Chapter 7
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Anguish given, pain filled, blood splatered. Everywhere. Need to escape. Why? Why hate? What's missing? Red. Black. Never clear. Tears. Why bleed? Why live?
Why do you hate me?
Hiei started violently, shaking awake from his dream. The sand and scattered plant life beneath him had grown cold, despite his high body temperature. The hair on his arms was standing on end, yet he knew the chilly air was not the cause. With a stiff movement he looked around the area.
And there was Myth, long lilac hair swaying slightly as she stared at Kerr. The Atlantian stared back with wide eyes and blanched features as his body shook badly at even his slightest attempt to move. "N-no...you...you can't...no!" He shook his head roughly from side to side.
"Poor youngling," she murmured. Again her voice sent chills down Hiei's spine. Though why, he couldn't figure out. It wasn't unpleasant to the ears, nor evil. Quite the opposite. Still, he drew his blade from next to him.
The mysterious women turned to him at the strange metalic sound, her mildly elongated ears moving at the noise. She shiftered her head ever so slightly to one side. "Are you going to try to fight me, little koorime?" Her eyes froze him in place. The strange red eyes that he had mistaken for ones like his shone oddly in the light. Instead of the heartless black that edged his irises, this women had streaks of reflective sliver, causing them to flicker and shift like a cold flame. Her outfit consisted of layers of complex robes of pure white save the edges of her dragging hem and belled sleeves for they were stained red and embroidered in delicate silver detail. The scent she gave off was too weak to pick up. As he took in her strange sweeping features, Hiei found himself unable to move his blade.
Graciously, his mouth was another thing all together. "Leave before I remove that dainty head."
She laughed a gentle, unmocking laugh that sounded more like the wind than a voice. "Then please, do. I have found it very troublesome at times."
The rage coursing through his veins seemed to break whatever spell held him. With a graceful movement, he stood, his blade clutched in a white knuckled hand. "I don't normally take commands, but I think I'll make an exception for the woman who plots agianst me."
Her eyes narrowed only a bit, making it hard for the demon to be sure he didn't just imagine it. Myth raised a hand above her head gathering her light like energy there.
Hiei braced himself, waiting to dodge and strike.
Suddenly she stopped, wheeling to see Mia standing behind her. The girl's black/brown eyes danced just as much, if not more in the fire light than Myth's despite the strands of now chin length bangs hiding them. The tall women stared at her as though trying to read her very soul. Mia only returned the gaze, unblinking.
Hiei felt a presence behind him and shifted his head so he could look out of the corner of his eye. Standing next to him was Youko, his eyes glaring fiercely at Myth's back. A wave of unsummoned relief fell over the koorime with the realisation that his friend would stand loyally next to him.
Mia growled something under her breath about time. Myth appeared to be offened, though it was hard to tell with her porclin freatures.
Kurama flicked his crystal rose into a whip. Once again the elegant creature seemed to react to the sound. She turned so Mia flanked one side and Hiei and Kurama the other.
"What is your game?" Hiei found himself hissing once more. "Why do you threaten me?"
"I am the challenger of the soul. Only in true emotion can one's mind be read. Hate is simply easier to draw out in a pure form."
"There is more than that. You fear me because of my blood."
"...I fear you because I know what your blood can force you to do."
"Nothing can force me."
"I beg to differ."
"Enough," Mia's harsh voice cut through. "It is not your time. Not yet. The memories have yet to flow. It will shatter if much more force is placed."
This time there was no mistaking the woman's irritance. "Very well. My patience grows thin. You know this well."
"I would be slow to not."
Myth smiled at Hiei out of no where. A small, beautiful smile, that the koorime found a thousand times more frightening than any other action she had taken against him. Perhaps it was because it was so sudden. But the likelyhood of it was he could see the malice dripping from every curve of her lips.
"Perhaps another time we will discus your past. When the memories run fresh." And just as before, she slipped away in a mist.
Mia relaxed visably. But Kerr was still stiff, his spear had somehow been reformed once more to fit his large hands. "Mia, what business do you have with that chaos bringer?"
She dropped her head, as though ashamed, yet only Hiei, once more, seemed to see the ironic smile curling on her shadow hid face, so similar to Myth's own.
"Answer Me!"
She turned and walked away, heading for the desert.
"Damn it, Mia! Don't you want to be trusted? To not have to worry about your own companions striking you down?"
The girl stopped, but said nothing.
"Kerr," Kurama spoke softly, the green starting to seep back into his eyes.
"No! We've all delt with her solitude enough. Despite everything I've been taught, I have fully allowed this child to lead me into a wilderness so I know I could never get out! Now, I am starting to think it was a mistake!"
Edeth, now awake, growled in warning, but the Atlantian continued.
"I am tired of the ploys, and the attempts to make her human in my eyes. She is nothing more than a heartless beast!"
That got her atention. "Very well. I'll tell you something only two living people know." She turned, striding up to him with long purposful steps.
"Mia...don't be reckless," Edeth warned, his eyes pleading.
She looked full into Kerr's face causing him to jumped back slightly. The eyes staring back it him were slitted and irises all black except for a thin, barely visable dark brown ring between them and the pupils.
"You flinch away. Just as you did when your brother asked you to come in his stead."
The group around them were now fully awake, even the heavy sleeper, Yuskue.
"H-how?"
"How? It's in your eyes. Just because you do not see mine, doesn't mean I don't see yours."
"Stop that!" he spoke in a fear that seemed unrational to all save the changling that was staring at the two with sad, knowing eyes.
"Do you have a problem looking at me?" She pulled down her hood and once again Hiei's eyes were drawn to the asortment of shining scars on the back of her thin neck. "Did your brother even have the guts to tell you why he agreed to the request I carried for King Enma? Why he dared to let me into your city that I shouldn't have been able to find to begin with?"
Kerr had stopped moving now, but his body was still rigged as he stared down his long nose at Mia. Sweat dripped off his face landing on cold sand that greedily swallowed it up.
"Then again, how could he? How could he reject his own niece?"
"Stop," he choked.
"Stop?" her voice was dangerously low. "Oh no, dear uncle, I will not stop. You wanted something to dangle over my head. You were not content with the blackmail of my previous life, you wanted something fresh, you greedy fool. So I will give you what you wish."
Kerr shook, though Hiei doubted fear alone could cause such tremors in a full fledged warrior.
"I was born of a Thirian and a demon. A ungrounded match on it's own, supposedly unable to produce offspring. But with a little godly intervention I was able to have a body without pushing out a soul. Hell knows, they wouldn't allow me to form my own."
All ears were on her now. So that was part of her story. It explained why they couldn't sense her energy -because she didn't have any. Her body wasn't supposed to exsist. Her shiftings may come from her demon parent, a type of demon that when they became a certain age, they hit a growth spurt. But why couldn't they sense it before?
"But why was a Thirian not in the protection of a Lost City? Because she herself was pushed out of her home. And not because she took a demon for a mate, oh no, no one knew of it that time. It was because of the fear her eyes struck in the heart of an onlooker. Even her own family rejected her in fear. Fear of the reflection of themselves."
Mia grabbed his collar, yanking his seven foot frame down to her now five foot six inch height and glared mercilessly into his eyes. "Of Shamer eyes. So they shunned her. Allowing only the outskirts of the towns to be her domain. What a sad fate for one of the house of Cathmor."
The Thirian choked, but she continued, each word seemingly piercing him farther. "And to think, I wouldn't be here would you have stuck up for your kind sister. She would have never went searching for someone who could look her in the eye as my father did if only her own friends and family would have stood up for her. But you couldn't, not against an entire race."
Tears pricked the corners of his eyes.
"I wouldn't be here, haunting your very soul, making you see your own inner demons, if you only had a spine then. You say I am the monster, Kerr, but my coldness, my lack of desire for trust is nothing compared to what you did to her. To your own kin." She released his collar and allowed him to drop to the ground, staring at the earth, pupils dialated to the max and shedding soundless tears. "At least I do not tear at the ones who trust me, for there are none other than the changling over there. And it cost him much to make me accept that gift."
She stared down at the Thirian, her normally hollow eyes filled with dislike. With one last disgusted grunt, she pulled up her hood and went back to gaze at the moon basked sand.
No one dare ask her why.
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They were moving again. The group's speed was questionable, but since none of them had managed sleep after Mia's rage -save Hiei, but a moment does nothing for a body's fatigue other than make it feel cheated- it was no surprise. Kerr had naturally ailed the worse. Dark blotches covered under his eyes; the Atlantian slouched, never staring ahead, always looking at the ground his feet claimed; his eyes were haunted, lost even; he talked not at all, and his normal confident air had been blown away in the night, leaving nothing more than a husk. Kerr's gloomy actions seemed to seep their feelings into the bones of his teammates until even the blazing desert sun could not warm their souls.
But, Mia, the strange girl who spoke only of pain and facts, said nothing even when Edeth asked her to answer. She simply treaded earth as though they weren't there, as though she was the one who had been berated the previous night.
It was slow work and they only drank the gathered water at sertain time and even then, they could not drink more than a little. Mia had given them all a bits of salt, but other than that she did nothing. Not even get water for herself.
Slowly though, Edeth became more and more alert to the point of being jumpy. Eventually he ran to Mia's right side and stayed there, glancing around nervously.
Hiei didn't mind any of it, but the heat was making him drowsy rather than uncomfortable and that was a dangerous thing to be attacked in, but he couldn't quite shake it. Even worse, echoes of the nightmare from the night before seemed to follow him and despite the koorime's best attempts to push the words from his mind. They continued to stick, like a never ending chant. Yet the single, confusing words were not the cause of his growing insanity, it was the full sentences. Anguish given, pain filled, blood splatered. Why bleed? Why live? Why do you hate me?
It tore Hiei up, made him want to stop and scream to make the words that only echoed in his head stop. What is this! I should have complete control, why does it haunt me? He shook his head violently from side to side. Enough, I'm being irrational.
He looked around the group. Yuskue and Kuwabara looked ready to collapse and Kurama in his human form was probably just better at hiding it. Kerr was the same as the start and Edeth seemed more and more edgy every second. Mia, once agian, was unreadable and untouchable as she some how managed to live under that heavy cloak. And him, he was becoming dilusional in his own mind.
The changling suddenly gave out a loud, content sigh. "Finally," he muttered with a voice that was even more drie than normal. "I hate being exposed like that."
"Can't imagine why," croaked Yuskue. "So we're finally coming to the edge of this place. About time." He checked his watch. No one knew why he brought it. Perhaps the chance to complain. "We've been going nine hours through this place."
"Yeah, and we went the short way," replied Edeth.
"How would you know?"
"Do you honestly think it's easy to find a group that doesn't want to be found?" He didn't wait for an answer. "Why did you bring that thing?" He pointed his chin at the watch at the detective's wrist.
"So I can tell the time," he replied in a voice you often take with toodlers.
"I can tell the time perfectly without one."
"Yeah," he scoffed, "So what time is it?"
Edeth gave a wicked smile and raised his arm as though there was a watch there. "It's...a hair past a freckle!"
Yuskue nearly fell over, "That's NOT A Time!"
"It is to me," he snickered, suddenly breaking out in fits of laughter.
Something shook beneath him and Edeth stopped his laughter suddenly and Yuskue let go of of the changling's collar he had seized in anger. "Uh-oh," they muttered at the same time.
Kerr broke out of his stupor and grabbed the pole at his waist, changing it to a spear.
Slowly rising from the ground came creatures, sand sliding off their humaniod bodies, shifting through their folds of clothing, and covering their cold gray eyes and unnatural hair colors.
"Ambush!" shouted Edeth, stating the now obvious as more and more of the creatures slipped out from the sand and began moving their way towards the team.
"Changlings," Kerr growled, though whether he was talking about friend or foe was hard to distinguish.
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