HOPE
The past…
“Nothing will stop me,” the Kaly slice told Kaly with a wicked smile and wild eyes. “There’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
“Stopyou?” Kaly lifted a delicate eyebrow. “Stopme, you mean. For you are all me. Slices of me. Shadows of me. Parts I don’t need.”
“You’re the slice! You’re the shadow! A shadow of who you once were!” Another Kaly-slice called out in disgust. “Of whoIam.”
“And me!”
“And me!”
They had different voices. Different faces. Different bodies. But the same soul. Kaly regarded the slices of himself–all arrayed against him–surrounding him in a huge circle. How many were there? So many he couldn’t count them anymore. And not one among them had the sense to see where this was headed. What did that say about him?
That I was foolish enough to get myself here. Even though Seeyr claims this is where it was always supposed to lead.
They were in the field where Ashyr had died, where the War had started, where all hope of a peaceful whiling away the years during Daemon’s sleep had been demolished. Mist curled around the stalks of thick, tall grass that came nearly to his waist. The twin moons of the Ever Dark rose above them all. Red blood light encountering icy blue light to become a purple brilliance. But the moons were uncaring of the spectacle happening below them. While the very creatures of the Ever Dark had wept and the foliage had drooped when Daemon had gone to sleep, the moons had been unmoved by the Immortal War.
Is that because only Daemon matters to the Ever Dark? Or is it because we matter so little to Daemon?
Even now, he couldn’t quite let go of his feelings of abandonment by the Vampire King. Yet there were so many more things pressing at the current moment. But everything had seemed uncaring since Daemon had gone to sleep. His depression–barely held at bay at the best of times–had swamped him. So he’d sliced himself to cut out the agony, the angst, the grief, the rage, the love, the betrayal, all of it.
Slice.
Slice.
Slice.
He’d thought to pare himself down to his base being. Then he wouldn’t care that Daemon had left, because those parts capable of caring would all be cut away. He wouldn’t be in pain. He’d be pure and cold like ice. He’d focus on his work to wile away the millennia until Daemon returned. Not as the Vampire King believed it would be: in the arms of a beloved, fated fledgling. No, Daemon would finally see that no one else was coming andhe’d wake up realizing that the Immortals were enough. Enough to stay conscious at least!
But he’d been wrong.
About so many things.
Maybe in his slicing, he had carved away some of his intelligence.
Through Eyros, Seeyr had shown him the future. A young man with purple eyes would come. He would be an adventurer and hero. Loyal as night followed day. Curious and intelligent. Athletic and risk-taking. And remarkablykind. Not at all what Kaly would look for in a potential Childe, buteverythingthat Daemon would love.
“Why did you show me this?” Kaly had asked after he’d met with her and Eyros after confessing to them that he’d sliced too deep and things had gotten out of hand.
“Because you need to have somehope, Kaly,” Seeyr had answered gently.
“I sort of wish you had shown him thisbefore.Then maybe he wouldn’t have decided to slice and dice himself to madness and start this damned War, Seeyr,” Eyros growled with a shake of his head.
“I couldn’t. It wasn’t the right time,” Seeyr said, her own head lowering, understanding their pain, but unable to relieve it.
“What good is seeing the future if you can’t stop a calamity like the War from happening?” Eyros snarled. “Or Kaly going off his head? Or Weryn following right after him? He’s killed more Immortals than Kaly, Seeyr! Have you seen some of the abominations he’s made? Vampires that shift into the darkest, foulest of the Ever Dark creatures? Our old foes?”
“I have seen them. In fact, I saw thembeforethey were made,” she reminded him quietly.
“And yet you didnothing,” Eyros enunciated every word. “What use is your gift if it cannot stop this, Seeyr? Or are you not at all as powerful as advertised?”
Her head lifted proudly. Her lips fluttered a moment before she flattened them. Eyros’ tongue was sharp and it always went for the softest places. Kaly found that he had no joy in seeing others fileted by it instead of him. When Eyros was angry like this, he was the most bitter, acidic and cruel.
“You think that only because you cannot see the other futures that I stop from happening,” she answered. “Getting what we want does not mean obtaining it without cost. Sometimes there is great cost. Like now.”
Eyros threw up his hands into the air and paced. “I see you mean that! You even offer me visions of those futures if I want, don’t you?”
