"ENRYU," SHE whispers, testing the feel of his name on her tongue in a way that is almost in awe, but not quite so. Power is magnificent, yes, but the way it is utilized, at least in the Tower, more than often is not. "The shadows whisper your name."
Red eyes watch her unflinchingly, then arch, amused.
"You," he says slowly, "are the vessel of a god, are you not?"
The fear comes again. And for a moment, she hates herself. So weak, so ignorant, so frail and so, so breakable. "That's... correct."
"I'm... Looking for someone," he says. Eyes now distant and gazing into the far-off destroyed red of what was once the forty-third. This is an ancient beast, and those that angered him have all paid the price.
"I know." She's shaking, finger clenching hard on the edge of the tunic, trying to buy time. Time. "He won't be here for a while, Messenger."
Red eyes widen, Enryu's head swerves towards her. For a second, their eyes lock - pale lilac and sanguine clash, until he ducks his head again, chuckling in amusement. "The powers of a god indeed," he murmurs softly before straightening. A streak of red appears in his hand, and Kerriquane can feel herself tensing. "What is it that you want, Vessel?" he asks, voice ringing again with the unbidden authority.
Quavering, Kerriquane's heart pounds and unbidden, the hope roots in her heart at a chance to go home- to the roaring tidal waves and the gentle balm of the sand of seaside beaches against her skin. The cry of seagulls and the ripples of the sunset reflected on deep ocean waves. Ignoring the roaring in her ears and the fear, the terrible blossom of hope chipping away at her heart. "A way out, Messenger," she says, chin tipped and eyes clear with resolution. "I want to leave this tower."
Red eyes meet her.
The Red Tower inclines his head.
"We have a deal."
Enryu has a cabin in a lower residential floor. Inconspicuous but homely, bathed in a dark, almost-brown red. The fields surrounding it are empty for miles and overgrown with golden daffodils. Just beyond it, Kerriquane can almost catch a glimpse of jagged cliffs and lustrous, dark waves bashing and rearing against the rock relentlessly. She takes a look at it, taking that feeling, and burying it inside her heart. Like the sea shanties she no longer sings, the silver bracelets she no longer crafts and her little home by the ocean with its peace and the seagulls surrounding it. With the town people and the children that mischief around the hills.
I'll be back, she promises herself. One day, I'll be back.
Time is an infinite prescence when she is there, in that little cabin on a residential floor, where Enryu plays with the shinsoo to his heart's content and she had all the time in the world to read books, crochet and do whatever the hell she wants. They can go days without talking at times, but, the thought that he is there is enough.
She slows down, with one more pair of eyes watching, she does less suicidal things. The chilling loneliness is gone, especially when Enryu has deemed her to be a new curiosity he has to dissect, and Kerriquane has to catch herself more than once from sniping at him and his age. An ancient beast, would be what the shadows would've once said, and there are times where, in a twisted, sentimental way, Kerriquane misses them. Even if she is relieved that they are gone
She interests him—
"A God," he marvels with amusement, when she is across from him by the fire on the porch of his cabin, twisting the shinsoo into the form of stars, constellation and stores them inside her lighthouse. And then he would look at her, illuminated and aflame by the firelight. "Don't you wonder?" he'd ask her with half-lidded eyes, stretched out against his chair. "About your powers? About the greatness you can achieve?"
Enryu is beautiful amidst the flames, shadows cutting his cheekbones sharper and the flames making his eyes sanguine, and sometimes, Kerriquane's attraction to danger ( to dangerous men ) scares her just as much as herself and the shadows inside her.
"I think," she says, trying to ignore the heat of his stare. "I'll leave it up to your imagination."
( She leaves, with red eyes branded onto the back of her eyelids and the want in her stomach burns when she touches herself and tries to ease the ache of that desire. )
Clang!
Sometimes, she gets the image where she is a mouse and Enryu is a cat. He's playing with her without malicious intent, but doesn't quite have the grace to be gentle or the idea to do so. It's like being dangled in front of his face as he tries to slice her apart gently with his claws.
Kerriquane ducks, fling an arrow of shinsoo at the projectiles. Enryu is relentless as he raises his hand to physically pull a spear out of his armoury before dismissing his baangs entirely. Leaping forward, he clashes his spear against hers, the force making her skid back several feet.
Lord have mercy, she thinks dryly. This isn't going to end well.
The shadows have once told her that even the weakest Axis could defeat the most power non-Axis— But power doesn't guarantee victory, much like how immortality does not represent invincibility. Kerriquane is only a bare fraction of that power she had sensed in the sea, and she doubts she will ever be more.
Fear has embedded itself in her life and in many ways, fear might have saved her more times than she could count. Because the red— The red of the baang envelopes her, the blood-thick metallic red envelopes her again and while she knows the shinsoo won't hurt her, the memory of it hurting remains.
One second she's trying to avoid the baang, the next, she is falling through a cavern— A darkness that stretches out infinitely. She's in shock, falling for a few more seconds before she lands.
A surface ripples as she lands, a light splitting across the dark expanse to review a transparent lake and three doors in front. Kerriquane rises and glances below her. A vacuum of space delves far beneath the surface, endless and lightless. She blinks, and suddenly, there are playful koi fishes threading through a water blue with sunlight and filled to the brim with pads of water lilies and lotuses.
The edge of her lip tugs up in marvelment and wonder, but the scenery captures her attention for only a brief moment before she starts making her way to the doors. However, she realizes, after the first few steps that the water seems to keep her in place as each step never brings her closer to the door.
A bridge...
Her eyes widen—
Before her eyes, the surface of the water breaks and rises upward into threads of silk. In harmony, they begin to thread and spin into the form of a bridge — tall supports takes shape before more threads join them and begin weaving until the strands solidify the mirage and before her— Is a bridge. Ivory and smooth, with an intricately paved path. Hesitantly, she steps onto the bridge. The contact of her foot creates a barely noticeable dent in the bridge and the material beneath her bit light up ever so slightly every time the soles of her foot makes contact.
Brushing the round heads of the support, she realizes that there are shifting design on the bridge. Koi fishes and cherry blossoms, alongside parchment and scrolls. They shift and turn, every time she blinks until there is a certain point where the intricacies blend in with arrows and spearheads, majestic beasts and ancient myths.
This is a gateway, she realizes as she looks out toward the water where the designs began to change. Where the water was once smooth and unblemished, it has started to become rocky and restless. The fishermen of her home used to say that there was a certain place in the paths of fishes when they migrate out to sea. Where the fresh water begins to meet the salt water, where the temperature was a blend of the cold and warm. The start of a new journey.
And the memories of a past her.
The sudden revelation hits her. This entire space is entirely tailored to her. Her memories, her experiences and her desires. The Axis were known to have an advantage because of their certain control over an aspect of reality and an ability to create a finite amount of space around them— A pocket dimension. Or perhaps one they could merge with the world beyond the artificial world.
If so—
Caught by a sudden desire, she reaches for the unending sky above her—
Light erupts from her fingertips, the warmth blooming up to her wrist, her arm, her chest— The light flies upward and begins to expand, illuminating the space until Kerriquane is laughing in wonder like a child, spinning around as she bends the light into fireflies and constellations— Caeli, Helianthus, Epithia, Liyostoni.
Beckoning a bloom of light towards her, she takes it into her palm with the gentleness of a newborn babe and compresses it, before placing it into a jar. She watches as the light swim around in the space of the jar, floating lazily like a jellyfish and pressing up against the jar.
She continues the rest of the journey, an easy joy tugging at her lips and a warmth in her chest.
The doors are tall and made from wood painted white. They seem to be made someone for Enryu's size— No, the man she saw a hundred years ago. They must've been made for, or by him. They each have different feelings, one is the scent of roses and the taste of chocolate while another is the scent of drying wood and parchments. The third and last, however, seems to be empty, there is only cool air, a whisper of chill when Kerriquane wraps her hand around the handle and opens the door. She steps through it—
And falls.
She wakes again to the sight of dark red and the smell of burning wood and the sound of the crackling fire. Kerriquane rises, the sheets sliding off of her shoulders as she squints, eyes bleary from sleep.
"So, you're awake."
She turns her head to see Enryu sitting in a chair, holding the spine of an open book with one hand and the handle of a tea mug with another.
"Where was I?" she asks, covering her face with her hands as she tries to orient herself, haori sliding off of her shoulder to reveal bandaged skin.
"Your shinsoo presence disappeared for an hour or so, when it resurfaced I tracked you to the edge of the pine forest," he says easily, eyes roving over her form, before settling back to her face. There isn't any indication of where she was or what she's been doing. And seeing that she's not going to divulge, he continues. "You don't seem to be injured other than a few scratches from a tumble with the bush."
He slides closer sliding a lock of her hair around his finger, "You might need a trim," he finishes pleasantly before removing himself entirely from the room.
Kerriquane looks down to see a patch of her hair where what was once silver had become a bright scarlet. She closes her eyes and remembers a flash of a hand tangled in red threads of shinsoo reaching for her— Grasping only a lock of hair, before the silver is gone.
She gets dressed. She's not sure how to feel when she sees the still warm tea placed at her bedside, a ceramic she made years ago now the colour of red— meaning Enryu likely used shinsoo to keep it warm.
She bakes him a cake ( thank you for finding me )and she isn't sure how to feel when he leaves her a bouquet ( i'm glad you're safe ).
"We should do something about that... Ability of yours," Enryu says one day.
"Like what?" She raises an eyebrow, pausing in her reading.
He smiles. "Like testing it."
Kerriquane bursts out laughing, for a moment, Enryu seems surprised by her amusement before a faint curl of lips betrays his own. "Why do I have the feeling this isn't going to end well for me? Remember why I was thrown into a pocket dimension the last time around and who made it happen?"
Enryu rises and takes a step toward her, taking the book out of her hands he snaps it shut before throwing it somewhere behind him. Then he wraps his hands around her wrist and pulls her up until she's standing right in his arms. "Don't worry," he says, the voice of rich timbre as he slides a hand down to her side and leans down until they're eye to eye.
Her lips part before curving back up into a smile and then another peal of giggling. Kerriquane laughs, close enough that she's sure he can feel the vibrations but far enough that they're not explicitly touching. "Somehow, I don't think anyone other than you will emerge unscathed."
She's right, is what the world dictates as she stands above the roaring waves, wind blowing her dress amuck as she peers down into the deep ocean blue.
"Your Axis seems particularly affluent with water," Enryu says as he led her up the cliff. "You yourself are a child of the ocean, it's reasonable to assume that there's at least some semblance of connection if the space is specifically tailored to you. We have two methods of entry—" His smile is wild and alive with fervour.
And her heart stirs, a sudden realization— Because the second you need to remind yourself to focus, to remember, you have already lost the battle. You have already begun to fall.
"Which are?" She raises an eyebrow.
"You'll see."
They get in—
With Kerriquane landing right in Enryu's lap.
It's not the worst thing that can happen, but it's suddenly too warm and Kerriquane can't tell if it's from her hormones or if it's because warmth is suffocating. The line between love and hate is thin, exactly like the difference between suffocation and attraction because she is almost drowning in him.
One arm slung around her abdomen and one hand holding onto her wrist, Enryu's jaw is right beside her head and every time he breathes, the air by her ear simmers and forces her to hold in a shiver.
For a second, everything freezes, Enryu's almost stopped breathing as he shifts his head from beside hers. Kerriquane turns and watches as red eyes take in the space, the stars she's left from last time and the bridge, still strong and standing and glowing in the dimness of the space. He looks at the vastness of the entire chamber and then looks back down to her, their proximity making her frozen.
He says nothing.
Don't be foolish, there a wisps of smoke dancing in the outer reaches of the darkness. And with the hand in his shaking with almost impudent desire, she settles a hand onto his chest as he remains still—
And pushes away.