Chapter 7: Chapter Seven – Waning Gibbous

Chapter 7

"Aaaghhbbttbbrr!"

"Guubbuuurahhk!"

"Ahhhk!"

I choke and sputter as I cough up water from my lungs. My magic may let me breathe water, but filling my lungs with liquid is still incredibly unpleasant. I won't let a little lung pain ruin my mood though. I just swam in the Tagus, with magic! I didn't think I'd ever be able to again. Nothing can dampen my joy right now! 

My mind is filled with pleasant memories of my childhood, escaping from the orphanage to zip and dash up and down the river. I flash Lina a huge grin as she drops her shroud from around her, leaving only a thin cushion of smoke for her to sit on, legs crossed, hovering a meter above the surface of the water in front of me. 

"Lina! We did it! We're in the Ocean right now! Wow, when you said you could keep up I didn't believe you! Even the best air channellers can only get up to 20 or 30 kilometers per hour while flying. We were going four or five times that fast! Is that your shadow magic?" I ask as I tread in the dark, calm Atlantic Ocean water.

"Haha, yes, we made it. Good job Lua, I'm proud of you!" Lina says with a warm smile as she hovers down closer to pat my head. 

"No, my flight isn't shadow magic, it's part of the shroud. All vampires have access to flight in their shrouds, no matter their aspect." Lina says. 

"Wow, that's amazing! Will I get to use shroud magic?" I ask excitedly. 

Lina frowns at me apologetically. "No, sorry. Only vampires can use shroud magic. It's not a channeling spell, it's something innate to our biology, like anti-aether."

"Oh ok, well that's fine. I'd much rather spend time in the ocean than the sky!" I shout as I launch myself out of the water and into a backflip over Lina's head. 

I resurface behind her and splash her with a smack of my arm into the ocean surface. 

"Hey, watch it little mermaid! You're gonna get Tiamat wet." Lina says through a big smile and a suppressed laugh. 

"Sorry, sorry!" I giggle out as I rapidly swim tight circles around her seat of dark hovering smoke.

"So where are we exactly?" I ask as I look back towards the distant lights of the shore. It's difficult to see anything out in the open ocean at night, but the lights from Lisbon make things more disorienting. 

"We're about 15 kilometers south west of the mouth of the Tagus, I think. Although, shouldn't I be asking you? You're the water channeller after all." Lina says with a hint of a teasing smile.

I scrunch my brow up at her. "That's not fair, I haven't swam in the ocean in years, and I have no clue how to do ocean navigation magic. Nobody's seriously practiced that in at least a century." I pout up at her. 

Lina laughs at my expression. "I know, I know, I'm just joking. Don't worry, I can navigate. I've flown all over this area many times. But that does beg the next question: Where exactly do you want to go?"

"Uhhh, I don't know. I thought you would. I mean, I don't have any family or anything, and I guess I don't have a job anymore, so you tell me!" I happily reply. 

Lina thinks for a moment. "Well, we can go almost anywhere really. Hiding from the CRB should be easy, but if the consortium gets on our trail we may have to lay extra low. I meant it when I said I didn't want to restrict your life though, so you name the place and I'll make sure we're safe." She says.

"As long as we're near the ocean, I'll be happy!" I shout through more giggles as I flip up over her head again. 

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Lina laughs at my acrobatics. "Ok, well I have a friend in the Azores who could teach you Lunar magic, or we could just swim to the south pacific and bake in the sun for a couple decades, or-" 

"The moon!" I shout, interrupting her.

"We can't go to the moon Lua."

"I want to do moon magic!" I shout. "Can you take me to learn Lunar channeling? Please, please, please, pl-" 

"Ok, ok! I'll take you to my friend in the Azores." Lina giggles out as I zip around her in circles. 

"Wow, thanks Lina, you're the best!" I grin at her as I settle to float on my back directly below her. 

Lina shares in my happiness for a moment, before a serious expression overtakes her face. "There is one detour to the east I really need to make first though. Before we start our new life, there's something very important I need to give you, but I have to get it from someone."

"Oh ok, no problem. If you say it's important, then it's important! Let's go!" I say as I dash off further out to sea. 

I swim for a minute or two before I realize Lina isn't following me. I turn around and swim back to her to find her hovering in the same place I left her. Her amused smirk quickly makes me realize my mistake.

"So uh…where are we going exactly?" I ask through my embarrassment. 

Lina holds her smirk as she points in the opposite direction that I swam in. "That way." She says with an amused little laugh. "To Cyrenaica." 

I look at her confused. "Sorry, where?" 

"Ah! I believe they call it Libya now. Sorry, I haven't been in a few centuries." Lina says. 

"Just how old are you, grandma?" I ask with another splash directly into her face this time. 

"Hey! Watch it young lady! Don't you know to respect your elders?" Lina teases me, with more giggles, before her laughter fades and a distant look fills her eyes. 

"I don't know how old I actually am." She says. "My earliest memories are of snow, and ice. Ice covered everything, everywhere I went. It was cold. So very, very cold. It stayed cold for a very long time, I don't know how long. I didn't have much concept of time then… 

"Eventually the ice melted, and I found myself in a vast, grassy plain that stretched for what felt like forever. I remember hunting humans for many years. There were different kinds of humans. They didn’t have names back then of course, but what we now call Neanderthals tasted the best. It’s a shame vampires hunted them to extinction…

“In hindsight I think I'm from somewhere in the Central Asian Steppe, not that I knew that at the time. I don't remember much from then, I wasn't much more than an animal really, just hunting, trying to survive on primal instinct. I knew there were other vampires, but I lived and hunted alone. I didn't speak any language, I didn't have any friends or family, or any home. 

"Not until humans settled down anyway. I eventually followed humans to their first cities. I believe the first city I called home was what historians call Ugarit, but we had a slightly different name for it back then. That’s when I really became me. I stopped hunting humans, and lived alongside them from then on. That’s when I gave up my primal nature, and embraced humanity, and became a part of it. So I’m at least that old, however old that is.” Lina finishes her story with a long distant look out into the ocean past me.

It takes me a moment to realize that I’m just floating on my back with my mouth open beneath her. “Oh, yea, that’s pretty old! Probably just a bit too old to be called grandma then.” I giggle.

“Haha, just a little bit. Maybe add a few 'greats’ before it” Lina laughs as she hovers above me in the darkness, the thin silver light of the waning gibbous moon illuminating her soft brown hair.

“Well, you look great for someone counting their age on the geological timescale!” I tease with another splash.

“Lua!” Lina shouts, as she dodges my splash with a dash to the side so quick I barely see her move. 

“Ok, ok sorry miss fossil vampire, I’ll stop splashing.” I giggle out. “What about your parents though, in Madeira? How old are they then?” I ask as I get my giggling under control.

Lina grimices. “Those weren’t my parents. Those two women were…something like probation officers for me.”

“Oh? Why exactly were you on probation then?” I ask.

“Well, around 1200 BCE there was a bit of a vampire civil war, and I may have… fought on the losing side of it. The Consortium was the winning side. They imprisoned me for a few thousand years, until I was ‘rehabilitated’.” Lina explains, using her fingers to make quotation marks in the air.

“Oh wow, what's a vampire prison like? How could they imprison you? Aren’t you kind of…hard to contain?” I ask Lina as I wave my hand in a circle around her dark, floating form.

“Haha, yes, I am!" Lina boasts with a big smirk. "A vampire prison is essentially just a block of molten silver that they submerge you in. Once cooled, It acts as a giant channeling artifact that is charged with a neutralizing spell to prevent any use of anti-aether. Silver is especially attuned for use in that spell. Once I was encased, a group of water channeler thralls dumped me in the ocean. They were instructed to dump me in the Atlantic, but they must have been a little lazy, because they just dropped me a few hundred kilometers that way, right in the mouth of the Straits of Gibraltar.” Lina explains with an arm outstretched, pointing into the night over the dark ocean.

“Wow, that sounds terrible!” I decry. 

“Yes, I certainly didn’t enjoy it. Every couple hundred years a water channeller would fish me out and ask if I was ready to renounce my grievances and declare allegiance to The Consortium. I finally cracked in 1416 CE, but my 600 year probation period didn’t end until 6 years ago, when my ‘parents’ stopped monitoring me and ‘moved to Madeira’.” Lina explains with more air quote gestures.

“Wow, so I guess we don’t have to worry about visiting your parents then huh?” I ask.

“No we don’t. I very much hope I don’t have to see those two women again anytime soon.” Lina says with a grimace. “We really should get going though. It will be much safer to pass the Federation Naval Base in Gibraltar at night.” Lina says.

“Ok, but just one more question. Pleeeeaaase!” I beg, looking up at her with my best puppy dog eyes.

Lina smiles back down at me. “Ok, one more.” She says.

“Neblina isn’t your real name is it?”

Lina frowns at me. “Of course it is! Every name I’ve taken is my real name. It’s just not the first name I took.”

“What was?” I ask.

“My first name was ????????????????????????.” She says.

“Uh sorry… How do you pronounce that?” I ask, slightly embarrassed.

“????????????????????????.”

“...”

“...”

“...”

“It’s ok, I’d rather you just call me Lina.” Lina says through her melodious laugh.

“Ok then Lina, let’s go see your friend in Syriatica!” I shout with another sudden flip over Lina’s head.

“It’s Cyrenaica, and she is not my friend!” Lina shouts at me as I swim off in the wrong direction.

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