[Beastborne: Tower of Blight]  Chapter 57

Besal realized the problem as the droplets of blood landed on the pile of ashes, but kept his counsel to himself.

He wasn’t evil, he just wanted to see what would happen.

Ralst, in all her infinite wisdom, had forgotten that the rectangle of light was still on the pile of ashes from the window.

Luda hadn’t. For a moment, Besal wondered if perhaps the Oracle was plain evil. Then he saw the same curiosity in her eyes that he felt.

As the ashes stirred and reconstituted from a cloud of smoke into a young man dressed in clothes about two centuries out of date, the vampyr smiled winsomely and put his hands on his hips as if he were modeling.

“Well, if this isn’t a pretty–”

He promptly ignited in a flash so bright that it reminded Besal of a camera flash from Hal’s Earth.

Luda gave Besal an impish grin, as if she had also known all along that would happen. He shared a smile and a wink with her. Not an easy thing with the helmet he had on, but she seemed to get the gist.

Ralst sighed. “Right. The sun.”

“I dare say the old boy was quite pleased to see you,” the lich said thoughtfully. “Normally, he is quite possessive of me. Classically trained Assassin, don’t you know? Uses a Shadecore.”

Besal tilted his head at the word. Wasn’t there something from his memories about Hal’s Monster Core and… something else. The longer he was away from Hal, the more the memories seemed to deteriorate. They were as fragile as cobwebs. One wrong breeze and they disappeared.

Shaking his head to rid himself of the thoughts that wouldn’t come anymore, he caught Luda giving him a worried expression. “It’s nothing,” he told her softly.

Her look of concern was unsettlingly touching. She was diabolical in her own way, but completely harmless at the same time. He could not tell whether he wanted to hug her or strangle her most of the time.

All part of being alive, I guess.

If there was one thing he was glad for, it was that Hal’s memories of Noth and him alone had completely fled his mind.

Good thing he and Luda didn’t hook up.

That would have been too much for the Khaeros to handle. Not to mention Luda looked way too young for Hal. While Besal had lost the reasoning for it, he understood that it was some great terrible taboo.

He was just incredibly relieved he didn’t have a mental image of Hal’s sexual misadventures. In fact, he was glad none of his memories included such disquieting images.

Sharing memories had its downsides, no matter how illuminating they were to the way humanity worked.

With a flick of his hand, the lich caused the windows to turn dark like smoked glass. There was the faintest trace of light. Just enough to see by, but not enough to kill the vampyr again.

Besal and Luda both were eager to see if he was right.

This time, it only took a single drop of blood to revitalize the vampyr.

“–group of people! Hello, Al!”

“How many times must I tell you to not call me that!” Aldrich snarled.

“Sorry, Al, sorry, I don’t mean anything by it. You’re just… well you’re such an Al,” Mac told him.

Now that he wasn’t exploding into powder, Besal had a better look at the man. He was tall and lithe, like a dancer might be, with golden brown skin, curly dark hair that fell to his ears, and most striking of all, brown eyes.

Not very common, as he understood. Not on Aldim, at any rate.

The lich sighed and shook his head. Apparently, this was an old argument that even the lich had given up on.

The young man seemed to take everybody in with a great sense of curiosity. He didn’t look like an Assassin, but looks could be deceiving.

Just look at Luda. She appears to be the most helpless little girl, and yet her visions of the future could affect every soul on this star.

The vampyr’s eyes settled on Besal. He tilted his head to the side as if unsure what he was, then settled his gaze back to the lich. “A strange fellowship you have here, Al.”

“They are… our friends,” Aldrich said diplomatically. “They are here to find out more about the Balesians, and we are not to kill them for wanting to know.”

For all his laid-back attitude, Mac had tensed at those words, then immediately relaxed. Besal watched him ease a small dagger back into his sleeve.

He’s one to watch out for.

Ralst, however, hadn’t moved a muscle. There was no doubt that she had seen it too. She just didn’t deem him a threat.

“I’ll give you the same speech I give to everybody,” she said, a trifle bored. “You get one chance to try and kill me or usurp me, whatever you want to call it. One chance and I will let bygones be bygones, but if you try again, I will have to hurt you.” She turned a brilliant, simpering smile on Aldrich. “As your friend, Al, here can attest.”

It was so upsetting that the lich stepped back from her. “Yes, I am afraid she is correct.”

Mac looked from the lich to the drow. “Spicy lady?”

“Very,” Aldrich said, regaining his composure. “For now, however, our desires are aligned. In order for this knowledge she seeks, I will need to recover my Phials.”

“They’re over in the archives beneath the 72nd floor,” Mac said automatically. “Though why you’d want your files is beyond me. It sounds more like you’d want your–oh. Phials. Not Files. Gotcha.”

Aldrich sighed. It was a hollow, gusty sound without cheeks or lips.

Mac smiled brightly at him, and at everybody there. “Okay, so we’re friends.” He tilted his head at Ralst. “I get to try to kill you once, but only once. Which sounds like a fun dating game by the by.”

“It is not.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Mac said with a dazzling white smile, his canines on proud display. “But first, I need some sustenance.”

“Oh, very well, let us retire to the pens. Surely there are some creatures still alive in there.”

Besal watched carefully as the lich and the vampyr led them deeper into the mountainous castle. They passed countless rooms as the hallway with the shaded windows curved slightly to the right.

The smooth stone floors were surprisingly clean, given the amount of time the place must have been lying empty and disused. Then again, Besal had no idea how long Mac had been dead. It was clear from his reaction that he didn’t seem to be aware of his death.

Either that, or he blocked it out.

“Do you know when you die?” Besal couldn’t help but ask.

“Not really,” Mac said, as if it were the most normal question to be asked. “It’s like when you sleep. Are you aware you’re sleeping? You got some idea that you must have fallen asleep. There’s a bit where time seemed to move and you can’t recall it, but that’s really it. Sometimes if the death is violent, I can sort of piece it together. Really obvious when the last thing I remember is pain and some jerk ramming my chest with a stake.”

“So you’re not aware while you’re dead,” Besal mused aloud.

“I don’t think most people are, friend.”

They all looked at Aldrich’s back.

“I can feel you looking at me,” the lich said exasperatedly.

“No worries, Al. You’re just popular.” He looked at the rest of the group. “Don’t take his grumpiness too personally. He’s a bit cantankerous. Been that way ever since I’ve known him. Beneath that cold shell of an exterior, however, he’s just really grumpy. Not his fault. Eternal life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

Ralst snorted. “Says the guy who cannot die completely. Anybody with immortality says that! ‘Oh, it’s not all that great’, as if they were saying sitting on a mountain of gold and having all your wishes granted ‘wasn’t that great’ and not noticing the irony!”

Mac fell into step beside the drow. “This is a subject of great interest to you, isn’t it?”

Ignoring him, she continued, “It’s always the people with power who say it’s not worth it. But do you ever see them giving it up? Would you give up your immortality?”

Mac looked like he’d been slapped. “Uh… probably not? I mean, then I’d get all wrinkly like a prune and dry up, right? As much as I like sleep, I’d like not to sleep forever.”

“Exactly my point,” Ralst snarled. “You hear all this caldross about ‘heavy is the head that wears the crown’, and yet none of those rulers ever step down, do they? No. They just want to make it seem like they’re somehow sacrificing for you. I’ve had it.”

“I think we’ve touched a nerve,” Besal said quietly to Luda.

The young woman gave him a warning shake of his head, but Ralst was already turning around, her face a rictus of anger. “You think you hit a nerve? All my life has been ruled by people who told me they were doing the right thing. They had everybody’s best interest at heart. They were the ones making the big sacrifices so nobody else had to. I’m done with that.”

“But aren’t you–?” Besal began to say before Ralst made a shining dagger appear in her hand.

“You were saying?”

“Happy being on your own now?” Besal continued.

“Spicy lady,” Mac muttered under his breath.

“I will cut you,” she warned the vampyr.

It had all the effect that a firm reprimand has on a cat.

“Children, please,” Aldrich said. “We have arrived at the pens. I suggest those who need sustenance take some. While the rest of us work out a plan as to how to procure my first Phial.”

The large door opened before them. A strong acidic smell filled the hallway, and the lights turned on inside. Large panels set into the ceiling gave off a warm, pleasant light that illuminated the strange scene below.

Besal had figured they kept pens of humans, which would surely be dead or worse by now. That was what he thought vampyrs drank. Human blood.

That didn’t turn out to be true.

The vampyr vanished in a plume of smoke that streaked across the room to the far wall, which was nothing but floor to ceiling glass with two doors, one set into the base and another high up in the wall.

Massive creatures roamed within the green space. It must have been lit by artificial lighting because Mac didn’t burst into ash.

“Up here,” Aldrich told them, motioning to a set of stairs that wrapped around the edge of the room and to the upper door.

The smell grew more powerful as they entered the… Besal had no word for what the room was.

“It’s like a city-scale terrarium,” Ralst said with barely suppressed awe. “How?”

Aldrich clearly seemed pleased by the reaction. “I am a rather powerful and skilled mage, in case you have forgotten. Just because my powers are muted after so long a rest does not mean I am weak. In time, we will have a… reckoning. Especially if you and yours turn out to be something they are not.”

Besal looked forward to seeing that.

Luda gasped and pointed.

Down in the leafy jungle were a few glades and open fields where creatures with gray-green skin nibbled at the grass or chewed on leaves.

Mac left them alone.

They looked so familiar to Besal, but he couldn’t remember what they were called. Hal had been fascinated with them as a kid, but that was as far as his memories went.

Something about a park? Jeeps? Clever girls?

Besal shook his head. Nope. It was gone.

“What are they?”

Aldrich puffed out his chest, which was saying something. Besal would have liked to know how he did that without lungs.

“They are an extremely rare and valuable type of animal. Mac’s favorite to dine on. Just watch him go.” He shook his head.

“And their name?” Ralst pressed with annoyance.

“Oh. Dinosaurs, I believe.”