By Raven
It had been simple to take the stone walls of the pit, as it was called, and texture them. For Salem, now that he had a lot more practice in his magics, a hundred thousand years worth, a little texturing spell was a breeze to do. Raven wanted to paint the walls with the pictures of those she had left behind. For her, this was therapeutic, letting herself remember those she loved and lost, knowing that loving them and letting them go had been hard, but that they had made her life richer, as she had enriched their lives.
The niche where the bed was recessed did not matter. That left the shelves containing her journals, the spells used to preserve them were still strong. The shelves were moved to a new configuration by Guardian, now being to the ceiling, which was thirty feet high, instead of lengthwise along the walls. The ability to fly was truly handy on occasion.
Guardian was now showing the signs of her pregnancy, but, as before, she would not say who the father was. The current betting pool being that it was either Simon Pomeroy, called affectionately Stormlord, or maybe Raven�s father. She was, after all, incredibly beautiful and completely charming. She had come a long way since the first meeting- she was quite human, for the most part, if not for the fact that she was very quiet. She understood plants and animals the way people spoke to one another.
In total, moving the shelves and weapons cabinets, along with the racks of bottles of blood from Gomez�s critters (Flavors from A to Z, and some that truly were exotic), did not take long. The year she did not feed had built up a collection. Though she once again only needed a bottle every day, sometimes she would consume as many as four. The shelves, in arrangement, now took up the space between the right hand door and the niche for her bed. Some twenty-one hundred square feet of wall space, plus the niche. This left a lot of space for painting.
The room is a perfect circle a hundred feet in diameter. The walls were thirty feet high, and the vaulted apex of the ceiling stood at fifty feet. That left a hundred fifty-eight thousand, one hundred sixty square feet of wall space to paint. She had coated the last three feet of the wall, running out before finishing a day of so earlier.
Ninety-five percent was covered with gesso and sketches. Those left behind- children of the guild and the grand and great grandchildren. Also those ones of worlds that Chris had no idea of. Those she had created, blood children, vampires. First born�s as were those like Remmy and Gomez. It would take a small fortune in pigments and linseed oil.
The room was acoustically perfect in such a way, that if you knew how, you could whisper in any one place in the room and be heard across it. Sing perfect opera arias that would make the virtuosos cry with joy. This was Raven�s refuge, as it was meant to be. She had gone to the holodeck in that infernal slide rule to construct plans for musical instruments, which she then took to the finest crafters to make on commission, making each a one of a kind. Those she would play in here, playing some of the most beautiful and haunting tunes. She would sing- few knew that she had a voice that would and could when she chose to, rivaled Marty�s. She had promised Marty once that she would sing a duet on an album.
She was working with him on it now as she finished the last coat of gesso on the wall. It was going to be called Robin's song. Her part was in an ancient dead language, to most. To those that knew, it was in a very beautiful dialect of Sumerian. The dialect of the Ur valley. Marty had written the lyrics and the music after hearing her sing in the pit. The whole album was being dedicated to eight very special children and all children in general. Marty sometimes got flashes about music- after he heard her he had a very powerful one. He must have stood there frozen in his vision for at least five minutes. He had come to ask about the dressers a few days earlier for the kid's house, and was hit with his flash. Since then, he had been working to have the album in stores on Robin�s birthday. It was going to be a very big surprise. Remmy and the rest of the fang gang all agreed that it was about time.
The house was going to be finished in time, without problems. The look on Melody�s face had been of surprise when she said she needed painters and a carpenter or two. The crew that showed up for this was interesting. Nine vampires, John and his crew of recruits that totaled twenty, plus three off duty VS units, making the final total forty- four. Consequently the painting, carpentry and wiring needs was done in thirty-six hours. This included security measures, the installation of the holosuite, and placing in the transport module.
After the crew left, Melody teased Raven about not kidding when she said "Tell me what you need.". Amanda was as tickled when she produced a holo record of all the extra furniture she had in storage. Amanda was like a kid in a candy store over some of the pieces, and a lot of haggling went on over the lunches the three women would spend together plotting.
Salem could hear Marty- he was talking about arrangements of instruments. He had a tape of some of the tracks. They had all the rough instrumentation done, and it was time to mix the track music. The one thing he had as an asset in this room was its acoustics- it helped them find the right sounds. Like his son Brett, Marty was stone deaf, and used other peoples' ears to hear.
As they worked on the song, Salem knew it was special. For one thing, Raven took Marty in rapport with her, giving him access to her preternatural hearing. It was better that a sound analyzer machine. Marty now understood how Remmy mixed music the way he did. This was taking up her time as far as Marty thought, but it only took a moment for him to feel her unbridled joy at hearing the first voice tracks. The vocal on only two tracks had been laid, but they were beautiful.
�It�s almost ten, Marty. You will need sleep for tonight. I know that Creole can be ruthless in the studio. Go home and sleep. I will see you later, and maybe I�ll drag Chris along. It will do him some good to relax and have fun like when you were little.� Raven said to Marty.
�I remember the sleep overs at your house, Aunt Raven, when we would head to Remmy�s as soon as you got to my house after school.� Marty said distantly, remembering those times fondly.
�Many a night you would be up way past your bed time, and still get straight A�s in school. I remember once when your dad got a little worried that you had no friends, and spent too much time talking philosophy at my place or Horace�s place.�
�Well, he did not need to know that it was music philosophy now did he?� Marty�s grin was punctuated by a yawn as he left for home.
One set of faces sketched out was Allia, Ramas and Cery. This had been one mission that was strange from the beginning. This earth type world had, about two centuries prior to our arrival, outlawed technology, finding it to be the root of all their cultural wars and problems. They had dismantled and reclaimed all complex machinery. The problem started when at one point someone had decided to hide various technologies on this planet using it as their own personal warehouse. The people, when they found tech, turned it in and that was that. As buildings and thing would wear, storehouses were being found.
What was not known by the general populace, was that the original scientists who created the machines had either been murdered or placed in work camps. At the abolishment, a rigid caste system had been instituted those that were free thinkers being branded untouchables in a sense. Ramas had been such a boy. Raven and I had found him living in a work camp with his parents. His great grand parents had been scientists who had been sent there. His parents as well as all the other adults living there had the job of dismantling the things found.
Raven had tracked a lead to a corrupt foreman at the facility. There had been a fire fight and she had been hit. The weapons they used were, to his people, a harmless sleep dart. To her, it had rendered her Sagans inert, and the sun was coming up.
Ramas, being about five at the time, found her hurt and swilling blood from a dead bird, the local equivalent of a chicken. The boy was not frightened by her, even though she was covered with burns over sixty or so percent of her body. �They are bleeding out a pig in the shed.� the boy volunteered.
�Can�t go- the sun.� was all she said before she passed out from the pain. I was about to panic when the boy darted out and in a few moments came back. He had an oil tarp and his wagon was lined with straw. He managed to wake Raven enough with a little of the blood so that she was able to crawl into the cart. After she was in, I realized this kid ain�t strong enough to pull the cart. That was when he called the biggest mastiff type dog I had ever seen. He then hitched it up and they pulled her to the appropriate shed. Turned out that the kid had a job of hauling the different small items to various sheds as well as running errands for the camp guards. The guards had no idea what was done here and the prisoners had no idea about the outside.
She woke to the smell of the blood, and had healed the burns, soon the only thing she was having a problem with was the drug. She finally asked the boy how long most people were unconscious.
�About a full day.� the boy said.
�Well, can I stay here?� she asked.
�Probably not,� came the little boy�s all to serious answer, �but you can stay under the slaughter shed.� He explained that he had found a loose board in the skirting of the building and made a place to hide in it.
�What side of the building is it?� Raven asked.
�This one.� he said, as he pointed out the wall where he had his door, showing her the knot hole that he used to spy with. It took very little effort for her to pry up the board. She was in the hiding place when the slaughterhouse boss came in.
�Why are you in here, boy?� the boss demanded.
�I was getting Ruhk the scraps you said I could have for helping with the pig, sir.�
�That was over an arn ago!�
�I had water detail first, sir.� was the child�s quick reply.
�Very well, back to your duties.� the boss relented.
Raven collapsed in the hiding place, the drug bringing about more than a sun burn. She slept passed sunset, and I worried. She woke shortly after midnight.
�What happened?� she asked me.
�I think it was the drug.�
�I need to find the boy and thank him.� She concentrated on the scent, and soon was at the shack that his parents called home. They were all asleep- Ramas had an older brother and sister besides the parents.
At first, I thought the dog would bark alarm, then, it just lolled its tongue out at me, then licked Ravens hand. �Boy,� she said to the sleeping child, �Wake up.�
He looked a little startled and about to scream, so she grabbed him and clamped her hand over his mouth. �I am the woman you helped. Now will you be quiet?� she whispered. He nodded his head in the universal sign for yes. �My name is Raven, and this is Salem. What is your name?�
�Ramas.� he said proudly. Turned out that he was seven, just small for his age.
She and I would come to the boy in the night almost every week for five years. We learned a lot, thanks to that kid, about shipping schedules, quantities processed, types of materials and guard schedules.
Raven and I watched four camps in one area, and could never catch the culprit. This went on until Ramas was too old to roam the camps anymore. He was then sent to work in the special section, and we thought we would never see him again.
It was fifty-four years later when we found Ramas again. His society had abolished the work camps out in the open in favor of something more sinister. Special section turned out to be a highly secret and highly corrupt government project. Apparently, they had made contact with an alien civilization, and what they had really been doing was reconfiguring the old tech. The province dictators became very rich, while the people were in the dark.
Ramas had married a wonderful woman named Allia- they were both working in special section research and development when Raven was caught doing a little B&E. Ramas discovered us hiding in a parts closet hoping that we would not be seen. He immediately recognized us and, with his wife�s help, got us out. There had been one problem, though- we had to ditch the evidence. I couldn�t use my magic because it came off as a radiation leak on this world. So that was out.
Well, to make a long story short, the couple was caught and tortured. Now, mind you, this made Raven really pissed. She broke into the facility and stole the nearly lifeless bodies. She took them to the villa she was using as a base. Then she made them like her.
When they woke, they both wanted vengeance, but we convinced them otherwise. Instead, we convinced them to prove to the people what was really happening. They still burned in the sun the way she did at first, but they only slept two, maybe three hours and this was a light doze at the worst. So they started the rebellion of truth.
They had a good underground going when Raven was captured herself. I had not been with her at the time. When I tried to find her, I found that there was something blocking my magic. She managed to escape, and get rid of all the tracers that they had placed on and in her. We found her shortly before sunrise, barely conscious, bloody and running a real fever- 100.1 degrees. I thought that she would die. Allia had been thinking quickly, and gave her a shot of a cooling agent that was used to hide the heat produced by the smelting process. It took about a split second for her temperature to drop as she screamed the words �my baby�. She lost consciousness and was out for nearly two hundred days.
She had apparently gone into some sort of hibernation due to the shock of everything that had happened to her. She would feed much like Robin and his go-juice bottle. She had been raped repeatedly as part of the torture. She was systematically tortured to give information, not about the rebellion, but about the tech operations. Drugs had been used, and apparently her Sagans intervened on the fetus's behalf, filtering the blood to the fetus so that it would be healthy. The final act being given the tranquilizing drug in an undiluted form, enough to overdose. Her vampirism then took over.
It started burning out the drug by making her body temp too high for it to work on her. The problem then being that she knew it was killing her baby. That was when the cosmos went and burned all the chemicals out of her. I don�t know how she did it, but she made it intact. By the time she woke up, she was too pregnant to be able to sneak anywhere.
Cery was born healthy, and when Raven was healthy herself, she went back to the place where she had been tortured, only to find a note saying �Till we meet again." We, in the end, traced it all the way back to the Guild itself. That is another story.
When it came time to leave, she left Cery with Ramas and Allia. Allia had been barren all her life, and Raven knew that the child would be loved. Plus, I think somewhere in that head of hers she knew that the father had been our nameless opponent at the Transiteers Guild. She was finally asleep and the tears stopped. Time for a little nap myself.