Darklight 6: Darkbirth

by Forrest, Bella

  Dorian gave me a nod of confirmation. Ruk flicked his eyes between us, watching. Dorian and I knew each other so well that we needed little to communicate now—a single look often sufficed these days. We would know when to give each other the signal to commence our plan.

  Xiu and Un, instead of returning to their place at the top of the steps, came down into the amphitheater to stand on the black platform with us, Xiu floating a step in front of Un.

  She hovered nearby, saying in her soft voice, "The arbiters are ready for a vote."

  Like hell they are. I stepped in front of the blue orb, as close as I dared. I wasn't sure if her energy could burn or hurt me in some way. I completely blocked her from the crowd's view.

  "What are you talking about?" I demanded, voice rising with anger and indignation. It felt good to let loose. "Dorian and I haven't given our testimony. If this is going to be a fair trial—you know, an actual one with two sides—you have to listen to us."

  Xiu paused, but I sensed subtle irritation radiating off her as she tried to push past me, literally and verbally. "Your kind cannot fully comprehend the nuances of what is happening here," she said with sugary condescension, as if I were a child too young to grasp an abstract concept. She moved, but I blocked her again, and this time her tone was sharper. "There are rules and processes at play here that exceed your understanding. You cannot defy me. It's our job to take care of your kind. You must accept that we know what's best when it comes to cosmic matters."

  I gritted my teeth. "That’s quite an assumption to make, Xiu. You never even asked us what we know about cosmic matters. You haven't given us a chance to demonstrate our comprehension. What we have to say in this trial matters. Why would you think so little of us with no evidence of our actual capabilities?"

  Un exhaled quietly upon overhearing my appeal. "Do we need to test each proxy to know that they are mindless drones? Xiu, don't give them any more attention than they deserve."

  Xiu attempted to zip past me, and this time I let her, stepping forward with Dorian to the front of the sleek platform. He grabbed my hand, and together we gathered our anger and fury. The mists rose around us like the great snapping tails of furious red dragons.

  Dorian snarled, his fangs flashing in the eerie light of the mist as he released all the emotions he'd been pressing down. I glared fiercely at Xiu and Un, my own emotions tumbling out of me all at once. I was fury, grief, pride, and desperation. The clouds tangled up until red, blue, and citric yellow swirled together above us.

  Un stared up at the swirling, psychedelic mass of clouds. Xiu froze. She drifted closer to me after a second, either fascinated or ready to try to put a stop to this.

  "You say we don't matter, but the substance of this plane listens to us even if you won’t," I declared. "If you won't listen, then witness our fury. It knows what we feel is important." My words echoed throughout the amphitheater, louder than my voice would normally ever be. I channeled every single bit of rage that I'd felt since entering the Higher Plane into my words, summoning up the raw anger inside me. It filled my body with a hot rush, the overwhelming sensation that I hadn't felt since Dorian drank from me.

  The mist above us suddenly exploded into a tornado. An arbiter cried out, the first raised voice I'd heard since the Games. Orbs scatted as the tornado ripped through the amphitheater. Un sucked in a sharp breath.

  A huge yellow lightning bolt cracked the sky and streaked through the air. The bolt smashed into the ground in front of Xiu, narrowly missing me. Instead of fear at almost being harmed, the near miss of the lightning sent a rush of fierce joy through me. I grinned wildly, letting sparks fly up into the air. Xiu yanked herself back. Someone out in the amphitheater yelled at her and Un to control us, but what could they do? We had all the emotions, and the arbiters had nothing but their stoic gray. They couldn’t stop us from feeling.

  The tornado took to the sky again, destroying a good chunk of the amphitheater on the left side. Startled arbiters piled on top of one another, forced to move to avoid being gobbled up by an emotional storm. I allowed my focus to slip away just enough. Dorian squeezed my hand.

  “We won’t push our luck,” he muttered. “We got them to see us… again.”

  I agreed. All we needed was a slice of their attention. We would release our anger, but not so much that we couldn’t call upon this weather again if needed. The air cleared, and the clouds returned to more placid shades above us. The audience fell into complete silence. Wind still whipped around us like a soundless reminder from some force in the universe that power still coursed through our veins, even in this plane.

  Shaken almost-human faces stared at us. Orbs buzzed with nervous energy. Have any of them ever seen anything like this before? Probably not in ages, since they’ve been suppressing their emotions for so long. Their hush unnerved me, and I bit the inside of my cheek to keep my composure. I wanted to yell at them, but I'd save my rage for another tornado if we needed it.

  My gaze flashed to the one known as Fiz. He sat in the front, wearing a look of astonishment and calculation. He opened his mouth and stared at me; words he couldn't say stuck in his mouth. My heart pounded as I saw a few more faces melting into some strange realization. What are they thinking?

  Finally, my gaze landed on Xiu and Un. Un stared at us for a long time, saying nothing. His unnaturally long brow raised—although it looked strange—into a stunned expression. Whatever he’d expected from us, it obviously hadn’t been this.

  Dorian swallowed tightly. "I hope that demonstration was educational. Lyra and I keep hearing the same phrase over and over. You keep saying that you have plenty of time. You think there's all the time in the expanding infinite universe. If that's true, then it won't hurt you to hear us out."

  Un and Xiu exchanged looks, as best as a humanoid and an orb could.

  "We can certainly consider their words," Xiu muttered. Her voice lacked its usual cool composure. Good, we'd shaken her. “In order to be thorough.”

  Finally, Un gave a wary nod, his white braids bobbing along with his head. His face remained frozen, but at least we had his attention.

  "It's a fair point," Xiu announced to the crowd. "We will give them time to prepare their case and will hear their argument." Her voice shook slightly. After not seeing much emotion in the arbiters at all, I enjoyed this aftershock immensely.

  I looked to Dorian with a victorious smirk. Finally, we've got them where we want them!

  Behind him, Ruk smiled. It was a wide, sharp-toothed grin that sliced across his elongated face. Dare I say it, but the smile seemed proud.

  Chapter Twelve

  No pressure.

  Finally, after what felt like countless attempts, we were going to have the chance to tell our story. Dorian and I gathered on the side of the platform, attempting some level of privacy, a difficult feat in the open amphitheatre. The arbiters spoke with each other in hushed tones or remained silent, but they didn’t appear to be actively listening to us prepare. Good. My frantic eyes darted to meet Dorian’s. It had been so difficult just to get here that I hadn’t really thought about how we were going to handle the moment when it arrived.

  "The future of everyone we know depends on this," I muttered urgently, shaking my head. It hardly felt fair for such a big decision to come down to a single presentation, but here we were.

  "We just need to tell them everything we can," Dorian said, eyes not focused on me as he silently ran through what he knew we needed to cover. "The more evidence, the better, I think. So we’ll tell them everything we know about the tear, the war, how everything about their allegedly flawless system is unraveling."

  My throat tightened. "It's a lot, but they went on forever about nothing. This is our one chance, so let’s make the most of it." I tried to psych myself up, inwardly cheering myself on. Old Lyra would have been grateful to know that we were at such an important point in our journey. The end was nearly in our grasp, but I was nervous there might be some hidden stumbling block we h
adn’t foreseen that would create more issues for us to deal with. Hell, the arbiters’ complete lack of interest so far was a big enough problem for now. I swallowed nervously, trying to find my fighting spirit and wracking my brain for how we could best appeal to the arbiters. Sen had told us about their original purpose, and if we showed them what was truly unfolding, it might appeal to their sense of responsibility, or at least their pride, if we pointed out that their system was failing. I hoped. After all, the situation was no longer ignorable. The tear interconnected our struggle with all three planes.

  "We're not necessarily asking for their help to fix all this," I reminded Dorian quietly.

  "Exactly. We'll offer to do the bulk of the dirty work." Dorian's mouth gave the ghost of a smirk filled with dark humor. "Like we keep doing for everyone, it seems."

  We’d handled rough stuff before, and we would do it again. We’d escaped prisons and taken down corrupt organizations, but now we were facing both at the same time. The difficulty here came from the lack of a target. There were no walls to break through, no higher power to appeal to for judgment. My nerves surged again, but I settled as Dorian squeezed my hand. I gave him a nod, which he returned. This is our chance. Our entire journey together had given us plenty of practice addressing larger-than-life issues. We were as ready as we could be.

  We turned to face the crowd of arbiters. Xiu and Un had stayed in the front near the stage.

  "Are you ready to present your case?" Xiu asked. Her voice had regained its perfect tranquility. The emotional sky had simmered down during our strategizing, and the crowd appeared more at ease.

  "We're ready," I said, hoping it was true. I gathered every bit of resolve inside me.

  Facing the crowd, I was reminded of the press conferences and appearance before Congress back in the Mortal Plane. How many times had I faced questioning faces from authority figures demanding answers about the chaos unfolding in this adventure? But this was much bigger than that. This was the final step—or something I hoped was close to it. Our old struggles now worked in our favor. In some way, the last few months had prepared me for this. I honed in on Xiu, choosing her as my first focus point in the crowd. My intense gaze rested on her, then flicked over the rest of the gathered arbiters. Gate Maker and Jia had drifted off to the side to give us the floor.

  Dorian took the first step forward, releasing my hand. I watched him slip fully into his leadership persona, seeing how his broad shoulders squared as he took center stage. He looked out at the crowd with the practiced ease of someone used to addressing large groups of people and being listened to. The effect was magnetic, and I watched how the arbiters leaned forward in their seats, ready to hear us out at last.

  "We thank the jury for finally allowing us the chance to present our case." His voice was strong and carried well through the amphitheater. The clouds above us twitched with a mixture of our emotions, adding to the dramatic effect of Dorian's speech. "We've come to give testimony about the realities of what has been happening in the lower planes, a situation that we’ve recently discovered also affects the Higher Plane and could have disastrous consequences for all three planes."

  That got their attention. A few mutters rippled around the amphitheatre, but Xiu made a sharp sound calling for silence.

  Dorian began the tale. "It began when the ruler caste in the Immortal Plane outlawed my kind several hundred years ago. A massive wave of discrimination followed that led to vampires being forced to the edges of society and the scale of light and darkness being tipped out of balance."

  He continued, explaining how the Immortal Council had strategically, by Irrikus's hand and influence, driven vampires out of their rightful place in society over the course of hundreds of years. The rulers had forced vampires to flee to Vanim.

  A few brow ridges rose. The clouds above us swirled with rising emotion, but this time it was laced with a different sensation. A pressure grew from the sound of Dorian's magnetic voice. It was a heavy but comforting pressure. The weight of the truth.

  Dorian walked them through the tale as best he could. His words bordered on poetic, as he chose to speak formally, likely knowing that this would help demonstrate our ability to understand complex situations. He spoke about the creation of the tear around five years ago and the tragedies that unfolded in Vanim as a consequence. As he spoke, the clouds and mist surrounding us condensed even further until a nearly solid gray mass settled behind us. I stared, astonished. A murmur of interest dotted the crowd. Dorian pushed on until his tale began to involve the Mortal Plane and, eventually, my own involvement. He explained that the Mortal Plane currently served as the battleground between forces that supported vampires and those that wanted vampires to be permanently removed from existence.

  As he spoke, his urgent speech and strong feelings of conviction brought about something miraculous. I gasped as images appeared in the mist behind us. It was a rough and grainy projection of our memories.

  "Dorian," I whispered urgently. He turned and saw the miraculous show appearing behind us. Our startled eyes met. Just as we had manifested our emotions in this plane and had unintentionally conjured the ethereal Lanzon, apparently we could also summon memories and images and thoughts. "Focus on the images. I will, too."

  I focused hard on my memories, reaching into every pocket of my mind as Dorian spoke. I whispered a desperate request to the universe to allow me to project my thoughts as I had when I first learned to move through the Higher Plane thanks to Jia's teaching. If it doesn't work, at least I tried…

  I wanted to show the arbiters the heartbreaking reality of the lower planes they were so quick to dismiss as unimportant. Let them witness what their inaction had caused. They couldn't dismiss this situation as unimportant if they saw for themselves. My desperate longing for the arbiters to finally understand us swallowed me up completely.

  I pulled on my memories. They were strong inside me, appearing before my mind’s eye like film stills I’d unintentionally burned into my mind. We’d gone through so much, and I would never leave those images behind. They were part of me now. I sucked in a shuddering breath as the mist continued to grow stronger. Shadowy shapes emerged on the gray makeshift screen. Scenes unfolded before my eyes, scenes I had witnessed myself.

  I had called, and it seemed that the universe had answered.

  "The ruins of Vanim and Moab are testaments to the struggles the lower planes have had to endure," Dorian announced. I formed images of Moab, completely devastated, with a montage of how we had fought to save the city from collapse against the barrage from the empty swarm… how none of that had mattered later when Moab inevitably fell to the revenants. My images of the destroyed Moab played out on the left, while Dorian concentrated on displaying the ruined city of Vanim—a memory he held more strongly—on the right. Our memories worked in perfect tandem.

  More murmurs traveled through the crowd. The jury saw everything as we had witnessed it. I focused on every detail I could think of—the worn faces of soldiers, the chunks of destroyed city, the broken buildings and scattered bodies. Let the arbiters realize that their precious peace was a privilege.

  Our story poured out of us, not always in order, but filled with raw passion. A montage flashed through the different scenes as Dorian and I channeled our memories in unison. Our struggles when entering the Immortal Plane on our first journey. We showed the inside of the sanitarium and the cruel face of Irrikus. Carwin and Detra appeared in their bejeweled muzzles, tiny faces terrified and tear-stained. The arbiters let out stiff little gasps at the ghastly sight of Sempre snarling as his flesh ripped apart. Then, the mist showed the starving, hollow-eyed vampires resting limply against their cell walls in the sanitarium. An image of Kane appeared, the moment when he was nearly fed to carnivorous plants. Blood gushed across the screen as Inkarri sliced through the wildling like a knife through tissue paper.

  No sound accompanied these short films, but the images were as accurate as we could manage, and I had to hope that w
as impactful enough. A tear threatened to roll down my cheek as I re-watched everything we'd been through. This was our reality, our difficult journey. A strange pride rose inside me as we managed to show the jury exactly what we’d experienced. See our struggle, see our pain, see what your actions caused, however unintentionally. How could anyone with a sense of justice look at something like this and dismiss it? Words were powerful, but the harsh reality of images carried a much heavier emotional weight, especially to a species that spent all their time and energy creating their own worlds around them.

  As we spoke, the sky above shifted with varying mists in response to our emotional states. It was astonishing to see my own emotions playing out as I relived these memories. To see it all summarized like this, flicking past like scenery on a car ride, I saw how much I had grown as a person, as a soldier, as a leader. I saw how Dorian had evolved too—increasing in confidence, determination, and kindness. I saw the friends and allies who had come with us on this journey, how they had changed, how we had grown closer in the face of hardship. I saw our victories, our failures, the highs and lows and flashes of joy even in some desperate situations. And although I knew we still had a long way to go, I started to believe, in a way I hadn’t before, that we would be able to win this fight.

  "The tear, Lyra," Dorian whispered, pausing his speech. I focused hard on the tear, finding I remembered it best as the strange, stormy mess from Moab and as the image of it from the Immortal Plane. The tear flashed back into existence, the sight of it as it appeared in Moab on the left and the sight of it in the Immortal Plane on the right. I displayed them side by side.

  Dorian gestured behind him. "This," he urged. "This is the threat we've come to tell you about. It's in all planes."

  I focused hard, adding the memory of the terrible place Lanzon had led us to: the break in the plane, the swirling vortex, the splintering of the plane that allowed us to see down below. Three pictures, all of the same tear, unraveled on the misty screen. My horror and anger poured into it. The sky above me darkened, but I didn't fight the feelings. My urgency pushed hard. Suddenly, the third frame lifted off the screen and floated into the air. The arbiters stirred with abrupt movements, startled from their cozy seats.