BALANCE OF POWER...or not by kalaadaephon

BACKGROUND

This would be my first fanfiction ever. Hopefully, I am not deluding myself. No editing has been done, so mistakes are aplenty. Review in any manner you wish:)

It is the year 2013 and the month is August. Vampires existed. So did werewolves and demons and all manner of creatures alongside humans and beasts in peaceful coexistence or something along the same lines. Millennia of apocalyptic wars, extinct species, lost lands and written histories of textual warnings against the final annihilation, eventually led to an ongoing reconciliation process since the last two centuries. Leaders of all races met annually to discuss its progress and introduce new ways to inculcate inter-species acceptance, sometimes entirely impossible due to existing mistrust, and secretive natural tendencies of some species.

Cross-acculturative initiatives were made for more inter-species tolerance. For that, immigration was discussed to exhibit freedom of movement; standardised laws for rights of all beings everywhere were enacted through world conventions and organisations; similarly commerce and education across borders were implemented in manners that encouraged further cooperation.

And that is the world as we know it presently.

But at a certain mansion, the windows rattled and the howling winds did not abate outside of it. It did not care for the 21st century or the want of quiet from all beings wanting it so. It simply was.

Now normally the young fifteen year old occupant would have admired such a display of nature. But she couldn’t muster such an emotion as of the moment.

Bloody clichéd, she thought viciously with a most arrogant sneer that looked almost crazed streaking across her face, now I just need a heavy downpour to complete the scene. And just on cue, heavy drops began to hit the glasses of her windows to accompany the tempest outside.

As the severe pain surged in an unbearable moment, she randomly picks an object from her bedside table and chucks it violently across her room in frustration, as if to assuage the pain lancing seemingly inside her head. The broken laptop displayed some sparks before fizzling to its death. Her scented school assignment papers lying beside it caught some flying sparks and began to burn rapidly

I shouldn’t have done that, she thought distantly as she massaged her throbbing head with her fingers, but remained unmoving from her large bed.

The door to her room suddenly slammed open revealing a tall man with an aristocratic posture, also with a clear sign of running exertion and slight panic on his face.

‘Kagome!’.

The girl with the bright crimson pixie-hair glanced upwards with a grimace, but remained in pained silence.

Before approaching her, he moved sedately over the burning papers and quickly doused them under his sandaled foot. He then sat beside her and held his right hand over her head, while wiping her face with his left. A violet light flowed through them and the girl beside him relaxed her tense posture in obvious relief.

After a while, Kagome released a sigh and tiredly lay back under the covers of her bed. The man tucked her in and then looked at her with a question hovering on his lips, and appeared almost reluctant to ask but did it anyway.

‘You are having more visions as of late’. He stopped to watch her for a while and then asked. ‘Is the pain more in intensity or the same as before? Do you remember anything? And do not lie, for I shall know’, and here he looked at her sternly.

Kagome looked away and then after a long pause answered, ‘The more pain I feel, the more I can see but they are only flashes and still do not make any sense. But...’.

‘But...’, the man prodded.

Kagome looked back with a scared look and said, ‘Ni-sama, I saw myself in it this time. Falling through a well, the well across our lawns.’

If she is calling me Ni-sama then it must be really bad he thought to himself.

At this the man reached across and held his sister’s hands tightly to reassure her, ‘I will not let you fall. If we must we will even build a fortress around the well and imprison it, notwithstanding mother’s objection to the aesthetics of the landscape afterwards’.

Kagome giggled when she saw her brother appearing as if to start building it right away.  He swatted her hands and then pulled her hair immediately and seriously convinced her, ‘I’m serious’. The girl only smiled wider at that.

‘We will figure this out, okay. You are not alone, you know that don’t you?’. When she nodded to affirm, he, once again put his glowing hand over his sister’s head, but this time she fell into a deep sleep.

He stood staring at his sister for a long while, emotions roiling inside him in turmoil over her pain and the new information, while his face remained blank.

As he walked out the door, he met three worried faces.

The only woman in the group with an elegant bun, who had on a black fitted pullover and a midi with matching black heels, whispered to ask, ‘Raizol, how is she?’. The other two also closed in to hear what he had to say. One was only a young boy about ten with visible baby fat, while the older man looked about thirty just like his wife. All four of them had the most vibrant shade of crimson hair, making them look almost like siblings from afar.

‘It is getting worse, mother. She was bleeding through her nose and was not even aware of it’. Raizol then relayed what Kagome had told him about her vision. But it only worsened the worry across their faces.

‘Is Kagome going to be fine?’, the youngest male asked with concern, but his mother only shushed him and led him away from the door to her daughter’s room.

As they walked down the corridor and then down the carpeted stairs, the patriarch of the house reminisced back to the time when Kagome first came to be part of the Sycon family.

A surreal scene of blood and medicine permeated the air, while Rumett Sycon held a bloody baby girl who was barely recognisable under all the gore. But it wasn’t the screaming infant he paid attention to. It was her dying mother, who having just been widowed a month back, now found herself joining her dead spouse.

‘Rumett’, she feebly smiled despite the chaos of panicked medical attendants around.

‘Minako’, Rumett greeted and held out the baby for her to hold or see but she refused to even look by softly shaking her head and tiredly exclaimed, ‘Look at me. She will never be mine. She is yours now’. She shook her head again when it seemed like Rumett might protest her soft broken declarations and between sporadic and difficult breaths she continued again, ‘She is the last of her kind. And as the one who birthed her I request you and yours never to make her feel that. Please... love her as your own’. With that said she seemed to close her eyes as if to sleep and never woke up again.

‘I promise’, Rumett solemly stated, as he struggled to convince his mind on how to bid farewell to a friend of times old who no longer existed to hear his delayed words.

Syra Sycon watched her husband shudder as he came out from the distant look he had had on, as the family walked down the wide stairs. As if sensing his wife’s gaze he looked back at her and silently inclined his head towards the kitchen as they all reached the bottom of the stairs. She nodded just as discreetly and followed, leaving their sons to go about their respective ways.

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Syra silently went about the kitchen and began chopping the vegetables on the island, expecting her husband to speak when he was ready. Rumett silently stir-fried the vegetables chopped by his wife, the way Kagome preferred it. As they fell into the rhythm of steam and fire, Rumett took a deep breath and spoke out his thoughts, ‘at times like this, I am reminded of how little we know of Seers’.

Syra’s face echoed her husband’s anguish and she offered, ‘Can’t you try the Council Archives again...’ Her question remained uncompleted, as Rumett bitterly cut her off ‘Thrice! Thrice I have searched. And... Nothing’, he waved his hands about in helplessness. ‘The Seers were too secretive, even amongst themselves. They recorded everything in their memories. And our Kagome had no one to pass on those memories to her’.

As if as an afterthought he added, ‘Their union should never have happened. Look what he did to her. He should have stayed away from Minako’, and angrily hit the island granite top.

‘They were in love, Rumett’, Syra softly added and placed her hand over her husband’s tightened ones.

‘Yes they were’, an irritation flashing across his face.

When it came to his deceased friend, Syra realised that her husband had appointed himself as the older brother and was over protective. Often times suffocating the person to whom such protection was meant for. No wonder our son is just the same with his sister.

‘I am going to complete the changing ritual’

‘What?’, Syra inquired having missed her husband’s words. He repeated them.

Her eyes widened in shock, but recovered to coax, ‘Husband let us think this through.  No one has ever turned those of her kind before, if she cannot handle the strain she could die...’

Upon Kagome’s entry into the Sycon family—which was the day of her birth—Rumett and Syra had claimed her as their own through a blood blessing involving an ingestion of the parents’ blood to symbolise familial recognition. It was the first changing ritual performed for all vampire infants by their parents.

The second changing ritual was done again by the parents or guardian to affirm the final ascent into Vampirehood. The Sycon blood was powerful and ancient and was potentially dangerous to those it was gifted. To born vampires, only one parent had to give their blood to complete the ritual but those not vampires like Kagome, both parents had to gift their blood to make the bond strong. And while the bond grew stronger, it sometimes overpowered the recipient and consumed them from the inside burning through their very veins. That was why inter-species change was rarely done and in the case of the secretive Seers, no such case ever existed.

‘If we leave her as she is, she will die. That is certain. With the ritual, she at least has a chance. Our blood could help balance the pull of hers. If she had another like her, they could have done that for her, but she only has us’. Rumett beckoned with a look as if to beg his wife for her support.

Really, sometimes she did not know who was worse, her husband or her son. She knew her daughter was strong and trusted her strength. But as far they were concerned, Kagome was a crystal glass.

But she was not giving it easily, ‘If you do this and I lose my only daughter...’

‘Syra, she is my daughter too’, his voice rose and then paused to whisper again, ‘It may be weeks or months, but our daughter will either die or go insane if left alone to her visions and pain. This is her only chance. And Seers have different blood, yes, but it is ancient too. The Sycon blood will not overpower it easily, if at all’.

Syra could not fault the logic offered by her husband, but it did not lull the fear that gripped her heart. But, finally understanding the desperation pushing her husband, her face softened a little as she nodded, but asked, ‘What about our son?’

Rumett grimaced when he remembered his son and replied, ‘Raizol will never agree to this. When it comes to his sister, he cannot think straight. Do not inform him until after its done’.

Both of them going silent again as they contemplated the consequences of their actions to be.

‘She will pull through’, Rumett murmured, ‘she has to’, both of their glances met mirroring the same expression of uncertainty and fear.

Just then, their youngest son ran in quite oblivious to the severe mood permeating, and demanded vociferously ‘There’s a new game out but I can’t find my credit card. Can I have yours, Pops?’

‘Mekel, not now, your mother and I are talking’, his father replied without glancing at his son.

The young male who looked about eleven countered with a grin, ‘It’s cool I’m not here to talk. Now come on, I have to place the order with the designer, his twitter account just put out that the prototype was approved for an advanced model production by his company’.

Rumett simply glanced at his son unaffected by his pleading gestures and slight jumps on the spot, ‘No. This is the third time you’ve lost it this month’.

Having pushed his father as far as he could be pushed, he latched onto his mother’s arm, ‘hey Momsie’.

But she shook her head and began, ‘Son,...’ but as if sensing a negative reply, he did not even allow his mother to finish speaking, as he excitedly pointed at the prepared food and asked ‘Hey, is that for Kagome? I’ll take it to her’. He hurriedly placed the plate of hot vegetables, soup and some bread with assortments of cut cheeses and water in a large silver tray and just as speedily walked out, all the while thinking that his sister would be too delirious to deny him the use of her credit cards.

‘Where did he learn to speak like that? It is a disgrace and at his age... I am the leader of the vampires, if the other lords witnessed this...’, Rumett shook his head with a rueful expression.

‘Let him be. He is only 53, not even in his teens. And within the walls of our home, a little allowance should be made even for the vampire lord and his family’, Syra amusedly replied and then added with a teasing tone, ‘Pops’.

‘You are right, Momsie’, he stressed the word with a smirk, eliciting an irritated look on his elegant and usually unruffled wife.

‘So much for a game... and then his attention...’, they looked at each other as Rumett stopped speaking, both realising simultaneously that their son’s unusually helpful countenance had been for his own benefit.

'He resembles your side of the family', Rumett quipped. Syra pursed her lips in irritation.

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