Loyalty

They said loyalty is forged in fire.

But in truth, it's forged in doubt.

I had counted the strokes on the pit's wall again and restored my memory of how many days had passed.

Four hundred, seven. The number of nights I had spent here since that fateful night. This time, I woke before twilight on my own.

I had kneeled so often in the garden that it called to me of its own accord.

Two shadows waited. No ceremony, no handler, just two attendants, who upon my greeting presented me with a fabric stiff with old blood. This time, there was also no instruction. Barefoot, I was ushered through the lower halls. To where even the air dared not stir. Each step echoed as if the stones beneath my feet whispered warnings in a dead tongue.

A scent lingered. Older perhaps than the clan itself. I was not told the name of this place. But I knew it. Every initiate did. I was the last of them. Where did they go after? Unknown.

My mentor didn't have the answer either. Only that the loyalty test did not reflect your body, but the quality of your soul. It would show you the parts of it you refused to see. I suppose that was what the blindfold was for. StilI, I wouldn't be blind without fully understanding. To do so would be presumptuous.

The walls were perfect. The smoothest of smoke coloured glass. No blemish. So flawless I believed they could accomplish their task. No corners, no doors I could see. Just infinite reflections. Of me. And what looked to be a single way out. I didn't take it. Yet. Nothing here was ever as it seemed.

I resisted raising my hand to smooth my hair. Vanity called to me like a siren.

The trials are connected, Lydia. I heard the voice of my mentor echoing through my mind. Though still suspiciously missing from the pit we had shared.

Silence and stillness.

I remained still. My inward silence rich in inquiry.

Whatever could the two have in common?

I reflected upon my appearance and time from before now. The garden's beauty was the thought raised to the forefront of my thought. The petal of every flower which grew there. The creeping of the ant that tugged their eggs and seeds across the soil. The smell of the soil after the rain. The way bits of grass grew everywhere. Their growth shattered stones.

I considered further, a kernel of learning unlocked.

A soft, pliant, bendable slip of green, capable of splitting stone. The wildflowers that grew there had done the same. The rain had worn the stone. The ant had dropped the seed. I had watched it grow. I had measured it with my gaze as I knelt there, dusk till dawn.

My mind swept inward further. The first turning of the fledgling, and how bitterly they wept.

What they did to us was inhuman. They deserved nothing short of death. Another voice whispered in the stillness, threatening to become a howl. Death would be too kind. They had earned judgment. My gaze hardened as I stood before the mirror. Thinking of the being that had unmade the vampire before my very eyes. It was a thought for another time.

My mother. My mind turned to the cause of her death. The coroner had said that her heart had given out.

How had I not contemplated this in the garden?

Could it be that the wretched vampire had also been her end? How else could he have the necklace she wore all those years ago?

Sorrow filled me now, my capacity for it much greater now.

Yet not a wrinkle of emotion showed outwardly.

I stared at the blindfold in my hand, resisting the urge to wear it. I would not willingly blind myself to my faults if I could see them here.

If I needed to wear it, it would be given as an instruction.

I would be told.

I stood for what felt like three hours. Waiting for that instruction.

After the garden, standing was a privilege.

As the stars passed four degrees from my initial entry to the trial a voice finally spoke.

Cold. Smooth and feminine. Not my handler, nor the Mistress.

"Good, I see the garden has taught you stillness."

I did not speak.

"You may go. Once you swear fealty." The third voice stated this time via mind speak.

The old me would have responded, but the person I had become remained silent, even in my thoughts.

I knew to whom I owed my loyalty. I didn't have to think about it. It was just there, a part of me, as it always had been.

Still, I did not speak.

"You have also learned silence. They are unaware, and it will become their doom," came a whisper to the right of my ear. This voice was older—much, much older.

The voices joined as one, the crooning of song rising in unison.

A veiled form caught my eye. "You will not be tested by blade or flame. You will be tested by truth."

The walls of the chamber descended into the floor, shifting like the flared opening of the lotus. The mirrors had been an illusion.

This room was domed and vast.

Had I sworn fealty. I would have died. I would have failed the test.

I was led to another area. Alone. Or so it seemed again.

In the center of this room stood another structure. It called to me. Surrounding the base were bones I would need to step over. To stand upon.

It was neither silver nor glass. Its surface rippled of its own accord. An altar of some sort, I decided.

I moved to stand before it and heard the stillness of the chamber give way to whispers.

I was not alone.

I bowed my head, focusing solely on the stillness inside. Then lifted my gaze to stare into its depths.

Truth takes as long as it takes.

During the first hour, I considered my past.

It was fraught with deeds I was not proud of. Sorrows not mine to carry, but would gladly do so again at any time.

During the passing of the second hour, I considered the aching beauty of night's darkness and the refreshing rain that felt so cold I thought I might die. Had I ever truly been alive until that day?

I thought of the cancer.

Its power, too, was lost.

Whatever would be, would be. I was no longer under its control.

Three, four, five hours passed. I stood as I had before.

Nothing.

Just silence. Now a familiar and welcome friend.

I examined the outer form of the altar and wondered if I had perceived a movement.

A flicker beneath its surface and then a ripple. Until a form was birthed from the mirror-not-mirror altar.

It crawled into the room, on all fours. Formed of dirt.

A golem.

That looked like me.

And this one wasn't so interested in its precious, judging by the way it crawled my way.

The old me would have screamed, shouted and ran. Gotten right the hell out of there.

The person I became was evaluative and patient. Why should I fear myself?

It stood in front of me, and I recognized my own voice. Did I really sound that nasally? Did I stutter so much?

It circled around me, as though it, too, was performing its own evaluation.

"Borrowed strength," it hissed. "Your strength is not your own. Yet you believe yourself to be strong." Its tone curled around my throat like it meant to choke me. It was my voice - yes- but wrong. Hollowed and filled with rot.

"You don't even know who you are," it laughed. You've endured for nothing. The pain, the bloodletting, their ridiculous stillness, which is nothing more than an excuse to search for weakness."

I did not move.

"Pretend loyalty." It shifted, expecting fear or denial.

I did not speak.

"You are a doll. A vessel. A pet made pretty for the altar of their greed."

Slowly, the thing moved back to where it came from.

The surface now pulsed as though it moved in time with a heartbeat.

Another reflection emerged. Not my most current self, but the one I feared the most.

Shackled. Gagged. Bleeding from her palms and neck. Eyes wide and wet with grief. The grief for the shadow of my former self.

"This is the truth. What the world made and what you accepted." Each syllable tore at my heart, like a knife to the very core of my being.

I did not blink. While they had forced me to kneel in the garden. I had trained for war without movement.

Pain without motion. Stillness without surrender.

My breaths remained steady and slow, the echo of my heartbeat in my ears.

I let the mirror-me speak.

"Rage. Coiled like a viper in your gut." It continued. "Thirsting for revenge. You hide it beneath discipline. Yet there it lingers, ready to strike."

My cellmate's words returned, floating down upon me like a lightweight cloak. Stillness is not always peace. You are preparing for war without movement."

"Your continued hope is a disease. Even your memories are lies."

I focused on examining the quality of hope, ignoring its lies as they spewed forth.

"You have nothing that is not borrowed." The image spat, its figure the clearest of them all. "You are..."

From the pit of my stomach. My mouth not my own. My voice raised like an instrument of power.

"I am who my master says I am. And you are not him."

The room shook, and murmurs rose.

Their whispers of gossip about a benefactor, the initiate might be aligned with.

The reflection sharpened.

My face and body were no longer bound but crowned and wreathed in fire that shimmered gold and white. Eyes aglow with the dawn's light.

It wasn't a reflection anymore. A vision.

And it terrified the altar mirror.

"That is not meant for you," it growled.

"And yet it is not your gift to take away." I firmly faced the golem.

My clay twin.

And gripped its shoulders. The surface rippled and distorted. Hidden sigils seared through black stone, piercing it as a blade of grass would the rock.

Pressure built in the room. My throat went dry, even as the tears on my cheeks continued to flow.

I knelt now. Throwing the blindfold aside.

A single phrase emerged from a voice outside those present.

"I have placed my mark upon this initiate."