As darkness fell over the village, scouts reported vampire movements at the eastern border. Preparations continuedthrough the night, weapons sharpened, defenses strengthened, supplies gathered. The Heart Tree remained sealed, its ancient magic pulsing with an energy that seemed somehow troubled, as if it too struggled with whatever transformation occurred within its depths.
Boarstaff refused to remain in the healing house after Ochrehand had treated his most serious wounds. Despite her protests, he joined Thornmaker on the eastern wall, overseeing the placement of additional defenses. His body ached with every movement, but the physical pain was preferable to lying still with only his thoughts for company.
"He won't be the same when he emerges," Thornmaker said as they stood watching the forest edge, where scouts reported vampire activity. "If he emerges at all."
"I know," Boarstaff replied, his gaze drawn once more to the sealed Heart Tree. "But neither will we, after what's coming."
But even as he directed warriors and planned defenses, a part of him remained with Sebastian, alone in the darkness of the Heart Tree, surrounded by the magic that had begun his transformation. Wondering if, when this was over, if they survived at all, the Sebastian who emerged would be someone he recognized.
Or if, like the brothers Sebastian had been forced to kill, something essential would be lost forever in the transformation.
Chapter Twenty
The thick wooden door sealed behind Sebastian with a sound like a final breath.
Silence descended after days of constant noise, the mechanical hum of the citadel, the clash of steel, his brothers' voices, the pounding of hooves, Boarstaff's labored breathing. Then, nothing. The silence pressed against him like a physical weight.
Crystal light pulsed along the walls, revealing the vast circular chamber within the Heart Tree's trunk. Sebastian stood motionless, his father's fine clothes clinging to his body, stiff with blood, his own, his brothers', Boarstaff's. He couldn't tell whose anymore. Dark droplets pattered onto the stone floor, the only sound in the chamber.
He didn't move. Couldn't move. His body seemed frozen in place, muscles locked, breath shallow. The Tree's energy hummed around him, patient and ancient, waiting.
A sound escaped him, guttural, unfamiliar. Not quite a sob, not quite a growl. His face remained dry, his father's regulatory components still functioning enough to prevent tears despite the emotional storm building inside him. Centuries of conditioning wouldn't break so easily.
Inside him, the two parts of himself exerted their forces on him. The mechanical vampire wanted to do the logical thing, the practical thing and give into the conditioning that had kept him alive for so long, but the awakened part of him wanted to befree, to do whatever his emotional heart desired. What was the answer? Both? Neither? Could he find a path that was balanced between the two. Before his brothers had ambushed him and dragged him back to the citadel, he’d thought maybe he’d found a way. It lay within Boarstaff’s powerful arms. But that way had put his orc in danger. There had to be a safer way.
Sebastian drove his fist into the wooden wall, again and again, until his knuckles split. Physical pain was almost welcome, familiar, quantifiable, something he could understand. Not like the pressure building behind his eyes, in his chest, threatening to tear him apart from within.
He yanked at the fine clothes they'd dressed him in, ripping away the garments of House de la Sang. The silk shirt came apart in his hands, exposing the metallic gleam of new components embedded in his flesh. His father's "gifts." His "improvements."
The reality of what he had done crashed through him with each heartbeat. Zarek and Dominic. His brothers. Dead by his hand. The memory of their final moments flashed behind his eyes, their faces frozen in shock and betrayal as his blade found its mark. The weight of it pressed down on him like a physical force, threatening to crush him beneath its mass.
The Heart Tree's energy pulsed around him, neither judging nor absolving. Simply witnessing.
As if responding to his anguish, the floor beneath Sebastian began to glow. A spiral pattern of crystal light spread outward from where he stood, illuminating a path that led downward. Stairs, curving into the depths beneath the Heart Tree, appeared as the light touched them.
Sebastian staggered toward them, drawn by some instinct beyond conscious thought. Each step he took lit the next one below him, guiding him down the spiral path into the earth. His blood marked the way, dark droplets on luminescent stone.
The stairway opened into a vast subterranean chamber where crystal light reflected off still, black waters. The sacred pools. Sebastian paused at the edge, recognizing this place from when he had been brought here before. The same stillness, peaceful silence, and crystalline light playing across the surface of the dark waters.
Everything was the same. Only he was different. Last time, he'd been an outsider guided by others, observing the sacred chambers with curiosity and caution. Now he approached carrying the weight of his choices, broken by them, harboring a storm of emotion that his regulated body wouldn't let him fully experience.
The pool's surface reflected his blood-streaked, hollow-eyed face. He barely recognized himself. The precise, controlled son of House de la Sang was gone, replaced by something feral and wounded, eyes dry despite the agony within. Why had his father left his eyes alone when he’d reveled in returning the rest of him to mechanical perfection?
Without hesitation, he waded into the water. It rose to his waist, then his chest as he moved deeper, the cold shock of it cutting through his emotional armor. Crystal light filtered through the water, illuminating the mechanical components embedded in his flesh, regulatory nodules along his spine, efficiency modules at his major joints, the emotional damper at the base of his skull, balance enhancers at his temples, strength augmenters in his shoulders and arms.
His body still bore traces of his father's "improvements", not the original century-old components that had been largely removed during his first transformation, but newer ones. The replacements his father had forcibly installed during his recent reconditioning at the citadel, designed to bring him back under control after his time with the orcs had begun changing him.
Sebastian's hands moved to his chest, where a freshly installed regulator lay beneath his skin. He could feel its mechanical workings as it struggled to maintain control over his nervous system, trying to subdue the emotions threatening to overwhelm him.
With a cry that was half snarl, half moan, he dug his fingers into the flesh around the device. Blood clouded the water as he clawed at his own skin, tearing it open to expose the metallic disc underneath. The component's tiny gears ground against bone as he worked his fingers underneath it. The pain was blinding, but he embraced it, welcomed it as he pried the component loose. Connective fibers stretched and snapped like wet tendons, each one sending a jolt of white-hot agony through his nervous system.
The component came free with a wet, sucking sound and the crack of fractured bone. A chunk of his own ribs came with it, still attached to the anchoring hooks. Sebastian held it before his eyes, a complex mechanism of gears and tubes no larger than a coin, designed to monitor and suppress pain signals, trailing bits of his own tissue. With a snarl, he flung it away. It hit the chamber wall and shattered, pieces falling into the depths of the pool.
He moved to the next component; a mood stabilizer embedded near his collarbone. This one was deeper, also anchored to bone. Sebastian dug his fingers into the wound, feeling for the metal edge. When he found it, he pulled, tearing flesh rather than taking the time to carefully extract it. The device resisted, then came free with a spray of blood, trailing broken wires and tubes that had threaded through his body like parasitic roots.
As the second component came free, something shifted inside him. The pressure behind his eyes intensified. Hisbreathing became ragged, uneven. The regulatory systems were failing, one by one, as he tore them from his body.
Sebastian attacked a component at the base of his skull, a new emotion regulator his father had installed during his recent reconditioning at the citadel. His fingers slipped on his own blood as he reached behind his head, digging into the flesh where metal met bone. The pain was electric, white-hot, as he worked his fingers around the device and pulled.
