Beneath the Southern Lights
by Ibex's Lyre
Ha ha ha, I want everybody to know that my hard drives have been formatted 8 times in the past 2 weeks because of various errors--and during that time, I had no computer at all. In the few periods where I actually did have a computer, I had 3 major exams to study for, as well as homework…. College is a full time job…. Ah, but now I'm back with duel boot systems, so life is good again!
Yes, I've finally decided that I must apologize for the quality of the first chapter of The Lady, or the Snow Leopard. I'm really embarrassed--to the point where I'll probably revise it as I post the second chapter. Nothing major will change--except sentences that don't quite flow, random words in the middle of otherwise coherent paragraphs...
And for those keeping dictionaries, I have a few new random grammar rules... 'er' as in younger is denoted by the 'el' ending. The 'ing' ending is a 'ii'.
On a final note, I think you wonderful people are going to have to start waiting until the weekends for updates (yeah, I know, like you didn't anyway) because it's really the only times I have any time left over to write--and even then, RL seems to enjoy monopolizing my time. You should expect both stories by Saturday or Sunday, and with my luck, rather late at night. Obviously, there are going to be times when I cannot make this deadline, but I shall strive to keep them at a minimum, and to keep it from interfering with the quality of the text.
Chapter Two: Where the Pillars of Eternity Lay Fallen
Ti, gei keir yen mahilel
Gei Do'hedinsi faha'r Ser'linjern votumnen reukeu, quanshii a'ru orejemsi faha'r s'serusahym e chemii f'ejaxsi yirileths'si
E Xa'jawel nahewikarsi e Xa'jawel murilequetsi yeon zolen uhorn nemainth cy'gen e nemainthel cy'gen
Mehansi nahbrekkemen yei'jx.
Nashte, mellorensi verqwe sebachien
Sabehein ve'nexasi a'ru a'yen tifyre e nabrek faha'r yei'jx.
Serhai oeccebe tsujin'x yen draken kelo bajkae shakkuren jshayrsi faha'r Senhariebe
E behi meckh ame lere'x ame nabrek faha'r yeinail nabreksi--
Silvyrminen.
Once, when the world was younger
When the Pillars of Eternity stood upright, gazing to the ribbons of light and reaching towards the stars
And the Forever days and Forever nights were balanced between the cold season and colder season
Humans remembered me.
Now, the stones lie broken
Fallen testaments to what was once sacred and the memory of me.
The great icicle forest was melted by the jealous molten fires of Senhariebe
And all that is left is the memory of my memories--
Shattered.
--Tears of Yicikeiarkwe
Hermione was thrown to the ground in a cloud of powdered snow and frozen ice that stung her exposed skin like a thousand burning spiders that bit and ripped with their needle like mandibles into her numbed flesh. Above her streaked a brilliant flash of fire as Yicikeiarkwe lived up to her name as the Arctic Firetongue. Where Hermione had stood was a rapidly freezing lake of ice. Next to her, Snape harshly yanked her to her feet and shoved her in the direction of a glassy mass of glacier rock before he turned to face the dragon. "Have your scale, you contemptuous feathered wurm!" He threw the heart scale at the charging dragon, and aimed an earth-fallen meteorite at it. They fractured into ten thousand shards that flew everywhere and cut through her great hide, causing the creature to hiss in pain and spit another great ball of frozen fire--melting and deforming the rocks like her nemesis Senhariebe, Lord of the Mountains of Molten Blood.
Dodging the flying chunks of flaming, liquid rock, Snape sprinted towards where he had sent Hermione desperately hoping that Yicikeiarkwe was distracted by the pain and the broken heart scale. She hadn't been. The enraged dragon stretched her long wings and came after the two, torturing the landscape with her great jets of fire. One stray flame hit the glacial rock, causing a cascade of deadly ice to rain down upon Snape right before he found the sanctity of its great, looming hulk. The darkness of the Antarctic night came upon him, calling him away from the world of mortal men.
***
A palace of glass... Snape thought in blurry, incoherent sentences. The walls were clear and solid but shaped in such a way that it looked like somebody had poured liquid glass and then allowed it to solidify into place. Who would build a palace out of glass? And then a figure, with auburn hair frizzed and electrically charged by the dry cold, and slightly blue lips walked over to him. Suddenly, all pieces of his thought puzzle snapped together, and Snape knew exactly where he was. "Miss Granger," he said, more harshly than was needed. She recoiled slightly, and then stepped forward again.
"You're injured." was all she said before she knelt down and attempted to look at his wounds. Even injured, he was quicker than she, and before Hermione could even so much as reach her hands underneath his shirt to feel the extent of any injuries, Snape was on his feet and several meters away. ok
"I can take care of myself, Miss Granger," he hissed ever so softly. "I am, indeed, a Potions Master."
Hermione stared at him for several long minutes, examining him and his pride. "It is in self-limitation that a master first shows himself," she whispered, earning a sharp but thoughtful scowl from Snape. He looked almost waxen, he was so pale. Black on black clothing contrasted sharply against the white of his skin, and it was quite obvious that underneath those masochistically thick robes and starched shirts he wore even in mid summer, he was just as cold as she was. Only he refused to admit that he was mortal, too. Of course. He was Snape, after all, and Hermione wouldn't have expected anything else from him. Finally, she looked down at the useless wand she held in her hand. "While you were... erm..." Snape scowled at her as she tried to come up with a diplomatic way of saying 'unconscious' "otherwise occupied by the dragon, I took the liberty of bringing you into here. She melted and refroze the entranceway, so we can't go back the way we came from. And our magic seems to be... blocked in some way. I already tried to use my wand but--"
"I understand the current situation--probably better than you. If you would kindly refrain from making obvious statements?"
Hermione sighed, but kept quiet. Her fingers were so cold that she couldn't even feel them anymore. A thousand oceans could have fit in the distance between them, even though they were no more than a few meters away. It was almost ironic how much less lonely she thought she'd felt if she were alone and Snape was not here. And yet, he was here and standing still meant that they were losing precious body heat. How many people had died that way? There had been muggles, determined to reach the South Pole, but before that it there must have been magical folk, too... "Well then, Professor, what do you suggest we do? Since you obviously know more than I do? I mean, it's not everybody who can hold a conversation in a nine thousand year old language with an extinct creature!"
He gave her a scathing look, ignoring the fact that she looked like she was on the verge of suffering from hypothermia, and began to walk out of the ice cave. He was determined not to spend any more time in her presence than he possibly had to. "We, Miss Granger? I do not recall a 'we' in this. I seem to recall myself attempting to return back to Hogwarts, and being transported here with an insolent young witch who apparently doesn't know much at all about her subject of choice for continued education, and a young wizard who is too stupid for his own profession! I am most certainly not going to wait for my death of cold."
Thus he left her, completely alone.
She watched emotionlessly as his black-clothed figure disappeared into the dark southern night before slowly following his footsteps in the snow, wondering what he was searching for, or if he knew what she knew. She knew what she was looking for, knew what she could find even in this harsh world of blue and white and all the colors of the southern lights that danced and glowed above. But as harsh as Snape had been to her, Hermione couldn't allow herself to abandon him to the sure death that awaited both of them if they stayed too long out in the Antarctic open. So she followed even as she allowed him to get further and further ahead of her, even thought the wind was becoming more and more fierce, and even though she felt as thought she was being frozen to the marrow. For a moment, she was almost positive that she had seen him stumble, but then she realized that it was she who had fallen.
It doesn't snow in Antarctica. It can't--there is simply not enough precipitation in the air. It's too cold and too dry. And yet, the way the wind blew the powdered snow and ice, it could have been a blizzard. Hermione picked herself up and walked forward, not able to recall when she had last been able to feel her feet. A futile effort, really, for she walked forward only to stumble again. The ethereal lights in the sky reflected off of towering monuments that could have existed since the beginning of time itself for all Hermione knew. Some were still up right, others fallen over and broken like dying sentinels of a forgotten age. Several moments went by before Hermione realized that she had stumbled over the wiry, kneeling body of her former Professor. He seemed very annoyed--no, more than annoyed: irked!
"Well, Miss Granger," he said icily and seemingly ironically unaffected by the cold, "since you apparently decided to follow, you might as well translate this."
Surprised, Hermione gave him a questioning look, which he ignored. "Y--you can--can't r-r-read this?" she shivered.
"If I could, Miss Granger, I would not have wasted precious time or energy asking you."
"B-but earlier y-you c-c-could speak to the d-dragon!" she protested, wondering if this was some new way to humiliate her.
"Minus ten points for your lack of observation," he said in a silky smooth voice, despite the fact that Hermione was no longer a Gryffindor. Not in the literal sense of the word, anyway. "This is a different language."
So now he asks for my help, she thought, rather annoyed. Still, she studied the broken piece of stone for several minutes in an attempt to decipher it. The freezing wind cut through her thin clothing and lacerate her body like knives and still she studied it intently. Cryptic symbols seemed to dance before her eyes, their meanings just beyond her reach when she realized slowly that she was dying. She simply couldn't concentrate as the looming darkness pressed forth against her. Somewhere far away, she heard a voice that sounded like hers whisper, "... S remember what lies sunken here. The hot springs of eternal youth are just beyond the Eternity Steles, lit by the Cobalt Lantern... I think this is a beacon stone, designed to guide lost travelers to their destination...." Hermione tried to stand up, but couldn't. As the world faded away from her even though she fought the darkness with all of her might, she missed the look of grudging respect that she had earned in the eyes of Snape, and the feel of his arms around her as he finally accepted the fact that if they both were going to survive, they needed to work together.
***
Hermione was looking up at the great pillars of stone and glass as they had been in their prime--tall, proud. In the age before Antarctica had been covered in ice, and in the age after. First there had been the ice, and then the forests, and came the ice again--but why was she seeing this? This was the age after the first true ice, the in-between age when the land spent half of the year green, and the other half white. In the distance, there was a lantern filled with cobalt blue flame that burned intensely and refracted through the atmosphere. No--that wasn't a lantern, that was a dragon egg! Hermione looked around and realized that there were more eggs--some glowing different shades of blue. Each was assigned to a tree of icicles, patterned in some fractal way that seemed to be filled with jewels as the Aurora Australis almost touched them. Where were the other dragons? The adults?
There was a small rumbling, and Hermione felt the earth underneath her shifting. But this shouldn't be happening--Antarctica was not on any fault lines! Not any present ones, anyway. The earth groaned again, and suddenly a giant crack ripped through the icicle trees, hurting none but separating many. Out of the molten red gap that threatened to ooze lava, a gigantic, serpentine creature came and examined the trees before her. She snorted one great cloud of air so cold that it condensed the rest of the air around it, and grabbed one of the blue eggs, replacing it with one that glowed red. Then she returned back into the abyss, allowing it to heal over with fast cooling lava that rapidly transformed into obsidian in the icy air.
And so there were two eggs in the very center of the forest: one cobalt blue and one fiery red, each with their own tree and own origins, but sharing one common destiny.
***
Awareness came slowly to Hermione, and in waves. First she could hear the steady sound of air rushing softly past her ears. Then she became aware of a spicy smell of pine and chamomile and... healthy male, which was oddly enough the most comforting thing she had known up to now. The next wave of becoming awake brought the feeling of warmth and of being embraced by somebody who completely engulfed her against their body, and of a head resting in her hair. Asleep. When her eyes finally opened, Hermione saw that she was pressed up against Snape, tucked neatly under his chin and in his arms. She thought about struggling for a moment, and then realized that she had no idea what the unconscious response of a former Death Eater would be; so she slowly wormed her way out of his grasp, and gasped--the sudden cold was a shock to her body.
It was not the only uncomfortable thing.
Frowning at her body's basic needs, Hermione decided that she needed to find someplace to empty her bladder. And while the idea of dropping her trousers in such an icy place was not a fun one, neither was the idea of walking around much longer without relieving herself. She disappeared, in search of a suitable place, trying not to feel too guilty about desecrating such a place with the necessities of an organic body. When Hermione found her way back, Snape was awake, and looking relatively amused at her own discomfort. The knowing smirk followed her across the room even as she was sure he probably needed to take care of business just as much as she had.
Finally, she folded her arms across her chest and tried her best not to be intimidated by the man who had haunted her childhood for seven long years. "Where are we?"
Snape glanced at a wall etched with half melted and solidified symbols that read: Renye ame dehibeth faha'r Senhariebe. "Apparently we're in Senhariebe's domain. My suggestion, Miss Granger, is to tread lightly." He stood up carefully and disappeared through a blackened door. "Coming?" came the echoed query, prompting Hermione to follow.
His footsteps came from the darkness beyond her, but try as she might, she was quickly lost in the darkness even before she had truly begun to follow. "Sir?" she called. An echoing hiss responded, forcing a stop from her. Hermione felt completely helpless. Listening to the wind rushing through the echoing caverns around her, she did not hear the tall form that approach and grabbed her from behind--
A hand clamped over her mouth before she could scream and a pair of lips pressed softly against her ear. "It would be best," the silky voice whispered, "If you would be a little more quiet. You are not a dundering, graceless Hufflepuff, and waking up the sleeping creature that undoubtedly finished off the rest of this city would be most… unpleasant." Strong hands clasped her shoulders and steered her forward though the darkness into halls dimly lit with the lingering magic of thousands of years ago. Deeper they went, farther away from the harsh cold of the Antarctic surface, and from the promise of being found. Like a void of despair, the further Hermione descended into the depths of the cavernous hulk of a buried city, the more certain she knew that there would be no escape from this. Not now, not ever. The memories of sunlight and warmth, of the Hogwarts summer, or spending the entire day in her cozy University library were lost in the forever emptiness of the dead city. As if Snape knew exactly what she was thinking, his hand slid down her back in a graceful yet awkward gesture of comfort, and then slid from her back to his side.
The lack of warmth made Hermione realize just how cold she was. Her hands and face burned as though they were on fire, and itched like a thousand fire ants were crawling across her skin. In an effort to keep the blood flowing through them, she began to rub her hands together and analyze the situation. "Where are we going?" she asked finally.
Silence stretched between them as he seemingly navigated the catacombic ruins and depths of the true wizard's Atlantis. "Would you prefer the ice and wind?" he asked rather sharply.
The stinging words surprised her even though she felt she should have expected them. "No," she admitted, fears confirmed. It wasn't very likely at all they'd be able to get back to Hogwarts. Why wouldn't her wand work? Frustrated, she pulled it out of her wind tattered robe, and aimed it menacingly at a dimly lit rock. A weak hex flew out and knocked the rock a few feet in front over a precipice neither had seen. They both stopped where they stood, surprised. One more step, and neither of them would have survived.
"I guess we have to go around," Hermione muttered sheepishly.
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Stay tuned for the next episode, The Hot Springs of Eternal Youth!
"It is in self-limitation that a master first shows himself."
-Goethe.
Ha ha ha, the wonderful thing about Antarctica is that it may not be situated on any fault lines, and it may not snow (although it is the coldest place on earth) it is situated on a couple of active hot spots, and contains a few nicely active volcanoes...
LoPotter: I hope you have a superb day, too! Thanks for putting up with FF.Net for half an hour just to review my story, and I hope you like the LoS sequel, too...
ChelleyBean: Thanks! That makes me feel very loved... I'm frustrated, though, because I didn't find the exact thesis I had read once, which was very well written and very plausible/worthy of consideration. Oh, well...
Bellemaine Chercoeur: Yes! My characters are In Character! (I had a mid chapter crisis where I wasn't sure I keeping them in character, so this makes me feel very validated at this point.) Ah, yes, I think that we shall be seeing more twists in the dragon's tail (excuse the pun, it's 1:30 in the morning) too...
Tablynvan: At this point in time, I haven't decided Draco's fate. To be quite honest, I really don't like Draco that much, but that doesn't mean he can't be used as an interesting plot device--especially given Lady Granger's challenge guidelines (the ones pertaining to Voldemort, if you want a hint).... *Evil grin*
Lady Granger: When you're done with that dictionary, can I steal it? *Grin* That way I can continue being a lazy Ibex... actually, I was planning to make a dictionary, simply to make it easier when I go back and do some more translating further along the story... Glad you're enjoying it! And... try not to salivate all over your keyboard... I learned the hard way that keyboards and saliva simply don't mix.... Nor hot chocolate, for that matter.... (Ask Autumnmist)
Aurinia: Thanks for that wonderful read (Oh, do I look like a geek now?)! That was incredibly fascinating and I loved the analytical approach taken--it really brightened up my evening (as I was stumbling through trying to relearn Schrodinger's Quantum Cat problem so I could finish the first chapter of the LoS sequel). There are so many theories out there--sometimes I almost wonder if there really were more than one 'Atlantises'--Humans are odd creatures in that the same innovations will spontaneously appear from place to place to place with seemingly no connections to one another. If there was one great civilization during that period of time--why not two? Or three? Until we get some serious research going, like your thesis said, --sonar mapping, respectable archaeological excavations--however, I don't think we'll know the answer any time soon. Although, I always get a good grin out of the strange 'Atlantis was really Antarctica' or 'Atlantis was really created by aliens' stories... (Hence why both of my Atlantises were founded by magical folk, and the second was located in Antarctica--aside from the fact that it fit Lady Granger's prompt...)
I am amused, though, because I said that the South America one was one of the most plausible theories I'd heard (unfortunately, I haven't been able to track down the very good thesis paper I saw on that theory, otherwise I would have included a link for that, too) but now it looks like I have two plausible theories! What's an Ibex to do? Become an archaeologist, maybe... ;) Actually, what would interest me is if somebody did a study on the probable oceanic currents that occurred during that time period and plotted the most likely places a ship would sail to if taken by the currents... Then we really *would* know--or at least, have an incredibly good idea...
As to the languages--I must admit that I've never had any contact with Icelandic or Cyrillic/Scandinavian! When I created the language, I was basing it off of Yicikarekwe's name, which I had invented a few weeks prior (yes, this story's been sitting on the back burner for a while thanks mostly to my workload) and my attempt at figuring out how a dragon with such an exotic name would speak. I had thought at the time that it was very similar to what I remembered of my Japanese (which isn't much anymore) and was rather worried that it would come off looking too fake. From the reviews I've gotten on it, however, I'm going to guess that I achieved what I wanted, which was to create a realistic well-founded language. That makes me soooo happy!