Fractured Faith
One
Ralyn knew the roads and the streams, knew the rivers and the trees.
She knew the forests better than any other, had raced and flown through them since her childhood with Eonari, a cat-like creature known as a zalarati, at her side. Night or day, light or dark, she knew the woods and all within them, knew the lands which she played upon as surely as she knew the glaring weakness of her own magic. As she leaped off a drop-off, plummeting through the air, arms loose and stretched above her, she felt the tendrils of awareness from the forest as she landed, with ease, on a branch of an old tree.
Eonari landed just at her side, long, silver-blue tail trailing behind it like a fading ghost. Its eyes were silver, a rare gem floating in a sea of black. Ralyn let her fingers glide over the zalarati's back, the mist-like fur cool and silk-like as it ghosted around her thin, long digits. Eonari was large and long, his head level with her knee, and his voice was a haunting echo when he finally began to speak.
"This game has gone on long enough, Seralyn," the girl glanced down at the zalarati, one pale eyebrow arching. Eonari rubbed his snout with a paw, silver irises flaring with a hint of electric green, before he pressed on, "Soba will not be happy if he finds out you have been running the woods. You are still weak from the last test. Do not try his patience."
Ralyn shook her head. "The scrolls speak of the diavas, of the Land of Souls. I have to know…"
The zalarati hissed, coiled around her limbs as he snapped, "Do not be foolish, Seralyn. None who have tried to crass a diavas made it through alive."
"Maybe none of them found a way back, Eo. It's possible the other mages crossed through," Ralyn tipped her head back, inhaling the forest's scent. She let her own senses spread out, felt the energy pulsing in the bark under her hands and feet. She heard the whisper in the leaves, felt the cold touch of the wind on the silver stones of the Cliff of Woe a few days off. "If I can find out what happened to my parents, then maybe I can find a way to control my…sensitivities. Or get rid of them."
The zalarati swiped his tail through the air, hissing. "Those sensitivities you hate have saved your life."
Ralyn leveled a hard look on her familiar, sitting up on her haunches. Draping her elbows over her knees, she sighed. "I know they have, Eo, but there's no off switch. When I'm in the city, I feel like I'm drowning."
She would prefer not to even think about returning to Soba's home, to the bustling city and the countless people with too-confusing emotions rolling off them in waves. Ralyn had a goal, now. She couldn't do true magic, not like the few mages she had found hiding in plain sight. She couldn't breathe fire to life in the palm of her hand, couldn't get water to whirl around her from the rivers or air. She could move, though.
The girl lunged from the tree, dropping further as Eonari yelled after her. Ash-blonde hair, natural highlights weaved through neutral brown, curled around her face as she skimmed between twisting branches and reaching vines. She landed, light on her feet, on the ground, and then pushed off the ground to race through the underbrush. Eonari landed on an overturned tree to her left, soundless as he ran at her side. The edges of his being blurred, transparent and ghostly.
"Seralyn, this is suicidal!" Ralyn's familiar's eyes were almost entirely green, at this point.
They were reaching a divide, then. A Gateway. The scrolls spoke of this, of the change a zalarati would go through when nearing a place of great, ancient power. Ralyn was fortunate her familiar happened to be one of an old, nearly extinct species. She sent a quick look his way before saying, "It's only suicidal if I actually die, Eo. If I'm right, then the Gateway will send us across intact. We'll be alive."
"Alive?" Eonari raced ahead, leaping onto the zigzagging branches that made a natural canopy over her head. She could see him weaving between the cracks even as he hissed, "What good is being alive if we are stuck in a world of death, Seralyn? None who cross a diavas have returned!"
She was fine with that. It was something she said, which had Eonari's ears flattening against his head. His tail curled around his body as he stared down at her, the two of them having stopped in the tangled wood and its odd, earthy ceiling made of twisting branches, vines, and flowering plants. Ralyn held his gaze as he dunked his head down, black nose twitching. His gaze stayed on hers, though.
Ralyn turned and continued on the path, knowing Eonari would follow. She felt him stall, for a moment, and then he was moving again. Another moment passed, and then he was bounding ahead of her. His impossibly long tail danced behind him with every graceful leap, the air around his paws misty. Ralyn picked up her pace, heart starting to speed up as she went from jogging to a mind-numbing run.
Bounding over overturned trees, ducking under low-hanging branches, kicking off trees at sudden and unexpected turns, Ralyn sped after her familiar. The ground bit into her bare feet, steady and firm and a comforting presence as the forest pressed closer and closer until the light began to fade. She knew these woods, knew the paths and the trails, but they were venturing into territory she had never braved.
'Stay away from the Hollowed Grounds, Seralyn,' Soba had told her, long ago. She had been a small child, terrified of Soba's rage when he had tracked her down after she had fled. She could remember the river he had found her by, on how the forest on the other side was dark. 'People who go there, they go to die.'
She hadn't understood his anger, at the time. Ralyn did, now. The woods she was running through, it was similar to the woods she had grown up in. They were connected, after all, but the moment she and Eonari had crossed the river early that morning, pushing further and further, the air had changed. The moment her feet had touched the ancient soil, her bare toes digging into the damp sands along the side of the river, she had felt a shift of attention. She had felt the forest, sensed its awareness shift onto her.
It was a deliberate, intense focus that sharpened the further she and Eonari traveled. It was intentional, the way the dark woods seemed to observe them. How long had it been since someone had run these trails, pathways forged by the will of a forest instead of the worn mark of human and animal intervention.
As she swung over a fallen tree, one hand to the bark, she tried to push past the pain rising in her chest, the ache that followed her from one place of rest to the next. She knew Soba would realize she was gone, by this point. She knew he would understand, once he got her note. He had to understand. He knew her thoughts were haunted, her mind always whispering questions.
.
'Your parents? What of them?' Soba looked up from the text he was writing, the tome hundreds of pages already. It was a big book, not even halfway finished. Soba told her, once, that his writings were what would put food on their table. Seralyn glanced at the quill in his hand, knowing he was unhappy about her interruption, then at his face. His eyes narrowed as he said, 'I'm busy, girl. If you have something to say, then say it. If not, then leave me be.'
Seralyn rubbed one foot into the ground behind her other ankle. 'Did they leave because of my…'
Did they leave because of her magic, she had wanted to ask, but the words stuck in her throat. Seralyn shot a quick look at Soba, watched as he set the quill aside, and flinched when he reached for her. She didn't dare move when he caught her chin, though she did look in his eyes when he lifted her face to his.
'They loved you, Seralyn,' Soba's expression was fierce, but cold. 'No matter what you did, they loved you.'
.
It was one memory that always stuck with her. Sometimes Ralyn could recall the warmth of the fire on her skin, Soba's desk situated near the fireplace in his study. If she focused, she could smell the ink of his still-wet writing. Soba, and his home, had been her home. Shy of two decades, she had lived and breathed and ate in that old, book-laden house.
Now she was on the run, barely a day over twenty-three, and ready to do the unthinkable.
As she ran, the question she had asked herself since her childhood echoed: If they loved me, why leave?
"We're getting close, Seralyn," Eonari called back to her.
Ralyn picked up her pace as the forest thinned, the trees twisting upon themselves more and more. She slowed to a walk, careful where she stepped, as she eyed the pinprick of light flaring in the distance. As she and her familiar closed in on it, she saw it for what it was: a circular opening, made of the last few trees and vines and roots, that came together in an elaborate disk of wood and plant.
It was upon this threshold that Ralyn paused, her vision whitened by the intense light spilling into the darkness of the woodland she had been traveling. Once the blinding light dulled, she stepped over the wooden barrier and began to tread through waist-high, violet-silver grass. She could hear the soft whisper of water in the distance, could feel the pulse of energy echoing through the ground.
When she reached the water's edge, she saw the source of the deep, ancient magic that was surging, wave after wave, though the ground. A large, half-submerged sphere rested on the other end of the lake, buried partially in a rock wall as the downpour of a waterfall battered the smooth, shimmering surface. It was a massive structure, easily three times larger than Ralyn herself, but it was the designs on the dome that drew her attention.
The diavas looked to be made of interconnecting hexagons, each eight-sided platform melded into another. The dips between them glowed golden-red, the liquid-like magic spilling into the water and turning the lake around the orb a silver-pink. In the water there, she spied what looked like shimmering images of a forest, some distant place with towering trees and bright sunlight.
"We shouldn't be here, Seralyn," Eonari wove between her ankles, quick and agile. His fur was on end, his ears back and nose twitching. She kneeled, combing her fingers through his fur. Once he stilled, she lifted the feline-like creature from the ground and tucked him against her chest. He nuzzled the underside of her chin, rumbling, as he said, "There is something foul about the magic here. Something watches."
"I know, Eo," Ralyn stroked the soft fur between his ears as she looked into the water. There was no reflection staring back at her, only ripples of silver and blue and indigo. When she looked over her shoulder, the circular opening she had come through was narrowing. She turned back, an unsteady breath leaving her as she said, "We've come too far to turn back. This place won't let us leave."
The path leading back to the civilized world had shut once she crossed the threshold. This was a place where one could not turn back, the decision to step forth a choice between worlds. Ralyn took the first step forward, fingers absently trailing through Eonari's fur. His claws dug into her shoulders, his entire body rumbling as the water, warm yet frigid, climbed from her ankles to her knees on its own authority.
She felt the gentle tug, hear the whisper of 'come, come' echoing from the sphere.
Fear licked at her mind as Eonari whimpered. "We should never have come here…"
She knew he was right, but they had made their choice long ago. When she had first found a book on magic and opened it, the power of the teachings thrumming under eager fingers, she had drawn the line between contentment and a need to know. When she hunted for ancient history, of stories about the lines between worlds where one could hunt for answers hidden, her grieving heart steeled over.
When she reached the sphere, the water was up to her thighs and Eonari was on her shoulder.
When her palm touched the ancient surface, the world came crashing down.
Author's Note
I'm back with a new Naruto story, though this one isn't like the other one. This one deals with someone going into Naruto's world! Only said person isn't from Earth, exactly. I had this idea in my head for a while. As usual, this is the best place (for me) to leave a quick note. It's likely someone is going to mention the "pairings" slot, and I do think it is a really good idea to target that before everyone starts asking me a dozen questions.
Kakashi, Naruto (and his two lovely teammates), the Akatsuki, and Seralyn and Eonari are the focus of the story. The pairing is uncertain. I'm in love with the Akatsuki and all their crazy-ass tendencies. I also love Kakashi. He's the epitome of badass. However, I would also like to mention this takes place during Arc 1, when Naruto's roughly 11yrs old - I'm changing his age a tiny bit. He's the youngest out of his teammates.
Anyway, Seralyn will be interacting with Team 7 and the Akatsuki. I'm not sure what the pairing will be, as I plan to let that evolve naturally. So that's out of the way, so I hope I don't get too many questions regarding that. This is a new story, one where the OC has an actual reason to jump into another world that could possibly kill her (just going there). She's no ninja, by the way, and she won't be doing any fancy ninja-like stuff either (except, maybe, her ability to fucking run like a madwoman through a forest with a spirit kitty) because she's mostly normal.
Hope you enjoyed!
