DARKLIGHT

- 29 -

Fleur watched Kaces with vague concern for a few moments. Eventually, she told us, "Councilor Blaine and Corvan rushed Daigar to the medical wing. I was told to take you two to the bunks, and the Councilor will probably be ready to talk with you in the morning." Kaces looked up warily in the direction of her voice, still apparently unable to see her. "It's all right," she said. "I know who you are. Or, who you were, at least."

He snorted and approached the disguised metal platform, passing close enough by me that I nervously backed away, afraid that he would go through me like everything else. "You're doing better than me, then."

"We used to be classmates, Kaces. How could I have forgotten?" Fleur got choked up for a moment but quickly composed herself. She slid a finger down her symbol, using the strange device in her hand to activate the platform again, and Kaces was briefly surrounded by Light magic before reappearing, a little wide-eyed at his new, brightly lit surroundings. The stiff scales that had developed on his face certainly didn't help to hide the expression.

Kaces scanned the room, gazing up at the remarkably tall ceiling and raised walkways that encircled the space about a floor above where we were. A few young Kireveans wearing clothes similar to Fleur's were strolling down one of them, idly chatting. When one of them saw Kaces, she froze and nervously pointed down. Her two friends looked similarly shocked when they saw him.

Kaces narrowed his eyes at them and pointedly turned his attention to Fleur. "I do remember you, but only a little," he confessed. When Fleur continued to stare at him, he added hastily, "My memories of the Order are all but gone. I only remember Corvan because..." he trailed off, seeming to lose his focus on the conversation.

"I know. You both probably have a lot of questions. I do too," she said, peering at me. I had been listening silently, not wanting to interrupt what seemed to be a reunion. After a long, uncertain pause, she asked, "Is he yours?"

Kaces nearly doubled over in stifled laughter. I'd never heard his laugh before, and it was surprisingly gentle and quite contagious. "No, he's just another kidnapped Order kid," he finally managed to explain.

Fleur blushed and started to apologize to both of us. "It's all right," I reassured her, unable to completely hold back my own snickers. "We've been traveling together for a long time."

With the situation lightened, Fleur gestured for me and Kaces to follow her into a hallway that I remembered led between two thin oak trees. Glancing up at the hall's lower ceiling as we entered it, I noticed the tips of a few leaves passing right through it, moonlight glinting off of their glossy tops. "Fleur?" I called ahead.

She glanced over her shoulder at me, pushing a few locks of brown hair out of her face. "Yes?"

"How does that work?" I pointed up at the leaves, which were riffling against each other in the outside breeze. Kaces looked up too and did a double-take when he noticed them.

"Councilor Blaine didn't hold back when he designed the cloaking mechanisms in this place," she grinned. "The entire Resistance base, including everyone and everything in it and under its effects, is impossible to see, touch, hear, smell, and even taste." She counted out the senses on her fingers as she listed them. "He prides himself in having kept it completely secret ever since its undercover construction just about two decades ago."

"That's a long time for an organization to exist without doing anything noticeable," Kaces said dryly. Fleur sighed and didn't respond.

The architecture of the Resistance base was a strange conglomeration of the Order's white metal walls and the Kireveans' silver, decorated ones. It had obviously been originally intended to look like the Order, but the doors and some more open lengths of white wall were painted with designs of both Light and Dark arkaetres. Most of the depicted arkaetres were alone and had incredible detail, and the thicker lines seemed to be engraved into the metal itself.

The walk wasn't too long, and to Kaces's apparent relief, we didn't pass anyone along the way. Fleur skillfully navigated the labyrinth of hallways until we reached a pair of doors. She went into one and pointed us towards the other. "That's the men's bunks. The base is nowhere near full capacity, so you shouldn't have any trouble finding empty beds."

Kaces nodded to her in thanks and slipped into the men's bunks so quickly that I only barely caught the door before it closed. Once inside, I faced a long, narrow room lined with bunk beds. Almost everyone inside was asleep, but a few boys were sitting on an upper bed at the right end of the room, playing a game with pieces I couldn't make out on a checkered blanket. One of them sat on each end and another had discreetly lit their Dark symbol to help them all see.

Kaces sat down on a lower bunk and started distractedly untying a shoelace, and I almost joined him before thinking better of it and finding another lower bunk further away. I wasn't in the mood to find out what falling onto a metal floor from an upper bunk felt like. Either way, I knew it was going to be a long night.