Chapter 409: An Old Story?
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Sekhmet’s eyes narrowed slightly. Not because he doubted the message.
Because very few things in the Void Land could interrupt him without consequence, and even fewer things would dare create disorder near the prison side unless they either had no sense or thought the matter was worth the risk.
He looked once toward the deeper dark where Sofia and Natasha were kept.
Then he moved.
The bat launched off the stone at once and flew ahead of him in short urgent bursts, glancing back every few heartbeats as if to make sure he followed with proper seriousness. It did not need to worry about that. Sekhmet’s pace was steady, but there was nothing casual in it now.
The prison side of the Void Land always felt different from the rest.
The new Bloodlands patch where Leaf and her Trinity had begun spreading life was strange, dangerous, and alive. The prison side had none of that. It was harsher. Colder. More honest in its ugliness. Stone, shadow, and old blood. A place built not for growth, but for holding. For keeping dangerous things where they could still breathe, but only because death had not yet been ordered.
The bat kept chirping as it flew.
Sekhmet listened.
The meaning came through well enough. Not words. Never words. But impressions sharp enough to shape into understanding.
It was noise and conflict.
The guard bats could not stop it. The girls were too strong.
Not strong enough to break their current situation, of course. Not with the seals still in place, not in the state they were in, and certainly not under his eye in the Void Land. But strong enough that small bats trying to play jailer would fail the moment real pressure entered the room.
Useful information.
Behind him, he heard another flutter.
Bat Bat.
Of course.
She had come out of the Bloodlands side after him and, seeing the direction he had taken, followed without bothering to ask permission. When she caught up, she shifted back into her larger form mid-step, landing lightly at his side with her usual complete absence of caution about timing.
"What happened?" she asked.
Sekhmet did not answer at once.
He looked at the guard bat instead.
The little creature landed on a jagged rock near Bat Bat’s shoulder and let out a series of fast sounds, clicking and chirping with obvious agitation. Bat Bat frowned at it as though trying very hard to understand the situation.
Sekhmet, however, understood enough.
"The prisoners are acting strange," he said. "They are fighting each other."
Bat Bat blinked. "I don’t understand... Why are they fighting?"
The guard bat chirped again, louder this time, then spread its wings in a display that carried more frustration than fear.
Sekhmet’s gaze shifted toward it. "The guard bats could not stop them."
Bat Bat folded her arms. "That sounds humiliating for them."
The bat made an outraged sound at once.
She looked at it and then added, "I mean for very understandable reasons."
The bat still looked offended.
Sekhmet kept walking.
The stone underfoot grew rougher as he neared the prison section. The bats posted there had not been arranged for beauty or ceremony. They clung where shadows broke best, where lines of sight remained open, and where they could scatter quickly if something ugly started moving inside the holding area. Two of them came into view first, hanging upside down from a slanted jut of rock. Another shifted lower along the wall, clearly nervous. The moment they saw Sekhmet, all three erupted into overlapping bursts of sound.
Bat Bat winced. "They are all speaking at once. I respect their fear, but their manners are terrible."
Sekhmet gave the bats one look.
They quieted instantly.
Then he stepped forward enough to see into the holding area properly.
And his first thought was annoyance.
Sofia and Natasha were indeed fighting.
At least, that was what it was supposed to look like.
Sofia drove in from the left with a sharp forward strike. Natasha twisted aside and met the motion with a clean block. Natasha countered low. Sofia stepped back. Sofia turned and came again. Natasha pivoted and cut the air near her shoulder. Their hair moved. Their clothes shifted. Their faces held focused intensity.
But that was all it was.
Look. Shape. Imitation. But there were no wounds. No fresh bruises. No blood. Not even dust on their clothes.
That was what made it insulting.
Two women moving at that speed and force in rough ground like this should have scuffed stone, kicked dirt, cracked something, marked something, breathed harder, slipped once, shown one real sign of violence. Instead the area around them remained nearly untouched.
They were not fighting.
They were performing the idea of a fight badly enough that bats had panicked and well enough that something had clearly been intended by it.
Bat Bat leaned forward and squinted. "That is fake."
"Yes." Sekhmet replied.
She stared another second and then looked deeply offended. "They staged a prison drama to do what?"
That was also Sekhmet’s question inside his mind. For once she asked the right question.
Sofia came in with one more high strike.
Natasha caught it.
Then both of them saw him clearly.
The whole thing stopped at once.
There was no transition. No last clash. There was no attempt to maintain the illusion for dignity’s sake.
They stopped immediately, which made the trick even more obvious than before.
Sofia straightened first. Her silver hair had shifted slightly loose around one shoulder, but not from real struggle. Natasha lowered her arms and stepped back half a pace, her eyes fixed on him with the careful seriousness of someone who had decided the performance had served its purpose and should now be abandoned before it became stupidity.
Bat Bat put both hands on her hips. "Shameless."
Sofia looked at her briefly. "Effective."
Bat Bat actually recoiled. "I dislike that answer because it is annoyingly true."
Sekhmet ignored both of them and stepped closer.
The guard bats scattered away from the direct line between him and the two prisoners, clinging to higher stone or shifting sideways with urgent little wingbeats. They had learned enough by now to know when a scene was no longer theirs.
Sofia watched him approach.
Natasha did too.
He stopped only when he was close enough that neither of them could pretend this remained light mischief.
Sofia spoke first.
"You are finally here."
Her tone held the accusation, but only lightly. It was not enough to be stupid. It was enough to signal that the waiting had been deliberate.
Natasha crossed her arms and added, "We waited a long time."
Bat Bat stared at them. "You mean you made all this noise because he did not come visit you quickly enough?"
Sofia’s expression did not change. "Yes."
Bat Bat looked at Sekhmet. "I almost admire it. They are in love with you, master."
He did not react to that joke. His face remained unchanged. Instead...
Sekhmet asked, "What do you want?"
The directness of the question stripped the room of whatever small theater they had tried to drape over it.
Sofia’s mouth tightened faintly, as if part of her had hoped for one more turn of positioning before the real conversation began.
He did not give it to her.
"If this is about freedom, broken seals, bargains, threats, or wounded pride," he said, "do not waste my time. I am busy."
That landed properly. The silence after it was not empty. It was measured.
Natasha answered first, because she was the less decorative of the two when things mattered.
"It is not that."
Sekhmet said nothing.
Natasha continued, "It is something important."
Bat Bat muttered, "People always say that right before saying something complicated."
No one acknowledged her.
Sofia stepped back into the conversation then, but now without the performance of a false fight to hold her posture up.
"We wanted to talk to you."
"You managed that," Sekhmet said.
Her expression flickered at that, it was not quite irritation, not quite reluctant approval. Probably both.
Natasha cut in before Sofia could choose a worse sentence.
"It is about your power."
That sharpened the moment. It was not enough to show on his face. But it was enough that Bat Bat felt it and went still beside him.
Enough that the guard bats on the rock line above them also stopped shifting.
Enough that Sofia stopped trying to play her own scene and let seriousness settle fully over her features.
Sekhmet looked at Natasha. Then he asked, "What about my power?"
She glanced once toward Sofia. That was enough to answer. Something old was coming.
He remained silent.
Sofia lifted her chin slightly, it was not in arrogance this time, but in the way of someone about to place something old and dangerous into the air and wanting the shape of it right before release.
"Before that," she said, "let me tell you a story."
Bat Bat made the smallest possible sound of delight.
Sekhmet ignored it.
Sofia’s gaze remained fixed on him.
"A story and a myth," she said, "among vampires."
Natasha did not move.
That made it heavier somehow. Sofia might have had the voice for legend, but Natasha’s silence carried the warning that this was not idle lore being dragged out to entertain themselves in prison.
Sofia continued.
"It is about the blood that runs in our bodies."
The line settled between them and changed the mood completely.
Even the bats seemed to feel it.
The guard creatures clinging to the rocks held still now, heads angled downward, as if some instinct in them recognized that the noise and fake struggle had only been bait and that the real thing had started here, with words instead of claws.
Bat Bat, for once, did not speak.
She had moved from offended witness to fascinated listener in less than a minute, and her dark eyes stayed on Sofia with the full dangerous concentration of someone who could be trusted to remember every word and misuse none of it until later.
Sekhmet remained where he was. He was Calm and Unreadable. He did not tell Sofia to continue faster.
He did not ask whether the story was worth the trouble she had caused.
He did not promise interest either.
He simply watched her, which in some ways was a heavier permission than words.
Sofia saw that and understood.
The fake fight had bought her an audience. Now she would either justify it or regret it.
She drew one slow breath.
Then another.
When she spoke again, the rhythm in her voice was different.