(TWO AND A HALF YEARS AFTER BLACK AND GOLD HIKARI )

The soul swirled around the vessel I had chosen for it, fighting me, struggling to remove itself from my grasp as I tried to transfer it from the amulet.  I began sweating with the exertion of fighting both the soul and the vessel itself.  Finally I decided the experiment had failed, and let the energies around the soul disperse.  I felt the soul disappear into the beyond and couldn’t stop myself from swearing and throwing the elaborate diamond vessel across the room.

One less element to choose from.  I eyed the corpse of the monster I had performed my experiment on and decided to clean it up later.  Its crumpled body with its glazed-over eyes seemed to mock me, and I kicked it as I left the room.  I needed to get out of the laboratory for a while.  The, relatively, fresh air would possibly help my thought process as I considered what the experiment had taught me.  

Ah, lessons in failure.  An image of a tall, strong woman who looked very much  like me, only with gold in her hair, flashed before my eyes.  If there was any sort of lesson I had learned from my dear sister, it was that there was always things to learn in both failure and success.  However, it struck me as fairly odd that she had popped into my mind unbidden like that.  

As I uncharacteristically mused over what she could be doing, I changed into much shorter robes and tougher boots than I normally wore around my dwelling.  After all, even just a short walk in the dangerous underworld of the drow was something to be taken seriously.  Since I was still a little tired from my earlier spell castings I buckled on a short sword as well and tied my bangs back out of my eyes.

After a quick spell to enable me to see in the dark, I set out on a quick circuit around the nearby cave complexes.  One part of me was alert and tensed to deal with any attack, while the other pondered my recent discoveries.

Stone was out of the question.  Granted, I probably should have used a softer stone for my vessel, but for some reason I was thinking that perhaps it was more the magical characteristics of stone than the actual physical property that was blocking me from encasing a soul into it.  It was rather depressing, considering that the focusing agent had worked.  I had to admit I was proud of the elaborate diamond pendant.  It could hold one, perhaps two souls at best, like the other pendants on its own, but without a separate vessel made of the same material, its usefulness was rather limited.  I could just make a bunch of separate pendants, but I couldn’t help snicker every time I thought of a mage bent over with a ton of rocks hanging around his neck.  There was also the problem of how long the manufacturing process for the pendants took in order for them to be able to hold the souls.  In order for my idea to be put into practice, the preparation time needed to be as minimal as possible, otherwise the soul could be lost.

Switching between the pendants whenever one needed to access a separate soul’s knowledge would also be a mental hassle.  With another vessel that could be maintained elsewhere separately and safely from the mage and using the amulet as merely a focus, the process would be much smoother and easier.  I groaned aloud, “Which brings me back to my original problem.  How do I contain the souls?”

“Ta’ress!  Ta’ress!”  I groaned again at the usual butchery of my name by my drow associates.  For Christ’s sake, it sounded like a woman’s name!  I turned to face this newest offender, only to realize that there were three of them, two of whom seemed to be carrying a man between them.

My blood turned cold, as I realized they had probably captured this man in an attempt to gain a reward from me.  These particular males, whose names I had no idea were (nor cared enough to find out), had received payment from me in the past for the capture of certain monsters for my experiments.  I realized that I hadn’t put my foot down with this group about prisoners not being on the shopping list.

“Listen,” I began, “I don’t know what whoever told you, but I don’t pay for anything other than monsters.  This includes humans, goblins, white elves, gnomes, slaves in general, usurping siblings, and ex-wives.”

As my hand drifted towards my sword, the elf on the poor man’s left shook his head wildly.  “No!  He no bounty.”  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at his broken command of the common underground language, “He trespasser, found early this morning.”  

I glanced up at the rocky ceiling.  I wanted to ask, This morning?  How could you tell? but instead I asked “Why bring him to me?  I don’t own this complex, I just rent it from your people.”

The original speaker piped up at this point, with such a shit-eating grin that I could tell he had been dying for me to ask that.  “Soon as he see us, he start saying ‘Ta’ress!  Ta’ress!’ So we bring him to you.”

I struggled to stop my eyebrows from shooting up to my hairline.  As I knelt to inspect the dirty and disheveled man, I asked, “Why is he unconscious?”

All three of them chuckled, and grin-boy replied, “He not think we help, think we eat him or something.  Kept yelling ‘Ta’ress!  Ta’ress!’  So we make him take little nap.”

His little statement pissed me off even before I recognized the man under all the dirt and obviously new facial hair.  I took him from the two carrying him and laid him down on the ground before facing the trio with a  grin of my own.  Grin-boy, or as I now liked to think of him: Guy-Who-Dies-First, was the one to ask, “So what do we get?”

I frowned in thought for a moment, before scratching the back of my head and saying, “In the shape he’s in?  About a three second head start.”

I have to admit, I enjoyed the look on his face as he figured out what I meant.

I also have to admit that it takes a damn fine runner to almost avoid a fireball and two lightning strikes.  Too bad he and his buddies didn’t quite make it.  

With that task done, I leaned down and hefted my little (though at the time I was wishing he was a bit more little) brother Lillian over my shoulder and walked back to my lab/apartment.

First thing I did was dump him into a bath of semi-warm water.  The boy was nasty, and with the poor ventilation down here I wasn’t dealing with that, beloved brother or no.  That and it woke him up rather nicely.  He thrashed around for a moment, getting water everywhere, including my legs and favorite boots.  When he stopped, and looked around blearily, he finally seemed to recognize me.  “Tarence?” He looked up at me through the wet mat of hair over his face.

I snorted, “Nope, tis the magical queen of Happy Land, here to grant you your choice of fine women for the evening.”  I smacked him upside the head, “You just stumbled into the realm of the drow, and are currently not dead.  Who the hell else could it be?”

Instead of the expected irritable grumble that I usually got with a smart ass comment, an odd haunted look came over him.  “I was so scared that I’d never find you.” He whispered.  

“Yeah, well,” I cleared my throat, “You’ve found me, so before I start grilling you on why the hell you’re down here, you are going to clean up and change clothes, not to mention shave that nasty-ass beard you’ve got going on.”  I reached over and tried to ruffle his greasy hair.  “With that long hair, you’ve always been destined to be a pretty boy, and facial hair on you is just freaking me out.”

Lillian nodded, and I left to poke around the pantry for some food.

About half an hour later, he sat in front of me, dressed in some older clothes of mine, stuffing his face with anything I put in front of him.  Well, almost everything.

“Eat your vegetables.”

“They’re glowing.”

“They’re perfectly fine, so eat your veggies.”

“Vegetables are not supposed to glow.”

“That’s just the cave algae. It’s good for you, full of vitamin something or other.”

At least he had managed to get his hair untangled and his face shaved.  He actually looked like my brother again, even if he was fiercely thin, with huge purple and green bags under his eyes.

I couldn’t help but laugh, as usual, at how different Raeya and I looked from him.  His below shoulder length, wavy, and soft light brown hair, fine boned face, and sea green eyes clashed with my pitch black hair that fell an inch above my shoulders, strong features, and dark emerald eyes.  The only thing we had in common was our light build.  Contrary to our sister’s beliefs, none of us were really suited for heavy melee combat.

I chuckled again as I remembered how in our childhood, one old lady had actually thought Raeya and I had kidnapped him, and didn’t believe he was our brother.  The woman had actually called the guards on us!

“What are you laughing at?”  Lillian seemed to have run out of food, and was now searching my face in curiosity.

“Crazy old kidnapping lady.  You remember her?”

Lillian laughed a little.  “Somewhat.  I just remember her grabbing me and Raeya snarling at her like a she-bear.”  He laughed in earnest now.  “I’ll never forget the look on their faces when those guards showed up and saw the tug-of-war going on.  And of course you just stood there like you had no idea who those strange people were.”

We both cracked up laughing, and I realized how much I had missed him. I immediately gave Lillian my most innocent face, “What, officer?  Related to those people?  I don’t know what you’re talking about.  The tall girl with the black and gold hair?  The one who looks just like me?  That’s screaming like a fish wife at that poor old woman?  Nope. Don’t know what you’re talking about.”  I wiped a tear away from my eye.  “Raeya sure as hell knows how to stir stuff up.  I bet those Dragonlords will never be the same… Lilli?  You okay?”

Lillian’s face had turned a sickly gray, and he looked like he was going to be ill.  “Lilli?  Seriously, are you okay?” I wondered if he might have gotten poisoned while he had been wandering around down here.  

As I got up and began casting a spell to check, he shook his head.  “I’m fine, really.  I’ve just been through a lot lately.”  He sighed.  “It’s why I’m here, actually.”

I sat back down and crossed my arms over my chest.  “This had better be good.  There are very few reasons that you should be down here, even if I’ve enjoyed seeing you.”  I smiled at him, trying to reassure him.  “If you need help, I’ll do whatever I can to try and make it better.”

The look of relief that crossed his face seemed to bring all the color and life back to him.  There was a moment where he looked slightly sheepish, before, “I burned my shop down.”

My jaw dropped.  “You… wait, what?  You mean the book store you opened a few years ago?  The one you LIVED ABOVE? Congratulations, Lillian Hikari.  You officially have my attention.”

Lillian winced.  “Umm… yeah.  Everything’s gone, even the stuff in my apartment.  All I have is the clothes on my back and a half empty purse of copper.”

I sat there, gob smacked for a few minutes, trying to wrap my head around how this could have happened.  “But… you’re Mister Checks-Everything-A-Million-Times!  You keep a quill next to you whenever you read something, in case the someone forgot to cross a ‘t’ or dot an ‘i’.  How on earth did you do something so stupid!?”

I have rarely seen Lillian lose his temper, but at that moment something in Lillian snapped.  “What, the great mage doesn’t know that wood plus torch equals fire!?  Lamp oil splashed on all the nice flammable books does great wonders for it as well.  I burned that damn thing to the ground and enjoyed every second of it!”  The kid couldn’t have surprised me more if he had gotten up and slugged me.

He loved that store, or so I had thought.  I reached across the table and grabbed his shoulder.  “Lillian.  Why?”  

He refused to look at me.  “I had to get away.  That store, how could I possibly stay there?  Raeya made me leave, made me open it.  If I hadn’t left, then maybe…”  Lillian shook his head and buried his face in his hands.  “It’s my fault, when you left, I should have stayed…”

I thought I had been stunned before.  What on earth could he be talking about!?  At this point, he had lost coherency and just sat there, shaking and sobbing.  I stood up and squeezed his shoulder.  “Come on.  Why don’t you go to sleep for a little while?  You’ll feel better, and we can talk more then.”  

He stood up, and he numbly let me steer him towards my bedroom.  He collapsed on the bed, and as I closed the door I could barely hear him mutter, “ Tarri‘ll make things better.”

My own sleep schedule being very erratic, I decided to go clean up the remains of my latest experiment.  Dead monsters in my lab were the last thing I wanted Lillian to see.  As it was, I’m sure that I was on some sort of watch list in my guild.  Very few mages come down into the underworld in order to pursue their research, and those that do often end up as black rogues and must be hunted by the guild.  While my own research had far from evil intentions, the very fact that I had sought out the evil drow for their knowledge probably didn’t sit well with my masters.  

I sighed.  Such a shame it was.  There was so much untapped potential in what they knew.  Just because the current uses of some of these principles were… unsavory, that didn’t mean that there weren’t practical uses for them.  Oh well, the masters can’t do anything, as long as I do consistent reports and check-ins.

Almost as soon as I had finished cleaning up the corpse, there was a knock at the lab door.  Lillian entered slowly, looking around suspiciously, as if he expected lightning bolts to come out of nowhere.  The action ended up just being amusing, considering he looked like an old woman with that blanket wrapped around himself.

“You let anyone into your lab?” he finally asked, as he sat on a chair in the corner.  He looked around the fairly large room, his gaze sweeping from the long line of bookcases and cabinets on one wall, to the protective circle on the floor, to the line of tables with their alchemic tools on the other wall.  He went a little pale when he saw the cages on the fourth end of the room.

I snorted.  “Of course not, but I knew it was you.  There’s spells on the outer rooms to let me know if anyone comes in.  That, and you happen to give off just a touch of magical aura.”

This seemed to surprise him. “What?  Really?  How?  I thought you said I didn’t have any of Mom’s gift?”

I shrugged.  “You do have some, but it’s just a little.  When we were kids, I wasn’t experienced enough to tell.  Heck, Rae has a touch of her seer’s ability that I never noticed.  You would really have to work to develop it, but it is a possibility that you could learn a few simple spells.”

Lillian gave me a small smile as he sat down at one of the tables.  “Maybe you could teach me a little sometime?”

My heart squeezed at that familiar scene, my little brother reaching out for me, but still expecting me to deny him that little favor.  How many times had I seen it? How many times had I done just that?  God, what kind of brother had I been all those years?

I grinned back at him.  “Sure Lilli, I’ll be glad to.  Let me see…” I looked around the room for a few seconds.  “How bout I teach you out to activate some of my simpler magical items?”  I founds a crystal globe with a four inch diameter.  “I use this for lighting in small areas.  It’s pretty easy to use, and practical since I have these all over the apartment.”  

Lillian laughed sheepishly, “That would explain why I keep walking into walls in dark corridors.”

I joined him laughing.  “Okay, what I want you to do is put your hand on this globe.”  He did what I said, “Do you feel anything?”

His brow creased, “Yeah, there’s like this tingling in it that reaches right for my chest.”  

“That’s good, now, I want you to visualize a small ember where you feel that tingling inside the orb.  Now, run the energy in your chest down your arm to feed into that ember until it’s a nice candle flame.”  

The orb flickered for a few seconds, not wanting to light.  

“You’re not making the stream constant, you’re pushing it in spurts, try less energy and more consistency.”

“I did it!”  He yelled as the orb lit, “I don’t believe it, I actually did it!”

“Awesome, Lilli!  I knew you had it in you!  Would you like to see what I’m working on currently?”  He nodded excitedly, and I moved to one of the cabinets to get my latest amulet.

When I held out the amulet on it’s chain, his face went slack at the sight of the sparkling diamonds.  “Beautiful,” he breathed.  “You made this?”

I nodded.  “Yep.  It took a hell of a lot to get a hold of those gems, and it makes me utterly sick that it’s a failure.”  I made a face. “Without the corresponding vessel, it’s worthless in the context that I’m trying to use it for.”

“Which is what, pray tell?”  Lillian asked.

“I want to end the problem of lifespans for human mages.” I said, sitting down next to him, twirling the amulet on its chain.  “It’s not fair that the mages of the magical races can spend centuries perfecting their art, surpassing human mages easily.  Human mages only reach the pinnacle of their strength as old age sets in, and claims their knowledge for the abyss.  All that knowledge and power, lost forever, because there is no way to pass it on completely.  The only way is for students to spend decades learning exactly what that withered old man already knew!  That is, of course, assuming the old man didn’t take his secrets to the grave with him.  Then THEY die, and the cycle merely continues!”

Lillian was looking at me like I was insane, but I merely grinned and leaned forward, clutching the amulet until my knuckles turned white.  I could feel the flush of excitement and inspiration racing through my veins.  It was time to deliver the punch line.  

“What if there was a way to keep that old man’s knowledge and power?  What if there was a way to instantaneously transfer his knowledge and abilities?  What if, on the old man’s death bed, his successor was able to be given all that his master knew?  Think of how it could speed up research and discovery!  Brilliant geniuses wouldn’t go to waste, just because their bodies had turned to dust!  Forget outdoing the other races, just think about how it could just improve life in general, how much good could be done in the world.”

I ended my rant breathless and flushed.  Lillian was quiet for a very long time, and I could practically see the thoughts turning through his head.  Lillian wasn’t a mage or alchemist, but he was very intelligent and well read.  God! How I had missed being around someone intelligent enough to understand what I was trying to offer to our race.

Lillian had gone white again.  “How…how does it work?” he rasped out.

I grinned at him proudly.  “It’s all about the souls.  At the moment of death, a soul contains all the knowledge, memories, and magical power of the body it inhabited.  A strong enough mage, such as a necromancer, can utilize that moment of separation.  They can capture the soul, and utilize its properties.”

“Incredible,”  Lillian breathed.  “Why hasn’t it been done before?”

I snorted in derision, “The knowledge hasn’t been available above ground.  Souls are slippery things, and keeping a hold of them for any length of time is difficult for even the strongest mage.  That’s why I’ve come down here.  The drow have a method of torture that captures the soul in a vessel of some sort.”

“The amulet.”  Lillian grinned proudly at his deduction, “The amulet allows you to hold onto and contain the soul.”

I laughed, “You’re partly correct.  The only problem is that the amulet doesn’t hold more than one or two souls.  If I can create a separate vessel that can be manufactured easily, and use the amulet as merely a focus, then the process will be much smoother and easier.”  I sighed, my earlier frustration coming back.  “I just can’t find the right damn element to make both the amulet and the vessels out of.”

“Right element?  What does that have to do with anything?”

“I think the magical properties of the element that the vessels are made out of affects how well they work.  For instance, stone,” I gestured towards the failed amulet, “While strong enough to contain the souls, is far too resistant to being used as such, and requires an enormous amount of power to use. Other elements such as water, which aren’t nearly as resistant to change, are not stable enough to contain the souls.”  I gave a harsh laugh.  “It’s quite the irritating puzzle.  At the moment, the amulet is on a hair-trigger.  It only takes a little magical power to activate it, but eventually I want to add a spell that requires a bit more magical power.”

Lillian’s brow furrowed in thought, “Can it be any sort of element?”

I shrugged, “I suppose so, I don’t see why not, so long as it has the right magical properties.”

“What about earth?  That’s an element, correct?”

“I suppose so,” I repliedslowly, “It’s usually categorized as one of the minor elements with the same properties as stone… Wait-”  I started to see where he was going with this.

“But Man has worked the earth for years and yet-”

“Yet, it remains as eternal and powerful as stone!  Lilli, you’re a genius!”  I stood up from the table and clapped him on the back.  “I may finally accomplish my dream, thanks to you.”

Flushed with pride, he stood up and grabbed my shoulders.  “Why stop there, Tarri?  Do you realize how powerful you could become?  Why, I bet you could even use the powers of other beings to live longer yourself!  With the power of those cursed dragons, we could live as long as Raeya!  I knew you were the person to come for this.”

Yet again, the boy had confused the hell out of me.  The flushed and fevered look had returned to his eyes.  “Cursed dragons?  What?  What does this have to do with Raeya?”

“Everything!  With your power, we can go back to the way things were, the way they should be.  We can save Rae!”

“Lillian!” I roared, tired of him skirting around my questions. “What has happened to Raeya?”

“Haven’t you heard?” Lillian looked confused, “She has been turned into a Dragonlord.  Even now they hold her captive in their lairs.”

“Captive!?  What on Earth makes you think that they are holding her captive?”

“She has abandoned us, Tarri!  Can you honestly think of anything that would make her ignore my letters and no longer care about us?”  Lillian looked like he was about to cry.  “It’s all my fault, if I had been there when they transformed her that time, I would have been able to talk her out of it.”

My jaw dropped.  How was it that my well-read and intelligent brother was so ignorant?  Granted, the ways of Dragonlords may not have been well known to non-magical folk, but still he should not have been this mistaken.  “Lillian.” I maneuvered my little brother back into his chair and leaned over to look him in his face.  “This is Raeya’s destiny.  She always was, and was always meant to be, a Dragonlord.”  

“LIES!”  Lillian suddenly roared and slugged me in the jaw.  Out of shock, more than pain, I flew back and crumpled to the floor.

“What the hell!?”

“So, you are saying that those years with us, with the Panthers, were not supposed to happen?  That we are supposed to have our sister torn away from us?”

“That’s not what I’m say-”

“No! You’re saying that all along, our sister wasn’t even human!  That she was some sort of werecreature and that we never even knew!  That’s not the Raeya I knew.  There’s no way that she could be something like that and we could never know.”

“Lillian,” I started towards him and he started flailing about again.  “Goddammit, Lillian!  Listen to me!”  I finally managed to grab his wrists and hold him still, but he kept glaring at me.  “At the moment of her birth, Raeya received half of a human soul, and half of a dragon soul.  The other halves belong to a man called Kaelnef Sartonna.”

“That’s just what we’ve been told.” Lillian sulked, “How do we know for sure?”  His delicate face twisted into one of rage and hatred.  “I bet it was that damn man who made her like that!  He was there, he was one of the monsters that changed her.  As far as we know he just wanted her as his mate, that blather about soultwins is just something the Dragonlords tell everyone.”

“Okay,”  I sighed and released his hands, “Assuming this is true, how could he possibly make her into something like that?”

“Like every other werecreature of course! Werewolves change regular humans into their kind all the time, how do we know that Dragonlords don’t do the same?”

“Wha?” I shook my head, “Do you even realize what you’re saying?  Dragonlords and werewolves are barely even in the same category, and I do mean ‘barely!’  Why are you so adamant against Raeya being a Dragonlord?”

“Why are you so adamant against making sure that our sister is safe?!”  Lillian yelled.  “Wait…” His eyes narrowed, “You still have something against her, don’t you?”

I was getting so tired of being confused.  “You’re going insane, little brother.”

“No, I’m not!  You’ve always had something against her, never been happy with how she raised us and how she treated you.”

I grabbed his shoulder and led him back to the table so that both of us could sit down and talk rationally, I hoped.  “Lillian, that was a long time ago, those issues have long been resolved on my side.”

He looked at me in disbelief, and I realized he was a long way from being rational.

I gestured towards a display hanging on my wall.  “Do you see that?”  It was a simple sword crossed over an old worn spellbook.  Most people would have probably thrown them away long ago, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

“When I was eighteen, our sister had been the leader of the Panthers for three years.  On my birthday, she called me to her tent.  We were alone, and that sword and book were on her table that she used for her maps.  She told me to make a decision about what I wanted to do with my life.  Would I choose a life by the sword, or a life by the staff?  

“I remember she was sharpening her sword, she never looked up to see what I had chosen, and when I left the tent and opened the spell book, there were the acceptance papers and travel money for a prestigious mage school.”

I could feel myself smiling at the memory.  “Even though she knew exactly what I was going to chose, she still gave me the choice.  In my years at the school, seeing those spoiled noble children, and excelling past those soft wimps without any effort, I came to realize exactly why Raeya did what she did.  I haven’t held any resentment towards her since.”

Lillian growled lowly, having ignored the entire story, “Then why, exactly, will you not help me?”

“Because she doesn’t need our help!”  I spat, “She’s currently enjoying a love that we will never be able to comprehend, and probably happier than she’s ever been!”

“Liar!”  Back to the screaming, I see, “You’re just jealous of her, you always have been!  You’re a horrible brother!  You don’t even care that she’s become some monster’s concubine!  You’re no worse than those creatures that hold her captive.”  I was expecting to see holes in my floor from the acid in those words.

I looked at my brother, really looked at my brother.  His eyes were haunted, his face was feverish, and he was so thin.  I hadn’t meant it earlier, but he really was going insane.  He was so far gone in his delusion that he literally couldn’t understand anything else.  Raeya, I thought, closing my eyes in pain, If only you had let him grow up.  Look what’s become of our little brother.  I wish we hadn’t been so engrossed in fighting each other that we never saw what we were doing to him.  I hoped there was still time for me to help him.

“Tell you what, Lilli, I’m going to go make up a guest room for you, so why don’t you stay here for a while and get your strength back up?  Then we can talk about the situation with Raeya, okay?”  With any luck, I could slowly help him see the light, before he took more drastic measures.

He nodded slowly, and I turned to leave.  I hadn’t taken more than a few steps before excruciating pain exploded in my chest.  I looked down to see a sword point extending from just below my heart.  Blood gushed out from the wound as the sword was pulled out, and I fell to the floor.  

Lillian walked around to the front of me, bloody sword from my wall in his hand.  He looked at me with pity.  “I’m sorry, brother, but I have to save our sister, even at the cost of your life.”

I coughed up lung-fulls of blood, and still I couldn’t breathe.  The sword had hit my lungs.  I was dying.  My brother had killed me.  The thought paralyzed me, and any spell that might have saved me dissolved in an instant.

Lillian walked out of my sight for a moment, and then came back with something bright in his hand.  Through my blurry vision, I recognized my amulet as he turned me over and set it on my chest.  “I do not need you to save Raeya, but I do need your power.”  He stroked a blood covered hand over my face.  “Don’t worry, Tarri, some part of you will live on in me, and together, we will save our sister.  But first, He must die.  He will be the first of many to die for taking her.”

The amulet glowed a soft silver as everything began to go black.  God, Raeya, was my last thought, What have we created?