Title: As Swift As the Wind
Author: Haze
Disclaimer: I don't own Flame of Recca so don't sue me…
Chapter Dedication: Fuuko-san, hyper_shark, Melyan, Yanagi-chyan, Kurei, bishounen lovah, Ranka
Chapter 8:
The door flung open at Mikagami's forceful kicks. He hurried inside and found Fuuko nowhere. His mind raced. Where could she be?
But then he heard whimpers – very soft whimpers. And it came from the walk-in closet.
Mikagami walked towards it and jerked the door open. His eyes scanned the mini-room and with certain strides, he walked to the corner where the coats where hung and found Fuuko huddled there. She was whimpering and crying.
"Fuuko."
She flinched at his touch. And she looked at him with wide, terrified eyes. She looked very pale and it sent uneasy chills up his spine. He reached for her body and engulfed her in a comforting embrace.
"Tell me what's wrong." He whispered.
But Fuuko kept on with her small whimpers and Mikagami could feel her body tremble either from her weak attempts to prevent herself from crying loudly or from fear of the unknown.
For a long time they kept that way. And all along, Mikagami tried hard to ease the fear that Fuuko felt, to make her tell him what was wrong. How he wished she would let him in to take away what's doing these bad things to her. But he knew that it is not easy. For he had also shut out most people before. And as stubborn Fuuko could be, he knew she held her pride with it. All the more making it more difficult to let her guard down. To let him in.
When Fuuko had ceased her whimpers, all was left was the deafening silence he used to find solace in. Used to. For now, he loathed it. It made barriers. It constricted the soul. And it destroyed the bearer. It destroyed him. And it is now destroying Fuuko.
Thinking she was sleeping, Mikagami moved slightly away to carry her. But her delicate hands found their way to the shirt he was wearing and gripped on it tightly as if it was her last hope of living.
"I won't leave, Fuuko." He said softly, comfortingly.
Her hand relaxed slightly. And he took it as a sign that it was now okay. He shifted and drew her closer to his chest as he carried her outside the walk-in closet. He moved with grace and laid Fuuko on the bed. She whimpered again.
"What's wrong?"
"I'm scared." Fuuko softly blurted out.
"Of what?"
"It won't come off."
Mikagami stared at her with fear and confusion. "What won't come off?"
She was staring at her hands, face terrified to a deathly pale. She kept whispering words to herself as if she didn't even realize that he was there.
"It won't come off." She whispered again, hands rubbing on the blanket and then being brought up to her face for inspection. "It won't come off."
He reached for her and embraced her. She was absolutely scaring him.
"I can't sleep." She said. "I can't. But I'm so tired."
Mikagami continued holding her, cradling her tenderly against his chest. He hoped that in one way or another, he was helping ease out whatever bad things Fuuko was feeling.
"I'm so very tired." She continued absently. "I wish I could sleep. But I can't."
"Why?"
"I'm so scared to close my eyes." She whispered to herself, not really hearing his question. "I don't want to be alone. I'm scared."
Shane suddenly glanced at the picture in Amethyst's office desk. Worry was written on her stunning face as she reached for the frame containing the picture of a purple-haired girl – Fuuko. Her slender fingers traced the crack on the glass that was directly covering the face of Fuuko.
Red.
It flashed through her mind quickly and as if being burnt by the contact, she released her hold on the frame. It plunged to the carpeted floor of the office room.
"Fuuko." Shane whispered, staring with an unreadable face at the picture frame by her feet.
"No, don't!" Proxima pleaded at the handsome green-haired General Nexus as his men dragged her parents away.
Others of Nexus' men restrained her with power-binding chains. She couldn't help her parents. She knew they would die. Every captured noble people died. For this was what the prophecy had foretold about. A being rising to bring about the greatest blood shed that would ever sweep across their land.
This was the fall of the Crimson Rain.
"Nexus! Why?!" She screamed at her fellow noble blood.
He regarded her with cold eyes. "Ask yourself why."
"I don't understand! Tell me!"
His dark green eyes flashed with annoyance but it disappeared as quickly as it came. He looked at her coldly before turning away. "Dungeons."
"Yes, sire." The men chorused.
"Nexus! Don't do this! Please!" Proxima cried as she was being dragged away.
"Beseeching is useless." He said icily.
"You are a cold, heartless bastard!" Proxima screamed.
Pain. It shot up all over her body as she sprawled on the cold stone flooring of the palace. Someone's power had slammed her into the stone wall.
"A defiant little thing," came a sneering voice. "You shouldn't let her get away with insults."
Proxima looked up and saw another being from the nobility class. A red-headed temptress with burgundy-colored eyes looked back at her.
"Phoenix." She whispered as she knew immediately who slammed her hard seconds ago.
A mocking smirk rested on the redhead's cherry lips. "One of the little monsters recognized me." She drawled. "I had always thought that these nobles had nothing inside their skull. But your charming lover remembers me, Nexus."
Nexus merely looked with an impassive expression in his Grecian god face. "She's not my lover, Phoenix. She never was and never will be."
Phoenix laughed coldly. "What's wrong? You don't like to admit that you once held a repulsively ruthless swine before?"
Proxima's eyes showed her fury. "Repulsively ruthless swine?! Who's being repulsively ruthless here?!"
Just then, a dark-haired charming girl walked in, her face expressionless. She raised a brow upon seeing Proxima. "She's a noble." She stated monotonously. "Why isn't she beheaded or tortured yet?"
"You might have forgotten something Dark Star," drawled Phoenix once more. "That is Proxima, daughter of the Duke here."
"That makes her of noble blood. So why isn't she dead?"
"Haven't you known that she's betrothed to Nexus?" A brown-haired debonair interrupted, as he strode gracefully inside.
Nexus shrugged coolly. "We better halt all these. The head General wouldn't be too pleased, Twilight."
The brown-haired debonair shrugged with equal coolness. "Anything you say, Nexus."
"Interested?" Phoenix asked Dark Star, noticing that she had been staring steadily at Proxima.
"Yes." She replied evenly. "I want to know how this little noble would fight her own battle. I want to hear her scream in agony for her Highness Rhapsody's forgiveness."
"Perhaps you could just give her to Twilight. He could make her scream in some other way." Phoenix suggested, now wiping blood off her sword.
Twilight looked at Nexus and shrugged indifferently. "Nexus could deal with her. She's his possession to begin with."
"I am not some damn possession!" Proxima screamed with rage. "I am a Duke's daughter! What right have you to insult me like this and treat me as a thing or as a paramour?!"
"You belong to the nobility." Dark Star stated flatly.
"But don't the four of you?!" Proxima countered. "So you're some concubine then?!"
Dark Star walked gracefully towards Proxima and her hand swept painfully on Proxima's pale cheek.
"I'm going to give you a lingering and excruciating demise, Proxima." The beautiful Dark Star whispered harshly.
Red wine spilled and glass shattered on the cold, stone floor.
Proxima had always hated to remember what had so long ago happened. She swore she would make them pay for their treason. And for their assistance to bringing the Crimson Rain.
She had worked hard to be strong. To fight them and make them experience the pain she had gone through when they killed her family and the other people she had known and love. It was only Chance that she had waited for. But now that it finally graced her, she would not waste any moment to show them just how much pain she could inflict.
Fuuko stood once more in the midst of the massacre. She stood there, watching people slice each other to death, being splattered with blood from different bodies, hearing their screams of agony.
Why was this being shown to her? What was she doing in a place like this?
From the corner of her eye, she caught sight of a very beautiful goddess sitting atop a black stallion. Fuuko turned to see her even more.
A multi-color eyed temptress was she that looked upon the death and suffering not far from her without so much as a streak of pity, fear, or remorse. It was as if everything was normal for her as if she had been so accustomed to seeing all this pain and carnage.
Soon, four enchanting people came to her, dragging with them people dressed in what seemed as royal armors. The royal-armored people were forced to bow down before her. And from the distance, Fuuko knew that the royals were saying something repulsive and insulting to the multi-color eyed goddess.
The royals' throats were slit open before the heads were amputated thereafter by the other four young warriors. Blood spewed and splattered. But the warriors did not flinch, they did not care. It was normal. It was right. It was as things should be.
"Fuuko! Damn it! Snap out of it!" Mikagami half-yelled as he continuously shook Fuuko by the shoulders.
"They fell down the red land." Fuuko whispered, eyes brimming with tears.
His patience was thinning in a rapid pace with Fuuko's delirious talks for almost around the clock since he first heard her weird talks about things he had no idea of. It was almost two weeks since Fuuko had locked her door and he found her huddled in her walk-in closet. And since that day when he first learned of her weird talks to herself, she had been getting worse each day. Almost always in a trance and scared to death and then talking about something he's not quiet sure of where she acquired.
If this had been the old Fuuko, he was sure that this is some sick joke of her very twisted sense of humor. And he was sure that he would kill her for scaring him like this. But this wasn't the old Fuuko. She was not even humorous about anything else. She was withdrawn, silent, and angst-ridden.
And knowing all these is what scares him the most. Because he was sure that this would not stop in her laugh and her teasing. Rather this would stop in a tragic end.
"The heads – they were carried away." She whispered. "I'm scared. What if I'm next?"
"What heads? What do you mean about being next?" He asked, flustered. "Fuuko, snap out of it!"
"I don't want to go back there." She shivered. "But I go there almost all the time now. And it scares me so much."
Her tears cascaded down her pale cheeks. She struggled to fight back the shivering of her frail form and struggled even more to speak or rather, whisper.
"It's so strange. I just find myself there. I don't know why or how, but I'm just there." Fuuko looked at him straight in the eye for the first time as if she had finally acknowledged that he was there. "I hope someone will help me out."
"I'll help you out. But I need to know, Fuuko. I need to know what is going on."
Fuuko shrugged as if hearing him for the first time in almost two weeks and looked at him with eyes full of mixed emotions not all distinguishable. "You can't."
"Why not?"
"I don't know. But you just can't."
"Just tell me, Fuuko. And I–"
Fuuko placed a finger on his lips. "Please stop. I'm tired."
For the past times that she had been pushing him away, now was not one of it. For she buried her face in the crook of his neck and snuggled nearer. He on the other hand, felt his hands relax and slide down from her shoulders to her arms, pulling her nearer and rocking gently as if putting a child to sleep.
"Mercy!" Cried the Count. "Show me mercy!"
The expressionless eyes of the beautiful angel standing before the Count were evidence enough that she would not head his plea. It scared him to know that the being before him could take away his immortality and let him die as if he was a mere mortal. For she is one of the feared Enchanted Blue Bloods.
In their caste system, they base it according to the intensity of powers and immortality which is only determined by the blood they are descendants from. The highest is the noble class followed by the warrior-mages, mages, warriors, and finally the slaves. The immortality can be taken away by the one of higher caste as they are more powerful. Therefore, the nobles are the most feared.
But according to the legends, there are more powerful beings than the nobles. And they are the Enchanted Blue Bloods – royals who were enchanted and gifted by the Cosmic Powers in the Universe.
The nobles feared that the legends would come true, so to make sure, they killed all those who were suspected to be enchanted blue bloods from the day they were born. But nobles who opposed against the rules of other nobles had managed to save a number of these enchanted blue bloods by swapping them with babies from different classes before reclaiming them again as their own when they were more grown up. And there was an instance when the King had decided to save one who happened to be his favorite.
But this enchanted one who was before him had risen and called upon the other enchanted blue bloods to her aid. And together, five of them wreck havoc in their land, bringing about the Crimson Rain from the legends.
"Your head," the girl of multi-color eyes said. "Is mine."
The Count was petrified. The other fallen nobles' head were now one of this enchanted one's collections of nobility head – her trophy for her triumphs. And now, he was the latest conquest.
"Please!"
"Groveling would do you nothing." Phoenix, the red-headed temptress General interrupted. "You will be one of the collection. You shall pay."
"Pay for what?!"
"You know what," hissed the raven haired, Dark Star.
She stepped towards him and grasped his hair, pulling it painfully. She looked straight in his eyes, her eyes silently telling him how much she hated him and his kind. Reaching for a jewel-studded dagger in her boots, she slit open his throat.
Fuuko woke up suddenly and jerked away from the arms of Mikagami who was startled to wakefulness. He jumped out of bed to follow Fuuko to her CR where she vomited on the sink. He rubbed her back continuously, trying to soothe her the best way he could as she continued to throw up.
She was crying. And when she no longer could vomit, she sank down to the tiles and cried even more.
"Fuuko." Mikagami whispered as he kneeled by Fuuko.
"Don't leave me, Mi-chan. I'm so afraid." She whispered back.
Amethyst felt something wrong in the winds that blew past him. Despite being in other dimensions lately, he can feel something unsettling. Like the balance between the Light and the Dark is being disturbed.
He didn't like this at all. If he could not locate the whereabouts of Meia soon, there was a possibility that the Crimson Rain would come once more. And this time, it wouldn't only involve the Realm of Darkness and Light, but the realms of all living --- spirits, monsters or humans alike.
He couldn't let others be destroyed by the war Meia had struggled to finish so long ago. He couldn't let innocent people be dragged into a revenge of souls who craved the justice they were deprived of. He had to find the Essence of Rhapsody.
"Kill them all." Dark Star said coldly.
"Yes, General." The soldiers chorused and set forth to commit once more the massacre that had plagued the land since the Crimson Rain started.
Dark Star looked coldly and started to move for her mission --- retrieve the heads of nobles within the battlefield. But since they are now besieging a castle-fortress of one noble, then it would be revised because the castle would be the battlefield.
The other three generals must be also in the process of completing the task in the area they were assigned to attack. They were not to fail at any cost. And so was she not to fail, too.
With a swift movement, she cleared her way inside the castle, bent to achieve the goal of the generals of Rhapsody. As she searched and slaughtered anyone who stood in her way, Fear struck each enemy soldier. They were winning and as each battle has it, casualties are but normal. But the battles fought by the army of Rhapsody were marked as the most brutal one --- for no one is allowed to live.
Then, a more powerful sense of immortality came to her senses. And her hate increased more. How she hated the blood that flowed within her veins. It was the very same blood that she had to hunt down along with three of her companions who were as her, a noble.
The door flung open with Dark Star's mental command. And in the throne room were the castle's most elite guards. But they stood no chance against one noble --- one enchanted blue blood who hungered for blood to spill and quench her thirst for revenge, for a painfully cruel revenge.
Flashes of light from powers and from the sparks of clashing swords followed forth. But in the end, Dark Star emerged the victor and in her walked path laid mutilated bodies and claret water of the bodies' once precious lives. The very same claret liquid dripped from the drawn out sword of the raven-haired death knight.
The nobles trembled and knew of their inevitable demise. But Hope refused to give in to the overwhelming touch of Fear within their beings.
"Don't," whispered the beautiful lady who stood in front of her parents and brother.
Dark Star looked on coldly, continuing her steps. "I will kill those I am obliged to kill."
"Stop this blood shed, please."
"It's not us who started, Taurus."
In a flash, Taurus' brother fought with Dark Star. Taurus knew how deadly Dark Star was even before the war and now, she knew that this raven-haired noble now surpassed her previous deadly skills and accuracy in killing.
"Stop it, brother! She could kill you." Taurus called out.
Her parents were merely there, looking on in shock, paralyzing fear engulfing them. A little bit later, burgundy liquid sprayed unto them as Dark Star's sword came crashing down to the neck of her opponent.
Head rolled down on the floor, followed by a decapitated body and an abundant supply of burgundy fluid.
Dark Star's cold eyes met green eyes filled with terror. Her expressionless face gave nothing away. With the speed of the legendary enchanted blue-bloods, two more heads were acquired.
Taurus stood in horror. She was next. Dark Star turned to her.
Just then, another strong presence was felt.
"Stop this, Dark Star!"
The raven-haired beauty turned to the massive entrance of the throne room.
"Prince Ignis!" Taurus exclaimed.
The blonde-haired prince looked at Dark Star. "Stop this."
"Make me."
Swords clashed and more blood spilled. But it was from the raven-haired noble. On her normal unspent state, she still wouldn't stand long against the blonde prince, the enchanted blue blood kept by the King. And now that she had been in battle for long, she was even more in disadvantage.
But she struggled hard to fight back and hold her ground. She would rather die fighting than surrender to these repulsive blue bloods.
The prince on the other hand would not spare anyone if need be. Dark Star may have blue blood flowing within her but she's one of the traitors, and he would kill her without second thought now that his chance came.
The sword of Dark Star flew from her grasp as she shielded one forceful, powerful attack. And this left the female adversary open for the final blow. He was quick. The blade of his sword came to finish off the beautiful traitor. But then, one more sword blocked his attack. He drew back and stared at the cold eyes of Dark Star's newly arrived ally.
Multi-colored eyes looked back coldly, her angelic face betraying no emotion but that of indifference.
"Dark Star, take the heads you have succeeded in retrieving. I shall cover you while you call your army to go back now."
"But General Rhapsody---"
"Go. I shall be out soon enough." She said in a commanding tone.
Dark Star had no choice but to leave the head general. Gathering what she accomplished, she left the throne room. The blonde prince moved to stop her, but the multi-colored eye girl was against him.
"Rhapsody, move."
"Why go after her when she's just one of my generals? I am the leader. Why not kill me?" She asked, her melodic voice having the tone of indifference.
The prince looked at her. "Don't do this."
"You cannot tell me what to do. I am no longer one of your subjects."
Frustration etched itself on the Grecian god features of the prince. "I do not wish to have to fight you, Rhapsody. So stop."
"Unfortunately, dear Prince, this is what our choices of sides brought upon us."
The prince turned his back and closed his eyes tightly. "Leave."
For a fraction of a second, the multi-colored eyes had a flash of expression. It was that of a person who would go through all the pains just to help a friend. But it left as quickly as it came.
"We'll meet again and you know that." She said before turning to go.
~tbc~
Author's Note: Okay, as my thanks to reviewers, I dedicated the chapter to them. About the summary teasers, it's in my bio, just check it out. I really am in a hurry so just check it out. The new characters that Fuuko are seeing are brutal and hateful. I know.
Anyway, I know how people hate my rant and I've ranted enough on the other thing I have. So, I'll just probably shut up now. But before that, thanks to those who reviewed. Thank you very, very much. ^^
