Hello, everyone!
Again, I apologise for my horrific delay in posting. My excuses remain the same, except this time I have the holidays to point to as well. I'm back at home and trying to enjoy life before returning to the realm of dread yet beloved school. Not much more to say on that point, really, other than I wish you all happy holidays, and a wonderful new year!
It has come to my attention that I should give you all a warning at this point in the story. The ending will not be happy. But it won't be sad, either. The ending of this story will be bitter-sweet. Because that's the kind of ending I like best, quite frankly. So! That's it, really. Of course, I'm not going to tell you what the ending will be, only that it's general mood is intended to be bitter-sweet. Hopefully that doesn't drive too many of you away.
But! Aside from that! I hope you'll enjoy!
Disclaimer: Mai-HIME is not mine.
The world was a spotted whirlpool, streaked through with glaring lights that flashed, pyretic strips, broad. Air felt thick, pressing in from all around like cloth and each breath was a stifled gasp through soaked fibres. Midori's head rolled back and she could hear the breaths ripping through her throat, great ragged swells, like tattered canvas sails cast by Aeolus' untender prisoners, their wailing only drowned by the din of their tethering chains (1). She was not aware that she had hit the floor until she was parallel to it, her face pressed against the cool linoleum, looking into the sightless eyes of one of her soldiers directly opposite of her, coated in a shaggy layer of oily ash. A bloody smear marred his boyish cheek. Half his face had been removed, the jaw yanked brutally from its joints so that he now tasted the earth of his fallen ground with the flaccid spear of his tongue.
Something obscured Midori's vision; she was unable to see anything else but this boy-soldier, for a mound of useless flesh sheathed in a stump of white cloth obstructed the path of her gaze. With no small amount of difficulty, she focused upon its form. The end of it had fingers that were slowly curling into a loose fist, muscles rapidly seized by the frigid grip of rigour mortis, curling the way the edges of paper shies and blackens from an open flame. With a strange sense of detached fascination, she watched it shrivel in upon itself, becoming smaller and smaller until she was sure its dessicated remains would twist into oblivion before her very eyes.
It was not until a flickering of light was caught and glimmered gold upon the sleeve that Midori realised the arm was her own.
Something grabbed her and pulled her painfully upwards, yet her face remained blank, devoid of all conscious thought or feeling. She was turned over and she could faintly see the shadowy outline of a figure toiling above her, twisting something around what remained of her shoulder which leaked spatters of blood, making her head spin. A tourniquet to stem the flow. The lights flickered again to reveal a familiar face haloed by a mop of disheveled orange hair looking down at her with an expression of absolute horror. Mai had a hump the shape of an eagle's hunched form, a mound with fiery red eyes and talons with which to snatch unsuspecting Ganymedes from their lofty homes (2). Midori only hoped that it had not seen the Trojan boy-soldier upon the floor-he would make a fine prize for any god seeking cup-bearers, silent as the dead as he was and twice as dutiful.
Suddenly, she was being hoisted up and in spite of herself a small pleading groan escaped her, almost a piteous whimper. Midori was sure Mai said something, but sound moved like liquid through the turgid atmosphere, never reaching her ears but to plug them full of drones and swollen hives. Draped across something soft and malleable, beige with a broad and mobile back, Midori felt herself being carried away. Her eyes remained fixed upon the placid face of the fool boy-soldier, an over-zealous Euryalus, until they rounded the corner and she saw no more.
A tremor wracked the earth.
Scowling, Shizuru looked down at her feet. She knew the cause of this disturbance. She could feel Hespera's mounting power not a few corridors away. When they had exited the van upon arrival at Phaesporia, Midori had tried to suit Shizuru up with a set of soldiers. A swift glare in the Cynthian Leader's direction, however, had solved that problem and Midori had just flung her hands up in exasperation and let Shizuru do as she pleased. As agreed upon, she had intended to rush through the ranks of rubble and chaos until she reached Natsuki. Things had a stunning knack to never work out according the plan, though. The place was swarming with scum. Most of the Artemisians were dead or dying. What with all their military force being located elsewhere, namely Parliament, most if not all of the Cynthian personnel consisted of doctors, researchers, general paper-pushers and janitorial staff. After but a taste of the carnage that had consumed this place, there could be no doubt about it.
Phaesporia had fallen.
They had arrived too late. There was nothing they could have possibly done. And now...Now Shizuru was bent upon finding what she had come for in the first place.
The last group of verminous kin she had run across and slaughtered had certainly not been the first. She now retained a constant aura, a state in which she was near invulnerable. Her eyes shone scarlet through the dim and flickering lights. A darkness wreathed her, wicked and sharp. And her footsteps were faint, squelching marks upon the ground, creased with dark blood. Her constant vigilance came with a price, however. Always in this state she could feel the Keres clawing at her from within as though clawing at the walls of their cells in deepest Tartarus, gnawing, tearing, burning. It was a thin line she walked between madness and despair. She had almost lost herself to her own demons more than once in her long, long lifetime. Shock, grief, rage: these were the tools necessary for her control to slip, for her to become truly lost in a skirling vortex of chthonic numen (3).
If something had happened to Natsuki...
No. She mustn't think like that. Natsuki was fine. She could yet feel Hespera's life-force. It was close. So close. And growing closer with every step.
Rounding the next corner, Shizuru froze.
Natsuki stepped through a wall just down the corridor. Her body was sheathed in blinding
white light, her eyes a blaze of virulent green. She turned slowly, saw Shizuru, then started forward, stopping only when she was just out of arm's reach, so painstakingly, tangibly near.
Shizuru paused as she took in the sight and greeted coolly, "Hespera."
The girl's pelucid face broke into a smile, bright as the day itself, that snatched Shizuru's breath away, "No, Shizuru, it's Natsuki."
For a moment, the Countess frowned, bemused. Then, it struck her.
She stared.
It had taken her years to reach the point that Natsuki had achieved in a matter of weeks. Equilibrium with the powers residing within her, learning to accept them. It had been so difficult to not fight it, as her body instinctually wished to do, and to embrace the shrieking, raving essences of the Keres, to make them one with her. Doing so was against her very nature as a person, as a mortal, as a mere human...And yet, this dark-haired, wide-eyed slip of a girl had accomplished this most inhuman feat with an ease that was not so much startling as it was terrifying.
The ground rumbled and thrashed, making the walls and ceiling shudder.
Snapped out of her reverie, Shizuru raised an eyebrow at a smattering of dust across her shoulders and hair before turning her attention back to Natsuki, "Really, now. That's quite enough. You don't need to keep up the act in my presence."
But the girl just frowned and shook her head, "That wasn't me..."
"Then who-?"
Natsuki shrugged.
Swearing as yet another groan seized the earth, Shizuru motioned for Natsuki to follow
and started off in the opposite direction, growling, "That damnable Artemis better not be dead..."
Shifting the unconscious woman on her shoulders with a low grunt, Mai quickly typed in her officer's code to over-ride the emergency system. The alarms may have continued to blare, but the doors of the Medical Ward unbolted with a metallic snap and click. shoving the door open with her foot, she entered, followed closely by Camilla and Prometheus.
"Yohko!" she shouted, lilac gaze sweeping anxiously around the room.
Please let her be here...Please let her be alive...
"Yohko!"
A clatter of instruments sounded to her left. When she turned in that direction, it was to
see a thoroughly skittish Dr. Sagisawa peering over the remains of a dead man upon her coroner's table, still in her lab coat. "Oh god..." she breathed, "Oh god! Did the lion tear off Midori's arm?"
"What?" Mai just blinked at the doctor for a moment, then shook her head and said incredulously, "No! God, no! The lion didn't do anything!"
Suddenly, without warning, the doors behind them burst open, nearly flung from their hinges, which wailed and screeched at the strain. Yohko shrieked and dove beneath her coroner's table once more. Whirling around with Midori still unconscious upon her shoulders, Mai took a step back.
Shizuru stepped across the threshold and eyed the doors, which had two smoking craters blackened in their very centers. The Countess looked back over her shoulder, saying admonishingly, "Really, Natsuki! Was that necessary?"
The raven-haired girl just behind her grinned sheepishly, "Sorry, Shizuru," she shrugged apologetically.
"Don't apologise to me! They're the ones who will now probably assail you with grievances caused by your actions!" she made a wide sweeping gesture to the inhabitants of the room.
Dr. Sagisawa pointed over the body upon her table at Shizuru and Natsuki, stammering, "D-D-Did they tear off Midori's arm?"
Sighing in exasperation, Mai straightened the weight across her shoulders with a wince, Midori could stand to loose a few pounds, "No, Yohko. They didn't." Great rumbling noises shook the place again accompanied by the floor heaving beneath their feet. Mai staggered, "And can whichever of you is doing that please stop!" she snapped at the newcomers.
"It's not us!" Natsuki put up her hands defensively.
"Then what-?"
Shizuru cut in, "We do not know. The author of this cause is the least of our concerns. The effect, on the other hand, concerns us greatly."
"What the hell are you talking about, Viola?"
"The place is gonna blow, Mai," Natsuki interjected suddenly.
A sort of dull silence followed, punctuated only by further explosions and the groaning of metal and stone heard in the distance.
Finally, Yohko leaped up and cried, "Well, what are we waiting for? Let's get the hell out of here!"
"My vote's with her," Natsuki piped in.
"You can't die!" Mai shouted as the earth rumbled again, "You're a goddess!"
"Technically that's not true, but we're not going to get into that particular topic just now," Shizuru waved a nonchalant hand. She and Natsuki were the only ones in the room unaffected by the grumbling and heaving of everything around them, "Unless you want to discuss that now, of course. I'm not the one in mortal peril, after all."
Muttering a low oath, Mai snapped, "Fine. Let's get out of here. Come on, Yohko!" The doctor scrambled from her hiding place and latched herself onto Mai, the only other seemingly normal person in the room. Camilla padded after them with Prometheus swooping ahead, scouting. No sooner had they started their trek, however, did Mai pause and ask, "Aren't there others still alive?"
But all that Shizuru said coldly in return was, "None that would want to be alive."
(1) Aeolus' prisoners = In book 1 of the Aeneid, Juno goes to Aeolus, Lord of the Winds, and request that he unleash the winds to blow Aeneas' ships to smithereens. Ergo, here I am referring to the winds themselves which he keeps under lock and key, chained in a mountain prison.
(2) Ganymede = Ganymede was a young Trojan boy with whom Zeus became infatuated. Zeus swept down in the form of an eagle (or a whirlwind, depending on the source you read) and snatched Ganymede up, bearing him back to Olympus. Ganymede then became Zeus' royal cup-bearer.
(3) numen = numen is the Latin word meaning "divine power". I'd already used the word "power" a few times in this chapter and was getting rather tired of seeing it popping up everywhere. Unfortunately, I couldn't think of a good enough English equivalent, so I just went with numen. It's a word that can be used in reference to any god's power and is often confused with the word nomen, meaning "name". They're quite different, though. (Also, I've used the word "chthonic" before, but I think I should mention its definition here since it a rather rare term outside of the Classics. It means of or pertaining to the underworld. So an example of a chthonic deity would be Hecate. Or the Keres. Or the Eumenides. Or...you get the point.)