Darklight 6: Darkbirth

by Forrest, Bella

  Again, a proxy answered. This one was more beautiful than the others, decidedly on the feminine side. She was shaped like a small cherub and floated with tiny blossom-pink wings. She regarded us with dainty violet eyes.

  "We came to request an audience," Dorian said gruffly. Our patience had run thin for beings with no manners.

  As he spoke, a figure appeared in the foyer beyond the cherub proxy. It was Un himself. I stiffened, not expecting to see him so soon.

  Un gave us a wary look. "I'm not interested. Go find another."

  "But—" Dorian's protest was cut off as the cherub slammed the door in our faces. The golden doorknocker, shaped like a bizarre geometric symbol, shook violently.

  I turned away. “When I start a revolution to free the proxies, that little jerk will not be included. I'd like to smack that cherub right in its—"

  "We'll try a few more," Dorian said in a tired voice, cutting short my violent thoughts.

  I agreed because there was nothing else we could do except trudge back to Gate Maker’s derelict castle. Again, we tried. We managed to come across two more balls of light and their estates. One was a greenhouse filled with all manner of strange plants that I couldn’t hope to identify or make sense of. The other featured a sauna filled with books, their pages curled from the unrelenting humidity. Neither arbiter wanted to help, and the one in the sauna ignored us entirely.

  We traveled to three more arbiters after that, only to be ignored each and every time. The desire to throw a punch that had started with Un’s proxy only increased. How were we going to get out of here? Nobody had told us a thing.

  I ran a hand through my hair and let out an agitated sigh. Although my anger had greatly decreased since we’d arrived in this plane and my body had apparently slipped into stasis, I still felt restlessness crawling under my skin. I just needed to do something, but even though we tried our best, we kept hitting walls at every turn. I glared at my non-working watch. If I’d thought the Immortal Plane experience was bad in terms of time, this was a thousand times worse. At least the Immortal Plane had soul-dim to give some sense of the passage of time.

  Strange as it was, I also missed the feelings of thirst and hunger. I even missed the pain of my injured ribs. I hated the numbness of just existing here. I wanted to feel something beyond my complex emotions creating a light show in the sky wherever we went. Part of being a living being with a soul was needing to interact with the physical world around you, to experience the sensations that came with being alive. Here, I felt… well, maybe this was how Jia felt? I glanced over at Dorian, realizing I’d been so lost in my thoughts that I’d forgotten to check in with him.

  He was stressed, his brows pinched together, clearly deep in contemplation. I'd wager that we were cycling over many of the same concerns inside our chaotic brains. This was proving much harder than we’d anticipated. It seemed like we were on the cusp of exhausting our options.

  "Someone has to be willing to help us," Dorian insisted. He repeated it after every rejection we faced. I felt a rush of affection. Even though he was struggling to adapt to the Higher Plane, he was trying to push forward. I could relate.

  "They're sentient beings,” he argued. “How can they look at us, other intelligent sentient beings, with such disdain?" He hissed. "They lack basic empathy. No matter how much power they have, we're still here. We can talk and think just like they do. We could speak with them if their giant egos allowed such a thing. Nobody who behaves so carelessly deserves this kind of power." He wrinkled his nose in distaste.

  How many times have we come up against people with too much power who had no business possessing it? Too many. Between all three planes—Mortal, Immortal, and Higher—many beings appeared to share some common vein of superiority that ran deep. I wanted to bang my head against a wall… except there were no walls. I looked longingly into the gray around us, then at Jia. For some reason, his sheer existence inspired me. He was literally made to follow us and provide help. Who was I to complain about my suffering? If he could keep walking with no purpose other than existing, I could too.

  "We'll try one more time," I offered. "Then we can always go back to hunker down somewhere to rest. Even if we don't need sleep, it'll be nice to just stop for a while and think things over."

  "One more try," Dorian agreed.

  We recalled one that was a very striking purple shade and began walking. Curiously, our intended path brought us to three estates built together in a close line. It appeared to be a small neighborhood.

  "Why are these so close together, Jia?" I asked.

  "Some arbiters choose to live in close proximity. These are the estates of Aman, a scholar, and two others, Sen and Ina. Ina rarely emerges from his cave."

  The three structures appeared more like houses than any others we'd seen in the Higher Plane. The first, I guessed the scholar's home, was reminiscent of a Roman temple with few windows. Several sculptures of humanoid figures sat in front. The next house was small and quaint, made entirely of aquamarine glass. The last was virtually a hut, circular with a simple thatched roof. The three estates shared a courtyard of shimmering khaki stone. A small fountain sat perfectly in the center. I admired the strange water flowing from it, flecked with actual ice shards in the running liquid.

  As luck would have it, two figures stood in the courtyard on opposite sides. My heart lifted, but I quickly reminded myself how our other interactions had gone.

  A willowy figure, feminine and dressed in dark robes, shuffled through a stack of scrolls in her hand and murmured to herself. We approached cautiously.

  "Excuse me. Can you help us?"

  At my question, she looked up with a subtle, annoyed twist of her lips. "Excuse me. I have very important duties to attend to. These archives will not sort themselves. You'd better run along." She cast us a disinterested glance before returning to her papers.

  A tiny green light floated over. "Oh, Aman, how curious. What are these things?" Her tone was wistful and dreamy. This must have been the arbiter of the second house. To my surprise, she flicked toward us. "How are you, sweet little things?"

  I grimaced at being spoken to as if I were an infant. Dorian crossed his arms tight across his chest.

  "We're looking for help," I pressed.

  "Oh," she cooed. "But what are you doing here in the first place?"

  A sense of relief flooded me. Finally, someone who would speak to us. Dorian and I rattled off a basic summary of what happened. Well, we tried to.

  Aman made a grand show of adjusting her robes and gathering her scrolls in her arms. She cast a snide look at the green light. "Sen, you really should know better. They're like proxies. If you talk to them too much, they grow too attached, and then unraveling will be necessary. And you know how inconvenient that is." She took a step to leave.

  Sen, the green light, floated higher. "They're already here, sweet Aman, so we might as well learn something from the opportunity. It's been so long since we last interacted with these two species, after all. I want to see how their cellular processes have developed over the years. Isn't it fascinating? Their basic functions hold true after all this time." She spoke of us as if we were lab rats.

  Aman gave Sen a bored look and stalked off with her scrolls. I heard the door to her house shut solidly and realized we were unlikely to interact with her again. But this Sen…

  I studied the green light and got the impression that Sen was staring back with just as much blunt curiosity.

  "Gate Maker—Ruk—brought us here,” I repeated, not entirely sure whether Sen had processed our initial summary. She appeared a little… out of it. “We're trying to get back home—"

  "Home," Sen interrupted me, dreamily, "Oh, how interesting. I knew Ruk brought you here. Everybody is discussing it! How exciting. The judgment will be soon."

  Judgment? I bristled at this casual mention. "We aren't exactly pleased to just sit around waiting for a judgment," I said, but Sen merely flitted around us to get a better view
instead of listening. She muttered to herself, far too quiet and garbled for me to make out, as she circled us.

  "You're clearly surviving off the universal energy. What an impressive adaptation." She floated back to face us. "It would have been sad if you couldn't survive up here. A real waste of an opportunity."

  "Yes, we would have hated to disappoint you," Dorian said dryly, obviously as unimpressed with Sen as he had been with the rest of the arbiters.

  Fortunately, Sen seemed oblivious to his sarcasm. She said nothing in response and merely let out a sound like a hum, clearly in a happy mood. I stole a glance at Dorian, thinking that trying to get our story out to her would be a lost cause. He gave me the tiniest of nods, as if sensing my thoughts through my maybe-we-should-move-on-to-another-subject look.

  Fine. If she wouldn't listen to our tale, maybe we could at least get some information.

  "How long have you arbiters been here?" I probed. "What's your role in the universe? Our proxy companion has given us a few details, but can you enlighten us further?"

  Sen gave a delighted little gasp. "You don't know basic history? Oh, well… what an excellent opportunity for me to teach you. We arbiters have lived in this plane from literally the beginning of time. We don't know anything else. In the past, our duty was to maintain the delicate balance of light and dark energy in the lower planes. A pesky job! For a long time, we spent all our time and energy trying to keep the balance by intervening in the lower planes from the safety of the Higher Plane. We tweaked creatures and beings this way and that. We constructed things, changed beings." She took a beat, wistful as she recalled the memories she spoke of. "We arbiters can only change other beings while we are in the Higher Plane, as we are at our strongest here. Even then, we can only make small changes, which was such a difficult position to be in when we needed to punish those who became saturated with darkness. It was exhausting to reward those who spread light, too. Everything requires energy, you see? But then the Separation began to occur, and arbiters became unable to interact with the Mortal Plane. We could not help the beings there, and so, embarking on one final mission, we descended into the Immortal Plane and changed the creatures there before we were sealed away from the lower planes completely. It was a lot of work. We created the caste system as a structure that could independently manage and balance the dark energy coming from the Mortal Plane."

  Shock sent tingling waves down my body. Separation? Changing creatures? The arbiters created the caste system that we’d seen cause such damage?

  Sen floated closer to Dorian. "And you," she began with an approving tone. "You and your kin are born from one of our greatest ideas—our greatest inventions. You are a creature that can process dark energy with the near impossibility of being corrupted by it."

  Dorian's face fell in a way I'd never witnessed before. He sputtered starts of phrases but failed to finish a thought. "What—I—No—"

  Sen carried on, oblivious to my love's emotional destruction.

  "Well, the Separation happened, and now the arbiters are under the Mandate of Secrecy. The lower plane beings are never supposed to know about us. That's why you're such a problem. You've figured that out, right? You've shaken everything up. How fun." She let out a little giggle, made unsettling and garbled by some inhuman note in the mirth.

  I stared at Dorian, my heart slamming in my chest. I can't even imagine what he's going through right now. To discover that these beings created you for the sole purpose of essentially doing their job for them? I stole a furtive look at Sen. I needed to either get her to shut up or find a way out of here, preferably both.

  "Well, we're having such a great time being a source of fascination and entertainment to you," I said smoothly. "And yet, we can’t stay. We must get back to our lives and the situation unfolding in the Immortal Plane. We'd be happy to leave the Higher Plane alone. I get the sense that many of your peers want just that."

  Dorian let out a sharp breath. His face relaxed slightly, but I could tell it was taking much of his energy to regain his composure in the face of Sen's casually delivered revelation. "You could easily solve the problem by simply sending us back through a portal," he said.

  At Dorian's suggestion, Sen bounced up and down in excitement.

  "I find it amusing that you two lack such basic information," she said sweetly. The condescending tone struck a chord of annoyance inside me. "There's no possible way that I can do that. The barrier is one-way only and has been since the Separation so long ago. Was it long ago? Maybe it was long ago for your kind, but not for mine. But the point is that once you come through, you can't go back. Maybe Ruk could do it. Yes, Ruk could most certainly do it, since he designed the barriers between the three planes so long ago. But that was when we arbiters were still working alongside the universe to manually balance the lower planes. Such messy work. So very time consuming and flawed. He's been altered since then, though. We had to make sure he couldn’t return here once he chose to remain in the Immortal Plane. Even if he still had the ability, he wouldn’t be able to muster up enough energy now, especially since any energy he gathers he owes to the rest of us."

  A horrified chill froze my body. He couldn't… he couldn't do it?

  Lies. Nothing but more and more lies at every turn. Instinctively, I reached for Dorian's hand. I just needed to hold him, to feel that he was with me in this nightmare. Could all this be true?

  Sen charged on. "Now that you know about the Higher Plane, the only solution is to stay here until your mortal lifespans reach their end… unless you would remain in stasis here forever. Oh, what an interesting longitudinal study this will be." Her tone turned sympathetic. "It's not so bad. There's so much to learn and discover. You really have time to ponder here. You can think with true depth. After the Separation, we arbiters found a new calling in studying the true nature of the universe on a fundamental level. You can join us. It's probably more interesting than your squabbles in the lower planes."

  This arbiter spoke with such careless confidence, and anger pierced my core like a hot knife.

  "You're wrong," I snapped. "There's a meaning to life, to its beginning and end. You call us lower beings, but you understand nothing. There’s an entire war going on that you seem to have no idea about."

  "You talk of studying the universe, yet you sound like the most ignorant being I've ever met," Dorian added hotly.

  Sen zipped up and down. “I have nothing to do with your lower planes,” she said. “The Separation lets me stay here.”

  "So you're content to sit around and waste eternity watching passively from the sidelines?” I demanded. “And what about the rest of the system—how can you just fling it aside like that? Vampires are on the verge of extinction because the caste system you built and abandoned is flawed and crumbling. The rulers are abusing their power, abusing wildlings, harvesters, makers. Don’t you feel any sense of responsibility to do anything?"

  Sen paused for a moment, mulling this over. The fire inside me felt hot, not like the acidic sensation of vampire blood's effects, but rather a true and righteous fury.

  “The end of a species is always sad," Sen said, although her tone sounded emotionless. "But one must understand that eternity is a long time. Things stop seeming so vital after a while. Surely it will happen to you, too. You'll forget many of the things you know and learn many new ones.”

  Dorian narrowed his gaze. "What about the tear? And the collapsing of the different planes? The Mortal and Immortal Planes could meld, ending in utter destruction and devastation. Clearly, this system of yours didn't work. It's going to cause a huge amount of suffering." He squared his shoulders. "As we speak, the Immortal Council is creating a wave of darkness to permanently change the Mortal Plane and all the humans who live there."

  Sen bobbed up and down in exasperation. "Our role is done." Her reply was stiff. "Our planes are separate now. It's no longer necessary for us to meddle in the affairs of the lower planes, and the Separation halts us from interfering even if
we desired to. We have a new duty now, one that suits our logical needs."

  And one that disregards the sufferings of billions. New anger boiled in my gut. Sen's attitude, apparently common among these arbiters, grated on my every nerve. Dorian and I weren't perfect, but damned if we didn't try our best to ease suffering and save everyone we could.

  "That sounds a lot like an excuse to do nothing," I said, my tone sharp. A jolt of worry ran through me as Sen regarded me with an intense gaze, staying silent for a long moment.

  "That is an interesting theory," Sen said mildly. Her tone held a weary sort of honesty that suggested she genuinely failed to register our anger with her. It was like we were pesky children asking too many questions. "I will consider your view of the situation and ponder it further. I look forward to seeing you again at your sentencing." She floated a foot higher, her orb form vibrating gently, and then vanished.

  The conversation was over.

  Chapter Six

  With the weight of our conversation with Sen on our shoulders, we decided to cut our losses and return to Gate Maker’s ruined estate. It was easier this time, after so much practice. I appraised the crumbling walls as we trudged dejectedly up to them.

  What happens at a sentencing? I had a vague idea of what a trial might entail, but shouldn’t Gate Maker be the one facing judgment? Surely, Sen misspoke and meant to say that we were witnesses or evidence rather than accessories to Gate Maker’s criminal activity.