BONUS: UNDERGROUND ELYSIUM

DANA AND LUCRETIA

I promised I’d share a little bit of my original writing this month. It’s a little later than I would’ve liked, but here it is: a short story (about 5.1k words) set in “Underground Elysium”.

A visionary vampiress, belonging to a matriarchal society of vampires with praying mantis-like habits, saw the apocalypse as an opportunity to subjugate humanity and elevate her species in a new world order, after the outside world became inhospitable to humans. Between the choice of risking falling prey to the walking, rotting corpses that roam the exterior, and a life of servitude under the civilised blood-sucking monsters underneath, many submitted to the second option. Nonetheless, there’s those even among her own that don’t appreciates living under Lucretia’s iron fist; around every corner a conspiracy against her brews, right as election season approaches.

This story would serve as a prequel of sorts, offering a window to the beginnings of Lucretia’s dynamic with Dana, the main antagonist. I hope you enjoy it!

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i. promise

The Imperatrix’s Palace was often referred to by the more colloquial term of “the Orchid” for, were it possible to enjoy a bird’s eye view from over the place its ceiling met the soil, that’s the shape the design would have formed. Its construction was carefully micromanaged by Imperatrix Lucretia herself, who had given extensive requests to the best architects among the vampiric species for its creation, and it was finished in the record time of a mere decade thanks to the labour of hundreds of human serfs.

It took every advantage offered by the underground terrain; per their custom, adapting to its inherent constraints instead of working against them. Its walls were ostentatious yet solemn, carved with the most vivid facsimiles of flora; one could nearly feel them growing beneath their fingers, had they been allowed to approach close enough to touch. Its stained-glass windows to the exterior were a source of light themselves, each made of countless little petals from bioengineered luminescent flowers, forming images of all three Goddesses and their grandiose feats in bright colours.

The main entrance was placed on the base –the lip of the Orchid, so to speak–, with a large hall leading the guest to three coral onyx sculptures representing each branch of government: the Imperatrix, as the political force; the Dictator of the Magistrate, as representative of Justice; and the High Abbess, as the conduit of the Goddesses. Each of them formed the likeness of a vampiress in body, with the head of an animal, and held in her arms a token of their ancient office. The Imperatrix, with the likeness of a powerful panther, held a sceptre; the Dictator, a keen-eyed fox, rested her hands over the handle of a long sword; and at last, the Abbess, a cape cobra, pressed the Word against her chest.

Once in front of the sculptures one could have their choice of path. Backwards, in diagonal, the lateral sepals held those necessary rooms that kept the whole building in shape, but that no one ever wanted to think much about let alone witness at work, such as the kitchens, the storages filled with cleaning supplies, the laundry rooms and, of course, the habitations of the human staff that maintained them. To the sides, on the petals, were the spaces more suited for desired visitors, be it the Grand Office or the extensive library to the west, or the Ball Room and large dining area to the east.

And if a visitor were allowed to walk ahead, towards the dorsal sepal, they would find the more personal chambers of the Imperatrix; a miniature home inside the grand house where she could take private meetings with staff, with rooms to hold her, her protective sentinel guards, or her personal maid.

A young vampiress called Dana had the privilege of being such a visitor that day, guided by two sentinels towards the Imperatrix’s living quarters. As she walked the path for the first time, Dana strived to keep her gaze aimed upfront, but her eyes escaped her will, entranced by the tasteful décor, the elegant furniture, and the large paintings in each wall, each a perfectly restored work of art from centuries past.

When the small party made their way to the Imperatrix, she sat in large cobalt coach that looked soft enough to slumber. Typical of Lucretia, she dressed in full white in contrast with her ashy black skin, but with a much more unassuming appearance than Dana or any of her campaign staff would’ve seen beforehand. The dress she wore had a relaxed cut, made of pure cotton without a hint of her favoured lace; its ends caressed her bare feet, and from them silvery embroidered spider webs travelled up to her modest hips. Her hair was kept out of her face by a plain but thick long braid that rested over her shoulder and brushed her waist, very much unlike the elaborate hairdos crafted by her maid’s hands nearly every evening.

The simplicity of the ensemble didn’t rob her of one drop of her natural regal appearance, nor of the aged maturity that reflected in her blood-red eyes, rebellious before the lack of wrinkles or any other visual signs expected in mortal beings. What a picture they made, Dana thought as she sat down in a mirroring couch opposite to Lucretia; despite wearing her best, most stylish suede suit over her bountiful figure and taming her natural wild curls in a high bun, and despite the distance of puberty by a few years, Dana could never come across as anything but a neophyte next to Lucretia. It had nothing to do with looks, with the milky pallor of her skin adorned by a stardust pattern of freckles, or with the inadvertent coquettishness of her pouty mouth; in her posture an audible eagerness to please present in every uttered syllable, and an evident, vulnerable vanity, ever hungry for praise once withheld, were too present to ignore.

But for all her immaturity, she wasn’t lacking in virtues that made Lucretia take notice of her work, novice or not. This was the third election Lucretia faced; if she won, she would accomplish what no other vampiress had before –and everyone, including Lucretia herself, took her victory for granted. They didn’t do so without reason, for she had been the architect of the paradise they inhabited, and every vampiress and vampirito knew how much they owed their eternal revelry to her person.

Nonetheless, Dana wasn’t one to settle or sit idle; she took to the task with the cheerful ruthlessness of an orca in a hunt, and she could always find something on Lucretia’s rivals that proved their undoing, just as easily as she could handle it with enough discretion as to never have her schemes backfire on the campaign. And she relished just as much as Lucretia secretly did in smearing the opponent.

The fight was down to three players, other than Lucretia herself, who would refuse to back down so close to the finish line. Just making it that far could prove good for them in terms of professional opportunities and political capital, since Lucretia knew how to be gracious in victory. But that didn’t mean that it’d hurt her plight to obtain some leverage against them, and thus make them all the more eager to stay in her good graces. That was just what Dana brought that night: information with which to accomplish such goal.

While Lucretia examined her findings, young Dana took the chance to really take in the space. The living room didn’t have windows, prioritising the privacy of its inhabitants, but the glass flowers encased in the ceiling offered such a natural daylight that anyone could be fooled into thinking they sat at an open park on a breezy summer afternoon. Vampires couldn’t be touched by the sun, but they hungered for its warmth all the same.

Two sentinels stood vigil at the mahogany doors. Belonging to a military order created by the Imperatrix, they were always the most imposing of vampiresses, towering over two metres while Dana’s growth stuttered at a pitiful one-hundred eighty centimetres. Encased in protective gear adorned with black velvet and crowned with long dragon braids, they were as mesmerising as they were intimidating.

Other than the four vampiresses, there was one more person in the room: Lucretia’s human maid. Dana wasn’t daring enough to look at her with open curiosity, but Lucretia’s taste for maids was cause of interest among all of Elysium, and she was keenly aware of her presence. High-class vampires could have their pick of human servants, and they chose them for largely utilitarian reasons –or, in cases as Dictator Imogen’s, due to who knows what unsavoury appetites.

Lucretia, however, had senses perfectly attuned to purposefully crafted beauty, to a high degree only matched by her inborn inability to create it herself. From the moment she rose to power over both vampires and the servile humans that chose the safety of the underground over the risk and disease of the world above, Lucretia had an array of artists of various kinds at her disposal. Every human could be taught to do the work of a maid, but Lucretia craved something more interesting; she was both master and patron of these human women, who got to live in comfort and improve their craft in solitude during their short life spans. Lucretia looked for these extraordinary, unusually talented humans, and they lived as pampered as a dog who broke into song could’ve been among benevolent humans, instead of seeing their talents wasted and unappreciated among the mediocrity of the masses.

She had enjoyed writers, poetesses, singers; dancers were a particular favourite of hers. This one was a painter; a pale, short, wrinkled woman of firm hands and firmer mouth, with small dark eyes who painted not what she saw with them, but whatever escapes she could conjure in her mind. Despite the comfortable temperature, she wore a turtleneck shirt at odds with its short sleeves that had the purpose of hiding the bite marks on her neck; Lucretia’s preference was to bite on the wrist, when the mood struck –when she wanted that inspiring burst by transference through the blood–, but it would not do to hinder her maid’s talents.

Dana came to realise that she had been gazing at the maid’s painting, a seashore barely visible from her position, and took interest instead on the sweets and pastries waiting at the table between the couches. A precious, blood-infused commodity that only a select few enjoyed.

“Go ahead,” Lucretia spoke, an amused tint colouring her high, melodic timbre. Dana readily succumbed to tentation, choosing a bonbon with encrusted peanut crumbs that melted in her mouth and briefly enlarged her sharp fangs as a reflex.

Lucretia regarded her with the condescending and distant affection she reserved for those few whose company she enjoyed, but nonetheless found beneath her. She made sure to tell her what a magnificent job she’d done by gathering the new intel, and she asked how it was that it came to her.

“An old friend of mine from our days at Agate Academy works in Dame Priscilla’s campaign. They owed me,” Dana replied.

“Friends in Priscilla’s staff, friends in Margot’s, friends in Ivette’s… and all of them owe you one.”

“I’m solicitous, and thoughtful, and always ready to help a friend that’s found herself in a bit of a bind. Everyone knew that; everyone knows that.” Dana looked down to her lap, where her hands interlaced and rested, with affected demureness. “And when they know they can rely on you, truly rely on you, they come to you when they find themselves in a bigger bind.”

The more serious, the more secretive… the more beholden to Dana’s good favour, and the more willing to go far to settle the debt, for vampiresses were prideful creatures.

Lucretia spared some more words of praise for her resources and cunning that made the blood of the bonbon rush to Dana’s face in a blush that, in turn, was a sweet treat to Lucretia’s own vanity. As Imperatrix, she had gotten used to that sort of bumbling idolisation and rewarded it with no more consideration than she would’ve paid to a minute change in the wind, but her ego wasn’t wholly immune to its effects. It did little to make those bestowing it upon her gain her respect, but she found it more forgivable from vampiresses like Dana, young enough for the starstruck act to be inoffensive, and who balanced what could’ve come across as the empty flattery of a sycophant with true competence.

There was an added element of kinship between them, as well. Lucretia had grown without a Clan, her matrilineal lineage banished long before her generation; Dana would’ve endured the same fate, if Lucretia hadn’t already been in power when she was born, and hadn’t taken it upon herself to unite them all in one, under her rule, without distinction. Making the role of Imperatrix have true weight in their society once again, instead of relegating it to a mere arbiter of the Clan leader’s skirmishes. Lucretia had turned her lack of pedigree into an asset when she remade the world in her image, and she had no doubt that Dana could go far if she managed to do the same. The youngling, Lucretia thought, showed a vast, untapped potential.

ii. perfidy

The atmosphere at the Senate was vibrant and charged with electricity while three hundred and one vampiresses buzzed left and right like a swarm of bees once the votes were counted. Lucretia’s candidacy razed the competition with an even larger majority than she’d managed to reach in the previous election, exactly sixty years before to the day. That alone was motive for celebration, as were the attentions paid to her by allies and rivals alike; the latter appeared gracious in the face of their expected defeat and aimed to lay the groundwork for the exchange of future favours. Opposition wasn’t a concept with much use in vampiric politics, for each candidate campaigned solely for herself. Each policy would be debated within the chamber, through a complex game of taking and giving that however allowed the Imperatrix plenty of swaying power, as well as granting her the ability to take her pick of Senators for the Cabinet of her choosing.

Lucretia kept those names close to her chest, tolerating advice in that regard from two voices alone. One was Rivka, the Head of the Sentinel body and an old childhood companion of hers who’d supported Lucretia long before her ascent into politics. The other was Lucretia’s own mother, Dame Constanza; her input was a lot less welcome and a lot more volatile, but after two long centuries of experience, Lucretia knew to compromise in the smallest, most inconsequential of ways in order to enjoy some peace of mind.

Neither of them was present in the room –Rivka had a most important task, and Lucretia minimised Constanza’s presence in both personal and political matters as much as she could with all the diplomatic aplomb contained in her figure. At the time the Orchid was built, Constanza had tried her usual dance, claiming the last thing she could possibly want was to be a burden to her daughter, to make her feel obligated to house her mother when she had so much on her plate. Lucretia, high on power after that first vote of confidence coming after long decades of efforts, had dodged the guilt trip and wilfully taken her mother at her word, showing her the fully staffed, just conveniently distanced house she’d purchased for her as a dutiful daughter.

They were the two oldest influences in Lucretia’s life, and for all that they could not be more different, both were in agreement about one specific thing: their disapproval –expressed as polite reluctance by Rivka, and as offended dignity by Constanza– over one of Lucretia’s choices for her Cabinet.

Said choice was, of course, present in the room, and was more than a small sensation: Anouk, the first and only vampirito to amass enough votes to raise as Senator. He was luminous and radiant in the room, with round rosy cheeks and a smile impossible to contain; he dressed with an elegance and glamour befitting his station, in a rosé cape and suit decorated with large light pink roses adorning his shoulder. A picture of youthfulness, vitality, and sweetness.

Lucretia had kept an eye on his rise to power with interest. He’d proven to be spirited and individualistic, with a sharp wit and ambition beyond the scope of his sex, and a talent to preach for other vampiritos what he himself did not follow without a whiff of hypocrisy in his demeanour. The novelty of his presence alone could be an asset instead of a hindrance, if used appropriately. She had already set an appointment –one of the firsts she’d make, as he was one of the youngest members of the Senate–, and she looked forward to hearing his proposal, if only out of curiosity. Lucretia didn’t think too highly of vampiritos, as a general rule, but she was willing to give this one the opportunity to impress her.

Her only objection to his presence was the indignity of witnessing so many grown vampiresses behaving like horny hyaenas barely held at bay by their collars it produced. Nonetheless, Lucretia had to commend him on how he handled their attentions: with an ice-cold disdain at odds with his velvety, plush exterior.

Lucretia spoke with everyone in the room, Anouk included, accepting their congratulations and their measured adulation, arranging meetings through her secretary, and stepping outside the balcony to greet the masses. She did it in full splendour, wearing a sleeveless dress made out of long strings of white pearls, sewn over a see-through white cloth that hugged her figure. Larger pearls decorated the strands, with two additional ones hanging low and framing her shoulders, as well as descending from her small chest down to her navel in a low cut. Her hair was in an elaborate braided bun, adorned with small white scarab hairpins. Such animalistic inspirations were present across the room, with one of her rival Senators dressed in a hooded cape with shiny transparencies that resembled that of a peacock butterfly’s wings.

As Lucretia greeted the multitude in the streets, drinking in the ardour of their devotion, each slow, calculated moved that accompanied her rousing speech resembled that of a particularly balletic arachnid, and when the ambient petal-light flickered at just the right angle, it shone over a small, beatific smile that betrayed no hint of self-involved pride, of insincerity, or of unease.

Nothing in Lucretia’s careful body language, in her voice, or in her attitude, would even hint at the most egregious betrayal every citizen of Elysium had just suffered.

Rivka and her sentinels, ever vigilant, were the ones to give Lucretia her warning. A warning that came almost too late; thankfully, “almost” was a word capable of carrying impossible amounts of weight.

Dana, that foolish girl, had involved herself with a human male. Lucretia regarded such relations with a similar disgust as to what any rational human would feel if they heard, pardon the vulgarity, that their neighbour let their pet dog lick them to sexual climax. She acknowledged hers was an extreme position and was resigned to the idea that other vampires would indulge in the company of primates for a variety of reasons. But she never would’ve predicted the scenario that Dana propitiated.

When she had been daring enough to create a paradisiac world for all of them on the wake of humanity’s apocalypse, Lucretia had predicted a lot of what could go wrong. She had thought the humans likely to step out and take their chances with the walking putrid corpses rather than live under their rule; she had thought about the ones that would rebel in more harmful ways within their social structure, and about how to balance the use of carrot and stick to guide them into complete submission. She had calculated every logistical, alimentary and technological challenge that they would have to face to perfection.

A betrayal of such calibre from one of their own never crossed her mind. What more could they want, with everything she was offering them? And yet.

She had ignored the warnings; she could admit that much to herself. It wasn’t unusual for a vampire to get a bit attached to the humans they fed on with regularity. Lucretia herself was fond of her maids and mourned them when the worst happened to them. But –and this was key– she let the worst happen to them, as befitting their short, simple lives. Dana had turned her human after he’d been infected, which not only complicated the delicate balance in their world by removing a source of food, and the consequent cattle he could produce, but it also risked revealing to the humans their most closely guarded secret.

The first generations of humans were the hardest to contain, for they grew on stories about turning. Even then, the real method to achieve transformation was so obscure, so outlandish, and so deathly, and the evidence presented each time a vampiress hatched an egg and vampiric children played and grew on the streets to the view of humans so incontestable, that their hopes slowly dissipated. Old stories lingered, with futile nostalgia, and attempts to garner secrets occurred, but the humans under their heel had largely resigned to their own fate, and that of their descendants.

If Dana and her pet hadn’t been caught in time, the secret could’ve gotten out. Everything Lucretia built could’ve gone up in flames in an instant, all for the whims of a foolish adolescent.

But Rivka, her trusted Grim Rivka, had reacted with swiftness, and prevented the worst of it. Hours before the vote Lucretia sent her to Dictator Imogen, who had issued the sentence just as swiftly, aware of the gravity of the situation and unusually obliging for it. It would be carried before the morning.

In the meantime, Lucretia had a few hours to compose herself. In the absence of Rivka, who at that very moment dealt with the prisoners, Lucretia did something wholly out of character and walked towards her mother’s office.

It was barely worthy of the name: a small room with two packed bookshelves framing a small desk, where her venerable mother could feel of some importance when Lucretia sent her some menial tasks her way, primarily related to the organisation of party events. She would be awaiting Lucretia there, wired hood over a coif and buttoned dress, watching the broadcast through the cables with the self-important pride of a matriarch ready for the moment Lucretia let her out of her gilded cage,

Such expression dropped the moment Lucretia walked in with a furibund expression. When questioned, Lucretia detailed the unvarnished, dreadful truth to her mother.

“We can’t let this stand,” Constanza said, agitated, “I know you saw something on that girl, Lu, but–”

“And that was a mistake,” she interrupted, with a thundering voice. “I don’t make many, but they do happen, once in a while. However, mother… when have you known me to be merciful?”

No, that was not a characteristic that anyone had ever seen in Lucretia, not even Rivka’s kindest regard. Dana’s actions wouldn’t be rewarded with mercy.

iii. punishment

Two of her sentinels flanked Imperatrix Lucretia in her descent to the lowest levels of her subterranean empire. Human serfs eased their path on every step; they operated the necessary machinery that transported them down and got out of the way of their imposing figures with deferential bows, averting their eyes from Lucretia’s genteel smile and her piercing red gaze only for it to caught in the hypnotic glide of the long braids of the sentinels.

The contrast with their liege wasn’t as drastic as it accustomed, for although her hair remained on the tight bun her maid had worked for hard that twilight, she had removed the adorning scarabs, and changed the pearls of her pristine dress, white as almost everything she publicly wore, for a simple black one that blended easily with the velvet in their uniforms.

That wardrobe choice was the only sign anything was afoot. Her sentinels’ expression was as stoic as ever, and her more pleasant demeanour didn’t give even the slightest hint of anything being wrong. Nothing in her poise or her countenance as she left the most opulent levels of the Underworld to travel to the belly of the beast could reveal the simmering fury that hid beneath them.

The three vampiresses walked into what by all appearances was a minor research facility and arrived at an unassuming doorway. Grim Rivka, leader of the sentinels, sat in a stool before it, yet she raised and stood with dignity when her sovereign arrived. Her uniform didn’t bear any markings to differentiate her from that of her subordinates: the same gear protecting her muscular figure; the same velvet contrasting with her bone-white skin; the same black dragon braid falling down her taut back. And just the same perpetually enlarged fangs and claws that marked their function in Elysium. Her weapons were the only sign of a higher regard, for the hilt of her sword and daggers showed a matching set that Lucretia had ordered to have custom made to the best blacksmith in their realm, just for her.

With a calculated gesture Lucretia signalled to the other two to stay on their post by the door and walked a few paces away from it with Rivka. It gave them an illusion of privacy; the sentinels’ keen senses, enhanced even above vampiric standards during their initial training, would allow them to hear everything they said, but they’d never dream of intruding, let alone repeating whatever they witnessed.

“The newborn?” Lucretia asked, all business.

“It’s been handled.”

“And her?”

“At first, she begged for him. Once she realised what was at stake, she cared only for herself,” Rivka answered, a hint of steel in her gravelly voice.

“Good.”

Rivka, taking a liberty she hadn’t dared to in years, grabbed Lucretia’s wrist with a large hand in a gentle gesture, rubbing her clawed thumb over her smooth skin. Lucretia allowed it for several long seconds; a sign of the tumult brewing inside her.

“It could’ve all been ruined,” she whispered.

For all that no one would call Lucretia affectionate, she hated with as much ease as she loved: none. Dana had become the unlucky target of a passionate loathing that she couldn’t have believed possible in herself.

Death was common among vampiritos, who risked life and limb every mating season, but it rarely occurred to vampiresses, and their laws reflected the fear such an occurrence produced in them, holding their lives as sacred and unwilling to waste them, as per the Goddesses decree, and forbidding the loss of it to be used as punishment. For the first time in her long mandate, both before and after it became official through the urns, Lucretia wished her station allowed her to overrule what now looked like a grave error in judgement.

But the law was clear, and in any other day, Lucretia would’ve dutifully upheld it with conviction. She straightened her posture and the two of them returned to the door; Rivka retook her position, and Lucretia walked in.

The room was simple; artificial petal-light illuminated its dark walks, eerily bare except for a wooden cabinet by the left of the door and, of course, the woman chained by the right. Lucretia pursed her lips when she observed that, even if the bloodstains remained as proof of her punishments, Dana’s wounds had predictably healed. With the notable exception of the removal of her fangs, from which she still visibly ached to Lucretia’s satisfaction.

Beyond the dull pain that according to those sentenced with such fate would remain long after the gaps left in the two cavities scarred, what made the punishment so unique and so sparingly used was the utter shame that accompanied it. To remove such an essential tool from a proud predator not only greatly diminished the quality of their eternal life: it left them feeling bereft, castrated. Dana’s humiliation burned her from within.

Lucretia dismissed the prisoner, turning her back on Dana to open the cabinet. With languor, she ignored the more traditional weapons in favour of a syringe and the black, viscous substance on a glass vial. It was the poisonous essence gathered from the Decayed: from underneath their nails, from their saliva, from their clotted blood. It didn’t turn a vampire into one of them, but the process, virus fighting against virus, was a most exquisite physical and mental torture than anything Lucretia could have come up with.

Of course, she had come up with it. She’d been in politics for so long that people often forgot she was a chemist by trade, and Lucretia was not one to let a talent go stale; not another’s, and not her own.

When she approached Dana with it, she looked up at her, with her face and body pale as a sheet; only her eyes, her hair, the dark freckles and the blood stains on her body providing her with reddish tints of colour.

“Please,” she said, “please, no more, please–”

Lucretia’s hand closed as a vice around the vial, dangerously so. That she thought she could ask for mercy…

The punishment had to fit the crime. Dana’s action could have caused a damage so disproportionate to their species that such a thing was impossible, but Lucretia had devised the next best thing.

The Imperatrix kneeled down in front of Dana and forcefully grabbed her cheek, staining her own skin with Dana’s blood in the process and forcing her to look into her cold red eyes. She let her expression reveal just how pitiful, how pathetic she found Dana’s disobedience and her state, as she injected the syringe full of poison into her neck.

“Your pet has already been burnt into a crisp,” she said to no reaction. Rivka was right, then, about Dana forgetting the cause of her disobedience in the face of her own pain. Satisfied, Lucretia proceeded with the next reveal. “He confessed all about how his goal from the very beginning was precisely for your naiveté to grant him immortality. He just used you.”

Dana sobbed, as the substance started taking effect, begging for her sanity

“You’ve betrayed your own for nothing. And for that, you’ll spend a year like this, in this very room, alone with whatever torments your little head can come up in that time.” Lucretia’s hunger for vengeance demanded a longer period, but keeping Dana prisoner for longer would simply not be practical. “I always thought it paid to have little imagination, in your place. But I’ve gotten to know you well, Dana. Inventiveness isn’t on the list of things you lack. This will be agony for you.”

It was. After Lucretia stepped out a team of doctors came and stripped the prisoner to a table, connecting her with a permanent, more convenient means of injecting the poison, now that the Imperatrix got the privilege of administering the first dose. Dana dreamed for a year, Lucretia and her cruel smile the perpetual perpetrator of her nightmares. And for a year, an echoing hatred born from pain and degradation flourished inside her, as she promised retribution.