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Epicness. That's what's on the way. This is the last chapter where you'll be completely in the dark. Savor it. Chapter 35. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: Yeah, what you gonna do about it?
35
Race of Time
The gnawer lands wrapped around the Cutter Lair, so that while Eris and Gregor had taken brief refuge in gnawer lands they were actually on the opposite side of the Lair as Regalia.
Moving back, Eris tried to find a route that they could utilize back through the cutters' territory so as to conserve their timing as much as possible and arrive in the night, thereby surprising the city, then hopefully the Viceroy, and being able to take action whilst their state and arrival was mostly in confusion.
Even before they had passed back into cutter territory, though, the sounds and rumblings of close proximate cutters assaulted them with air vibrations, and it didn't take much thought thereafter to deem passage completely and assuredly unsafe. Left with no time to try and think of drastic alternatives, Eris began to make their slow way all the way around the curve of cutter territory, through the gnawer lands until they would reach the human border. Gregor was distraught over the time loss, but it couldn't be avoided.
For the better part of what he estimated to be the night, they flew through the dark, wary of the closeness to the cutters and the gnawer patrols that periodically rotated below them. They were so solemnly aware of every ticking second as it passed by, lost and more lost with each stroke of Eris' well-muscled wings, less of which to work with every moment they made their way even faster and faster. Gregor was already trying not to count down the minutes until Luxa would be sworn away to a traitor, but tried to chastise himself from doing so and turn his mind to other thoughts. Much too soon to worry of such things.
His memory of an Underland was sketchy, but he had also only seen a few complete ones in his entire time beneath the ground. Eris, however, seemed to have perfect recollection of such things, as well as perfect calculations for their distance traveled, and never differed once as they finally reached the desired curve. Angling through tunnels in which both her belly and Gregor's bowed back grazed ceiling and floor, she shot around what was apparently the end of cutter territory, whipping at full speed around until they were bee lining straight for the human lands.
At one point she slowed slightly, only so that the beating blasts of her wings wouldn't drown out the sound of her voice as she spoke loudly to Gregor in mid, uncomfortable, flight. "No doubt the border guards will have an even tighter lock down on any approaches to the city as this point, so close to her majesty's wedding. What are we to do when we encounter them?"
"Concentrate on the flying," Gregor replied without hesitation, mind already at work. "Get us there, fast. I'll worry about the rest." His mind needed occupying anyway, and he truly had no idea how he was going to face down hostile allies without hurting them or them hurting Eris and he. Eris complied with his wish, and restarted her flight speed with even more intent.
And even as the slow hours passed, and they got closer to their destination back in Regalia, and the night hours began to pass into early morning and then towards waking times, Gregor poured over and fully pondered the problem at hand. It didn't involve much problem solving, truly. In the end he simply decided that there wouldn't be enough time to stop and explain their situation. He would just have to find a way to dodge any projectiles and or capture orders that were thrown at the two of them. If they stayed in the air, this shouldn't be particularly hard. He was more concerned with what would happen when they would have to land. Anyway, though, that was a problem he would only know how to handle when it actually happened, and wouldn't be able to think about solving that until it actually happened.
They cleared the gnawer lands, and began the quick stretch across the ten-mile dead land, neutral zone, that was laid out at the point of the three-way intersection between the gnawer, cutter, and human territories. He had only crossed his eyes over it in passing upon maps, but understood it to be the remnants of a once-rich land that had been scoured dry to make up for the losses of the Time War between four and two years previously. Most of it was a massive cavern not unlike the giant Lair cavern, only the pillars supporting this distant ceiling were many and very thin, spaced out nearly equally across the wide, smooth rock floor.
It took them somewhere between fifteen and twenty minutes to cross it, and then they hit the border of the human lands.
Eris began to fly so fast, through familiar tunnels she seemed to know well, that Gregor found it suddenly difficult to register the switches between the narrow, close together tunnels. He began to periodically tighten his knees' hold on her body, as the turns became tighter and less banked. Every time she arced or leaned to shoot through a smaller gap he lowered himself closer to her back, wary of the close proximity of his head to whatever which wall he was closest to hitting each time. All the while, he was trying to get a sense of how close to Regalia they were.
An entire hour passed where they did nothing but zig and zag constantly through smaller and smaller passages where the gaps of safety became even smaller. Twice Gregor almost asked her to slow down for nearly throwing him off. Both times, however, one remembrance that in only a short amount of time Luxa would be walking down the aisle to the rest of her lying life, perhaps right at that moment if his time estimates were off, was enough to keep his mouth shut.
Eris must have been going faster than even she had believed they could. At one point the recently healed scabs of Gregor's scars ripped themselves back open and began to bleed freely again onto his clothes, purely from the friction with the air. He would have put a piece of cloth or a hand over them to stamp the blood, but he had to concentrate completely on staying on Eris' back with all of his mind power or he would find himself in midair, heading straight for a very hard stone wall.
Then a light began to filter into some of the tunnels and small caves, and Gregor sucked in a breath of anticipation. A moment later Eris out of a last cavern and light blasted them into hesitation. Used to the darkness of the Cutter Lair for days' time, Eris faltered only slightly by the intensity, but Gregor was nearly knocked completely off of her back, and continued to remain incapacitated even after she continued her flight. It took him several moments to regain himself to actually see the city.
The city was covered in light, the daytime torches and lamps lit and shining. The streets weren't empty of citizens, but neither were they jam packed in a congregation. That knowledge alone was enough to tell Gregor that the wedding was being held private and inside the palace. The palace itself stood just as it had before, except he could see several weak attempts at decorations in certain places that he didn't even care to characterize and identify, but told him that he had successfully guessed the actual day of the ceremony at the correct point in time. Anyway, his eyes were suddenly scouring the castle for any sign that would give him a precise location of the wedding he now had to do anything to stop.
A cry sounded from below as they approached the city, at the fringes, where the guards were located. Gregor looked down to see soldiers scurrying to arms. He wondered if they hadn't identified the two of them or were simply ordered to attack any intruders upon the city. Whichever one it was, a few words were obviously relayed, and then suddenly a startled line of archers pointed bows up, pulled back strings, and fired without much aim.
"Evasive," Gregor warned Eris, but it wasn't quite needed. She had already begun to make adjustments in their flight path, but even those weren't quite needed; only one of the arrows made it up to their high height, and that fell far behind them.
They continued without hesitation, ignoring the cries below as citizens noticed them. Eris intentionally began to fly lower, perhaps in an attempt to get Gregor recognized. It relatively worked, at least to the point where a few fingers were simply pointing now instead of accusing and screaming. No matter what was happening below, they just kept flying, hard and quick all the way up to the standard platform ahead of the castle, where a regiment of soldiers stood ready but unthreatening in the rear of the area.
Eris pulled up abruptly in the air as they reared to the stone floor, but took several seconds to halt in midair for her speed. Even before she had come to a complete stop Gregor had leaped from her back and rushed towards the soldiers, who had finally identified him and loosened their hold on their weapons, although not relinquished.
Without even waiting for the obvious lead officer to acknowledge him, Gregor ran for the stairs that led up and into the palace. Before he could get there, though, the captain and his troops moved to block the way. Gregor ran all the way up until he skidded to a halt directly in front of the officer, and then didn't waste a moment before snarling, "Move, captain."
"Overlander, sir, this is greatly unexpected," the soldier replied easily, with the perfect hint of interest and concern at the same time as he ignored the question.
"Whatever, it'll be explained later," Gregor groaned, beckoning him out of the way. "Right now get the hell out of my way."
"I cannot do that, sir," the captain responded with the same, easy voice. "I have been given explicit orders not to let anyone pass these gates until Queen Luxa's and King Arthur's marriage ceremony has been completed."
"On whose authority?"
"King Arthur, sir."
Gregor didn't have enough energy to be annoyed or horrified. He pressed on instantly. "How far in the ceremony are they?!"
"As far as I know, they have just begun."
"Then there's time," Gregor continued, half-relieved, more to himself than the soldier. "Move."
"I cannot do that, sir."
Gregor sucked in a nasty breath, preparing his words very carefully as he stepped as close to the soldier as height would allow. He stood a few higher, but the aura of command about his opposite nearly matched them evenly. Speaking very softly, directly into the soldier's ear as he stared past the man towards his troops, Gregor hissed his words quietly and carefully. "Captain, your queen is in very grave danger. Enough so that I won't feel any remorse in saving her life if I have to kill you to do it. You have ten seconds to get out of my way."
The only sign of fear came from the sharp intake of breath following his conclusion. After the briefest moment's hesitation, the soldier replied. "Are you threatening me, Warrior?"
"No. You are threatening your city and your queen by standing in my way. If you don't think I'll sacrifice your life for the queen, then hold your ground, but I would advise against it. You now have four seconds left."
The soldier expended three of them, but just as Gregor was despairing, against his word, that he would have to shed blood, Regalian even, to save Luxa, the captain groaned deeply in something Gregor might have associated with annoyance, and then quickly stepped out of the way. A harsh hand signal to his men had them following the same reaction, and Gregor instantly plunged forward up the steps, taking five at a time in his haste to reach the top and into the castle.
He only hesitated at the very last stair, and whipped around. "Eris!" he called out, to where she still stood watching him from where they had landed. "Thank you. I'll pay you back sometime, I promise."
"I will collect, Overlander," Eris replied, composed and serene and standing tall in front of the numerous Underland soldiers. "Go and save the queen."
Gregor was already running deep back into the castle, though, and barely heard her reply. He listened quickly for the signs of obvious congregation, but couldn't catch the snatch of a single one. The halls were nearly vacant, except for a few stationed soldiers at precise points as he ran. Running hastily, still completely lost, Gregor dropped himself down to the floor and used the additional friction to slide himself quickly to a halt. Leaping back to his feet, he yelled at the nearest guard for directions to the room of the wedding.
A short amount of prodding later got him the horrible location, a massive chapel room he knew to rest over four floors above his head. He ran instantly for the nearest staircase, praying that his knowledge of the castle's layout didn't falter with his recent disruptive actions.
He cleared step after step, thinking of nothing except Luxa and how he needed to get to her. He removed his gun as he covered the first two flights, just in the case that he would have to put one of his two remaining bullets through the Viceroy in a few nervous moments. His whole body was shaking now, but he wasn't sure whether it was from fear or exertion or the stitch now ripping up his right side. All he knew was that he had to stop the Viceroy.
He hit the level ground running as he finally reached the right floor, careening as quickly as he could, soundlessly, down the corridor, past the suddenly startled and disoriented guards as he flew past. Running through his head suddenly was the fact that he knew the Viceroy was guilty, but the fact that none of the clues fit, and still he had no idea why Arthur would want to do such a thing as kidnap Luxa. He shot past even more soldiers, barely paying attention, and thought even deeper, into the marriage, the ceremony passing only a few more rooms down. Why? There was absolutely no in-depth way the Viceroy could find himself gaining something from the outside in the plan puzzle Gregor had fit together backwards. The Viceroy's cunning mind, the negotiation, the further plans. Nothing went with each other.
He was just down the hall, able to see the massive doors leading towards the place where his heart would break or explode, or both, and he heard Mareth's pronounced voice, evidently overseeing the ceremony, abruptly call for any objections to the current ceremony.
And then, just as he reached the doors, Gregor's mind did a back flip and suddenly, finally, clicked all the clues into place, solving the puzzle.
Skidding to a halt just as he watched it all close together in his mind's eye, Gregor was so shocked by his sudden revelation that he almost forgot to push forward and open the doors quietly into the room, before stepping in with a sudden fury.
Just as Mareth called for a second time, his face composed together in a composure of pure acceptance, and he raised his head perfectly as he looked out over the ceremony, trying to take in everything. The gnawer seniority in numbers, the carefully organized regiments of humans and fliers attending. The long, long, long aisle leading right up to the stand where Howard and Vikus stood looking on, Mareth overseeing the two people standing ahead of him. The Viceroy, straight and smiling. And Luxa, irrefutably the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. He never hesitated as he opened his mouth to speak.
"Yes. I have reason to oppose this marriage."
END OF PART 4