Chapter 4: Children's Blood

Zilva woke up the next afternoon rested and peaceful, but also confused. He remembered being in the common room fearing the nightmares, but did not remember going to bed. The last thing he remembered was "Goodnight, noble Vriloth. And may flights of Drakes guide you to peaceful sleep." Jeysa. She had put him to sleep. But there had been no nightmares, no children dying. He had not seen the faces that haunted him every night. And he felt better. Zilva's door opened and the youngest Vriloth Ge walked in.

"Good morning Zilva. Zek asked me to come and see if you were up and wanted some lunch." Ge's voice had a touch of pride, barely two weeks a Vriloth and Zek was already talking to him directly. Ge did not realize that the only hierarchy in the Vriloth was self imposed, and that he was no less important than any of the others. But the boy was young and impressionable. "So… are you ready to eat because Zek said that Cullen has something to tell us and that all of us are to be there before he will say anything."

Zilva smiled at the boy who was in reality only two years younger than him, and got out of bed. He stretched his arms over his head and opened his brown wings, knocking over a desk in the process.

"All right Ge, I am up." Zilva certainly felt better than he did the day before, but when he thought of last night and Roed despair set in again. How many more children will have to die before the Behemoths and Mezaroths are no more? Then his thoughts went back to Jeysa making him sleep, and for some reason he felt embarrassed.

Ge nodded in his impudent way and leapt off the ledge to glide the twenty feet to the ground of the common room floor. The Horel Troen was a large room with individual chambers going along the walls going up from the floor. On the ground level were their kitchen, bathing chambers, laundry chambers, and an area to relax. All of the rooms had ladders going up to them, but with all of the Vriloth having the wings of their Drake parent, the ladders were hardly ever used.

Zilva quickly changed from the shirt he had been wearing the night before, who ever had brought him up did not change his clothes. With a leap Zilva followed Ge off of the ledge.

This is one of the best feelings ever. Zilva was doing what everyone born with wings loved to do, fly. With a beat of his gray leathery wings he changed direction, flying towards the ceiling fifty feet above him. Gelof isn't there yet either, I can take a moment to just enjoy this. When he nearly reached the ceiling Zilva folded his wings to his back and dropped like a rock towards the ground. As he was falling he noticed Gelof coming out of his room falling with him. When Zilva was eighteen feet from the ground he righted himself by opening his wings and slowing down enough to land. Gelof landed some five feet to his right. Zek was sitting at the table with Mni and Cullen. All three were looking solemn. Ge and Jeysa were helping to clear the table of all but one setting, presumably for Zilva. The Vriloth took turns with cleaning and preparing food. This morning Zilva was to do the dishes, he remembered with a pain of guilt. It looked as if Jeysa had done his chore for him. As he sat down at the table Cullen stood up.

"I am not going to dance around the subject that I have come to you today with. The Council decided this morning that from now on the Blood Ceremonies will now take place every week." This announcement brought a variety of response from the gathered Vriloth. Cullen seemed saddened by it himself. Only Gelof seemed unaffected by this announcement.

After a few moments Gelof spoke.

"Are there enough Phoenix and acceptable children for that to be feasible?" Those two reasons where all that had stopped this in the past. Gelof's words seemed to break the tension in the room.

"Yes there are. And this was their idea. After seeing the destruction of their clan, they brought this to the council, saying 'This war had gone on long enough, the sooner that we find the last two Vriloth, the sooner it is all over.'" Cullen could not seem to shake this feeling of dread that hung over the Eyrie.

"Then six days from now there will be another Blooding, right?" Zek had tried to compose himself enough to talk, but that he was worried about the rest of the Vriloth was apparent. Cullen nodded in affirmation. "Then we will be there." At the stunned look on everyone but Gelof, he continued. "The Council was the ones that gave us our chance in the first place, we have to support them. The rest of the Eyrie look at us with hope, we can't look like we are in opposition to the leadership, even if we don't agree with them."

Everyone realized that Zek was right, to publicly speak out against this, would be disastrous to the morale of the Eyrie. The families that had supported the Vriloth by sacrificing their children were ready for the cycle of death to change, more children would die from this, but if it would bring the last two Vriloth to light sooner, then it would be for the best.

Zilva had stopped eating after Cullen had made his announcement, the food no longer looked appealing to him. The thought of the children dying for a chance hurt him greatly. When he looked at his hands all he saw was blood. He knew that it was imagined but in his mind the blood of all the children that died in the Ceremony was on his hands. All he wanted was for the dying to end.

Six days later the first of the new Blood Ceremonies began. Diem was the daughter of a Giraffe man and the requisite Drake mother, at barely eight years old she was younger than any of the Vriloth had been when they were blooded, but taller than Gelof. The girl died in a ceremony that all considered to be a mistake.

That night when the Vriloth had returned to the Horel Troen everyone went their separate ways back to their own rooms. After an hour of just laying on his bed Ge could stand it no more.

"I have got to do something. Just moping around isn't helping me." After launching himself out of his room and into the dimly lit cavern that served as the main hall in the Horel Troen Ge took a lazy spiral down to the floor that was roughly sixty feet below him. How is this really helping us? The Blood Ceremonies were sad enough before this new announcement, now everyone comes back here and goes their separate ways for the entire night. If anything this is driving us to doubt ourselves and our cause. If we don't find the last two Vriloth soon… With that thought Ge turned and dived onto the ledge that was in front of Zek's door.

"Zek, can I speak to you for a second… um sir?" Ge knocked timidly on the door, hoping that he wasn't disturbing the leader of the Vriloth. Some children older than he had told him that Zek had a horrible temper when he was younger.

"Come in." Timidly Ge entered Zek's room surprised by what he saw. For some reason he expected broken furniture, tattered wall hangings, and a broken bed, but what he was a bare room only a desk, dresser, book shelf and a bed. Zek was seated in the floor on a mat, and it appeared that he was meditating. "Ge you must quit referring to me as 'sir.' I am only leader in name. There is no hierarchy in this group. We are all fighting for the same cause and I listen to everyone. You are no less or no more than any of the rest of us. Just because we are older now wont matter in twenty years after we die in the fire, only to be resurrected as babies. Now what did wish to talk to me about?"

Zek may have said that he was leader in name only, but the speech that he had just given Ge inspired the young Vriloth.

"Its just that tonight was so horrible for us, that I fear for us. A week ago you spoke of the morale of the Eyrie, well what about the morale of the Vriloth. We are hurting and need some reprieve. Something to take our minds off of the deaths of so many people."

"I know that was the very thing that I was sitting here meditating on. We need some diversion from the death. Not a game, but something still physical. Maybe it is time to start training something more than our minds. Is that the same conclusion you came to Ge?" Zek could tell by the look on Ge's face that it was. "But I don't think that training with swords or other weapons is the right thing to do. This is something that we are going to keep from the council."

"Hand to hand combat? Like fist fighting? That doesn't sound like it would be very effective. I mean just to come out swinging isn't the best way to fight ever…"

"No Ge, no brawling, skilled martial arts. If we first mastered that, then fighting with swords would be easier, in theory. Also it would serve as a way to work out anger and frustration."

"And when would we begin?"

"Tomorrow morning. After breakfast, don't tell anyone what we talked about tonight. I want it to be a surprise to everyone else tomorrow. Good night Ge." With that Zek closed his eyes and seemed to go back to his meditation. Ge knew himself to be dismissed and left the room. After closing the door behind him Ge leapt off the ledge and flew back to his own room, elated that he knew something the rest didn't.

After Ge left Zek felt sick to his stomach. He had lied to Ge about the leadership of the Vriloth. 'Leader in name only.' That was what he had told the boy. I used him, like I planned to use Jeysa. I need to have Ge be completely loyal to me and what we are supposed to do. But that doesn't make it any better.

At the same time that Ge and Zek had been talking Jeysa had flown to Zilva's room to talk to him, to try to comfort him. Unlike Ge's lazy path down, Jeysa jumped and plummeted, falling nearly the whole depth of the Horel Troen, only to catch herself with just enough space as to not kill herself on the ledge outside of Zilva's door. Also unlike Ge, she did not knock, but opened the door and entered. Zilva was lying on his staring at the ceiling.

"How are you Zil?" Jeysa asked at her most empathic. She knew just how much he hurt. "Zilva?"

"I hurt Jeysa, but you already knew that, or you wouldn't have come." Zilva sat up on his bed and looked at her. His eyes looked empty, like a part of him was dead.

Jeysa walked over and sat next to him. "Zilva, please you have to stop participating in the Blood Ceremony, it is killing you. Why can't you see that? I am worried about you."

"Jeysa you know how I feel about this," as he said that he got off the bed and walked to the other side of the room. "as bad as I feel when I watch each child die, helping to save them; it would be worse to know that I stood by and did nothing. All life is sacred to me. If it was possible to save the very people who wield the cursed weapons, I would. But after grasping a Behemoth those men are changed, never again would they be whole without it. It would be torture to keep them alive after that."

"I know. But don't you see that you are loosing yourself to this? When the Ceremony was every other week you could nearly regain that little piece of yourself that you had lost at the last one. But now with only a week between each one, will you be able to find yourself again." Jeysa got up and walked to the other side of the room where Zilva was. "Zil you have to see that your well being affects all of us. We live together as a unit, but we are more than that. There is a bond between us, forged in blood. The soon to be eight of us will be together for what could be forever, if you loose yourself now, how will you survive? How will we survive? How will I survive?" Jeysa started crying when she said the last sentence.

Zilva did the only thing that came to his mind; he took Jeysa in his arms and began crying as well.

"Beautiful Jeysa you are right," Zilva managed to say, "I have been loosing myself. But you have been keeping me together. It was a comfort to me to know that if I asked you could give me the dreamless, peaceful sleep that I needed. I just never asked. You are the angel saves me from my nightmares." Zilva then led Jeysa to the bed, where the two spent the night in each other's arms, neither moving nor saying anything. When it got cold Jeysa spread her wings over them both, and Zilva spread his wings over hers as extra protection from the cold. The next morning neither said anything again when they woke up before everyone else and went down to prepare breakfast. If anyone else noticed that both wore the same clothes as they wore the day before nobody said anything.