Chapter eleven… On Cloud Nine
Mako lunged at the newcomer, but she danced to the side, keeping the staff stretched towards Li's heart. "You don't want to get in my way," she sang out as he came at her again. "I could hurt your friend even worse than I am now… do you really want that to happen?"
Li screamed again. Against her will, it seemed, tears were streaming down her face. They were running out of time.
Mako threw his hands out at Cirrus. "Leviathan Blade!"
"Barrier Shield!" she countered immediately.
The dragon of water spiraled out from Mako's hands at full force. Come on, he urged it silently, come on, come on…
A sound like a brick being thrown through a window rang out. The dragon had drilled straight through the shield.
Keilin watched Cirrus dive to her right, tucking the staff under her, causing the dragon to miss by four feet. Li dropped heavily to the ground. Keilin ran forward, trying to help her up before Cirrus could regain her composure, her arm outstretching as she moved—
Movement far ahead in a cluster of trees caught her eye: another silhouette hiding in shadow. Someone else.
No, she thought, we can't handle more than this, we can't even handle one.
Cirrus was rising. Mako rushed forward to deal her another blow.
Keilin yanked Li up with less grace than she could have given and looked back to the shadow in the trees.
Still there. Retreating. Good.
"What are you looking at?" Li asked, following her gaze. "I don't see anything."
"Are you okay?" Keilin asked, still keeping an eye on the shadow.
Li nodded. "Yeah."
"Go help Mako," Keilin said. "Tell him we may have company."
Li obediently bounded off.
The shadow stopped. Keilin prepared herself to cast Angel Wing, waiting.
Two eyes opened on the shadow's face. The rest of the body remained shrouded in obscurity, but these two eyes, clear as day, stood in a sharp contrast to the darkness.
Keilin felt her breath catch in her chest. "Cail?" she asked, shocked.
"Flame Dagger!" came Li's voice from somewhere to her left. Cirrus gave a cry, then called forth another spell, and Mako yelled in pain; he recovered and answered with his own magic, and Cirrus shrieked again.
Hi, Keilin.
"What are you doing here?"
I wanted to talk to you.
"This really isn't a good time—"
Your friends will be fine.
Keilin glanced over her shoulder. Li had latched onto the staff with the purple orb on top, and she and Cirrus were engaged in a furious tug-of-war for it; both of them were spouting insults and threats at each other, and Mako was standing off to the side, as if he wasn't sure what to do. His face was unusually red.
"But she could kill them. She said she's going to," Keilin said, looking back towards the trees.
Are you coming or not?
"Cail, can't this wait?"
The shadow began to retreat again.
Yes or no, Keilin. Follow me.
It was gone.
Keilin looked one more time at the unfolding scene, then took off into the trees ahead of her as quickly as she dared.
Cirrus finally managed to wrench the staff out of Li's hands. She swung it around and aimed it at Mako, who had been prepared to cast magic again; he felt sharp, white-hot pain explode throughout his chest, and he half expected to burst into flames. His throat was raw, swelling, he was choking—
—and suddenly it was over. He gasped in a cool lungful of fresh air and looked up to see Li holding a large stick in both hands like a baseball bat, beating wildly in Cirrus' general direction. Three long scratches on the woman's shoulder were yielding blood: apparently, Li had scored a hit. Cirrus either didn't notice or simply ignored the cuts; she swung her staff around and met the stick in midair. A loud crack resounded, and Li's weapon was snapped in half; the pieces of the stick flew in different directions. Inertia drove the globe on the staff into Li's side, and the girl fell to her knees. Cirrus laughed once, then prepared for a spell to finish her off.
She had forgotten that Mako was behind her.
The shorter, thicker half of the stick hit her squarely in the side of the head. Mako had, for lack of any better plan, just thrown it at her as hard as he could.
Cirrus cursed and swung herself around to face him, a line of blood coursing from her temple into her silver hair. "You little—"
"Leviathan Blade!" Mako shouted.
Cirrus screamed, long, high, shrill, as the dragon left a sizable gash on her side; more of her blood showered the grass. There was a flash of light, and she was gone.
Li stood rubbing her side and staring at the vacant spot on the ground Cirrus had left. "Nice shot."
Mako shrugged. "I have good aim." He hesitated, then added, "She'll come back. That just grazed her."
"Let's go before she decides to make another appearance, then," Li suggested quickly. "With this and that other person Keilin saw—"
"What?" Mako broke in.
Li's eyes widened. "I forgot to tell you! Keilin said she saw someone else farther in the trees. Isn't that right, Kei?" Her head swiveled right, then left, as her expression grew puzzled. Mako took a quick survey of the area too.
Keilin was gone.
"Crap," he muttered under his breath. "She didn't go after them herself, did she?"
"Or else they took her," Li suggested, voice tremulous.
Mako felt the now-familiar tug on his pant leg and looked down to see Mokona, one paw still on his leg and the other pointing ahead of them. "Puu!"
"She's in there?" Mako asked, and Mokona nodded. He scooped their guide up. "Show me the way."
"Cail! Wait!" Keilin pushed herself over a large fallen log and continued forward, trying to keep the shadow in sight as it led her farther in. The trees became more and more numerous, taller, closer together, until it became clear that they were well into the forest by now. "Where are we going? Why couldn't we just talk back there?"
I wanted to talk to you, not the others, he answered, sounding farther off than he had before.
Keilin picked up her pace. "Could you slow down? I'm in a skirt!"
Just a little farther.
The shadow vanished behind a thick curtain of vines. It took Keilin half a minute to reach it as well. She hesitated, then ducked through to the other side.
She emerged in a tiny circular clearing, just big enough for a few people to stand under a canopy of leaves so thick the sky could not be seen at all. It was dark, quiet, and unsettling. She turned around once. The shadow was gone. "Cail?"
Above you.
Keilin looked up and turned to her right. The shadow crouched on a large branch around ten feet up a tree. Even though this was the closest she had ever been to him, she still couldn't see him well, just those clear-as-day storm-sky eyes on the silhouette. "Are you coming down?"
Not yet.
She hadn't really expected him to, but she felt a little disappointed anyway. "What is this about?"
So you are one of the Magic Knights that Ciela summoned?
"Yes."
I saw you use your magic in Farway. That was quite impressive.
She didn't answer. She felt a little uneasy. Why was Cail only interested in her?
Do you know how the Magic Knights are selected, Keilin?
"No."
The spell Ciela used seeks out the three people in your world who have the strongest and purest hearts, emotions, wishes and dreams at that exact moment. Mako's intense desire for perfection and his overprotective attitude toward his sister, Li's childlike innocence, they helped select those two for the position.
Keilin frowned. "That can't be right. Why was I selected, then? My heart isn't strong. Not like his. And… I don't have Li's… 'childlike innocence,' if that's what you call it. I thought this Magic Knight thing was about doing the right thing, making everyone happy, bringing light to the world. All I know is darkness."
What is it you desire, then?
"What do you mean? I want nothing more than to go home."
I don't think that's true, and I don't think you're fooling yourself either. He paused, then added, There's something that you desperately want, and I think it's related to this darkness you've drowned in.
For a moment, Keilin heard her voice echoing inside her head, a memory of six years ago, heard the cries, the sobbing, could almost feel the bruise on her cheek. No, she thought, that's impossible. There's no way he could know. Aloud, she snapped, "What, you're my psychiatrist now? I want nothing, okay?!"
Keilin—
"No. I don't want to talk about this. Just forget it."
Did something happen to you?
"No!" she yelled up at him, resisting the temptation to stamp her foot as she said it. "Nothing happened, okay? Now drop it!"
Alright.
This shocked her. She had expected him to continue pressing, trying to force something—anything—out of her. Knowing full well that he didn't believe a word she had just snapped at him, she glared at the shadow on the branch. "Was there anything else? I need to get back to the others."
Then I'll make this quick, he answered, and his young voice seemed a little wooden. The Spring of Eterna is dangerous. I've hidden something for you between the roots of this tree. It should be of some help.
Keilin muttered an automatic, toneless "thank you".
Cail's shadowed form shifted positions slightly. Keilin, I know you don't trust me completely. That's alright. I'm willing to wait and prove to you that you can trust me. He paused again, then continued when she offered no response: Your friends are coming. I'll see you later.
The eyes closed, and the shadow seemed to melt into the deeper shadows of the trees.
Keilin slowly walked forward and knelt down by the foot of the tree he had stood on. Something lay wrapped in a drab piece of cloth between two of the bigger roots.
She drew away the cloth and almost gasped out loud. A knife lay on the grass, a twelve-inch, extremely sharp narrow blade that glimmered even in the dim light, with a golden handle set with two small emeralds on either side.
She was afraid to touch it, as if it would suddenly jump up and slice her arm open the way her magic had hit the chimera. It seemed both large and small at the same time, it seemed to glow from within, it seemed to ask her to take it—
"Keilin? Kei!"
She started, and her head whipped around over her shoulder.
Li was holding the vines back, Mako and Mokona standing just behind her. "Kei," Li said again, "what are you doing? Where have you been?"
Keilin looked back to the knife. Quickly, she made to cover it again, but when her finger touched the handle, it vanished and a streak of green light soared into the orb on her glove, which glowed for half a second before going dark again.
What on earth? she wondered silently.
"Kei?" Li asked for the third time. "Are you okay? What the heck were you doing anyway?"
Keilin straightened up quickly. "I was trying to find whatever it was I saw," she said, deciding that it was close enough to the truth to mollify her conscience.
Mako stared at her in disbelief. "You should have waited! We're not supposed to split up!" he said sharply.
Keilin folded her arms. "What if they'd attacked from behind?" she asked, her voice falling back to the dull quality she was used to using around others.
"What if they'd attacked you?" Li retorted.
"There wasn't anyone there," Keilin lied, completely ignoring her conscience now. "And I do have magic now, if you've forgotten already!"
"That's beside the point," Mako started, but she cut him off. "That's exactly the point. I can take care of myself." She knew she sounded childish; she just didn't care. After practically biting Cail's head off, she had enough anger in her to dish it out on anyone who would listen.
Mako didn't seem bothered. "We could have used your help in fighting Cirrus, then," he said quietly.
Keilin found herself unable to answer.
They glared at each other for nearly half a minute before she broke eye contact, scooped up Mokona in a less-than-gentle manner, and muttered, "Let's just go."
