ALARYAN'S KEEP
PART I
"FREAKS"
Chapter I
Between worlds there is a Bond, thread thin and yet infinitely thick, nothing and yet everything at once. It stretches and holds worlds together, an intangible lifeline set out before time began, before man walked, before his earth existed, before life itself was. It is this Bond which holds ever-precious life together, pulling man ever towards his Destiny.
There is also a Keeper of the Bond. A babe who has seen too much of the hatred man can create, a child who has felt more than his share of pain, a man who secretly fears yet can do nothing as he watches his world spin out of his control to shatter around him. Some call him the Dragon for his outward appearance. Others call him the Mountain or the Lion for his stubbornness and courage. Still others call him the Angel for his boundless love. He holds the Bond and all it touches in his hands; wears it as a gilded collar, so exquisitely beautiful yet so infinitely cruel.
Through this Bond's chaotic mixture of tangible nothingness and biased neutrality, one thing is for certain:
The Keeper of the Bond must not die, for with his death comes the end of the species of man and all it has come to know.
-excerpt from Atuvan the Red's
"The Dragon Man"
How long it has been…
Trowa Barton shut his emerald eyes and leaned his back against the rough bark of the maple tree, sensing keenly the warm sunlight on his face. He felt Quatre's prone body move against his foot in quiet slumber on the soft grass by Delaney Park's duck pond. It was a year to the day the Gundams were destroyed and the now ex-pilots were having a sort of reunion care of Quatre's constant insistence, cajoling and finally some of his not very convincing threats. Relena was there, of course, tossing around a Frisbee and laughing with Duo some twenty feet away. She wasn't horribly good, but Trowa endured good naturedly the plastic disc being flung into his lap with what sense of humour he had and let it go at that. Heero was parked on a picnic table in front of a chessboard opposite Wufei, who was still trying to figure out how the Perfect Soldier had managed to box his king in so neatly without him
How long it has been… Trowa mused again, listening to the girl he thought of as his older sister croon to her new feathered friends. How long has it been since we have gathered without sadness? He opened his eyes, watching Duo and Relena laughing hysterically on the grass and smiled. This is what our pain was for. Catherine giggled girlishly as an over-eager duck tried to wrench a piece of bread from her fingers. Silently, Trowa chuckled along. Let others say what they want. The pain was worth this new joy. This peace I never knew.
"Hey, Trowa!" Duo was waving to him, Frisbee in hand.
"Yeah?"
"We're playing ultimate Frisbee and we need a doubles team! You and Catherine wanna join up?" The braided boy grinned devilishly. "Of course, I can't really promise that we won't totally whomp you guys."
Catherine shook her head. She found Frisbee dull –not enough pointy objects involved. Quatre, who had just woken, sat up and stretched languorously.
"I'll play in Catherine's place, if you'd like," he called.
Duo waved him over, " 'Course! The more there are the more satisfying the win!"
Quatre got up and loped over. Trowa followed, pausing to prod his surrogate sister with his foot. "You're boring, Cathy," he teased. Ducking a flying crust with a laugh, he joined the others.
"Aaargh! You did it again!" Wufei shouted in disbelief. He glared at the chessboard, as if demanding Heero's pieces to pull themselves out of check. "Best five of seven!" he demanded, setting the black pieces back up.
"Sure," agreed Heero, lazily turning Wufei's lost king over in his hands. "Loser owes me lunch."
Wufei snarled and began to set the white pieces up, thumping them down more forcefully than necessary. Heero's mouth quirked in an almost imperceptible smile. For the last year, all his battles had been fought and won upon this battered, second hand wooden board. The need for violence to bring peace was over. The need for the Gundams was over.
Heero still wasn't sure whether he was entirely pleased or not with the loss of his gundam. Wing Zero had been a curse to him, warping his mind, causing him all sorts of hell. Even the thought of it made Heero's nostrils fill with the scent of blood and fire and fear. But without it, the Perfect Soldier was nothing, a lost soul drifting through life with nothing to hold on to. A soldier without a mission.
What am I now…? A dead man in a live body? A wandering spirit? Images of the smoking ruins of mobile dolls, their pilots draped limply over them came unbidden to his mind. Where do I go from here?
"Yuy! Quit daydreaming and make your move!"
Heero blinked and -without seeming to think about it- captured Wufei's rook. The Chinese ex-pilot's eyes widened in shock.
"Dammit!"
Catherine grinned and sat back in the very spot her brother had just been in a moment ago, watching him, Quatre, Relena, and Duo chase each other around on the grass like wildly laughing puppies. They were so cute!
Not that she would ever tell them that, of course.
So much had changed in Trowa since the end of the gundams. He smiled more, though admittedly only at Catherine. He also spoke more, though again he was only that open with her, telling her about his life as a mercenary, and later on as a gundam pilot before he joined the circus. The changes were subtle but they were still there and his ongoing friendship with the other pilots seemed to help him cope with the memories of the past.
Still, there were bad days. Days when Trowa's mental state simply collapsed and the show went on without him. Days when he would sit on the floor of his tent and stare at his reflection in the little mirror Catherine sometimes used to put on her makeup, sitting there for hours on end, whispering half-heartedly to himself. It still scared Catherine when she woke to hear him crying out in his sleep nearby and her heart almost broke when she caught him standing over the sink watching the blood fall from the cracked skin of his hands as he tried to scrub away the taint of war.
Catherine's mind pulled back to the present as a sudden realisation gripped her. The ducks she had been feeding had gone eerily silent. They all stood in front of her now, all in a perfect line staring stiffly at the pond before them like tiny soldiers standing at attention. The amazed young woman inched towards them on her hands and knees, a sick feeling growing inside her, her eyes fixed to the pond. Tiny ripples rolled from the centre. Catherine watched the smooth, perfect rings moving to a slow, easy rhythm. Cocking her head, she could almost hear it.
Whummmm…whummmm…whummmm…whummmm
Fascinated, Catherine stared as her stomach knotted in fear. Her hand brushed against a stone-still duck. It fell stiffly over, unmoving even as it landed. The rhythm in the centre of the pond sped up.
Whumm.Whumm.Whumm.Whumm…
"Guys?" Catherine's voice was high, unnatural. "Guys?"
The urgent, almost hysterical note in her voice was enough to send the others running to her, Trowa far in the lead.
"What is it, sis?" His arms snaked their way around her. She pointed fearfully to the pond.
The sound was louder now, more forceful. They could hear it as well as feel its bass vibrations.
Whumwhumwhumwhumwhum…
"Oh, lord. Get away from there." The quaver in Quatre's voice betrayed his calm tone. "Get back. Now."
The water in the centre of the pond had graduated to bubbling. The vibrations were causing more ducks to fall over.
"Get back!!"
The pond exploded in a scalding geyser of water. The line of ducks was destroyed as the water ripped through them backed by thousands of tonnes of pressure. The sound was enormous. Chunks of earth thudded soundlessly to the ground as the geyser expanded, flash-boiling everything in its path.
"Ruuuuunnnn!!!!" Duo screamed, his voice a child's whisper above the din.
The others did not have to hear him twice. They sprinted in blind terror as the spray of death closed in, splintering trees, shattering statues. Onlookers who stopped or looked back were instantly destroyed by the immense pressure and heat of the liquid inferno.
A scream from behind rang out shrilly to be swallowed by the thundering rumble of the column of water.
"Relena!" Quatre shouted.
"She's gone! Move faster! Don't look back!" Wufei urged to the boy behind him.
The hideous slam of thousands of tonnes of pressure was his only answer as Trowa and Quatre were devoured by the ever-hungry water. Catherine screamed as Quatre's hand made a clumsy grab at her ankle and she too was sucked into the wet inferno, leaving Duo, Heero and Wufei to outrun the thundering wave.
The settings darkened as the wave grew and blotted out the sun. Suddenly, it split and poured around the three young men, pulling them to a halt and boxing them in. The steam scalded their skin red immediately as the raging barrier closed slowly in.
Wufei lifted his chin in defiance. "So be it," he murmured, his voice hopelessly lost in the fury. "I will die with honour."
Duo and Heero lunged at him and almost managed to grasp at his sodden clothes as he threw himself into the scalding water. Neither of them heard the slight sizzling sound as all the fat was flash-boiled off his body.
"So I guess it's just you and me, buddy!!!!" Duo's voice was hoarse as he screamed these words. The walls were closing in. The heat was truly unbearable.
"Yeah!!" Heero could feel his skin burning as the steam found it. His eyes were bleeding. "Funny thing we get to die now!!"
Duo dropped bonelessly to his knees, slumping over like a rag doll. The crushing water was barely a foot away. "Yeah!!" he gasped, the steam filling his lungs. He heard nothing but the crashing of the water as it began to touch his face. "See you on the other side, buddy…"
And then blackness took them…
Footsteps echoed off the stone walls as Riana Broman made her way to the Dying Room. There was probably a better name for it somewhere in the records, but everyone -even those who had stayed there- called it that. It was a place for the terminally ill to lie, to gain respite from the rest of the world and, overall, to die. Walker had taken over this room with his constant attacks and since there hadn't been any terminally ill in what seemed to be years, the room had been given over to him. But much to his chagrin, the name had stuck.
The halls were barren today, almost dead to the touch. The complete antithesis of the hustle and bustle of everyday life in Alaryan's Keep. But today was not a regular day. Walker was in the throes of yet another attack and to walk the halls with him letting out so much magical discharge could prove to be fatal.
Riana –known to all as Ria- paused a few feet from the Dying Room's wooden door to compose herself before going in. Seeing her brother like this was never easy. Once inside the scene was all too familiar to her. Her younger sisters Misty and Tama were crowded next to a simple bed with her older brother Darien -Walker's twin- on the other side, wringing his hands. Misty's harp was in her lap, her thin arms around it like a child with a treasured security blanket. Poor thing. She was only seventeen and every time Walker had an attack it was like she was being asked to watch him die just a little bit more…
Nineteen-year-old Tama sat with her hands on her knees, her normally hard expression softened by sadness as she watched Walker's torment. Even she, with her strength and cool head could not
Walker himself was in the bed, lying on his side, his scarred face contorted in agony. He was bare to the waist, the sheets pulled down to the middles of his muscular thighs. His hard, well-muscled back was criss-crossed with a complex network of scars and a thin sheen of sweat played over it, emphasising his muscle tone further. Long black streaks like pennons of pure evil radiated from these scars like morbid sunbeams, moving sinuously as the plague got yet another foothold on Walker's already weary immune system. Ria blew out a small sigh and ran her fingers along the scars on her beloved brother's hot, sweaty face, tracing his features. These ones were still clean of the disease, but for how long, Ria didn't know.
"He wants you to stop that Ria. Your hands are too hot."
Ria pulled her hand back as though it had been burned. Darien's voice was thin, and wearily so. His thick, shaggy black hair was unbrushed and had probably not been washed in days. His green eyes were clouded as he felt keenly his twin's pain. The young men held a psychic link between each other. It allowed for transfer of thought, but it also allowed for some physical pain to filter through.
"Sorry." Ria ran her fingers through her auburn hair. "How is he doing?"
There came a sudden wet snap as another black streamer scythed across Walker's shoulders. With a moan, his body jerked in agony, his face contorted into a rictus of pain.
"You tell me."
Tama cracked her knuckles against her thigh. " 'S getting worse," she sighed in her full, throaty voice. "It's getting harder to control the spurts by the hour."
A small sound that could only be described as croik caught the group's attention as a candle on the bedside table suddenly melted into a dove and flitted to perch on the bedpost.
"Ah." Ria watched the newly-formed dove bob its head. "I see."
Almost absent-mindedly Misty hummed a little tune to herself. The bird immediately darted off the post to land on her shoulder, cooing along. Misty fingered its breast distractedly. "Something's wrong." Her soft, musical voice was worried. "Walker's never been at it this long before. The Bond could suffer for it."
"As he suffers now?!" Darien snapped, his nerves stretched to their tearing point. "Keep your thoughts on what lies before you!"
Walker cried out as another thread of plague whipped across the small of his back.
Darien's hands knotted again. "Why him? We're only twenty-three!" The girls looked at the floor. How many times had this question been asked? How many times had the answer managed to elude them? Darien dolefully stroked Walker's fiery hair. "He looks so old," he murmured.
The others nodded sadly. Almost all the magic in the world was here in this Keep and yet no one could ease the pain of a dying man. Ria crossed her legs and watched her brother's shallow breathing, helplessly as usual. They came so suddenly. One moment Walker would be up and laughing, and the next, he would be lying in the Dying Room, eyes sealed shut, lungs struggling for his next breath. Darien sighed and wiped his eyes as the plague danced gruesomely along Walker's body like a host of demons at play. How long did he have? How long would it be until the Keeper of the Bond died and the world would be plunged into eternal darkness? How long would it be until Earth was lost?
The siblings watched their brother lie, watching and waiting for the answer that would no doubt wait until it was too late to come.
Wantonly, the wax dove cooed and took flight out an open window, taking with it the siblings' hopes for their brother's life.
Well, that's all I have for now, please R&R. If I know that people want to read more, i'll put more up! Until we meet again! --Lady PhoenixDagger