A PARENT'S LEGACY
Chapter 9: "Blood Vow"
A Neo-Sailor Moon fanfic
By Bill K.
Sailor Juno and Sailor Ceres hiked up the path leading them to the summit of the rocky incline that bordered the forest and the village by the river. The path itself was not very worn, indicating most people chose to walk around the rocky formation than to climb over it. Right now, Sailor Ceres was gaining an appreciation of that logic. Pulling herself up onto the ledge above her, she gained a foothold and steadied herself for the climb still ahead of her. Though not all of the path was rough and jagged, this broken stretch was more than enough for her.
"Are we still on the right path, Ceres?" Juno asked, looking back from the ledge above. She saw Ceres struggling with her climb. "You need a hand?"
"I need my head examined!" Ceres fussed. Finding footholds, she pushed herself up to the ledge Juno was on, then onto the ledge. She expelled a dramatic breath.
"Come on," Juno told her. "It's just like climbing the trapeze pole back in the circus."
"No, it's not," Ceres replied pointedly. "The trapeze pole had metal rungs that were solid and evenly spaced, going in a straight line." She dusted off her knee. "And the trapeze pole wasn't dirty."
"You're just out of shape," Juno smirked.
"I am NOT out of shape," Ceres corrected her. "Just because I don't have the skills of a mountain goat doesn't mean I'm out of shape. It's the thin air, too. Remember what Saturn said when we first landed here."
Having caught her breath, Ceres and Juno continued on. The path ahead was more defined, and the only exertion Ceres felt was in her knees.
"So why don't you just get the plants to hand you up?" Juno asked.
"Believe me, I asked," Ceres replied. Then she rolled her eyes. "I'm not going to repeat what they said. Earth vegetation is SO much more refined and intelligent than the vegetation on this planet."
"They are telling you where Urusham is, aren't they?" Juno wondered.
"Yes."
"Can you trust them? If they're this rude. . ."
"Plants don't know how to lie," Ceres assured her. "Lying is a purely human trait that plants, thankfully, have never learned." They continued on. "So why not have some water spout carry us up?"
"Not enough water," Juno told her. "There's just enough water in these rock formations to keep these scrub plants alive. Certainly not enough to lift the two of us. And the river's too far for a spout to reach the top of this rocky range. Maybe if there were some low-hanging clouds . . ."
"Just as well," Ceres sighed. "The water would probably mess up my hair."
The two senshi continued climbing, each one secretly wishing their senshi uniform boots were a pair of hiking boots. At one point, Ceres stumbled and narrowly avoided twisting her ankle from her experience as a circus performer. Finally the two reached the top of the rocky summit. They looked down over the valley below. The forest was thick on this side as it was at the bottom near the cave where Katyr lived.
"Hey, there's the castle," Juno pointed out. In the distance, beyond the forest, was the merwyn castle and the grassy plain that surrounded it. "And I think that's Katyr near the castle. Sounds like he's shouting something, but I can't make it out. I don't see Vesta, though."
"I'd be disappointed if you did see her," Ceres said. "If there's one thing you can say about Vesta, she knows how to trail someone and not be seen. I'm sure she's in there somewhere." Ceres looked around. "No plants up here to ask. I guess we're going to have to find Urusham ourselves."
"We should probably go in that direction first," Juno reasoned, gesturing toward the castle.
"Why that way?"
"Why would Urusham come up here in the first place?" Juno proposed. "The most logical reason would be to have a vantage point where he could keep the castle under surveillance."
Ceres thought a moment. "Sounds logical. Let's go." The two senshi headed out. "I wonder what kind of mood he's in?"
"Hopefully he's calmed down from the last time we saw him," Juno mused.
"Seeing your fellow villagers slaughtered isn't something you calm down from," Ceres said. "But I hope you're right."
As they approached the edge of the summit, Ceres and Juno could see Urusham's burly figure in the distance. They could also see the hang glider sitting near him. It didn't take a student of Sun Tsu to figure out what Urusham planned. As they approached, Urusham seemed unaware of them, his attention occupied by the castle in the distance. Seeing Urusham's head perk up made them wonder if he'd heard them, but he kept staring off at the castle. But without warning, he jumped to his feet, turned around and drew his sword, all in one swift motion. The two senshi froze in their tracks.
"Did your Princess send you to find me?" Urusham asked. He turned away from them to resume looking at the events outside the castle, but he didn't sheath his sword.
"She's kind of worried about you," Juno offered. "What state of mind you're in, you know?"
"What does she fear I will do?" Urusham replied vaguely.
"Something rash and stupid," Juno said bluntly. "As rash and as stupid as King Toren's attack on the village."
"I plan nothing rash," Urusham said without looking at her. "And if avenging the innocent dead, killed for no other reason than they were human and easy targets, is stupid . . ." He trailed off, revealing no more.
"So that's what the glider is for?" Ceres asked. "I thought you wanted to talk to your mother."
"I doubt my mother will speak to me with the blood of her father upon my blade," Urusham said. "A small loss, since she will not speak to me now."
"Urusham, vengeance isn't going to help anything," Ceres told him. "It won't raise the dead and it won't ease the suffering of the survivors. It'll just give the merwyn a new excuse to kill."
"The merwyn," Urusham repeated the word bitterly. "By the Great Spirit, I wish I had never heard the name. If it weren't for Akisham, I would pray that the entire race were expunged from the world." Something caught his eye. Noticing, Juno and Ceres strained to look.
"Who is that with Katyr?" Juno asked.
"Mother," Urusham whispered urgently. "She's finally been pried from her hiding place!"
Urusham lunged for his glider, but Juno intercepted him and grasped his arm. The burly hunter pulled away from her grip and glared at her.
"Don't go through with this," Juno advised him. "You're thinking with anger, which means you're not thinking clearly."
"She meets with Katyr, but she will not meet with me?" Urusham seethed. "Katyr is nothing to her! He is a village shaman! I am her son!"
"In the state you're in, going down there will only make things worse," Juno reiterated to him. She positioned herself between Urusham and his glider. Recognizing the danger, Ceres felt a familiar adrenal reaction in her body and the accompanying tension.
In response, Urusham reached out and shoved Juno aside with ease. The senshi tumbled to the ground and rolled helplessly for several feet before being able to stop herself. Reflexively Ceres reached for a pouch of seeds in order to stimulate them into a restraining vine.
Then she realized that they were on a summit of rock and there was no place for her vine to take root. Fear began to grip her. What was she going to do? She couldn't just abdicate her mission and let Urusham go. In his current state, that might lead to war. But taking him on in his current state might get her injured or worse.
"Urusham!" barked Juno, scrambling to her feet. Urusham ignored her and grabbed for the glider. "Aqua Initiation!"
Drawing all the moisture she could from the air at the higher elevation, Juno was able to form a single water globe about the size of a baseball. She launched it and it struck Urusham on the side of the head, staggering him. While he recovered, Juno positioned herself between Urusham and the glider. She strained to form another water globe, but there just wasn't enough water at their higher elevation and the river was too far away.
"Juno!" gasped Ceres.
Alerted by Ceres' cry, Juno saw Urusham's advance. The hunter swung the flat of his sword, trying to drive Juno away more than injure her. Using the acrobatics taught her in the Dead Moon Circus, Juno executed a back flip to avoid the sword, then landed, pushed off and launched herself at Urusham. Before he could recover, Juno seized his wrist and flipped him over her hip, twisting the wrist in hopes of forcing him to release the sword, as Kino Sensei had taught them in training. Urusham landed hard on the rocky ground, but he wouldn't release the sword.
Using brute strength, Urusham twisted out of Juno's grip. Juno threw several kicks at him as he struggled to rise, but the hunter fended them off. All the while, Ceres tried to ignore the pounding of her heart and searched for something she could use to help Juno with. At once, she seized upon it: The glider.
Racing over to the glider, Ceres grasped the edges of one wing and tried to pitch it over the side of the mountain. There would be no attack if Urusham had no means of reaching the castle. What Ceres hadn't counted on was aerodynamics. The glider flipped over onto its top and came to rest several feet from its original spot. Ceres moved to flip it again, but her arm was seized by Urusham. His grip was like iron. Ceres tried to kick his knee as Kino Sensei had taught her, but she hadn't been as attentive as Juno and the kick lacked any damaging force. Urusham flung her away and Ceres landed hard on the rocky surface.
"I have no quarrel with either of you," Urusham warned them, using one hand to right the glider as he held his sword in the other, "save that you seek to bar me from my goal. Stand down while you still can! I will not be barred from my mother any longer!"
"And Toren?" Juno demanded.
"Aye, I will settle with Toren as well, for many things," Urusham declared. "But first things first. I will speak with my mother and I will know why she rejects me!"
"You attack the merwyn and you're only going to draw more retaliation down onto the village by the river!" Juno shouted at him. "Don't those innocent lives mean anything to you? Or don't they matter, as long as you get what you want?"
Urusham looked at her coldly. "And if I strike King Toren down, then there will be no order to retaliate."
"If you strike Toren down," Juno argued, "the merwyn won't need an order!"
Urusham turned away from the argument and sought to launch his hang glider. Desperately Juno threw her hands up into the air, threw her head back and bellowed to the sky.
"Aqua Initiation," she cried, "Pour Down Rain!"
The winds picked up. Clouds above them began to darken. Through sheer desperation, Juno was gathering all of the moisture in the area. It formed into the clouds above them, darkening them as they gained mass and closed out the sun. Urusham stopped and looked up at the rapidly deteriorating weather. A heavy rain would be suicide to glide in, the winds and the water making navigation hazardous. A downpour, as Juno was trying for, would make using the glider impossible. Urusham looked to the heavens and then to Juno. He realized that she was responsible for the sudden change.
Putting the glider down, Urusham walked over to her. A fist lashed out like a cobra striking. Juno tried to block it, but the fist connected with her jaw. She went down like she'd been shot, crumpling in a heap onto the ground. Urusham glanced over to Ceres, but she was still down. Satisfied that there would be no more interference, Urusham walked back and picked up the glider. He glanced up at the sky. The clouds still hung over them, but they weren't worsening. He looked down. Not only were Mellebet and Katyr there, but they had been joined by the Earth princess and her band. And was it - - yes, King Toren as well.
The time was now. Urusham balanced himself on the hang glider's crossbar and launched himself from the rocky summit.
"Juno? Ceres?" Sailor Moon asked urgently. There was no response. She could feel her anxiety go up along with that of her team. "Vesta! Pallas! Home in on them! Check it out!"
Vesta nodded. "Fauna assimilation, Pegasus!" She had no sooner transformed into a winged horse than Pallas scrambled onto her back. The senshi launched into the air and flew off, guided by her senshi communicator and Pallas's telepathic abilities.
"She was never this willful," Katyr mumbled in shock. "Mellebet was a kind and loving spirit. I thought I could reach that spirit. How could she change so?"
"Love, with the proper motivation, can easily be turned to hatred," Helios said to him. "Bitterness can infest and blacken any memory, any emotion, particularly if left to fester."
"You speak with wisdom for one so young," Katyr replied. "Tell me. What do I do? How do I make this up to Mellebet? How do I provide now for the son I abandoned? How do I end this thing and absolve the sin I committed, the sin which has haunted my life?"
"Would that I could tell you," Helios offered. "Some put their hearts beyond the reach of regretful words and conciliatory acts. We can only try."
"What do you think Toren is going to do?" Saturn asked Sailor Moon.
"I don't know," she answered, "but he didn't seem too happy that Mellebet is meddling in Akisham's life. If she's determined to force Toren to choose between them in her blind rage, she may not get the answer she's expecting." She engaged her communicator. "Anything yet, Pallas? Vesta?"
"Pallas can hear Ceres," Pallas reported. "She thinks Ceres is beddy-bye." There was a pause. "Juno is beddy-bye, too."
"Spotted them yet, Vesta?"
"Still on the trail," Vesta came back, "but the beacon is coming in. I'm heading for a cloud formation over that small mountain range. It could be one of Juno's."
"Let me know when you find something," Sailor Moon told them. She closed the communicator and let out a worried breath. "This whole mission has become one gigantic headache."
"Do not give in to despair, Maiden," Helios offered. "Large problems do not have easy answers."
"And Ceres and Juno are probably all right," added Saturn.
"I hope," Sailor Moon mused. "But Mellebet has these merwyn on a hair trigger and now Urusham is loose. There's no telling what he's got in mind."
Mellebet stalked into her room within the castle's east turret. A sentry and attendant trailed her.
"Does the Princess require anything?" asked the attendant.
"No!" Mellebet snapped angrily. "Leave me!"
The attendant backed from the room, but the sentry lingered.
"I said leave me," Mellebet told him.
"But Princess, your father . . ." the sentry began.
"I SAID LEAVE ME!"
The sentry nodded and backed out of the room. Mellebet turned and shook with fury before she regained control of herself. The merwyn walked over to the window and peered down over the grassy plain between the castle and the forest. Katyr, Sailor Moon and Sailor Saturn were headed away from the castle.
"You think that an apology twenty years too late is enough?" Mellebet muttered to herself as she stared. "And a half-hearted effort at that, seeking to make me share the burden of what happened. You should not have betrayed your word to me, Urutarga. You should not have humiliated me. You should not have gazed upon me with such shock and revulsion," and she swallowed, "as if I were beneath you. You, a human!"
And, unbidden, the memory of that day returned to her. She thought about the human child she had given birth to, cradled against the matted fur of her hind legs and crying in protest over the rude way he had been expelled from his safe, warm environment. She recalled how the name came to her: "Urusham", which meant power and grace, for that was what she saw in the red little figure huddled against her.
And always the next memory would come, of Urutarga staring at her as if she were some - - some thing. Her teeth ground together.
She was about to speak. But at once, the canine caught the scent coming from the other room.
"Come out! Now, or I will come in and slay you!" barked Mellebet.
A curtain parted. Leisurely Urusham walked out, his sword drawn and ready to use should the merwyn attack. There was no fear in his eyes. Only determination.
"Mother," he said, a slight accusatory tone to his voice. "How good it is to finally meet you."
Continued in Chapter 10
