Don't Fall, part 25

FIC START!

Sakinah laid on the bed Queen Shelia had provided for her, wearing nothing but her underclothes as she waited for Kain's return. She had scrubbed herself clean in the bath earlier, and it felt nothing short of heavenly. In Troia, the bath smelled much different than it did here, but she figured it had something to do with the culture. She had to remind herself that her home was more matriarchal, and that would be a reason why the bath would smell much more inviting than it would in a place that was run by men.

Her mind was adrift in all the fantasies she could dream up of the two together, wondering how Kain was fairing in his mission to retrieve the Prince he mentioned so often. Her eyes closed and she wasn't sure if she was going to be able to wait up for him, but then she felt the ground below her bed quell. The whole castle must have felt a tremor like that. She put her bare feet flat on the floor. She searched the surface for any sort of energy, and the earth sounded vengeful. Angry.

"Earth Crystal," she whispered, "Is it you? Or is it something else?"

Outside the room, she heard all sorts of men yelling back and forth. There were marching troops in the halls and outside in the castle courtyard. Fabul seemed as if it was under attack or something with all that activity this late at night.

Soon the door burst open and Kain stormed through it. "Forgive me, my lady, but I am in need of your ability," he said hastily.

"Kain… what's going on out there?"

"Yang, his daughter, and Ceodore have been swallowed up by the land itself," Kain said. "I wish for you to use your abilities to read the ground from where they were accosted, to see if there's something you can figure out."

"I will help as best I can, of course," she said. "But you will have to give me a moment."

"We must go quickly. We've no time for anything else."

"Kain…" she said, glaring at him. "I'm not dressed."

He finally took a good look at her. His mind was too filled with the trouble of the moment to realized how little she was wearing. He smiled. He expected himself to be awkward about it, to try to hide the fact that he saw her, but it didn't bother him as much as he thought it would. "I am sorry I did not take the time to notice how beautiful you are, Sakinah," he said, turning around. "Dress as quickly as you can, then."

"If you just give me a moment," she had all ready started putting her dress on and clipping her long hair into place. It didn't take long for her to be ready. "Take me to where it happened."

"...yes."

Kain carried Sakinah there. While the monks were mobilized to find the King and Princess, Kain was able to jump with her in his arms, making their way to where the gigantic hole in the ground came from out of nowhere just before. She took in the time she was so close to him, to his heart. How safe and secure she felt being there. There was a part of her that never wanted that feeling to end, even if they had a situation to take care of.

When he put her on the ground, instantly she felt much differently than when she tried to scan the ground back at the castle. She bent down to place her hands on the earth itself instead of going through reading the energies with her feet. She had a hard time reading the vibrations of the earth. It was messy, jarred. The signals she received were strange. All it did was leave her utterly confused. She had to pick her hands up otherwise it would have also made her dizzy.

"Do you sense anything?" Kain asked.

Sakinah wanted to answer that with something clear, that would have given some sort of lead. "Honestly, no. I can't make anything of the sensations the Earth is giving me right now," she shook her head. "This was not natural. It was caused by something."

Kain looked around before saying, "Come with me into the hole. We can't leave Yang, Ceodore, and Ursula in there."

"I will, but…"

"What's wrong?"

"Being underground, I won't be able to use my Sky magic," Sakinah said. She stood up completely so she could start walking down into the hole that had been created during the incident. "I won't be as useful to you as I was on Mount Hobbs."

"I am not asking you to come with me for backup in battle," Kain confessed to her. He followed her as she walked. "It would be easier with you along with me, rather than sending you back for your safety." He smiled.

The cave did not smell like other caves. Both of them had been in different caves, and most of them smelled murky, of moisture not able to escape into the air. Here, it was more like the moisture wasn't exactly water, but contaminated with something else. What little water they found was completely filthy, devoid of any life. There were no monsters or creatures of any other kind. In some places, the Earth was rotten and decayed, and if anything touched it, the Earth crumbled into dust.

"...this place," Sakinah gasped. "All of this land is dead. I do not feel the energy of… any crystal here, let alone the Earth crystal."

"What would cause something like this?" Kain asked. "The crystals are in their rightful places, and they are honored by all who gaze upon them. No one has done anything to them since the War with the Second Moon…"

"That's a good question," Sakinah replied as she turned around to look more at all the devastation that filled the hole. She started to head in another direction, as she saw something else that caught her attention, but the ground beneath her feet began to give way. She lost her footing and fell to the ground, her face straight into the stagnant dirt. "This ground is… weak, like there is empty space below it…"

Kain reached to help her to her feet again. "Should I just carry you? For someone that is supposed to be in tune with the Earth itself, you're clumsy."

"With someone as light on his feet as you are… anyone would be clumsy next to you."

"I suppose so."

"...considering how weak the ground is here, I wouldn't be surprised if they fell even further because of the gravity pulling down on them," Sakinah thought aloud.

Kain twitched for a moment. "You don't think they could have fallen through to the Underground?!" That would make a swell report back to Baron.

"That would be miles worth of ground… I'm not sure if even a dragoon could survive that kind of fall." She kept looking around, not seeing any clue as to where the missing party could have landed. The warrior monks from Fabul were also slowly making their way through the hole to find their missing royalty.

"Cid did once."

"...your Cid must be immortal."

"Sadly, no. Our head engineer passed away year."

"Forgive me. I didn't mean-"

"No, you didn't." Kain shook his head. "Let's just continue to look around… they have to be around here somewhere."