Chapter Twelve: Darkness
Some would compare Ushas during nightfall to the land of the dead. Those fools—myself included—have never been to Thoth. It is absolute silence in this dark world. The chill is impalpable, like ghostly fingers clamouring for life than the coldness of space; except that I don't believe in ghosts, only facts. And the facts are that this barren land is grey and only kicks up dust when stepped on; deep canyons and giant craters are the only things that break the flatness of the ground. In the horizon, the sun glares, black spots all over it as if marred by the sight of this planet. There is no colour, no air, no life. Thoth has long ago died, leaving nothing but two survivors as evidence of its existence.
Understandably then, that Mercury appears to have fallen into brief despair at the sight of her dead home. She stands ahead of us, the tips of her boots so close to the edge of the cliff that she only needs to titter forward and plunge to her end. I can feel Jupiter practically shaking beside me, worried for her. But Mars keeps her still. Mercury is a unique soul. So she has a unique way of working through her despair. Sharing isn't one of them.
"We should be quick," I suddenly blurt out. "We shouldn't leave the Silver Millennium unguarded for so long."
Jupiter nudges me so hard with her elbow that I stumble to the side and know immediately that a bone has actually cracked. She's unremorseful, but that means I am. That was callous of me.
"I'm sure the guards are working hard, Venus," Mars says disapprovingly.
I know. But what can I say that isn't the truth of my hating the silence? I needed to do something, and if it isn't consoling Mercury, what else but moving her on?
"No, Venus is right," Mercury says softly. She raises a hand to calm us, but doesn't look back. "Come, I've found the path down."
There are steps carved out of the walls of the canyon, probably the work of ancient Thoths. Now, they are more like random protrusions. The steps are barely there, ruined so much by age and damage from the catastrophe that ended a great civilisation in a mere year. Every land of our steps chips away at the stone; every leaps over gaps between only serve to make those gaps larger. Yet we keep venturing down, deeper and deeper, darker and darker, quieter and quieter.
I've barely opened my mouth and Jupiter is already shooting me dark looks. I'm forced to wallow in my thoughts the same way Mercury must be doing in hers. We're quite similar in this respect when it comes to miserable situations, so I know this is torture. Except that I would probably anger Jupiter before I even get to explain myself, and I have never seen her furious. I don't think I want to.
We finally come across a door of sorts not halfway down the canyon. Here, the platform in front of the rather unimpressive door is nearly untouched. Not surprising given the reason the last Thoths chose this place to seek refuge. Too bad they couldn't anticipate that the surface would be made uninhabitable and the sky blocked from the sun for at least two common years.
Mercury pulls on the handle, and it's almost deafening in the way the heavy, frost-crusted door drags open in the silence of space. It's completely black inside, and Mars goes to light up a torch.
"Not too bright, Mars. Just enough to watch our step," Mercury cautions. She doesn't tell us why.
It's not difficult to guess the reason anyway. I can't smell nor hear anything, and Mars' flame reaches only a small radius around us, but I have no doubt that in the shadows behind those open doors, lie corpses nearly thirty years old. Dried husks or frozen—I suppose it doesn't really matter. We walk by those rooms, trying not to peer through Mars' light to satiate some freakish curiosity. Once in a while, I catch a boot at the edge of Mars' light, before she quickly pulls away. Sometimes it works. Sometimes she just ends up shedding light onto another limb.
When that happens, Mercury will always stop, gazing into the darkness where none of us can see. Why she torments herself with her visor on, I cannot imagine. Perhaps to put to mind how her people used to look like. Nury is many centuries old; her hair has gone white and she is perhaps shorter than she used to be. Mercury herself has been Senshi for nearly as long as she has lived. She would never know how a normal Thoth child looks like, how tall a Thoth man at his prime could reach, how a Thoth mother carries her unborn baby.
Mercury raises her head. "There is a library back here." She opens the door and hesitates. "Wait here."
When she disappears from the light, it is like the gloom of this place becomes magnified tenfold. It is claustrophobic, too dark, too quiet, too difficult to breathe. My breaths come as hisses through my clenched teeth. My fingers curl into claws, barely holding back the power to light up this terrible hallway.
Jupiter touches my shoulder, nearly making me jump. "How's your rib?"
I touch under my arm. It's probably no more than a bruise by now. "Fine."
"So—"
"Don't feel the need to apologise, Jupiter," Mars says. "She deserved it."
"Someone's being rather sensitive today," I reply.
"As opposed to what, you?"
"Whoa," Jupiter exclaims with a frown. "What brought this on?"
"Beryl, clearly," I mutter.
"This is a pointless mission based on a musing of a young Earth's girl."
"You agreed to come!"
"After all that talk about this only working if we journeyed together, would you really have let me stayed?" Mars retorts.
"Go back then." I wave a hand. "Three Guardians will be easier to sync than four."
"Stop it!" Jupiter stomps her leg, and crackles of green sparks travel from her foot up and explodes overhead. Thoth lighting must be powered by something other than illuminated stone as the whole hallway suddenly burst to light.
It is infinitely worse than I'd thought. Not so much the bodies which are few and far in between, but the closed doors, the pictures, the ceremonial hangings tied to those handles. So many families, cowering in the tiny rooms allocated to them far below the surface, dying a slow death as their light resource began to fade. The few stronger ones who tried to give them proper passage into the Thoth afterlife. Those same ones slumping against the door as their strength withdrew from them as well.
Mercury stumbles out the door and quickly closes it. She leans against it, her face hidden. She is trembling a little; I don't want to know what she saw in there under full light.
Jupiter drops her head and puts two fingers to her forehead, saluting off.
"I'm sorry," Mars whispers. I can't say if it's actually directed to me or not.
"Why were you fighting?" Mercury asks softly.
"We're…" Section by section, the lights begin to fade and shut off, until ours is last. "I don't know."
Our section finally shuts down, plunging us back into darkness. "Let's be quick," Mercury says.
After many twists and turns in a maze reminiscent of the knowledge hub back in the Silver Millennium, we enter a room through a door lavished with more ceremonial trinkets from the many worlds gathered in one place than I could have imagined. I see an Ushas statuette, her eternal flame long extinguished. On the other side of the door, the Netoan Family. A Tanse red string is wrapped around the handle; Ataksak's medallion nailed to the door; there is even an ancient Saturn key to the other world. This is our final destination, then.
Lights flicker to life above us, small round globes that glow almost as bright as the sun. As Jupiter follows Mercury out of the concealed closet, I look around. We are in a small common room, barely furnished with only two couches of unknown material and a single monitor. There is a nursery one end, followed by a smaller bedroom, and another—Mercury shuts the door before I can have a good look inside.
"Look around the drawers," she instructs. "Particularly that study there. It's probably the best place where we'd keep important items."
"Knowing you," Jupiter says, shaking her head, "we should actually be looking at places we wouldn't expect to find them."
That gets a smile out of her. "Don't worry, Nury tells me I'm the odd one out."
I end up taking the nursery, and it hits me a little too late once I step in that this is the room Mercury had spent a year in near darkness after her parents had died. There is a cot on the far end. Bare; as if someone had stripped off everything that made it a bed for a toddler. It was probably Mercury herself, dragging her mattress, her toys, her covers... I see the lounge chair in the corner, a lamp beside it. There is the mattress at the foot of the chair, and in a neat, small arc around, layers upon layers of books that can no longer be read, computerised trinkets that can no longer be understood, and toy blocks, stacked in the shape of the only Thoth script I know: Mercury.
She didn't believe she would survive too.
"So here's where everything is." I jump, startled, by Jupiter's sudden entry. She shrugs apologetically. "The study's empty from the waist down."
"So is the other room," Mars says as she comes in, "Nury's."
"That's our Mercury," I say wistfully. "I'll take that closet."
The clothes in there are so small, it hurts all the more having one more thing to help me imagine what it was like for a toddler Mercury to live alone during those days. The facts are inconsistent on whether she was born before or after the catastrophe hit—neither her nor Nury are particularly open about it—but I know: at least one year alone since she turned the lights off on her parents at the common age of two. However fast Thoths mature, she was still just a child.
"Nothing," Mars affirms as we trudge unwillingly back into the living room.
Mercury nods, leaning against the back of the couch. "I was afraid of that."
"Are you sure it was in this area? Maybe—"
"We're at the lowest level of this bunker," she says, cutting me off. "I am sure."
It has to be in that final room then, the one with the closed door. Her parents' room.
"Well." Jupiter exhales long and pumps her fist. "All right."
"Stay here with Mercury, Jupiter." Mars rests her hand on the handle, her body angled in a way that tries to block it fully. She doesn't actually fail; Thoth doors are small. Heck, everything Thoth is rather small; Jupiter's head is practically scraping the ceiling. "I'm better at finding things."
"I'll go with you," I say.
"Thank you." At least, that's what I think I hear Mercury say as we enter the room.
The first thing that greets us is a bed straight ahead, small and not what you would expect for a royal couple. Its headboard is a simple board with minor etchings along the sides. The frame is four planks of some local material nailed together and the bedding a plain navy colour. In the centre, though, piled so high it keeps me from seeing the heads behind those body shapes under the covers, are flowers—big, small, brightly coloured, white, bloomed, buds—some I recognised from my own home world, some from Jupiter's, a rare purple one from Neto, a crystalline one from the Silver Millennium. I don't know whose tradition this is, but somehow, flowers just seem aptly suited to pass the deceased.
"A whole civilisation," I find myself saying softly, "destroyed in just a matter of moments."
"Such is life," Mars replies solemnly, heading over to the shelving along the wall.
"Mercury shouldn't be doing this."
"She's already made up her mind."
"But she's the last Thoth!"
Mars straightens from inspecting a drawer. "Venus, she has Nury. And even if she were to have a life outside of the Guardians, her children will not be Thoth. Not completely. And eventually, what heritable Thoth features she passes on will die out as the descendants grow. There is no way to preserve the Thoth blood. You know this."
I do, so why am I being so difficult about it now?
"Come on, be helpful," Mars admonishes.
I go to the nightstand beside the bed, realising much too late that I now am in full view of the faces of Thoth's last Queen and King. On Ushas, the bodies are always covered, if not already set inside a casket. Here, they are left so openly viewed, as if I'm just watching over sleeping persons. If I didn't know better, however, it's exactly how it looks like. The Queen is pale and has an angular chin, but her nose and lips look soft, and the blue of her hair looks healthier than even Nury's. The King has a fatherly look, a neat trim of a greying beard that tells of several centuries of life.
"They look so…"—I turn to Mars—"not dead."
"It's below freezing and there has never been on record other living organisms on Thoth."
"That's not what I meant."
"Then stop making me guess and help me find the stone," Mars snaps. "In case you've forgotten, both of us can't survive out here as long as Mercury and Jupiter."
A strong sense of hostility rises up within me, and I just barely catch it to refrain from lashing out. She is just as uncomfortable as I am, I tell myself. One day, she too could return to Neto and find her brother dead—assassinated in bed; hung in the town centre; a spear through his chest in a bloody battlefield.
Quietly, I start on the other side of the room from her. There aren't many cabinets around and I quickly finish, circling around until I'm back at the bed, on the King's side. Mars is already done and is staring down at the Queen.
"I don't want her to see this," she whispers.
"They don't believe in covering the faces of the deceased."
"Let's search again."
I take the side she had covered, while Mars takes mine. It's a futile effort that only makes us realise how close we are to our limits.
"They should have practised burning the bodies like we do in Neto," Mars complains sullenly.
"I'm sure they would if they decomposed."
"Search again."
"We don't have time," I say. Yet we do, so insistently that the floor starts to become littered. It is disrespectful and callous, and even Mars seems to have lost the thought for them.
It must be bad when Jupiter comes in and immediately frowns disapprovingly. "What is wrong with you two? You do realise that not only does Mercury have to come in now, she'll also see this mess?"
"We just need a little more time," Mars insists.
"You've been in here nearly an hour."
I blink. Has it really been that long?
"Jupiter, wait!" Mars jumps for Jupiter's arm, who reacts so uncharacteristically that even Mars is too shocked to defend. With a flick of her arm, Jupiter throws her off and catches her by the collar, a snarl on her lips.
"The longer we stay, the worse the pain gets for her." Jupiter releases her and shoves the door wide open.
I can see Mercury. I can see her so clearly in that gap in the wall. That means she can see me, standing right next to the bed. That means she can see…
She raises her head, so slowly. She closes her eyes, so slowly. She exhales, clenches her jaw, books her fists. She opens her eyes, her lips quiver, she closes them again. It's almost a grimace. Why? Why did I suggest this? It's not worth it. Nothing is worth this. Not even little Serenity.
"M-Mercury…" Jupiter steps back, aghast. "I… I'm sorry."
It's like I can hear again after a thousand years. Jupiter's voice brings me out of my strange reverie, like a sudden clap of thunder that makes me jump and fall to my knees, knocking ornaments off the bedside table in a soundless clatter.
"Venus!"
"I'm all right," I wheeze out, quickly raising my hand against Mercury. I wasn't fast enough.
She pauses at the foot of the bed, the faces behind the flowers now in full view. Her eyes widen; it's realisation baring itself all to her. Memories. The pain, the darkness, the loss; they are all rushing back at her now, fighting against the strength of her mental barrier, tearing that colossal wall down as if it were paper. Near thirty common years in the making, such a beautiful mind that grew so strong with unparalleled intelligence and awareness—withering down in the presence of a shattering heart. Tears that have never before appeared but for physical pain. Gasps as un-Thoth manifestations of stress, subconsciously brought out from a life raised among non-Thoths.
Jupiter steps forward. "Mercury…"
She rubs the base of her palms against her eyes and shakes her head. "Of course," Mercury says, her voice unshaking. She walks over to the Queen's side and pulls down the covers, revealing the hands clasped together. It's like watching her work in boiling water—if boiling water hurt her like normal people, that is. With every finger she delicately pulls apart, knowing that with just one tiny carelessness she could easily break off that frozen digit, her expression hardens. Harder. Harder.
I don't know what I'm seeing anymore.
She holds it up to the light, a blue crystal, dull and lifeless. It's no bigger than the palm of her hand, unshapely. But the light that refracts off it is magnificent, and my mind clears.
"What…" Jupiter mutters. Mars frowns.
"We're done here. Let's go," Mercury says.
I really don't like this place and I'm all too eager to be the first one out the door. But then I look back. Mercury leans down, presses her lips to her mother's forehead, an eternal goodbye.
After today, she loses all hope to meet them in the Thoth afterlife. For we will eternally bind our souls to the life of a Guardian.
"Beryl again?"
I pull back my hood and unclasp the buckle, shrugging off the heavy cloak. A servant quickly comes to take it out of my hands. Though she tries to hide it, I see how her face blanches at the smell of filth on it. The things I do for a little Earth's girl.
"You've certainly gotten awfully fond of her," Jupiter continues.
"Nonsense," I say, waving my hand.
"You rushed off the moment you knew the bullies were after her again." She steps in line with me, a smirk on her lips.
"She's a useful friendly, is all."
"Ah, you break my heart!" She clutches her chest and throws her head back in mock pain. "Actually, you break her heart. Stop toying with the girl, Venus."
"I am not!" I say indignantly, slapping her hand away. But the woman is so tall that I feel that the action of reaching up to do so is lessening the annoyed effect I'm trying to portray. In any case, it earns a sudden snort out of a passing guard. "Epia! Go run a hundred rounds around the castle or something!"
"Don't need to let your anger out on a poor recruit."
"You know she won't listen to me."
"She will." Jupiter stretches her hands up into the air, looking as if she could reach the very stars themselves. "They all will, Venus."
I can say nothing to that. I'm not dumb. If I can still see it with my own eyes and yet not come to the same conclusion, what kind of leader am I? Somehow, from all my mishaps and reluctance and wavering confidence, I have become the leader. Mars teases it's by virtue of Mercury unwilling to step up, but we all know anyway that Mercury would've made a terrible leader. Far from driving us to failure, we just wouldn't be able to keep up.
I glance at Jupiter. While Mars is a warrior through and through, Jupiter not only has the potential and experience, she has the presence to be a commander as well. Never once have I seen her bleed or succumb to fatigue. She converses well with the people. And when Mars took her to her first war the other day, apparently it was an overwhelming victory. I have yet to see any repercussions from that in her behaviour.
"If I handed you leadership of the Guardians, what will you do?" I ask.
"I won't take it."
"What if you don't have a choice?"
"There is always a choice."
"But—"
"I don't want it, Venus. I won't do well."
"You were a queen," I insist.
"In a community where royalty means no more than a person with an extra hand on the voting table," she says. "Sure I get the final say, but it is with my advisors that we make the decisions. And it's for the best because I—" She pauses just out of earshot of the crowd entering the antechamber to the outside. "It's no good expressing these doubts in public, Venus."
"You're…" What? "You're right." What just happened?
She blinks. "You realise this too, don't you?"
I nod slowly. "It happened when we were on Thoth." Something is messing with our minds, delving deep and pulling out our darkest thoughts.
"I remember," she continues. "I wanted to talk to you about it, that's why I met you at the gate. But… I got distracted." She rolls her shoulders, as if wanting to stretch.
I suddenly realise I've been rubbing the back of my hand since I returned. "Does your back hurt?"
"Just an itch." She frowns. "The curse?"
"What else?" I swear loudly, startling a couple of the residents. "Come on. Is Mars with Mercury?"
"I think she's with the Princess." She transforms as we leave the antechamber into the outside.
I put back the communication device. "Mercury isn't answering. But we know where she is so let's get her first."
We don't break into a run until at least a hundred yards away from the dome's entrance. The Silver Millennium is hardly a large kingdom, about a hundred or so residences at best, but it is spacious. Like the village I was born in, neighbours can be up to an hour's walk away. With our speed, it doesn't take more than five minutes, although dodging the few carts or houses in the way does slow us down. We come across a cluster of what others may construe as a tiny village, but it's really just a community-run farm. Jupiter speeds up and takes the roundabout way, while I bound about the buildings, careful in my landing so as not to create damage, and we meet up again just outside.
"Do you know where exactly Mylas' house is?" I ask Jupiter.
She shakes her head. Today was supposed to have been the first time we'd venture as visitors into this unknown territory—that of Mercury's admirer, possibly reciprocated. No, I suppose it isn't right for me to assume. I hardly know the Moon-dweller, who in truth is probably one of Queen Serenity's most trusted men. He is a tutor for the other worlds, though he mostly sits for Earth; nearly two centuries old, I think, with the wisdom to go with it. Still, he doesn't act like it the few times I've met him. Always with a smile on his face, a little clumsy, a great storyteller albeit a bit easy to be talked over, Mylas comes off a little…forgettable. Perhaps it is just a trait he developed so that he is not found out while on Earth.
We slow down as we come toward the house, a rather small thing compared to the open shed adjoining it. Mylas and Mercury are both in the shed, sitting next to a metal burner, a hearth for the less accommodating homes. With Mercury there, perhaps they are experimenting to improve the heat-giving mechanism.
Mercury sees us and waves. Whether she notices our expressions or not, she doesn't indicate it. Almost immediately, she faces Mylas again, a soft smile on her lips as they both stare silently at each other, in a mental conversation both Jupiter and I cannot be a part of. Mylas waves to us, a wrench in his hand. For his part, he does attempt to keep a longer eye contact. This forces Mercury to acknowledge us again. And—
The burner explodes.
How, why, I don't know. I stand stock-still like a fool. The house is in absolute destruction with debris flying away. The burning stone expands once more, then bursts into tiny bullets with enough speed to run through my thigh. Jupiter throws me down and covers me with her body, grunting with every impact. I can only gape.
"Mercury!"
No! I scramble to my feet. She wasn't transformed!
"Mylas!" Jupiter tosses away boards and bricks in her haste to find them.
I dumbly follow her path, though it works out for the better. She finally uncovers Mercury, clothes singed and bleeding profusely from a shrapnel in her neck. Jupiter goes to pull it out, only to have her hand slapped away by Mercury's.
"Mercury, it's me, Jupiter," she says frantically. "I'm only trying to help!"
Mercury sputters, trying to say something, gurgling blood from her mouth instead. Her hand flails, trying to grasp something, growing weaker. Spasms hit her; her back arches, something else protruding there. A sharp pain enters my head, bringing me back to my senses.
"We need to help her transform!" I tell Jupiter, dropping to my knees. We take her hands, pressing her down. Every writhe disturbs our concentration. Every spurt of blood at our faces threatens our link. It scares me how much the outcome can go either way. I'm trying, pushing, praying—shoving so much of my magic to her that it almost drains me dry.
"Don't die," I beg, tears blinding me. "Don't die."
"Should I pull it out?" Jupiter moans. "I think the metal is touching her spine. Venus, should I pull it out?"
I don't know! "I don't know!" What do I do?
Lengthen the metal... Shorten the metal... Maybe lengthen it a bit more...
I reach over and touch the shrapnel, closing my eyes to focus. Yes, Jupiter was right, the tip is digging into her spine. I can feel nerves running across its edges, snapping at every violent twitch. Yet I know I cannot pull it out for it is also slowing her bleeding. "Jupiter, I need to leave her to you," I say tersely. Never before have I regretted not honing my metal magic to its absolute finesse as much as I have now. Weapons are one thing. This is near impossible.
Yet somehow I manage. Jupiter brings out her transformation not long after, and when Mercury finally settles, I turn her over and pull the rod from the back of her shoulder, and start on the rest of her fragile body. Eventually, it becomes safe enough to remove the shrapnel at her neck.
Jupiter heaves a sigh of relief and presses her forehead to Mercury's. "We nearly lost you," she whispers.
Mercury reaches up to stroke the back of her neck comfortingly. I stand up shakily. "I'll look for Mylas."
"Don't."
When Mercury muses, she leans back and steeples her hands. When she tilts her head, her muses have become a potential reality where she can now develop theories off it. When those theories become complicated, she scowls.
So what does it mean when she is hunched over her bench, fingers interlocked and resting close to her lips, covering half her face?
"Mylas was tainted," she had told us. What that means is anyone's guess. Mercury wasn't in the mood to explain further.
I stand in the doorway of her lab, little Serenity beside me. Mars had taken to a stealthy rampage on Earth, accompanied by Jupiter. I hope they find something to explain this…this impossibility. Moon-dwellers have never committed such dark atrocity. They are peaceful, contented people, generally accepting of all beliefs and ideas. Guards weren't even considered until Sailor Uranus demanded it a mere thirty common years ago.
And Mylas intentionally created an explosion that took his life and nearly took Mercury's.
It had to be Earth.
"Will Mercury be all right?" little Serenity asks quietly.
"Her wounds were deep but she's strong," I say. "She will recover soon enough."
"That's not what I was asking." Little Serenity slips under my arm and hesitating comes up behind Mercury. She touches her shoulder, waiting. When Mercury doesn't shake her off, she wraps her arms around her front and presses her cheek against Mercury's. Maybe she says something. Maybe it's just the hug itself.
Mercury hides her face behind her hands and this time, I know what it means.
A/N:
Edit - 15th Oct 2016: For some explanation/follow-up of the reason they've gone to Thoth for the blue crystal, please visit Dawn of the Moon Chapter 29, First Scene (do not read the rest if you don't want to be spoiled for the rest of Evening); or send me a message.
A reminder and amendment of the warning before: I can't make this standalone anymore. It probably has to be treated more like a companion of Dawn of the Moon now. I'll note in future A/Ns when this happens again. So sorry for that.
Valkyrie Celes: Biggest thanks, as always!
Vchanny: So sorry, bad writing on my part. The idea is as you guessed, though more specifically to show Venus that Earth's people do not even have a clue of their existence, so Venus shouldn't even need to consider them as enemies. Thanks for pointing it out; I added a couple more things in that chapter that hopefully explains it a bit more clearly now. :)
Thanks, and take care!
