Vote?  Enjoy.

-January 22, xxxxx  xx-

Mucus.  Filth and grime. Gritty, everything is gritty.  It’s always gritty, deal with it.  I will deal with it.  Mucus, there’s always mucus.  I can’t get rid of it, maybe I don’t want to.  The dirt is cool today, wet, it’s not normally wet, but it must have rained recently to be so.  Outside, yes I’m outside.  I don’t get to be outside often, but she let me out today.  In fact she let me go quite far today.  I don’t normally go this far, but today is okay.

There must be a reason why we are so far from home.  Home.  I can’t believe I called it that.  That place is worse than hell.  She does things, terrible things, yet I’m still here.  Sadly I’m still here.  I stay low to the ground and keep my face nearly touching the mud.  Mine wants me like this or there’s punishment.  I don’t like punishment, it’s never good.  She says if I’m low I can’t see what they are doing, it’s for my protection.  I think she just wants to humiliate me, and it works very well. 

I exhale slowly, I can see my breath.  It must be cold out, but I can’t feel anything.  Muddy rags cover my body and are twice as heavy as they normally are.  This is probably because they are wet, but I can’t feel that either.  As of late I haven’t felt much of anything.  Maybe she did something to maybe, maybe I’m finally broken.  I keep my head close to the wet ground and shift my eyes up.  It hurts to look up like this, but it’s the only way I can get a glimpse of what’s going on without getting scolded. 

There are trees around us, lots of trees, we’re in a forest.  For some reason I can’t quite remember the journey here, only that we are here.  This happens a lot, lapses in memory.  I hate them, or at least I think I do.  Maybe it’s good I forget, maybe it’s not.  She’s in front of me, her back is arched and she’s wearing at least two fur coats.  She smells like mold and dirt as much as I do and the coats have probably never been washed.  Two coats, it’s not that cold… is it?  The fungus on her face has grown considerably and started sprouting white pussy gunk from them.  She often takes that gunk and throws it into her brews. 

There are three other people here besides my keeper.  That’s two more than the last time we had visitors.  The last time, I was so innocent then, I was so unknowing.  So much has changed since then, I’ve grown so much with Mine, she’s taken good care of me, changed me, trained me.  I would never consider leaving her side, she is my everything.

One of the other three I know.  It’s the pretty one with the scales.  She’s wearing a black dress, her skin is clean, and she doesn’t even have the proper attire for the chilly weather.  She’s sexy, I just want to jump on her and shove dirt down her bra, I want to cover her in filth and fuck her silly.  I can’t.  Mine won’t let me, she’d never let me.

Two more.  One doesn’t look like she’s from around here.  Her skin is full of color and she has red lips which contrast with her thin black coat.  She’s wearing boots but doesn’t seem comfortable in them and has orange hair that’s so curly it froths up in a neat ball on her head.  Her jaw is wide and she looks to have some punch on those arms of hers.  Russian.  She’s Russian, that or Eastern Europe.  Either way she’s not from around here, not at all.

The last one is old, very old.  Mine appears old due to the filth but I’ve discerned she can’t be more than forty or fifty.  This one looks ancient.  Unlike the tall strong European this one is only four feet tall, has a wooden cane, and wears a single long robe of sorts with a hood and large sleeves.  If we were comparing garb to see who’s the most witch of the witches she’d win first prize, literally resembling every single cliché a witch could have.  Old, cane, robe, I wouldn’t be surprised if the woman has a crackly voice, is missing eye and even has a pet raven.

Mine puts her hand down and twists her fingers in my hair.  I look back at the ground, not wanting to give away that I was peaking when I shouldn’t have.  There’s tension in the air, lots of it.  It’s like at any moment one is going to say something offensive and all-out war is going to take place.  They just look at each other in silence.  It’s been like this for some time.  I can tell these women don’t get out often.  Hell, twenty days and we never left home.  Why now?  What changed?  These others, that’s what changed. 

“Yaverlize,” the snake women, Harrorine if I recall correctly, is the first to speak to my keeper, “I see you still sport that filth.  I thought you would have killed that off by now,” her voice is slick and sharp like daggers.

“I fancy him,” Mine replies with her cracked voice.

“It won’t speak?  I don’t see why you accompany yourself with something subhuman as that.”

“Something to keep me warm at night.”

Harrorine scoffs at that reference, “You would be one for that.”  I press against Mine’s leg and rub my hair against her fur coat.  This acknowledgement shall be rewarded if I do it to the best of my ability.  I like rewards. 

“Why are we here?” The tall woman with the red lips finally speaks.  Her English has a heavy Eastern European spin to it and she speaks slowly like she has to think about the words before letting them part her lips. 

The last lady lets a rumble out of her throat, places her staff right in front of her and grabs onto it with both hands.  She looks up at the three others around her.  Well, missing one eye, saw that one coming.  The rumble seems to resonate with everyone as basically meaning, “What she said.”

“Bevonski, Mother Oda,” Harrorine beings, “I called you upon this meeting today to discuss a series of events that have taken place over the last sixteen days and how these events effect every single one of us, present or not.  I called upon more but given the nature of deceit and distrust amongst our kind most naturally declined this… invitation.

“We have a problem, a serious problem, you may have seen it before, you may have felt its tremors, or you may still be too isolated to notice it’s presence,” she looks at Bevonski with that, Russia is pretty far from wherever we are, “Yaverlize, explain.”

The other three turn to Mine.  She clears her throat and cranes her neck out from under its filthy veil, “On January 6th,” she clears her throat again and continues very slowly, “I created a golem to stalk and exterminate a Blood Witch I encountered a month prior.  The task was simple, isolate the Blood Witch from her companions, use one of them as bait, hook and sink.  The acquired gunmen to do the task were all slaughtered except one and my golem was defeated by the Blood Witch’s boyfriend who is in procession of a powerful demon.”

“What is the point of this, you lost because you’re weak.” Bevonski cuts in; frustrated she even bothered to come listen to my keeper’s story.

“Not done yet,” Mine raises her voice and sticks a finger up to hush the other, “One of the companions of this Blood Witch is a girl named Lilian Ver Avaion.”

“Impossible.” Bevonski growls, “The Avaions were driven to extinction.  None of their bloodline should exist.”

“I confirmed it.” Harrorine snipes.

“Yes, my one survivor explained that the child was able to turn wolf midday several days after the full moon.  A white wolf then slaughtered the men,” She chuckles, “I might of gotten more but I was hungry and his heart was beating so very fast, they taste good full of adrenaline, I couldn’t help myself.”

“Yaverlize,” Harrorine shoots a glare.

Mine gets back to task, “The wolves live.”

“Why didn’t you just kill the runt while you had the chance?” Bevonski says.

“Because she’s not the only one, the Blood Witch is one too, and I suspect so is the boyfriend.  They’re coming back.”

“Three wolves and you call a meeting to prepare for the apocalypse?  This is ridiculous.  I’m leaving.  You have fun with your wolves, kill them for us all or suffer as the imbecile who let a few dogs best her.”

As Bevonski turns to make her exit Mother Oda speaks for the first time, “There’s more.”  Her voice has this river of deep wisdom laced within it, but is so quite an untrained ear would miss it.

Bevonski stops, apparently Oda speaking is a big deal in its own, even for other witches.  Mine fills the gap, knowing she has but a few words and even less seconds to keep Bevonski’s attention, “Yesterday one of my birdies witnessed a vampire attack.” Bevonski turns around just as fast as her exit, “They’re coming back; both of them are coming back.  Petty rivalries over inches of land will mean nothing if there’s no land left to fight for.  We called a meeting to prepare for the apocalypse because that’s exactly what’s coming.”

The four look at each other in that same death stare their circle had before the conversation started.  Silence sinks down like a heavy winter blanket.  Werewolves were one thing to Mine, but she hasn’t stopped speaking about that attack yesterday.  Werewolves are disorganized, disjointed, and it’s easy to control and predict their animalistic behaviors.  But vampires, that’s a class of monster that takes genocide down to the science. 

Mine wouldn’t stop bickering; if they really are back it could mean the end of her kind.  Shields take months, years to build and perfect and no one’s used them for half a dozen. Their defenses are down and most of her kind doesn’t even know the threat exists.  It will be a massacre.  Mine will die, I will die, we all will die.

I suck in air for my nose, mucus.  There’s always so much mucus and filth.  I want to press my face into the dirt in shame and cry.  I need to be sad so Mine doesn’t have to be.  The world is dirty, but it’s about to get a lot more dirty.  War is coming, a war that will decide all of our fates.

-January 24 North of Los Vegas, NV-

I put my fingers under the straps of my backpack.  I look down at Lil who is silently beside me.  I guess this is a group decision between the two of us. We can’t just stay here and wait.  We’re tired of just waiting and it doesn’t seem to matter how much I shout at the sky Aleniese is simply not coming and Clare has now been gone for a full week. 

There’s just one more thing we have to do before leaving.  I knock on the door of room sixteen.  There is no reply.  Of course there would be no reply.  She hasn’t spoken a word in the past week.  That nurse, Nina, has had Sarah in a drunken trance for a week now, even now I bet she’s suffering some kind of deluded after effect of the last time she stared into those red eyes.

I slowly open the door, “Sarah, it’s me and Lil, can we come in?”  I peak inside.  The bed is empty, the white shades are over the window and curtains have been draped over them too making the room very dark.  I look to see her in the corner as far from the bed as possible.  Sarah is curled up in a ball with her arms over her legs and the hospital gown covering her body like a blanket.  There is a single cord going from her arm to a metal hanger on wheels.  The hanging bag is red and a very slow consistent dropper is letting more of the blood feed down the tube.

“How are you doing?” I ask.  Lil remains in the hall, this is the closest I’ve been able to get her to here since we put Sarah in the room, so that’s an accomplishment on its own.  I flip the light.  Sarah squints at the brightness and blinks her eyes several times.  Poor thing.  Her eyes are blood shot, her face is extraordinarily pale, and her lips look to have shrunken and shriveled up.  It looks like she’s lost a good amount of her body mass in the last week and I don’t think she can even stand up if she tried.  I’m not sure how she was even able to get from the bed to the corner. 

“We need to talk.”  I jump as a voice comes from behind me.  I turn.  It’s Nina.  She reaches her hand into the room and switches the light back off.  She then pushes herself around me and closes the door forcing me back into the hall, “You can see her in a bit.”

“What is it?  It’s been a week, she hasn’t said a word.”

“She survived, that’s what happened, and she’s also in a trance.  She’s not stable enough to be brought out of it, at least not yet.”

“Then what do you want?” I look behind me to notice Lil is gone.  She must have scurried off when she smelt Nina coming.  I’m not great with that smell thing yet, my scene has indeed increased but I still have no idea how to tell things apart, only that they smell.

“I’m recommending we terminate her.”

“What? No!” I put my hand on the door handle to open it again.  Nina puts hers on mine.  I stop.  Her fingers are ice cold to the touch.

I look down into her eyes, a good six inches lower than mine, “She’s unstable, she’s sickly, but there’s worse…”  Nina pauses, I don’t reply, I just look, what could be worse? “Her preference is people younger than her.”  I don’t get it, what’s so wrong with that? “My Lord, she’s nine.  Nine.  She’ll always target kids, she’ll want them.  We can’t have a vampire on the streets hunting children it’s inhumane.”

“Can’t you just change it?”

“No, it’s like telling someone obsessed with chocolate they can never eat it.  But they will, it’s their favorite, they’ll try to eat only chocolate if possible.”

I put my hand against the door, “What are we going to do with you?”

Nina puts her head down, “Excuse me my Lord, I need to visit the patient.”

I put myself more between her and the door, “What’s your preference?” 

She looks back up, “I don’t have one.”

“How’d you get here?”

She takes a step back and keeps her eyes on the ground, “Top marks in vampire medical, I was to be turned a year after the extinction when I graduated.  My family has grown up as servants to the Vampires for several generations.  I went to school to prove I wouldn’t be a blood bank like my mother and my two older sisters.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty six now, I really have to get back to work, please let me in.”

“Let me have a moment first.”

“Five minutes.”

Five minutes that’s enough.  I open the door and go into the room, this time keeping the light off.  I go over to the corner.  It smells like death in here, it smells like someone died multiple times.  I have no idea how anyone could stand it in here.  “Sarah,” I say as I carefully approach, “Sarah, look up.”  She keeps her gaze down at her knees. 

I lower myself to one knee and slowly reach out.  Nina says she’s unstable, I have no idea what that means.  I touch my hand to Sarah’s arm.  Her head jerks up.  Her dull eyes focus on my face and four fangs shoot out from under her lips like they are spring loaded.  She hisses at me and I yank my hand away. 

She puts one of hands down and falls to one side.  She slowly spreads her legs up the wall and her back up the other corner pushing the blood bag on the hanger away,  “M, make it stop…”  she looks up at me and opens her mouth.  Her lips on the inside are cracked and the underside of them is red with what looks like her own blood.

“Make… what stop?”

“Morelious…  Morelious… Morelious…”

“What does that mean?”

She pushes her fingers into her stomach as if it’s burning a hole into her chest, “I don’t  know,” she cries out, “Just… make it stop…”  She pushes one hand harder against her belly and reaches the other out for the door.  I back away, having no idea how to help her.  I take a few steps back then turn for the door.

Nina is still standing there, waiting patiently, “She’s calling for you,” Nina nods her head and steps around me to enter the room, when she passes me I ask, “What does Morelious mean?”

She turns and scowls, “Darkness my Lord… how do you know that word?”

I look at Sarah lain out in the corner, “Maybe it’s not a vamperic symptom.”

I leave before she can question further.  She didn’t like that I knew that, I could sense her surprise and agitation when I mentioned that word.  I wonder how she knows what it means and what it’s from.  I go down to the bottom level and out the front door.  Lil has found a way into the truck.  Gilbert of course offered us an array of fancy cars to use.  I have no idea why, but this truck has a connection with me, I feel we have to use it.

 “Is she okay?” Lil asks as I get into the driver side and throw the backpack into the back seat.  Other than that bag there are a few sleeping bags, a bag of clothes for Lil and a bag for me.  Knowing our track record I also was able to slip a few guns into the truck bed under a heavy blanket.  Those are for emergencies only. 

“I’m not sure.  She still looks really sick and is in a lot of pain.  Nina is taking good care of her.”

“I don’t like Nina.”

“Of course you don’t you don’t like any vampires.”

Lil looks forward and spots two men dressed entirely in black looking at us from next to the building.  Both men are packing compact Uzi’s, “I like Sarah,” I guess that’s true, though she hated her at first as well, “They’re going to follow us,” now she’s referring to the two in the suits.

I nod my head, “I know.  We’re their pets now right?  Guess they need to keep their dogs on a short leash.”  I start the engine and pull the truck around to the exit.  The guard opens the door.  The two in suits move to a slick black car parked along the side the roundabout and start its engine.  As the gate finishes opening we pull out and as predicted the car follows, well at least they aren’t trying to hide the fact that they have orders to follow us. 

“Are we going to lose them?” Lil asks.

“I don’t think so; maybe they can be of some use. We’re heading North.”

“North, why?  Isn’t it dangerous?”

“I’m counting on it.  Aleniese won’t come to me to explain where he took Clare and why.  He hasn’t spoken to me in a week.  We’re going to make him come.  We’re going to get into a situation where he has to come.”  Lil nods in agreement.  One suicide run coming up, straight North it is.

-January 25, Lansel, Z.14-

Cloud 9, that’s what they should call this place, because that’s exactly what it is.  It’s everything, it’s all creation bottled up in a single place for the privileged few to experience its grandeur.  I’m in heaven and there’s no reason to ever go back, I’m dead to the world and that’s perfectly alright.  Here is everything I’ve always wanted, its more than me, it’s more than all of us.

I look at the wall of text in front of me.  Heaven has everything, including a library of every ancient book known to mankind and some that are not.  A library of every book a person like me could possibly need to perfect my craft, not just my craft but every craft.  Here gods are made, gods are broken.  I’ve been given the keys the universe and it’s purely my decision whether to use them to save two worlds or lead to the death of everything.  I could burn cities with these books, I could create empires.  I could change the course of everything or create an entire world of my own.  I could do anything with these books, so many books burned out of existence but brought back here to stand frozen in pure perfection.

I could break the rules here; I could master a second craft in a year, all of them in a dozen.  I would be unstoppable.  There’s no time.  There’s never any time.  The light won’t last that long, I have to defeat the darkness in days, weeks, not months or years.  But I can improve multiple crafts.  Right now my biggest problem is being too slow.  Bloodcraft though the easiest to cast the most extreme spells takes minutes to hours to prepare, in the heat of a moment you have seconds.  This makes Bloodcraft a weak offensive skill.

I can change that, I practiced Chantcraft in my younger years.  I know the hymns and rhythms.  I know the basics and can easily build on that.  I should be able to easily defeat the darkness.  I should be able to easily defeat an army with these secrets kept from the world.  There are three large tombs on a table in front of the wall of gold, two are Chantcraft books, and one is of Bloodcraft I’ve never seen before.  The idea is simple, use chants to sort and create the diagrams required with blood, then all I need to do is simply add a final ingredient and a spell that could take hours to prepare would be finished in seconds. 

The Queen will be so proud.  I’ve been practicing for several days now, and I think I got the chant down.  I plant my feet on the ground and concentrate on the three books.  “Devilium lo ro… lo ro la lem herro,” The words themselves have no meanings, the craft is purely tonal, any words can be used but the tones have to be perfect.  Nothing.  I try again, this time raising one hand and reaching it for the books, “Devilium lo ro… lo ro la lem herro!” My fingers lung out as if they were magnets on them.  I can’t move my hand; it’s locked in front of me.  I slowly raise my middle finger and the book in the center lifts off the table.  I tilt that raised finger to the left and the book slides to the left, I tilt to the right and it goes to the right.

I lift my other two fingers and the other two books lift as well.  I push my pinky down and one of the table legs crack as it gets forced into the ground.  I lift my pinky and the table rises off the ground like the books.  I slowly wiggle my fingers and the books twist around each other.  This doesn’t seem too precise.  I can refine it with another spell, one of the mind.  I saw it earlier, a spell that will separate the innate connection between fingers so that I will be able to move each one of them with precision without interfering with other fingers.  Seizing, a common word Witches use to explain the act of unnaturally moving their fingers.

I touch all my fingers together and the objects drop.  I smile.  I’ve learned so much here in the last five days and I plan to learn so much more before the battle is upon us.  Nothing else matters anymore, it’s me, the Queen, and her delicious blood.  Together we will be unstoppable. 

I move back up to the table and press both my hands against its wooden surface.  I look at my fingers, they’re shaking again.  A painful knot rolls in my chest and my heart burns like its beating right into my ribcage, even if I know for a fact that poor thing hasn’t beat in a decade.  The tremors grow as sweat compiles on my face and arms.  These flashes are coming faster and heavier every time, is it the extended exposure to intense light?  Is it the deoxygenated world?

My mouth waters and my tongue cries out for that bitter relief.  I’ve been drinking from the Queen several times a day, yet it never satisfies me for long.  I feel bloated and overfed but so thirsty.   I want her blood but deep down am sick of it.  Maybe I’ll visit her in a bit and get some short lived relief.  I’m guessing the intense environment I’m stuck living in is stressing my body far further than it’s ever been stressed before.  I’m guessing just like when I exhaust energy and have to feed more frequently that is happening here, but on a more extreme case.  No Earth being should be here for an extended period of time, not even the undead.

The shaking stops and the chest pains subside.  I take a relieving breath and open the more serious Bloodcraft book.  These spells are amazing, they require such easy to acquire ingredients but do such devastating things.  These are war spells. They are an entire section of Bloodcraft cut out of history and forgotten in time, these are the spells intentionally lost because they made the craft by far the deadliest of the five.

Here’s one, it describes as a fire cannon, a perfect cylinder of fire with a five foot diameter that can reach up to a hundred meters.  Requirements: A diagram, which is etched into the page, animal blood—mammal, unspecified; human blood—any; and Witch blood—mine, to close the spell.  If I knew this spell alone I could be nearly unstoppable back on Earth and that’s one of over a hundred spells in this book, scary part is that this book’s title is Beginner’s Battle Spells. 

If this is the beginner book what must the more complex ones look like, how has a Blood Witch not yet simply taken over the planet?  What’s stopping them?  Probably the fact that these spells were lost to time, they possibly never existed on Earth—then the question becomes how did the Angels come upon them if they never existed?  Did they create them?  I know spells can be created, I’ve seen it many times.  Beatrice my zombie friend got herself killed trying to invent a spell.  But these are impossibly simple; the Angels had to have invented them and perfected them down to their simplest form.

The sweat on my forehead runs down to my chin and drops off.  I need a break.  I back away from the table and slip down a narrow hall.  The Queen waits outside, this building and the library is not built for her kind.  She can’t fit into the building or around the large fragile shelves that house the thousands of books, many in languages that are quite obviously not Earth originated.  If she can’t fit in it leads me to wonder who does manage the library?  The books I pull out are always put away the next day, someone else is here, but I’ve never seen them.  There are also doors to upper and lower floors, I could go down to the undercity if I wanted and the Queen would have no way of following me.  But the undercity is not of my concern, I have more important things to do and right now I’m so darn thirsty.

As I exit the Queen’s voice comes with the same phrase she always starts with, “What did my little one learn today?”

She makes me explain everything I learned that day before letting me drink.  The Queen loves hearing all the wonderful things I’ve learned and how they may be able to help fight against the Darkness.  “I was able to levitate books today.”

“Doing magic in the Literia, isn’t that dangerous?”

“Not this spell, it’s a basic levitation chant spell.  I was able to lift and move the books around at my will.  But it’s not ready yet.”

“Why not?” she’s been growing more impatient every day.  I think the Darkness is coming faster than anticipated.  My month or two of preparation may be shortened to a couple weeks. 

“I need to master how to seize, to independently move my fingers in unnatural ways all at once in order to create designs and move objects alike.  Levitation is one thing, but it’s a meaningless skill if I’m unable to accurately control the objects I make hover.”

“Is it complicated?”

“Very, it takes a chantress months or years to master it.  Luckily I’ve had years of practice when I was younger and just need to brush up on the spell, it shouldn’t take me more than a week to learn it again.”

“We may not have a week.”  I nearly bite my tongue as another painful wave of knots fills my chest.  I try not to show I’m in pain to the Queen, but I think she knows.  I think she knows about the strain being here puts on me and that may be another reason she feels the need to rush me.  Just a small snack and I can be right back in the library learning countless spells to make me a monster on the field.

The Queen peels her arm out.  There are several holes in her wrist from my previous bites.  I found that I prefer making new holes instead of biting into old ones; the flavor is better that way.  I place both my hands on her arm and find a spot further up her wrist that has not been tarnished by my fangs.  I close my eyes and wait for another knot to pass before I sink my teeth into her.  That tangy goodness fills my mouth quickly followed by drunkenness and dizziness.  I remain attached to her for as long as my body will allow before pulling my teeth out and wiping her silver blood off my face with the back of my hand. 

Back in, I have to go back in.  I’m not done yet.  My vision spins in a slow circle as I stumble back towards the library.  I slip inside and follow along the wall to my spot in the back near the spell books.  A different kind of knot builds in my stomach and I trip over my own feet, falling to a knee and placing my hands on the floor.  Nausea encompasses my body and I feel a sickening dry heave come up my throat.  My neck burns as if I’ve been drinking acid and I heave once more, this time spewing hot silver all over the floor.

I cough once, causing more displeasure and vomit more out.  I find myself crying as I feel wave after wave.  I haven’t felt this bad in years, possibly even as far as a decade.  Hell, even getting shot wasn’t as bad as this, I’ve not felt good since I got here and it only gets worse with every passing day.  I’m so busy with my sickness I don’t sense anyone approach, but a rubbery hand rests amongst my shoulder.  I’m doubled over in too much pain to look to see who it is, but hear a very small voice, “Shole, shole.”  The hand gets a firm grip on my shoulder and pulls me up slightly, “Sinie…  you.”

I gather the strength to turn my head, standing above me is a little creature, her head is round and about the size of a soccer ball, she has two large glowing owl-like eyes which are mostly green.  She has on a simple dress, this dress looks like it was once white but now has brown stains on the bottom half and a gray shade as if it’s been covered in years of dirt.  Her body is skinny and malnourished and she has arms like pale twigs and feet just as flimsy.  She has long wooden fingers and toes.  Barely held in one of her hands is what appears to be a teacup with steaming hot liquid.  They have tea here?  Who is this creature?

“Shole,” she speaks again reaching the cup out to me, drink?  She wants me to drink?  I take the cup with both hands.  I find my fingers shaking again, even if I just fed.  Her fingers, though wooden in appearance feel more like rubber. I place the cup to my lips, “Harvi!” She says as I place the cup to my lips, I see she’s waving her fingers across her face.  I sip. The liquid, even though it’s steaming is ice cold.  One sip and it’s like soothing ice blankets my throat.  I sip more, quicker, and seem to shock the creature with how easily I can down the liquid.

The spinning world slows to a standstill and everything becomes clearer than it has in days.  The acid in my throat mellows out and my stomach tightens as whatever illness is making me sick subsides.  I take the entire cup in another thirty seconds and sit back, finding a wall to rest up against.  I don’t even look at the mess I created for fear it’ll make me nauseous all over again.  “Thank you.”  I say to the creature.

She just stares at me with a half-smile, apparently not understanding what I said.  She reaches her fingers out for the cup and urges for me to return it.  I hand it back and she takes it close to her body.  She starts to leave, “Wait,” say, trying to get the strength to stand up.  She goes down one of the rows.  I struggle to my feet and proceed to chase.  She crosses to the backside of the library and takes a left, opposite of my little corner.  There I see a door which she appears to be heading too.  I walk faster, feeling at full strength now, and catch her wrist right as she opens the door.  In the darkness behind that metal are half a dozen other large glowing eyes.  The eyes all cower away when they see me on the other end.

She moves away from the door and it closes, a click sounds right after which I presume is the door locking.  Her big eyes look up at me, standing I’m nearly twice her height.  “Who are you?  Why did you help me?  Why haven’t I seen more of you?” She looks at me, empty.

“Earth no yes,” she strings together apparently random words, she throws her free hand into the air, “only.”

“Only what?”  I let go of her arm, she reaches both her hands out to her sides like an airplane, “Earth, only.” 

“The Queen? Angels?  Only them?”  She looks at me, I point back towards the entrance of the library, “Only?”

A glint of recognition floods her eyes, “Yes, only.”  She forms a mouth with her fingers and mimics talking, “Only.”

“Only they,” I point at where the Queen would be waiting, “Can speak,” I mimic a mouth with my own fingers, “with me?” I point to myself.

“No.  Only can spake Earth.”  English, she means English.  Only the Angels are allowed to speak English or any Earth tongue by the looks of it.  They are not allowed to even form a bridge of communication with me, why? 

She reaches for the door in a second attempt to escape.  I catch her wrist again.  If she goes through that door I may never see her or any of her kind again.  They look to live in this city, but I’ve never seen them until now.  This is my opportunity to find out what’s really going on here.  I turn back and look to where my corner is.  I drag her along; quickly showing my size also comes with strength far superior to hers.  She has no choice but to follow.

I place her in front of my desk, “Stay.”   I head back towards the entrance, turning down one of the isles before getting to the spot where I spewed my meal over the floor.  Near the front of the library is a row of books with red bindings, one caught my attention right away when I first came here.  I go right for that book and take it out, it’s a book on English basics, a book on how to learn to read and write English. 

I grab the book and take it back to my corner, hoping she’s still there.  She is.  I place the book on the table.  She takes one look at it and shy’s away.  After a moment of deliberation she takes the book off the table and scurries off.  I follow her to see she goes and returns the book to the shelve I found it on. I expect her to run off back to that door and prepare to cut her off again, but instead she turns back and goes down one of the isles nearby.  She finds a massive book which looks to weigh as much as her and struggles to carry it back to the table.

She drops the beast on my table.  I look at it.  There is some strange script on the front I’ve never seen before.  I open the book to the first page, it’s dusty and old and unlike the paper pages of my previous books this one looks to be made of some kind of fiber.  On the first page are geometrical shapes, eighteen in total, it first shows each of the shapes then shows what looks to be guides on how to draw the shapes.  The next page has what appear to be random squiggles, these squiggles and lines cover the next four pages, and there looks to be at least two hundred of them.    After the four pages are many, many more pages on how to draw these symbols.  My eye catches one in particular, a symbol I’ve used several times before, that’s one of the ones I use in my spell to make an object or place unnoticeable.

After the pages on the symbols and the shapes come simple combinations of the two.  This is a language book, their language.  I flip about half way through the book, it looks like the way it’s written is that there is always a base shape at the bottom, then one to several of the symbols are drawn directly over the shape and each other, making certain syllables complex to read.  Words are separated by a single space and the syllables within a word touch each other, making it even more jumbled.

I leave the book on the table and head back to the front.  I find the English learning book again and bring it back to the table.  I place it down once more.  She shakes her head no and reaches out to grab and probably return it.  “No,” I say, stopping her, “You,” I point at her, “This.” I point at the English book, “Me,” I point at myself, “This.”  I point at the tomb of her language. 

She nods her head and reaches for the English book, she points at the red binding, “No, Bolelsion.”

I place my hand on hers and the book, pushing it back onto the table, “I don’t care.  If she has a problem with it,” I point to the front entrance, “then I’m not fighting her fucking war.”

She pulls her hand out from under mine and puts both of them on her chest, “Bee.”

Bee, that sounds like her name.  I put my hands on my own chest, “Clare.” She nods.  I go back to my spell books.  I have a spell for this.  I know a spell that can open the mind for absorption of large quantities of information very quickly.  The spell works great for learning pure facts such as history or vocabulary, not so much on motor skills, grammar, or more precise details—which is why it wouldn’t work with learning spells.  But for learning her entire language in a week or two, it shouldn’t be a problem.

I find the memory spell and study its tones, this looks complicated and I have no idea where to start.  Bee looks at the same page.  Even though the explanations are in English she looks at the tonal bars.  She starts singing, her voice goes high pitch, then low, then skips for two seconds before going high and cutting off fast.  I look at her, at the book, then back at her.  She does it again.  Did she just do it perfectly after looking at the page for a few seconds?

She repeats the melody a third time.  There are common words used in association with the melody but she just completely forwent that and went right for the pure chant.  She does it a fourth time and I try to repeat, I’m not quite on tune so she repeats again.  We do this several times.  I find it funny.  We are both entirely unable to communicate but she knows I want to know this tune and she’s helping me learn it, we’re both singing like idiots in an empty library. 

Ten more minutes of this back and forth and she stops.  I think I got it.  I place my hand on her shoulder, and nod.  She does the melody once more and I sync up with her perfectly.  I pull my hand away.  She doesn’t look any different and it doesn’t look to have affected her any.  Not all spells have flashy lights to show they work. 

I place a hand on my own shoulder and do the same hymen. There is no different feeling.  I flip her book back to the first page and stand over it with Bee next to me.  I point at the first shape, a circle, “Dou,” I nod and point at the next a triangle, “Dem,” I point at the next, a triangle, but upside down, “Dam,”  We keep at this as I point at each of the geometric shapes, I try my best to plant their names in my head.  I don’t draw these, I don’t need to.  We move to the more complex symbols and she begins naming off each one.  Remembering the names is easy.

We do this for the next hour before switching to the English counterpart.  She’s afraid at first to even look at the book, but after a few soothing words I get her to start working on learning my language.  For the rest of the day I put aside magic and we concentrate on learning letters and how to draw them.  Bee acquires something like a metal feather from a hidden compartment in one of the walls and we practice writing, it looks like we’re actually doing this, we’re actually going to learn each other’s languages.  Learning is quick, I can’t be sure but it feels like the spell worked.  I’ll have to recast it tomorrow, but that doesn’t seem too difficult now. 

It becomes time to part ways for the day, “Tomorrow?”  I question Bee, she doesn’t know the word, but she nods a yes.  She begins putting books away and I take the one for her language and the metal pen.  She looks at me worried, but I nod letting her know it’s okay.  I go outside, the Queen is still there and she sees the book under my arm, “What’s that?”

“Your language.”

“Why do you have that?”

“I’m sick of reading broken translations.  Everything is so much simpler in its original form.  I cast a spell to help me learn faster and have spent the better part of the day studying your written language.”

“Are you sure that’s a good use of time, we don’t have much.”

“If I spend a week learning how to speak Demon,” I know that’s not the name of the language but it’s what we named it back on Earth, “I could master spells a hundred times faster in their purest form.  The translations are broken and it takes me hours just trying to work through what they wanted to say and how to possibly reproduce them.  It’s like I have to recreate every spell I do, and that takes too much time.  So yes, I think it’s worth the investment.”

“Are you feeling hungry?”

“No,” for the first time in days I feel great.  “Maybe later, I’m exhausted and have a lot of work to do studying how to draw these.”

She’s taken back by my lack of hunger, but acknowledges it and reaches out a hand to return me to my comfortable white prison.