Ruin of the Zodiac Chapter Two: In Which An Implied Promise is Shattered
Aries had told him not to tell the other Guardians about who she was. So, naturally, the first thing he did was fly straight to North and tell him about the strange golden-haired young woman.
"Zodiac?" North's Russian-accented voice boomed throughout the workshop. The Guardian of Wonder had his arms folded over. "Are you sure that is what she said, Jack?"
Jack shrugged, deftly balancing on the crook of his staff as he faced North. "Word for word. 'Aries, the Ram, Zodiac of the Cardinal Fire and Blesser of the early spring children.'" He raised an eyebrow. "That's a lot of titles for someone no one's heard of. Do half of those even mean anything? Like, anything at all?"
"Believe it or not, yes. Aries is cardinal sign. Comes with new season. It is also one of three fire signs. Leo and Sagittarius are others." Jack had to raise his other eyebrow at this.
"Wait, are you saying she could be telling the truth?" he asked incredulously.
"Not necessarily. I am saying that if she is lying, she is very well-learned liar. But..." North paused. "It is possible she is telling truth. You say she carried a shield and spear?"
"More 'pulled them out of thin air' than actually carried them." Wincing Jack rubbed the side of his head, remembering being knocked aside like one of his snowballs. "She's got a mean swing, too. Pretty sure she's using that spear wrong though."
"Hrm," North looked deep in thought. "Jack, do you know what ruling planet of Aries is?"
"Uh, no?" At his answer, North turned around and picked up a piece of paper and a pen from off of the nearest table. Jack leaned back slightly. "Wait, is this going to be on a quiz? Because I don't see what any of this has to do with a bunch of stars in the sky." North shook his head.
"It has nothing to do with stars themselves and everything to do with their meaning," North said. "The ruling planet of Aries is Mars. Named after Roman god of war. And the symbol of Mars," he said, scribbling something onto paper and showing it to him, "is said to represent Mars's shield and spear." Jack examined the marking on the paper. It was a crudely scarred image of a circle with and arrow sticking out of its upper right corner. "Yeah, still confused," he said.
"Jack, this means that there is enough tying this young woman you had snowball fight with in the woods and actual mythology of Aries where I would not rule anything out. But whatever she is is not important. What is important is whether or not she poses threat to children."
Jack remembered the fury in the young woman's eyes when she has knocked him out of the wind, the anger she had harbored towards him just for talking. It had only lasted for a few minutes, but... "If she tries to hurt any kids, I'll stop her," he said determinedly.
An unfamiliar voice echoed throughout the area, a soft voice with an oddly dreamy, disconnected quality to it. "I assure you, gentleman, for all the volatility that Ram possesses in the spark that makes her, well, her... she would not be able to hurt a child even if she wanted to. None of us can."
Immediately, Jack jumped off of his staff and grabbed it before it clattered to the floor, gripping it tightly and looking around, ready to turn the speaker into an icicle, courtesy of Frost. Likewise, North had pulled out one of his sabers. The latter was looking distinctly more worried. Not that Jack could blame him. The last time an uninvited voice had spoken in the workshop, it had been Pitch Black, snuffing out almost all of the world's belief.
"Put the weapons down, please," the mysterious voice said. "I bear no arms of my own... well, actually, I do. Two of them. They're very odd." There was a distracted giggle. "So many fingers... I'll never get over how the others adapted to these so easily. I can understand those like Sagittarius and Aquarius, but Cancer? Capricorn? Oh, they're so different from fins..."
Jack and North exchanged a confused look. "Who are you?" North called out loudly. The voice responded, but this time it was much closer, without the incorporeal echo.
"Gýrna, Sir Santa, and greet me with your own eyes."
The two of them turned around. Jack almost expected to see an exact copy of Pitch, with a malicious smile and a silver tongue. Even the very thought sent a disquieted shiver down his spine.
He did not expect, though, to see a long-legged young man with silver-tipped black hair and lilac eyes, wearing a leather jacket and a ten-foot-long blue-and-green striped scarf, smiling at something off in the distance.
Upon seeing their surprised faces, the young man lifted a pale hand and waved at them, beaming.
"Geia sas!"
... * ... * ... * ... * ... * ...
Meanwhile, in an abandoned farm somewhere in Greece, the perpetually unheard voices of several eternal constellations filled the air, loud enough to cause the walls to tremble.
"Someone saw you and you told them who you were? Oh, I cannot believe you! We have one rule, Aries! One! Rule! Even Aquarius follows it!" "Actually..." "Do you have something you want to say to me, Aquarius?" "..." "Good. Don't you go slinking off, Aries, I'm not done with you!" "Well, I'm done with you." "You've broken the one rule Capricorn's laid down, you don't get to be done! What in dark space possessed you to tell one of the Guardians who you were and what you did? We've always been under the radar! Humans don't know we exist, the Man in the Moon's spirits don't know we exist, and I'm sure if Capricorn and Cancer had it their way, even the Man in the Moon wouldn't know!" "But he does know, doesn't he? So really, we were never under the radar at all. He could tell the Guardians at any moment; I just wanted it to be my choice to reveal it. I would have told him whether he had won or not!" "Yeah? Did you forget the rest of us who actually accept the rule? If there's one Zodiac, there's twelve. That's terrible reasoning." "I resent that." "Aquarius? Were you... were you in on this?" "Of course. I think the rule's completely unnecessary. There are very few who can see us, and those who do probably would realize something was 'up' at first glance." "Augh! I cannot believe you!" "I, for one, welcome our new Guardian overlords." "No one asked you, Sagittarius."
Aries pinched the bridge of her nose, glaring at the dark-skinned woman who was twiddling with on of her dreads of hair, dreads the color of a lion's mane. "Leo," she said, trying very very hard not to smash the nearest window. Or face. "I know you. You want to be noticed. That's you. Just look at what you're wearing!" She jabbed a finger at Leo's sparkly white sundress, easily blinding in the late summer sun that the Zodiac of the Fixed Fire thrived in. Lucky for most humans that they couldn't be seen, then. Leo looked quite offended at her insinuation.
"So I like looking nice. So?" Aries resisted the urge to facepalm.
"There's nothing wrong with that!" she yelled loudly. "It's not that, you're missing the point! The point is, I know you better than anyone here. I know that deep down, you'd love it if you got the recognition you wanted, the recognition you know you deserved." Aries took a deep breath. "Aquarius and Sagittarius don't seem to mind. Do you?" At being mentioned, the Zodiac of the Fixed Air and the Zodiac of the Mutable Fire exchanged a glance. It was the former who spoke first.
"I stand by what I said. The rules is unnecessary. Aries is right; the Man in the Moon knows of us. We've never truly been secret," Aquarius said, brushing her hair away from her face. Most of them agreed that Aquarius was one of the prettier zodiacs. Everything about her was curves and waves, from her physique to her gentle, shiny black hair with a single streak of almost liquid-looking silver to it, tumbling around her slender shoulders and leanly muscled arms like a waterfall. Her eyes were a clear bluish-green, and looking into them was like looking into a fairy pool from Scotland. All very fitting for the Water-Carrier. The young man next to her, with his broad shoulders and thick, salt-and-pepper hair and constantly narrowed magenta eyes, with his twitchy fingers and his long face, couldn't look more different if he tried. It was hard to get them in the same room together, though, so it wasn't always noticeable. Speaking of Sagittarius, he spoke up after Aquarius. "I can get the rule, in a weird way. I mean, we are pretty weird," he said, shrugging. "I'm just confused as to why we're so worried about the Guardians. I mean, aren't they, y'know... the good guys?"
"I..." Leo's lips pursed, and she threw her hands into the hair, rolling her goldenrod eyes as she screamed, "You know what? I'm done. I am so done with you guys! You can talk to Capricorn about this, I'm sure she'd be thrilled to hear about you defying the one thing she has ever has of you." Leo spun on her bare heel and walked away, shoving passed the large man who entered.
The pale-haired young man who entered was actually very large. Big enough for two, actually. He had to stoop over in order to get into the room. The smile he showed to them, however, was that of a little boy. It was suprisingly short though, as his face fell into an uncharactersicticaly somber expression. Aries looked at him confused. "What do you need, Gemini?" The man shook his head.
"Can I ask a question?" he asked.
"I told Jack Frost who I was." Gemini blinked. "What?"
"Well, you were going to ask why Leo was so upset, weren't you?" Aries asked. Gemini shook his head. "No, actually," he clarified. "I was wondering where in the great big empty universe Pisces was. He's vanished.
Oh, wow, I am soooooo bad at trying being funny! LOL, I feel so ridiculous. (I'm also pretty back at writing characters that aren't mine!) Anyways, I'm so happy right now! A hundred views in two days! That's so many! So many people are reading my story!
And I think I'll leave it up to those many readers to put two and two together, hmmm? ;)
Still used google for greek, so here's what it says.
Gýrna - Turn
Geia sas! - Hello!
Sorry it's not as long as the first one! Please fave and don't forget to leave a review telling me what you think!
- the OTS
