A/N: WOW! I got ***16*** reviews for the last chapter!!! You guys are AWESOME! Thank you so much! :D

So this is only the first part of Chapter Seven. Midterms have hit already (I swear school just started!!!) and I'm swamped. The two hour round-trip commute to the university and back is killing me. All I want to do is sleep. Updates are probably going to be only once a week for now. Chapter seven is turning out to be really long. This isn't finished, but I hit a really good stopping point about half way and decided to post this rather than leave you guys waiting a whole week more for an update! Part two to follow. :)

Chapter Seven

Fireworks and Near-Death Experiences

-Part One-

Lancer pressed himself back against the wall, aghast at what he had overheard. Skulker working for someone? And Clockwork? He had mentored the boy? For years? What could it all mean? And it was worse than he had thought! The prince didn't just want to go to the living realm; he wanted to be alive! Would rather be alive than be crowned!

And the king…

In Praise of Folly! What would the king say?

Lancer put his hand out blindly, reaching for the shelf behind him to steady himself, but leaned on a bottle instead. The treacherous object rolled out from beneath him, sending him flipping head over tail with a cry of surprise, and he grabbed for the closest thing in reach to catch himself. The bottle twirled to the ground below, shattering with a tinkle, and Daniel and Tucker jumped up into the air in alarm, their eyes shooting upwards. The only moving thing to be seen was a corner of cloth hanging from a high shelf, puckering and wrinkling under the pull of some invisible weight. The two men watched in dread as the sheet slowly slid from the shelf, and they ducked and turned intangible as a rain of objects that had been sitting on the sheet were pulled down with it. Doohickeys, plates, and beads fell through a flurry of papers, smashing and bounding across the floor, but when Daniel peered up through the twirling sheaves, the sheet was still suspended in midair and flailing wildly.

With Tucker at his shoulder, Daniel shot upwards till he was level with the invisible intruder, molding a shimmering ball of ectoenergy between his hands. "STOP!" he bellowed, holding the energy threateningly but reluctant to throw it lest more objects be destroyed. "Show yourself!"

The ghoul flung off the sheet, and it rippled through the air to land with a whisper in a crumpled pile on the dusty ground. The man before them glared at them hotly, his nostrils flaring in displeasure. Daniel gasped, and from behind him he heard Tucker do the same.

"Lancer!" Daniel blurted in mortification, the ectoenergy evaporating from his hands.

"Daniel," the governor barked, "what is this?!"

"Uh – it's my collection," Daniel answered apprehensively.

"Your 'collection'?" Lancer gaped. "Are you mad?! I knew you had been through the Threshold a couple of times, but this –" he looked around him in revulsion, "I can't imagine how many times you must have gone through to find all these things, when your father ordered you never to go to the living realm! You betrayed him-"

"No!" Daniel protested desperately. "I-"

"Yes, you did!" Lancer cut him off, spitting in his fury, and Daniel cringed. "As your father and as your king!" Lancer's voice went dangerously quiet. "How could you?"

Daniel didn't answer, but hovered stiffly, his expression closed as if he had folded in on himself and his eyes focused on the ground far below them.

Lancer sighed in exasperation. "What are we going to do with you, Daniel? If your father found out about this-"

"You aren't going to tell him, are you?!" Tucker shot toward the man imploringly. "He would never understand!"

Lancer rubbed his face with a hand tiredly. "No," he answered. "I can't. King Phantom would disown him. He'd have to. The court would demand it."

"Let him," Daniel said quietly, and the two men turned back to him in surprise. The prince looked up at them, resigned. "I said I would rather give up my crown than give up this. I meant it. It's better it happens quietly now, rather than me trying to keep hiding this and it exploding later."

"No," Lancer stated flatly, moving around Tucker to confront Daniel. "That won't happen. I won't let you do that to yourself. Daniel-" he tried to grip the young man's shoulders sympathetically, but Daniel wrenched himself away from his touch.

"I won't give this up!"

"Daniel, you're dead!!!" the governor shouted harshly. "You can never be a part of that world!" The young man glared at him with glowing eyes, but Lancer could see the uncertainty behind them. Daniel knew it was true – how could he not? – and Lancer softened in sympathy, watching the internal war that rippled beneath the young man's defiance. "I overheard your conversation with Tucker. You are not doing nothing here. It may not be what you want, but… Sometimes the greatest thing we can do is be our best at what fate has allotted us. And much of the greatness comes from it being harder than doing what we wish we could. You are the heir to the throne. There is no one else."

Daniel stared down past Lancer's feet in turmoil. He knew Lancer was right. There was no life for him. There never could be, as much as he might wish it. The right thing to do, maybe even the good thing, would be to forget the other world and apply himself to his royal duties with as much energy as had spent on the treasures around him. But there was another part of him that writhed at the idea, that screamed that the man's words were just apathy rationalized, reminded him that his grandfather had reigned for almost four hundred years. His father before him had ruled even longer, yet their chapters in Lancer's history books were only a few dozen pages, and the dread that rose in him argued that to submit to such morality was submission to unending death. The medallion he wore hidden beneath his shirt burned against his breast. A symbol of the king, Clockwork had said, of responsibility and authority. A symbol of a great king, the kind of ruler he should be. But the symbol of a living one too, and Daniel was torn.

"…Daniel," Lancer broke into his thoughts, "you don't have to go looking for greatness. It's been given to you by rebirth, if you would just take it."

Daniel looked up at his teacher, clarity washing over him like cold water. "Then it's not greatness at all."

Lancer opened his mouth to retort, but before he could say anything the light in the cavern quivered, and Daniel looked up in time to see a shadow passing above the portal, eclipsing the Threshold. The light ebbed out completely, and the cavern melted into darkness. A ship? he wondered breathlessly.

Without a second thought, Daniel flew towards the event horizon. He had almost reached it when he felt a grip around his arm pulling him back, and as the shadow withdrew from above he looked down to see Lancer's hardened face. "Don't even think about it," Lancer warned darkly.

But a serene certainty came over the prince, and he looked down at his teacher with an odd expression of detachment, as if seeing the man for the first time. "You can't tell anyone," Daniel realized. "Not without causing the exact thing you don't want to happen. You can't do anything." Tucker floated up beside them, watching the exchange warily. Daniel moved back from Lancer's grasp and the governor didn't offer any resistance, looking at the young man in astonishment. The prince turned to his friend. "My father said Skulker had seen the humans rekill all of my mother's soldiers; but if Skulker is working for someone, we can't believe what he said. I'm going to see for myself."

Without waiting for Tucker's reply, Daniel turned back up toward the portal and rose through it. With a distrustful glance at Lancer, Tucker followed, slipping through the Threshold soundlessly, leaving the older man staring up at the vortex in dread. Leviathan! I have completely lost control of the boy, he thought in dismay. He's realized I have no real authority. All I can do now is try to dissuade him from going too far.

Was he really thinking of crossing the Threshold? Him? Sir Lancer, loyal servant of the king? But what choice do I have? he thought with a chill. With a shuddering breath, he gathered his courage and shot up towards the portal –

Only to almost fall back through when he hit the water on the other side. The unexpected pressure of being several meters deep was crushing, as though he had emerged into liquid rock. He thrashed against its thick weight, his limbs moving pitifully slow as if he could not command them. Panicking, he turned intangible-

And the weight was gone.

Gasping, he spun, looking around him. He was hovering over the swirling Threshold, halfway between the glittering surface and the ocean floor. Faint streams of twilight shot through the grey-green waters, dancing in coruscating patterns over an alien landscape florid with color and with life: peach coral and orange sponges nestled between crimson sea grass and clusters of pale blue anemones that blossomed like flowers. Over it all, giant seaweed rose like ethereal trees, their leaves trembling in the currents. A school of fish darted between the plants, turning and flitting in perfect unison like a single animal, the light flashing off their bright scales like they were living drops of silver.

A shadow of movement caught Lancer's eye, and he looked up to see Daniel silhouetted against the light, cutting expertly through the water towards the surface with a wisp of an intangible Tucker close behind. Grimacing in determination, Lancer steeled himself and slipped after them.

Daniel broke the surface cautiously, letting only his head and shoulders emerge from the water. Coming to the surface where he might be seen wasn't something he had dared to do very often, and he put his arms out and let go, allowing the water to hold him up, the foamy waves rolling over his shoulders. He closed his eyes, savoring the feel of the wind that blew across his wet skin, and he pushed back the consuming longing that welled within him. How much more euphoric would this be if he could feel it with real skin, real limbs, a living body, instead of just the echoes of what it was to feel faintly remembered by his soul…

Swallowing the bitter yearning, he opened his eyes and treaded water, peering through the gathering darkness for what could have eclipsed the Threshold. To his left there was a hoarse whistle, and he turned in time to see a shower of golden light bloom in the darkness with a violent clap. Another followed, and another on top of it, amethyst tails and blue sparks that burst outward, twirling and cascading down before twinkling out over the water. Out of the corner of his eye, Daniel saw Tucker surface beside him only to immediately duck back under with a yelp at the next explosion. The man poked out from the water timidly, letting only his eyes show, but Daniel watched the lights in rapture, hardly breathing.

Lancer popped up on the prince's other side, his foul mood firmly in place. He was going to give Daniel a piece of his mind, and opened his mouth to start his tirade – but the words died on his tongue. Was the boy swimming?! He suppressed a shudder at the sight of something so unnatural and groped for the patronizing sentiment he'd commanded a moment before, but it had abandoned him. Sounding more unnerved than condescending, he stammered, "Your highness-" A deafening crash cut him off, and the governor jolted backward as pearls of orange flame tore open the night sky. "Dante's Inferno!" he cried. "We have to get out of here!"

"No, no!" Daniel shouted ecstatically over the booms. "They're called fireworks! It's just for show! They're celebrating something!"

"How would you know?!" Lancer shot back, trying to hide his panic.

Daniel glanced back over his shoulder at him, his eyes bright. "Clockwork told me."

"Of course he did," Tucker muttered irately, too softly be heard.

The prince looked back up to the sky in awe. "I never thought I'd actually get to see them."

The next shell exploded low in the sky, and the three men gasped: bathed briefly in the golden white light was an enormous ship, its three masts towering majestically into the clouds, the canvass sails pregnant with the wind. Darkness swallowed it again, but Daniel could make out its topmost sail in the next flash of light, and the decision seized him before he had even thought about it.

"I'm going on board," he declared.

"What?!" Lancer squawked, grabbing Daniel's arm. "You can't! You'll be caught!"

"I'll stay invisible," he assured, pulling away. Turning intangible, he rose out of the water dry, and then vanished altogether, with only a faint ruffling of the air to suggest the prince had flown off.

"Daniel!" the governor cried desperately. "Daniel, please! Come back!!!

There was no reply.

Lancer looked over to Tucker nervously. The other boy was scowling after his friend, obviously waging a debate within himself, and with a exasperated groan rose into the air as well. "Tucker! I forbid you from going with him!"

"He's my friend. I can't let him go in there alone."

"Friends don't lead friends into suicide!" Lancer hissed.

Tucker glowered down at the bald man. "Daniel might be right about what Skulker said. There's only one way to find out. And beyond friendship, Daniel's my lord. I have to protect him if I can, as should you. Aren't you the one always going on about duty?" Tucker shot back, and took off, vanishing midair.

Lancer bobbed in the water, gaping, alone now with the horrible shadow of the ship looming out in front of him. But Tucker's right, he thought in dismay. Even in folly, Daniel is still the heir to the throne. He had devoted himself to the royal family. If he abandoned Daniel now, what was he? Rolling his eyes, he growled, "That boy is going be the redeath of me, I know it," and followed.

Daniel swooped down over the ship, grinning in exhilaration. He dove between the sails and back out, carving around to soar through the masts again, peering down at the open decks. Below, men in white shirts and black pants heaved ropes and scaled the rigging, pulling the sails taut with a practiced synchronicity, as if they were all moving to a silent rhythm.

…Or maybe not so silent after all. Daniel pulled to a stop as music drifted faintly to his ears – real music, he realized in awe as the melody did not disappear at the end of the refrain, but fell and rose and fell magically into one phrase after another. He dropped closer to the deck, floating between the bottom sails, and listened in wonder. It was like nothing he had ever heard before, swaying between jubilant and mournful as though it wasn't sure which to feel, or perhaps felt both at once. Entwined in the instruments were voices, but he could not make out the words.

Where was it coming from? There – that direction! He turned and flew towards the aft of the ship, phasing through the mast – and stopped short in surprise. There below him was a large group of sailors. Near the back, beneath the railing of the stern castle, several men sat on crates playing instruments: pipes and drums and a carved wooden box with strings that he touched with something like a miniature of a bow used with arrows and one with an odd contraption that he expanded and compressed between his hands. The other men were sitting around them or dancing, their feet stomping the cadence as they sang, and as Daniel landed behind the railing above them he could hear the words.

"…Oh! Give me a flowing sea!

And a wind that follows fast

And fills the white and rustling sail

And bends the gallant mast!

Oh for a soft and gentle wind,

I heard a fair one cry.

But give to me the roaring breeze,

And the white waves heaving high!

And the white waves heaving high, my boys,

The good ship tight and free.

The world of waters is our home

And merry men are we!

There's a tempest in yon horned moon

And lightning in yon cloud

And hard the music mariners

The wind is piping loud!

The wind is piping loud, my boys.

The lightning flashes free.

And the heaving waves our death will be,

Our destiny the sea!"

The prince watched them in breathless rapture. He had seen drawings, portraits and illustrations of people in his books, but never had he seen the living like this: loud and solid and moving and so close. They grinned at each other, some of them with crazy gap-toothed smiles, laughing raucously, and a cheer went up as the notes of the next song sounded. Their voices wrapped around Daniel and filled him, and an ache bloomed in his chest, something like he had only felt once before when he was little, when he had slipped from the palace by himself and gotten lost exploring, and in his childish imagination had thought he would never see home again…

He gazed down at the sailors, and for a strange moment the fabric of reality seemed to shift, like the feeling of falling into one of the currents of time that flowed around Clockwork's tower. Suddenly it seemed that the scene below was the familiar and it was his own world that was alien and fantastical. He watched as the men began to dance, gallivanting around each other, and the desire to go down and be among them, to be seen and to feel himself to be real to them was piercing…

He felt himself start to turn visible, and turned away from the railing quickly, closing his eyes and clutching his chest. It feels like being homesick, he realized with a pang. I'm homesick… for a place I've never been.

He started to drift away from the railing, but the sensation made him nauseated, and he landed and walked instead, his eyes cast down.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" a voice in front of him startled him from his thoughts, and his head snapped up in panic. There before him, floating a few inches off the planks, was Clockwork in his adult form, his staff gripped in his strong hand. "They know they will die out here, that eventually the perilous sea will claim them, and yet they sing about it, and dance, reveling in the very life that will lead them to their deaths."

Daniel gasped and whipped around to see if anyone else was nearby, then glanced down at himself to make sure he hadn't really turned visible after all.

"They cannot see or hear us," Clockwork assured him. "Only we can see each other."

"What are you doing here?" Daniel asked in disbelief.

"Observing," Clockwork answered nonchalantly. "Sometimes I find it more useful to see to things in person."

"Like lecturing me for coming here, I'm guessing," Daniel said morosely, walking past the time ghost to lean on the far railing, watching the frothy wake that rolled out behind the ship.

"If I were going to do that, I would have done it before you came," Clockwork said, joining him. "But you would have come anyways, so it would have been pointless."

Daniel stiffened, anger bubbling up within him. "Tucker was right!" he exclaimed incredulously. "You don't just observe human affairs. You've been watching me."

"What is a human affair?" Clockwork shrugged casually, shifting into an infant as if to show how little the young man's glowing eyes impressed him.

"You lied to me!"

"No, Daniel," Clockwork said calmly. "I never lied to you. I told you, I only observe human affairs. But the fate of living realm and the Ghost Zone are intertwined."

"Then what isn't a human affair?" Daniel asked sharply. The ghost hovered serenely, gesturing as if to hand the question back to him, and realization dawned over Daniel's face. What wasn't a human affair, if the two worlds were intertwined? His eyebrows furrowed in furry. "Nothing," he answered for himself. "You know who Skulker is working for! Tell me! Tell me who!!!"

"I said before, I can't tell you."

"No, you won't," Daniel spat, turning away.

Clockwork morphed into an old man and put a gnarled hand on the prince's shoulder. "I won't because I can't. Time is like a tapestry, and if some threads are woven through before others, the picture will not emerge. It will be a mess of lines and colors, and cease to mean anything at all. You must trust me, Daniel, when I say you will learn who Skulker is working for. But there are other things that must happen first, or it will be for naught."

"How can I trust you?" the prince asked distrustfully over his shoulder. "Even if you never lied, you've kept the truth from me. You never told me about the war."

"War is the lie, Daniel. War is always a lie, because it can only stand on the conviction that the side you're fighting is an other that is unfathomable to you, so unlike you as to be a threat in its very existence. But you know differently, precisely because you knew nothing and could only see things for what they were. You have seen the truth in the books you have found, in the paintings. You have seen it down there among those men. The truth is what you feel in your soul."

Daniel closed his eyes again and gripped the railing, his anger melting as the ache burgeoned in his chest. He stood with his head bowed, lost in the pain and confusion, and Clockwork spoke gently, "You are not different from them."

"I'm dead," he bit out softly, and buried his face in his hands, his white hair sticking out messily between his fingers. "What do I do?" Daniel asked, his voice crushed with torment. "I can't obey my father, but I can't live either."

"You will know what is right."

Daniel lifted his head and looked at Clockwork, comprehension trickling over him. Coming from the master of time, such a comment could never be just rhetorical, for the sake of comfort alone, the prince realized. And, indeed, there was a knowing gleam in Clockwork's eyes.

"When?" Daniel asked suspiciously. "When will I know? What's going to happen?"

"That," Clockwork answered with a faint smirk, "is up to you."

Daniel straightened, epiphany pressing upon him as the time ghost began to drift away from him toward the main deck. "Wait, you could have stopped me! Why did you let me come here?" he demanded, following him.

Clockwork smiled, and began to fade out, his last words purling around Daniel on the wind. "Because it's time…"

A/N: Dun, dun, DUN! Cliffhanger!!!

And for the geeks like me:

I've decided to keep all of Lancer's literary references within the time period I'm guessing the story takes place in (mid 1600s and prior). For those readers curious how those reference fit into the story:

Hamlet – (actually from the beginning of chapter 6) There is one very loose correlation between Hamlet and what is going to happen in this story, but I'm not telling you what it is yet. Can anyone figure it out? ;)

In Praise of Folly – Written by Desiderius Erasmus in 1509. A satirical work in which the quality of Folly is a character which praises self-deception, madness, and faith corrupted by superstition. Beginning of the chapter, after Lancer has overheard Danny and Tuck's argument from chapter 6 and thinks Daniel is out of his mind.

Leviathan – A political philosophical work by Thomas Hobbes from 1651 arguing the necessity of an absolute, all-powerful central government such as a monarchy. Lancer cusses this after Daniel has realized Lancer really has no authority to do anything and no power over him.

Dante's Inferno – Written by Dante in the early 14th century. A poem describing Dante's trip through the circles of Hell, with the Roman poet Virgil as his tour guide. Just a play on words: Inferno is a synonym for 'fire' and Lancer cusses this when looking at the fireworks.

The sea shanty the sailors sang is not something I came up with myself. I did change the last couple lines though to fit the story. Here's the actual lyrics below:

"A Wet Sheet and a Flowing Sea"

www. sailorsongs. com/ a_wet_ sheet_and_ a_flowing_sea. html

"The wind is piping loud my boys

The lightning flashes free

While the hollow oak our palace is

Our heritage the sea"

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all your awesome reviews!!! :D