Thicker Than Blood
Chapter 6
Demons of Zeal
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"Every man is plagued by his own demons; I just happen to be yours."
- Daniel Yetman
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Timeless
Most of the destruction in this universe is caused by humans. The killing? Humans. The war, the violence, the bloodshed? Humans. How ironic that they turn out to be our only hope for survival. These creatures that seem to thrive on pain and chaos are the one light left in a universe that has only known, for so long, utter darkness.
But...what do they have to do with our star?
Everything, love. Absolutely everything.
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12,003 BC
The sun was dying, no longer a bright source of light but a faint red glow, a fading ember, elongating wild shadows. An oppressively hot wind blew over the grass, bending the stalks into a pale shimmering sea. Zeal Palace towered over the land; throwing its cold shadow out so far it reached the edge of the continent and dripped sharply over the edge. Clouds whose bellies were bathed pale pink from the sun hung low in the sky above the kingdom.
Janus found himself standing alone amidst all this, in the long dry grass beside the Skyway on the main continent. He couldn't remember anything after the demon Bloodreaver and had no idea how he'd gotten from fainting in the cool snow to standing on the outer edge of Zeal. The air smelled of dust and dirt, and a few gritty particles that may have been sand blew into his face.
Janus stood still for a while, watching the kingdom. The wind ruffled his hair and he restlessly pushed it behind his ears. The absolute silence grated on his nerves. No bugs buzzed from under the grass, no birds sang out from the trees, no Enlightened children laughed and played along the side of the lake. With a feeling of unease growing in his stomach, the young prince slowly started for the palace.
He found the first of them lying face down in the dirt on the road outside Kajar. At first Janus didn't know what it was because the body was completely covered in black flies, and the fading light made it increasingly hard to see. But when he got closer most of the flies were scared off and he could make out the decaying body of an Enlightened woman under the rest of the crawling mass. Her eyes were white and strangely bloated. He leaned in for a closer look and her eyes erupted suddenly into thousands of wriggling squirming maggots. Janus stumbled back in horror, almost falling over a rock.
For the longest time he could only stare in mute terror, breathing hard through his mouth because the smell of rotting flesh was wafting from the corpse in waves. He noticed now the oozing puddles of puss and blood soaking the dirt around the body. The buzzing black flies were covering that too.
A single thought sifted through the horror in his mind, and he stood still for one brief moment, not even breathing with the weight of the fear that had seized him, before setting off in a dead run to the series of caves set up to teleport people to Zeal Palace. Please, he thought as he dashed up the marble steps, pushing through the heavy doors. Not Schala. Please. He cursed the fact that he had to take the long way instead of teleporting himself directly to her room.
More bodies were scattered around the palace, some slumped over tables, but most face-down on the floor. There were no black flies, but it was very hot and the stench was so strong it was nearly visible. It hit Janus like a wall and he stumbled back a few paces before covering his nose with the collar of his robes and running on grimly, determinedly ignoring the corpses he had to step over. His heart was racing faster than his feet in desperate fear.
In his haste to reach his sister, Janus did not notice the round purple shape of a one-eyed Nu standing in the shadow beneath a stairway, watching the young prince's progress through the death filled palace. Its single narrowed eye was the only part of it that moved as it followed Janus until the prince was out of sight. The Nu nodded once, and disappeared.
"Schala?!" Janus called frantically when he reached the hall their bedrooms were on. His voice cracked. He waited for a response only to be rewarded with his own echo. "Schala! Where are you?!" He burst through the door to her room -- and froze, the cold beginning in his heart and traveling from there throughout his entire body.
Schala lay on her side, one arm outstretched over her on the cold marble floor, quite definitely dead. Her skin was chalk white and her lips were blue. Zeal -- Janus had never thought of the cruel woman as Mother -- stood a few feet away at a table, flipping idly through piles of paper on its surface. She looked up at him, and her eyes went from his desperate expression to her daughter's corpse on the polished floor. A wry smile twisted one corner of her mouth.
"Well," she said in a deep scratchy voice that was not her own, "don't look so upset about it, kid. She wasn't anyone special." Zeal looked up at him and frowned angrily, like someone staring at a pile of dog mess in the middle of their fancy plush carpet. She raised her arm and a cloud of shadow blasted from her open palm, engulfing him in total darkness. The cloud expanded, taking up the whole room, and Janus had no time at all to be furious and vengeful before he found himself standing in what seemed to be a vast, boundless darkness. Way above him white objects that may have been stars glittered but gave no light. He made no effort to fight the tears streaming down his cheeks.
'I hope that someday you can forgive me for this.' The presence descended around him, warm and polite like a living blanket. Then it gathered, invisible, a little ways in front of him. Its voice was deep but pleasant; not the one that had been using Zeal, though it was the same that had spoken to him in Algetty and lurked in his nightmares.
'You again. Why do you keep bothering me? Are you the one responsible for Schala's death?!'
'Mmm. I might just tell you that if you answer something for me first.' It paused. 'If you had the...choice...to save the world, or the one you love, which would it be?'
The question was so absurd Janus didn't even understand it at first. 'If I had the what?'
'...You are not taking this seriously. This is not a trivial matter, Janus. I am not joking.'
'If I could save... Well, who is the one I love, Schala...? I'd save her, no question. What has the world ever done for me anyway?' He couldn't keep the bitterness out of his tone. Janus sensed that it was grinning, and then the presence rapidly began to fade, as if a hole had opened in the air behind it and was sucking it in.
'Wait! You said you'd answer me if I told you so answer, damn you!'
'I lied.'
The darkness fled instantly and Janus opened his eyes to find himself in his own room in his own bed at the palace. His heart nearly stopped when he saw Schala sitting on the edge of his bed, leaning over some papers in her lap and looking wonderfully alive. He threw himself on her, startling her so that the papers were jolted to the when he wrapped his arms around her neck and trying to speak through his sobs.
"Schala! Schala, I dreamed you'd died and everyone had died and they were all covered in flies but you were lying all blue and cold on the floor and -- and Mother'd killed you Schala, she had! She looked at me and her eyes were all dead looking and then she started laughing, only it wasn't her voice it was some monster and -- she'd killed you Schala, she had, you were dead!" Janus broke down in tears, pressing his face against her shoulder. Her arms came up around his back instinctively. She was used to his nightmares.
"It was only a dream," she murmured soothingly. "I'm right here, it's okay." She stroked his soft blue hair until he quieted and pulled away, sniffing and wiping his face on his sleeve until his pale skin was red and blotchy and his tears were dry. Schala cleared her throat.
"Do you remember what happened? You were attacked in the forest?" He nodded slowly. "They...the Earthbound said..." She stopped and took a deep breath. "Something about you wandering off on your own, and getting attacked by a monster from Mount Woe. When they realized you were lost, they sent someone back to follow your tracks, and he found you out cold in the snow. One of them got in contact with Melchior and he came down to get you, that was four days ago, I-" She stopped. Her hands, clenched together in her lap, were trembling very slightly. She looked up at him and there was a strange mixture of fear and fury in her ice colored eyes. "Running off was a very stupid thing, though I suppose you had your own reasons for it and it seemed justified at the time. I can't really yell at you -- sending you down there probably wasn't very smart either, but -- you were such a little brat, and I was busy, I didn't think-" She took a deep trembling breath. "I'm sorry, I'm not really together right now. I've been very worried about you, Janus."
"I'm sorry," he said automatically, trying to ease her fears. He felt guilty about making her afraid, but even more so for keeping things from her. He hadn't even known he was going to lie to her until that moment -- he'd never done it before and it made him feel sick -- but he knew that if he told her about his suspicions toward the Earthbound she'd shrug him off and not do anything to prevent whatever plot they had.
Janus dismissed the telepathic girl as some kind of genetic throwback -- such things did happen occasionally, of which he himself was misreable proof. If the Prince of Zeal could be born without magic, was it really so impossible that an Earthbound child would be born with telepathy? Probably some kind of mutation from all the inbreeding. Anyway she was only a child, no one special, and certainly not a threat. That Siris man was the one who worried him, especially considering how the black wind had gone all crazy on him. Not that the Enlightened wouldn't be able to take care of themselves if need arose, but it was Schala he was worried about. Earthbound were stupid but certainly not so stupid as to try and fight the Enlightened head-on; an assassination attempt was obvious.
"Janus?" Schala's gentle voice broke into his thoughts. Janus looked up. A young servant woman fluttered nervously in the doorway. "I have to go now, okay?" His sister was standing up, leaning over to kiss his forehead and peering worriedly at his face. "Mother...needs me for...something, it may be a while before I can get back-"
"It's okay, Schala. I'm eight, I think I can handle being alone in my own room for a few hours."
She ruffled his hair. "Nice to know you're feeling better," she said dryly, following the servant through the door.
Zeal depended way too much on Schala, in Janus' opinion. Zeal's new project had everyone going around the clock, but Schala was the focal point and everything Zeal was doing hinged on her. It was wearing Schala out, and Janus only resented Zeal all the more for the way she was pushing her daughter. He remembered the dream and shuddered.
Whatever they were doing, Janus knew it was dangerous. Schala wouldn't breathe one word to him about it, even if he asked her straight out, and there were times when she'd look so burned out and...old. Sometimes when he went to her in the dead of night after a bad dream she'd be sitting up at her desk with her quill pen, bent over some papers and looking haggard and weary in the flickering candlelight.
One more reason for him to fix the Earthbound problem on his own.
Well, it would have to wait, he was thirsty. And anyway, there wasn't much he could do about the Earthbound from Zeal. Find out who was helping them, get evidence. There was an Enlightened helping them, he was sure of it. They were too stupid and transparent to be working on their own. Janus wormed his way to the side of his enormous bed and swung his legs over the side, then stopped.
The papers Schala had been looking at when he'd awoken were still on his floor.
Janus dropped down and bent over to pick them up, shuffling a little dance because the marble floor was painfully cold on the bare skin of his feet, which had blisters gathered from the treck with Ivy, no doubt. His feet were sensitive from years of silk-lined boots on turf no rougher than grass. He hopped back up onto his bed, letting his legs hang over the edge as he spread the papers out on the soft blanket.
Most of them were junk -- mathematical equations, a whole bunch on phases of the moon, oceans tides, things like that -- but one caught his eye, hidden as it was in some mess about Nus.
It was a sketch, crudely drawn onto yellow flaking parchment. A huge creature that had to be cousin to some sort of freak giant insect graced the fading surface. Things that were somewhere between spikes and blades made from gray bone thrust elegantly from its squat larva-like body. It had a three-pronged eyepod that was closed in the picture, and small appendages that may have been legs -- though the scrawny things would never have been capable of shifting this creature's impressive bulk -- ran along its body from its eyepod to stop not even midway to its end. The word 'Lavos,' which he assumed was its name, had been faintly stenciled in at the bottom margin.
Looking at it made him feel sick.
Janus quickly buried the picture beneath the sheets of carefully worked out equations and began pouring through the rest of the documents with new fever -- many of which, he now noted, were written in the casual, yet barely readable, script his sister used when writing something not intended for anyone else to read.
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Rast: Okay, I've got some crappy news. My school blocked Fanfiction.Net under the pretense of 'too much violence,' whatever the hell that is supposed to mean, so from now on I'll only be able to update Friday or Saturday, which is if/when I can ever get to the public library. Yeah, I have a computer at home but it's really old and basically is a piece of festering crap that doesn't really get along with Fanfiction.Net at all, refuses log in, and also for some obscure reason shows up all the text at FF.Net as underlined. Whatever.
Also, a special note of thanks to Bloodreaver Alpha for letting me use his name, and for the idea about Flea. Yeah, I probably should have posted this in chapter five but... I dunno, whatever. Hmmm, something else...
Oh yeah, thanks to all my reviewers for the great reviews and encouragement and please review more! I'll still write this story through to the end if all I have are the eight reviews I've got now, but it's really nice to know that people are actually reading this, so...yeah, whatever.
I'm doing the best I know how to do, and if anyone out there has ideas, criticism, comments, please let me know. Review, email, IM, whatever is easiest for you. Stuff you like, stuff you don't like, stuff that confused you -- tell me so I can do it better in the future. I'm new at this, I don't know much about anything, which includes pleasing the readers. To me, I think I have problems with characterization and dialogue, but what do you think? You're the one that matters, reader person, so let me know please! I've got the whole plot planned out and I know that it's gonna be a killer when I'm done, if I can get better at the actual story part.