Darklight 6: Darkbirth

by Forrest, Bella

  "After what happened with Aurora, the friendship between Irrikus and me had changed." He let out a bitter laugh. "Imagine that. Yet… I thought I could use him one last time before making my escape. I thought I could just push through, do what I needed to do, and then make my escape before he was any the wiser. He was getting something in return with the leaps in technology I would be leaving behind. He would be fine. I still failed to see him as a threat because I reasoned that he could hide nothing from me. I could sense the entire composition of any spell he created or kept in my vicinity, so I would know if it did anything other than what he told me. His powers were paltry compared to my own, even in my weakened state. And I knew he had much to gain from this challenge of trying to solve my problem." He sighed, and several days of studying and experimentation unfolded before Dorian and me in mere moments. "We became consumed with trying to create a spell that could restore me—one that could absorb significant energy at once, and which I could then consume to let me return to the Higher Plane, fix Aurora, and return us both to the Immortal Plane. I told Irrikus that I would continue teaching him magic afterward, although I was secretly planning on doing no such thing and hoping he might prove himself in the meantime."

  The Immortal Council appeared briefly before us, and I noted that now, unlike in the earlier visions, the council was only made up of rulers, several of whom I recognized: Sempre, Izelde, Orin. Irrikus had apparently already started pushing his exclusionary policies by this point. They looked younger and less splendid, but already I could see the hints of what they would become in their hardened eyes. It was always clear, though, that Irrikus was the one in charge. He ruled whatever room he was in, even when he was of lower status on the council. I watched it unfold, horrified, as Ruk continued. Jia hid partially behind my leg.

  "Meanwhile, Irrikus often left me alone in the lab, insisting that he would take care of the tedious work of politics. He told me the other council members wanted to meet me, to get to know the mysterious being they knew was in part responsible for so much of the city's success, but that he would keep my secret. What a fool I was to believe him." Ruk's voice frayed at the edges. He let out an angry, feral growl. "He hid me, telling me he was my ally and my refuge. In the back of my mind, there was always Aurora to get back to, and perhaps that hope is what blinded me enough to maintain the quickly deteriorating thread of loyalty between Irrikus and me."

  The younger Ruk stood in front of a large, complicated silver machine with several blinking lights. It was clearly powered by a variety of crystals, wires running from the device to hook into crystals in various small clear boxes. In a large, dim underground cavern, the machine and crystals provided eerie illumination. Irrikus stood a foot behind Ruk, who eyed the invention with palpable frustration. Around the room, the walls of the chamber were lined with the ghostly shapes of harvesters. They each held bundles of dark souls. Very dark.

  "Are you ready?" Irrikus asked. His voice echoed in the chamber, ringing in my ears. A cold jolt ran down my spine.

  The current Ruk sighed wearily. "We were trying to isolate dark soul energy without requiring a harvester to distill it or a vampire to drain it. It wasn't nearly as powerful as the universal energy I can absorb here in the Higher Plane, but it would have been enough. Would have. And now I know why Irrikus wanted a part in it. His intentions might have been good in the beginning, I don't know, but at some point, Irrikus crafted a devious web of deception for me to strangle myself in. He got me." His lavender eyes flickered to the previous version of himself. "Just listen."

  Irrikus breathed a touch heavier, excitement gleaming in his eyes. "This could be revolutionary, Ruk. The more energy there is inside it, the more energy it will be able to draw from the dark souls. I've added as much dark soul energy as I can, but it needs more to activate the spells woven into it. There are so many, you see, and they are so complex. My harvesters and makers can't produce energy fast enough to keep it powered. It consumes everything we give it before it reaches full power. But if you power it up with your own energy… just a boost, to support what we’re doing… then the machine will activate. You'll be able to draw back one thousand-fold what you give it, and then you will finally be able to rescue and heal Aurora."

  The image flickered. A red filter flashed over everything, but then the memory steadied, and the machine whirred to life as if warming up. Current Ruk clenched his eyes shut for a moment, shaking his head.

  "I had no reason to doubt the machine’s purpose. Irrikus and I had built it together, damn it. Everything he said matched the spells I could sense. Nobody had tampered with it, of that I was certain, because I wasn't foolish enough not to check for such a thing. The only thing I suspected was that his idea and the machine would fail. I knew exactly how difficult the harvesters had been for my peers to alter—they and what they do are easily the most complex parts of the Immortal Plane. But I was desperate, and Irrikus knew exactly how to convince me that it was worth a try. He appealed to our history, reminding me how we’d tried and failed on so many other projects but always found a way in the end. What I didn’t realize this time was that in his mind, whether it failed or not, he'd win. He had me in the web."

  The younger Ruk took a deep breath. I wanted to cry out to the memory and beg him not to, but it was no use. He held his hands out, and energy sparked weakly from them. With the last dregs of his strength, he powered up the crystals until they glowed brighter than any soul lantern. A deep humming started, growing louder and louder with each passing second. Ruk strained as he pushed forward, angling his hands toward the crystals.

  "You can do it," Irrikus urged. "Nobody else but you. We need more. We're on the cusp of it, Ruk, I can see it!"

  The crystals brightened to blinding intensity. For a moment, the humming reached a crescendo and the dark souls were wrenched from the harvesters’ grip. The souls started to swirl around the center of the machine in a gloomy dance that made me take an instinctive step back, unsettled. Beside me, Dorian’s reaction was even more intense. His fangs descended, and the distress on his face at the horror of the scene broke my heart. It was monstrous to see something being used to try and mechanically drain a soul, treating it like something inanimate and meaningless to be used as nothing but fuel.

  Suddenly, younger Ruk toppled over with a cry, crashing into the machine, his energy exhausted. There was a faint scent of burning that hit my nostrils, not of flesh, but something just as horrible. The machine smoked and promptly shorted out, every crystal exploding in a shower of cutting shards before the whole construct went dark. Ruk slid to the ground and turned over, watching in a daze as Irrikus sauntered toward him. There were shackles in the ruler’s hand—they were covered in complex glyphs similar to those on Ruk’s chains when I met him in the sanitarium. Irrikus smiled icily.

  "I want to thank you," he said. The stony voice made my heart stop with horror… the change from an earnest and ambitious young ruler to the tyrant Dorian and I knew was now complete. "You've helped me so much, my friend. In fact, I believe this is just the beginning of how useful you'll be to me."

  The image went black as past-Ruk lapsed into unconsciousness. Irrikus's cold eyes and the gleaming crown set above them were the last things to fade, the image burned into my own memory.

  That sick… He's so… I couldn't find the right words to express my fury. The blackness cleared into the regular mist of the landscape around us. When the gray greeted me, I found myself staring, stunned, at Ruk as he was now.

  Ruk slumped forward but held himself up. He looked emotionally drained as he stood in the same spot where his younger form used to be. "I can only assume that he gambled on the machine failing or somehow sabotaged it," he said and dropped his humiliated gaze to the reflective ground. “With my strength and energy utterly depleted, when I had nothing left, he caught me with a simple set of shackles we'd designed for larger creatures who lived on ambient dark energy. He added more spells and chains to prevent me from absorbing energy. And
you have an idea of the rest, of how you found me… I won't show you anything of that long, long captivity. None of us would enjoy it. Suffice it to say, I underwent grotesque tortures in the place that I’d helped build. They tried to make me give up my secrets. I gave them anything they wanted, so long as it didn't break the Mandate. I locked that part of my life away from all of them, but especially from him. That tyrant. I curse him every waking moment now. When the tear in the barrier was discovered, I was taken to help unravel it, a little bit at a time, every night."

  My hands clenched into fists as I shook with anger, determined to see Irrikus removed from existence. I couldn’t help but flinch away from the memory of the cruelties he’d inflicted on Aurora and Ruk, which I knew would haunt me for a long time. His merciless plan for the lower planes had to be stopped, or no one would ever be truly safe. Now, with the full force of realizing just what he had suffered, Ruk's desire for revenge made more sense to me.

  "So when I spoke of revenge,” I said quietly, “in the caverns of the Restless Desert… that's why you agreed to help us? You hate Irrikus more than anything else."

  Ruk lowered his head somberly. "I think that’s what appealed to me in your speech, yes. I still felt half mad, barely in control of my senses by that point." He sighed. "You don't spend nearly a millennium being tortured and keep your sanity well checked. All I saw ahead of me was revenge. Then, when I realized how impossible that was, it just turned to a desperate need for rest."

  I sucked in a sharp breath, trying to anticipate what Ruk might say next. "And now? Is that truly the only thing you care about?” Everything inside me begged it not to be true. “You deserve redemption alongside revenge.”

  Ruk dragged his chin up to meet my gaze. "Rest as my only objective? Yes, I want a brief break, but that's not my overall goal. I need to find the energy to fix the spells on Aurora so she can live out the rest of her days. She'll never be a normal wildling again, but with a sufficient amount of energy, I can grant her some type of peace and comfort. At the very least, I can satisfy her original wish of being able to move between land and water. Perhaps I can do more, but that remains to be seen. I'm not sure I have the time that I need. I certainly don't have the energy. One of the reasons I brought you here… I thought I might be able to convince you to let me borrow more light energy. It wouldn’t be for me. It would be for her. Light energy is very powerful for healing when freely given."

  Dorian shook his head slowly, still looking dazed from what we’d seen. "That was your one mistake. You didn't trust us with your story. You didn't even treat us like we had autonomy. Ruk, you gave us no choice." He exhaled slowly, his brow furrowing into a pensive expression. His hostility had faded in the face of everything we'd witnessed.

  I hesitated as silence fell between the three of us. It was truly sinking in for me that Ruk was a victim in all this too. "I want you to know that we would've helped you, if you'd asked," I said softly, allowing the last of my anger to fade away. "All you needed to do was explain."

  A sad smile crossed Ruk's face. "I'm almost beginning to believe that you would have… but I trusted no one, not even myself, after Irrikus."

  Dorian crossed his arms tightly and studied Ruk with a shrewd but compassionate eye. "If we work together to fix the tear, it’s only a matter of fulfilling our pact for you, but you know it means more than that to Lyra and me. And while we’re willing to help you, we're not just here to support your personal quest. We’re here to protect those most at risk of suffering and death if the tear continues to grow worse. And it will. It will meld the planes together in ways they weren't meant to be melded… perhaps because your kind should never have separated them in the first place. But…" He spread his hands in an open gesture of peace. "We need you. You need us. We have common enemies."

  Dorian's statement, the reminder of our common goal, floated over us.

  "The three of us can work together," I added.

  "But no more lies." Dorian narrowed his eyes. "Absolutely zero."

  Ruk gave a solemn nod. "No more lies, I promise. Please, follow me back to my estate… while I still have one. I wonder what I’ll dissolve first." He laughed bitterly to himself. Dorian and I shot each other a curious look. “The arbiters might sense it, but hopefully they’ll think I’m gearing up to begin my first payment.”

  "Just to be clear so that we can help you however we can, are there any other reasons you brought us to the Higher Plane with you, apart from what you already told us about Aurora and paying off your debt?" Dorian asked as we approached the curling, shell-shaped structure.

  Ruk gave us a genuinely remorseful look. "I respect the two of you enough now to no longer waste time concealing information. What I showed you, I've never allowed anyone else to see. I really did require your help to finish the portal back to the Higher Plane. I did need to get back here to get the energy to fulfill our pact—even though I can't gather it as quickly as the others of my kind, thanks to my currently limited abilities. Here, I can at least recharge much more quickly than in the lower planes. Beyond considering your light energy and how it might help Aurora, I didn't have a grand plan." He shook his head. "I see now what apologies mean to you, and I make mine again. My hopes were caught up in the belief that I could succeed in my immediate goal of getting home and getting out before anybody noticed. And obviously, that proved to be more of an issue than I’d assumed it would be."

  "They were waiting for you here," I said. "Just like when you came back with Aurora."

  "Yes." He sighed wearily. "I’d hoped that bringing you two would allow me to leverage my way out of debt. You're clever and resourceful. I suppose one part of me saw the good ambition in you—one that reminded me of Aurora and perhaps the very best parts of my early friendship with Irrikus—and hoped that you'd be able to convince the arbiters to abandon the Mandate of Secrecy. Or at least show them that the lower planes matter and that the tear needs to be attended to. I'm sorry I didn't have more of a strategy planned."

  Well, it was sort of flattering… in a way.

  "Let me get this straight,” I said, almost laughing. “You thought we'd be able to get you out of your cosmic debt, save Aurora, and fix everything wrong with your peers’ ignorant attitudes?" I couldn’t hold back the chuckle any longer. "Geez, Ruk, no pressure!"

  A playful smile briefly flitted across his face, reminding me of how he’d been in his younger years, in the presence of Aurora. I felt as if I were truly seeing him for the first time.

  "I'm keenly aware that you two are very resourceful creatures." He looked up at what remained of his estate. Despite everything he’d been through, a small expression of hope appeared on that worn red face. "We still have time to achieve those goals."

  Chapter Nineteen

  After all the emotional turmoil, I was so ready to finally jump into action.

  Ruk, however, was more excited than Dorian and I put together. He rushed ahead to his estate, murmuring excitedly about possible next steps. It was a side of him that I'd only glimpsed when he showed us memories of his younger self. The cogs in his head were clearly turning.

  I hung back a few feet with Dorian, Jia trailing even farther behind us. Had he been able to watch Ruk’s memories, too? The proxy seemed extra silent, but maybe I was just paranoid. Was I reading too much into it? Dorian shot me a small but weary smile. Our time spent at the trial and watching Ruk's entire adventure unfold had nearly flattened us. We would need a chance to rest soon with some quasi-sleep after the mental strain, but at least we were finally on to something. I gave him an understanding nod.

  "He certainly seems to be having some ideas," Dorian murmured and sent an interested glance at Ruk. "And it looks like we’re going to need to start trying to figure out how we can help Ruk escape this plane. The priority is obviously finding and healing Aurora, followed by our quest to fix the tear, but every goal involves eventually needing to get out of this damn plane. That’s currently our greatest obstacle."

  Ruk sudd
enly stopped and looked back at us, focusing on Jia. "First, I need to shoo your friend away. Proxy, go as far as you're allowed away from these two. Whatever the limit is set by your master, do it."

  Jia said nothing but immediately started walking until he was about twenty yards away.

  Before I could ask why, Ruk strode up to the tower directly opposite the missing one. I raised a curious brow as he splayed his hands across the green stones, stroking them lovingly before he pressed his long and narrow fingers hard onto their surface. A trembling shook the ground beneath us as I watched his hands melt into the stone. Dorian grabbed my arm, but thankfully it only lasted for a second. The towering structure crumbled to rubble before Ruk. Awed, I watched the rubble break into smaller and smaller rocks, then become sand. The sand finally wilted to a cloud of fine dust, leaving a hill where the tower used to stand. Ruk plunged his hands into the pile of sand. All at once, every grain lifted into the sky and turned into a glowing mist of forest green. It began to swirl around Ruk. As he inhaled deeply, the cloud flew to coat his entire body, sinking into every inch of exposed skin. It was a beautiful, if unsettling, sight. He smiled at us and tipped his head back with a relieved sigh.

  "That feeling never gets old, though I’m sad to see my estate go.”

  I stared at the tower, now vanished and seemingly inside Ruk's body? "You just… absorbed the energy from dissolving your own estate?"

  Ruk rolled his shoulders and shook himself as if letting the energy settle into his body. "Because I had a good idea." He turned his sharp, bright eyes onto Dorian and me. Ruk pulled us close to him. It was interesting to see the excitement in Ruk's face, since he had previously shown so little positive emotion. But now his eyes gleamed as he grinned, the dramatic bone structure of his elegant face giving him an unearthly look, like a trickster god planning his next ploy.