(revised)
Ghaa! O.o ~points~ FIC! Good for me. I am Fifi the Chronically Insane Slayer of Muffin Men! Hey, everyone ELSE can have fancy titles. :D Am I not special enough to have a title? Sadness.
Right. Get on with it, neh? Yes, I brought Lloyd back. ~hides~ It's that feeling of GOD-LIKE POWER. Everybody still here? Good. On with the fanfic madness.
The Answer Is…Darkness
Dust formed tornado-like dervishes as cold wind raced over walkways and through the cracks in old stone towers. In one, once marked in vibrant violet, a thin flicker of shadows stirred with the breeze. Watching from another, this one bearing chipped and faded gold, there perched a great blur of…something, distinguishable only by fickle moonlight and crimson slits of fire.
Calm in this shadow of fear, Albert searched the towers and the stairs below, squinting into the vast darkness for any telltale hint of the beasts that kept him captive. Not in a word 'captive,' he was free to wander around the tower of the jade dragoon, but the feeling that if he took a single step outside its protective stones, he would once more be at the mercy of the dark creatures surrounding him.
His shoulder gave a sharp twinge, a dull throbbing following. The ragged wound was bound tightly with the remains of his outer shirt, and had thankfully ceased bleeding long ago. In the dark velvet night above, the skittish flickers of lightning brightened the gaps between dark lined clouds and the beginning percussion of thunder reverberated in the surrounding rock.
Still no sign of the last shadow creature, or the cloaked nightmare (that one had not made an appearance after the first 'visit') but he knew they were there. Watching. Waiting.
Crouched in the doorway of the emerald topped tower, Albert watched and waited as well, timing the flashes of lightning to the drum beats of thunder and the relative silence in between.
One hell of a storm, as they say, was brewing.
A hard rumble denoted the lament of the clouds above, witnesses to all. Something shifted in the structure to his left; bright red sparks it seemed, moving to watch the king.
There was really no place to go, Albert mused, even if he DID try to escape. Vellweb was fairly well hidden from the rest of the world, the closest sanctuary Deningrad, and the thoughts of traversing the whole of Gloriano with a pack of hell-spawned monsters nipping at his heels with NO provisions and NO weapons did not sit entirely too well with him. However, the alternative was staying, and perhaps the safer of the two, it still presented the threat of the unknown creatures and the broken ramblings of phantoms.
Albert was not content to sit and wait out whatever 'fate' held in store. Nevertheless, he was not ready to risk everything on some foolhardy mad run for empty plains and no real hope that he could actually make it. Another cracking streak and ominous grumble from the clouded skies. He stood slowly, letting blood pour through veins and rush to tingling limbs that had cramped during his watch.
That and the gleaming fact that they needed him for something…what had it been? Unlocking Darkness? Schooling those questioning thoughts into the back of his mind, he shuffled back into the cool before-storm calm of the jade tower, quietly panning the room for anything that might be of use.
The flash bang of the storm setting into full swing opened the curtain of rain that pattered the stone with droplets then blanketed all.
Rotted shells of book casings piled in one corner. Albert nudged them with his foot, grimacing as they collapsed into dust. Two days of absolutely nothing but waiting. Rainwater alone had sustained him. Surely there was more to this than simply letting him starve to death a thousand miles from—
"You can run, but you can't outrun it." Colder than the grave, the voice sounded.
Hair whipped into his eyes smartly, testament to the speed in which Albert spun to the speaker.
Pooled in a cloak of shadow, it sat there, in the doorway he had just left. "You can hide, but it will find you."
Albert tensed, backing farther into the tower, never once letting his eyes stray from the softly stalking figure. In morbid fascination, the once jade dragoon watched this creature laugh, its head thrown back to reveal a crude, twisted mockery of a human face, aged beyond imagination yet somehow still clinging to life.
"It is blind," came another line through insane laughter. "And yet can see!"
"What are you?" was spoken as he backed away, this perversion of nature more…wrong…than the others.
"What is IT?" Phantoms clouded, began to circle him, closing in life wolves. "Give me the answer!"
Another cracking bang illuminated everything in inverted shadows, light were it should have been dark, dark where light should have glowed.
The mad cackling continued on, reaching a frightening crescendo that drown out the storm outside. "Open the Door! Let the Child come through and let me wash this world in darkness as was before!"
Shadows blurred and hellfire eyes rose to full height directly in front of him--that disjointed mouth opening in a scream. In reflexive action, he jerked backwards; a boot heel hit the remains of a book covering and skipped out from under him, dropping the king to the floor with a painful jolt.
"The answer boy! Give me the answer!"
And Albert was once again in the impossibly strong grasp, hauled upward and held fast. All encompassing in his vision were those eyes, those red orbs of the damned that were as if looking into a direct road to Hell.
Again, the riddle flashed, no, burned its way into his mind, gnawing deeper until all he could do was scream out, "DARKNESS!" before shoving himself away with every ounce of strength he still possessed to lay too still upon the floor, clenching his jaw firm to hold in the cry of pain that torn a jagged swath down his arm. Damn him! DAMN HIM!
"And you WILL open the Door, even if I must MAKE you." A lightning step forward, Albert raised a hand to push the phantom away, watched as the cloaked nightmare took another pace towards him, the beginning of the laughter flowing out once more--
--and a silver shadow of a different nature connected with it, knocking it completely backward and sent it flailing back through the doorway.
A shade, the translucent pallor filling in even as he dropped in a defensive stance with the grace of a panther. Before Albert's unsure eyes, this ghost took a sure step closer. "You cannot harm a Echo." This was said in a voice of velvet overlaying steel. A crooked grin graced see-through features. "Funny though, that I can you."
A broken rasp from outside. "Too late shade, Echo, memory…whatever you are. You cannot stop the Child of the Damned."
Lloyd—it HAD to be—paused, wraithlike in the lightning's illumination. "Shall we see?" Another twisted smile, mocking to a point of cruelty. "I think we shall."
Keeday, some terms—
Echo is LIKE a ghost, or a shade, only not. But I'll get into that later. kk? I didn't to 'resurrect' them as much as I wanted to bring them into the fic. And yes still, Lavtiz WILL be the Jade Dragoon, regardless of his current state.
And once more…I am SORRY about the revisions, they just makes things harder to follow. I am, however, happier with this and the storyline did NOT alter as much as I made it out to be. Just fixing some things that needed fixing. So while I was at it, I cut some things and added different, it's back on track with the original plan I had for it and The Riddle was solved! Yay! Betcha didn't think it had purpose, did ya?
