Darklight 7: Darkfall

by Forrest, Bella

  To my surprise, the forlorn woman spoke. “They will try to use you as their puppet.” She lifted her chin and met Inkarri’s gaze with a serious, heartfelt look. “We have already lost. Take us to Itzarriol and punish us. We deserve nothing less.”

  Maybe the Immortal Council is more complex than I thought. I had pictured them as loyal servants to Irrikus, but they wanted to survive this more than anything. They saw a potential savior in Inkarri.

  Inkarri seemed to fracture before my eyes. “Don’t lecture me on what I should do,” she said, her voice cracking. “Take care of your own mess. I’m leaving.” She strode toward the staircase, then stopped with her foot on the first step. “Sonia. If you want to come with me, you can.”

  "Me?" Sonia echoed.

  "Yes," Inkarri said, turning to face her. I couldn’t read the expression on her face, but it was intense. "I don’t yet know what I will do, but you've been loyal to me, and a good asset. I'll protect you from any danger you face in the Immortal Plane. I know you've wanted to explore it, and I suspect we’ll be doing a great deal of that."

  Apprehension seized me as I saw Sonia seriously consider this. "Sonia, you'll be trapped in the Immortal Plane if you do that. You can't go back. You can never go back to the Mortal Plane if we fix the meld."

  Sonia stared down at her two hands, as if they held answers. A moment passed, but she stepped toward Inkarri. I caught her arm, and Sonia looked at me. She seemed torn between grief and excitement, but excitement was winning.

  “She needs me, even if she won’t say so,” Sonia said softly, but managed a smile for me. “Thanks for everything you’ve done. Please let my family know that I’ll return to them as soon as I can.” I could see that she’d already made up her mind, and I didn’t have the words it would take to change it back. I let her go, and she joined Inkarri on the staircase.

  "Uh, is it wise to let Inkarri go? She was our enemy," Juneau whispered to me. He and Laini had stepped closer to our group in the madness, so we were all right next to the machine. I shrugged, giving Dorian a look. It didn't seem like Inkarri was bent on hurting anyone.

  "It looks like she doesn't know what to do," I said. "She's not going to act like her father, after witnessing what happens to dark souls… I'm just not sure she can change entirely."

  Dorian watched Sonia closely. "She seems to have found a good guide. I don't think we need to worry about her. Her honor will propel her to a better place than her father could've ever reached… but we'll keep track of them. The Immortal Plane will soon be a very different place."

  "You always were the optimist in the family," Lanzon said, with a faded chuckle.

  Sonia had paused for a moment, saying goodbye to her father’s spirit. Now, she followed Inkarri up the stairs. Should I follow her? Try to convince her to stay? No, this was her decision. I needed to let her go, and Inkarri, too. I turned to Ruk, with whom we had made the pact, and gave him a questioning look.

  “The pact is fulfilled,” he told me, going back to the machine. And now we needed to fix the meld. Sen pulled away from the controls for a moment, her head tilted upward like there was a sound only she could hear.

  “I finally reached them,” Sen said, giving me and Dorian a meaningful look. Excellent! We needed the arbiters more than ever.

  Ruk scoffed. "Oh, now they can help, after all this? What convenient timing for them." Sen shot him a scolding look. "Do you want help, or not?"

  Before they could continue their bickering, a gust of wind wrapped around our groups. Even the spirits gasped, sensing the strangeness of what was coming. Smoky wisps formed on the ground. A figure emerged from the cloud, and Un stared at us, his arbiter humanoid form looking very solid and real in this strange combination of planes. Before saying a word, he peered around and placed a single hand on his cheek.

  "Goodness, what did you do to this place?" Un muttered, aghast.

  "Not us," Ruk corrected firmly. "Now, help us."

  "I will—it's just… I've never felt anything like this before. The Higher Plane is being drained of energy at a rapid rate as the barriers fluctuate. Most of our estates are crumbling," Un said with an irritated scowl. "Things have been utter madness, but it looks like we're not the only ones—oh." He stopped short as he registered the presence of Laini, Juneau, and the others. Then the spirits came into view. "Hello there."

  Sen twisted her lips, annoyed. "Un. Watch your tone."

  "Higher Plane?" Laini parroted, with a furrowed brow.

  Juneau whistled. "Sounds like a fun place." Sen sighed deeply.

  "Oh, damn the rules for now," Un muttered, shocking me to the ends of my hair. "The planes are ripping at the seams. Do you want my help, or not? Until all this is fixed, let's talk freely. You can explain later, or we can cleanse their memories." He said the last part to me. Great, I'm Captain Blow-Your-Mind-With-All-My-Lies once I have to sort all this out with our friends, again. Fantastic.

  Another plume of smoke rocketed up from the ground, making the council members gasp as another arbiter appeared right next to them. Xiu stepped out of the misty cloud. Her humanoid figure was weirdly beautiful with its elflike features in the interior of the mountain peak. She let her eyes pass over the environment with a small frown.

  "This is terrible," she said darkly. Her elf-like features made the Immortal Council members go wide-eyed, but she barely gave them a passing look. Her hand went to the machine. "Such a monstrosity. I can't believe they managed to develop such a thing."

  "I can," Un said bitterly as he crossed his arms. "You can sense this entire place is absolutely unnaturally evil."

  A new shimmer of smoke burst upward. Pik grinned from ear to ear as she circled around in smoke form, refusing to solidify right away. "The Mortal Plane and the Immortal Plane," she gushed. "I mean, it's in a state of absolute madness, but it's gorgeous in its own way."

  Laini blinked and looked at me. "These are your friends from the other continent, meant to help us?"

  "The Higher Plane," Pik corrected. Xiu grimaced severely. "What? I heard Un blabbering earlier. We should focus on the tear."

  Four more arbiters arrived. Bi, Krysh, and two others I didn't recognize followed behind Pik in their own smoke clouds. They hurried toward Xiu, waiting for her instructions as she conversed with Ruk.

  "What do you need?" Xiu asked. "We can only entrust the magnitude of this task to the Gate Maker himself."

  “We need a lot of energy in order to stabilize everything," Ruk said. He stilled for a moment as fourteen specks of bright light appeared all around us. This time, it wasn't the spirits. "Are these—?"

  "Unbelievable," Xiu whispered. I raised a curious brow as one of the lights began to speak.

  "Hello, brothers and sisters," one of them said. His voice was like a whisper that wrapped all around us. "It’s been quite some time, hasn’t it? We set out to investigate the tear, and while we studied it, the disrupted universe drained us until we were shells of ourselves, and we were trapped… We couldn't do anything but float through the planes, unable to contact anyone… until now, that is. We were drawn to you. It's good to see you, Xiu."

  I gasped. It was the missing arbiters! Ruk had said there were a number of them who were too far away from the Higher Plane to call upon.

  "Welcome back," Xiu said gently. Her worried eyes went to Ruk, who stared up at the mountain peak's opening. How were they going to get enough energy to fix this, if it had already sucked several arbiters dry? His mind must have been in overdrive. It felt like he wasn't really with us at all, but rather completely focused on the task at hand.

  "You seem to have made a lot of friends, Lyra," Zach said to me with a laugh. "You always had a knack for picking up people from all over."

  The missing arbiters zipped around us without saying anything. They examined the spirits, then Laini and Juneau, and ended with Dorian and me. They were like a cluster of fireflies, tiny and fragile.

  "We could sense Un’s frustration from miles away," one of them
whispered. "We’re here to help."

  I smiled at the orb as Juneau and Laini sent me strange looks. They had no idea what these creatures were. Sen, having given up on protecting the Mandate, just sighed and tried to get Ruk's attention.

  As she did, my comm sparked to life. I let out a little noise of shock, surprised to hear a voice on the other line. The strange melding of the planes must’ve allowed it to work for the moment, but who knew how long that would last.

  "Are you dead?" Arlonne snarled. "I've been calling on this damn thing for hours."

  My heart soared with hope. "Arlonne! How are you? How's the training camp?"

  "Ugly. One of your human vehicles lodged itself in the rulers’ prison in the training yard. The mess hall is overrun with prickly plants that I hate, but we're okay." Her voice wavered for a moment from the weakness of the connection. She let out a huff. "What's the situation over there?"

  I summarized it as best as I could, hoping she could communicate with the others. I had no idea how long the connection would hold.

  As I spoke I realized how surreal this all was. Here I stood, with vampires, spirits, rulers, and arbiters, to try to prevent the end of the world. It was breathtaking. Never in a million years at the beginning of my journey with Dorian had I ever imagined such a situation. I had discovered an entire new world of beings beyond my imagination, and now we were all united.

  The connection of the comm went in and out, but Arlonne grunted like she got most of it.

  "The connection is bad," I muttered. Sen gently touched the comm in my ear with an anxious frown.

  "The ambient dark energy of the Immortal Plane is in conflict with the Mortal Plane's own energy, it seems," she muttered. I nodded, remembering how electromagnetic devices never worked in the Immortal Plane. Before I could think about connecting to Reshi, Ruk came up to me.

  "I'd like to talk to Aurora," he said. His lavender eyes held a strange pleading. Does he think she's been hurt? Arlonne would've told me, but I didn't argue with Ruk. I gave him the comm, and he slid it into his ear, holding it in place. I updated Dorian and the others to let them know that the training camp was okay. As I did, Ruk politely asked Arlonne to grab Aurora.

  "Aurora?" Ruk asked. For a moment, a slice of his younger self peeked through. "Listen, I need to ask you something. Do you remember when Irrikus was studying energy?" They lapsed into a conversation that I could only piece together from his side. Ruk was asking her questions about the sources of energy, prodding her to remember everything she could from Irrikus's research. It sounded as if Aurora was fully healed, from the animated voice that slightly leaked out from the earpiece. Eventually, Aurora gave him an answer that made Ruk grunt and go silent.

  He was making me nervous. I studied him carefully as his body stilled, and then he pressed the comm harder into his ear.

  "Aurora, I think I have an idea, thank you." His shoulders squared. "I don't like it, but it may be our only option. I want to say goodbye to you, just in case this doesn’t work. I want to let you know how much you've meant to me. More than that, I want to say I'm sorry for everything." She responded with something that made him let out a sad chuckle. "Yes, you're right. I need to stop wanting things and just do them. So, I will. You are my friend, and I care for you more than you'll ever know. I don't know what will happen, but listen… one day, I hope to truly show you the world above the water’s surface."

  My heart throbbed with grief. Ruk was once a prisoner locked in my neighboring cell, then an enemy, a reluctant ally, and now, a friend. As he poured out his heart, I teared up. Everyone averted their gaze as Ruk whispered goodbye, except for Un, who watched in stunned silence. Could Un ever understand why Ruk cared so much for a lower-plane being? I expected to see scorn in the proud arbiter's face, but instead Un’s gaze dropped with something that almost looked like jealousy.

  Ruk passed me the comm back. I held on to it tightly, desperately wanting to comfort him, but then I saw Zach and Lanzon. We all had lost and would continue losing as long as the meld wasn’t reversed. He had mourned Aurora for centuries, but he’d at least gotten to see her again after her years of slumber. Whether his feelings were romantic or platonic, I couldn't say. It didn't seem to matter. Ruk cared for Aurora in the way that I think many people wished they could be cared for. Arbiters could know love, in the end.

  Ruk motioned for the arbiters to gather around him. His red form looked small and drained, but his eyebrows knitted together with fierce determination. A blazing motivation sparked in his usually flat eyes.

  "I figured it out," he said. "The only source of energy big enough to fix the meld is the energy from the barriers themselves. We must use the very thing that caused this mess in order to undo it."

  Xiu sucked in a breath but didn't argue. There was so little time. There was barely concealed panic on her usually composed face. "Let's do it." None of the arbiters disagreed. They came together as a group, looking more grim and focused than I’d ever seen them.

  "It may look strange," Ruk explained to us. "Currently, the barriers are no longer collapsing, and their energy is no longer tangling the planes together. There are also places where the barriers still hold… There's an immense amount of energy in them, even after all these years. If we take that energy and combine it with a bit more, we have a chance. We'll use the crystals here, and give our own energy, too. We are partially responsible for this, in the end."

  Xiu lowered her head in somber apology. "You speak truthfully, but we need you most of all, Ruk. You must direct all this energy and try to return the planes to how they once were. There is nobody else who can accomplish such a task. I'm sorry that you have to be burdened with it, but I will give as much as I am able."

  The missing arbiters pulsed around Ruk. His own personal cheerleaders.

  Exhaustion flickered beneath Ruk's calm expression. His body should've buckled under the weight of his tremendous task ahead, but that was not the Ruk I knew. He had fought to make his way against his own kind, against Irrikus himself, and ended up the victor. Now, he had to face the seeds of fate he'd planted so long ago.

  "I'll do my best," Ruk said, and turned to look at all of us. His lips tilted upward as he met my gaze. "You know, some meddling lower beings have taught me to continue forging ahead, even when it seems impossible."

  I smiled, despite the looming danger. I believed in him more than anyone. Ruk was the only being in the entire universe who could fix all this.

  The arbiters organized themselves into a circle around Ruk. Next to them, the defunct machine sat with heavy presence. I tried to ignore Alan's fallen body on the ground.

  Ruk grinned rakishly at me. "Lyra and Dorian, thank you for everything." The fierce affection he spoke with warmed my entire body. "You two never gave up. Despite your frustrating sincerity and refusal to take no for an answer, I found something because of you. You helped me discover a piece of myself that I thought I lost long ago. Wish me luck, my dear friends." His eyes twinkled with a mischievous air that made me think he was plotting something, even now. The lavender color disappeared as he finally closed his eyes and gave his full focus to the task at hand.

  37

  Lyra

  The arbiters raised their arms around Ruk, who resembled a glorious statue with his closed eyes. Energy poured into him from each arbiter. His body braced under the effect of the power, drawing everything in like a sponge. A tapestry of rainbow colors flooded into Ruk, like the portals he created. He was the portal now, between our chaotic world and the new, healed world beyond this. Laini let out an awed gasp beside me. I understood completely. I had seen this in Ruk’s memories, but up close, it was breathtaking. The arbiters strained to give him everything they had. Every cell in my body tensed. Waiting was always the worst part, and besides the color show, it didn't appear as if much was happening.

  I breathed in. The smell of ozone vanished, replaced by something pleasant and alive. Instinctively, my hand went for Zach’s, as if I could still touch
him. After the arbiters finished this, I would have to let him go. He couldn't stay. Alan's body lurked behind us, a relic of what we'd done. I pressed my hand to my chest.

  "I’m not sure how I feel about shooting him," I whispered. Zach gave me an understanding look.

  "I feel avenged," Zach replied with a smile. "Super avenged." Gina let out a half-chuckle, half-sob. She knew he was going to leave us. He and Lanzon would have to move on. Lanzon softened his gaze as he looked at us. He stood between Laini and Dorian, wearing a look that said he wished he could stay forever.

  The desire to cling to the moment struck me like a punch to the face. I longed for my brother to stay with me, to help thaw the numb sensation in my chest when I remembered that I was the one to finally kill Alan. A conversation I might not ever have with my parents. I hadn't decided how to handle that.

  A wild thought occurred. If I stopped the arbiters now, I could keep him here. I could hold on to Zach, as I had when we were children. He was the one who first taught me how to be brave. How was I supposed to do it without him? He was always in my plans for life, woven into every imagined future that I casually fantasized about before going to sleep at night. I’d wanted us to raise our kids together, if we had them, and I’d hoped that his wit would rub off on my children. There was nothing more comforting than hearing Zach crack an impossible joke that nobody else could get away with. Worse, I would laugh because I always laughed. But obviously, stopping the arbiters was impossible. If I did, I would only have a few more moments with Zach before we all died.

  I wiped away a tear that sprouted in the corner of my eye. It seemed cruel that in order to save everyone, I had to give up someone so precious. My eyes went to Lanzon and Dorian, who were talking in low whispers. Laini's tears were silent, but Gina couldn't help herself. We had all given up something in this fight against evil. The world is unfair, but I'll make it better in their honor. This was the only thing that could pierce the cold grief running through me. Determination was my fuel in life, and it would find me again once I’d cried out all the tears I needed to.