Sixty-Eight: A Downpour

Rain fell over Morris.

A sheeted downpour veiled the Black Sun, and the city that had just reunited with the sky sank back under a quilt of cloud.

Eliza led Lilith to the window. The Vampire Princess lifted a hand and caught a falling bead, then whispered to the little dragon at her side.

“The rain will hush the fear the Black Sun brings. Vampires can still scrape by under this rain.”

“How long can that last?” Lilith tipped her chin to the cloud-choked heavens, her voice lost. “Clouds are brief. The Black Sun will reclaim the sky.”

“Morris still holds enough stored magic,” Eliza said. “We can keep a twenty-year rain.”

“But after twenty years, when the clouds fray and the Black Sun takes the dome again, vampires won’t be any stronger. No matter how long we hide in Morris, we won’t gain the power to defy it.”

Her scarlet eyes locked on the Demon drifting above. The Little White Dragon noticed her gaze didn’t fix on Eve. Eliza looked past that black Demon, sight spearing into the Black Sun behind it.

“I want to gamble. But I can’t sacrifice every vampire’s stake and wedge our future on my whim.”

“So I’m waiting for a chance. A moment to set down every fear and throw everything I’ve got.”

“And now, it’s here.”

Eliza drew her military saber. The Vampire Princess stepped to the room’s center. She tapped the floor three times with her toe. A cutaway stone slab rose like a surfacing whale.

She lifted the saber and drove it into the stone. Her grip twisted the hilt like turning a key.

Boom.

A dull, heavy sound rolled.

Lilith’s head snapped up. The ceiling above shivered, then split wide like a wound. Beads of rain stitched down into the room. In moments, everything was wet and shining.

Eliza pulled her saber free. Where it had stabbed was now a neat, human-sized hole. The little dragon peered in. The vertical shaft fell away without a bottom, swallowing light like a throat. No matter how she strained, Lilith couldn’t see what lived below.

“What is it?” the little dragon asked, drawing back.

“A passage,” Eliza said. Rain slicked her hair. Wet strands clung to her cheeks, each droplet bright as a bead before it leapt and burst on the floor. “It leads straight to the blood pool where the Progenitor resides. I built it while I ruled.”

“You…” Lilith stared at the Vampire. Eliza hardly spared the rain a thought. She was quietly arranging her collar like a speaker about to step on stage. The little dragon couldn’t read Eliza’s heart. Watching the Princess wrestle her lapel, she couldn’t help but ask, “Why build this passage?”

“Lilith, do you know why our ancestors persuaded the Progenitor—no, call it Untimely Death—to aid us so easily?” Eliza didn’t answer. She threw back another question.

“I don’t,” Lilith said, shaking her head. “I wasn’t even born on this continent. How would I know what the ancestors and gods were thinking?” She had no idea what pact vampires had made with a Divine Fragment.

“Untimely Death is the largest portion of Death. Unlike other portions, which were more or less bound by different races, every being under Death’s rule falls under Untimely Death. Civilizations, too.”

“Even if the Nameless One has shattered, Untimely Death still carries out its mission with cold loyalty. The shelter given to vampires was only a pen, a temporary feeding. A courtesy within its duty to someone who was once a Necromancer Cultist like me.”

“And now our lifespans are brushing the edge where they can be called untimely death. It’s ready to act. Cutting off Morris’s magic was only the omen.”

Eliza turned to the baffled Lilith. The Vampire Princess held the Little White Dragon’s gaze and spoke slowly.

“Soon, the god we once worshiped will grant vampires death with its own hand. So we must find another path.”

Lilith had no words. Weight crushed her chest first; action came slow. She stared at the Princess with a grave face, thoughts blank as winter fields. After a long struggle, she only lifted a hand and patted Eliza’s shoulder, saying nothing.

“Of course, the deadline’s still a few years out,” Eliza said, eyes dropping to the dark throat of the tunnel. Her look sharpened, like steel in rain. “The downpour might end and Untimely Death still might not move. But I won’t sit and wait for the butcher.”

“I’m going to gamble.”

“How?” Lilith couldn’t imagine a clean break. Whether Untimely Death was a Divine Fragment of a sundered god, or not, vampires were made by gods. How do you defeat your maker?

“I’m going to bring down the sun.”

Eliza raised her fist toward where the Black Sun brooded.

“I’ll shoot the Black Sun out of the sky and bring blue back over Morris.”

She looked at Lilith. Drenched, the Princess seemed a ruined noble girl, a wanderer with no house to run to. But not a shred of timid lived in her voice. It was arrogance that crackled like lightning.

“Our millennia of accumulation are not just memory. Under my feet, the blood of every kin who returned to the Progenitor over a thousand years will become my strength.”

A strand of blood drifted up from the pool to her side. The scarlet thread wound around her arm like a red serpent. She caught its tail and drew it into her skin.

“Lilith, you’re a traveler. You don’t need to wade into our house’s war. But I do have a request.”

More droplets rose to her like fireflies. She cupped them, gathering them into her palm. The scarlet became rushing bands that coiled around her forearms.

“Remember us. When you leave Spuiset, tell the other races that vampires fell fighting the Black Sun. Make our name a bell in every land. Don’t let this continent forget us.”

“…I will.” Lilith paused, then nodded hard, like a stake driven home.

Eliza’s smile softened. She looked at Lilith one last time. Blood swelled beneath her feet. In the next heartbeat, she became a raging cyclone and speared straight into the cloud vault above Morris.

The Black Sun waited there. But before the Black Sun, the black Demon still crowned the sky.