What if: Myth
By Prinder
Rating: PG 13- R
Disclaimer: I do not own gundam wing or any of its characters. I also do not own Felina or Jasmine they were so gratefully lent to me by my dear role-playing friend Ashley.
Claimer: I DO own Fiora and JinChi, so please don't use them unless you ask me first, thank you.
"…" Denotes Speech
'…' Denotes Thought
(Notes from me)
Chapter 14
Campfire. No, bonfire light was what he saw. In his sleep Heero lay, chained down, in a room with a window that caught the firelight as it shined into the starless night sky.
Memories. This was all that it was, all that it was meant to be, the echo of beating drums and ringing voices, wailing into the night. And campfires. It was all from the past. His past. What was once only back then, was once again haunting the now. All because of this meaningless hell that the humans called: dreamland.
It was made of thatching, twig, hey, and mud. It was his prison; he wasn't strong enough to break the chains, which bound him here, to this place, to this hole that he still suffers in. Even after he was set free.
Humans. He could smell them coming for him long before he saw them. The foul stench of animal blood clung to their skin; they had literally bathed in it, for this ritual, this rite.
They hadn't fed him. Not that he could have eaten what they had to offer anyways. He was so weak he couldn't see straight. Everything was one fuzzy blob to him.
They dragged him out by his arms; his feet and knees lay limp, leaving tracks like a snake's behind them.
The high priest, who was what they called the monster that stood before the altar, he tied him down, the groves in the stone cut into his flesh, as did the ropes that bound him in place. He vaguely recalled trying to fight to get free. Some of the humans cheered, but none helped him.
Human words. Grunt and spoken in the back of their throats like a wad of mucus that clung to ones lungs. He couldn't understand them then.
The knife. The dagger which was held in the human monster's hand, held above his chest, tip pointed down, gleaming in the firelight.
The pain. The searing pain that never came held back by Wynford's staff and Felina's magic kept the other humans at bay.
Freedom. The ropes cut and being led out of his prison. He left something behind though, his heart, and his belief that humans could understand, could learn to care, to feel.
He would take the magic away from the humans one day. He swore that he would. Humans had no right to have it, to be so powerful. Felina would never know what happened. He swore that too.
Something wet. Something was dripping on his forehead; it was cold and gave off a rather annoying feeling. Heero slowly opened his eyes.
"Duo." he glared at the street-boy-turned-knight as he sat up and rubbed the water off of his face.
"'Bout time you woke up! We've been waitin' for you since this morning!"
Heero just grunted and got to his feet, noting that the sun was already high in the sky.
"Thank goodness you're awake! I was starting to get worried about you, Heero." Relena said as she made her way over to him, her crystal ball-like orb in her hands.
"She thought that you was sick! Been trying to get us to try and find something wrong with you. What a drip!" Fiora laughed.
"I was worried! I didn't want anything to happen to him, especially on our first day really and truly on our own." Relena replied.
"Whatever you say Princess!"
"… Regardless of who said and did what, we still are yet to decide which direction to go." Wong said, shooting a glare at the female pirate.
"Most of our horses came back while you were still asleep so we won't have to walk everywhere." Duo said, cheerfully motioning towards the seven out of the original ten horses sitting in the shade of a nearby tree.
"Yeah, mine included, I swear that damned thing is out to get me!" Fiora exclaimed, making the others laugh at her out of pity.
"I highly doubt it, Fiora." Wong snorted.
"We seem to have wandered off of the subject at hand." Wufei said, bringing an end of the snickers from the others.
"Right. We really should launch our retaliation against whoever attacked Cinq." Quatre pondered loudly.
"The only problem is, we have no real idea who that might be." Jasmine sighed, shaking her head.
"But unfortunately, when they attacked they didn't carry their flag. This works to their advantage, but does little to aid us in finding them. What cowards!" Wong seethed.
"They were relying on their anonymity from the start." Trowa stated in his calm fashion.
"It sure seems that way, doesn't it? It's a little freaky when you think about it. It's almost like they KNEW that we were going to go after them and that we were… uh… what was it that we were again? The Keepers of the Gates into Mystic?" Duo asked.
"Pwa, yep! That's right." Felina replied.
"What the hell is this Mystic thing anyways? Ain't no one said anything about that yet. What with that?" Fiora questioned.
"The forgotten isles not a thing; it's a place." Heero corrected.
"Really? What is it like?" Relena asked, curious.
"I wouldn't know I've never been there."
"So, what exactly are we supposed to do there? Or is that also something that you don't know?" Wong said, using reverse-psychology to try and extract a straight answer from them.
"Wynford told us! It's like a passageway, a bridge, into the forgotten isles. It's a patch of fog-covered land that looks like a white swamp with a few dead trees still sticking out of the watery ground. See? I know what it is! So there!" Felina said, sticking her tongue out at her.
"Yeah, that sounds like a GREAT place to hang out for the rest of our lives… NOT!" Fiora said sarcastically.
"Maybe not, but it is the only thing that stands in the way of humans and the our world." Heero replied.
"I'm not sure I quite understand; you say you have never seen it, yet you have to pass through it to get to and from your world and ours, right? How is that possible?" Quatre asked.
"There was never a need to be there so we would usually just teleport over it." Heero replied.
"Okay… weird, why in the HELL do you have something like that there and never even make use of it?" Fiora exclaimed, confused.
"To keep Humans out; they can't just teleport over it, not when they don't know how far they have to go to get across or which direction to go. Its another way we keep our borders safe from humans that would wish to harm us." Heero replied.
"I got a word for that; it's called PARANOID!" Fiora laughed.
"Paranoia or not, that isn't our reason for conversing; our reason is to plan our next move!" Wong glared.
"I say we go to this forgotten isle and maybe we'll find some answers." Quatre said with a resolute nodding of his head.
"I think we should go back to Cinq and see if my brother can't remember anything about who it might have been that attacked our kingdom." Relena said firmly.
"Personally, I'd rather get the HELL outta here, to HELL with them, to HELL with Cinq, to HELL with Mystic, and to HELL WITH ALL OF YOU! I've gotten my ass into this mess far enough, thank-you-very-much! Look! I ain't asked for this! I don't wanna be a hero! This is CRAZY! We're gonna get KILLED, I don't give a fuck about what King What's-his-face says! Under all of this fancy magical BULLSHIT we're still just a bunch of kids that ain't got no clue as to what the hell we're gonna do! We're still the same screwed up pack of punks that consists of TWO SCHOLARS, THREE BLUE BLOODS, A STREET KID, A CLOWN, TWO FAIRIES, AND A PIRATE!" Fiora laughed.
This started quite the chain reaction, starting from Relena and Jasmine opening their mouths with shock, Wong and Felina clamping theirs shut angrily, Wufei drawing his sword, Duo taking a step back because the blade came dangerously close to his neck, Heero ignoring her completely, Quatre stepping in to try and pacify the situation, and Trowa, well, Trowa was Trowa and he was leaning up against a tree trunk, taking this all in before looking up at them and offering a solution.
"Hold it, we know that the enemy came through this forest, remember? If we wait here, there is bound to be more of them to pass through here and then it would just be the simple matter of following their trail back to their main fortress." Trowa said, raising his hands to stop the verbal fight that was ensuing between his comrades.
It was as if they had just realized that he was there for the first time in forever; It was like they just realized that he wasn't deaf, dead, or blind for the first time they first met him. Trowa was known for doing that to people, invisible until he wants to be seen and heard. It didn't come to any surprise to him when they gave him their full attention.
"Uh… as much as I like that idea, there is just one slight problem with that… IN CASE YA HADN'T NOTICED! Ain't no one passed by here ALL DAY!" Fiora yelled.
"No, wait Fiora, I think Trowa is onto something." Quatre said, raising his hand to silence her.
"ARE YOU LOONY?"
"No, Fiora, listen. Trowa's right, this is the only road into Cinq, they have to cut though here, it's either that or risk the monsters deep within, beyond the paths." Quatre said.
"I have a question; does anyone know of the different places this road splits off to?" Wong asked.
"I do, one goes to Quatre's kingdom. One goes to Benovia, ruled by King Traize. Another leads to Encatnta, a small kingdom ruled by Princess Dorothy while her father wages war with another land to the north. And the last is a small town just along the cape." Jasmine replied.
"Okay, well it isn't my kingdom or the town, neither of those two would attack Cinq. So that leaves Benovia and Encatnta." Quatre said, wondering aloud.
"The best course of action would be to move to that part where the road splits off and wait for them there, that way we can be sure we have the right path." Trowa said from his spot next to a tree.
"That's fine. Let's do that, that is, if there aren't any objections?" Quatre questioned.
Fiora looked like she was about to say something but, with all of the warning glares that promised a great deal of bodily harm if she said anything, she wisely clamped her mouth shut and muttered under her breath about "Damned blade-happy land-lovers, think they own the world, why I outta…" and so on and so forth.
It wasn't until they had all checked their supplies and got the horses ready when they realized that three of them would have to share a horse. This, of all things, made Fiora cheer up, not because of the fact that she might get to ride with someone, but more the fact that she was more then willing to let someone else ride her horse while she walked. This only got her a loud chorus of: "FIORA, SHUT UP!" Ending the thought right then and there.
In the end, Jin, Relena, and Jasmine ended up riding with Wufei, Heero, and Quatre. This caused only minor complaints from Wufei but, with exception of him, everyone else seemed to be taking the arrangements rather well, that is, all except Fiora, who still held out saying that she "could manage just fine walking" and that she "would bet my left boot that I could beat ya'll to the fork in the road on foot before ya'll did!" not that anyone believed her, and so she rode on her steed, grumbling the whole way, making her horse even more jumpy then usual.
"Pwa! Fiora! You're only making it worse!" Felina chirped.
"Yeah, well, its not like I have any say in the matter! Your body would be tense too if it got knocked off of this damned thing twice within a one week time span!" Fiora said, wrinkling her nose up at the fairy girl as she rode past.
This started a rather interesting show for the rest of the trip, as Fiora, being one never to back out of a challenge, ended up having a race between Felina, Trowa and Duo the rest of the way there. Sure, she lost, but at least everyone was laughing and smiling again; that was better then any high that she could have gotten from winning in her opinion.
Late that night, after feasting on elk that Trowa killed, they turned in for the night with Wufei keeping watch. As everyone had settled in, climbed the tallest tree he could find and seated him self on one of its branches. It was the perfect vantage point, he could see far into the distance and yet he still had a good view of what went on below him, namely the fire and the forms sleeping next to it.
"You've been quiet." a strangely distant voice said, by some weird twist of nature, next to his ear.
"I was wondering when you were going to show yourself all day, Meiran." He replied as he turned his head to look at her wavering form as it faded in and out of phase, it's slightly glowing white setting off the sharp blackness with its bitter cold warmth. Wufei mused silently on how that was even possible, to have warmth and yet be so cold to the touch at the same time.
"I couldn't do that with them awake; it would surely have given Wong a heart attack." she remarked wryly.
"Hum."
"Look at it, the moon, I've never seen it that color before." Meiran murmured.
Wufei looked up and there, just behind the treetops, was the moon, glowing an unusual shade of orange, very much unlike the icy blue shades that one normally sees reflecting down upon them. Wufei stood up on his branch, being careful not to touch Meiran's wavering form, and looked down at the members of his party sleeping peacefully while strange shadow-like being slithered through the camp; stopping to look at their calmly resting faces.
"Do you know who they are, Wufei?" Meiran asked, not bothering to turn her head to look.
"No."
"They've been following you for the longest time, only stopping once you reached the fairy's stone alter."
"Who sent them?"
"I don't know." came Meiran's faded reply, she was disappearing again, Wufei noted.
"What are they after?"
"You… and them… and everything that involves you."
"How do we stop them?"
"You can't, they aren't really here, and they fade in and out like I do, shifting between worlds…" Meiran's voice echoed as she faded out completely, leaving Wufei to decide how he was going to take care of the shadowy monstrosities that had invaded their camp for the first, and last, time.
Wufei shimmied down the tree trunk silently and, turning so that his back was to it, used it as a shield between himself and the shadow beings and in doing so, he managed to be close enough to pick up the growling words in the shadow-like's tongue.
"Blangzenti galntongmogo thwidknke, fornoutisnsn Dermail-snonjuokong, Fernvernto! Poplomontidn ghtimaeos bjotasjeifnmo."
'Dermail…now that sounds familiar…' Wufei thought.
"GAHHHZAAAHHHSSSS!" one of the shadow monsters cried out suddenly, making the rest of them look up before slinking away into the darkness from which they came.
Wufei, now somewhat alarmed as to what made them flee, stepped out from behind the tree and approached the others and, kneeling down, gently shaking Wong awake.
"M-master…?" Wong mumbled, her mind in a sleepy haze.
"Get up. We had some unwelcome guests," he ordered, standing up to tend to the fire.
"Master!" Wong cried realizing who it was that, through her sleep clouded mind woke her up. "Master Wufei, What…" she stammered and busied herself with getting breakfast ready for the others.
"Forget about that for now, Wong. Wake the others, we have to move, and soon." Wufei ordered.
"What? But Master Wufei!"
"DO IT!"
"…Yes Master Wufei, as you wish…" Wong said, trying her best to hide her shock, Wufei rarely gave her orders in such a tone and even more rarely did he raise his voice to her.
'He must be very troubled by something. Whatever happened while we slept affected him more then he seems to realize.' Wong thought, her mouth set in a grim line as she set to work on waking the others.
He saw the look of surprise on her face before she forced it away. And he knew why she had it. He knew it wasn't acting like himself, and it was all due to the fact that those things had gotten into camp on his watch, literally, right under his nose. And he didn't even see them until it was almost too late!
"Alright, what is it?" Heero asked, getting right to the point.
"Shadow beings snuck into camp and I didn't see them until it was almost too late. One of them said something about a Dermail, and then another one of them said something else and they took off. They've been following us for some time now, since before we came to the ring of moonstones and the alter." Wufei explained.
"Shadow walkers. They're called Shadow walkers, they feed off of spirits." Heero said, poking a stick at the embers in the fire, making sparks fly up before cooling off and turning to ash and landing on the ground.
"GREAT! That's just LOVELY! So now, not only do we have to protect this Mystic-what-cha-ma-call-it, save the all mighty-FALLEN Cinq kingdom, but we also have to put up with SOUL-SUCKERS? Oh that's it! I hated this half-baked plan from the start, but for some dumb reason it just seems to get worse and WORSE as the whole fucking day goes by!" Fiora said, pacing back and forth, waving her arms in the air like a lunatic.
"Pwa? Soul-suckers? But didn't Heero say that they were Spirit-eaters?" Felina asked.
"…I don't CARE about what they're called! All I know is that my soul is in serious danger with you people and I ain't about to risk what little of it that I have left because you all think that we're a bunch of long-lost heroes or some-such-shit!" Fiora yelled, still motioning with her hands.
"Ya know if I didn't know any better, I'd say that you were CHICKEN Fiora!" Duo challenged.
"…Cluck, cluck, cluck… OF COURSE I'M CHICKEN! I'm feeling like a fish outta water! This whole mess has got me knocked for a loop I tell ya! And guess whose fault is that? YOURS!" Fiora said, pointing at him.
"Duo, Fiora, PLEASE stop fighting! Now isn't the time to be placing blame on anyone for any reason. Right now we have to get out of here while we still can." Quatre said, standing up to place his sword in his sheath.
"The only question is; where do we go?" Relena asked, picking up her orb.
"We can't backtrack to Cinq now, it's too far away and we still have things to do here." Jasmine said as she dusted off her robes.
"I guess that just leaves Mystic. We can get there from any place in the world with just a simple spell and we can return the same way." Felina chirped as she packed up her things and set them on the back of her horse.
"Alright, Mystic it is then." Quatre said with a nod.
"Right!" everyone agreed.
"Okay, let's see here… ah ha!" Quatre said as he fingered through his book of shadows before pointing at something on one of the pages and being to chant the ancient tongue. "Feim marleo, encota, lenkke, kalekale ayen!" he said, this voice echoing as his eyes flashed white and wind began to wrap around the party before shooting past the blonde spell caster and creating a large, blue, swirling, vortex in front of them.
"Holy fucking shit…" Fiora whistled.
"Let's go!" Quatre said, flicking the reigns on his horse and galloping into the vortex and disappearing.
"Quatre!" Jasmine called out as she rode off after him, the others not far behind.
On the other side, just as the last of them passed through it, the vortex sealed up after them, locking them inside the misty realm that was the forgotten isles.
______________________________________________________________________________ Yipes! Sorry it's taken so long to get this chapter up. I've been very, VERY, busy lately. I'm also sorry that this chapter is shorter then my usual, I just couldn't hold off anymore. This chapter is dedicated to my Role Play friend Ashley, for, I think, she it the only one that is ACTUALLY reading this fic lol ^_^; so yeah… you know the drill by now, Email to FioraEmbyr@aol.com bye!