Binding Blood - Chapter 1

The water rippled around Dannel's swimming cap in a sweeping bow wave. It thundered in his ears as he surged towards the far end of the pool. With each stroke of front crawl he flew forward almost on top of the water's surface. His chest was burning but he powered on, reaching the halfway point on his last length of the night. A few more seconds and the green and blue mosaic wall came suddenly into sight. His breath sounded ragged when he twisted his head to the side to gulp in more oxygen but he sped up his kicking to an almost manic pace. His right hand latched onto the edge of the wall and the last of his breath exploded from his lungs.

"Fifty-nine point two seconds." His coach, Aaron, grinned and gave him a thumbs up. "You broke the minute."

Dannel splashed his fist triumphantly into the water and smiled out at the other end of the pool, from which he'd begun his last length of the hundred metres a little under fifteen seconds ago. Now, if he could just reproduce the same result in an official race event.

"Congratulations!" spluttered Holly Martin. She was treading water in the lane to his right, leaning on the lane rope.

"Thanks," he murmured.

She probably hadn't heard him but he didn't have the energy to repeat himself louder. Holly was already peeling off her cap. Her strawberry-blonde hair was long even in the plait and her face was dotted with a smattering of ginger freckles. Dannel found himself smiling at her, for absolutely no reason. He nodded and turned back to his coach.

"Do you think you can do that for me on Sunday, Dannel?" Aaron asked.

Dannel hauled himself out of the pool and stood up to his full height. He still only came up to Aaron's shoulder. To be fair, Dannel was only fourteen. Aaron was closer to forty. He'd catch him yet.

"I'll try," he promised.

Aaron clapped him on the shoulder and wished him luck. Dannel, still grinning slightly, ambled expertly across the slippery tiles towards the shower ring at the side of the pool. The bank of ten or so showers constantly alternated between lukewarm and unbearably scalding. Dannel tentatively eased the left-most shower handle down towards the floor and, figuring that it was as close to perfect temperature as he was likely to get, shuffled under the weak pitter-patter of water.

He gazed around the swimming pool that over the past few years had become his second favourite place on Tayfir, his first being his bedroom at home. The twenty-five metre pool was at the centre of the immense room. The showers were huddled a few metres away from the far left corner when you entered. To the right of the main pool was a leisure pool and to the left was a towering spectators' gallery.

Finally, after the end of the main pool was a circular baby pool with optional jacuzzi. Dannel smiled as he watched the late-working mothers playing with their children in it. At seven o'clock on a Wednesday night, that was pretty much all who were left, except for the club swimmers of course. Wednesday nights were Elite-only so there were at most seven swimmers in the pool at any one time.

That night, what with the schools being out, there were a total of three amateur swimmers training during the two hour time slot for which the club had booked the pool. Josie Francis - a thirteen-year-old back-stroker and Dannel's fellow teen prodigy - had left half an hour ago so Dannel and Holly were the only ones left. Josie somehow managed to excel in both sport and academia, a balance that Dannel had struggled to strike over the past year. Josie was two years ahead of her age group and as a result had some sort of test or exam almost every three days. Dannel knew she wasn't particularly arrogant or condescending but he still found her incredibly intimidating to chit-chat with.

As Dannel massaged his anti-dandruff shampoo into his scalp, he watched fondly as Aaron mimed breastroke to teach Holly some fine point about rhythm that would be utterly incomprehensible if you weren't used to speaking to him four nights a week. He had a habit of adding syllables to the ends of words when he was teaching, making things into adjectives with a -y or into verbs with an -ing.

Dannel sighed contentedly as he closed his eyes and rinsed the shampoo out of his shoulder-length brown hair. When he reopened his eyes, he was startled by the sudden appearance of Holly standing less than a metre in front of him.

"Congrats!" she exlaimed, "Aaron was just telling me that you're the first under sixteen to break the minute mark for one hundred metres freestyle in all of Manarilde's history."

"Really?" Dannel replied, "I had no idea. Oh and um, thank you!"

"I didn't come anywhere close when I was your age," said Holly.

Dannel flinched at the reminder that Holly he was three whole years younger than Holly. He knew when he grew up three years wouldn't be much of a difference but at the moment the age gap felt at least a decade larger.

"What's your PB again?" Dannel asked as Holly swooped gracefully into the shower beside his.

"One oh eight point seven." Holly sighed half-heartedly. "I'm getting there. But hey, what about you? Can you imagine your name in the lights of the scoreboard yet? Picture that, the little orange dot next to your name in block capitals. And the winner is: Dannel Ipsen!"

Dannel imitated Holly's booming voice and added, "And gold in the women's two hundred metres breastroke goes to: Hollipena Rinerty!"

"I will do my best to honour your faith in me," Holly replied gravely, then giggled.

Dannel smiled and nodded. He was about to reply with a mangled compliment that would doubtless end up offending her, when he spotted a chubby green figure about a foot in height. It was sneaking towards Holly's ankles, a mischevious look on its devilish face.

"Teersin!" Dannel snapped.

Teersin frowned and teleported to its perch on Dannel's shoulder, shrinking down to three inches high so he didn't fall off. He was a pot-bellied ember imp demon, popular amongst Tayfirran teens for its ease of maintenance and willingness to submit to a master's will in exchange for very little energy. Plus, they were cute.

"Must you always ruin my fun?" Teersin muttered.

Teersin was a bipedal imp with rough skin the colour of an avocado. His limbs were spindly and his cheeks were angular but his belly was round and his eyes were wide and bright. At the moment he was only slightly taller than the length of Dannel's finger but he could shoot up to almost double Dannel's height - only for a few seconds and it took it at least a megajoule of human-demon energy. His features were sharp but his voice was so high-pitched that not even the most sensitive of children could ever be frightened of him. There was also a black pock-mark above the bridge of his nose that was the port-point for inwards and outwards flow of demon energy.

"Hiya, Teersin," Holly greeted.

"Hollipena," Teersin replied bitterly, which sounded absurd since he had the voice register of a six-year-old.

"Aw, what's the matter, Teery?" Holly cooed.

"Don't you 'aw' me, Holly!" Teersin exclaimed, "By your reckoning I am six hundred years old! I am not a baby."

"Yes you are," Dannel argued, "Pykil told my father. He says that your species live til they're tens of thousands of years old. You's a wittle baby-waby!"

"Pykil is a Pythius demon," Teersin pouted, "His entire classification is titled 'Liar Demon'."

Pykil was the demon bound to Dannel's father, Frederict. They'd been bound together when Frederict was eighteen, as was tradition on Tayfir, the giant land mass that took up most of the surface of the world. Pykil was an insufferable, arrogant liar but he was loyal and trustworthy and had stood by Frederict for over twenty-five years.

Still, Dannel would never trade Teersin for that oaf.

"You's a baby-waby!" Dannel insisted. He reached up to tickle the nape of Teersin's neck but gave up when he realised that Treesin had materialised in far too small a form to be petted. He wondered if that was on purpose. Teersin was not fond of being treated like a pet.

"Are you done here?" Teersin grumbled.

"Yeah." Dannel murmured, "Just dry me and I'll go get dressed."

Teersin sprang from Dannel's shoulder and morphed spiky orange wings at the top of his jump's arc. He hovered a foot from Dannel's face, level with his eyes.

"Give me the energy," he demanded.

Dannel rolled his eyes. "I topped you up this morning."

"Fine," Teersin muttered. He fizzed with energy and his torso slowly turned the bronze of its wings. His entire form began to shudder and expand until it reached a point of maximum tension and the energy sprang out of his body towards Dannel. Great swirls of ethereal bronze wrapped around Dannel and fizzed against his skin. After roughly four seconds, the flow of energy abruptly ceased and the bronze vanished completely.

"Thanks, Teersin." Dannel smiled. He was now completely dry other than his feet which were still planted firmly on the sodden floor.

"Don't mention it," Teersin grumbled.

"Uh-huh." Dannel grinned and rolled his eyes. "Come on. Let's go home. See ya, Holly."

Holly gave him a mock-salute which he firmly decided not to return because there was no way he could perform it anywhere near as smoothly as her. Holly lathered her flowing blonde hair in shampoo and tipped her head back to rinse it out. She closed her eyes so the shampoo wouldn't get into them. He took this as his cue to leave.

"Yeah, time to go home," he whispered to himself.

As soon as they'd crossed the threshold into the changing village, Teersin fluttered from a spot near Dannel's shoulder to a spot directly in front of him.

"You realise that it's never going to happen with her." Teersin didn't leave any room for debate.

Dannel prepared a comeback but only sighed and hung his head. He shoved Teersin out of the way and trudged on to the changing village.