Darklight: Precipice

Part 1: Inhibited

Soran woke with a jump. The darkness was all around him, it had taken him.

But... he could still see the faint green glow of the clock. So it wasn’t real. It was a dream. The same dream. 

Natasha was fast asleep, resting on her side with her two hands placed under her pillow. Her hair was tied back into a ponytail with a black hairband and she wore a pale pink vest. The room was stuffy and smelt like sleep. His pillow was wet with sweat and Soran had to wipe his forehead dry with the back of his hand. He gently kissed Natasha’s cheek and got off the double bed, careful not to to disturb his sleeping wife.He walked over to the desk opposite the bed and switched on the small lamp, facing it away from Natasha. The diffused light cast an orange glow over him.

His face was pale, dark bags hung under his eyes. His body, once strong and a healthy tan, was now pale - his chest hair hanging limply. He was still well defined but the bulk of his muscle had wasted away. And all thanks to the device around his neck.

The inhibitor. The device that was keeping him alive, keeping everyone alive. The strap hung around his neck like a watch strap, tight enough not to move but loose enough not to strangle him. To the right of his neck the strap looped into a device, keeping it steady and ensuring it didn’t shift. The device was a small, thin rectangular metal plate which dug into his skin and eventually lead into the right common carotid artery. There was an indention in the plate itself.

Soran opened the drawer in the desk and took out a vial of liquid and a device that looked a little like a handheld spray gun. Clipping the vial into the gun Soran lined it up to the plate in his neck, pressing a button on the gun and injecting the liquid directly into the artery that eventually lead to his brain. The dizziness only lasted a few seconds these days, thankfully.

There was no way that he would be getting back to sleep now so Soran left the bedroom of their latest apartment, grabbed his sandy colour trenchcoat and headed out into the night air. Just before he left he noted the time: three am. Typical. Who needed sleep anyway?

Soran walked for some time, not really paying attention to where he was going. He found himself walking through the civic centre of the city. Of course everything was new here. Large buildings of concrete, glass and metal were all around. There was much more of an architectural feel to this place though, it was more friendly than Utopia City. Natasha was the one who convinced him to move to this place, she could never get to grips with the way of life in Eresmai - she was human through-and-through even with the slightly different genetic makeup. She always felt like she was being watched, scrutinized by the people of the city. They all knew that she wasn’t really High Matriarch Natasha Renton, they all knew that she was possessed by Vittoria Leon, but the attack had once again left high tensions between Humans and Skry .

He walked to the edge of the raised walkway and looked out. He was only about five stories up but in the cool of the night air the city looked at piece.

Precipice. The city of Precipice.

It was a fitting name. High Patriarch Draz and Master Faraa, the two new leaders of Utopia and The New Skry Nation, had decreed its construction in the ruins of Nestro. A ‘New frontier in relations between our peoples’. A city for both Skry and Humanity to live in piece, a new Arcadia.

“Precipice....” Soran muttered. “A fitting name for an experiment that could plumet into ruin”.

Construction of the city had begun four years ago. It was elliptical in shape, the commercial sector took up the centre of the city which had civic buildings running around its perimeter. The city was divided into segments around this centre, each with its own commercial centre and residential areas set around it. Unlike Utopia the city did not boast a nightlife or condone alcohol. It was a safe place with numerous mixed Skry-Human police forces.

No one had ever thought that Nestro would be habitable for thousands of years after Rammachandra decimated the continent. But the ritual that she had used to try and burn all life of the surface had, ironically, backfired. Yasmine’s dispelling of the ritual had meant that the unused arcane power held within the symbols had leaked into the ground, sparking life to return. Grass and moss had started to grow on the dried up salt lake and a microclimate began to form. Rain once again returned to the desert and the greenery grew, attracting Draz and Faraa to the idea of building this city on the continent. Below Precipice were mine shafts that had been dug and various scientists and scholars worked in these tunnels to continue Netro’s return to a nation of life rather than a desert wasteland.

Soran rubbed his neck as a breeze picked up, rustling the trees lining the road below him. It still ached like hell every time. The liquid he had injected himself with was known as Serum. Simply because its full name was so difficult to bloody say. “Prohibipotenthominis Ieiunium”. It was designed by a team of both Humans and Skry to inhibit Soran’s uncontrollable increase in Arcane Energy - an energy that would eventually lead to his body ripping apart and taking half of the world with him. Serum contained a cocktail of arcane based drugs that accelerated his ability to process Arcane power, as well as nanomachines that acted as inhibitors that latched themselves onto the receptors in the Arcane Cortex of his brain. So basically any power that Soran’s body would try and harness would be reduced thanks to the nanomachines, and any power that Soran did absorb would be passed through his body so quickly that he would not be able to use it. Which would all be fine without the two side-effects: One, Soran could only use the very, very basics of his abilities. His powers were severely diminished. And two: The head rushes, the dizziness, the fatigue... Use of Serum had left him in a sorry state.

He thought about his past, all that happened five years ago. That’s what the dreams must be about. He had once been diagnosed with Depersonalization Disorder. Did he still have it? He didn’t really care too much about what a psychologist thought of him. Rammachandra was his biological mother, Vittoria his aunt, and he had killed them both. A therapist would have a field day with him. But then... the dreams were bothersome. Was it a coincidence that they had started as soon as he had started taking Serum? Maybe the recurring dream was his subconscious calling for help. But Soran never asked for help.

As he looked out over Precipice he knew that he was no longer needed - that was his past life. There was no danger left. The Leon sisters were dead and the world was doing well under Draz and Faraa.

He didn’t even take the Darklight Sword with him when he left the house any more.