A New Life to Live: Chapter 2, Part 2
Nabiki watched through the back window of their moderately sized cottage as Ranma went through a blazingly fast kata, the Staff of Oblivion swirling around him in a howling blur. It's current enchantment, an ice spell of Ranma's own devising, filled the air with a thin mist as it cooled the surrounding air. Ranma had cultivated much dislike among the natives of Nox when he reassembled two of the three pieces of the staff also known as the Necromancer's Bane. It wasn't as if it were still truly dangerous, not with the Orb of Souls long banished from Nox, sucked into a magically created wormhole.
Nabiki turned her eyes from Ranma and went back to cutting the vegetables for their supper. She hated the times when it was her turn to cook. The meals were always so drab, and the cleanup afterwards was a bitch, but Ranma's meals always seemed possessed of a peculiar flavor that she often believed was the result of some obscure spell that he had learned in secret.
She heard the massive explosion that accompanied one of Ranma's sorcerous traps that were spread liberally throughout the forest and along the small road that led to their little settlement. No doubt another 'adventurer' seeking to make a name for him or herself by besting Ranma, or even Nabiki herself, who in their few years upon Nox had become infamous in many regards. She had heard tales that under their home huge caches of gold and jewels, magical treasures and objects of power were stored. How this rumor had been started, nobody knew, but it now led to the death of at least three people a week.
Ranma would no doubt go to reset the sprung trap. She had little fear that anyone had survived it's detonation, not with the powerful fire, ice, and chaos spells that Ranma wove into his traps. There would probably even be a new pond the next time they got a good rain. Even with her confidence in Ranma, Nabiki set a squad of forest spirits to guard Ranma encase he walked into an ambush.
Nabiki's betrothed returned even as she laid the night's supper out on the table. She gasped in suprise, nearly dropping a plate of biscuits. Ranma was covered in blood, as was the Staff of Oblivion which he held in his right hand, but from the lack of wounds evident on Ranma, none of it was his."Ranma, what happened?" she asked quickly.
Ranma smiled in fading battle rage."There was an army of them, Nabiki. Three dozen trained warriors, at least three wizards and two conjurers. Those spirits you sent really were a life saver. I doubt I would have made it if they weren't there."
Before Ranma could sit down, Nabiki grabbed him lightly by his pig-tail and drug him towards the bathroom. Any blood he got on the furniture was his responsibility to clean up, but Ranma always ended up resorting to a spell to remove the recalcitrant stains and that was always the signal for Nabiki to go buy new furniture because the old had reached the end of its life.
As Ranma washed the blood from himself, he told Nabiki of the encounter with the men in the forest. None of them had been poorly dressed and all were in fine, polished armor or whatever garb suited their profession. They obviously weren't strapped for cash, and the attack had been so well planned, so perfectly executed, that Ranma should have died. If he had been any normal wizard, he would have died, but Ranma was by no means normal. When they had sought to nullify his magic, they had succeeded, but only in nullifying the magic that they themselves knew. His chaos and ice magic had served him well until he had at last depleted his considerable mana reserves.
His remaining foes had thought him easy pickings when once they saw his last spell flicker and die from lack of power. The warriors' valliant charge had met only with a ruthless opponent who outclassed them in their own field. With the Staff of Oblivion and its ability to hold any enchantment placed upon it, Ranma had carved up a gruesome, half-frozen offering to the scavengers of the forest. Nabiki's spirits had kept the conjurers from drawing on any supernatural aid while Ranma slowly herded them towards another trap.
This trap was one designed to force its victim into a state of uncontrolled, and magically enhanced speed. The wizards and conjurers who had hung back from physical battle were then forced, against their will, to run straight into Ranma's grip.
"We should get in touch with Horvath, Ranma. He has the resources to discover who is behind all these attacks," Nabiki said as she slowly washed and massaged Ranma's tense back.
"It was the Council," Ranma responded."Each of them, warrior, conjurer, and wizard wore the mark of their Assembly. I guess that someone has finally convinced the higher-ups that we're too dangerous to live free."
Nabiki jerked her hands from Ranma's back and forcefully turned him around to look straight into his eyes. He wasn't joking!"I'll gather my things and call back my creatures. You should start gathering all your traps and constructs, we'll probably need them," she said, standing up and heading for the door.
"So we we're off to the Castle?" Ranma asked. Nabiki nodded."Oh well, it had to happen some time."
The Castle in question was one of those discovered the year before during their more adventurous roamings. It, like so many other abandoned places of magic, had become infested with various hellspawn. This one had been full to the brim with the undead and several species of medium strength demons. Besides its demons, though, the castle had remained untouched by the years or the corruption that denizens of hell so often radiated. It was there, under the watchful eye of golems and ember demons, that they stored the vast treasure they had accumulated. It also sported several deactivated teleport pads that once restored, allowed for easy transit to most of Nox's major cities and sites of magic.
****
Throughout the night Ranma tirelessly removed all the traps laid within the forest and stored them in the Castle as they simply referred to it. His experiments with enchanted armor and clothing, along with the equipment needed to carry out the experiments took two trips by teleport pad. Nabiki had some trouble with her little menagerie of summoned and charmed creatures. The forest spirits she relesed back into their natural environment, but Char along with his mate and a dozen half grown wolf puppies, a horde of various sized spiders, an amazingly tamed ember demon, and the trio of urchins that they used to take care of the gardening and general upkeep of their cottage all had to be herded reluctantly through to the Castle, located between two snow peaked mountains in the far north.
It was only after everything had been settled in and Nabiki and Ranma were laying in a feather stuffed bed, wrapped in silks and each other that the glowing face of Horvath appeared at the foot of their bed.
"By all that is Holy, you're alive!" the face exclaimed in happiness.
Ranma sat up, disentangling himself from Nabiki, and in the process pulling the creamy silk sheet from her. She 'eeked' and hurriedly snatched the sheet back over herself."Horvath? How did you find us?"
"Oh, you two, I am so happy to see that you live!" Tears flowed down Horvath's incandescent face."I tried to convince the Assembly and then the Council of your innocence, but there were too many against me. With your partial reassembly of the Stall of Oblivion, they all thought you sought after the power of the Necromancers that it destroyed."
"How did you find us?" Ranma repeated impatiently. If Horvath could do it, so too could others.
Horvath smiled at Ranma, and said,"Not to worry my boy. There'll be nobody following my trail, not unless they wish to journey to the Forest of Souls."
"That would mean-" Ranma started.
"That I am dead," Horvath finished."Yes, sadly I leave this world. They were too strong for me, the combined powers of the Council. I tried to get a warning to you, but they were just too strong. It appears that you two still live though, so even in death I know that you cause at least some small torment to my murderers."
"Horvath, I could bind your soul if you wished," offered Nabiki."You would still be immaterial, but at least you would live on, in some form."
"No sweet child, it is my time to go, so I will go with dignity, not gibbering in terror at my uncertain fate." Horvath's image began losing the little integrity that it had."Farewell, and may the gods smile upon you," were his last words before fading away entirely.
For some time after the old man's ghost had departed, Nabiki held Ranma in her arms as he mourned the man who had been more of a father to him than his blood sire.
****
The vengeance reaped by Ranma and Nabiki after that day was great and frightening. From the Castle, Ranma cast spells of such power that they reached halfway across the world to dissolve, freeze, burn, or raze the strongholds of his enemies. Within a week of Horvath's death, Castle Horrendous, the main seat of Warrior power on Nox, had been turned to charred rubble. Castle Galava and the Tower of Illusion were the next to fall, though both places could have been easily protected by their inhabitants if they had prepared any type of defense against Ranma, but in their arrogance and confidence in their own abilities, the Wizards, too, lost their seat of power.
It was Nabiki who wraught wholesale destruction upon the less centralized conjurers. She could only control so many demons and other creatures at one time, but by giving them simple instructions then turning them loose, Nabiki had a near-limitless army at her disposal.
Through it all, no lives were lost. The warriors lost their strongholds and armouries, the wizards their great storehouses of arcane knowledge and magic power, and the conjurers their accumulated knowledge of controllable lifeforms from the various planes of existance that bordered Nox.
Though they did not know it at the time, Ranma and Nabiki had set in motion an upheaval in the culture and tradition of Nox. Their single-minded fury had planted the seeds for a new dark age that once banished by the light of enlightenment, would see a world without magic, without even the knowledge that magic had once existed.
But for now, in the present, Ranma and Nabiki were content to live their lives. Time passed in the Castle, and life went on. Ranma turned seventeen, and a few months later Nabiki reached eighteen. They were content with what role Fate had alloted them.
Then one day as an early winter storm pounded on the walls of the ancient castle, Nabiki heard a shout from Ranma. She raced through the halls, fearing that at last they had been found and that vengeance was to be extracted from the avengers. The sight of Ranma smiling broadly, his form glowing with radiant joy, convinced Nabiki that nothing bad had happened. At least not anything that Ranma saw as bad. He had a weird view of somethings every now and then.
"I can get us home!" he shouted to Nabiki when he saw her enter his laboratory.
Nabiki mouthed the word 'home'. It was an alien thought, viewing Nox as anything but home. Was earth truly their home?
****
Ranma was exultant from his triumph over the forces of the universe that had hindered him at every turn, but he too didn't know ih he truly, in his heart, wanted to go back to earth. His life had never been a pleasant one, not with the constant training. There had been no real friends, not even Ucchan who was little more than a passing aquaintance, and no place to call home. Earth was no home, just as Nox was no home, Ranma realized. Home was what you made of your surroundings and the place where you felt truly relaxed. In that case, the Castle was home.
"But I'm not sure if I want to go," he confided after his first announcement.
Nabiki understood Ranma's decision, for she had come to the same conclusion."How could we travel back to earth 'if' we wished to go?" she asked him in hopes of keeping his spirits reasonably high.
"The two rune swords are the key. Horvath once told me of how they travelled from one universe to another, so I decided to look into how they did it."
"Did you discover how?" Nabiki asked, her curiosity piqued by the involvement of the mysterious swords they had found a year earlier.
Ranma looked towards the end of the room where each of the two exquisately crafted blades stood upright within a glass container full of water."Nope, still haven't got a clue to how they do it, but I know how to 'use' it."
The gears in Nabiki's head were turning, and the proverbial light bulb had become a blaring siren and flashing neon sign."Could we go to earth and come back to Nox whenever we wanted?"
"Well, yeah, I guess," Ranma answered slowyly, trying to figure out what Nabiki was thinking.
"Ranma, why not visit for a while? We could tell our families that we're okay and that we are happy." They could also bring some people back with them to populate the Caslte, and Nabiki was already making a mental checklist of all the antibiotics and drugs that could be used on Nox to treat diseases that also inhabited earth. Magic didn't always remedy such malidies, not to mention that magic wasn't always available or free if you had a sick child, but cheap earth born medicines would have no such disadvantages.
"That wouldn't be so bad. I would like to see how Pops is doing. Hell, I might even be able to find my Mom."
Nabiki, too, would relish being with her family once again. Who knew, maybe she could get them to come back to Nox with her and Ranma.
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Author's Notes: Couldn't sleep so I decided to do something mildly productive. The results were this short sub-chapter that may not be all that well written but advances the story to the point that I can put Ranma and Nabiki back on earth. Won't that be fun? Send me C&C at dark_phoneix@hotmail.com