Title: The Heralds of the White God chapter 13 - Things Seen and Unseen
Rating: M
Warnings: Violence this chapter.
Summary: In which Kurogane and Syaoran encounter an ambush in the desert, and Sakura begins to see glimpses of the truth behind the veil.
Author's note: Kendappa's comment about dancing is a passing reference to the legend of Amaterasu, whom she supposedly incarnates. When the sun goddess hid in a cave, plunging the world into darkness, the other gods arranged a massive party outside her cave, including the Kami of Merriment, who performed a raunchy dance on top of a washtub in order to try to lure Amaterasu out again.
Kurogane squatted on the hilltop, squinting curiously at the plant. At least he deduced it was a plant; it was green and it sprouted from the ground, and it certainly was neither an animal nor a rock. But it also had neither leaf nor stem; only a cluster of flat, round disks about the size of his palm, growing haphazardly upwards like coins stacked on edge. He leaned forward on the balls of his feet and poked it curiously; it felt rubbery and oozed moisture where broken. Spines caught on his glove as he withdrew it, and he winced and extracted one from the gap between fingers.
This was a strange new land, he thought, and he'd better learn its ways quick if he wanted to survive.
He lifted his head and rocked back on his heels, surveying the terrain from the high point he'd climbed for this very reason. They'd left the mountains behind them and the foothills had flattened out, leaving broad stretches of flat plain between the few remaining bumps. The endless sea of green trees had petered out and broken up, making irregular, splotchy rows of dark green across a dusty tan backdrop. The ridges and ravines that did climb above the plain were barren rock and gravel, mostly, baked by the sun; but the mountain streams which trickled to nothingness in in shallow beds were marked by swathes of yellow-stemmed grass, so thick that from this distance the ground seemed to be covered in golden fur.
It was not even midday yet, but the sun blasted down from a wide blue sky overhead, sending rivulets of sweat trickling under his heated armor. It was miserably uncomfortable, but he ignored it; he'd be a lot more uncomfortable if they ran into something without the armor. Not that he expected demons - this wasn't demon country, no humans for them to feed on - but you never knew. Kurogane pushed his way to his feet, brushing the sand and gravel from his legs, and turned to hike down the shallow side of the ridge back to the camp where Syaoran waited.
"Did you see anything?" the boy wanted to know, as he slung the last of the bags across the kozelorug's saddle. They'd found a stream - or at least what passed for one, in this dry land - and while Syaoran had filled up as many waterbags as he could, Kurogane had taken the opportunity to scout ahead. He was a little worried about their mounts - they were covered in shaggy hair and didn't really seem suited for this flat, hot landscape - but they didn't seem bothered by much, and there wasn't really much they could do about it anyway.
"No," Kurogane grunted as he climbed back into his saddle. It was a difficult feat in armor, considering the height of the beast's back, but he'd had a lot of practice. Once he'd mounted and gathered his reins, he raised a hand and squinted in the direction of the morning light. "Let's go."
"That's good, right?" Syaoran asked hopefully as his mount swung easily into step behind Kurogane's.
"Not necessarily."
"But we don't want to meet anything, do we?" the boy asked after a moment, a confused note in his voice like he already knew this was the wrong question.
"Don't be stupid. Of course we don't."
"Then why…" Syaoran trailed off uncertainly. Kurogane stayed silent as they crossed the flats, then pulled to a sudden stop as they crested a ridge.
"Look out there," he said, pointing with one hand. "What do you see?"
Obediently Syaoran looked, and frowned. "Um…" he said. "Cattle?"
"They're not cattle," Kurogane replied. "Different heads, different horns, different hooves. Never seen anything like them before. But that's not important. The important thing is that they're there."
"Yes?" Syaoran said uncertainly.
"Out in the wild, kid," Kurogane said, "where there's food, there will be something that eats the food. There's grass, so they eat the grass. The question is, what eats them?"
"Um," Syaoran said in a very different tone of voice. He glanced quickly in every direction. "…lions?" he ventured.
Kurogane shook his head. "Lions aren't that hard to spot if you know what to look for," he said. "Certain kind of tracks. Certain kinds of scat. There are no lions or any other big cats out here.
"But I did see some other tracks." He glanced around for a suitable mark to use as demonstration, but there were none handy. "Only on the gravel, not on the dirt. Small tracks, but widely spaced. I've never seen tracks like that made by an animal before."
"Demons?" Syaoran's eyes went wide, catching the qualifications he didn't say.
"There shouldn't be any demons out here," Kurogane said, but his voice wasn't sure. "Demons don't eat animals."
Syaoran chewed on his bottom lip. "What, then?" he asked.
"Don't know," Kurogane said, and kicked his mount into motion again. "Point is, I saw the tracks. But I didn't see what made 'em. So keep your eyes open, all right?"
The savannah seemed to stretch on forever. They were actually making better time on this level, open ground than they had picking through the mountains and forests; but there were fewer landmarks to judge by, so the distance seemed to crawl on endlessly. The terrain continued to flatten as they traveled, and there were fewer hills or ridges to get a good lookout of what was ahead. All that could be seen were the endless rows of scrubby dwarf trees and dry, dun-colored grasses stretching to a dead-level horizon.
Day by day the sun rose before them, climbed overhead, and gradually sank behind their backs. Kurogane began to give serious thought to the problem of water. It had never been much of an issue in his old career, since he knew the terrain of his old patrol well enough to find springs and lakes wherever he went. Even this side of the mountains, where the rain fell only rarely, there had been a steady supply of mountain streams trickling down from the icemelt above. But these had become fewer and fewer the further they went.
Kurogane had never traveled through a desert before, but there was one elementary fact about them he couldn't fail to know: they didn't have much in the way of water. Although he insisted they stop and fill up all their waterbags and containers with each stream they cross, he worried it might not be enough. Heat was also going to be a problem. He had at first ignored the discomfort of the hot sun on his armor, but as the heat of the days slowly increased with the season, it was threatening to creep from "uncomfortable" to "dangerous."
He questioned Syaoran, and the boy was willing enough; but although he'd been born in a desert country, he couldn't be much help. He had spent most of his time around towns, cities and well-traveled routes, not forging blindly across unpathed wilderness, and he had been too young to remember where or how Fujitaka arranged for water at each stop. By the time he'd been old enough for such concerns, they had left Clow.
Kurogane brooded on the problem off and on; he chose routes that took them through dips in the land where hidden streambeds might be lurking. So far, they weren't in trouble. But he was sure the terrain was only going to get worse.
The rocks of this country were strange; weathered by constant exposure to wind and sun, their shapes were rounded like the stones in a streambed. They passed hills that resembled handsful of pebbles or marbles thrown carelessly into a pile and forgotten; but each 'pebble' was a boulder weighing tons. Kurogane eyed a wall of rock that they passed under with nervous distaste; it looked like the slightest movement could dislodge the whole hillside to crash down on their heads.
He wasn't exactly sure what alerted him; the flicker of a shadow in the corner of his eye, perhaps, or the scraping sound that didn't come from the hooves of their mounts. Whatever it was he suddenly snapped into high gear, all his senses straining to capture the slightest clues; his vague nervousness came into sharp focus as he realized they were being hunted.
"Kid, stop right now," Kurogane snapped, reining in his own mount sharply. The beast snorted with asperity, but the noise of the footsteps just made it impossible to hear.
"What is it?" Syaoran asked, confusion slowly growing into alarm.
"Something's stalking us," Kurogane said, slowly scanning the edges of the rocky ravine. Nothing to be seen silhouetted on the lip of the gorge, and the shadows didn't seem to be large enough to hide anything dangerous. But still…
"I don't see anything," Syaoran said, turning in his saddle as he looked around.
"That's the whole point," Kurogane said. With one hand he snapped off the saddle straps, lifted his leg and swung it over. Whatever was out there, he didn't want to fight it encumbered by this big hunk of goatsflesh. "Get down."
"But -" Syaoran protested.
"Shut up," Kurogane said. Syaoran subsided, his mouth closing on whatever objection he'd been about to make, and he swung out of his saddle without comment.
At last he had the moment of silence that he needed, and as he listened the sounds of the ravine echoed back to him. Something shuffling and scraping over the rock… it was hard to discern just what, when he didn't know what he was listening to or even where it was. The pattern of the noises sounded off, different from any hunting beast he knew; too widely dispersed, too fast. Two of them?
He turned around, stepping clear of the kozelorug, and drew Souhi from her sheath; better a lighter, more dexterous blade when you didn't know what you were dealing with.
There. It was coming closer now that they were stopped. Closing in for the kill - a rock dislodged from its perch somewhere high up and bounced down the side of the ravine. Kurogane snapped his gaze to it and traced upwards, seeking any hint of movement - but he could see nothing, nothing but naked rock and shadows.
Something passed over their heads, like the shadow of a cloud passing over the sun.
Syaoran had gone very still, and his face was pale. "Sensei," he whispered, his voice a hush whisper. "Was that -"
"Quiet!" Kurogane snapped, still frantically searching the area of the cliffside where he'd seen the rock fall. There was nothing there. It -
It was behind him now. Kurogane spun around and snapped his sword into position, just as the scream rent the air.
It wasn't a human scream. It wasn't even an animal, at least not like any animal he'd ever heard before. There was a bloodcurdling quality to it that hadn't come out of any living voice or pumping lungs, like a howling wind or the tearing of stone. High-pitched and deafeningly loud, it ripped through the air of the canyon and hit them with the stunning force of a hammer.
Kurogane recovered first, his body moving on automatic instinct as their mounts brayed and reared in panic. He sensed blurred movement ahead, rushing towards them like a cloud of doom and threw himself to the side. His arm shot out and grabbed Syaoran's shoulder, yanking him to the side just as something landed on the ground beside them, plowing up a huge billow of dust in its path.
The impact knocked Syaoran, already unsteady, to the ground and he dragged Kurogane off his feet as well. He turned the fall into a roll and was up again a moment later, dizzied by the tumble but ready to fight. There was a great rent in the dust and gravel, as though some giant farmer had plowed a furrow there, but of their attacker there was no sign.
He hauled Syaoran to his feet and thrust Souhi into his hands. "Take this!" he snapped because there was no time to recapture their panicked mounts and get his bokken from the saddlebags. Syaoran grabbed for it clumsily, and Kurogane wrapped both his hands around it before he stepped away and drew the larger Ginryuu.
"Where is it?" Syaoran cried, but Kurogane was already searching the landscape. Was it an ambush or a hunting animal, would it go for their bigger, meatier mounts or would it attack them again?
Kurogane's kozelorug brayed, a goat-like sound of terror, and bolted back the way they had come. Kurogane let it go. They could chase down their mounts later; the important thing was what had made it run? Something had crossed upwind of it, and as Kurogane moved and turned his face upwind he could smell it too; he did not know what he smelled, acidic and foul and burning in his nose like ozone, but he could smell it.
He swung Ginryuu in the direction of the wind, channeling his ki along the metal blade and releasing it in a controlled blast of energy. It roared out along the path of air that he had directed, blasting loose a load of gravel and sand and cracking boulders in half. Rock roared and crumbled and Kurogane briefly entertained the worry of an avalanche, but he had bigger concerns right now.
Shadows flashed; dust swirled, sand scattered. He snapped his head around, his arms shifting from one spot to the next as he sought his prey. He could see the disturbance it made in clouds of dust and scrapes of rock as it moved but he could not see it…
"Where is it? I can't see anything!" Syaoran said, his voice edged with panic.
"Calm down!" Kurogane said, his mind careening furiously at this confirmation of his own blindness. "You don't need to see. Use your other sens -"
The scream came again; and although it was not as frightening or mysterious as the first time, it still numbed Kurogane's mind and almost whited out his vision. He clung tenaciously to his wits, though, because the beast screamed right before it leapt -
A wall of air roared down the canyon towards them and this time Kurogane turned to meet it, swung his father's blade with the full force of his arm and power. "Senryuu hikogen!" he shouted, and felt the jolting grate of impact as his blade hit home. There was a horrible noise - not the shriek from before but almost as bad - and he staggered backwards as something scuffled and thrashed in the dust of the floor.
Blood spattered, rusty dark brown spurting in arcs and drips from nowhere, and it was all the confirmation Kurogane needed to his own wild suppositions. "It's invisible," he called to Syaoran, feeling weirdly calm to be saying such an absurd thing out loud. "Don't look for it, look for the ground when it moves."
"Is it a demon?" Syaoran wanted to know, and Kurogane did not answer or look away. This wasn't demon country. But what else could it be? Dust filled the air, now; falling rocks and gravel came from all sides of the ravine and it was impossible to see anything in this mess.
The terrible noise split the air a third time, and as he shook off the numb dread another piece of the puzzle fell into place. The purpose of the scream - not only did it stun its prey into stillness, but the ear-bursting volume also prevented its prey from being able to track it by sound.
But Kurogane needed neither sight nor sound to track his prey. He shut his eyes against the stinging clouds of dust and focused, spreading his awareness outwards into the world around him. All things, living and unliving, had their own ki; Syaoran's bright burning, the weird color-tinged aura of the kozelorug, even the dull outlines of the stones around them. And there, bulbous and massive, scaling the side of the rocky defile with terrifying leaps and bounds on too many, impossibly long legs. How could anything so big move so quickly?
It screamed again and this time Kurogane let out a matching roar of his own, countering the crushing noise with the sound of his own voice. This time he leapt first, moving forward at a charging run, with his sword held in both hands point-forward over his shoulder. His eyes opened, but he could still see the sullen, iridescent ki of the monster before him, and he lashed the fury of his sword against it.
The monster pounced, and he sensed a claw coming down and parried it with a savage upwards sweep, feeling a furious sense of satisfaction as his blade resisted and then passed through; more dark ichor painted the stones. He slashed at the monster's center, but scored only a glancing blow - it was all very well and good to sense the monster's position, but if he couldn't see it he didn't know where to hit.
"Hama ryuu-ou jin!" he roared, and let a wall of fire blast outwards from the steel of his sword. It washed over the creature and passed on, but the flame had caught in a dozen tiny places and singed and blackened still more; now he could see it, the monstrous, giant arms that splayed out and supported the huge bulbous belly between it. Tiny black eyes gleamed and glinted from the bizarrely small head, and sizzling, crisping hair surrounded a black maw from which jutted two shiny black mandibles.
It reared back, going up on its back legs as the front legs spread across the sky. Before he had time to try to guess where the underbelly was it pounced, and the mandibles seized on his armor and scraped horribly as it bounced off the impenetrable iron. The blow jolted him backwards, and he found it suddenly hard to catch his breath.
A yell sounded from behind him, and Syaoran leapt forward into the fray, brandishing Souhi with admirable bravery - but a dozen mistakes in form that Kurogane would box his ears for later, assuming they both survived. Stupid kid, he thought as he labored to catch his breath, what is all the drilling for except to make sure that when you grab a sword, your hands remember what to do with it?
Syaoran stabbed forward, missing the eyes - if that had been what he was going for - and the blade disappeared into the empty nothingness to the side of the mouth. He must have struck home, though, because the boy gasped as the sword hilt was jolted from his hands. Then one of the arms - multi-jointed, outlined in burning hair - swept over and down and slapped the boy aside like a rag doll, invisible claws tearing long swathes in the leather of his jacket.
Kurogane didn't take his eyes off the monster- couldn't - but despite the damage to his breastplate he stepped forward, straddling the kid in a protective posture. "Enough of this!" he growled, hands tightening on Ginryuu as he gathered strength for a spring. The charring fires set by his earlier blast continued to spread slowly, and as they traveled back along the length of the spider-thing more and more of it was revealed… and more…
This time, instead of blasting outwards, he focused inwards along the length of the blade, putting all his strength and fury into length of the hardened steel. With a wordless roar he leapt forward, raising Ginryuu with both arms over his head and then sweeping back downwards in a blow that cleaved the creature's head and torso in half.
"It's getting worse," Kendappa said.
Tomoyo, the High Priestess and Tsukuyomi of Nihon, tried with great difficulty to rein in her temper. She had always been the gentle and patient one of the two siblings, the sensible check to the more volatile Empress; but the events of the last few weeks had strained her nerves to the limit, and she did not appreciate her sister's irritating habit of repeating the obvious.
Outside the walls of the palace the winds roared, the rain fell in furious sheets. The cloudbanks filling the sky overhead seethed and rumbled, twisting into an endlessly self-feeding spiral that spread from horizon to horizon. Against all reason the storm did not pass over but stayed stubbornly put in the sky overlooking Nihon, and against all belief, it had raged for weeks now without ever letting up.
Her dreamseer talent, which had guided them for years through the turbulent upheavals of Kendappa's reign, had all but deserted her. All she saw at night, every night when she closed her eyes, was the awesome and terrifying vision of the great doorway in the sky; the doorway that signaled oblivion.
As the winds howled outside the walls Kendappa paced, her boots ticking loudly against the wooden beams of the floor. She'd taken to wearing her armor all the time now, keyed up to fight an opponent who never showed his face; Tomoyo couldn't help but think, with an acid sarcasm, that the armor wasn't likely to do much more than weigh her down when the floods engulfed the palace.
She controlled her temper with difficult, and reached out to catch her sister's arm as she turned for another circuit. "We knew that it would, sister," she told her. "We knew from the first day that this was no natural storm, and all our attempts to break it have failed. The Seer of Ceres warned us that this would come to pass."
"Well, what am I supposed to do?" Kendappa yelled, whirling to face Tomoyo in a fury. "The sun hasn't been seen in weeks, and what am I supposed to do about it? Do a little dance? Flash my tits? You're the priestess, you tell me!"
Tomoyo ground her teeth, and tried to tell herself that fighting with her sister would accomplish nothing. "We can do nothing to directly affect the outcome. It will end when the dark sorcerer accomplishes his goal, or when someone succeeds in defeating him; no sooner. So far I have been unsuccessful in locating his lair, as have all your agents."
"How are they supposed to search for anything in all this mess?" Kendappa raged, shaking Tomoyo's hand off her arm. Tomoyo sighed and sat back, pressing her hand against her aching forehead. She had not gotten more than a few hours' sleep each night in the past week. "The rice crop is completely drowned! The roads are underwater. The last report I got from the southern coast said that the tide is coming up half a mile inland! Gods only know how many lesser villages have already been completely destroyed -"
Tomoyo took a deep breath, stood, and stepped over to grab her sister mid-rant. "You must call the army back, Kendappa," she ordered, with uncharacteristic steel in her voice. "Nothing you or they can do can break the storm, but they can at least help to contain the damage. Those that survive losing their dwellings to wind and flood must have somewhere to go, shelters must be built. They'll be more use doing that than anything else."
"Call the army back? At a time like this?" Kendappa said in astonishment. "Are you mad, Tomoyo? We would be completely undefended if Ceres decided to strike south again!"
"Ceres has their own problems right now," Tomoyo replied. "The glaciers are spreading down from the mountains now as fast as a man can walk. Entire valleys are ground under its heel or entombed in solid ice. I have spoken as often as possible with their own mages; all their efforts are bent on evacuating their own people to safety. This is not a time to be thinking of attack and retaliation."
"Perhaps you might not think so," Kendappa began with a breath, " - nor I, but you underestimate that slimy, stone-hearted piece of poison Ceres calls King! So much for a peace accord! Even if the world were raining fire around his ears he would still take the opportunity to stab us in the back -"
Tomoyo said nothing, but she knew - from all that had been said and not said by the Wizards of Ceres - that King Ashura was, for whatever reason, not doing business right now. On the other hand, she also didn't want to give Kendappa any 'opportunities' of her own. Instead she reached out and seized her sister's jaw in a tight grip, turning her to meet her gaze.
"Call them back, Kendappa," she said again, a sharper bite in her tone that made Kendappa wince, gaping at her sister in disbelief. "You asked me to tell you what to do, and this is it! We are under magical attack; normal state affairs are not in effect. In the next few nights I will call a conclave of all the miko in Nihon that yet live; together with the Wizards of Ceres we will do all we can to break the magician's power, and together we will try to strike at him in his own lair."
Kendappa sputtered. "If you can do that, then why haven't you before?" she demanded. Tomoyo shook her head in frustration.
"Because we can do nothing if we are beset by storms and disaster on all side! This is all a distraction, sister, from the main event - meant to do no more than keep us paralyzed and helpless while the real battle goes on beyond our reach. Call them back, for if we do not succeed, then by the time the moon reaches its next phase you will have no empire to be concerned about ever again."
"Is it dead?" Syaoran asked, peering over his shoulder.
"Yep," Kurogane said.
"Is it a demon?" Syaoran asked, poking one of its legs in fascination. He'd recovered from the shock of his first battle in record time; thankfully the monster's claws had scored only a glancing blow on him, and although his leather tunic was slashed, only the shallowest of scratches had grazed his skin. He had no idea how lucky he'd been, although Kurogane had insisted on cleaning the scrapes thoroughly just in case.
Kurogane just shrugged. He'd walked around the hulking corpse, throwing handfuls of dust until he'd outlined the whole body; whatever power made it invisible hadn't faded with its death. At least he could see the shape, if not the detailed features - but then again, he didn't think he really wanted to see the details.
"Don't know," he said at last. "It doesn't feed on humans."
"It was in a hurry to feed on us!" Syaoran objected.
Kurogane shook his head. "True demons feed only on humans, and ignore animals," he said. "This thing - and its brothers, I guess - have been feeding on the cows out there, I found bones in its den. It just looks like a normal spider."
"Normal?" Syaoran looked at him incredulously. "Normal spiders aren't the size of a caravan wagon!"
"Well, apart from that, I mean -"
"And they aren't usually invisible!"
"It's not a demon," Kurogane snapped irritably. "It isn't… distorted, or combined, like the other demons I fought." He remembered Seishirou, and the horrors of his lair - In the beginning I actually had to sew together the parts of two animals I wanted to combine into a demon. Now, I can do much better.
"And it doesn't smell like them, either." He crouched down next to the thing's head, closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. There was none of the foul corruption of the Master of Demons, but there was something… like sparks and ozone, burning acid. "I'm not saying it's a natural animal. Obviously it's been tampered with by magic somehow. But it's not a demon like we used to have outside the walls of Nihon."
"Does it make a difference?" Syaoran wanted to know. "I mean, in terms of being giant, lethal, and jumping out at us from behind rocks."
"Yes," Kurogane said firmly. "In the first place because I don't think these things eat souls, which makes them much less dangerous. In the second place, if it's a native creature and not a construct, then it means it probably wasn't sent after us. In the third place -"
"Sent after us?" Syaoran said, his eyes widening. "You think the - the enemy could be watching us? That he could see our every move?" He glanced around nervously, then looked up at the sky, as though some invisible eye were hovering and watching them from above. From what Kurogane understood about how magical scrying worked, that wasn't a totally unreasonable thought.
"I don't know. I don't think so. And if he is, there's nothing we can do about it. Stop interrupting," Kurogane said. "As I was saying - in the third place, if this is a native creature that lives in these hills and eats the cows, then that means there's probably more of them."
An ominous silence fell between them. Kurogane's mount snorted nervously and sidled, obviously made unhappy by the proximity to the dead monster; Kurogane reached up to grab its harness.
"But there's nothing to do but go on anyway, is there?" Syaoran said quietly. "I mean, the Princess is still somewhere out there. We've come this far already. And now that we know what to watch out for, we can be more careful…"
"It's your call, kid," Kurogane said in a neutral voice, thinking back to his promise to Fai. "She's your girlfriend."
Syaoran blushed hotly but did not, Kurogane noticed, deny this. "We go on," he said in a firmer voice.
They mounted up and rode on, Kurogane wincing as the new dents in his armor jabbed into his bruises each time he shifted. The sun beat down hotter than ever, but Kurogane was not about to take off his armor now.
"Sensei?" Syaoran said after a while, riding beside Kurogane. His voice was small, thoughtful. "I… thanks. I'm really glad you decided to come with me."
"So am I," Kurogane said. An uncomfortable, warm silence fell between them; at last Kurogane said, "If nothing else, it showed me that you still have a lot to learn."
"I know," Syaoran said humbly. "When we stop to camp tonight, I'll do my drills again."
"You bet your ass you will," Kurogane said. "But some lessons don't need to wait that long. It's time you learned how to sense the ki of your enemies."
"You want me to practice it now?" Syaoran said, expression mirroring uncertainty. "I mean - while we're riding?"
"Given that you're going to be on watch tonight and some of the things that might attack us are invisible, yes," Kurogane said. "Close your eyes. Just do it, your mount will follow mine."
Obediently, Syaoran closed his eyes.
"Now keep 'em closed," Kurogane said. "I'll tell you when to open them. Just concentrate on the world around you. All things have a ki, living or unliving. Try to make out the shape of the rocks and sand first, then see how the life-force of the plants are different. Then try to see our mounts, and me, which are different from them."
Syaoran frowned, eyes pinching tightly shut and brows drawing down as he tried to follow his teacher's instructions. "All I sense is a big fuzzy blur," he reported after a few minutes.
"You're trying too hard," Kurogane said. "You've got your own ki bunched up like you're planning to attack something. Relax. Stop thinking about yourself for a moment and open up your senses to your surroundings."
There was silence as they continued to ride. Kurogane kept one eye on the flat, baking terrain around them while his own senses monitored his student's ki levels. He could see them flare and ebb as his student struggled to master some sort of control over himself.
At last Syaoran sighed and opened his eyes. "I'm sorry, Sensei," he said. "I can't be doing this right."
"It takes practice," Kurogane said. "Try again."
Syaoran closed his eyes, but then shook his head. "It's no good," he said. "I keep thinking that there are all sorts of people around us, but I know that can't be right."
Time seemed to slow down for a moment as Kurogane snapped his own senses to their fullest range, his hand tightening on his mount's reins as he scanned his eyes over the terrain surrounding them. "Right," he said. "This is a good lesson. Second thing you learn, kid, is that when your senses and your brain don't agree, it's usually your brain that's wrong."
"What do you mean?" Syaoran said, looking at him with some confusion.
"What I mean," Kurogane said, "is that there are a dozen or so people surrounding us. Don't make any sudden moves."
The sand seemed to erupt around them, and their mounts snorted and danced to a halt. Half a dozen figures seemed to sprout from the ground, dressed in loose, flowing cloaks which shed the sun and the sand from fraying, tattered edges. Kurogane tensed, jaw clenching as he berated himself for getting so distracted - but they'd masked their own presences so well that they'd been nearly invisible in the sand until they were right on top of them.
There were six men in a loose half-circle in front of them, with more hidden behind the far ridge - no, five men and one woman, he corrected himself, although the dark-haired woman in the streaming cloak appeared no less ferocious than her companions. Bandits, Kurogane thought, seeing the bows in the hands of several of them, and then what the hell, out here? There's no travelers for them to attack!
One of the bandits - a surprisingly short and young-looking man to be their leader, but you couldn't judge by appearances - walked around to stand before them. He was unarmed, but carried himself with the graceful carriage of a powerful warrior, and Kurogane's eyes narrowed as his attention sharpened. There was something - wrong about him, and as a gust of hot, dry wind blew across him, Kurogane inhaled in shock.
Behind him, Syaoran gasped. "It's the Dragons of the Desert," he whispered in disbelief. "They're just a legend!"
With complete unconcern for Kurogane's swords or the imposing height of the kozelorug, the slender, dark-haired man - almost more of a boy, really - walked right up to Kurogane and tapped his mount on the neck. The animal snorted and shied away, and Kurogane didn't blame it - the man's scent carried the faint but distinct tang of some strange metals, a smell Kurogane had only ever encountered on one person before.
When he raised his eyes to glare at Kurogane through eyes of gold, glowing faintly even in the bright sunlight, it was almost redundant. He rattled off a sentence in a language Kurogane had never heard before, but the hostile tone and interrogatory inflection made his meaning plain anyway; who are you, what are you doing here, and what the hell is this thing?
"Yeah, a legend in more ways than one," Kurogane said, not taking his eyes off the man. "Have to say, the middle of a desert is the last place I'd expect to find a vampire."
Sakura entered the throne room, the hem of the white dress they had given her to wear fluttering about her ankles. Her own clothes were starting to get a bit grubby after two weeks of constant wear, so her attendants had given her these garments to wear instead. She liked them well enough, although they were a bit plain and somber; but in that respect they matched everything about the Heralds' stronghold, so that was okay.
The massive looping lines of the magical wards on the stone ceiling overhead no longer filled her with awe or wonder at their size and power, although she still admired their beauty and strength. She crossed the echoing floor and climbed the dais, her bare feet tingling as they crossed the different steps - hot and cold, smooth and rough - and settled back against the black rock of the throne. The by-now familiar tingling started in her hands and feet, and the deep thrumming of the dimensional portal before her rocked her bones. Sakura took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and began to whisper her mantra.
Sakura hardly ever got headaches any more. She was proud of that, and proud of the longer and longer times she could spend in the throne before her endurance gave out and she was forced to break the connection. She was learning, too, how to direct her scan of other worlds in a more methodical way, so that she could avoid seeing the same useless worlds over and over again.
Mister Reed had taught her what to look for, although it was something that was hard to convey in words: an endless fount of white or golden light, a limitless presence and boundless awareness, a being that spanned a whole universe, who had always been one and had never known the strife of division or loneliness. She was certain now that she would know the right world when she came to it; until then, it was just a matter of searching.
She didn't mind the searching… not really. There were so many universes out there, each one a little different, some strikingly like her own. It was fascinating to watch, and she had to scold herself not to waste time and power lingering to study the plants and rocks and animals of alien worlds.
But lately there was… something else. Little flashes of light or sound, that intruded on her when she was in her trance. Nothing should have been able to distract her there. At first she'd thought she was losing control of her vision again, spinning wild and uncontrolled between random worlds - but some of the noises sounded like voices, human voices, and there had been no human beings on any of the worlds that she visited.
At first it was just snippets, passing by in instants too brief for her to make any sense of them. But in the past few days they'd grown, both in frequency and in duration, to the point where she could almost make out figures or words. They followed her even after she broke out of the spell and left the chamber for the day, buried in the distraction of the mundane world only to resurface in her dreams.
She'd asked Mister Reed what they were, worried that she was doing something wrong somehow. He'd looked at her with his stone-faced impassiveness, and told her to ignore them. Impurities, he'd said, residue left over from the source of the magic power you are channeling. They are meaningless; disregard them and focus only on your task.
So she tried. But it was getting harder to ignore them.
She opened her 'eyes' and turned to the void, the multitude of starry worlds swirling around her like fireflies. With practice, she was able to identify the ones she had already visited, and mentally 'pushed' them away. It was time to start her task. She had to find the right world, and ask the White God to come and help them; everyone was depending on her.
A world of red rocks, dry and barren and lifeless.
A field of stars within stars, scattered like diamonds on black velvet, points of light bursting and dying in endless succession.
- don't - not -
A deep rugged jungle, where fern-trees swayed without wind and moved ponderously across the ground in search of sunlight or food.
A world without light, where strange eyeless beings sang endlessly to each other in the darkness, and knew the universe only in shades of sound.
- ver, I'm tell - you it's n -
A world of wind and storms, vast billowing figures like moths flapping among the currents of howling storms. The clouds seemed to go down forever, lightning crackling below her feet, with never any solid ground -
- knife - edge glints sharp -
- damn well take you with me, I -
An endless holocaust of volcanoes, belching endless fumes into a sulfur-colored sky -
- a wedding arch, rice and flower petals showering down in fistfuls, turn to the bride and kiss -
- baby coos in a hempen cradle, take her to your breast and nurse -
- vertigo - FALLING -
A black sky overhead, below her violet-tinged rock that crumbles and breaks even as she watches, rocks shattering and hanging in the void, turning lazily in empty orbits -
- fall back, men, fall back! -
- coughing - racking coughs - chants the sutras to maintain the wards, protect home and husband and family and son -
A blackness so deep that even looking at it made her shudder, filled with a cacophony of mindless, malicious voices all clamoring for blood, life, suffering -
- woodsmen sing as they move through the forest, the chop of axes ringing in wood, with a rip and a crash, they cheer as the great tree falls -
- can't breathe - blood bubbling in lungs -
A green-tinted light suffuses everything, tiny silver bubbles rising, branched kelp swaying in the currents -
- teeth - blood - PAIN -
- please! Spare my daughter, spare her, spare -
Another desert world, the rocks and sand tinted acid green, lifeless -
- sword - edge flashes red-hot - power roars, "Hama ryuu-oh-jin!" and burn the demon to cinders, but for every one he kills there are twenty more -
- blood - pain - protect home and family and wife and son -
A forest of crystal, each tree rendered of diamond and humming with a deep resonating sound as light crept slowly from one root system to the next, a song that spanned a planet -
- she burst out the door into sunlight, breath already dragging in her panting lungs. Her feet are throbbing in the too-tight shoes, and she limps with every step as she makes her way to the edge of the balustrade. Normally there would be guards - are guards - should be guards but not today, they've all abandoned their posts. Or dead. Some of them are dead.
She leans heavily on the stone parapets and looks out, and strands of yellow hair blow into her face from the wet, icy wind coming down from the mountains. She strains her eyes over the plain, over the castle walls - there, she can see them. Movement, marching, men are coming - are going to come - have come to conquer them, raze their country to the ground and kill them all.
She turns at bay, breath fogging the air and tears fogging her eyes. There is nowhere left to go, no one left to go. Her husband the King is going to go - has gone - is going mad, gorging himself on blood, and all the knights have abandoned them while the peasants shriek and cower. No one listened! No one ever listens!
"Too late now!" she screams, and the words echo off the parapets and bounce around the empty courtyard. Too late late now now now. "The king of Ceres will kill us all in our beds!"
A noise behind her, a rush of air that is dry and foul and far too warm for this snowy climate. Slowly she turns and sees him, like she's seen him many times before - never seen him before. There is a ragged gash in the world and he looks out of it, hair black and upswept like a storm crow's wings, an angry scowl above a granite chin, sweeping black robes and it's Mister Reed, Sakura recognizes him, but she's never seen him so angry! "Where are they, Elda?" he says, his expression as dark as as the howling sky.
"You!" she says. "I knew you would come! I saw you!"
"I knew that you would," Fei Wong Reed says, his voice utterly calm despite the chaos of the kingdom dissolving around him. "Unfortunate are those who are born with enough power to see beyond the veil of this world, but without the wisdom or guidance to know what to do with their power."
"No one listens!" she screams, and her fingers tear at her hair - her hair - golden strands floating down to the paving stones below. "I told them you were coming but no one ever listens!"
"It is well they did not," Fei Wong Reed says, a dangerous glint in his eyes and a rumbling undertone of his voice. "You made enough trouble for me as it was; you very nearly upset all my plans for the disposal of Valeria, constantly setting your husband against me. As it is, this has all taken far too long, and it was never my intent that the King of Ceres should interfere. He will be here shortly with his army, and I intend to leave nothing that could be traced back to me."
"The black guards..." Then she realized, now she realizes why the hallways were so deserted. Day by day there were more and more of the faceless black guards, less and less of anyone else. Now they are gone - all gone - and there is no one left. No one but her mad husband and the cringing peasants and her.
"Yes. There is nothing that can save Valeria now," the black magician tells her with an iron finality. "But there is still a chance for you. I will save you, if you only tell me the truth: where are your children, Elda?"
She laughs and laughs, as she finally heard - will hear - hears the words that echoed in her dream every night, that drove her to wake up screaming and weeping. "You'll never find them!" she shrieks, laughter ending in fury. "I've hidden them from you! You will never, ever find them, and they will never be yours!"
His face darkens with fury, the light drains out of the sky. The metal marching of the Ceres army is closer, now. "Your family is far more powerful than they have any right to be," he said. "Your sons - such a rarity, twins born with such power - would be invaluable assets to me. But even more than your children, I need you. I have long had need of a dreamseer, to help me find that which I seek. Come and serve me, Elda. I will have the truth from you, now or later."
"Never," she breathes, and her lips peel back from her teeth. She takes one step back, and then another, her shoes scraping against the stone. "I will never serve you! I will never serve you! I will ne -"
A flash of soundless light sears the sky, a tumult of what is and what was and what will be roaring like a wave, like an invading army that razes all in its wake; and she sees what future he brings with him, she sees the doorway in the sky framed by a hellish light, she sees what Fei Wong Reed desires, and all that will become if she submits to him…
And she opens her arms and leaps gladly into the storm, the winds that will carry her out of his reach forever. Her hair, her hair, fluttering around her face as she flies, golden strands floating down to the marble paving stones below -
Sakura gasped, the mantra broken, opening her eyes with a jolt to the inside of the stone room. The visions faded quickly around her once the contact was broken; the world-portal seethed and subsided, the light and heat of the throne slowly dying away as no more magical power flowed through it.
"What was that?" she whispered.
"My lady?" The black-clad attendants look at her with alarm. "Have you found what we seek? Have you made contact with the God?"
"What? I - no," she said, trying to recover her balance. What was that? She could still hear the shrieking of the queen's mad laughter, could still feel the fury of the visions lashing at her. If Fei Wong Reed's wish comes to be - If the future he seeks becomes real -
"I - I think I have to stop," she said in a shaking voice. "I'm not feeling very well."
"Very well, my lady," the steward said, confusion plain in his face and voice; she'd only just gotten started. "I will take you to your chambers to rest for a while, and then you can try again."
She stumbled from the vision hall, through the lamp-lit stone corridors to her bedroom. Feigning a headache, she lay down on her bed fully dressed and pleaded for the maids to put the lights out. They did so and withdrew, leaving Sakura staring wide-awake into the darkness.
What did I just see?
As the sun sank towards the horizon, a bird winged its way across the sky. It was a falcon, too high for its hunting range and abroad too late for its day-sighted kind. Leagues of empty land spooled away beneath its wings, its golden eyes fixed on a far-off destination.
Far to the south, another mountain erupted in fire; a low plume of smoke and ash belched into the air, adding to the growing stain that spread across the southern sky.
~to be continued...