Ever Dark Academy, Vol. 5

Chapter 1 Hope

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.”

“Stop you?” Kaly lifted a delicate eyebrow. “Stop me, 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 who I am.”

“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 and he’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 remarkably kind. Not at all what Kaly would look for in a potential Childe, but everything that 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 some hope, Kaly,” Seeyr had answered gently.

“I sort of wish you had shown him this before. 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 them before they were made,” she reminded him quietly.

“And yet you did nothing,” 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?”

“Like Kaly, you need to have some hope, Eyros.”

“If you knew people’s minds, you’d have no hope, Seeyr,” Eyros answered darkly. “You’d retreat into your palace and close yourself off from it all.”

“But you haven’t. Of all of us, you’ve tried to keep things light,” she pointed out.

“Because you either laugh or cry. And crying makes my eyes puffy. I’m quite attractive laughing,” Eyros answered with another toss of his head. “So there’s honestly something worse than what Kaly has done here?”

“The slices. Not me,” Kaly corrected, which was in direct contradiction to what he knew to be true. The slices were him. He was the slices.

But they are not complete. They are parts of me. Messy parts. Parts that make things difficult or unbearable. A small voice pointed out, But doesn’t that mean that I’m not complete too? I’m missing what I’ve cut off. I’m not myself. Not fully.

“Are they not you? Did they come from someone else?” Eyros scoffed and his lips hovered between a snarl and a grin. “No! They are you! They are the parts of you that you deny exist. And now they are running rampant without any of your self-control or intellect.”

“At least, you recognize my strengths,” Kaly retorted.

“Oh, I do! Because they are so small in comparison to the whole! You have pretended forever to feel nothing,” Eyros snapped.

“To follow only logic. While the rest of us were just slaves to our emotions. But the truth,” and here Eyros stuck a finger in Kaly’s face, that finger shook, as he spat out, “is that you’re the one who has been such a damned emotional mess since Daemon went to sleep that you pulled the biggest tantrum in the universe! ”

Kaly’s spine stiffened with every word. That they were true made them only more infuriating.

And Eyros wasn’t even looking in his head.

Eyros simply knew he was right. But Eyros never saw any of the good he brought to the table.

Never recognized the balance he offered Daemon and the rest of them.

Kaly knew he was an outsider. Not truly part of the group.

But that gave him a different view. But Eyros just sneered at him.

If only the slices had started with Eyros.

“I heard that!” Eyros scowled.

Kaly plucked at the invisible lint on his shirt. Unrepentant.

“That is not helpful, Eyros. And, Kaly, wishing him ill isn’t useful either,” Seeyr said gently but firmly. “None of us can undo the past, even if the past could be undone, it shouldn’t be.”

“What?” Eyros let out a bark of laughter. “This shouldn’t be undone? The War? The War Children? The deaths? The horror? We’ve been decimated, Seeyr! We’re heading towards almost complete annihilation if this War doesn’t stop.”

Seeyr patiently waited for Eyros to wind down before she said, “The War isn’t just Kaly’s fault. All of us are guilty of moving towards this place. It was inevitable. You know that very well, Eyros.”

Eyros tossed his head again and crossed his arms over his chest. “I didn’t want this! I wouldn’t have done any of the things I did if Kaly and Weryn hadn’t started it!”

“I don’t need to read minds to know that’s a lie,” Kaly hissed, silver eyes narrowing.

“You’ve wanted to be in charge for ages.

Take the burden off of Daemon’s shoulders.

You with your dirty, little fingers in everyone’s minds.

I heard you cooing to Daemon about it. Thankfully, he turned you down each and every time.

He knew the danger of having a megalomaniac in charge. ”

Eyros spun towards him. “And if I had looked into your mind, how long ago would I have discovered your slicing had started? Your self-mutilation? Your crazy experiments? You have no limits, Kaly, but instead of just taking yourself on this fun-house ride, you’ve taken all of us!”

Kaly said nothing.

“It wasn’t just when Daemon went to sleep that you were doing these things.

” A triumphant, bitter smile lit Eyros’ lips.

“Oh, no, I’m sure you’ve been experimenting like this for ages.

You just finally fucked up enough that you couldn’t cover your tracks.

And there’s no Daemon here to clean up your mess. ”

“Daemon is not here. And he will not be here for a very long time,” Seeyr interceded.

“He will sleep until his fledgling comes. So we are the only ones able to put an end to the War and set things up in such a way that when Daemon does wake, he will have the Immortals he’s deserving of instead of what we’ve become. ”

Eyros’ lips flattened. “I don’t see myself as having fallen like everyone else. I’m the same as always. There’s not some better version of me–”

“There is,” Seeyr cut him off.

Eyros blinked rapidly. “What–”