Those We Love #1: Rest (An Archemi Short Story)

This contains character spoilers for Crowned in Black, so don't read it if you haven't read that book yet. One of several forthcoming parts of Those We Love, which shows some of the private moments between the main characters of Archemi.

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Mercurions didn't sleep. Not as such. Ebisa needed a scant two hours of rest, where she slipped into meditation and thought the words of power that shut her body down into torpor. Her mind remained within her body at a distance, as the quiet, fluid-suspended mechanisms in her torso quietly filtered and refreshed the mana that served as her blood.

She hated every second of inaction. Of vulnerability. The need for rest was a curse, she thought bitterly, especially now. The oldest Mercurion alive was maybe twenty-five, twenty-six years years old. Unless they were Starborn, their bodies shut down at the age when a human or a Meewfolk was just starting to flourish in adulthood. As a Ju'chi, an experiment, Ebisa had no idea what her lifespan was to be. Only that it would be short. Every hour of her life spent sitting at rest was wasted time.

Ahead of her, on the other side of the room, Ignas tossed and turned in his sleep. He had been sleeping more than usual since she and the Dragozin team had pulled him out of Lovi... and it worried her. Ebisa was used to a restless Ignas, an energetic, driven Ignas. Not an Ignas who needed ten hours a night, and struggled to rise in the mornings and cursed as he groped around for the blindsight visor that now served as a poor substitute for eyes.

Ebisa gazed at him across the gloom, her hands resting on the knives she'd laid out across her lap before switching herself off. Her optic and aural pathways were the only functions left while she was recharging: Ebisa could see and hear, but not move until she reactivated. The reactivation process was generally automatic, though it could be overridden with a command phrase. In her early days of freedom, Ebisa had overridden her rest cycles constantly - until the day she had jumped from a building in pursuit of a thug from a rival syndicate, and her knee had burst apart and collapsed under her. The Artificer-medic who had seen to her had scolded her fiercely when they'd learned what she'd been doing.

Across the room, Ignas moaned in his sleep, legs kicking under the covers as he tried to flee the phantoms of his dreams. He had never used to dream. In private, he had admitted to Ebisa that he now saw the two Starborn in his sleep. Lucien and Nicolas.

Sorrow was replaced by anger. Cold, level, predatory anger. One of the quirks invested into Ebisa by her 'father' was the ability to record and replay memories like films, and as she sat in her chair like a doll, Ebisa idly went over every scrap of recollection she had about the pair of vile Starborn.  Not a whole lot - not enough to hunt and kill them, yet. But she would gather that information, that observation and... Looking at Ignas, writhing in his nightmares, she would tear herself apart to kill them if that was what it took.

The Volod fell still, chest rising and falling as if he'd been running. It was a familiar cycle, in the days since he'd returned to Vulkan Keep. He never remembered his dreams come morning, as composed and in command as he always was, but he complained of tiredness.

Half an hour or so of restless breathing passed before the next sound of distress fluttered to Ebisa's ears.

She thought the override command sequence. 

It was early: she had only been in torpor for an hour, and her body felt creaky as she slowly rose, joints popping and snapping in a way that told her that the required rest period would not be negotiated with. But it was only a temporary interruption. Like a ghost, the Mercurion crossed to Ignas' bed and - after a moment of hesitation - lay down and wrapped herself around his back. Ignas stopped moaning, and as the minutes passed, his breathing slowed.

Ebisa let one spidery arm rest over his bare chest, then put herself back into torpor. He wouldn't remember she was there - he never did. She only needed two hours, but as her body stilled once more, she committed to four. She would be out of the bed by dawn - back to her chair, so that her king would find her alert and on guard. Distant, but within reach. As always.