Number two of the double posting. Ugh, I'm not too proud of this one. It was kind of rushed. Oh, well. We're almost there, amigos. Hang in there. Chapter 34. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: How many times have we been through this?

34

Two and Two

Eris was smarter than she looked. Which meant, as Gregor found her to appear exceptionally intelligent, a lot smarter than he had originally imagined.

Gregor was passed out for much of the next twelve hours, which, in Underland time, took them through the night and back out into the early morning. The next day, Luxa would be married, and now, Gregor realized, there was something other than jealousy that sparked his concern over the eternal bonding. He couldn't allow it. Not with what we knew. Not anymore.

For the twelve hours that he was generally out or too groggy to move, Eris flew away. If it were Equinox, they would probably have flown right back to Regalia, regardless of what followed them. This would most likely result in exactly the same outcome as before, more or less a straight invasion of the city by angered cutters, except for this time the city wouldn't be happy to see the two of them coming back tailed by such enemies. Even if they had the evidence to prove Luxa's abductor. Now, however, with Eris, Gregor awoke after his unconscious and reviving respite, and learned immediately from her that she had done no such thing as think to fly back towards Regalia. Instead, she had flown away from it, zigzagging as much as was possible through tunnels and passages, doing everything to get the cutters confused and off their trail. Her superior speed continued to gain them more and more distance until eventually there wasn't even the sound of the rumbling hunters behind them. When they were both efficiently confident that they were home free, or at least safe for the moment, they took refuge just inside the gnawer grounds, safe from attack by the wary patrols but not entirely welcome as it was.

After twelve hours of rest Gregor was ready to tell his tale and collaborate nonstop, but Eris, after her own twelve hours of flight, found herself too tired to do so. As she flapped her way into a small, secluded cave in the middle of a tall wall in one of the passages, she barely had enough strength to wait for him to hop off before collapsing to the floor in exhaustion. Without even words, Gregor realized that there would be no discussion until Eris received her own rest, which meant even more time dead and gone. Still, there was no way to avoid it, so Gregor just left her as she was, unwilling to disturb her should she already be asleep, and went to sit at the cave opening out into the cavern passage, taking watch while the flier began to snore in a foreign way slightly behind him.

As she slumbered and recovered stamina in unconsciousness, Gregor let his mind drift back to the facts he had seen and discovered back in the Lair. In his opinion, the evidence was indisputable. He had no idea how the court system of the Underland worked, or, actually, if there even was one, so he had to resort to comparing through the Overland one. Through that, he ticked off his necessities on his hand as he named them off: as far as he could tell, he had evidence, at least one witness in Eris, and perhaps the statement of the soldier where the Viceroy made the first call of Luxa's abduction in the first place. There was only one thing he was missing, as it turned out, but that one thing was suddenly the most important one, the thing he needed or his whole case and accusation would fall apart.

A motive.

And that was one thing Gregor couldn't wrap his mind around. It made absolutely no sense. Arthur didn't stand to gain anything from Luxa's abduction by the cutters. If he thought about it, Gregor could actually see how it was bad for the Viceroy. He was in direct line for the male throne of Regalia and the Underland human population. With Luxa gone, though, that was forfeit, and he might drop even farther by the fact that some of the council and citizens might actually blame him for the occurrence in the first place. And Arthur was too smart not to see that, Gregor was positive. If this had been pulled off, then the Viceroy would have examined every angle thoroughly to weigh whatever risks would come out of it. Gregor just didn't know from which angle the man was looking at the problem. Maybe that was part of the mystery, another way to throw people from his trail.

Damn, the guy was good.

Nothing to gain, everything to lose, yet Gregor was as positive that Arthur was the culprit as he was of the Viceroy's intelligence. There must have been another explanation, another thing he wasn't quite seeing, some reason he was completely overlooking out of habit or absurdity, but what had to be the correct answer for elimination of the impossible (or drastically improbable). He rolled his mind over every possibility he could comprehend, and then back over it again, and then for a third time just because he couldn't think of another justification. Never once, though, did he come across a plausible answer to why the Viceroy would abduct his own betrothed and send her to a foreign enemy, supposedly in a shaky alliance only, for an unknown purpose.

Gregor considered the fact that the cutters had requested Luxa specifically after Arthur had struck up the deal, but he didn't believe that to be so. It had been intentional, concocted and arranged well in advance of the agreement. One of the parties had gone into whatever negotiations there were with Luxa specifically in mind. Gregor could see what have happened if the Viceroy had only agreed to the cutters demands because they would kill him if he didn't. After all, he had been the one to plan the rescue mission, and the disappointing act of retreat and subsequent kidnapping could have been done out of nothing but selfish fear. It was the most plausible answer that Gregor had so far, but for some reason he didn't see the Viceroy as the type of person who would be subjected to such obvious disruption. He didn't buy it.

If this wasn't the case, though, the only thing he had left was that the cutters had asked for Luxa and the Viceroy had delivered without hesitation, setting up the retrieval idea only as cover-up. But in that scenario he saw nothing on Arthur's side of the deal, leaving him once again at a dead end.

There was another thought, actually, but it made so little sense Gregor could hardly spare it thought: if the Viceroy had gone to the cutters, and orchestrated the entire attempt himself with the idea of abducting Luxa from the beginning, then his side of the bargain was sealed. The cutter's end was not, but that wasn't presently important. The only problem there was what he had addressed earlier, the no reason move where he could find no plausible excuse for the Viceroy's need of Luxa abducted.

He was stuck. Again.

For hours, he poured over the mystery, trying and failing to conquer his rabid thoughts. He used a cupped hand to get a small drink of water from a dripping stalactite, which did only a little to ease his mind, but more for his throat. He didn't come any closer to an answer, nor eliminate any of the possibilities. He hit dead end after dead end, only to turn back and hit more in the opposite direction. Eris just kept sleeping and sleeping, but he found that he couldn't wake her, for he had slept longer, and he had done it one her back in midair. Even when time began to run low.

At one point he realized that it had passed midday and that the next morning was the arranged time of Luxa's marriage. He had less than a day to stop the worst event in Regalian history, if the Viceroy hadn't already pushed the occasion forward earlier. He fingered his gun unconsciously from where it rested deep in his pocket, but resisted the temptation to pull it out. He only had two bullets left, and, law permitting, he planned to put at least one of them in the Viceroy's head. Until then, though, he had to save them from any other act of shooting.

After a while, he just stopped thinking altogether, and tried to let his problem-solving mind grab some rest, even as he used the extra attention to double his watch efforts. He need a second opinion, and for now he would have to wait until his second opinion woke up.

As it turned out, Eris slept for close to the same period that he had on her back, taking their silent stay in the cave well into the night hours before she rose from her slumber refreshed and ready for thought. So much time had passed without action or resolution that Gregor could barely restrain himself from waking her in the last few hours, so desperate was he for a conclusion. He didn't, though, and his flier companion awoke in a general good mood.

Without preamble, he immediately explained his theories and suspect to her. To his gratitude but not surprise, she took the extremely likely idea that the Viceroy was the offender and traitor in stride, much easier than he would have and quicker than he would have expected from anyone. She interrupted only once, to clarify a point somewhere, but otherwise left his speech unhindered as he ranted through his columns of evidence and displayed for her scrutiny and criticism his two most likely scenarios of motivation for the Viceroy's doings. Only when he had finished his entire explanation and found himself wheezing for breath did she respond.

"You believe the Viceroy to be the culprit because he wore a gown of the same fabric of which you found inside the Lair?"

Taken aback, Gregor could only recover fast enough to be honest. "Yeah. Why wouldn't he be?"

"I have not seen this exact cloth before, but I know that many of the exports and imports that run around Regalia are common and abundant. I find it highly possible that this is just coincidence. Viceroy Arthur might have simply bought the robes cheaply off of a desperate cheap vendor."

Shaking his head, Gregor pulled a denial from thin air. "This isn't a plain fashion, it appears and is made far too regal to be sold at low cost on the streets. This is high-class merchandise, and Arthur used it to bargain with the cutters."

"You're seeing patterns, Overlander, where there are none."

"Eris!" Gregor seethed, angry at the turn of events. He had pictured many times while she slept the moment when he told her of his suspicions and ideas. Each time, though, she had backed him up. "The Viceroy took Luxa off of that ledge, he traded with the cutters through this fabric... He's somewhere around two inches taller than me; that bootprint we found was just larger than my foot!"

"All circumstantial," Eris replied with something that sounded like grudging contradiction.

He was losing the battle, but he was positive he was right. He had to find some way to convince her, or he would never get back to Regalia before Arthur would be made king. No matter his intentions at the beginning he had turned into something evil, and now higher authority would do no good for Regalia, not to mention what danger Luxa was and would be in. Just half a second of thought of what would happen in the night when the two were left alone made him shiver in pure revulsion and nearly drop to his knees in horror.

Then, like a sign from above, from Ripred's essence, from God, from something, another piece of the puzzle clicked inside his mind, and his dejected head shot up so fast that his neck cracked loud enough to echo across and inside the cave. Eris actually jumped back a step in reaction, but his mind was too occupied to notice or apologize. A moment later, his memories registered.

"Eris," he said excitedly, making odd gestures through the air as he tried to convey his message to her. "In the room where I found the fabric, there were crates. I never saw what was inside of them, but they had a symbol on the side, and the cutter I questioned told me they came with the cloth. This symbol... it was a black circle with a white 'X', and then a red lightning bolt running down the center. Isn't that the symbol of The Fount?"

Eris regarded him with a blank stare for a moment. "What is this... lightening bolt?"

"Lightning bolt!" Gregor toned loudly, trying to make the shape in midair with his hands but failing. "Uh, here." He bent down in the darkness and put a finger into the dirt, drawing out the shape of lightning streaks into the dirt. "This, a lightning bolt. A line that zigzags back and forth repeatedly. In the Overland it's a discharge of charged particles with... well, never mind. But here! Isn't that the goddamn symbol of The Fount?"

Eris stared down into the dark, getting an echo of the shape, and thinking of his description for long moments. Finally, when he was beginning to lose his patience, she looked back up to him. "You say with a black circle crossed with white?"

"Yeah." Gregor nodded enthusiastically.

"That does fit the description of the symbol associated with the Fount," Eris said, her voice dripping with suspicion and uncertainty, but neither towards Gregor, he could tell. Almost towards their becoming clear evidence, which suddenly wasn't so circumstantial. "And Viceroy Arthur comes from The Fount. But still, this could just be the result of a cutter conquest over a trading convoy running accidentally over the borders."

"I don't think so," Gregor argued immediately. "The cutter I spoke to said everything was brought directly for bargaining. I would guess that that means all of the stuff was brought directly from the source spot right to the cutters, direct and easy for transport and ready for use and barter at a moment's notice. No middle man, no expenses, no records. Easy to cover up."

"Still pure speculation. And the motive is still not there."

"Screw the damn motive! We have enough as it is! The motive will come later!"

"We will never have a sound case unless we have all the pieces."

"Eris," Gregor said, clearly making the forced calm in his voice plain for her to hear. "I'm going to ask you to do something for me. Just one little thing, one little time, never again in either of our lives, ever. I need you, right now, once, just this very little once, to trust me. Trust me with this one, and back me up, because I know I'm right, no matter how many people tell me otherwise. I am right." He looked up to stare her right in the eye, even in the darkness seeing everything he needed to.

He took a deep breath and added the last view words effortlessly. "Please. Trust me."

For the longest of times, they stared into each other's eyes, neither saying a word, Gregor silently begging for her just once (or so) to go along with what he had to say, to try and believe even as she tried to find some way to contradict him, just so that they didn't return empty-handed just to see their mission failed in the wake of their great revelation. But he knew, positively knew, that there was nothing clouding his vision, no disturbing love to make him believe Arthur to be the false bad guy in the situation. He had only his pain left, and all of his angst and mortal turmoil were telling him nothing except the fact that the Viceroy was a very bad man, no matter how he had started out, and nothing but evil would leak out from him onto Luxa and Regalia. He had to be stopped, and Gregor would willingly go to any lengths to do it. As long as he had Eris' help.

And for once in his life, he had never been happier to hear a flier's reply.

"Queen Athena was never especially approving of the ambassador from The Fount. She had many an eye of her inside advisors on he, and still, even after the point where he pledged his life and property and many other things to Queen Luxa, our most valued ally, in proposed marriage, she was suspicious. I will not say that it is quite possible you are jumping to conclusions, but, as you so wish, I will grant you my trust. For the general moment, I trust you to be confident enough that you will not fail. If the Viceroy is as evil as you believe, then we will stop him. And if he is not, then we will stop him. Either way, we will not turn back the moment we leave this cave with intentions. Do you truly wish for this attempt?"

"Hell yeah," Gregor said, still thanking luck and trust for siding with him on this one. "Thank you."

"As I'm sure many a person has told you before, thank me when we have killed the perpetrator, or been locked away for destroying the wrong person. Until then, you are leading me forward, whether to doom or triumph. I believe time is not on our side."

"Too right."

"Then we will hasten."

So just like that, Gregor climbed upon Eris' back and began to fly away, back towards Regalia, finally able to fight the power behind Luxa's abduction, after weeks of turmoil, of guilt, of death-ridden devastation. Finally he would kill those who had taken so much away from him. Finally he was on his way to doing something other than looking for something to do, something to help him out as he attacked whatever he could as he ran away. He was done running away, though. Now he was running straight towards, right at the heart of all his problems. He never even stopped to think of how much Eris had just sacrificed, through her own pride and self-reliance, to throw her complete trust behind him at that moment, when he needed it the absolute most.

As she jumped out of the cave, his mind was already back in Regalia.