Author's Note: School will be interfering in my update rate now, so please bear with me as I slowly put my thoughts to paper (or in this case, Microsoft Word Document) and join Sakura and Syaoran for this next saga of their adventure that has just begun!
Summary: There's a certain prophecy that tells of four legendary swords with the powers of the elements. This prophecy was passed down until it became legend... and then myth. Now, a thousand years later, the swords have resurfaced and two people set forth to claim these powerful weapons. What will happen when their paths cross?
Ruler of the Elements
Chapter 9: Buried Under Stone
A thought popped into her head. It was risky, but at least Tomoyo would be safe. As the wolves regrouped, she pulled out a card from the deck that was still in her pocket and activated it. The card glowed, turning the world yellow, and everything except the two girls stopped in their tracks: she had frozen time. Without waiting around, Sakura looked Tomoyo straight in the face and said, "Go!"
Tomoyo stared at her in confusion, not understanding what she meant. "Go!" Sakura repeated, "I can't hold time still for long, and you don't stand a chance of surviving against ten monsters. I'm in no shape to protect you, so hurry up and find somewhere safe to hide. After I'm done with these pests, I'll come and find you."
"Sakura-chan…" Tomoyo whispered, eyes filling with tears as she finally understood her best friend's thoughts. The Time Card took up a lot of magic… magic that Sakura didn't have. She intended to sacrifice her own safety for Tomoyo. "Don't be a hero," she sobbed.
"I won't, now go…!" Sakura yelled as a building near them flashed from yellow to its regular color and back to yellow. "I'll be fine!"
Tomoyo nodded, knowing that she wouldn't be able to persuade Sakura to act otherwise, and ran past a frozen wolf, back the way they came. After she had left, Sakura half grinned, half grimaced, as time flowed once again and the world continued on as if nothing had happened. And she muttered…
"How cliché is this…"
Growls filled the air as the wolves advanced. Though they were more intelligent than the normal kind – and that is saying a lot – they ignored the absence of the other 'prey,' deciding to settle on the dirty and exhausted, but still fresh, female laying on the floor at their feet. Sakura closed her eyes as they drew closer; what a way to die…
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Syaoran rubbed his aching shin gingerly, grimacing from the pain that resulted from Sakura's anger, all the while muttering under his breath. "What is that woman thinking, running off towards who-knows-what and who-knows-where? She'll just get herself killed and it'll be the end of that."
He straightened himself, stretching his leg out as he put away the now pendant-shaped sword into his pocket and prepared to set out away from the congregation of monsters he could see, far off at the center of the city. There was no reason for him to get involved; he had lost his chance to get his hands on the Sword of Gales, so there was nothing left for him in this half deserted half destroyed city. Still, he had a strange desire to check if that auburn haired girl was alive… not that he cared. She's just a rival; an extremely good rival that I want to beat with my own hands… though I won't admit that to her, he convinced himself.
Just as he was about to leave, a far off scream reached his ears. He spun around and spotted a woman being chased by what seemed to be extremely large hawks with large, blood red eyes, light grey feathers, and sharp raking talons that were nearing their victim's unguarded back. Hating himself for caring, he pulled out an ofuda, a slip of paper with the Chinese character for the element that he was about to use inscribed on it. He muttered, "Come forth, lightning," and moments later, two streaks of yellow flashed down from the cloud filled sky, burning the feathers from the hawks' flying bodies and blinding their large eyes. They crumpled to the ground where they twitched once, and stopped moving, turning into stone.
The woman sank down to her knees in relief as Syaoran ran over to her. For a split second, he had another strange feeling of hope that it would be Sakura, but he shoved it to the back of his mind, scolding himself for 'trying to show off.' A few feet from the woman, who had began sobbing hysterically, he could tell it wasn't the girl with bright emerald eyes, but her friend, who had amethyst eyes instead.
"Daidouji-san?" Syaoran asked. His voice attracted the raven haired woman's attention and she looked up, tears still cascading down her face.
"Li-kun… thank – whatever you're supposed to thank – you're here!" she gasped. Realizing that her face was streaked with dirt and tears, she wiped dry her face with the, still relatively clean back of the sleeve of her dirty and torn kimono. "Thanks for saving me…" she added sheepishly.
"What are you doing here? Where's Kinomoto?" Syaoran asked, ignoring her thanks.
"That's why I came back," Tomoyo started slowly before rushing on hysterically, "Sakura-chan's in trouble. We were cornered by more of those wolf monsters and she froze time so that I could escape, but that probably used up a lot of her magic so she might be utterly defenseless right now or even… even…" More tears flowed down her face as she trailed off. The thought was too horrible to think, much less speak aloud.
"She froze time?" Syaoran asked incredulously. That was high level magic, and he hadn't thought that Sakura had had it in her, even if she had been trained by the Clow Reed. If she had indeed, as Tomoyo said, froze time, then she would probably be lying, wherever she currently was, motionless waiting for the wolves to walk right in and - He shook the gore filled thoughts from his mind and asked Tomoyo, "Where is she, and how long has it been since you last saw her?"
"I left her behind at an intersection somewhere in the city, and it's probably about ten minutes," Tomoyo replied sadly, "Why?"
This is not good, Syaoran thought to himself. Though a ten minute's run for a frantic Tomoyo might not necessarily mean ten minutes for him, it would be more than ample time for the wolves to make quick work for his, most probably exhausted, rival. "Let's go," Syaoran said, ignoring the woman's query, believing that some things were better left unsaid.
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Ten minutes earlier…
Sakura felt the heat exerted from the flames covering the wolves' bodies. She could also hear the roar that came from energetic and extremely hot fires. She felt lucky that her eyes were too tired to open, mouth too tired to scream in pain as she imagined how being burnt to a crisp would feel. As the heat started to become too unbearable – signaling the proximity of the burning wolves – the air suddenly cooled and the heat receded at the unmistakable sound of a sword striking through flesh accompanied by the unearthly howl of the blow's recipient. An instant later, her head darted up to meet face to face with the fangs of a stone statue; the maw still wide open from the earsplitting howl. Similar howls filled the air as a cool wind blew over her tired body still lying on the ground. A smirk settled on her face as she found that she really wasn't too tired to open her eyes, her actions proving her earlier thoughts wrong. But… who could it be that was dealing with the monsters so effortlessly efficient and systematically?
If only I could twitch my finger to show that I'm alive, maybe someone will pick me up so that I can look at more than the dirt under my nose! Or… if I could possibly summon the strength to lift up my, somehow too heavy, head, I could see for myself!
Lost in thoughts, as she had been on several other occasions during the past few days of the tournament, she didn't register the end of the howls before a voice broke into her thoughts, scattering her self pity into thin air. "Fancy meeting you here, much less on the ground," a quiet, though sarcastic voice emanated somewhere above her body.
It was definitely not the Prince, thought Sakura with equal, if not more sarcasm, though it was definitely a male voice. Syaoran Li would have said something more irritating after finding her on the ground, with her dignity in shambles. So, not knowing the name or nature of her savior, she replied with, "Blood…?" She would have said with something more suitable to their situation to loosen up her tension from the near death experience, but drops of red distracted her as they slowly dripped on the ground in front of her eyes. Moments later, she felt more drops of the warm liquid settle into her right arm's sleeve and trail down her arm to her fingertips.
"I'm afraid so," the voice replied before she heard the sound of someone collapsing to their knees and the sound of a sword being pushed hard into the ground to hold up its wielder's weight. She knew exactly what the sound symbolized because the sword struck the earth seemingly inches form her face, though was actually more than a foot away. Awkwardly tilting up her eyes, she suddenly recognized the face of the Guardian of the Winds.
Kyo Saikatou looked much more than a little worse for wear. Blood dripped down his left arm, which hung loose and useless. Several cuts on his face gave him an untrue war-hardened look and his clothes were in shambles; torn and sullied beyond repair. He seemed to concentrate on summoning strength for his next task before he got up and pulled his sword out of the ground. It was only then that Sakura recognized the blade as the Sword of Gales: Tysterisk. What his next task was soon became apparent; he held the sword in the air directly in front of him, hilt facing the right with the abnormally clean flat of the blade reflecting his image back at him. Inscriptions Sakura had never noticed before flared to life, glowing bright green as a whistle loosed itself from Kyo's partially opened lips and a great gust of wind whipped his clothes to and fro, like a puppet on strings, before it settled around Sakura's prone body and she felt herself being lifted up above the ground. She flipped over once in the air, her stomach lurching and a few trickles of blood leaking form the corner of her mouth, in a half turn. Tired beyond her mind's belief, her body slowly shutdown and her last coherent thoughts were of bewilderment. Her eyes closed as she felt herself begin to move, the summoned and enchanted air rocking her slightly into a deep slumber.
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Syaoran arrived at the intersection two minutes after Sakura and Kyo had left, just missing them, a total of eighteen minutes passing after Tomoyo's escape from the monsters; ten for Tomoyo's wild run from the falcon like monsters and eight for his rapid pace toward the fallen swordswoman. The scene before him gave him a feeling of both apprehension and relief. Ten wolf statues, in various poses of pain, were arrayed within the intersection's square. Syaoran calmly looked around and confirmed what he had thought when he had first arrived; Sakura Kinomoto had not been killed by the wolves and was most likely still alive, not dead… yet. That was more than he could ask for, though why he felt this deep feeling of concern, he did not, and did not think he wanted, to know. Aside from the flecks of drying blood or occasional drop of already dried blood, there were not any relatively large, or even close to human sized pools of blood. Furthermore, if she had already been killed by the wolves – which would most likely mean her body disfigured by the gorging of the wolves, a sight he did not want to picture, – why would the slayer of the ten wolves not leave her carcass there? Why go to the trouble of properly burying, or finding a place to store a dead body when monsters were roving around in large numbers, searching for more quarry to chase?
Feeling the development of a slight headache from the various thoughts piling into his head, he stopped thinking and calmly thought of only one thing; find Sakura's trail. Of course, the sudden drizzle, which soon became a downpour of rain, did not help his predicament at all. If the Good Samaritan that saved her had left her behind, which was not likely, she would have left traces of either blood or a dirty path behind, with her body in the metaphorical state that it most probably was in. If the, still figurative, Good Samaritan that saved her had brought her with him or her, there would be traces still of the same examples mentioned before and maybe more, considering the means of transportation; the person would have to either carry her, even if there were more than one of them, or use some sort of magic to move her, and magic could be traced. Even as his mind worked on these possibilities (which meant he hadn't really stopped thinking), he detected a faint trail of magic, particularly wind magic. Ideally, wind would be an efficient way to move objects, were it not for the drain in magic to continue keep the wind in a more material form and the fact that the larger and more durable the platform for… say a human, the more magic used. Furthermore, the weight factor would also have to be considered in the equation. All in all, his final conclusion was that the person either carried her him or herself and used wind magic to aid in the person's flight, or said figurative person used wind magic to carry her a short distance away, or used a magical object to aid the process, which would mean that any distance was possible.
Final conclusion… this is giving me a headache, Syaoran thought to himself. He then closed his eyes and concentrated on the magical trail. After a moment of concentration, he reopened his eyes and started walking to the left path away from the intersection. Strangely, he had a feeling that he was forgetting something…
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Another two minutes passed before the silence of the empty intersection was once again broken by the sound of footsteps. "I'm completely drenched and soaked. Why did he have to leave me behind, and in this storm too? I thought he told me to follow him!" Tomoyo grumbled to herself. How was she supposed to find Sakura if Syaoran didn't wait for her? She looked around and spotted fresh footprints in the newly made mud. Shrugging to herself, she followed them, hoping that they were indeed Syaoran's as she ran to the left path and followed the footsteps, unaware that she was being stalked yet again.
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Sakura drowsily opened her eyes. Am I dead, she asked herself, and then quickly shook away the thought. It wouldn't hurt so much if I was dead, she commented dryly as she winced in pain. Her whole body was sore as if she had been hit by a two hundred pound brick… but she hadn't been hit. But where in the world was she? She looked around to see a ceiling above her head, and moved her head until she could see what she was laying on that was so comfortable. With an ironic smile, she realized that it was a bed she was on. She must be in someone's house, or rather what had been someone's house. The place was sullied with dust. Cracked floors and broken furniture sported the room. A whole section of the wall had been broken, torn away by some unknown force, so that she could see the rain pouring down outside. She was suddenly grateful for the warmth that came from the fire lit in the building. Fire… in a building? But who had started the fire? Slowly and painfully, she pulled herself up to a sitting position, her whole body aching and drained of strength. Her movements attracted the attention of the other occupant of the dirty, practically destroyed, and yet, still comfortable room.
For a second, she stared blankly at the wounded, blood splattered, orange haired man leaning against the wall, with one hand gripping a sword that shined brightly in the shadow filled room. Then her memories filtered back into her head and she gasped in recognition. With disregard for her own condition, she half jumped and half fell off the bed towards the man. "Saikatou-san! What happened? Are you alright? How did we get here? Where is this place?"
"Whoa, whoa… calm down," he replied with what started as a chuckle and ended in a hacking cough. Flecks of blood landed on an unsullied part of his white shirt. Still, with all the blood leaking out of various wounds, the shirt was ruined anyways; a little more blood wouldn't change anything. Kyo took a moment before saying, "And remember; it's Kyo, not Saikatou-san. I'm hoping you remember that I arrived just in time to save you from those ten wolves, but it's alright if you don't. You were, after all, sprawled on the ground," he added wryly. "Then, I used Tysterisk's power to move you here after it started raining. As to where this place is, it is one of many abandoned buildings in this city, which I believe has been completely overrun by monsters." He ended his reply with another hacking cough, sending more flecks of red onto his bloodied shirt.
"I meant what happened to you?"
"I… got in a spot of trouble with two giant fists made of stone," he replied with a weak smile. "Fortunately, I escaped in time to find and help you."
"So that… thing is still rampaging around nearby?" Sakura asked incredulously.
"That, unfortunately, is correct."
"But you had Tysterisk! Shouldn't you have won?"
"And there's the problem; brought right up to the surface," Kyo sighed.
"What do you mean?" Sakura queried.
"The answer to that question is the reason why we're stuck here and most of the city is ruined," he replied. Sakura looked confused but listened quietly while he continued, "Though I am the Guardian that will protect Tysterisk, I don't have the ability to wield its full power. The only one who can do that is the person it chooses to be rightful bearer of its blade, and that is not me." He looked intently at Sakura and asked, "Do you understand?"
Sakura definitely did not understand… at least not all of it, so instead of answering his question, she asked, "How does a weapon, though Tysterisk is definitely special, pick its wielder? Isn't it supposed to be the other way around?" Kyo chuckled at her confusion like someone who had gotten hold of a juicy secret which he wanted to share, but didn't all the same. Irritated by his response, she turned her head to the side to put his smirk out of her line of sight. With the brief moment of silence that followed, the smirk called an unbidden thought to her mind, This is all Li's fault! If he hadn't gotten on my nerves, I wouldn't have dragged Tomoyo halfway across the city only to have to use up all my magic to save her! If only that irritating man – a so called 'Prince' – was here instead Saikatou-kun, I could proceed to wipe those annoying smirks he always wears off of his face…but why would I want him here? Saikatou-kun is not half as annoying as him. Great… just great! I feel like killing something now!
Just as she was picturing several ways to kill the man she blamed for her present predicament, Kyo spoke again, "To answer your question I'll have to tell you a story." His voice broke her train of thought and she felt the anger evaporate at the opportunity of a logical explanation, though why he would use a story to explain, she didn't know. At the slightly confused, but eager and attentive face she showed him, he added, "Please bear with me, for I might lose my place in the story if you interrupt." At Sakura's nod, he proceeded to take a deep breath and started his tale.
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"Where is she?" Syaoran muttered in frustration.
- To Be Continued…
Ending Note: Expect cliffhangers from now on… Coming up next time is the Special Sub-Chapter: The Guardian of the Winds. A special chapter dedicated to the, soon to be recurring, appearances of my original character Kyo Saikatou. Note that even though it is a 'special' chapter, it is still a vital part to the story. YOU MUST READ IT TO UNDERSTAND WHAT COMES NEXT! Though I don't really understand it myself just yet… but I will!