Scott Ciencin - The Night Parade

The fire lord's will was incredibly strong. Sixx knew he would not be able to pull Zeal into the psychic battlefield he favored unless he could weaken the man. In seconds he would lose his hold on the fire lord, but those seconds would prove to be all that were necessary.

Surrender to the flames, Sixx urged. Let them overwhelm you.

The fiery-haired man shuddered. His arms were engulfed in flames so intense that the rain was burned away before it came within six feet of him.

Turn and release them! Sixx commanded silently.

Zeal felt his body pivot as the flames struck from his hands, reaching across the distance that separated him from his wife. He screamed in horror as he saw the tongues of flame strike Tamara, sending her shrieking form backward, into the darkness.

"No, I couldn't have. I couldn't have-" Zeal began, stopping suddenly as he spun around and caught sight of Sixx's eyes for a second time. This time, Zeal had little defense against the Eyes of Domination. He stiffened, and his own eyes became blank, though his flames continued to burn.

For long moments, Lord Sixx and Imperator Zeal remained motionless as the crowd watched. Their duel was being enacted in a private place that only Zeal and Sixx could experience, a dimension solely of mind.

Lord Sixx broke from his trance and smiled. He raised his hands as if he were conducting a symphony. Zeal jerked and trembled in time with Sixx's motions, then fell to his knees as his power became novalike. The fire lord had been the first of his so called Inextinguishables. Only one being among the Night Parade possessed the power to destroy him: Zeal himself.

Suddenly, the fire lord turned his flames upon himself. He threw his head back in a silent scream as the fires that had always been his allies choked his breath and incinerated him. In moments, all that remained was a smoldering corpse.

Lord Sixx turned to Dymas. "It seems I owe you my life."

"My duty's to protect you," Dymas said.

Sixx nodded, searching the other man's eyes for ambition. He saw nothing, but Zeal had fooled him also. When this night was done, he would enter Dymas's mind. If he found a trace of duplicity, he would kill the sleeping man. For tonight, he felt better with Dymas alive.

Across the docks, Myrmeen and Krystin had been trying to locate Lord Sixx and the apparatus. They knew that somehow they had to find a way to stop the ceremonies. A torrent of flame had struck a rooftop a block away. Moments later, a second burst of light reached up and touched the sky. They ran to the warehouse, unaware that it had been the one upon which Tamara had crouched, and came upon the woman-spider's smoldering remains. They watched in fascination as Tamara quickly became human once again, though she had been horribly burned, most of her hair singed away.

"Myrmeen," Tamara said weakly. "I'm glad you came."

"Vie saw the light on the roof, decided to see what had caused it," Krystin said distractedly, her gaze fixed on the item around Tamara's neck, which had been burned but was still recognizable. "You saved my locket."

"Not worth much now," Tamara said, each word bringing pain that she could not mask. "Sorry."

She reached out to Myrmeen, who drew away. Tamara shut her eyes and said, "I know what happened to your child."

The words nearly drove Myrmeen from her feet. She reached out and grasped Krystin's shoulder for balance. The child wrapped her arm around Myrmeen and helped the woman kneel beside Tamara.

"Have to tell you now," Tamara said. "Lord Sixx will send someone to make sure I am dead."

"Speak," Myrmeen said, unable to force more than the single word from her mouth. She listened to Tamara's faltering narrative, the flow broken as the woman paused to cough, blood spitting out with her words, her eyes becoming glassy, her body shaking.

"I said you had destroyed my home," Tamara said. "Our home, where you lived as a child and I called home as an adult."

Myrmeen thought of her return to her childhood home, the Tower Arms. The building had been in ruins except for her old quarters. They had been perfectly, impossibly restored to the way she remembered them. Then she recalled the nightmare, the screeching monstrosities her parents had become, and their horrible words:… we told you the other one was dead and you would be our one and only. Yousmiled. Youthoughtwe didn 't see you, but we did and it cut our hearts out.

Not true, she thought. Please, it's not true.

Then she remembered when she first had heard of the Night Parade. Her mother had been explaining what had happened to her baby sister. She had been taken to a place where she would be loved and happy, where she would be with her own kind.

Where she would be a monster.

"You're my sister," Myrmeen said breathlessly, her emotions going numb at the realization.

Tamara nodded. "Twenty-eight years ago, two members of the Night Parade wanted a child but could not conceive one. In this plane they cannot reproduce by natural means. They purchased a child and brought it to the Festival of Renewal. It was placed with the others, so many others.

"Myrmeen, the apparatus transforms human children into Night Parade creatures. I was raised to believe I was one of them, given the traits during the Draw of my adopted parents, themselves part human, part spider. Many years later, they died. Zeal, who was ten years older than me and had loved me from the first time he saw me, told me the truth. It was difficult to learn the names of my human parents, but I found them, and I found you. I came to you many times, but I could not bring myself to confront you."

"The nightmares," Myrmeen whispered. "The people with limbs of spiders-"

"My parents," Tamara said softly, "and me."

"Wait," Krystin said as she looked at Myrmeen. "You said your sister was stillborn, that your mother told you-"

"She lied," Tamara said bitterly. "I had been born sickly, and the physicians gave me only a few hours to live. The slavers came and offered our parents a fortune for a child that would die soon anyway. They looked to their other child, to you, Myrmeen, who was starving because they could not provide for her, and accepted the slavers' gold."

"You should have come to me," Myrmeen said. "You should have told me."

Tamara shook her head. "I tracked you. I watched you with envy, my human sister who could go where she wished, do as she liked, and experience this world as a native creature, not a predator. As much as I wanted to be human, I had needs and appetites that were not."

Myrmeen's lips curled slightly in disgust.

The muscles in Tamara's face tightened. "I did not think I would be able to› bear seeing your revulsion. It's strange, sister. Somehow it doesn't bother me."

Covering her face with her hands, Myrmeen said, "I'm sorry."

"You can't help it," Tamara said. "I understand. Besides, would you have believed me if I had told you the truth then?"

"I don't know," Myrmeen said honestly. "Why did you try to kill me at Shandower's retreat?"

Tamara shook her head. "I thought you had been party to the sale of your child. All my life I had convinced myself that you were noble and decent. When Dak sold the baby I thought you were party to the deal, that you had done to this innocent what our parents had done to me. I thought you had chosen to abandon her."

"I never would have done that," Myrmeen said.

Tamara glanced at Krystin, then back at her sister. "I know that now."

Hardness returned to Myrmeen's eyes, the golden slivers within the deep, troubled sea of her pupils shining like avenging swords. "What happened to my child?"

"Zeal and I wanted a baby," Tamara said. "We purchased yours."

"No, please," Myrmeen said. "My baby can't be like you, it can't be, please-"