Immortali

Chapter 35: Things in the Dark

Hey everyone! Happy Easter! Here's a chapter for all my lovely readers. Enjoy!

The next day, Raina waited for Arriana at the Maple Tree. She wore the hooded dress, exercise tights and converse that Arriana had ‘magicked’ out of her old clothes (which, Raina thought grumpily, I’ll never be able to get back).
She looked up at the leafless branches. In the dark, they looked menacing. Dark tendrils reaching upward to claim the sky. She shivered. She had a feeling that somewhere on this earth, there probably were creatures who reached toward the sky with arms of darkness. She knew there were. Arriana had mentioned them, hadn’t she?
She called them Depraved. Another creation of The Lost.
Demons, Depraved and God only knows what else. What a wonderful world.
Yeah, note the sarcasm.
She rolled her eyes and shook her head as the distinct shape of her mentor moved toward her, yellow eyes practically glowing in the dark.
Raina grinned. “You know, this is becoming a bit of a habit.”
Arriana shook her head. “Blame it on Alrick.”
She coughed. “Oh? And was it Alrick who dragged me to some Challenges in the middle of England?”
The older woman rolled her eyes. “At least there was a little less chance of you being captured at The Challenges.”
“Yah-huh. Sure.”
Raina watched as Arriana pretended to ignore her and instead sketched glowing runes into the air. Soon, a portal stood before them.
She reached for her mentor’s hand and braced herself for the pulling motion. It no longer bothered her. She knew what to expect now.
A flash of light, a slightly disorienting moment, and the next thing she knew, she was standing in a bushy area. Turning around, she saw that she was standing on a hill or a mountain. She looked over it and saw many green fields and, in the distance, the glow of a city.
“Rome?”
Arriana nodded, but held up her hand for silence.
Raina watched with unease. Was it just her… or was Arriana wary?
What could possibly have made her mentor so nervous?
She stared at the older Immortali who had her head cocked to one side, listening. Waiting.
But for what?
A moment came and passed. Then another, and another.
Suddenly, Arriana straightened. There was something stiff and rigid in her movements. It wasn’t relaxed. It was disciplined and well-practised.
She made a few movements with her hands, and Raina held her breath as her mentor’s ordinary red blouse and black pants changed into a black suit. A black belt armed to the teeth with an assortment of sharp looking knives appeared around her waist.
Arriana caught her staring. “What? It’s for stealth. And trust me, you’re going to want stealth.”
“Why?” Raina asked, the uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach growing ever stronger.
Arriana looked over her shoulder before answering. “Because, I have a feeling I know exactly who The Lost are meeting tonight. And they’re very dangerous.”
“How do you know?” Her voice was barely a whisper.
“I can sense them. Tonight, they’re not hiding. They give off a certain… aura. They can cloak it, but tonight they haven’t bothered.”
“And, what are they?”
Arriana looked her dead in the eyes. “Drear.”
Raina raised an eyebrow. “Drear? Demons? Depraved? You guys sure have a thing for the letter D.”
Her mentor shrugged. “The three D’s of Doom. Maybe Lost Ones like alliteration.”
“Maybe.”
Arriana beckoned for Raina to be quiet. The older Immortali turned around and crept deeper into the woodland. Raina followed, trying to be equally as silent, but every twig and shuffle felt like mini-earthquakes. She was surprised these Drear-things hadn’t heard her yet.
Abruptly, Arriana stopped and knelt down behind a bush. Raina did the same. She looked out from behind the bush and saw a clearing.
In the clearing, a gathering of people stood. At first, Raina didn’t notice anything unusual about them, but then she saw their eyes. They were bright purple.
As she watched, she started noticing other odd things about them. Their skin was deathly pale; their nails were lengthened into claws, and whenever their mouths opened, sharp fangs glinted in the dappled moonlight.
She glanced at Arriana and gulped. Even that sounded too loud.
Her mentor nodded and put a finger to her lips. Her message was clear: stay quiet, otherwise things will get messy.
A stir of movement from the Drear drew Raina’s attention back to the clearing. A new figure had appeared. A tall, dark haired woman with pale skin and almost black eyes.
Raina stared at the woman. She was a stranger, yet there was something oddly familiar about her. Maybe it was the planes of her face, or the stubborn set of her jaw, or maybe it was the same proud stare that reminded her of Arriana.
Clearly, this was Lilith.
The Drear gathered in a thick clump, some occasionally hissing and gnashing their teeth at the Immortali. Two Drear stood in front of the rest.
A man, and a woman.
Their leaders, Raina thought.
The man spoke first. “Why, Lilith, what a pleasant surprise.”
Lilith said nothing for a moment. Raina didn’t think she was very impressed. “It’s not a surprise if it’s an arranged meeting, Valda.”
The man grimaced. “Well, then, pleasantries aside, what do you want?”
Lilith smirked. “You know what I want: I want the Drear armies fighting on the side of The Lost again. Just like the good old days.”
Valda looked deep in thought for a moment. He then turned to the woman.
“Well, Kira, tell her about our little… dilemma.”
The woman, Kira, grunted.  “The problem is… ours are a dying breed. Humans know about us. Their pathetic governments have found a way to… ‘cure’ us.”
Raina glanced at Arriana, who nodded, and then back at the scene in the clearing.
“Oh,” Lilith said, sounding completely unmoved.
Kira huffed and continued. “They test babies when they’re born. If they find a black blooded one, they give the human parents a choice; kill the baby, or suppress its instincts.”
Lilith looked up, a curious glint in her eyes. “Suppress?”
“Yes. You know that Drear are not social creatures. We don’t like warm, sunny environments. The sun burns us! They take these children and they raise them in an environment where they are forced into the sun, where they must learn to socialise.”
“You say it like you care about your own kind. If I remember correctly, Drear don’t particularly care about anything except the annihilation of everything around them. You don’t feel love like others, remember?”
Kira scrunched her face up. “I don’t care about these children. I feel insulted. The humans think they have something over us.”
Lilith glanced at her and smiled. Then she looked at Valda. “And what are you going to do about it? Sulk? Very unlike you, Valda.”
He glared at her. “And what do you propose we do? Humans are hunting us down; The Circle are hunting us down. There aren’t enough of us to form these so-called ‘armies’ of ours.”
“Maybe… maybe not…” Lilith whispered.
“Excuse me?” Kira hissed.
“What about the children who’ve ‘suppressed’ their instincts? There are plenty of them, I’m willing to bet.”
Valda nodded.
“So, why not just… un-supress their instincts? Why not expose them to violence, darkness and gore? Give them a reason to use their survival instincts. There, there’s your army, or should I say… our army.”
The two Drear stared at her. Valda was the first to speak. “And how do you propose we do that? Just kidnap children one by one.”
Lilith shrugged. “Do what you have to, I don’t really care, but Samael’s back, and he wants an army. You will be that army.”
There was a moment of silence where both Drear said nothing. No one moved. The gathered Drear seemed to watch on with anticipation. Raina couldn’t say she blamed them. She, too, wanted to see their response. Then, Valda sighed.
“This is the only way to get what we want, isn’t it?”
Lilith nodded, a subtle smile just sightly tilting the corners of her mouth upwards.
Kira hissed. “If we must, then so be it.”
It was with a flick of Valda’s hands that the Drear melted into the darkness and disappeared, like fleeting clouds passing the moon.
Lilith remained in the clearing for a while. So long, in fact, the Raina had broken out in a cold sweat. Did she know they were there? Could she feel them watching her? But, when Lilith turned around and exited the clearing the way she’d come, Raina began to relax.
They waited a full five minutes before even thinking about moving. Raina was still trying to process everything she’d just seen.
Arriana led her back to the cliff with the view of the farms and the city.
“This is very bad,” her mentor muttered.
Raina nodded. “I don’t understand what half of it meant, and even I know that. Those things, Drear, what are they exactly?”
Arriana sighed. “Half demon, half human. Syretia Ebany created them, alongside the Demons and the Depraved. But these ones, she took particular care with. The story goes that Samael wanted humanoid soldiers. Immortal ones that would never die. Syretia combined demon blood and human blood to create the Drear.”
“So… they’re immortal?”
Arriana bit her lip. “Not quite. They’re immortal in that they cannot age, but, in spite of their accelerated healing, they can be killed like a human or any other mortal being.”
“So, Syretia failed?”
“Yes. She started with combining immortal blood and human blood, but it didn’t quite work out. Something like the babies didn’t survive, or they weren’t what Samael wanted. Regardless, you can’t make immortals out of humans. Only one has managed to do that.”
Raina frowned. “Who?”
“I’m sure you would have heard of him. His name was, or, is, Nicholas Flamel.”
“The Alchemist?” Raina asked. Arriana nodded. “I thought that was either just a myth, or that he was an Immortali, like us.”
“He is… now. But he wasn’t originally. That ‘elixir of life’ he supposedly made is actually a formula which can undo the mutation that turned Immortali children into humans.”
Raina’s eyes widened. “If Samael ever-"
“Yes, I know. But, Flamel quickly realised it too. He destroyed all his research and any remnant of the formula. He even sought out Mnemosyne, the Primordial of Memory so that any recollection of it was erased. Now, he just lives out his life, wishing he hadn’t made himself immortal.”
“Why? He actually wanted to be immortal. He wasn’t forced into it like me.”
“Yes, but when he realised his mistake and destroyed his research, he couldn’t work out how to reverse it. He watched his wife die.”
Raina hung her head. “Oh, so, you know him, then?”
“In passing,” her mentor replied vaguely.
Raina nodded. “Righto… how many other famous people do you know?”
“Depends.”
“On?”
“What you define as ‘famous’.”
She shook her head. Getting a straight answer out of Arriana was sometimes like yielding blood from a stone.
“Just take me back home, I could really do with a nap right now.”