Dalton household, Silver Run district, Avriya

  November 2048

  Kai Dalton

  Meanwhile, on the afternoon before Alexis’s dorm party:

  “Happy birthday to you,

  Happy birthday to you,

  Happy birthday dear…”

  Kai inhaled. He placed Juniper’s birthday cake on the table, a chocolate cake with strawberry jam that had the words Happy Birthday, Juniper! printed out in red frosting on the top. Five red candles were stuck on the cake, each of them topped with a flame. Knowing what he’d have to say next, Kai sighed. But hey, whatever made his daughter happy.

  “... Juniper, the fearsome overlord of the underworld…”

  Juniper kicked her feet in her chair. “Yes, I am the big, scary, and evil ruler of the dead!” She shouted. “Mwahaha!”

  Kai laughed. Then he continued singing.

  “Happy birthday to you!”

  Juniper looked up at Kai. “Are we gonna do the “are you one, are you two, are you three” chant?” She asked him.

  Kai nodded. “If that’s what you wish.”

  Juniper giggled and held up her plushie. Then Kai started chanting, and Juniper followed along with him:

  “Are you one?!

  Are you two?!

  Are you three?!

  Are you four?!”

  At that point, Juniper was bouncing in her seat in anticipation.

  “Are you five!”

  “Yay! I’m five!” Juniper exclaimed, tossing her plushy aside on the table. Then she held up her plastic fork. “Can I eat cake now?”

  Kai smiled. “No, silly, you have to blow out the candles first,” he told her. “Make a wish!”

  Juniper leaned forward and blew out the candles after a few attempts. Wisps of smoke trailed in the air from each of the candle wicks as soon as their flames went out.

  “Did you make a wish?”

  “Yes I did, but I can’t tell you,” Juniper replied. “Or else it won’t come true.”

  Kai nodded. “Fair enough,” he acknowledged. Then he removed the candles and began cutting up the cake.

  “Daddy, can I eat the candles?” Juniper asked.

  “No.”

  “But they look so tasty!”

  “I assure you, they do not taste as good as they look.”

  “What does “assure” mean?”

  Kai paused. “Well, it means to be confident in telling the truth,” he explained. “So what I am saying is that I know for sure that the candles do not taste as good as they look.”

  “How do you know?” Juniper asked him. “Have you ate the candles yourself?”

  “It’s “have you eaten the candles yourself,” not “ate,” Kai corrected. “And well… I haven’t. But I do know that candles do not taste good.”

  “But how? You haven’t eaten them!”

  “Candles are not meant to be eaten, silly.”

  Juniper crossed your arms. “You never know until you try!” She shot back at him. “You always tell me that when you try to make me eat yucky vegetables. Then I eat them, and they taste bad. And now you are telling me that candles taste bad when you haven’t eaten them before. How do you know?”

  Kai slapped a non-metallic hand to his forehead. “When I say “you never know until you try,” I’m afraid it only applies to food, and candles are not food.”

  “Why are you afraid?”

  Kai plopped a slice of cake onto Juniper’s plate. “It’s a figure of speech, Juniper. Now go eat your cake.”

  Juniper’s eyes lit up as soon as her father handed the plate to her. “Yay! Cake!” She exclaimed. Then she took her plastic fork and began to aggressively stab her slice with it. The more she stabbed her cake, the more holes formed in it, and as each layer fell apart, strawberry jam oozed out, leaving red marks on her fork and plate. “Look Daddy! I’m murdering the cake and it's bleeding!” She announced. Then she grinned evilly. “Die, cake! Die!”

  Kai’s remaining eye widened in alarm. When did I get such a violent child?

  “I’m pretty sure your cake has been murdered enough as is,” he told her, taking another slice for himself. “You can eat it now.”

  For the next few minutes, Kai and Juniper ate their cakes together in relative silence, Juniper smearing chocolate and strawberry jam all over her mouth. When she tried wiping it with her sleeve, Kai stopped her and handed her a napkin. “Try using this instead.”

  “Okay!” Juniper agreed. She wiped her face with the napkin.

  When Kai and Juniper finished their slices, Kai took both his and his daughter’s plates and utensils and placed them in the kitchen sink. Juniper was holding her bunny plushie again, dangling it by its left ear. “Daddy, can I open my presents now?”

  “Sure, Juniper,” Kai agreed. He took his daughter’s hand and walked her away from the dining room table, to a closet downstairs where he had stored his presents for her. Then he took out three presents and placed them in front of her. “Here. Open.”

  Juniper opened the first gift, one wrapped in colorful wrapping paper. The sounds of crinkling and tearing filled the air, and by the time she finished unwrapping her gift, bits of paper lay scattered around it on the floor. She held up the gift, which was a puzzle box with an image of a field of sunflowers printed on it. “Jig-saw,” Juniper read out loud, tilting the box to read the text. “Daddy, what does that mean?”

  “It means that it's a type of puzzle where you fit the pieces together to form a picture,” Kai explained. “In your case, you will get a picture of a field of sunflowers that will look just like the one on the box once you complete your puzzle.”

  Juniper pouted. “But Daddy, I don’t like sunflowers!" She protested. "They’re too bright and happy.”

  “Don’t worry, those are…” Kai paused, trying to come up with something, “...evil sunflowers! Look, their centers are pitch black, and the yellow petals that border them are actually yellow teeth. That means if you’re not careful, those sunflowers could swallow you whole and take you to the shadow realm, so be careful!”

  “Yay! Evil sunflowers!” Juniper exclaimed. “And don’t worry, I’ll be careful!”

  Kai smiled and handed Juniper her second present. “That’s a good girl,” he remarked. “Wanna open your second present?”

  Turns out he didn’t need to ask, because Juniper was already tearing the wrapping paper off her second gift, which was revealed to be a coloring book. “Butt-er-fly coloring book,” she read out loud. “But Daddy, I don’t like butt flies!”

  Kai sighed. Damn, this girl’s hard to please, he thought to himself. Why can’t Juniper like normal things that most girls her age do, such as flowers, butterflies, and rainbows? Why does it always have to be blood, death, and violence with her?

  He paused again to think of another explanation. “Don’t worry, those are actually vampire butterflies that suck your blood,” he explained. “Like the sunflowers, they, too, are evil.”

  “Yay! Vampire butterflies!” Juniper shouted, tossing the coloring book aside.

  Kai gave Juniper her third and final gift. Unlike the other gifts, which were wrapped in wrapping paper, this one was stored in a gift box. Juniper opened the lid of the gift box and peered inside.

  “Rain boots?”

  Kai nodded. “Yes, those are rain boots,” he confirmed. Then he looked out the window. “Huh. It's drizzling. Wanna try on your new boots and play outside?”

  “Sure!” Juniper agreed. Kai retrieved a pair of scissors and removed the tags from the boots, and at once, Juniper scrambled to put them on. Within moments, she stood by the entrance to the Dalton residence’s backyard, wearing her new boots and a lavender rain jacket.

  “Daddy, now that I am five, does that mean I’m a big girl?”

  Kai picked up Juniper, holding her under her arms. “You are now!”

  Juniper squealed. “I’m as tall as you, Daddy!”

  Kai laughed. Then he put Juniper down. “My, my, you’re getting heavy,” he commented. “My baby girl is growing up—”

  “I’m a grown-up?!”

  Kai shook his head. “No, I said you’re growing up. There’s a difference, you know.”

  Juniper bounced on her feet. “I’m a grown-up! Yay!” She exclaimed.

  “Not so fast, Juniper. You still have many more years left of being a kid.”

  Juniper crossed her arms and pouted again. “Ugh, how long do I have to be a kid for?” She lamented. “You always say “you’re too little for this” and “you’re too little for that.” Can I at least go to the woods all by myself now that I’m five years old?”

  Kai shook his head. “Not yet, dear. You’re still too young for that.”

  “But I’m a big girl!”

  “Not big enough.”

  “Am too!”

  Kai sighed. “Let’s just go outside and play in the rain at this point,” he proposed. “I’ve got better things to do than this “am too!” “am not!” back-and-forth nonsense for all of eternity.”

  “What’s e-tern-ity?”

  If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

  “It means forever. That something never ends. Now open the door; we’re going outside.”

  Juniper reached for the door handle and began twisting the doorknob. Kai finished opening the door and held it open for her, and at once the little girl rushed outside, making a beeline for the largest nearby puddle. Immediately she jumped into the puddle, attempting to make the biggest splash she could.

  “Daddy, look, look! I’m making splashes in the puddle!” Juniper yelled, waving her arms as she hopped up and down. “And my feet aren’t even wet!”

  Kai smiled. “I’m glad you like your new boots,” he noted as he glanced up at a particularly large hawk flying by, taking his attention away from Juniper for a moment. Unfortunately, that moment was one moment too long, and by the time Kai looked down again, he realized in horror that Juniper was running away. “Juniper?! Where do you think you're going?!”

  By now, the girl had already left the backyard, running across the open field in the direction of the forest nearby. “Na-na-na boo-boo, you can’t catch me!” She sang at Kai while giggling, sprinting as fast as her little legs could carry her. Kai climbed over the fence in pursuit of his daughter, but alas, his size compared to hers proved to be a disadvantage— while it took him some time to step on the lowest horizontal rail of the fence, swing his leg over, and hop down, Juniper could just as easily slip her way between the upper and lower rails in a much shorter period of time. At that point, she was already far ahead of her father.

  Kai’s prosthetic leg didn’t help, either. Even if he had gotten used to it over the years, it was still a hassle to run with. And Juniper was fast, too. Even when Kai tried to catch up to her, she still remained a good three meters or so ahead of him, which wasn’t as much of a distance as it was before Kai started running, but not close enough, either. Why was Juniper running away from Kai? And why was she heading to the woods, out of all places, where surely a little girl like her wouldn’t be able to survive for long on her own?

  Just as Kai was pondering those questions and trying desperately to close the gap between himself and his daughter, he heard a loud clang from his right foot and tripped over something hard before tumbling to the ground. He winced at the dirt flying in his eye and the pain pulsing throughout his non-metallic left knee and right elbow. Ouch, he thought. Must’ve scraped myself while falling. Better get disinfectant for those scrapes once I get home.

  But Kai had more important matters to attend to— frankly, Juniper. Still in shock from the fall, he raised his head to see how far ahead she was of him. But it was too late. Much to his chagrin, she had already disappeared.

  Kai pushed himself up, traces of mud and blood on his hands. His prosthetics didn’t go undamaged, either— they, too, had sustained a few scratches, and a small dent had made its way into the metal of his right foot. As Kai inspected his own condition, he caught sight of the offending rock on the ground that triggered his fall. Maybe he knew it was pointless, but he couldn’t help but curse it out before moving on to search for his daughter.

  “Juniper?!” Kai yelled, pacing by the edge of the forest. “JUNIPER?! WHERE ARE YOU?! THIS IS NOT A JOKE, COME BACK THIS INSTANT!”

  No response.

  Shit, Kai thought after fifteen minutes of searching with no success. Shitshitshitshitshit.

  Guess I’m gonna have to report a missing child to the Silver Run District’s main office.

  In defeat, Kai retreated to his house. Blanche knows what could happen to Juniper now that she was out in the woods all alone! If something bad did happen to her, then Kai might as well have failed as a father. Hey, maybe he already had as soon as he selected her from the orphanage— it was his own selfish desire to contact his dead parents that made him choose a necromancer for a child, after all. But at the same time, it would be wrong if Kai said that he only kept Juniper around for selfish reasons, and didn't really care about her, because despite all that, she was still his daughter. Even if she somehow lost her ability to communicate with the deceased, Kai would still hate it if any sort of harm came upon her.

  After returning to the Dalton residence, Kai re-entered the basement and rinsed himself off in the bathroom sink. Why does parenting gotta be so difficult, goddamnit?! He shouted internally, for only Blanche and himself to hear. And why am I stuck doing it alone?!

  Maybe it would be easier if I had a wife…

  Kai shook the thought out of his head. Wishing for his ex wouldn’t do him any good, and it certainly wouldn’t bring back Juniper, either. The only thing that could was determination. And patience. And perhaps a miracle from Blanche.

  Kai pressed his hands together, knelt on the basement floor, and prayed. He really needed that miracle from Blanche.

  Spirit household, Cragmire County, Avriya

  November 2048

  Skye Everson

  Later that day, after Alexis's dorm party...

  “Noi, is it true that Lucian started the Inferno of 2004 and killed nearly a hundred thousand people?”

  Noi looked at Skye curiously. “Where did you hear that?”

  “A friend from school told me.”

  “Oh.” Noi paused, appearing to be lost in thought. Skye didn’t think it would take this much contemplation to answer a simple yes or no question, but for Noi it did, apparently. Eventually, after some time had passed, he spoke again:

  “Well, yes and no.”

  A perplexed expression crossed Skye’s face. “What do you mean by “yes and no”?” She asked. “Did Lucian start the fire, or did he not?”

  “He was involved in the creation of the fire, yes,” the owl-spirit answered. “But he never wanted it to happen, nor was he conscious while creating it. You see, the entity that actually started the fire shared a body with Lucian. But it was not Lucian himself.”

  “So he got possessed?” Skye asked, turning the new piece of information over in her mind. If what Noi was saying was true, and if she understood him correctly, then God, the thought made her so angry. What sort of entity would cause so much needless suffering while involving Lucian, out of all people (spirits?), in a disaster that he never wanted to create? Why was he unfairly shouldering all the blame for something that he didn’t even do willingly nor consciously? Skye wished to find whatever entity had hid behind Lucian as a means to accomplish the vast amount of destruction that it dealt and hunt it down. Maybe then he’d be free from at least some of his pain.

  Of course, Skye felt a bit guilty for empathizing more with Lucian than the people whose lives were lost in the fire— perhaps she was a little obsessed with him. Just a little. She’d be lying if she said that seeing him smile did not make her heart flutter at least a bit, or that sometimes, when she should be studying for her classes, she didn’t doze off dreaming about staring into those striking green eyes of his, or running her fingers through his flame-colored hair and stroking his horns, or having his arms, wings, and tail wrapped around her, or kissing the freckles on his face. So what if she was wrong to think that? Skye wasn’t going to apologize for her feelings anymore; she’d already done that for long enough.

  “I guess you could say that, yeah,” Noi confirmed, answering Skye’s question. “But it’s not like he was completely innocent, either. Though Lucian did not want the Inferno to happen, in a way, it was still a consequence of his own actions.”

  Skye reached for the teapot at the center of the table and poured herself another cup of tea. “How can it be a consequence of his own actions if he got possessed into setting the fire?” She asked Noi. “Isn’t that a bit… victim-blamey, for lack of a better word? Well, I don’t know how much of a victim Lucian was in that scenario, but I’d assume that getting possessed into doing something that you know is wrong and then being blamed for the damage when you weren’t even aware of your actions at the time would be quite terrifying.”

  Noi nodded. “You do have a point there,” he acknowledged. “And it was highly distressing for Lucian, too— so much that it pains him just to bring it up. It’s a sensitive topic for him, which is why he avoids speaking about it.”

  “I can see why that is the case,” Skye acknowledged. “If I was in the same position as Lucian, having that sort of thing happen to me would eat me alive as well.”

  “And so it did for him,” Noi replied. “And not only that, but he’s also terrified of you finding out the full extent of what he’s done. I don’t know if you’ve noticed by now, but he tends to be quite evasive as soon as the topic of his past is brought up. True, part of the reason is because it's a triggering subject for him, but another is because he’s afraid of your judgment. Lucian likes you a lot, Skye. There’s nothing he would hate more than losing you.”

  At that, a sense of realization dawned upon Skye. As much as she liked Lucian for his carefree, unapologetic honesty, there were times when he seemed to be acting rather strange, to say the least:

  “Last time I tried to break free from Blanche's influence… you know what, forget it."

  “What happened?"

  "Hey, no need to worry about it! It's literally nothing.”

  Suddenly that interaction in the greenhouse made a lot more sense. Lucian was laughing nervously at the time, and seemed to be uncomfortable. Not to mention that his response to Skye’s question about why he couldn’t fly if he had wings struck her as somewhat odd, too:

  "Great weather today, isn't it?!"

  Yup. Definitely seemed like a not-so-subtle attempt to change the conversation topic to something else.

  And all while Skye was recalling her past interactions with Lucian, Noi’s final remark was replaying itself in her head, and a heat rose to her cheeks. He likes me a lot?

  “So what exactly happened?” Skye asked. “I still feel like I’m missing something here. Is Lucian only afraid of me finding out that he got possessed, or is there more to it than that? Because first you say that it wasn’t him who started the fire, but an entity sharing a body with him, and then you say that the fire was a consequence of his own actions. This is all confusing to me. Is Lucian to blame, or is he not? How can the fire be a consequence of his own actions if he wasn’t willingly starting it?”

  Noi took the teapot and his own empty cup from the table and stood up. “Let’s go to another room,” he told Skye. “I’ll tell you everything.”

  ***

  The study room of Noi and Lucian’s house was a cozy space with a desk, a rug, two armchairs, and a bookcase lined up against the wall. A lamp on the desk emitted a soft glow, and the sounds of the howling wind and the pattering rain outside could be heard in the room. Outside the single window on the wall it was already dark, a sign of the stormy weather and the shortening days of the season.

  Noi sat down on the armchair opposite from Skye. “So I’ve already told you about Polaris. How about Andromeda?” He asked her.

  “Andromeda?” Skye repeated. “Wasn’t that the name of the water-spirit who fell in love with a human, created a waterfall with her tears once the human died, and then got executed by Blanche upon returning to the spirit realm?”

  Noi nodded. “So you know the story already,” he observed. “But what you may not know is that Andromeda was also the spirit who created Lucian.”

  “But I thought Blanche created Lucian?”

  “That too,” Noi confirmed. “But you see, sometimes Blanche has her existing spirits help her create new ones as well. Oftentimes, she sends out a spirit to gather raw materials for crafting its body. Then she imbues the body with a core, which brings it to life. But when Andromeda was creating Lucian from the materials she gathered, she was still overcome with grief from the death of her husband, and couldn’t focus properly. That was how Lucian ended up with a crack on his left horn and scars on his face— because while Andromeda was carving out one of his horns from a chunk of obsidian, she ended up breaking the rock. Then she dropped a cup of lava near him, and some of that lava spilled on his face.”

  Skye winced. “Ouch,” she reacted. “That must’ve been incredibly painful.”

  Noi laughed. “Don’t worry, Lucian wasn’t alive yet, so he couldn’t have felt any pain,” the owl-spirit added. “At that time, he was literally nothing more than a decorated pile of sand shaped like a person. In place of his hair was a mass of red seaweed, where his eyes should’ve been were two green emeralds, and his wings and tail were nothing more but leaves and vines, with pointed stones in place of the spikes,” he described. “All spirits start out like that. Raw materials, and nothing more.”

  “Wow, that’s news to me,” Skye remarked. “And here I was thinking that Lucian got those scars in a fight or something.”

  Noi laughed again. “No, he couldn’t have. If it was possible for Lucian to gain scars in his lifetime, trust me, he would be completely unrecognizable by now. As long as a spirit has their core, they will always be able to make a complete recovery from any injury they face, fatal or non-fatal, and that includes scarring.”

  Skye’s eyes widened. “So anything can happen to a spirit and they would always make a full recovery? Even if, let’s say, you tore their limbs off? Or cut off their head?”

  Noi cringed. “With their core, yes, exactly so. And in that case, the spirit would simply come back to life, re-grow their limbs, head, or whatever other body parts they lost, and the replaced parts would look and function exactly the same as they did before. It’s physically impossible for a spirit to get injured or die permanently unless Blanche removes their core,” he explained. “But even if injuries and deaths are only temporary for us, that doesn’t mean they’re not incredibly painful.”

  “Huh. Curious,” Skye remarked. “You’d think that spirits wouldn’t be able to feel pain since they have no purpose for it. For humans, at least, it does the job of protecting us by keeping us away from dangerous situations. Yet spirits don’t need to feel pain because they can’t sustain permanent injuries, nor can they die under normal circumstances, so there is no risk to be avoided.”

  A dark expression came over Noi. “Oh, pain in spirits has a purpose, alright. It just serves a completely different purpose than it does for humans.”

  “That purpose being?”

  “It’s a way for Blanche to control us.”

  Skye looked at Noi in concern. “Huh?”

  “Think about it. If you were an all-powerful deity with the ability to create living beings that will do whatever you command of them, you wouldn’t want them dying or receiving injuries that would impede their ability to work because then they’d no longer be useful to you. But you wouldn’t want to make them completely invincible, either, or else they wouldn’t be afraid to rise up against you. The solution? Create spirits that can’t die permanently unless you make them, but at the same time, allow them to feel pain, hunger, cold, thirst, etc… That way, you’d still have a means of punishing them so they don’t act out of line,” Noi explained. Skye nodded.

  “Wow, now that’s just cruel. But it also explains a lot about why spirits are the way they are,” Skye responded. “I’ve always known that they lived for a really long time, much longer than any human, but I never thought about why. Turns out that for a spirit, their conditional immortality only means that they can die a thousand times over, and yet never live at all.”

  Noi tilted his head, giving Skye a curious look. “Huh?”

  “I don’t know if it would count as living, spending your entire life conforming to the demands of someone like Blanche,” Skye remarked. “And I may be using the word “die” loosely here, but I’ve seen Lucian die in front of me before. Maybe it doesn’t count because it was only temporary, but it looked close enough to the real thing.”

  Noi sighed. “Lucian would agree with you on that,” he responded. “He has “died” more times than anybody else in the spirit realm, and yet I think he’s the only one who has ever truly lived. Unfortunately, it was him deciding to live for once that ultimately led to his greatest regret,” the owl-spirit stated. “And yes, I am talking about the Inferno of 2004.”