All the scouts sat patiently outside around the wooden table at the shrine waiting to hear any news.
Artemis sat in Mina's lap eyes fixed on what might be going on the other side of the paper door where Amy, Raye, Darien and Luna were working to figure out what was going on with Serena.
Mina had made the call to the Tsukinos that they had all gone over to Raye's house for a birthday sleepover, but it was only a matter of time before they started asking questions. Yet at the moment it was the least of their problems.
Lita walked in with another tray of coffee, tea, and cookies for the ladies. Luckily Serena had passed out when Darien had loaded her into the car so no one suspected anything but if during the drive back she began another episode who knew what would've happened.
As Lita set the food on the table and sat between Amara and Mina the sounds of Serena gagging and dry heaving were enough to put away anyone's lingering appetites.
Lita pushed the cookies aside and began pouring the coffee, the least she could do was to help keep people awake. It had already been ours and still had been no progress.
Michelle sat in the corner of the room praying softly in a language no one understood with the sacred mirror on her lap, laying as dull as any other household antique.
Trista had come and departed hours ago and whispered something about the time gates, everyone had assumed she had gone to look for answers there.
Amy rechecked the thermometer once again; Serena core temperature was 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Physically impossible. She clicked rapidly away the minicomputer she had hooked up to wires that connected to Serena's forehead.
"Darien, ask them for more ice."
He nodded wiping his sweaty palms on his khaki pants and got up, his black hair was matted to his forehead, dark bangs glued in sweat patched to the back of his neck. He still didn't understand what was going on, she had gotten up for one second and he had been dozing off and then all of a sudden she was down.
Raye sat in her full miko dress kneeling before the Great fire rubbing prayer beads frantically between her palms, but all she could see was fire, it was showing her nothing and when they tried to put Serena closer to it, when her temperature had dipped suddenly, it grew as if almost trying to reach out to her.
She could hear Serena's fingernails scraping on the floor and broke her concentration to see the insignia growing on Serena's head once more.
"Raye do you have a cord or something? She scratching her fingers raw, and her hands are covered in splinters! Darien hold her hands together! Stop her!"
The quietest scout had become the commander of this mission. Her fingers fired away as she tried to analyze the information coming in to her computer from her Princess's unconscious body.
She pressed a button and a thin silver blade hissed out of the side of the computer, she gathered a drop of blood from Serena's raw fingers and placed a thin piece of glass over it creating a slide.
"We'll know what's going on soon enough. Raye something for her hands!"
The fiery scout nodded, in soldier mode, she couldn't be sentimental right now she just had to figure out what the hell was going on. She bit the cuff of her sleeve and ripped off enough of the cloth to tie bind her friend's together.
"We'll need mittens so she doesn't try to scratch herself."
Luna peeked out from behind Darien, "I'll get them." Her voice was hoarse and it sounded like it hurt her to speak.
Raye finished the knots and peered over her beloved friend. She brushed aside her damp bangs to see the glowing mark. As soon as her fingers touched it she was sucked in the same vision.
At first she was overwhelmed, the heat, it was so thick it made her vision swim.
She could see the boots of a man on a golden throne. She was kneeling and felt the fear in her heart, and the sweat on her back making her heavy clothes stick to her.
"So you failed?"
The words came pouring out of her mouth she had no control over it. "Yes."
"And how many of my men did you kill?"
"Only seven Father." She wanted to tell herself to shut up, but she had no controlover what she was saying.
"Only?" He paused and she could hear him slurping loudly from whatever he was drinking a cup of it had rolled next to him its contents spilled. It smelled bitter and dark.
"Sergeant General Sekthar and six others of my best soldiers, and you say only seven. Did you not know General Sekthar?"
"Dearly, Father ."
"Then what would he always say?"
She gulped, "One of my men is worth seven of any others, Father."
"Then did you not kill forty-nine of my men?"
She could hear approaching footsteps as the fear welled up and bloomed inside of her.
"Your mother should have stopped nursing you when you stopped sucking her tit. She loved you so much it killed her thinking you were better than your brothers, thinking you would return so soon. You lay waste to our best fighters! You think Soltha's wisdom would have worn off on you but instead you receive her father's foolishness! Forty-nine lashes for forty-nine men."
She could feel her body squirm as the guards tried to drag him away.
He waved his thick bejeweled fingers and the guards stopped. "Don't move him. Do it here. Let's see how brave the little prince is now."
Four men had lined themselves up on the castle walls. She could feel their eyes on her without seeing them. Other hands ran over her body as they removed her armor. The metallic taste of blood pricked her tongue as she bit down and the first lash of the whip came down.
"One!"
They broke skin with the first hit.
Raye gasped and crawled backward until she hit the wall, back still tingling and chest heaving.
She could see Serena wincing with each blow, the tears flowing down her face mingling with the glaze of sweat. How long had Serena been stuck in these too real nightmares. Who were the men? Why was she being beaten? If that man was king and she, they were calling him father were they a princess? But from what kingdom?
And why Serena? Why was she getting these visions?
Darien and Raye met eyes, but she wasn't with him, her mind was still reeling from the remnants of the vision.
"Her heart is slowing down, she's not breathing!"
Serena found herself in the throne room again, her back still felt sore. Everything was covered in a thick fog but she knew the outline of the throne. The thick pillars that seemed to go till forever were still there.
There was no warmth here, in fact it was just cold. She looked down and saw the billowing white of the dress she wore often during the Silver Millenium.
"Is anyone here?" She said it so it was just above a whisper. From her recent adventures she didn't know if she wanted to know what awaited her this time.
She could her footsteps coming towards her.
"It is not fire, not a simple flame, it is all light all warmth and all heat. It is the only gift I can give you and still it is a curse as well as a blessing. All other powers bow to this gift, without fire there is no light and in darkness only evil can flourish, but with it comes such anger and passion, such rage. As I'm sure you've seen, if you cannot overcome it then it will overcome you. I have seen you and watched you. You hold a by the like of which I have never seen, such warmth even I in the other world can feel it. But you are too naïve, too self sacrificing….your mother's traits. I wish you were a bit more hardened. And after this I know you will be."
She could see him, but once again he was somehow hidden from her, as if her eyes were working but her brain just couldn't process it. He was getting closer but still she couldn't see him.
It was like in class when she read the same paragraph over and over and still had no idea what she had just read. It was almost as if she had suddenly been cut off from reality.
He touched her and her dress disappeared and she was in her most vulnerable form.
Thick pink ribbons covered her entire body and fluttered backwards as the silvery crystal boomed from her chest.
It looked so much smaller in his rough wide hands then when she held it. He lifted her chin to his eyes so she could see him, his eyes with slowly being covered in a red lens that had started swirling in his pupils and suddenly reached outward.
She looked down for only a second, enough time to see him take her silver crystal and crush it.
"She flat lining! I can't feel her pulse, Darien start the CPR! She's dying!"
Blackness was creeping at the edges of her vision but he held her up with one hand.
He opened his hand again and the crystal bloomed into a blood red glass rose. He stepped forward and the haze finally lifted.
She could see the crown of long hair that fell to his shoulders but was tied back into a low pony tail. His skin was a warm bronze and his face was a lot more and angular than hers but wider to. He had sharp cheek bones, and piercing dark red eyes. His lips were full and curved into a soft smile, an expression his face didn't seem to accommodate his features, but she could tell he was trying not to look…forceful.
He was all sparking gold from his armor and to the orange cape that billowed past him. Brown riding pants met with gold shin guard and golden booth. The gold roaring helmet rested in his other arm. On his breast plate a detailed circle with flared wings and a circle in it center almost like an embroidered target.
The ribbons darkened to a deep red and molded to her body. The dress went straight across her chest in a straight neckline from shoulder to shoulder, and was comprised of deep red lace that fit her like a glove. Transparent cup sleeves were patterned with tiny roses and at her waist the dress suddenly shifted color with a burst of gold lace that formed a tail behind her. It seemed like a dress Galaxia would have worn. It seemed so unlike her.
The heat was back, but the sudden change in temperature soothed her this time.
She traced the strange symbol carved above the circle's outer edge directly over his heart.
She didn't realize how close or how safe she felt when she thought. 'What does it mean?'
"Death fears me. If I had taken you that day, you would've known, and later you could have defended yourself."
He crushed her to his chest and kissed her forehead.
"It has been so long, my golden star. So long and this is the first time I will ever meet you, smell you, touch you, and the very likely the very last. He hunched his hulking frame over to touch foreheads with her. "So prepare yourself, because the sun was at the beginning and will be at the very end. I give you everything, the blessing and the curse, the love and hate, the passion and purity,"
The solar sign flared on both of their foreheads.
"-my first hello…and my final goodbye." He crushed her to his chest and started chanting in her ear, she could feel his heart racing as he rested his chin on her neck. His skin was hard and cold but the power that swirled around him was so hot it felt like it was burning her.
"Morsos miedokos meed, hoik miedoko tos. Death feared me and now fears you. Goodbye Serenity, my little golden sun."
Seiya fed another orange fruit to the horse which chomped on it happily. It had been three days already by the end of the day it would be four. Out of the gate he had gotten too excited pushed the horse too hard to soon and it had almost collapsed at the end of the first day.
The pair had stayed closed to the small rivers so the could get fresh water and avoid the thieves that swarmed around the main roads. He stared into the mahogany eyes of the horse, Naito,"Sorry bro."
He pet the auburn hair that formed a diamond patch on its long face. He had ridden every horse in the Queen's stable, trying to see which one was the fastest, had the most endurance, this one was the best combination of both.
It had taken months sneaking into the stables after dark, earning the trust of the horses, especially earning the trust of this horse. He fed his companion another fruit, one more than usual, resting his head against his. It wasn't just the horse's fault they had to stop, he needed to rest.
On his other trip he had decided not to sleep at all thinking
At first he didn't get much sleep because he thought if he had Fighter would have bubbled back to the surface but then he realized he had always overtook her when she was tired not when she was sleeping. Then they had to rest every few hours just so he would always be alert and ready.
"Naito."
He rubbed scratched the small diamond patch of white in the center of the horse's long face, its long tongue lapped out and left a trail of saliva from his chin to temple.
Naito was the unruliest, horse in the entire stable so it was to no ones surprise that he was often missing because he broke out so often. At one time they even thought to sell him off after he had almost trampled a stable boy to death.
"But you were just tired, weren't you buddy, always waking up on the wrong side of the stable, ne?"
Naito was once the Queen's war horse, always the first into battle at the front lines, ridden by the proudest heroes on the parades after battle, after he injured his front leg, he was out of it and the training they put him through to get back to his former glory only embittered him.
Seiya was the first one to not be so harsh with him even though in their beginning trips he had suffered so bites and bucks from his giant friend.
"Here we go boy!" The city lay just ahead and the makeshift tents of the travelers and beggars began to multiply.
Dirt covered fingers scraped against his slightly worn in boots and slid down the sides of Naito's silky coat.
"Please sir, for my baby."
A woman with limp brown hair covering her face let the cloth of her cloak slide of her bony should to display her child still lapping at her sagging breast.
"Just a shimpa, please, for food."
Seiya looked on with sorrowful eyes he had not even a coin to feed himself, he had stolen a royal horse and that alone would eventually catch up to him. He hugged the thick leather satchel that he kept in hidden in Naito's stall, a place people really didn't like to linger. It contained everything he would need for this journey but nothing that would be useful to these people.
Everyone with a morsel of morals believed in the threefold law, whatever you put out comes back to you threefold, and he had stolen a royal horse bred and raised in the palace would be worth maybe a thousands of shimpas, enough to feed this woman for possibly the rest of her miserable life.
The rest of the city was no better. The "Holy City" was full of beggars and rich men. Merchants maneuvered through the crowds without so much as batting an eye as the hoards of children tugging at the ends of their silk cloaks. They looked after the workers at their stalls which sold everything from Holy Water to heal sickness to Sanctified Soil, guaranteed to make your crop flourish.
People called the city the Eye of Kinmoku. The shape of the city, which was bigger than many colonies, was a giant elipse which housed the travelers, merchants, and cellars, the smaller section, the iris or the Outer Ring was were the common shrines, and deeper still were the pupil of the eye, the inner ring where the more important shrines lay with only certain people could enter.
The streets were the veins of the eyes. Stone roads were at the center of an ancient city built long before horses and carriages, and teleporters, thin intersecting streets crisscrossed all over the place every other one leading to a dead end.
The richest kingdoms brought their princes and princesses to be blessed before marriages, or their queens to be prayed over before birth, the most important people passed before High Priestess Helenos, the woman in charge of the Holy City's most important shrine the god who created Kinmoku, Kinma.
"MOVE ASIDE PRINCE CLAUS OF THE AVAN KINGDOM"
Three bulky guards strode on each side of the tall coffin that held the prince. The prince of Ava was held in a container that could not have allowed him much room to turn over but from the layers of sky blue curtains you could see the faint outline of a reclined figure.
No one dared to cut in front and suddenly the bustling street was cut open and the crawling homeless disappeared into the alleys of the city.
Seiya quietly lead his horse from the side to right behind the caravan, it almost looked like he belonged with them, if not for his dirtied red and gold announcing that he was from the Tankian kingdom.
It would be easier that way though, people left the caravan alone and by some strange stroke of luck left him alone as well, it would be half a days walk to the center, the caravan was slow moving but a peaceful journey that would still be quicker than wading through other people. He looked forward at the back of moving tent, a scroll Aryan language covering the back.
It was better then to look down at the huddled masses of the starving, and sick, waiting, to no avail to, to be alleviated of a life that had left them so desperate in a city that was said to have healing powers.
Seiya had tried to be prepared for this. Everything he had studied on the Holy City had pointed to this. Every study suggested the city was a magnet for those looking for something better, that every penny they begged for they gave to the shrine of Shimpara goddess of the poor.
He knew from every story he had ever heard through Fighter's ears that the only way to be rich here was to be corrupt. He knew that assassinations were common, and that the scrolls were of protection from the assassins but the only way to get them was to risk your life coming to Helenos, feeding into an endless cycle.
He knew all of these things, and still he came, because he had to, here was the only way he could separate from Fighter finish phase one of his plan and then find his way back to her.
Amy shut her minicomputer. "…I don't know."
Her solemn statement gave all the scouts her attention.
"How?" Luna asked.
"Because I have taken into account all of her symptoms into every known data-"
"No Amy, go over how this all started maybe the answer is there."
Amara stood up and paced the room. "Darien said he saw her eyes glow completely red before she passed out, somehow triggered by this eclipse."
Lita shivered and stared down at the assortment of cookies she had baked biting into a cold sugar cookie. "The last time there was an eclipse…Is this the work of the Dead Moon Circus?"
Amara continued on, "And then Raye's vision, General Sakthar, Soontha, they don't seem to have anything to do with any enemy we've known."
Raye added in from her position still in the corner of the room. "It looked like we were in a palace, a gaint throne room, but it was a man on the throne not Metallia."
Trista suddenly appeared, everyone looked at her expectedly to which she responded by shaking her head, "Nothing is out of the ordinary, the future seems fine."
Luna lifted her head up, "Does that mean we should be more or less worried?"
"The time gates, neither helps, nor hurts us so it's a factor we shouldn't consider at all." Amy stood and beckoned Trista to the other room where Darien, still studying pre-med, was watching over Serena.
Amara stopped pacing, "But maybe it doesn't have anything to do with the future, but the past. The mark on Serena's forehead, the men assembled in a throne room, maybe it has something to do with the Silver Millenium.
Trista paused one foot in the other room, "The mark on her forehead?"
Amara responded, "A circle, or maybe half a circle, it glows so white that its blinding and we can barely see what it is."
Mina shook her head, "I still don't get it, what does an ancient kingdom have to do with Serena in the present? Why is it making her so sick?"
Luna's head sank and she felt Artemis's tale interlocking with hers to comfort her. "We'll figure this out, we always do."
The sun was going to set soon, and the caravan had taken him far enough. The caravan had moved on to the inner gate, where all the most important shrines were, no beggars, peasants or civilians allowed. It was where the most important gods rested, Kinmo, Raz, Tankana, Dreak, all of them had shrines there but it was none of his business, all he needed to go to was the Gemini shrine it was small enough that it was at the Outer Ring and never that crowded.
The Gemini shrine was a place where only separated twins looking for each other, or mother giving birth to twins prayed at. Twins weren't very common and so the fountain was secluded especially as night approached and the Holy City became more dangerous.
He dismounted from Naito. He had waited four years for this moment. Four years searching for answers. Hours upon hours of studying maps of the Palace of the Holy City, or other kingdoms searching for any way to free himself from his prison.
The fountain of Castor and Pollux was secluded, it was a minor shrine and most people tried to get home before night fell on the city. He had wondered for months what to tell her after they separated. Would it be better to go somewhere secluded? Or somewhere with people in case she tried to attack him? Would she want him not care what she did with him?
Seiya tried to rub away the tiredness creeping in his eyes and yawned it was now or never.
The fountain was made of stone carved from the mountains in Velena Dessert, pure white. Even for a lesser deity it was still magnificent because it was hardly used. The area around was clear and the only noises interrupting the quiet scene were the distant voices of people from the other shrines.
He lowered his canteen in the water. Filling it to the brim, according to his studies he would only need a few drops but, he had other purposes for the water.
He stepped into the clearing again, taking a breath and then taking his first sip.
Nothing happened.
He sighed and took another sip.
Naito lapped from the fountain and licked his masters face. Seiya laughed petting the horse, so it was useless, another dead end, just like the root in Florae had been, just like the Terkmesh oasis in Zagar, even how the cloud essence of Ava had been.
He throat dry up and the brewing of tears he wouldn't let fall. "Let's go home."
He stood to mount his horse again when his knees gave out. He couldn't let Fighter take over, not here, she would put the pieces together, she would know he existed, the rumors of the well, the bag he was carrying he really thought this would be it.
But he couldn't fight her it had been to long since he had rested, he was tired, disappointed, and she was determined.
He remembered Naito's crazed eyes as the horse raised its forelegs into the air, and then he blacked out.
"Wake up!" Her voice was a harsh whisper in his ear.
He was naked and cold, for a second he wondered what was going on before he saw his clothes hanging off of her smaller frame.
"Who. Are. You."
It happened and even though her hands were over his throat he could feel the tension ease from his body. Years of planning had finally come to fruition he could finally start phase two, he was finally one step closer.
He couldn't help but smile broadly at her, "I'm me."
-Chapter End-
Yay for page breaks! I finally fixed the glitch so the story is easier to read thank you to my readers. Bring on questions, comments, critiques, even flames? Hahah. The next chapter is basically done but just needs some editing and I'll be getting more time to write soon sooooo see you in the next chapter Flowers and Frustrations
thanks for the reviews Alisa, LoveintheBattlefied and new follower LinkTsunamiGirl
xoxSerenityxox