Darklight 6: Darkbirth

by Forrest, Bella

  Dorian was equally silent, transfixed by Ruk's story.

  "I didn't want to change a creature on random whims, you understand. That was against the rules, and for good reason. But… the arbiters, before she was even born, had taken away the ability that she so craved. We’d changed so much about her to suit our notions, and now she wanted to be the architect of her own body. How could I deny her?” Ruk swallowed hard before inhaling a shaky breath. “I told her repeatedly that I needed to carefully consider and develop the perfect strategy before we attempted such a thing, and in truth, if other forces hadn't intervened, I would have tried it. She'd already convinced me. But I also would have needed to go back to the Higher Plane to help her, something I didn't want to do because things were getting complicated."

  I raised an interested brow. Were we getting to the drama that had unfolded and caused this great scandal that the other arbiters railed about so much?

  The scene shifted away from the magnificent underwater city. Amber light leaked onto the misty screen; it was soul-dim in the Immortal Plane. Ruk and another arbiter sat high up in a mountain cave, perhaps near the future site of Vanim, given the color and texture of the stone. Ruk rested in his humanoid form, but the other was in his light form: Un. I recognized his dry voice immediately. Outside, the wind whipped past the entrance of the cave. A gust hit my face, somehow chilling me to the bone.

  They were discussing something in low, frustrated tones.

  "You must cut off contact with these lower beings. It's beneath you. The Separation is imminent, nearly upon us. Your remaining here and meddling with lower beings could endanger the Separation." Un's voice held a tightly controlled fury, but he gave no other sign of emotion. "This undertaking has taken untold amounts of energy and research."

  Past-Ruk huffed, already far more expressive thanks to the lower beings he’d passed so much time with. "This is ridiculous. After everything I've shown you, you all still want to go through with the Separation. If the arbiters really don't want to be constantly involved with the lower planes and want some distance, that's fine, but you have no reason to remove yourselves so completely and so permanently. It's selfish. I've refined the barriers, and I can, if required, ensure that we'll be able to go back and forth if needed, but the system designed to balance light and darkness will still run independently as we planned."

  "You need to remember your role,” Un said witheringly. “Let go of your frivolous attachment to the Immortal Plane. It's not for you. It's not for any of our kind any longer.”

  "Why?" Ruk pressed, looking as if he were ready to pounce on Un's orb form. "Because a bunch of you decided that you didn't want to do any hands-on work any longer? I’ll admit it’s not always enjoyable, but it’s challenging and interesting. Don’t you remember?"

  "You voted for the Separation just like the rest us," Un replied coldly.

  "What if I've changed my mind?"

  Un paused, anger radiating off his form. "The rules have been set. There is no return."

  Darkness swallowed them, the continuing argument fading to nothing as we were once more immersed in a gray mist. I clenched my fists in anticipation as the next scene unfolded. This was Ruk's entire journey—which I knew, considering where I had found him, meant that things would go from bad to worse.

  Opulent shades of silver, blue, and gold began to surround us. The intensity and brightness stung my eyes before the shape came into focus. A pair of familiar steely eyes gazed at me. My stomach dropped with shock and horror.

  Irrikus. He was much younger in this memory and wearing much less gaudy clothing. There was no telling how old he was in Immortal years, but he was clearly young. He looked like a man in his early twenties, with something rounder about the shape of his face than when I saw it in person. He wore his hair simply tied back and had no crown. Beneath his welcoming smile, I caught a glimpse of an eager hunger for something. At this point, it was compelling and interesting, and had not yet become self-serving, cruel, and sparked with arrogance. Dorian exhaled slowly. It was odd to see Irrikus so fresh and earnest, his face open with eager curiosity. He dwarfed Ruk, who stood beside him in vampire form with his classic purple eyes.

  The location jumped out at me immediately, though I'd never seen a set of stones there. They stood next to the waterfall that fell from the Gray Ravine into a small lake on the outskirts of Itzarriol. There was no sign of the statue of Irrikus in Ruk's memory. The garden looked more like a field of undeveloped meadows than the manicured grounds I remembered, but the waterfall and cliff were unmistakable.

  Past-Ruk approached the stone circle where Irrikus stood. I heard the water falling, the rustle of wind, smelled the curious flowers of the Immortal Plane as the two figures regarded one another with interest and caution.

  "You're no vampire," Ruk said to Irrikus, one brow lifted in curiosity. "Why are you here, ruler, and what interest do you have in this place?" He placed one of his hands onto the stone, splaying his fingers lovingly on the smooth slate surface.

  Irrikus leveled a steady gaze at Ruk. "You're not a vampire either, wise one. I've been sitting here waiting for you for weeks now. Tell me… how did this place come into existence?"

  Chapter Seventeen

  The younger Ruk let out a playful laugh, but he snapped back to his hesitant self in a second. "What do you mean, ruler? I know little of stones, and less of how they get here or there."

  I knew what was going to happen, yet I was still drawn into the moment, watching these two intelligent, eager, and curious creatures meet for the first time before anything was dark and brutal and stained by betrayal.

  Irrikus eyed Ruk intensely. "Don't be modest," Irrikus insisted. My breath caught as I watched the scene unfolding. This was Irrikus from the beginning. Even before he began to intentionally manipulate for his own cruel ends, he knew how to flatter and coax and smile to get the response he wanted. "You created something incredible. I've guessed that you are the all-powerful being who created the gates. What do they call you?"

  Ruk paused, mulling over his response. A small smile played on his lips. "My name is Ruk. You may call me that."

  The Ruk in the memories continued to smile, but present-Ruk watched with an expression I could only describe as mournful. From some of the things he’d said previously, I knew he had come to trust Irrikus and view him as a friend. How it must hurt him to relive this moment that started it all, knowing now that it would end with him being imprisoned for nine hundred years. I said nothing, but a new well of understanding for Ruk opened up inside me. He’d been taken in by a being who knew how to enchant without even using magic. Charm and flattery might be the most dangerous weapons of all.

  "You fascinate me, Ruk," Irrikus drawled and lifted his hand. "I have power, but nothing like this. From the reports I’ve heard about you, I know you must be wise beyond anything I can imagine." He paused, seeming to grow suddenly nervous. “I must admit that I came here with a proposition for whatever creature I discovered was the maker of these gates.”

  "Assuming I am the creator of these gates," Ruk said slowly, “what proposition were you going to bring?”

  Irrikus pressed his hand against his temple with a disarming smile. "With my knowledge of my kind and your vast capabilities, I would like to create an alliance between the two of us, for our mutual benefit. There are things we can offer one another.”

  "Perhaps," Ruk replied noncommittally. "Although, honestly, I don't see what you have to offer me."

  A sharp, angry flash sparked in Irrikus's eyes, but it was so demented in appearance that I wondered if it actually happened. Was this current Ruk, projecting to add hindsight to the fatally significant expression he missed?

  “I am soon to secure a place on the Immortal Council in Itzarriol,” he said. “I have connections and access to all the great libraries of our city, filled with books written by every caste. I can offer you my current knowledge, the experience of the Immortal Council, and all the dark soul energy at my dispo
sal."

  Ruk twisted his lips hesitantly. "I won't be involved with the city or with the Immortal Council. I've seen it from afar, but politics hold little interest for me."

  Irrikus tilted his head ever so slightly to the side with a mischievous smile. "Oh, I would never tell anybody in Itzarriol. Secrets are more amusing, don't you think?" His face relaxed, and he opened his palms up to Ruk with all the gentleness of a lamb. "Oh, great Ruk, I'm here to learn from you. Consider it, please. We can study together and discover things about the Mortal and Immortal Planes as a team."

  "His good intentions, born out of pure, scholarly interest, might have been true in the beginning but soon became nothing more than hollow lies," the current Ruk cut in icily. "I honestly lost track of how many lies there were in the end. Innumerable, and I was so drawn in by his lofty dreams that I became blind to how he was changing. Though it was not the case when we met, by the end every word out of Irrikus's mouth was a half-truth. It took me too long to realize what he was slowly becoming. If he'd been born a human in the Mortal Plane, he eventually would've ruled it as the sole dictator of the world." His voice came out in an angry rumble that reminded me of the bestial form Ruk took when he’d violently escaped from the sanitarium with Sempre in his clutches. Now I understood his fury so much better.

  How much was it taking from Ruk just to remember and show us all this? His shoulders squared, but something in the tilt of his neck as he looked at the images suggested lightness. He was clearing out all these heavy phantom memories. It might be useful—cathartic even—for him to finally show two other beings his pain. He's been torturing himself with these memories for too long.

  Irrikus gestured excitedly to Ruk. "Whoever or whatever you are, I want to combine our talents. I have a vision." He dragged his hands through the air to mime a great arc above his head, and for a moment, he truly struck me as a peace-envisioning innovator. "I want a new and better version of Itzarriol, and I have a plan that I can take to the Immortal Council. It would require great amounts of dark energy, but we could create an entire continent of arts, technology, and magic. The evolution could be priceless in the end. It would be a place where people can operate perfectly in a perfect system, surrounded by beauty. It will be a place with only happiness and no death. I want to create new things, but there’s a lack of sufficient energy in this realm. I often imagine what I could do if I could convince that stubborn old council to budge on their beliefs. They never want to change anything. Innovation seems to be a sore spot for them."

  No death? I held back a snort. Only for some. Irrikus was glossing over the reality of where dark energy came from and how it would have to be acquired in mass amounts. I do empathize with the frustration of no innovation, however.

  As young Irrikus spoke, I couldn’t deny his radiating magnetism. Even knowing what I knew about him, his ideas sounded good, and it was clear that when he spoke of a prosperous and inspiring future, Irrikus really believed in what he was telling Ruk. I could see how younger Ruk was taken in by this. It was everything he’d wanted the arbiters to give him. It was opportunity. And yet, I knew the reality of how this vision would play out. Irrikus talked of peace, but his proposal was poisoned. The idealism would be founded on the oppression, pain, and suffering of all castes besides rulers in the Immortal Plane, along with the suffering of every being in the Mortal Plane.

  The light shifted as the conversation unfolded. Soon, young Ruk and Irrikus sat together in the space of the stone gate. They talked for hours. Ruk sped up some parts of the conversation but showed us others. They built a fire together while the sky faded into soul-dim.

  "The truth is that I saw myself in him," present-Ruk confessed. "He was bright and dangerous and ambitious. He was better than I was, in some ways. He moved people to make what he wanted into a reality, something denied to me by my fellow arbiters. He had something I didn't possess, and that made him unique among the beings I’d met. He forced the universe to bend to his will, wanting to know everything there was to know, while I was bound by the rules set by my allies… or so I thought." The self-loathing in Ruk's voice was as hard and cold as ice.

  The image shifted. Ruk and Irrikus stood atop an ornate building, looking out onto the city of Itzarriol. The green glass of the Grand Senate was in the process of being moved, slab by huge slab, across a construction yard. A complex model lay before them on a grand table. Rulers, makers, harvesters, and a vampire or two bunched around the table, pointing at various things and muttering suggestions. I assumed these were the members of the Immortal Council at this time, suggested by the fact that there were representatives of all castes there. I knew Irrikus would eventually "remove" many of them as he rose to power and restructured the council to only contain rulers. Servants brought carafes full of bubbling electric-blue drinks to the council members. The council occasionally cheered over the model, or when another immense slab was set down in the proper location.

  Younger Ruk appeared triumphant. Young Irrikus wore the glowing grin of an artist who was finally seeing a vision achieved. The image moved, and suddenly Ruk took the form of a giant redbill. Irrikus rode on his back, wearing a gleeful expression of innocent, wild delight. He spread his arms wide and whooped to the amber-lit sky.

  The Ruk before us now looked contemplative and slightly sad. "Irrikus and I developed such grand, monumental plans. I didn't tell him about the Higher Plane or the imminent Separation that was to occur. Indeed, I told him nothing that would break the Mandate of Secrecy. And yet, I told him too much, for he was far too clever. I thought myself all-knowing, and I underestimated him and the lengths to which his ambition would eventually drive him. So many of the principles of magic that the sanitarium and Itzarriol were built upon… he learned them from me. My arbiter peers warned me against associating with the lower beings, but to them, all the lower beings were generally the same. They could not warn me of the specific threat that Irrikus posed, for it was beyond the collective arbiter imagination. Being outsmarted by a lower being? Being betrayed? Impossible. We had shaped these creatures. I let myself believe I was a god, and like those who follow that path, I fell hard. Even if my peers could've foreseen the troubles, it wouldn't have mattered. I considered Irrikus my equal and my friend, limiting even my trips to visit Aurora in the underwater culture of the aquatic wildlings to construct schemes with him. The counsel of the other arbiters appeared flawed in every way. I still think it was flawed, but that's a separate matter."

  The scene coalesced, and a heavy atmospheric pressure made my skin prick with goosebumps as we emerged somewhere high in the air. For half a second, my instincts kicked in and I panicked, thinking I was going to fall. Dorian grabbed for my arm, apparently having the same reaction, but we soon realized we were merely looking at a perspective of someone floating; in fact, if we looked down, we could see our feet still securely on the reflective earth of the Higher Plane.

  Before us, a cloud of amber souls lingered above a gathering of arbiters in orb form. They surrounded Ruk, who had taken a bird form as large as a redbill. Already, I could hear their rebuking murmurs. A smaller and dimmer version of Itzarriol glittered below, without an inkling of the toxic splendor that it would eventually embrace.

  "Ruk, you have ignored our warnings," said one light orb.

  Ruk waved a wing and snorted. "Your warnings were wrong. I only wanted to stay here a bit longer to finish my studies."

  "They’ve already learned too much from you."

  "You've taught them our ways, skirting around the Mandate to do it."

  The rebukes came from all sides while Ruk bristled, his feathers fluffing out. He angrily snapped his beak at his peers.

  "The lower beings have no way to find us, and they do not control me," he said hotly. The arbiters lapsed into silence, and Ruk pounced on this chance to defend himself. "What's the problem? I've done nothing to harm our system—I've only helped it become the best version of itself."

  "You will incur a major debt if you do no
t leave," Un promised in his light orb form. "You can prevent that if you go along with the Separation and leave the lower planes entirely."

  Ruk scoffed. "Until the Separation comes, I have full liberty to spend my remaining time in this Immortal Plane as I wish. There is still much to learn and perfect before we go."

  The orbs grew in intensity and size, expressing irritation, but Ruk had clearly had enough of the conversation. He dove down toward the Immortal capital, his mighty wings cutting through the clouds. Anger radiated off him, and worse, a toxic pride and the assurance that he couldn't be wrong. It would be his downfall.

  For a moment, I clenched my eyes shut with a tiny shudder of dread. I knew what was coming soon. Ruk had flown too close to the sun.

  Ruk dropped down into Itzarriol and landed on the immense windowsill of an ornate building. He quickly transformed back into his humanoid form clothed in splendid silver robes and slipped inside the room. It was a grand, elaborate study. Irrikus was hunched over a table with various scrolls and plans splayed out on the surface, his face slightly older now but still bright with intelligence and focus. Irrikus looked up from his work and greeted Ruk, their words fading as the modern Ruk told us grimly, "I wasn't an idiot. I knew by this point that Irrikus had flaws. He was manipulative and haughty, and I’d watched him lie to many others to get his way. Yet I thought he had good intentions and was merely doing what must be done to see our plans to fruition. It was working, after all. By this time, he held a senior position on the Immortal Council. I always justified not taking action against him because I’d never caught him lying to me, and so I was sure that I was different, I was above the others. Or perhaps I never bothered to think of him as a threat because I had finally found another rare example of someone worthy of my time."