CHAPTER 9
It wasn't until she reached the first junction that Refina realized through the gasping of her breath and maddened throbbing of her heart, that she hadn't been thinking. At least not beyond her initial need to escape what she'd been so keen to put behind her. Whatever it was that had looked back at her over Andoni's corpse.
She shook her head against the intrusive reminder of those eyes, the way they'd burned so clearly and cleanly in her memory, embers of a time which, though not even a year past, felt a lifetime away. She knew those eyes. She knew their burn, their murderous desire.
But it wasn't possible...It just…
Her feet skidded to an ungraceful halt as she forced her mind to sweep aside the disturbing sight of the way those eyes had been devouring her from the twisted shadows of Celena's face...and forced it to consider the immediate problem before her. She stood for a number of moments, fear fighting with frustration as she berated herself for not somehow obtaining a map of some sort before breaking out. Then again, she hadn't imagined that she'd even get this far.
Exhaling a gusty sigh, she ignored the still urgent pounding of her pulse and the prickle of her arm hair that warned of pursuit, instead consulting her memory of the route the guards took her when they let her outside for her allotted hour of exercise. When they brought her back inside, they'd taken a left turn into this hallway, which meant that, from where she stood now, it would be a right turn.
But her intuition argued back that she needed to get going right now, because her ears, alert for any sign of trouble, caught the erratic stumbling sound of footsteps not far behind her. Celena, or whatever had a hold of her, wasn't going to let her go so easily.
Without waiting a second longer, her feet sprang to the left.
Damnit, damnit, damnit!
Everything melted together in a dizzying whirl of color, sound, and smoke as Allen followed the guard down the aisle, careful to keep his gait as controlled as possible despite all of his instincts screaming at him to run straight for Scherezade.
I should never have left her alone! I should have had someone watching her!
The sudden burst of bright sunlight startled him out of his self-censure, revealing a small carriage that the guard hurried him towards.
"When did you find out?" Allen asked him as he opened the door, his hand tight on the handle to keep it from flying for his sword hilt; as a knight he could face combat and even certain death head on without so much as a flinch or a waver. Death was easy. It was this...the living, the inability to protect the women in his life, from Marlene to Celena, that set his both his sense of dignity and his sense of masculinity on edge, and it was an extremely unwelcome (if familiar) road to travel.
"Not an hour ago, Sir," he replied. "One of the maids went to check on her as per your instructions, but they found her bedroom empty and no sign of her in royal apartments." He nodded to the carriage in a silent gesture for the knight to worry less about questioning him and worry more about getting back to the palace with all due haste. "We raised the alarm and we've sent the Guard around to search the palace and the grounds."
"Wait!"
The cry came just as Allen was about to close the door behind him. Peering out of the window with an irritated frown at having his departure delayed, his expression quickly transformed into one of surprise when he saw Van dash down the wide stone staircase of the temple's front entrance, Fanelian garb swirling in vivid colors behind him like the wing of an exotic bird. He reached the carriage in a breathless disarray of plumage, the silk of his robes creased from the activity they were by no means designed for. He caught the door and attempted to pry it from Allen's hand, but the knight held fast.
"Van?"
"I'm coming with you," young king said briskly in a tone which did not allow for any protest.
Allen, however, looked to protest anyway, to tell him that this was a family matter he did not need to concern himself with and that he had his own royal duty to tend to, but he caught the determined glint in the boy's eyes and remembered last night and the promise they had all made to each other. Van may not be family by blood, but, godsdamnit, he was still family.
Nodding, Allen pushed the door open, whatever dissent he might have found himself giving dying on his tongue as the boy scrambled inside with a knock against the door to signal the driver.
"Something happened to your sister, didn't it?"
The directness of the question, the almost accusatory tone of it, made Allen flinch, his frown and his irritation creeping back to settle on his face.
"Yes," he answered with an edge to his voice that warned Van against making any assumptions about who was to blame for this, though he doubted that was the boy's intent. Van had such a blunt, almost careless way of speaking, that he often failed to notice when his words touched a nerve. The best thing to do, especially now, was to simply leave it be. "The guard told me she was missing from her room when one of the maids went to look in on her."
The boy blinked, shock rippling across his face before something darker and grimmer took it's place.
"Do you think…?" he trailed off, unsure whether or not he could shape the words that he wanted to speak, unsure whether he really needed to speak them at all when Allen's hard gaze fell on him, deep with the understanding that to name a nameless fear would be to give it the life it so desperately craved from the shadows. A reflection of red, of heat, and death.
"I don't know, Van. But we'd better pray that it hasn't."
The hallway flew past in a blurred mix of dank brown stone and grey shadows interrupted here and there by wooden doors shut tightly against any would-be thief. Refina felt no temptation to slow down and explore what those rooms might have to offer, though she might have done so if she'd been alone as she'd originally planned. She was sure, as she flew around a bend, that there were things she would have found useful to her escape. Food, certainly, would be stored down here, along with bedding for guards and prisoners alike. A loaf and a bedroll would have been welcome companions, as would some better clothing, and a knife to tuck somewhere inside of that clothing.
She resisted the urge to berate herself again for her lack of practicality when she knew the most practical thing she could do at the moment was to keep planting one foot in front of the other. At least she was armed now, and that was definitely an improvement, insane little noblewomen aside.
The appearance of a narrow set of stairs forced her to halt again, chest pumping, breath heavy in her throat. She managed to find a spare moment to curse the theft of her endurance; sitting in a cell for six months had been only too effective at sending her fitness levels collapsing down like a guymelef in free-fall. But that, like so many other things about her nebulous future, could wait.
Her eyes quickly scanned up the steps, once again measuring her surroundings for any signs of guards. There were none close, or none that she could hear, but the tightness gripping her stomach told her that she'd run into them before long. The exit could very well likely be up those stairs, and, if it were, she needed to be ready to face whatever stood in between.
Readjusting her grip on the sword hilt, she gingerly placed a foot on the lowest step, questing about for any loose stone that might slip beneath her weight and give away her approach. Finding none, she settled her muscles into the practiced flow of silence and stealth and began a creeping ascent.
One step.
Then two.
The top stair fell gradually away to reveal a large door that could only be the exit. It was flanked by two guards, whose heads immediately snapped in her direction as she crested the staircase, showing themselves to be more alert and well-trained than her own guard had been.
Refina burst forward, sword already swinging at the left guard whose hands had been reaching for his hilt. His cry of angered surprise was dampened by the scrape of her steel against his half-drawn blade, but she ducked around him on fear-quickened feet, using her momentum to swing down at the hand of the right guard. There was no answering cry of steel, only an agonized scream as her aim cleaved through the fragile bones and tendons just above the wrist, sending him to his knees in an eruption of blood. Whirling towards the door she faced the remaining guard. His eyes darted between her and his companion, face strained between horror at the flapping remains of flesh and anger that he'd been taken so unawares.
She waited, hands tightening around the hilt, the muscles in her feet and legs poised. One more look away. Just one hair of a second.
The man started in sudden shock, attention briefly drawn away from Refina as his gaze caught movement on the stairs. But whatever it was, it hadn't provided the complete distraction she needed as she noted that he still kept her in his periphery even as he barked, "Who goes there?"
Something cold prickled down her spine at those words, stirring in her the urge to simply run for the door and forget about finishing him off. She already knew who it was who had come up those stairs. She didn't need to look.
But look she did. Against all better training and judgement her head turned as if moved by an inexorable and invisible power and she saw the bedraggled pale curls rising and falling in time with the thin, narrow shoulders. All she could do was thank her gods that she could not see Celena's eyes. The guttural, labored breaths issuing from her as she climbed the last stair were awful enough, putting to mind the pants of a lion which has finally run down its prey and is circling in for the kill.
"Who are you? What's your business here?" the guard roared. He kept his sword aimed at Refina, showing him to be far more intelligent than Andoni had ever been, but unlike poor, dead Andoni, he hadn't seen the disturbing quickness with which Celena could move, hadn't seen just how with a few flashes of her fists she'd been able to totally disarm him.
He also hadn't seen just how quick Refina could be either.
"Answer me! Who-!"
With a grim whistle, she sent her blade crashing into his, the force of her attack coupled with his now nearly total distraction sending it spinning out of his grasp. It fell in a noisy, metallic clatter far too close to where Celena stood.
Celena moved.
In a single, bold stride she grabbed it and charged, the tip precisely aimed at the swelling pulse of the guard's neck where it buried itself in the vulnerable skin like a dragon fang through an auroch hide. Gagging on the pulp of his severed tongue, the guard stumbled backwards, hands clawing uselessly at his throat from which poured a livid crimson surge. There was the ugly sound of his last, rattling gasp as Celena's foot connected with his stomach to send him collapsing to the ground.
Silence settled around them, raw and pregnant with horrific possibility. Refina took one, excruciatingly slow step back, blade and body furiously aware that for all of Celena's stillness she could erupt again at any second and treat her to a similarly gruesome fate. Her mind, meanwhile, was frantically screaming at her to turn tail and run, run as fast and as far as she could before Celena even had the chance to strike.
But the girl made no move towards her, only bent down to retrieve the guard's sheath which she belted around her waist with an expertise Refina knew she could not possibly have had. She moved to the other guard, unconscious now from the pain, and did the same, slender fingers quick and sure. She held it out to Refina, the gesture weighted with an unspoken command: You will take this.
She hesitated, unsure if this were merely a more clever sort of trap, but there came the cold realization that the palace would discover them missing sooner rather than later and that if the girl had wanted to harm her she already would have tried. Her sword wasn't even out anymore, though an inch of it gleamed with sullen intent from where it had been sheathed.
Celena didn't speak, didn't even look at her. Only continued to hold the sheath out while she remained in an easy crouch. It made for an incongruous and bizarre tableau; the bodies of the guards sprawled around them in expanding pools of blood, Celena's stained skirt so delicately draped over such a disconcertingly masculine pose, the eerie sense of her somehow being sated, waiting only until the next opportunity for violence. Refina spared a quiet thanks to whatever gods may have been listening that such a craving had not been turned on her.
Not yet, at any rate.
She lashed out to snatch the sheath from Celena's hand, swiftly backpedaling towards the door as she put it around her waist, eyes firmly trained on the girl for her intentions. She lowered her sword, but did not sheath it. All it might take was one moment with her back turned and she had no desire to die the very day she'd just been freed.
"If you think I'm going to kill you, you can relax."
Refina felt herself start with shock at the sound of her voice. It was the first time she'd spoken since she'd stumbled down the dungeon steps enrobed in the cold caresses of her madness. And while she seemed to have reached a sort of calm in the midst of her internal storm, it was clear to Refina as those angry streaks of drying blood on Celena's dress that it had yet to fully pass over her.
But it wasn't just the cool, detached manner in which she pushed herself back to her feet and strode towards the door. It was the voice itself. It had grown slightly deeper, had sharpened its edges on the bodies felled by her hands and cleaved straight and sure into the heart of her memory where it stood, hands imperiously, impatiently planted on its hips for her to make the final connection.
"Come on," Celena snapped. She rose to her feet to step carelessly over the guards. "Or do you want to go back in your cage?"
When the carriage drew to a halt at the palace gates there was already a company of Royal Guards waiting. The long white feathers of their caps bobbed and whirled as they caught sight of it, reminding Allen of a flock of swans that had just spied the drifting shadow of a hawk. And just like a flock of swans, Allen knew they'd viciously attack anything that disturbed their nest, though it seemed that in the matter of his sister they had failed spectacularly.
"I don't like the looks of this," he muttered to Van as they marched towards them in single file austerity. He recognized Captain Enneconis at the head.
As the carriage halted Allen caught a stray glimpse of his reflection in the window, noted with vague alarm how the last year had taken its toll in the deep shadows around his eyes, the thin, grim line of his mouth that matched the expressions of the advancing guards.
I'm getting old before my time.
With a silent sigh of mounting frustration he reached for the door before Enneconis could knock and threw it open to leap out of the carriage. Van followed, though he was careful to stay near the carriage as Allen strode towards the guard, helpless anger describing his every step.
"Captain," he began, voice tight against the restraints of etiquette and exhaustion. "I've just received word about my sister. Explain how it is the Royal Guard allowed her to go missing!"
"Sir Allen," Enneconis said, leveling a gaze of chilly reserve at the knight. He was older than Allen and the two decades of his service to the crown had left him with an upper lip as stiff and calcified as the royal family itself. The lead swan. A privileged family retainer who divided the world into neat little categories of "us" and "them". And his eyes, Allen Schezar, whose indiscriminate and uncommonly close association with the Princesses, was forever a "them." A hawk after the precious, jeweled eggs of the nation.
"I shall appreciate if you will refrain from any undue accusations until this matter has been solved." He paused to offer an acknowledging nod to Van. "Your sister was discovered missing from her bedchamber shortly after Their Highnesses and their parties left for His Majesty's funeral service. A maid reported it to my lieutenant who then reported it to me. After this, things become…" here he fixed a grim look on the knight, "somewhat disturbing in nature."
"What do you mean by that?"
"About an hour ago another member of the guard, a Sir Batua, relayed that the morning rotation of the dungeon guards had not reported in. When he went to investigate, he found them...murdered."
"Murdered? By who? How?"
"If you will allow me to finish. They looked to have been murdered with their own swords as their wounds are consistent with such injuries and their weapons were nowhere to be found on their person. The fact that the cell door of one very particular and highly important prisoner was also found open should give you an idea of who the murderer is. But...there remains the fact that the escape of the prisoner coincides with the disappearance of your sister. It leaves me with only a handful of conclusions to make."
"Are you saying that Celena had something to do with the escape of the Zaibach captain?" Allen demanded, eyes flashing as he felt himself vacillate between the rising heat of his anger and the icy touch of dread. Even as the words flew from him like Teo's knives, he knew it hadn't been Enneconis who had failed. It had been no one's fault but his; ignoring his instincts, believing Celena to have been perfectly safe from everything that might take her from him...only to forget that it had been under similar circumstances that she had disappeared ten years ago. Hadn't he believed her to be safe back then, roaming along the grounds of his father's house and picking the flowers she'd so loved, only to have Zaibach sweep her away? He'd let it happen again, hadn't he? By shutting her up in the palace while he'd exiled himself to the distant corners of the world he'd allowed the enemy within to break free.
And I dared to call myself her brother!
He lapsed into a defenseless silence, sensing Van drawing closer behind him, though he dared not risk a glance unless he should let the boy see him shatter completely. If only it were Eries. He knew if he'd looked back and she were in Van's place he'd find the strength and resolve he needed.
"I am not saying so directly," Enneconis went on. "We won't really know what happened until the young lady herself is recovered. But I find it more than mere coincidence. Either she was personally involved, or the prisoner involved her in some way. Perhaps took her hostage. It wouldn't be unexpected. I've seen such things before."
"I…" Allen faltered. "I'm sorry for my outburst, Sir Enneconis. I did not mean to accuse you of anything. I just…"
"Perfectly alright, Sir Schezar. I understand that these are difficult circumstances for you, as they would be for anyone."
"Have you sent men out to search?" asked Van. He threw a quelling look at Allen's expression of mild ire at his intrusion as if to let him know that it was probably best to let cooler heads prevail. It struck the knight as an odd inversion of their relationship; in the past he had been the one to curb Van's reckless emotions, to hold him back from rash action. The irony would have made him laugh if they had been anywhere else, any time else. Not here. Not when the ghosts of his past had traveled the terrible circle of fate to manifest themselves into the present with such vengeance as to steal the strength straight from his bones and leave him that boy again collapsed at Balgus's feet begging for an end to it all.
"Of course," said Enneconis, a questioning eyebrow lifting as he took in Allen's stricken features. His training told him it might be best to leave him from the search. Family members, he knew, driven by desperation and fear, often hindered rather than helped in these matters. "But, as you are the girl's nearest relation, I think it's best I ask what you suggest our next course of action when we do find her?"
"Allen?" prodded Van, concern reflected in his eyes as he waited for his friend to answer.
"Let me...Let me go to Scherezade," he said, his voice slowly gathering strength as he spoke. He drew himself up with a shake of his head, hand going to his forehead as if to pluck out the last lingering vestiges of helplessness. "Van...where is Escaflowne?"
"Esca—What?" Van's face creased in confusion."Why do you need Escaflowne?"
"I already know what happened. Van…" Allen rounded on him, blue eyes alive and blazing with hatred and terror. "he's back."
"Who…" An ecstatically crazed and vicious smile slashed across his vision then. He saw fires engulfing Fanela, the screams of his people as embers and ash rained down on them. He saw the silver hair gleaming in the light of the sconces, sleek and haughty as the crimson eyes of the boy who'd sneeringly called him a coward.
"No…" Reflexively his hand went to his sword as he staggered back a step. Dilandau...alive. Set loose again to do gods knew what to the world. "That's not…"
"It's possible. I always had a feeling it was, but I tried to deny it for so long." A laugh, laced with bitterness at his own hubris, passed through lips drawn back into a hardened, humorless smile. "It's just as Sir Enneconis said. My sister goes missing at the same time the Zaibach captain is freed. Celena wouldn't do that. But Dilandau would. And I know he was the one who killed those guards. He'll go for a guymelef. Something he'll be able to fight with that can also get him out of Asturia as quickly as possible."
"And the prisoner?"
"We can deal with her. I'm more worried about what he'll do." Allen nodded, drawing himself up as the captain in him took the helm again to steer him out of the turbulent waters of guilt and shame. Face now set in resolve, he gave the king an imperative push on the shoulder.
"Now, Escaflowne! Hurry!"
–
The North Lawns extended from the back of the palace in a wide swathe kept entirely clear for the equestrian pursuits of the Royal Family, namely Princess Millerna, who in her younger days had spent long and happy afternoons to herself riding across the open green. It was in much less use these days, as Eries had neither the skill nor the interest in country pastimes as her sister, but it only heightened Refina's anxiety for the sheer emptiness of the expanse. The gardens were on the palace's west side and there were no structures between where they stood and the low white building of the stables and the guymelef hangar she could spy at some distance, leaving them no place in which to hide themselves. Any one at any time could walk out onto the paths which criss-crossed the lawn and easily spot them.
She glanced sideways at Celena for any sign of what she might do. The girl had barely seemed to acknowledge her presence since the fight with the guards, lost again to the phantoms which haunted a mind too unreachable and alien for her to begin to fathom. She could only be grateful for the small mercy that Celena had kept her back to her, relieving her of the sight of the unsettling fires she'd seen ravening through Celena's eyes as her sword had hacked through the first guard. And even though Celena had said she wouldn't kill her, the inch of blade glinting out from above her own sheath told of just how little Refina could trust those words.
"We'll have to run," Refina said haltingly, wincing at the note of uncertainty in her voice even as she nodded at the open flatness ahead. She'd never sounded so weak in her Zaibach days."There's no cover."
"Then we run." Celena's voice was easy, almost dismissive. "No one's around to stop us. Everyone is at the funeral. We're as good as free."
Refina scanned the horizon, alert for any signs of movement but it seemed Celena was right. No one was around. Even so, she cast another dubious glance out of the corner of her eye at the girl, wondering anew at how wholly different...transformed...she'd become since that first night and still utterly out of her depth as to what it meant in spite of deeper parts of her mind that took in the casual hand on the hip, the trenchant stare, the petulant demeanor and painted its own ghost atop those small, fine-boned features. The name itself paced restlessly on the back of her tongue, but she had no will to speak it.
"What if there are guards there?" was all she could say, throwing the question out like a line to test the waters to make absolutely certain of the sanity of her own mind. Celena was Celena, however cracked she might be. To think that a person could become someone else simply because they reminded you of them...because that was what you wanted….Wasn't that just wishful thinking?
"Then just kill them. They can't fight," the girl scoffed with a nonchalant toss of her head. "C'mon. I'm not wasting all day out here."
Without waiting Celena took off at a sprint, leaving Refina behind for a baffled moment before she too, broke off into a run. The first rush of wind against her face returned her to the cockpit of her guymelef in free fall as it dropped from its restraints, cape spreading out like the wings of the birds that circled around the fortress to build their nests in its towers. The sun was gloriously warm on her back, and, as the palace gradually fell away from her sight, she felt truly free.
At first she thought she was imagining it. The sound was so low it was barely a passing vibration through her feet. Then it came again, just on the edge of hearing, a distant rumble that might have been mistaken for thunder if the weather weren't so fair.
Another. And another. Like a pulse. A dragon's heartbeat.
The ground shook, sending Refina stumbling forwards. She caught Celena by the sleeve to steady herself, pulling the other girl to a halt in the process.
"What the hell-?" Celena snapped but Refina pressed a silencing finger to her lips.
"Shhh!" she shushed, cocking her head towards the direction of the sound. Whatever hesitation she'd been feeling before was lost in the face of this new and potential threat. She'd never heard of dragons venturing near a city, much less onto the grounds of a palace, but dragons obeyed nothing and no one save their own primal will and if one was about show its face, they needed to be ready.
"Do you hear that?" she whispered.
"Hear what?" Celena replied tersely, throwing a skeptical glare over her shoulder. She roughly shrugged off Refina's hand from her elbow. "I don't-"
Another rumble cut her off, and the snarling expression of impatience became confusion as she felt it quaking through her slippers to rattle up her spine. There was a definite and discernible rhythm now, but no dragon's footsteps were these. It was heavier, slower, and immediately recognizable to anyone who'd ever piloted those unwieldy bodies of metal and clanking gears.
"It's a guymelef," Refina said, head snapping to attention as her eyes darted wildly about to see where it was approaching from. Her hand clutched at her sword hilt even as she knew how useless the gesture was. "Someone knows we're out here."
"Fuck," Celena spat under her breath, voice and shoulders coiling tight with rage at the now visible guymelef lumbering towards them from the hangars, one enormous hand already closed around the sword mounted on its back from which billowed a cape of deep blue. The high sun describe the gilded crest embroidered there in stark relief, the serpentine curves revealing it to belong to the Schezar family.
Scherezade.
Scherezade, whose blade had sent Gatti spinning off of The Crusade, broken melef arm bleeding liquid metal as he plummeted into the river below. Scherezade, who had stood between her and the White Dragon during her invasion of Palas, sword laying down an uncrossable boundary while her flames ate away at the graceful marble columns and red tiled roofs of the harbor plaza. Time and again it appeared to thwart her hunt, the man behind the visor proving himself to be just another fool who believed in heroics, that chivalry and protecting the weak actually made any fucking difference in the world when she knew the only law the world revolved around was kill or be killed.
Allen...
Brother…
He appeared then, the golden visor lifting to reveal his face as the guymelef came to a halt a few yards ahead of them, once again making a nuisance of itself, an obstacle she had no way to cut through. She watched, impotent fury clawing its talons down her trembling back as Scherezade drew its great sword and heaved it down to the earth in a plume of soil and grass, effectively blocking off any further attempts at running.
A shadow flashed across the sun, momentarily distracting them. Looking up Celena and Refina made out the shape of dragon wings, the brilliant glitter of an energist chamber floating just beneath them in one clawed foot. As it began to descend in long, graceful arcs, the light rippled along the white scales in a luminous sheen, and it soon became clear that the scales were in fact metal plates exquisitely crafted together to mimic the sleek reptilian forms of living dragons. In the saddle sat the king of Fanelia, warm wind whipping at his cape as he landed behind them. A livid snarl tore through Celena as
"Escaflowne," she growled, the violent quaver in her voice dissolving into a sudden groan of pain as the pressure began to boil behind her skull, the uncountable memories birthing and fading in a dizzying whirl of color and noise.
Van, Van, Van! Ten thousand curses were not enough for Van and his damned Escaflowne.
"Celena!"
Allen again. Clutching at her head, she spun to turn one glaring eye on the knight, the visceral hatred distorting her features into something too gruesome to stand. In that single movement, the sun caught on the curls, those beautiful curls their mother had treasured, and showed their golden color now melting away into a silvery ash.
Gods above, he's here! Allen realized, mind awash with fresh horror at how the anguish bent and twisted her body. He's trying to come out!
"Get out of the way, Allen!" she screamed. My God, those eyes! Those blue eyes! How they glowed like embers from hell! "You're always in my fucking way!"
"Celena, don't do this!" he cried, pleading, begging. "I know you're still in there. Put down your sword and come back to the palace with me. Just come back and we can-"
"Why?" she jeered, a scathing laugh leaping from her lips to pierce his heart as surely as the sword she now held pointed at him like an accusing finger of a judge. Guilty! Guilty! Hang him! "So you can disappear again? You don't care about me or about how I feel! You were glad to dump me on Eries, weren't you? You were never a real brother! You couldn't even…"
She swooned, stumbling forward under the weight of the whispers, the visions of pale hands reaching down for her vulnerable body, forcing her mouth open. Liquids came gushing inside, needles jabbed into her arms. God, what were those guttural, animal sounds? Those horrible, gut-wrenching sounds? Was that her screaming?
"...You couldn't even...stop...the bad men from taking me…"
"Celena,"Allen began again, his voice soft but rent through with the rawness of inexpressible pain. "Put the sword down. Please. Just put it down. You know I love you more than anything else in this world. Yes, I disappeared. Yes, I was gone when I should have been here with you but I'm here now! And we can be a family Celena, we-"
Her cry of denial tore through the air, rising on wings of long years of resentment and abandonment where it caught on free floating particles of the very fabric of destiny. They shifted and swirled in resonant sympathy as they began to gather and lengthen, now shimmering threads weaving a new path, a new story. There was a gleam, as if from the birth of a tiny star, high in the heavens. It found an answering reflection in the shifting ruby hues of Escaflowne's heart. A shudder passed through the white metal of its skin with an electric intensity that its pilot sensed even though his layers of ceremonial silk and armor.
"Allen, stop!" Van shrieked, terror mirroring the motes of light that were now birthing themselves into a glittering firefly dance that heralded the ebb and flow of fate. A high, ethereal tone hummed across the green along a rising wind as if the voices of the long dead Atlanteans had decided to come together for one last song. He saw Celena lurch towards the Zaibach prisoner, blindly groping for something, someone, to hold onto to save herself from the onslaught, but the effort came too little too late…
Or perhaps it was just enough…
When her fingers found Refina's it was like the final connection of a circuit, the closing of a loop among the endless loops of human history where every ending became someone else's beginning. Van and Allen, helpless bystanders in a story whose roots began in the hubris of angels, could do nothing but witness the end of Celena as she was lifted from the grass in a sudden and stunning burst of white light that climbed into a blinding column that united earth and sky.
"CELENA!"
Scherezade's visor flew open and Van, through eyes slitted against the painful brightness, glimpsed the figure of Allen, washed clean of all detail, leaping down from the guymelef.
"Allen, stop it! You're only feeding into it! GET BACK NOW!"
But the knight did not appear to have heard. As soon as his feet touched the ground he was leaping for the light, one hand stretched out in a desperate and ultimately futile attempt to reach his sister. But the light proved too strong, the reverberating pressure of so many conflicting wills sending Allen to his knees, one arm up to shield his eyes from the glare.
"CELENA!"
And then it was gone. In one swift instant, all was silence in the exhaling breath of the wind as it died away, leaving behind nothing but emptiness.