Once More With Feeling (Part 1)
Blood and Starlight Ch 9: Part 1
Blood and Starlight: A conjurer, a vampire, and a mechanical demon embark on a rescue mission.
Audience: Adults (contains violence, strong language, and sexual content)
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Movement II: A Fool’s Errand
Chapter 9
Once More With Feeling (Part 1)
Ely took the University steps at a fraction of his usual speed. The cane, borrowed from Sir Ambrose Quinn's prop collection, rapped a hollow cadence against the weathered stone. These stately walls had never before looked sinister to him, but today the University frowned down like a wrathful monarch ready to dole judgment.
He slowed his pace, leaning more heavily on the cane. Nerves had made him forget his part for a moment.
"You're going to have to really sell it, my boy," Quinn had told him. "Give it the old stagecraft panache, eh?"
Ely remembered the way his uncle wielded his cane, as though it were a mighty staff that lent him authority despite his youth and limited mobility. He would have to handle his crutch with far less flair than Uncle Misha.
"You might," Quinn advised, "try imagining the exact spot where the aching fracture throws a hitch in your step. That's how we did it in my old theatre days."
"You were a player?" Ely asked him.
"I dabbled," Quinn shrugged. "There's not a maiden fair or worldly wise matron that can resist a thespian."
"Of course," Ely chuckled.
His mirth subsided as he recalled that it was neither maiden nor matron he had to convince with his performance. Dr. Faidra knew him better than he knew himself. She would certainly catch any tell he might convey. Whether he realized it or not.
"I'm not sure this is such a good idea, Quinn," he said, feeling suddenly queasy.
"Nonsense. You've soldiered on through far more harrowing adventures. This is nothing. Now, show me your walk once more..."
The doctor hunched at her workbench, a soldering iron in hand as she bent copper wires into place on a small sheet of metal.
Ely's heart convulsed, doing its damndest to threaten him with untimely collapse should he continue putting one foot in front of the other. He took a breath, stooping his shoulders, leaning into the cane. Quinn was right. The prop helped.
"So, you've finally crawled out of bed, have you, warm blood?" she croaked with a smug note.
Ely nodded, lowering his head, trying to appear contrite. Anger erupted at the sight of her putrid face. The cold, voracious power within him, grown healthy again fed on raw starlight, demanded release.
Focus.
"I trust you have learned a lesson you will not soon forget?" she asked.
"I have," he replied. "But I had hoped since I have done my penance you would allow me the chance to explain."
Dr. Faidra set aside her tool and folded her clawed hands on the table. "I'm all ears, Elyssandro."
Ely drew up a chair, taking care to allow a groan and a wince to escape as he sat. He did not have to feign a struggle. Quinn had trussed up his leg in the splint again, so the stiff discomfort required no further theatrics.
"Ravan Aurelio paid me a visit after our little standoff. He was trying to get more information out of me. If you hadn't fixed the wards, I'm not sure what would have happened."
"I fail to see how that justifies the utter stupidity of your behavior," Dr. Faidra growled.
"I'm getting to that," Ely said. "He mentioned something about how the Cosmologists would have answers, and that set me thinking he must be planning to make a visit to the ruins of the Tower. I wanted to stop him before he could find anything that might help him get to Ariel."
"And did you?" Dr. Faidra asked with undisguised interest. "Stop him?"
"I fought him off until I lost control. I don't know what happened to him after. Sir Quinn said he carried me to a great height and let me plunge. He said also that the vampire appeared to have been injured as he retreated."
"Sir Quinn, yes," she mused, eyes narrowed. "So, the vampire has not troubled you since?"
Ely shook his head. "I haven't seen so much as a creeping shadow. Which has me worried enough to drag myself all the way here."
"You think he knows something?" Dr. Faidra questioned.
"Evidence suggests," Ely replied.
He looked up, hoping he would not give away his intent the moment he met her glazed eyes.
"Dr. F, the only way we will know for sure he cannot get to her is if we are the ones protecting the keys."
The undead doctor grimaced, but she did not refute his reasoning.
"I saw what your wards did to him," Ely pushed. "They would be safe here."
She drummed her claws on the table. "I told you before, I don't know where they are."
"You know where to find one," Ely countered. "That's a start."
Dr. Faidra studied the wire-ridden scrap of metal before her. Finally, she nodded.
"I gave my key to the Etrugans," she said. "If we were to recover it, I could use it to find the next. We built them in such a way that the keys point to one another so they might be recovered if the need arose."
Ely beamed with excitement, nearly springing to his feet before the cane and splint reminded him of his staged injury.
"It's too dangerous for you to go as you are," Dr. Faidra declared. "And there is no guarantee they will still know where it was hidden after all this time."
"It's just a short jaunt along the Demonhead. I've traveled it before in worse condition," Ely reminded her. "At the very least, it will be therapeutic to stretch my leg."
He tamed his grin, asking earnestly, "If you don't want me to go, then I won't go. May I have your permission?"
Dr. Faidra scrutinized him, milky eyes unblinking.
"You may go, warm blood," she intoned at last, clearly pleased with the change in him.
"Many thanks, Dr. F," he replied, letting his voice turn breathless as if with relief. He braced the cane and heaved himself to his feet. "I'd like to pay a visit to the east wing, then I'll be on my way."
She inclined her head. Was there a hint of a smile on her bloodless lips?
Ely limped for the door. No need to imagine an ache in his chest to stoop him over. He paused, turning back to the undead creature that had been his only family since he lost his own. She was already back to tinkering.
"Dr. F?" he began.
She looked up, scowl not quite so deeply lined as usual. Who knew it took a cowed, subservient aura to inspire such fondness in her?
"Yes, what is it, Elyssandro?"
He shook his head. "Nevermind. I'll see you when I return."
She nodded. "Look after yourself, warm blood.''
He departed the Oubliette, making a slow plod to the east wing common room. Blinking back mist, he tried to swallow the tightness in his throat. Doubt settled as he looked about his comfortable, familiar space. What if Rav had been wrong about Dr. Faidra? Or worse? What if the vampire had lied to sway him to his side?
His mind wandered back to the first time he had set eyes on this place. He was cold and exhausted from the long journey through the wastes. Dr. F had lit a fire for him in the hearth, and he sat in awe of the mystical azure streaks that cavorted gently through its flames.
"You will be safe here, warm blood," she told him, speaking still in Canon Paxat. He had not yet revealed he knew Lanica, his mother's native tongue and the doctor's as well. "No one will hunt you. You will find the dead of Dianessa are more agreeable than in the Vale."
"Is there anything to eat?" Ely asked, with the famished whine of a child.
She brought him a draught of something that quieted his hunger and left him contentedly drowsy as he huddled in his uncle's overlarge jacket by the fire.
When he woke, she provided him scavenged clothes near his size and a few provisions left by an Etrugan visitor. He scarfed down the lump of cheese and packet of dense wafers like a starving pup. With his mortal needs addressed, the doctor listened intently to his story of persecution and narrow escape.
"Was it true?" she questioned at last. "What they said about your mother returning from the dead?"
Ely stared at his knees, hands clenched into fists. Death spilled icy tendrils through his veins, threatening to overtake him if he raised the memory of that night.
"I can't talk about it," he said through clenched teeth.
"There is no shame in whatever you did, child," she said.
"They say I am evil," he murmured.
"So, you're evil," the doctor shrugged. "So am I. So is everything they cannot grind underfoot."
He looked up at her. For the first time since his mother died, the knot in his chest loosened just a little.
"Would you like to see more evils, warm blood?" she asked, leaning forward with an eerie smile.
He nodded, grinning.
Dr. Faidra led him through winding, dank-smelling corridors and up flights of cobwebbed stairs to a windowless chamber at the peak of the University. She lit no candle, instead pressing her fingers to a prismatic crystal fixed to the wall. Ely gasped as the crystal glowed soft white at its heart. She beckoned him onward to a low circular platform enclosed by a corroded metal rail. Opening a latched gate, they stood in the center of the platform where a rectangular box sat fixed to a pedestal jutting up from the boards. Dr. F clacked her claws across the collection of switches and buttons arranged in a neat grid on its surface.
The platform shuddered, and a bass hum murmured through his bones. Gossamer lines like threads of spider silk projected from one side of the platform to the other, weaving together overhead. The lines converged on flickering, multicolored nodes that varied in size and brightness. Strange characters written in ochre light appeared and faded among the branching threads.
"What is it?" Ely asked.
"A map," Dr. Faidra replied. "I can see all that passes in the Vale. This is how I found you, warm blood. It is how I will protect you from everything that would do you harm..."
Ely shook off his stupor. Any spark of caring from the doctor had been a carefully acted play put on for a lonely lost boy. The recollection of her living map, however, raised a matter of imminent concern to his current plans.
Ely found his knapsack and packed his least threadbare clothes along with an ample supply of gold coins. He took also the violin in its case. His fingers ached to play it, to release some of the melancholy from his soul.
Shouldering his pack, he said one last goodbye to his haunt of all these years. Then he let the doors swing shut on that epoch of his life with a resounding clang.
Dr F just seems to have wanted a pet. She did not expect it to become a teenager…
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