Chapter Two—The Call to Action
"All right, if you insist. But I warn you, you're not getting much of a masterpiece from me this time. You didn't give me enough advanced warning… Why, of course it takes days of careful planning… No! One day is not enough; I don't care what you say… So if a plate of no-bake brownies is what you get, you're gonna eat it… Hah, hah, Ryo; I never would eat something that wasn't baked properly… … … Okay, enough with the jokes. There are some things I just won't eat… And stop laughing already!"
Kento hung up his kitchen phone, scowling deeply at the receiver as if Ryo could see him. Would they ever stop teasing him? He sighed, his frown melting into pursed lips.
Okay, so he was a little on the chunky side, and he had a tendency to say too much at the wrong time, and he was forever impetuous when it came to battle, but Kento had two things the other Ronins didn't. He had a hard head—which, despite how it sounded, was a good thing—and strong hands. With his thick cranium, Kento could take blows that none of the other guys could, not to mention he could head-butt anyone unconscious. And with his strong hands he could crush rocks or necks, whichever needed crushing. And nobody dared make fun of Kento of Hardrock when he needed a barrier removed.
Kento started to remove the desired ingredients for his famous "Egg and Dumpling Dinner" when he realized that he didn't have any of the snake eggs that he needed for the recipe. Before heading to the Toyama market, he made sure he had the rest of the necessaries for the meal, and upon creating a short list, Kento grabbed his wallet to leave.
As the warrior headed out the door toward his jeep in his driveway, Kento felt a sudden tickle in the back of his neck. It was both unfamiliar and unwelcome. Something about it was, well… not right. In his mind Kento heard what, at first, sounded like a baying wolf in the distance, but slowly turned into an H-bomb explosion between his ears.
Crumpling to the floor in severe agony, Kento dragged himself over to the phone. He propped himself up on the counter, and as he reached for the receiver, he was struck down yet again with another wave of pain. The kitchen flashed from black to white every other second. Dizziness and nausea filled his insides. Everything hurt.
Using all the remaining strength he had, the Ronin stood on his quavering feet and grabbed the phone tightly in his fist. He punched several numbers blindly, hoping for the love of God to get them right. His efforts were rewarded when he heard the familiar voice on the other end of the line. "Hello?" Cye spat out tersely, irritation in his tone.
"Cah… Cye? Help—huhh huhh—me…" Kento barely held the phone in his supposedly powerful hands.
"Kento, buddy, what's wrong?" a now frightened Cye demanded.
"Something's… not right…" With those final words, Kento passed out from the pain, collapsing in an immense heap on the floor.
@~~`~~~
So they met a lot sooner than any of them expected.
All five Ronins, their respective girlfriends (with the exception of poor Rowen's since he didn't have one), as well as the Warlords, Anubis and Kayura gathered in the Fuan household's living room. Everyone huddled over the murmuring Kento slumping on the couch, concern lighting each person's irises.
"What's wrong with him?" Leyte queried in a trembling voice as she cuddled her boyfriend's head close to her. "Please tell me how I can help him."
Kayura didn't know how to answer the fearful girl. She couldn't very well tell her the truth, for she was not ready to believe and neither were her other girlfriends. The blue-haired woman turned to her invisible companion, Anubis, and stared at him with questioning eyes. He shrugged his shoulders and left the explaining entirely up to her. "Mr. Fuan here appears to be suffering from, uh… post-traumatic stress disorder," the Lady illuminated, straining to sound like an intelligent doctor.
"Excuse me? I don't understand. What trauma happened to him to make him this way?"
"Yeah?" Linie pondered, hugging Cye's arm for comfort. "He seemed fine just yesterday."
"Well, uh, you see, ladies…" Help me out here, Anubis! I'm drowning! Kayura ordered telepathically to the smiling monk. When he gave her no answer, she continued, "A past situation that Kento did not deal with sufficiently must have reinstated itself in the present so he could finally cope with it. But my guess is, in this case, Kento did not have time to recognize this stressor, and the power of his emotions overtook his body, exhausting him to the point you see now." Pleased with herself, "Dr." Kayura placed her hands triumphantly on her hips. The others looked at the new Ancient completely stunned.
"Is that right, Dr. Kayura?" Ryo asked with a raised eyebrow.
Anubis chuckled, forcing Kayura to frown at him. "Absolutely, Mr. Sanada.
"Now, everyone, if you would be so kind as to clear Mr. Fuan's house, I would like to have brief chat with him first, then I shall put him to bed. Miss Leyte was it? I'll call you in the morning with a full report on his condition. For now would you please leave with the others?" Leyte stood to protest, but instead followed the doctor's orders. She kissed her boyfriend lightly on the head before gathering her stuff to leave.
She turned back around to find the seven guys still lounging on the furniture. "Dr. Kayura means you guys, too," Hime clucked, tapping a naked foot on the floor.
Sage blushed with embarrassment. His girlfriend could always do that to him. "Sorry, guys."
"It's always Sage's girls that make the trouble," Rowen muttered playfully, a profound knowledge of his best friend's dates stemming from their close living quarters.
"Not true!" Sage protested, but getting up from the sofa all the same on Hime's direct order.
Cye remained seated. "I'm going to stay just a little longer and help Dr. Kayura move Kento into his room. You guys can go on ahead. I'll talk with you later." He kissed Linie on the cheek quickly and scooted her out the door with an impatient hand.
The Warlords looked quizzically at him. "Then we shall stay, too," Sehkmet announced.
"Oh, no you won't!" Hime exclaimed, grabbing the hulking man by the wrist and dragging him toward the door with the others. "Kento needs his rest, not four big, scary guys looming over him. The doctor needs one guy and one guy alone to assist her—and that's Cye. You're leaving." Sehkmet could not believe this mortal woman's audacity. Obviously, she didn't know of his past, though the staid look on her face gave the impression that she wouldn't care anyway. Sage could sure pick a winner!
His fellow Warlords chuckled, but Hime quickly shot them a glance that told them to shut-up and follow her orders, as well. They complied, still sniggering about the way she spoke to Sehkmet. "Way to take charge," jested Dais as they made their way out the door. Dais shoved him into the back of Hime jokingly, and she turned around, scrunched her eyebrows and wagged a threatening finger in the pair's faces. Immediately, both stopped laughing, following the train of people in perfect alignment.
"Take good care of our Kento," Hime whispered as she closed the front door.
Kayura nodded, adding, "It will be done."
The second the door closed, Anubis revealed himself. "Thank goodness. I thought she'd never leave!"
"Oh, be quiet, Anubis," Cye scolded. "Hime's a nice girl, really she is. Very strong and secure with herself. She's just, well, a little on the brash side."
Anubis shrugged, floating over to Kento's side. "Shall we move him to his room now?"
"I don't know. Let's ask the 'doctor…'" the Ronin teased, grinning at Lady Kayura.
"Just wipe that smile off your face, you insolent brat. I've got real work to do." The youthful beauty waved her graceful hand, and a golden staff magically appeared. She raised it above her head, uttered an inaudible chant and waited for results.
Slowly, Kento's eyes opened, the pain vanishing from his face. He licked his lips as he pronounced, "I'm hungry. Need… food…"
"Here we go," mumbled Anubis.
"Kento? How do you feel?" Kayura asked, worry in her tone.
He jumped to his feet, patting his round stomach. "Like I said: hungry. No, I take that back. Famished. Excuse me." And the boy sprinted into the kitchen. The clatter of pots and pans emanated from the adjacent room as Kento prepared a fast meal. "Be right out!" Seconds later he emerged, his eyes salivating at the feast of a dozen items on his plate.
"Kento," Kayura beckoned, interrupting his meal. "Can you take a break to talk to me for a minute? I have some very important questions to ask you."
"I suppose," he choked through a mouthful of food. He swallowed and said, "Go ahead."
"First of all, I need you to tell me exactly what happened before you passed out."
Kento inhaled the rest of his plate before even thinking about what happened. As he wiped his face, he observed the three people—well, two people and one spirit—around him. They appeared gravely concerned about his welfare, and it felt good to know they cared so much. "Well, I was fixing the dinner Ryo requested I prepare for tomorrow night, when I realized I was out of a couple ingredients.
"I was making my way to the front door, feeling fine and dandy—if not a little angry about the short notice—and then it hit me.
"It felt like a freight train collided with my body, throwing me hundreds of feet into a solid brick wall. I could barely move, but somehow I gathered enough strength to reach to phone and call Cye. By the time he picked up, everything inside me had started to tingle then throb nastily. My limbs felt like they were on fire, and I heard these voices in my head."
"What kind of voices? What did they sound like?" Anubis inquired hastily.
"Oh, I don't know. They were screaming for salvation, for me to help them. It was weird. They didn't sound human; there was rocky inflection, you know? Real deep and hollow. Like an echo in the mountains, I suppose."
Kayura seemed perplexed. "An echo in the mountains? Who do you think these voices belong to, Anubis?"
The ghost scratched his chin as he worked his lips together. "Can you describe them any further, Kento of Hardrock? Did you hear what they were saying?"
"I guess… yeah, I'm sure at least one voice said, 'She's returned.' And I think, but I'm not as sure, that another one said, 'We shall crumble without you.' Mind you, that could be my own ego speaking though."
"Thanks for the warning, Kento," Cye laughed, glad to see his best friend was all right.
"That's really not much to go on," Kayura commented, facing Anubis.
"That's really all you're going to get," Kento informed, staring deeply at the Lady.
"Very well," Anubis said. "Can you at least tell me one other thing? Did you feel compelled to go somewhere, be anywhere, the moment you first felt the pain?"
The orange Ronin chewed his lip in thought. "Well, not at first. But when Lady Kayura revived me, I did feel the need to go to the mountains. Strange, huh? It was almost like they were calling me, not a normal human." Kento snorted at the thought, shoving a piece of gum in his mouth.
Instantly Anubis vanished without so much as a word of goodbye. "So what do— Anubis? My God," muttered Kayura, hanging her head in exhaustion, "I hate spirits."
@~~`~~~
"Damn!" the dark sorceress cursed into the blackness she coveted. "Damn! Damn! Damn! How did he do it? How did he manage to fool me?" Lady Morin was furious. She stampeded wildly around the room, blasting things with spheres of energy and shattering the silence.
No one fooled Lady Morin, Supreme Sorceress across every eon, no one. She was perfection, unstoppable, unimaginable. She had secrets even she did not know. Her incredible magical abilities and intense knowledge of evil made her a goddess above the innocent. Lady Morin could not be deceived.
And yet, this… Anubis had done the impossible. He had managed to pull the wool over the fair Lady's eyes long enough so he could figure out Rantach's and her existences and report them to his faithful disciples. Curses! How? How? How? It was UNTHINKABLE! The raging sorceress formed a writhing energy ball between the ebony talons on her fingers, launching it cruelly against the wall the very moment of its completion.
He faked the humanoid life force trail using sophisticated magic, led her disciple down the false trail to a false lair. How could he have possibly anticipated their arrival? This spirit was good. Too good.
She had to eliminate him—no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Her victory was not ensured until his demise was imminent.
Oh God, how could she let a spirit, of all creatures, fool her? The Lady could not get over this deception. Anubis was dead, unimportant and irrelevant. Why should he trouble her now? He had no body, no form and no powers. Why would he team up with living beings anyway? Cooperation between ghosts and humans was improbable and extremely rare. The chance of this union was so small Lady Morin had not even considered it an option.
Ah, but there was the rub. Exactly… It was the fact that she had not looked at every possibility that did her in. Had she taken the risk of believing the unbelievable, she would not be where she was now—without a clue on how to remedy the problem.
And of course there was the question of why Lady Morin did not examine the probability closer. After all, she herself was an impossibility. By all rights she should have turned to dust centuries ago, becoming one with the Earth, but instead, here she was, awakening after a LONG nap.
Enough of making excuses! the Lady exclaimed to herself. Now it is time to take the necessary action to… remedy the mistake. She had two options: damning or imploding. Which to choose?
Well, if she made the choice to damn Anubis, it would be considerably easier. The ritual was simple enough, and the materials to do it were easy to gather. However, the results were not permanent, as she knew oh so very well. Damning only resulted in sending the wandering spook to a grave in Hell, but the spell to remove him was as uncomplicated as spells get. And with the foreign energy she sensed in the mountains, Lady Morin figured there was another sorceress in town that could potentially make her job very complex. Anubis would be back in her hair just as quickly as she had damned him.
Now, implosion seemed to be the best, most permanent option. Although gathering all the necessaries and performing the rites was next to impossible because of particular reasons, implosion meant assured doom for the specter and victory for the Lady. It was literally the soul sucking into itself until it disintegrated, never to return. However, gathering the raw materials would be tremendously complicated, for they grew in the Fantasia Forest—woodland inhabited by ancient faeries, who held an immense grudge against Lord Yusaki as well as herself.
No matter. Lady Morin would just have to send Rantach.
Now she had bigger fish to fry. There was that matter of the Ronin Warrior of the Strata… His life force was so young, so tender, so vulnerable. And so ready to be devoured! The Lady could hardly wait to taste the flavor of his soul. Celestial warriors like Rowen of the Strata were a dead race. Their hearts were pure and succulent. Lady Morin had not had one in MANY centuries, and it seemed Rowen would be her last, for he was the last of his kind. Besides, he had something she wanted back.
Lady Morin smiled wantonly into the ebony room, licking her lips with excitement. She arranged the ingredients on the table before her, pinching a bit of powdered snake vertebrae between her fingers and dropping it into her other hand.
@~~`~~~
As he approached the front door to his apartment, Rowen collapsed to the floor, gasping like a fish out of water. He clawed at the door while he tried to scream for help, but no sounds other than wheezes escaped his mouth. Banging on the oak slab before him, the warrior attempted to pull himself to his feet. He twisted the knob and shoved the portal open.
Rowen fell haphazardly inward, crashing to the ground with a mammoth thud. The apartment was dark and silent otherwise. Apparently, Sage went home with Hime after leaving Kento's place, but Rowen screamed for him anyway. "Sage!" he croaked, his voice racked with tremors of pain. "Sage! Christ, where are you?" Strata's subarmor flashed on and off, like a strobe gone awry. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his head into the floor, mumbling, "I'm dying. Oh God, I'm dying."
The warrior tried to fight his way to the phone, but the agony of an undefined torture crippled his body. His limbs refused to move, as though he had no body at all. Suddenly, the intense heat of fire engulfed his heaving chest, and Rowen groped for his heart with grotesque, misshapen hands. The pain wasn't just outside his body, but racing within it.
"Sage, goddammit, where are you?" he coughed through a mouthful of blood.
Abruptly, Strata's muscles relaxed, and his eyes closed as he fell into a thankful sleep. This time he had the same dream as always, but this time it was far more macabre.
@~~`~~~
"This can't be right!" Anubis wailed incredulously. "No, no, no! Talpa, you slimy bastard! How could you do this! How could you unleash this!" His cast his eyes to the floor of Lady Kayura's cave. He then stomped his invisible foot angrily down to the ground, and an empty sound echoed.
Okay, get a hold of yourself, Anubis! You handled that Dynasty creep, and you can handle this, too. Besides, what has it got on its side? A dragon and the Necronomicon. Nothing you or the Ronins can't handle.
Or is it…
The spirit combed nervously through his ethereal white hair and massaged his head. He had to think. He had to come up with a plan that would outsmart the Dualar, or it would outsmart him.
Anubis had two options: separation or obliteration. Which to choose?
If he took the obliteration, that would be much easier. However, it would kill both parts of the Dualar, and that was against his ethics (which he was surprised to still have in his afterlife). In obliteration, at least the evil in the Dualar's soul would devour itself into nothingness. But once the process was started, it could not be finished until both souls inside the body were consumed. The Ronin Warriors would never allow him to do this, nor would the spirits of the Ancients.
Anubis' other option was separation, which entailed the dividing of the two souls back into their original bodies. However, separation had to be performed at extremely close range by a mortal human. With the separation ritual completed, the warrior could then kill the evil soul of the Dualar without doing much physical harm to the host soul.
It seemed Anubis' second choice was really his only choice. Now all he had to do was explain all of this madness to the Ronins and Kayura, and then they could fight the Dualar and her dragon as well as retrieve the Necronomicon before it could be used for the summoning.
Immediately, Anubis faded from view, on his way back to Kento's house in hopes of catching Kayura. The sooner they knew about this Dualar, the better chance they had of stopping her before it was too late.
@~~`~~~
Running. Running with the speed of a thousand cheetahs. Rowen ran until he reached the apex of a mountain. He surveyed the scene then squeezed the hand in his own.
The warrior glanced to his left and saw that his partner was exhausted, as her breaths slipped in and out of her mouth in fantastic puffs. Bringing her hand to his heart, Rowen calmed the mysterious woman as best he could. Though her face was heavily shadowed, even the darkness could not mask the appreciative grin displayed upon her fair face. It was as if she had not been touched by another human in eons.
But the moment couldn't last long because they were on the run. Rowen got the strangest case of déjà vu when he looked down at his pumping legs cloaked in his armor to, see them speckled with blood. It was like he'd seen this—done this—all before. He fought the feeling back and concentrated on pressing steadily downward on the mountainside.
Why? Why is this all so familiar? he questioned himself.
Suddenly, the path ended, and a gorge stretched out before the couple. Rowen stared anxiously at his partner, feeling her heart rate accelerate through the veins in her wrist. "What can we do? We have nowhere left to go, and it's coming!"
She said nothing.
"Akemi! Please speak to me! We'll never escape it unless we cooperate!" Rowen grabbed her shoulders and shook her until she faced him. "Listen, if you don't help me out here, you're going to end up back on the inside. Now, what are we going to do to escape?"
Akemi lifted her face toward his, and even though the blackness still disguised her visage, Rowen knew she was crying. Ever so slowly and painfully, her ivory arm striped with vermilion paint drifted upward, pointing directly over the edge of the stone balcony. "You can't mean?" Rowen asked, astonished. Akemi nodded. "But even with my armor's power, the sheer drop will kill you. Akemi, your body's in no condition to take that sort of a plunge."
Then Rowen felt the ground trembling beneath his feet in steady waves. "Oh God, it's coming!" Strata glanced back and forth between Akemi and the pit. He grasped her wrist, wrenching it unnecessarily harshly. "Come on!" He dragged her to the terrace's brink and looked downward.
In the canyon flowed a river of jewels, glistening cherry and violet in the setting sun. All Rowen could see was their blood staining the surface like oil and overflowing the river's banks. He couldn't protect Akemi if they jumped, at least, not enough to keep her whole. Rowen didn't want to risk losing her, not when she was the only person who could make sense of what was going on.
But there were no other options left from which the Ronin could choose. If he wanted to at least have something left of Akemi, he had to take her over the edge with him. Rowen took a deep breath and yelled, "It's coming!" The outline of their pursuer appeared over the crest of the path. A monstrous face glowered at Rowen and Akemi, two particularly vicious fangs hanging over the sanguine lip of the dragon.
Without a moment's hesitation and merely trusting his armor to guide him, Rowen of the Strata pulled Akemi tight against his body, holding onto her so firmly that he feared crushing her. He locked his hands around the small of her back then ordered to her, "Hold on to me with everything you've got left. You hear me, Akemi?" She buried his face into his chest and sniffled a yes. Biting his lip, Rowen placed a hesitant foot at the rocky brim. He knew this was way too dangerous for him to do with Akemi, but this was the safest way, ironically.
So he just let himself go.
Down, down the pair plummeted. Each clung to the other, desperately searching for a reassurance they could not find. Rowen closed his eyes, letting the air guide his inner spirit. As planned, his armor's self-defense mechanism was triggered, and a faintly blue bubble encapsulated Rowen and Akemi. When the wind stopped whipping around him, the warrior dared to open his eyes. And that's when he realized they had ceased falling.
Before him, on a pedestal of air, towered a black mistress Rowen had never imagined in his wildest daydreams. She was dressed in ebony from head to toe, the only exceptions being the amethyst jewelry and her rich, plum-colored eyes. Her skin was a flawless blanket of white, contrasting so sharply with her dark appearance that the look burned Rowen's retinas. A serpentine tongue darted out from between her tightly sealed, charcoal lips, coating them with a layer of saliva; they glistened then under the fading light. "I seem to have lost something," the mistress proclaimed with false innocence. Craning her head left to right, with secret intentions lying behind her shadowed visage, the midnight woman pretended to search for her lost possession. The moment her eyes returned to Akemi, a wicked grin emerged upon her face. "There it is! And all this time I've been looking in the mountains!" She put her hands on her hips. The dream world did not move—just the sorceress and Rowen seemed alive.
"You know what happens to souls that try to escape, don't you, Akemi?"
The girl cuddling within Strata's grasp was frozen, fear forever painted upon her beautiful face. Rowen tightened his hold.
"Now, now. I must have what belongs to me. And she is mine." The mistress threw her arms wide, and the dreamscape was sucked into her body, Akemi included.
"No!" screeched Rowen, urgent hands seeking the feminine form that haunted his every dream. "You can't take her from me! She is the key!"
"No, Rowen of the Strata. I am the key." The sorceress blinked, nictitating lenses flashing out from corners of her eyes.
She tapped her fingers together in front of her body mindlessly. "You know, you don't have to be without Akemi. You want the answers, Rowen of the Strata? Then step into my world…" And with that, she opened wide the doors to Hell; she stretched out her arms again.