The Gates of Night_ The Dreaming Dark - Keith Baker [11]
Now Pierce found there was another emotion at work. He knew Indigo would say that sleep was a weakness, one of the many flaws that made the so-called “breathers” inferior to the warforged. But watching Daine and Lei sleeping side by side, he felt a strange envy. The battle with Indigo, Lakashtai’s betrayal … he wished that he could escape it, if only for a moment. He wondered what it would be like to dream.
You were not made for dreams.
How would you know? It was a strange sensation, trying to communicate with Shira. There was no sense of a separate presence, just thoughts that appeared in his mind as if they were his own.
Because you were made for me.
You are thousands of years older than I am, Pierce thought. That makes no sense.
It makes no sense. It felt as if he was agreeing with himself. It is still true.
Memory flooded through Pierce. A time of war. Shira’s people were endangered on two fronts. They needed to escape their homeland before an impending cataclysm destroyed it, and they were fighting a fearsome enemy to claim a new home. He saw the creation of warforged … no, not warforged, but creatures much like them. These were soldiers, but they were also vessels of hope. Shira was the first of her kind to attempt the transition. Her essence had been fused to the sphere, where it could be bound to any vessel of hope. But only days after she had merged with her first vessel, she had been captured by the enemy. Her vessel was destroyed, and she was sealed away in the darkness of the vault.
That doesn’t mean I was made for you, Pierce thought. It sounds like any warforged would do.
Would they? A new memory emerged, but this was one of his own. Harmattan speaking to him at the door to the vault—
This is a relic of this ancient land, a key of a most unusual nature. Only a warforged designed to interface with it can make use of it. Hydra, Indigo—it will not interface properly with their auras.
What makes you think I can use it? Pierce had asked.
Because I could, if I still had a body. And you are my brother.
The memory faded, and the next thought was Shira’s. It may make no sense. But it is true. You were not made for dreams. You were made to escape them.
Pierce let this thought go. He still wasn’t sure how he felt about Shira. Her knowledge and analytic powers were certainly useful. Even now, as he glanced around the chamber, Shira identified the symbols carved into the walls as one of the languages of giants, translating each word that he looked at. But as much as it was pleasant to have a companion, it wasn’t the same as speaking with Lei or Pierce.
Or Indigo.
That was the heart of it. His mind still lingered on their last battle. He could remember every motion, and he walked through it in his mind, tracing the injuries she’d given him. The sight of Daine transfixing her with his blade, the surge of emotion he’d felt watching her fall, even as Shira whispered about the magical resonance of Daine’s sword.
She would have won their fight. Without Lei, without Harmattan … Indigo would have defeated him. Somehow, it didn’t seem fair that he should still be alive. He could see the battle in his mind, and he knew that he had lost … or would have. He couldn’t even blame her for wanting to destroy him. He had betrayed her for Lei. He’d intended to imprison her in the ancient vault. Harmattan must have saved her, while Pierce had simply betrayed her again.
He remembered those final moments, looking down at her on the floor of Karul’tash, the gaping wound in her abdomen. Lying there as if she were asleep.
But warforged didn’t sleep. Most people couldn’t tell the difference between a warforged that had been destroyed and one that had simply been rendered