The Divergence

The red-haired anchorwoman on television wore the composed expression of someone who had already repeated the same information several times that evening and knew she would probably be repeating it for the rest of the night. 

She looked barely into her twenties, though the neat blazer, carefully styled hair, and practiced cadence made her seem older whenever she spoke.

Behind her, a graphic showed a nighttime photograph of the Oakridge Central District Mall surrounded by emergency vehicles, red and blue lights reflected across the glass exterior.

"Good evening. I'm Natalie Reed, and while it is only ten o'clock, Oakridge has already seen another major supernatural incident tonight." 

Natalie folded her hands neatly on the desk as the photograph beside her changed to footage of police tape blocking one of the mall entrances. 

"A confrontation at the Oakridge Central District Mall escalated into a fight between a group of werewolves and several vampires, leaving extensive property damage and one confirmed fatality."

The footage shifted again, showing blurred cellphone video of overturned tables inside a restaurant, shattered glass, and people running toward the exits. 

A distant figure moved too quickly for the recording to capture clearly, followed by something much larger crashing through furniture.

Natalie's expression remained serious. "According to police and multiple eyewitnesses, the confrontation began inside a restaurant after an argument escalated."

"Several werewolves and vampires became involved, although witnesses consistently report that the vampires attempted to keep human bystanders out of the conflict."

Another clip played, this one shakier than the first. People could be heard screaming while someone shouted to get back, the camera abruptly jerking downward before the recording ended.

"If not for those vampires, authorities believe the situation may have become considerably worse. One werewolf fled the original scene after the fighting had already begun and later attacked a civilian on a lower level of the mall. Two vampires pursued and subdued the attacker shortly afterward."

The image changed to emergency responders crouched around a covered body, and Natalie's voice softened slightly. 

"Police continue to urge civilians to take appropriate precautions during any confrontation involving vampires or werewolves." 

"If you are able to flee safely, do so. If not, find cover and remain there until the danger has passed. Do not approach an ongoing fight, and do not remain nearby simply to record it."

A graphic appeared at the bottom of the screen emphasizing the same warning before the broadcast returned to Natalie. 

"Investigators have confirmed that many bystanders remained close enough to film portions of the incident despite the obvious danger." 

"Officials have stressed that both species are capable of movements and impacts far beyond human physical limits, meaning even accidental contact can cause severe injury or death."

Natalie paused briefly before continuing. "Police arrived after the fleeing werewolf had already been subdued. Unfortunately, by that point, one person had died."

A photograph appeared beside her, showing a man in his late thirties with close-cropped brown hair and a broad smile, one arm around two children in what appeared to be a family photograph taken outdoors.

"The victim has been identified as thirty-eight-year-old George Thuman, a husband and father of two. His family has requested privacy at this time, and our thoughts and best wishes go out to the Thuman family and everyone affected by tonight's events."

The screen briefly displayed the photograph alone before Natalie drew a breath and shifted into the next topic. "In other news, transportation authorities announced—"

The television went silent as Ophelia lowered the remote. 

For a few seconds, she continued staring at the frozen image on-screen before running one hand through her long dark purple hair, the strands sliding smoothly between her fingers and appearing nearly black in the dim hotel room until the light caught the violet beneath.

"One person dies and it's front-page news." Ophelia tilted her head, sounding almost impressed. "The Unified Sovereignties are doing remarkably well."

Diana looked up from the parfait in her hands, her spoon hovering near her lips for a moment before she lowered it back into the glass. "That's a strange way to measure whether a country is doing well."

"It's an excellent way." Ophelia leaned back against the headboard, one knee bent beneath the dark folds of her dress. 

"If a single death during a supernatural brawl is enough to monopolize national news coverage, then the country hasn't run out of the luxury of caring."

Diana considered that before taking a small spoonful of berries and cream. 

Her voice remained soft when she answered, but there was the familiar firmness beneath it that Ophelia had learned meant she wasn't likely to be talked out of whatever point she was making. 

"Some countries can barely function at all now. The new land broke transportation, governments lost communication with entire regions, and in some places werewolves and vampires are fighting humans or each other regularly. So yes, I suppose compared to that, one person being major news is a good sign."

"See?" Ophelia smiled. "You agreed with me eventually."

"I agreed with part of it."

"That's usually enough."

Diana gave her a flat look, earning a soft laugh from Ophelia before the vampire pushed herself upright and swung her legs from the bed. 

She stretched both arms over her head, sleeves pulling taut before settling back into place as she relaxed.

"We've traveled so far for this." Ophelia's expression brightened as she looked again toward the paused image of Oakridge on the television. "Forests. Plains. Oceans. Entire countries. All for the ones who somehow managed to stand out loudly enough that I could hear them from the other side of the world."

Diana watched her for several seconds before pointing at her with the spoon. "Do you always speak like that? Even when you were human?"

For perhaps two seconds, Ophelia looked genuinely thoughtful, then she laughed. "Who knows?"

"You know."

"Maybe."

"Ophelia."

"I remember enough to be annoying about it."

"That wasn't the question."

"It was close enough."

Diana sighed and returned to her parfait. She'd grown used to answers like that. 

Most of the time, Ophelia wasn't deliberately evasive; she simply enjoyed making a straightforward question take twice as long as it needed to.

Diana scooped up another small spoonful and stared down at the berries while her thoughts drifted back over the journey that had brought them here. 

After Ophelia saved her, there hadn't really been a point where Diana stopped following.

At first, it had been simple practicality. She'd nearly died, and the memory remained unpleasantly clear even now: an alley, wet pavement, blood beneath her, and someone she'd never known and would never understand who'd tried to harm her.

Then there had been Ophelia.

A pale face framed by dark purple hair, red eyes without pupils or irises, and a voice so calm that Diana had almost thought she was hallucinating. 

Ophelia had killed the person attacking her and then offered Diana something else—a chance to keep living.

Diana had accepted.

But, the world had become much larger. 

Forests stretched for distances that should have belonged to old maps rather than modern roads. 

Plains sprawled where towns had once been relatively close together, and existing borders had become less meaningful when entire countries suddenly contained twice the distance between familiar places.

Then there had been the ocean.

Diana closed her eyes briefly, still remembering Ophelia carrying her with one arm beneath her knees and the other around her back, enormous wings spread behind them as they crossed black water beneath the moonlight. 

The first few hours had almost been beautiful.

Then dawn had become a concern.

Ophelia couldn't simply continue flying once sunlight approached, so sometimes they found ships and those nights were easiest. 

A freighter, a cargo vessel, once even a large fishing boat whose crew had nearly panicked themselves unconscious when a vampire descended from the sky carrying a golden-haired woman.

Other times, there was nothing. No ship, no island, no shelter.

Then Ophelia had to go beneath the water, deep enough that sunlight couldn't reach her.

Diana hadn't been able to follow, at least not all the way. Thralls were not vampires. 

They were stronger than humans, faster, harder to injure, and capable of healing wounds that would have hospitalized an ordinary person. 

They didn't age, and disease had ceased being a meaningful concern, but they were still alive.

Diana breathed. Her heart beat, and she needed food, although blood could substitute for human meals if necessary. 

She needed rest in a way Ophelia didn't, and she absolutely could not stay underwater indefinitely. 

Ten minutes, perhaps a little longer if she remained completely still and prepared beforehand, was nowhere near enough to wait out daylight at depth.

So Ophelia would leave her on the surface.

The first time had terrified her. Diana had floated alone beneath an empty sky while Ophelia disappeared into the black water below, descending until even vampire senses would have considered the sunlight distant enough to be survivable.

For hours, there had been nothing around Diana but ocean. No land, no boat, no voice, just waves lifting and lowering her while she waited for the sun to cross the sky.

If she'd still been human, she was convinced she would have died. Exposure, exhaustion, panic—something would have gotten her eventually. 

As a Thrall, she could remain afloat without tiring in the same way, healed from small injuries quickly, endured cold far better, and could go much longer without food or water.

Even so, she'd hated those hours, and Ophelia had hated them too.

Diana knew that despite the vampire's attempts to act indifferent about it. 

Every evening, Ophelia resurfaced the moment the sun was safely low enough, found Diana almost immediately, and stayed close afterward. 

She checked her for injuries, asked whether she'd eaten, and found ships whenever possible specifically so Diana wouldn't spend another day alone on open water.

Ophelia had never neglected her. Not once.

The difficult parts of the journey hadn't happened because Ophelia didn't care; they'd happened because sometimes there had been no other option.

Diana opened her eyes again and found the hotel room absurdly safe by comparison. 

A television, climate control, a bed, and a window overlooking a city rather than an endless horizon. 

She took another bite of parfait and let the sweetness settle on her tongue.

Across the room, Ophelia had turned the television back to the paused image showing several Oakridge vampires. Her empty red eyes were fixed on them, and Diana knew that look by now.

There was too much in it to call it any single thing. Relief, anticipation, desire, excitement, and something almost like homesickness for a place Ophelia had never been.

Diana had asked about it before, more than once. Why Oakridge? Why them?

There were vampires elsewhere.

They had passed through countries where Ophelia could smell others nearby, sometimes very nearby, yet she hadn't stopped. 

She'd acknowledged them, occasionally even sought them out long enough to exchange information, but none of those encounters changed the direction of their journey.

Oakridge remained the destination.

Eventually, Diana had asked why, and Ophelia's answer had stayed with her.

"I know."

That had been all she'd said at first.

Diana had stared at her until Ophelia smiled. "No, really. I simply know."

Diana hadn't accepted that. She rarely accepted answers she considered incomplete, and Ophelia had learned that quickly. "Know what?"

"That I need others like me."

"Why?"

Ophelia had paused then, not because she didn't know, but because she was trying to translate something that apparently didn't normally require words. 

Finally, she'd looked Diana directly in the eyes, red into blue.

"Why do humans breathe?"

Diana had frowned. "Because we'd die if we didn't."

"Yes, but do you think about it?"

"No."

"Do you justify it?"

"No."

"Exactly." Ophelia had smiled slightly. "I don't need to find other vampires in the sense that I'll die without them. I could live alone. I could disappear somewhere and never see another vampire again, but eternity alone would be incredibly lonely."

That had silenced Diana, and Ophelia had leaned back, staring up toward the night sky above whatever unfamiliar field they'd been resting in. 

"Humans know they'll live and die. Even if someone reaches a hundred years, eventually the story ends. Mine doesn't. I won't die of age, and I won't die from disease. I'll live until something kills me, and I have absolutely no intention of allowing that."

Ophelia had turned toward her then and smiled. "And now you're the same."

Diana had blinked, prompting Ophelia to amend her statement. "Not exactly the same. Thralls are weaker than vampires in almost every meaningful physical way. You're slower, weaker, your regeneration is worse, and you're tragically burdened with a heartbeat."

Diana had stared at her, only making Ophelia's smile widen.

"But you're ageless. Human diseases won't take you, and time won't either." Ophelia's voice had become quieter then. "You'll live a very long time, Diana."

Diana had looked away at that point because she hadn't known what to do with the statement. Sometimes she still didn't.

Immortality sounded simple when described abstractly. 

You didn't age, and you didn't die naturally, but actually considering what centuries meant was something else entirely. 

Everyone she'd known as a human would eventually disappear. Cities would change, governments would rise and collapse, languages might change, and entire borders could become meaningless.

Yet she would still be here.

So would Ophelia.

Diana returned to the present and found Ophelia sitting in front of the mirror, slowly braiding a section of her own dark purple hair. 

Her fingers moved carefully, not because she needed the braid, but because she seemed to enjoy making it.

Diana watched her, and a small smile appeared before she could stop it.

Yes, the journey had been difficult. Exhausting sometimes and terrifying at others, while Ophelia could be aloof enough to make someone wonder whether she cared about anything at all.

But Diana knew better.

She'd been dying in an alley, and Ophelia had stepped into it. Nobody had forced her, nobody had asked, and she could have walked past. 

Instead, she saved Diana's life and offered her another one, not human and not vampire, but something between.

Diana looked down at herself briefly. The transformation had changed her, not as dramatically as vampirism changed people, but enough that mirrors had required adjustment afterward.

Her golden hair had become more lustrous, falling around her shoulders in soft waves that reflected light almost too cleanly. 

Her blue eyes were brighter than they'd ever been as a human, clear and vivid against refined features. 

Her lips were fuller, her skin smoother, and her figure had settled into an hourglass shape that seemed almost deliberately idealized.

Beautiful, objectively, but not vampire-beautiful.

There was a distinction.

Vampires had a strange similarity beneath their enormous variation. 

Different skin, different hair, different faces, but something about them always felt cut from the same impossible template. 

Thralls weren't like that, because the human part remained too intact.

Their differences survived, men remained men and women remained women, while their old features were refined rather than erased.

Diana was still recognizably herself, just more.

She preferred that.

Diana took another spoonful of parfait, and Ophelia's pointed ear twitched before she looked toward Diana through the mirror. "Why are you staring at me like that?"

Diana paused with the spoon halfway to her mouth.

Ophelia turned slightly on the chair. "That expression usually means you're thinking something sentimental and preparing to deny it."

Diana's smile deepened. "It's nothing."

"Suspicious."

"Eat something."

"I don't need to."

"Then stop interrogating me."

Ophelia laughed softly. "Stubborn."

Diana lifted one strawberry from the top of the parfait and bit into it. "You knew that already."

"I did."

Ophelia returned to braiding her hair while Diana chewed slowly, still smiling. Outside the hotel window, the glowing cityscape stretched beneath the night sky.

They were finally almost there.

Diana,

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