by Martha Carr
Cheyenne shoved her hands in her pockets and looked up. “They have everything here, only better.”
The platform stopped, and they stepped off into a wide hallway lit by the same soft lights set in the walls on either side.
“Okay, now this is kinda creepy.” Ember floated slowly forward, scrutinizing every aspect of the hallway. “Drow apartment buildings taking Victorian décor straight from Earth.”
“Kinda makes you wonder which one came first, right?”
“Well there’s no way a human made the crossing over here, saw the style, and figured, ‘Hey, I’m gonna take this back to Earth and make it a thing.’”
“Yeah, but a magical could have.”
“Huh.” Ember wrinkled her nose. “The portals go back that far, don’t they? Makes my head hurt thinking about it.”
Cheyenne snorted. “Then stop thinking about it.”
She stopped in front of the black door with the same rune as on the black metal square. The door was covered in intricately etched designs that hinted at tree shapes and vines. Too many trees. Like all the dead Nimlothar. I gotta stop thinking about that too.
“Oh, hey. I see how to get in.” Ember reached toward the door and slid her finger along the flashing yellow square Cheyenne saw through her activator. The door clicked and let off a flash of orange light. Ember hissed and jerked her hand back, shaking it out. “Okay, ow.”
“Maybe you’re not the right drow, huh?” Cheyenne swiped her finger across the same yellow square, and the door clicked again and slid into the wall with a soft hiss.
Ember scowled at the door. “Would’ve been nice to have a little warning for that.”
“Keeps curious magicals from breaking into the drow zone.”
“Whatever.”
The room beyond illuminated automatically as soon as they stepped inside, and the door slid back into place silently.
“Hey.” Cheyenne nodded, her smile growing. “So far, so good.”
“They went Victorian in the hall and Minimalist in the rooms, huh?” Ember looked around with an approving nod. “Okay.”
“You’re really into this whole design thing, huh?”
“Are you forgetting who furnished our entire apartment?”
“Nope, and my fae designer did an excellent job if you ask me.” Cheyenne turned around with a conceding shrug. “I like our place better, Em, but this isn’t half bad.”
“Can’t argue with that. It’s huge.”
Their O’gúl apartment lacked windows and natural lighting, though Cheyenne figured she could create a window by giving the walls a few commands. Not sure I wanna look outside and see this crazy city anyway, but it’s an option.
The gray walls were bare, and the only furniture was in the middle of the room—a black couch that looked like spray-painted cardboard boxes and two matching black chairs. No tables, no decoration, no sign that this was an apartment, not a waiting room.
“Okay, wait.” Ember turned slowly, eyeing the bare walls. “Where’s the kitchen?”
“You’re assuming O’gúl houses have kitchens, Em.”
“With all this technology, they can’t make a place to cook their own meals?”
Cheyenne studied the lines of code scrolling through the walls; there weren’t nearly as many here as in the exterior makeup of the building and the public areas in the city. Because everyone wants to control their space. “Over there.”
“What?” Ember spun to stare at where the halfling pointed.
“Go check it out.”
The fae girl floated toward the left front corner of the apartment’s main room and stared at the walls. “No way. I feel like we’re in a sci-fi movie.”
“You asked about kitchens.” Cheyenne joined her, studied the activation lines. “Pretty much anything we want, right? I mean, by O’gúleesh standards, at least.”
Ember’s hand flashed purple when she ran her fingers across the blank walls. Blue lines zigzagged across the metal away from her touch, and she frowned. “It’s not working.”
“Are you getting command prompts?”
“Jesus Christ, are you shitting me?” Ember backed away from the wall. “No, I don’t get command prompts. I see options and what I want to do. You’re telling me you get a full-on instruction manual?”
Cheyenne reached toward the scrolling code flashing yellow in her vision. “More like a choose-your-own adventure, honestly.”
“Well, you can choose your own ass-kicking.” The fae girl folded her arms. “I can’t believe this. Elarit just handed over that top-line activator, no questions asked, huh?”
“Okay, so maybe not everything’s the activator.” Cheyenne selected the options for two cups, and the system pulled up the available drink selection. “I guess the prompts are me.”
“Damn. No wonder everybody’s been gushing about your tech knowledge.”
“I guess.”
“Kinda makes a lot more sense when you think about L’zar wigging out all the time if he sees the magical version of command prompts floating around him everywhere he goes.”
“I’m done talking about L’zar, okay?” Cheyenne slid her finger across the wall, twisted her hand to the right, and stepped aside.
With a loud hiss, the seamless metal wall, which looked like concrete, opened two panels, and a heavy drawer shot toward them. Ember yelped and darted to the side, then peered curiously into it. She looked at Cheyenne and narrowed her violet fae eyes. “You did that on purpose, didn’t you?”
“Opened the minibar? Yeah, I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“I mean, open it and try to hit me.”
Cheyenne forced back a laugh. “I can’t tell if you’re serious right now.”
“I don’t know what I am.” Scoffing, Ember reached into the metal drawer and snatched the copper cup and the bottle of Bloodshine. “Fucking command prompts.”
“I didn’t think it would get to you like this.”
“Neither did I!” Ember sped across the room with another flash of purple light and dropped onto the boxy couch. “Get the hell over here and drink this with me before I down the whole thing myself.”
“Yep. Just a sec.” Cheyenne scanned the rows of options on the pseudo-kitchen’s system. “I’m guessing you’re hungry.”
“Only because I’d rather not wake up tomorrow in as much pain as you woke up today.” The cork popped out of the Bloodshine bottle and bounced across the room. Ember said as she poured herself a tall glass of the bubbling gold booze, “Okay. Yeah, food sounds good. Sorry, I’m being a dick.”
Cheyenne finished choosing the closest thing to recognizable food, set the command to prepare their meal, and grabbed the second copper cup. The now-empty drawer clanged back into place, and the seams between the panels disappeared again. “Totally okay. Kinda hard to compete with me in that arena, so I won’t hold it against you.”
“Very funny.” Ember lifted the bottle and looked around the room. “I seriously hope nobody lived here before you. Where the hell did they put things?”
“Uh, do you want me to show you how to do it?”
The fae girl’s only reply was to chug down half her cup.
And I thought I was the one feeling out of place here. Cheyenne took the closest black boxy-looking armchair and leaned down to reach for the line of code she wanted that was scrolling across the metal floor. Or I could try it with magic instead.
She sat back in the chair and flicked her finger at the floor beside the couch. Her activator lit up the spell prompt, and a yellow dart of light struck the place she would have touched. The segmented pieces of metal unfolded and built upon themselves until a sleek, round black table formed beside the couch.
By the time Ember lowered her copper cup from her lips, the new furnishing was firmly in place. The bottle of Bloodshine in her hand clinked against the edge of the table, and she jumped in surprise and stared at it. “Did you make that?”
“Yep.”
“From where yo
u’re sitting?”
“Mmhmm.”
Ember leaned forward without looking away from the table to hand the bottle to her friend. “My brain is melting.”
“Takes some getting used to, I guess.” Cheyenne took the bottle and filled her cup before standing to set it down on the table.
“You’re loving this, aren’t you?”
“You know what? I love that I can tell this place to make me furniture.” The halfling sat again and lifted the copper cup to her lips. “Not so sure I love grumpy Ember.”
They stared at each other for a moment, then the fae girl sighed. “Sorry. Again. I think reality might finally be setting in.”
Cheyenne took a small sip of the fizzy alcohol, and this time, she enjoyed the cool tingle of boozy energy racing up through her nose and into her head. “Well, if you wanna talk about it, I’m all ears.”
Ember’s violet eyes flicked toward her friend’s pointed purple-gray ears, and they both laughed. “You’re taking that a lot more in stride these days than you used to.”
“Guess I’m finally growing into ‘em.”
“I like it.” With another quick scowl at the table, Ember refilled her cup and held it in both hands on her lap.
“For real, though, Em. Something on your mind?”
“Too much, maybe. And I’m guessing this is how you feel a lot more than I do, so I’m getting a whole different perspective on what I used to think were your attitude problems.”
Cheyenne snorted.
“So here’s my deal. It was cool to get to watch Venga working his death-magic whatever to make that serum for you. Working with a version of the blight, I guess. And I’m willing to put aside the fact that he made the blight, ‘cause he obviously has a weird set of skills with healing, or at least cleaning up after something he created.”
“But you don’t like him.”
“I don’t like anyone who worked with that much enthusiasm for Ba’rael.”
Cheyenne cocked her head. “That include Maleshi?”
“What? No. Okay, maybe I just don’t like the scaleback necromancer. Fair enough.”
“Do you think he’ll be able to figure out how to clean this place up?”
Ember shook her head. “I don’t know. He wouldn’t talk about it, so I figured we were focusing on taking care of you while you were out. How are they, by the way?”
“The magical dart holes?” Cheyenne picked her shirt away from her shoulder to study the still-fading black lines of drow-tailored blight stretching away from the wounds. “They look a little better. Might have to give them an extra boost again before the night’s up.”
“Go ahead. I was told there’s pretty much no way you could take too much, and I don’t think any of us wanna see you and your dart holes get any worse right now.”
“Yeah, maybe later.” Cheyenne sat back in the armchair and shifted around. “Just gonna put it out there; our furniture at home is way comfier than this.”
“Right?” Ember elbowed the back of the couch. “Maybe it’s an O’gúleesh thing, huh? Get too comfortable, and you lose the urge to fuck shit up and get in fights.”
They laughed and raised their copper cups toward each other in a wordless toast.
“Anything else on your mind?”
“Just everything else.” Ember shrugged and drank again. “No big deal.”
“Well, if it helps, I’m not even a little worried about taking care of Colonel Thomas and the rest of the Bull’s Head scumbags when we go back Earthside.” Cheyenne took a deep breath. “It’ll be like the first time I crashed a FRoE sting, only this time I know what I’m getting into.”
“You want me there for that?”
“Only if you wanna be.”
Ember wrinkled her nose. “I’ll think about it.”
“Sure. We still have a few days.” Leaning back fully in the armchair, Cheyenne dangled her copper cup over the armrest and stared at the ceiling. The recliners are way better too. “I definitely want you there when I go check on my mom, though. If you don’t have anything better to do.”
“I’m your Nós Aní, right? Bound to serve and all that crap.” Ember almost snorted bubbly Bloodshine all over herself with her next sip. “Of course I’ll be there.”
“Thanks. ‘Cause once I’m done taking care of the loyalists and cutting Colonel Thomas out of the FRoE, I need to focus on getting her out from under that curse. Which I don’t even understand.”
“You seem to be doing an awful lot of figurative cutting these days.”
“Yeah, yeah. The heart. The rot. The curse. Oh, hey. You think a necromancer knows anything about curses?”
Ember blinked at the floor and cocked her head. “First time I’ve ever known anything about a necromancer, and I’m not about to assume anything. Venga’s like a mad scientist with a conscience. Maybe.”
“I wanna go talk to him tomorrow. See what he’s figured out so far about healing the blight.”
“Sure.” A sudden grin flashed across the fae girl’s face, and her eyes widened. “Hey, something I can do that you can’t.”
“Oh, yeah?”
Ember pointed at the activator behind her ear. “I did put his room on a map in this thing. That has to be the only way magicals don’t get lost in the fortress. That place is a freakin’ maze.”
“Well, then there you go.” Cheyenne raised her cup toward her friend one more time. “Something you know that I don’t, Em. I totally need you to be my guide.”
“Good thing you kept me around, huh?” Ember drank again, and that seemed to ease the rest of her short-lived frustration.
I don’t need to tell her I could find Venga in the system anyway. Or pull that map right out of her activator if I wanted.
A low buzz and a flash of blue light came from the corner behind them, and Ember asked, “Are we calling that the kitchen?”
“I guess.”
Another pulse of light raced across the wall, streaking down the metal toward their side of the room. “What’s that supposed to be?”
“The O’gúl version of a microwave timer.” Cheyenne quickly stood and went to the kitchen wall as a shorter, wider drawer opened to present two metal plates covered in steaming food with a name she couldn’t even pretend to know how to pronounce. Smells kinda like pizza, if you ignore the pit-sweat undertones.
“Oh, my God.” Ember stared at their plates of food and took another long drink. “We have our own replicator.”
“Huh?”
“It’s a Star Trek thing. Never mind.”
Chapter Eleven
One O’gúleesh meal and three-quarters of a bottle of Bloodshine later, Ember floated up off the couch and gingerly set down her cup. “I need to sleep.”
Cheyenne chuckled. “Hey, don’t stay up to make me feel better.”
“Didn’t even cross my mind.” With a crooked smile, Ember looked at the one other door on the right side of the room, then turned to study the door on the left. “Which room’s mine?”
“Beats me. You choose.”
The fae girl blinked heavily and belched. Gold sparks fizzled out of her mouth before disappearing again, and she swallowed. “Closer. I feel a lot better, by the way. That’s good stuff.”
“Glad you’re here, Em. Goodnight.”
“Good-fucking-night, halfling.” Ember floated in a not-so-straight path toward the door on Cheyenne’s left. “Tomorrow, we’ll tackle the necromange…necaroms…shit. You know what I mean.”
She slapped her hand on the door, which opened beneath her touch and closed quickly again behind her.
Cheyenne stared at the door with the ghost of a smile. Lucky smack, I guess. She waited for a moment longer, listening to the soft creak of whatever bed was in her friend’s room. When the apartment fell silent again but for Ember’s snores sneaking through the door, the halfling set her empty cup on the side table and headed for the other room. There better be a bed in this one too. No way am I sleeping in one of those chairs.
She tested the activator’s ability to sync with her magic again when it prompted her with a command to wave the door aside, grinning when it worked. My spellwork might be shit, but I’ve got this activator thing nailed down on both sides of the Border.
It was definitely another bedroom, though the only piece of furniture in it was a bed built on a platform jutting from the opposite wall. Sitting on the edge of it was her backpack. Cheyenne cocked her head with a chuckle, then climbed the two metal steps like stacked boxes and sat on the mattress. Okay, softer than the couch.
She kicked off her black Vans and let them drop to the floor before lying back and staring at the ceiling. Even when she dimmed the illuminated streams of code endlessly moving over every metal surface, closed her eyes, and focused on breathing, her body fought with her to keep moving.
Finally, she sat up again. “I already got twelve hours of sleep today. Not passing out anytime soon.”
She hopped off the bed and walked in a slow, curious circle, pulling the system up in her vision again to take a look at her options. “So, if I’m working with synced magic now, guess this is the time to practice.” And here’s hoping I don’t blow anything up again.
Rubbing her hands together, she stepped toward the left-hand wall and chose the path she wanted based on what the activator gave her. Sure. A window. Why not?
Her fingers reached toward the wall; she didn’t even realize her hands were moving with some memory she didn’t have until she was halfway through casting the spell. Then her gaze dropped to her gesturing fingers, and she stifled a surprised laugh. “Holy shit.”
The wall responded the way she wanted it to, panel after segmented panel folding back and disappearing within the rest of the metal until a perfect square had opened for her.
If this wasn’t so cool, I’d be freaking out about my hands being possessed.
Cheyenne dropped her hands to her sides again and stepped toward the newly created window to peer at the city below. Floating lights bobbed slowly back and forth across the streets of the inner circle inhabited only by drow, and one fae Nós Aní, illuminating the dark figures who all looked like L’zar’s halfling daughter. Beyond that, the lower levels glinted with lights of their own and flashing magical bursts. The buzz of celebration still raging through Hangivol’s streets and alleyways came through the window in a muted blur.