A babies cries broke through the stillness in the air like the trumpeting before a siege. On a black marble slab, a hysterical mother clung to her child, as it wailed its distress. She wore only a peasant's rags, her baby swaddled in a scrap of cloth barely fit to be called a blanket. Heavy iron manacles bound her wrists and ankles to chains in the marble, anchoring her to her unforgiving stone, with only enough length that she could barely hold her child in her arms. "Please," she choked on her sobs, the words coming out thick and broken, "please don't kill my baby!" Tears continued to stain her dirtied cheeks, as she trembled with fright. The chains clinking, her quick breaths and the babies lost cries were all that disturbed the silence.
Queen Serenity stood beside the altar, her hair intricately woven into a crown of curls upon her head and her dress embroidered with pearls of the highest finery. The white of her hair and dress seemed almost to glow against the darkness of the room. She looked down at the pair, lips set in a thin line and eyes chilled to the sheen of a silver blade. She turned to look to her left, where a woman with a thick auburn braid wearing a soldier's uniform stood. "You are sure of the prophecy you have foreseen?"
The mother let out another desperate sob, clutching her babe closer.
The woman moved her right arm, which held a gilded mirror forward. Inside the mirror, cloudy reflections showed the image of the woman in front of them with her child, a young boy with black hair, and a shifting darkness. "The kingdom will fall to the same evil my sisters sealed so long ago, if these three images come to pass."
"Pluto," Queen Serenity called, not moving her gaze from the troubling image. Like a wraith, another woman stepped forward out of the shadows, her long onyx locks blowing in a nonexistent wind and a pulsating garnet-adorned staff in her hands. "Has the time gate conferred with what Neptune has foreseen?" A thin layer of fog seemed to arrive with the entrance of the new woman, dropping the already frigid temperature of the room by another ten degrees.
The baby was beginning to hyperventilate on its loud cries, gasping and hiccuping for air.
Sailor Pluto bent to one knee before her queen, lowering her head in a bow. Her expression was carved of the same marble as the slab, impossible to read, but the weight in her garnet eyes were far older than her youthful skin. "The Hundred Gate shows me nothing, majesty." She lowered her eyes to the ground. "I fear it is trying to protect me from the future to come."
Queen Serenity looked back at the mother and child, quiet in thought. "Has the gate sheltered you from great disaster before?"
"The future is nearly impossible to see, majesty, even for one of my lineage and training."
"The Celestial Mirror does not lie," Neptune said, brown eyes set in determination. "If this woman and her child live, along with the young prince from Earth, the Silver Millennium will fall."
Queen Serenity had not taken her eyes off the two sobbing people in front of her, but those eyes were devoid of mercy. "So be it. If their blood is the price of our prosperity, I condemn them to death." Neptune stepped forward as soon as the words were finished, her mirror raised in front of her and beginning to hum with gathering energy for a fatal blow.
"No." The queen placed a hand on Neptune's shoulder, stepping in front of the woman. "I have sworn to never take a life for the sake of my throne, and it is I who will break those vows. Do not dirty your hands with this distasteful task." The mother was still begging through her sobs that the child be spared. Moving towards the wall, Queen Serenity lifted a great scythe from its place on a weapon's rack.
"Do you know what this blade is," she said, moving back towards the now frantically struggling mother. "This is the Silence Glaive, wielded by the reaper of silence and death, Sailor Saturn." She admired the blade for a moment, watching it glint in the ominous low light. "It hasn't been used for over a five thousand years. It is only used when the soldier of destruction is reborn to herald the end of world." She closed her eyes, steeling herself for what she was about to do. "I am sorry, but I will not allow such a thing to happen to this world."
With precision, she pulled the scythe back over her head and brought it down with her full weight behind it onto the woman and her baby. Abruptly, the room filled with silence and the stench of raw meat and blood.
Wrenching the blade up again, the queen looked down at her blood-speckled gown. It would be ruined. When she looked up to see if the glaive would require cleaning, she saw the thick red was already sliding off its surface as if the holiness of the artifact repelled it.
Turning to her guardians, she squared her shoulders and spoke with an authoritative tone. "What you have seen today will be spoken to no one. While this sacrifice may ensure the continuing peace of our kingdom, they were Terran, and their death would create untrust between our worlds."
The two senshi nodded, deferring to their queen.
"I'll have to change before we go to greet our young Terran prince. Please dispose of this." she gave a sweeping gesture to the two still bodies on the altar before them. Moving back towards the wall, she set the now gleaming blade back into its display mount.
"The Terran prince," Neptune said, watching a glimpse of him play out across the surface of her mirror. "How do you plan to ensure our future? He is the sole heir to his kingdoms throne." Pluto had moved past both of them, and held her staff out to the corpses of the deceased. They were both encased in a dark red light before all traces of them disappeared, no blood left to mar the swirling patterns on the marble and the manacles hanging limply from the altar.
Queen Serenity shook her head, her long locks bouncing around the crown of hair piled atop her head. "We have already stolen him from under the noses of the ruling monarchy of the largest province of Earth. To kill him would certainly start open war between us, and only ensure the future we have seen does come to pass."
"Then what do you plan to do with him, my queen?"
"That is my concern. Fetch Sailor Mars and my daughter." She closed her eyes, wishing this reality away. When she heard the click of Neptune's heels fade down the hall, she spoke in a small voice.
"Did I do the right thing, Pluto?"
Pluto watched her queen, her expression stoic. "It is not for me to know, majesty."
They stood there waiting for Neptune's return, a sense of impending doom hanging over both of them. "It was right," the queen said after a few moments had passed, taking a deep breath. "It had to be done."
Sailor Pluto said nothing, because she did not know the right words to say.
Neptune returned a few minutes later with a young boy tied in rope and a dark bag over his head. Mars wasn't far behind, with a small bundle in her arms. This baby was cocooned in a thick wool blanket with elaborate embroidery, and was quiet except for soft breathing. When Sailor Mars looked up and saw the blood still spattered on the queen's gown her eyes widened but she kept her horror and surprise silent.
"Set them on the altar." When Neptune moved to herd the boy forward he took a blind swing to try and hit her, grunting around his gag. Capturing his arm, Neptune gave an amused smile.
"He is quite lively for his age. But listen boy, I know you can hear me. No harm will come to you tonight, but if you ever speak of what you hear tonight to anyone, I will renege on that offer of safety."
"Enough, tonight will be just a bad dream come morning," Queen Serenity said, gesturing to the slab where Sailor Mars had already rested the sleeping crown princess. Neptune pushed the kicking and punching boy forward until he was a few feet away and then lifted him up like a bag of potatoes and deposited him down on the marble with the baby. Sailor Pluto moved forward and restrained him with the manacles while he gargled to try and scream around the gag, and Mars made sure that the sleeping baby was out of the young boy's swinging reach.
The senshi stepped back away from the two children while the queen stepped forward.
Cupping her hands in front of her chest, she summoned the mythical stone of legends, the Silver Imperium Crystal. It shone like a captured star in the darkness of the room, rooted in the base of a small crescent wand she now held.
The queen lifted the wand above her head as she beseeched the crystal with her prayer, and everyone else in the room watched as its pure light spread forward to encase the two children. Like silver mist, it sank into their bodies, before a thin but real cord emerged, stretching between the two. It winked into dust before anyone could blink to be sure it was real, the light from the crystal disappearing as the queen sank to the floor. Sailor Neptune and Pluto rushed to her side, helping her to stand upright again. The young boy tipped sideways onto the marble, unconscious.
"I'm fine," she panted, despite leaning heavily on two women. "Its done, return him to bed before he is missed."
Sailor Mars had already moved to scoop up the princess in her arms, who had not stirred during the entire ceremony. As she left the room to return the baby to its crib, she gave the queen a glare over her shoulders. Queen Serenity had known her long enough to know that when they next spoke, she'd be expecting answers.
Letting go of the queen and bringing her staff to the floor with a loud thud, Pluto summoned a gate and carried the crown prince through it with her. When they had both vanished behind the fog of the fourth dimension, Neptune helped her queen to walk back to her rooms.
But Neptune couldn't keep her curiosity sated for long.
"What did you do to the boy, majesty? How can you be sure he won't become a threat to our kingdom?"
Queen Serenity gave a tired sigh. "His life is tied to my daughters. They are irrevocably bound, so that if one heart should stop, the other will cease as well."
Neptune tried to keep the shock from coloring her voice, "A soul bond? That is an extremely dangerous! What if he dies and it triggers the death of Princess Serenity? This prophecy may yet become self-fulfilling!"
The queen shook her head tiredly. "I can't foresee every future like Pluto, but I do know that if he tries to overthrow our kingdom, he would have to go through both the princess and myself. And now, should he follow that path, his kingdom will be as doomed as ours."
Neptune pursed her lips, trying to dampen the worry she felt. She knew that killing the boy would lead to war, but at the same time, this choice could have extreme repercussions that she doubted the queen could imagine. As someone with the gift of foresight, Neptune had some idea about the enormity of consequences these actions could have.
It could still lead their kingdoms to war.
But Queen Serenity was right. If the prophecy was true and the boy grew to be an instigating factor in the destruction of their world, he would be forced to deal with the princess at some stage of his conquest. And in doing so, he would unknowingly bring ruin to the both.
As she helped the queen into bed, she couldn't help the shiver that went down her spine at the thought.
Instead of securing the future of their one world, their queen could have just inadvertently damned two worlds.
-
Prince Endymion woke with a scream, thrashing in his blankets and sucking in uneven gulps of air. The light of a torch framed the doorway and a guard looked in on him while the boy climbed out of bed frantic.
"I must see Mama! NOW!" He rushed past the guard before he could react, stumbling into the hallway and running to his parent's bedchambers.
When he approached the two guards on either side of the door, he ignored them and began pounding on the wood frame of the door since he was still too small to read the handle. "Let me in let me in!" He screamed, the two guards exchanging amused glances.
It was not uncommon for the prince to have night terrors, and his parents had the unlucky kindness to entertain their son's fears even at ungodly hours of the morning without complaint. A few minutes later the door cracked open and a woman with long golden hair looked out and ushered her son inside. Her eyes were bleary with sleep as she hoisted him up onto the bed where his father slept with one eye cracked open.
"What is it now?" The king croaked, fading between the line that divided being awake or asleep.
"It wasn't a dream! I was kidnapped!" Endymion exclaimed, beating his tiny fists onto the pillows at the base of the bed.
The queen sank back down into the blankets, motioning her son to come lay with her. But Endymion would have none of it.
"I swear it was real! They took me and put a blindfold on me like hide and seek but it wasn't a game! It was cold and dark and there were two women and they said they wouldn't hurt me if I didn't tell anyone about it."
The queen gave a worried glance at her husband, who was beginning to snore again. The dream did sound a bit real, but Endymion had always been a very intelligent young boy. It wasn't implausible that he could have read a book that spurred this dream, or heard something that triggered it from one of the palace slaves.
Endymion was beginning to cry, still pounding on the pillows. "It was real! I was there and...and..." he couldn't get anymore words out between his tiny sobs.
"Oh come here," the queen leaned forward to scoop the young boy up into her arms, making small soothing noises and rocking him back and forth while he cried. The king gave a sharp snort as he woke himself up again, mumbling something and giving the boy a pat on the head before rolling over.
"It was just a bad dream," she said, running a hand through his soft hair as he continued to exhaust himself crying. "It may have felt real but it was just a dream...you're okay now."
Prince Endymion continued to cry, pounding his fist on the blankets as he tried to figure out how to convince his parents it had been real. "It was real, it was real..." he succumbed to another round of sobs.
Because if there was one thing he was sure of, it was that tonight had been no dream.
He'd been there on that cold hard floor, listened to those women talk and felt that strange warmth that had seeped into him like a smothering poison.
He had no proof though and his parents didn't believe him.
It was only after he had cried himself out and been returned to his rooms that he saw the fading imprint of redness around his wrists from the torchlight in the hall. Staring at them in the dark, he felt tears at the corners of his eyes, both from the frustration of being ignored when he was right and from the fear of what had been done to him.
He curled into a ball, pulling the blankets up to his chin and tried to forget.
AN: I'm entertaining notions about how the silver millennium could have possibly been caught by a surprise attack and fallen. A magically, technologically advanced, well defended capital of the galaxy, with soldiers who can see into the future and conjure forces of nature, falls to ruin in one night? No way. There's definitely more of a story to it than that, and I'm here to create it. Oh and Neptune's description wasn't a mistake. I'm going to be using predecessor senshi before the familiar ones we know for various reasons. But don't worry, you'll still see all those girls you know and love.