak. A tiny spark ran through me. Dorian slid his hand into mine.

  “It wants me to walk,” he confessed. I nodded. The same urge had struck me. We walked through the mist for a short time. In the distance, like with Gate Maker’s estate, dark shadows appeared. My heart gave an excited leap.

  Unlike Gate Maker’s ruined castle, however, this estate was grand. It was odd, though—half of the castle was built upright, and the other half upside down. Staircases melted into the outer walls. An upside-down door sat on one end of the right-side-up castle. It made me dizzy just to look at it.

  Jia followed us but offered no advice or directions. It seemed we were going to have to feel everything out for ourselves. We approached a massive drawbridge. Two proxies, who looked like Jia but with eggplant-purple skin and wings, peered down at us with beady eyes.

  “Proxies,” I called. “May we enter?”

  One shook her wings, which stuck out of the top of her head. She looked from Dorian and me to Jia.

  Dorian cleared his throat. “May we meet the arbiter who lives here?”

  The proxies said nothing, but the drawbridge lowered. We walked cautiously through to a corridor. It led to another, but then that terminated in a dead end. I sighed in exasperation when we reached an upside-down staircase.

  “Jia, can you lead us to the arbiter?”

  Responding to the question, Jia diligently led the way through a dizzying array of hallways. Eventually, we arrived in an inner chamber where another proxy, similar in structure to Jia but with white eyes, stared at us. As if understanding a silent command from Jia, the proxy led us to a grand circular door in the inner chamber. She pushed the door open with the tiniest of creaks.

  Inside, the ball of white light floated in the center of a round room. The proxy led us inside and performed a tiny bow to her arbiter, gallantly folding her stubby arm that ended in a three-fingered hand in front of herself.

  The proxy spoke in a clear, mechanical tone, “Nai, these beings ask to be introduced to you.”

  Chapter Five

  The large white orb hovered in front of us, tiny crackles of energy coming off it. It finally spoke to Jia in a deep, resonant male voice that filled the entire chamber.

  “What beings do you speak of?” It was a rough demand.

  I took an awkward step forward along with Dorian. “We’re from the Mortal and Immortal Planes,” I began, but the white light pulsed and interrupted in a smooth but cutting voice.

  “Lower beings do not belong in the Higher Plane,” the light said haughtily to Jia, who stared back blankly. “You should not have escorted these beings to my estate, proxy.” Nai bobbed up and down. It was hard to describe, but its aura was somehow arrogant even as a simple orb of light.

  Oh, great. We’re back to being ignored again despite only being a few feet away. I refused to go back to being a fly on the wall.

  “We asked to—”

  The proxy lifted a hand to cut me off.

  Well, fine. I hoped Jia knew what he was doing.

  "I will have to discuss with the others whether introductions are necessary with these interlopers. But I will get to that as soon as I finish this project…" Nai trailed off and then told his proxy, "Take the trespassers away. I will deal with it later."

  The moon-eyed proxy herded Dorian, Jia, and me back to the doorway of the mind-bending estate. As we were shunted out, I shot an annoyed look at Dorian, who returned the sentiment. Our search for any kind of aid or answers from the arbiters grew increasingly frustrating. Jia said nothing as Nai's proxy led us back out across the drawbridge. It was immediately hauled up behind us, leaving us out on the edge of the estate, faced once more with the nebulous mist.

  "This is ridiculou
s," I said. Jia stayed silent, of course.

  Dorian shook his head as he turned to stare back up at Nai’s strange construction. "We're being dismissed at every turn. How are we going to get anywhere?"

  I sighed, trying to picture the other arbiters—those in orb and in physical forms—we'd seen in the group that had met us upon coming to the Higher Plane. "Maybe the others will be better?" I took a deep breath, drawing up all the motivation inside me. "Come on, I’m sure we can find someone who isn't a complete jerk. What about Xiu?" I looked at Jia. “Can you tell your creator that we’d like to speak to her?”

  Jai did not respond for a moment. “She is currently indisposed, and it is unclear when she will be available to interface with you.”

  Dorian drummed his fingers against his thigh in thought. "There are a few others I can picture clearly, but most of them were just confusing lights that I vaguely remember. A few who were in their physical forms stand out. Maybe enough to get to them? We seem to be getting better at it."

  I hummed, considering his proposition. To be fair, it was our only proposition. "We could go looking for Gate Maker," I offered. “Or at least raid his estate for anything left behind that might help us. Maybe he has some kind of cosmic map.”

  Dorian groaned. "I would rather rip out my own fangs by hand than be around that snake right now. It’ll be necessary at some point, but not now.”

  Fair enough. I huffed a laugh. Even in our hardest times, I’d often found pockets of humor, but more recently it was as if I'd forgotten they existed. Jia watched me laugh, interested, but made no comment. We were on our own. Luckily, Dorian and I specialized in dire situations. My brain turned back to our odd welcoming party.

  "There were a few cutting remarks I remember the most," I muttered. "One said Gate Maker thought himself brave for returning. He didn't seem very pleased, demanding that Gate Maker beg forgiveness and saying he needed to fix his mistakes and pay his debt. Seemed kind of intense. Would that be enough for us to find him?" I shot Jia a look.

  "Well?" Dorian prodded the proxy. "Is remembering his voice enough?"

  Jia gave a stiff nod. "If you can hear the voice in your minds, you can try."

  We squeezed our eyes closed for a moment. I tried hard to bring up that biting voice and scathing judgment in my mind. I heard it as clear as a bell. It rang and rang in my ear. We walked with our eyes half open, trying to concentrate on the sound rather than our surroundings. My eyes widened as the ringing grew to new heights. It wasn't an illusion, but an actual bell. Dorian was right. We were getting better at traveling. It gave me some hope.

  I gaped at the building in front of us. It was a long, stretching tower made of glittering onyx bricks that looked like they’d been carved out of a black hole. At the top of the tower, a loud bell rang. I could see it swinging in the open window, glinting under the glittering gray sky above us. As Dorian and I exchanged a surprised look with raised eyebrows, the ringing stopped abruptly. I glanced at Jia over my shoulder.

  "Is this the one we were looking for? The one with the bells?" I asked, unsure whether Jia could even answer that.

  "It is if this is the one whose voice you sought." Jia lifted a stubby finger, watching me carefully. His movements were jerky and strange, unpracticed. Perhaps he was learning to imitate our gestures. "Bi enjoys his bell towers. He constructs them with great care, as all arbiters use large amounts of energy to create anything. The bells are his way of being content."

  Dorian paused for a weary beat. "What a delightfully pointless pastime. I mean, the Immortal Plane is being torn apart, but hey—at least Bi gets his bells.” He shook himself as if to get control of his attitude. “Let's see if he is any nicer than Nai was."

  Unlike the sprawling estates of Gate Maker and Nai, Bi's home was a single tower. It ran up and up, so tall that it hurt my neck to crane it all the way back to get a view of the top. There was no drawbridge this time, so we walked straight up to the great wooden door of the tower and pulled on a red woven rope attached to, unsurprisingly, another bell. I could hear the dull peals of the silvery bell echo inside the tower.

  A small golem, like Jia but eyeless and with a large bell around his neck, greeted us. He opened the door and cocked his head. His large ears perked up like a rabbit’s.

  "We request an audience with your arbiter," Dorian announced.

  "I will ask if he is available," the proxy replied. From a small satchel around his squat body, he produced a small bell and rang it. The sound carried into the heights of the tower while we waited for a tense, awkward moment. Dorian appeared to be on the verge of saying something foul by the time a responding bell came jingling back down.

  The proxy nodded, his rabbit ears flopping down. "Bi will see you." He walked over to the start of a grand spiral staircase built into the tower. I heaved a sigh. Even though my muscles weren't tired, I was bored with walking, a feeling that only increased tenfold as Dorian and I began trudging up the stairs.

  "Thank you," I called to Bi's proxy. He made no acknowledgment, simply disappearing back in the black stone warren of the tower. I pressed my lips together, mulling over the fact that these poor proxies seemed to exist in the same way that lower castes did in the Immortal Plane. "It upsets me that they seem to get zero respect."

  Dorian gave me a sneaky look. Although his face was strained with worry, a quirk of humor lifted the corner of his mouth.

  "What?" I asked accusingly. The sound of Jia's footsteps following us up the stairs made me conscious of the fact that our own proxy was listening, almost certainly giving information to his creator, Xiu.

  "There's always a common theme when we visit new places, " Dorian said, teasing lightly. "You want to rescue everyone, liberate the masses, stick up for every underdog. I love that about you."

  I snapped my mouth shut, pleasantly embarrassed. "Maybe that's true." Okay, so I wanted a labor rights revolution everywhere I went, but I couldn't help it. It was simply unfair that these "higher" beings acted like gods when they were just as imperfect as the rulers of the Immortal Council.

  After far too much climbing, we finally came to a stone landing. Here in the interior, the brick was a dull yellow ochre, unlike the eye-catching, stark, shining black outside. I wondered if the arbiters liked to show off their exteriors more than the interiors—like Gate Maker's turrets and golden domes, which must have been so grand before he left the Higher Plane.

  Bi, although I couldn't remember whether he was in humanoid or ball form when we first met, now appeared human enough. He was short and squat, with wide hips and arms so long the hands drew level with his knees. He wore a plain gray robe, and his shiny bald head was as bright as the enormous bell he was standing next to. I glanced around the room. Shelves lined the room, all filled with bells kept in glass cases to protect them like precious artifacts.

  I took a step forward as Bi turned to regard us. He had flat blue eyes, darker than those of Xiu and her proxy, and they flicked over me, uninterested. Not a great start.

  "Bi,” I said, keeping my tone respectful, “we've come to ask you for advice and possibly aid. We're the mortals who came to this plane with Gate Maker by mistake."

  "The treacherous Ruk," Bi said. "He shames us."

  He shook his head, and as he did, I swore I heard the sound of a soft, tinkling bell.

  Dorian awkwardly cleared his throat and gestured around the room. "You have a wonderful, um, collection."

  Bi straightened. "Yes, I do."

  He didn’t even thank someone for a compliment? I was once again struck with how they didn’t use common expressions of thanks or apology here. To Bi, Dorian had made a statement that required agreement or disagreement; there was no need for social niceties. My mind returned to Gate Maker for an instant, starting to better understand his utter lack of social understanding, although his issues were also likely caused by nine hundred years in solitary confinement. Still, in many ways he was better than his peers.

  Bi cast an adoring gaze over h
is bells. "I saw them eons ago down in the Mortal Plane and enjoyed their sound more than anything I’ve ever heard before or since. They take immense energy and much patience to create." For a moment, his gaze turned to us, and I gave him a polite smile. Was he hoping that we would be impressed? "You say you’ve come here for advice and aid?"

  "Yes," I said, with a beat of excitement. My pulse quickened. Was someone finally going to help us?

  He stared me dead in the eye for several seconds, then shook his head. "I'm uninterested in an undertaking such as this."

  With a great sweep of wind that didn’t affect the rest of the room, Dorian, Jia, and I flew backward, free-falling down the open center of the tower. I couldn’t stop the scream of shock that burst from my throat, instinctive panic kicking in as my body told me that I was about to die. Yet we didn’t hit the ground. Instead we were caught on a cloud of air and whisked through the doors, landing in a tangled heap of limbs in front of the shining black bell tower. I cast an aghast look back up at the tower. The last I saw of the interior was Bi's rabbit-eared proxy closing the door with a neutral expression. No apologies, no explanation, nothing.

  Dorian growled. "Jia, if I imagined a firestorm to destroy this stupid tower, would that work?"

  Jia stood beside us, utterly unaffected by the sudden exit. "No, you cannot do such a thing. You don't possess the power. Bi has amassed much energy over ages and ages, and you have an extremely minimal ability to interact with this plane."

  I groaned and rubbed my face. "Okay, on to the next one then. Maybe we should get the worst one out of the way? He might not help us, but Un seems the most likely to accidentally spill some information on Ruk, because he seemed the maddest.”

  As much as we hated to, we dragged our sorry selves to Un. He was easy to find, since we had such a clear image of him. All it took was a bit of walking in the mist to come across the gaudiest castle I'd ever seen in my life. My eyes burned from the intense gold of the gilding that covered every edge. It looked like someone had married a fairytale castle with something out of a Gothic horror novel. Giant towers flanked either end of the castle, which was made entirely of solid black bricks. Pastel pink and violet curtains covered the windows. A garden appeared to extend behind the dark building, but I couldn’t see anything over the high emerald-green hedges. I stopped dead in my tracks to stare at it, and Dorian took this as a sign that he should be the one to knock on the door.