As we walked out of the stairway he must have noticed my cautious look.
“It’s safe. I would know if anyone had been up here,” he said.
The room was filled with the dying light of the sunset. Tall glass windows surrounded us on all sides, even above. Only a few at the very top were broken. The temperature in the room was several degrees warmer than it had been outside, which was good, because it had been getting pretty chilly.
All around us were an abundance of plants. Miniature trees rustled with the sounds of birds and the wind hushed gently through the leaves. The scent of flowers filled the room. I wasn’t sure where exactly the scent was coming from because there flowers everywhere. Flowers of every color, shape and size filled the room, giving off a bouquet of rich floral scents that all blended together.
“It’s beautiful,” I whispered, gazing around in wonder.
“It’s one of my favorite places in Heraklion,” he said, smiling slightly. His scars pulled at the corner of his mouth when he did so, making me sure that he hadn’t spent a lot of time smiling since he had gotten them.
“I think it used to be a greenhouse of some kind. Over time, the plants just kind of took over.”
He led me to a small alcove. A green tarp covered one corner of the room. Under it were some blankets and small containers.
“I keep these caches all over the city,” he pointed at the supplies. “So that if I’m ever caught out, I don’t have to worry about getting back to the base right away.”
I nodded. It made a solid strategy.
“Plus… the view at night is amazing.”
We settled in and got a small fire going. I was concerned at first that the smoke or the light would attract unwanted attention, but Hel assured me that the foliage would camouflage us.
We had just finished up a quick meal when he pulled out a small bottle of the juice drink he called vodka. He held it up to me in question, and I held out my cup.
He poured us both generous servings and we relaxed. Or at least, relaxed as much as we could relax in the situation. I had set up Air alarms as we traveled up the staircase, and I hadn’t seen any other exits.
“So, Davidus…” I prompted.
“Yeah, Davidus. So I had been here only few days when I ran into my first Mageia. She was an Earth Mageia, and she tried to kill me with some stone spikes.”
I nodded. Turning our magic to weapons of death was what we were taught in the Legion.
“I tried to talk to her, but she refused to listen. I still had this on,” he said, tapping the medallion. “The real one. She wanted that medallion badly.”
“It’s worth ten kills,” I said. His eyes widened. “Well, it is now. I don’t know back then. You hadn’t developed your reputation as a hungry cannibal.”
He smirked for a moment then sobered. “I never even knew her name. I found her in a building near here. I didn’t even think, just walked out in the open, excited to see someone for the first time in who knew how long. She immediately went into attack mode and was summoning rebar out of the building to throw at me. She must not have been paying attention because she summoned it out of a section of a building, and the roof collapsed, killing her.” His eyes look haunted. “I wish she had listened.”
He took another sip of his drink.
“After that, I did my best to try and communicate before revealing myself. That’s what I was doing the night I ran into you and V for the first time. I usually carry small supplies that I leave for the Mageia. Food, water, some basic medicines.”
I thought back to the package I had found.
“So that was you?” I asked.
He nodded.
“It seemed better than just walking up and announcing myself and risk getting fried.
“I got a little cocky, though. Or maybe… well,” he took a deep breath before continuing. “…I was still hurting over the loss of my Bonded. I was not one-hundred percent sure I wanted to keep living. After losing Ri, the fire, then this… It would have been easy to just… give up. A lot of Illyrians do, if they never Bond or they lose their Bonded. Something drove me to live, though. Just too damn stubborn, I guess.”
He paused to take a drink then smiled at me slightly, the look so incredibly sad.
“I was hunting in a housing allotment at the edge of town. I’d been out for a couple days, so I was low on supplies. At that point I was only eating what I could hunt, just like the Mageia, so it was a matter of survival.
“I had been tracking some kind of four-legged animal all day. A feline, I thought. It was injured. I had found blood and tracks suggesting it had gotten into a fight with one of the wild wolves that roam the city.
