Enola paced the wreckage of Sublevel 30, her path once again bringing her back to room 10. She’d finished the notes for her report over an hour ago. She’d been over the events and the wreckage again and again. There was nothing more to see.

So why did she keep coming back to this room?

What had once been a shrine of research within the temple of Gnosis was now unrecognizable. Deep gouges marred the floor. Terminals were pulverized. Cables and piping slashed and torn. The holding tank had been torn free and lay unceremoniously on its side. Some of the metal even looked chewed up or dissolved…

Animals did this. And we let them.

Her master let them.

He hadn’t even allowed teams to come down and begin rebuilding.

She swallowed her questions, her growing dissatisfaction, and boiling disdain. She buried it all, and yet it would not lie still.

Finally, Enola turned and began the long trek through the underbelly of Gnosis, toward the light. Toward the one person who could answer the question that would not rest.

Why?

~

Enola walked to her master’s office, and he bid her enter before she knocked on the door.

Ichabod was sitting behind his desk, the bloody wood contrasting with the blue swill in his glass. He swirled the blood substitute around before taking a sip.

She shut the door behind her and stood expectantly.

He gestured at the chair across from him. “Sit.”

She did. But his tone caught her off guard. It wasn’t a command, nor was it completely relaxed. Teacher to pupil, perhaps. It had been years since he’d addressed her in such a manner.

He pulled out a glass from beneath his desk, then poured both of them a glass of substitute. She didn’t care for the drink itself, but took it nonetheless. She was parched and on edge.

…Perhaps he’d recognized that.

Enola drank. She swallowed quickly, not letting the cold linger on her lips. It… It wasn’t the same. But it did slake her thirst.

Ichabod steepled his fingers together. “Now, speak your mind, my dear.”

Enola set the glass down. Despite his disarming nature, she chose her words carefully.

“You seem… relaxed, sire—considering all that’s happened.”

“Would you rather me string up the intruders and gut them? I could put their heads on pikes outside of the compound… Maybe that’s too much.”

“You could have stopped them as easily as draining your glass.”

“Yes… And yet we learned a great deal from this exercise. Our security was found wanting.” Enola began to protest, but Ichabod waved away her concern. “It’s my fault, entirely. My refusal to act and my very existence.

“The Elders are why our kind has survived for so long, even as technology propagates. The Elders are why we still continue to exist in this world dominated by supers and corporations. The public may be in the dark, but most organizations and governments know about our kind. Millennia of money and influence secures us favor, but power maintains our survival. No one short of Paragon himself could walk in here with the confidence of walking back out again.”

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Ichabod’s eyes flickered with an intensity Enola had never seen before. As if he reveled in the thought of the most powerful being on the planet trying to walk into Gnosis. She had never doubted her master’s abilities. She’d witness him eviscerate armies—gutting the last man before the first fell to his knees. But leveling an army and leveling a mountain were two very different things—

The difference between Class 4 and Class 5.

And yet, the look of fire in Ichabod’s eyes was wild and primal. If Paragon ever came to Gnosis, Enola had no doubt Ichabod would do everything in his power to kill him.

Ichabod continued, “Few on this Earth would cross us. And even if they survived, we Elders are not so easy to kill. Who would want to cross an immortal being that would stop at nothing to kill them and their associates?”

As Ichabod’s speech came to a close, Enola’s question remained.

“…Then why didn’t you intervene?”

Ichabod smiled. “A simple question that doesn’t have a simple answer.”

And yet, Enola couldn’t shake the question. “Did you know they were coming?”

An embarrassed chuckle escaped his lips, which he chased with another drink. “Forgive me. I thought I hid it better than that.”

Enola’s confusion and concern redoubled. “Sire… Why didn’t you intervene?”

“How long has it been since you killed someone?”

“...Some years.”

“Give an approximation.”

“Eight years.”

“Were they one of our kind?”

“Yes, sire.”

“What happened after you killed them?”

Enola shifted in her seat. She’d been forced to kill her own ward. Kavita was young, bold… and naïve. Memories of that day came back, and Enola pushed them aside.

“I mourned,” she finally said.

“And then what happened to her?”

“I laid her body in the sun and gave her the warmth we know only in death.”

“And that was the end for her?”

Enola regarded her master. He’d phrased it like a question instead of the statement of fact. Death was the end. She believed that, and so far as she knew, he believed it too.

“Yes,” Enola replied. “That was the end for her.”

Ichabod took a sip from his glass. “The end for her, and the end for you. We do not care about the loss of the body or even the mind—those are far too simple. We mourn the loss of potential. You will never talk with her again, nor laugh, nor drink.

“Lachlan Harris had potential in the Mutagen-X program. It was a testament to him that he had potential even in death. We studied his body because it held potential. Eventually, we went as far with our research as we could. Lachlan held no further insights for us—no further potential. And we could do nothing further for him. His best chance now is with those young artificers.”

Enola shook her head. “How can they do more for him than we can? I read the briefing. They were capes and now they’re ostracized. They won’t have access to resources or facilities…”

Ichabod sighed. The fire in his eyes only moments ago had smoldered.

“Gnosis soldiers fight on the frontline of every continent. We were instrumental in repelling the Deep Ones across every front around the Atlantic. We received commendations for our efforts—off the record, of course—and our contracts were renewed with every government and agency Gnosis partners with.”

Enola added, “A victory in every way, sire. Your victory, and a victory for our kind.”

He added, “In almost every way. We still hide. We still walk in the dark. Tell me, my dear, is it victory if absolutely nothing changes?”

“...No. I suppose not.”

“We’re monsters—that’s all we’ll ever be to the world. We walk in the dark and do the things that they cannot. We fight in their wars, spilling blood of human and vampire and spawn, alike—spilling our own blood as much as we spill theirs. We die for inches of ground and redacted footnotes in reports. We balance the world on our claws, and yet we’ll never walk in the light.

“I have wandered and struggled and fought across the world for millennia, my dear, and changing the world is so very much harder than history makes it seem. And I know this above everything else… there is no way to save ourselves—

“Unless absolutely everything changes.”

~ ~ ~