*Wow, think this one took me long enough? School! Finals! Projects! Teachers have gone crazy! Anyway, I'm finished in eight days so I'll be updating for real then!!! I'm so excited! And I can finally get back to writing!*
Chapter Ten: Room of Horrors
Dawn never seemed to come to this place. The only sign of the morning was a dull, sickly gray light seeping through the weeping canopy. The forest was suppressed and had this been earth, the trees would have been salvaged or merely cut. But, this was Cephiro, and the woods we wandered through were cursed.
Fuu woke me early that morning; she was smiling, but the rings around her eyes told other tales. She hadn't slept that night, even when she had the chance. I wondered how she did it, managed being up all night, but still being able to smile. It was a quality I greatly admired. I guessed that was because I myself did not even remotely possess that skill.
"Clef wants us up; he says we have to hurry."
I nodded and stood, rubbing my hands over my skirt to get the wrinkles out and stepped outside, into the half-light.
"Here," Hikaru handed me an egg sandwich with that same pale smile. How were we to fight one of the greatest battles of our lives when they looked like this?
I gulped down the food and looked to our drab little group.
"We should go," Clef walked from the woods and smiled at us all. We looked up and stood, refreshed by his burst of confidence in us.
"Where did you come from?" I demanded playfully.
"From there, I thought," Fuu pointed to the forest.
"Yes, from there, I was…disposing of the body. I couldn't bury it because it would be a curse to the ground. I think this Forest has had enough curses in its lifetime. Still, it needed to be taken somewhere that the Dark Lords couldn't stumble upon it and know that we were in their territory," he explained softly.
I glared and looked at the ground.
"Umi, it's not their fault that they're changed by the Dark Lords, which is exactly why I want to avoid killing them. After all this is over there may be a way to bring them back," Clef's reprimand seemed somehow less like a reprimand than normal. It was missing something, and I soon recognized it as Will.
'He doesn't think we're going tow in this fight,' I thought to myself.
'I have every faith in you,' a voice ran through my head. It sounded like it was spoken aloud, but somehow I knew it wasn't. My head shot up to meet piercing blue eyes and a small smile. 'What the…?' I started to think.
'It's your armor, I can hear your speech thoughts. I can hear the things you want to say or are about to say, but not anything else. Don't worry; your secrets are safe,' he explained, and the clenching in my heart loosened, and I sighed.
'So Fuu and Hikaru can do this in their heads with Lantis and Ferio?' I asked
'No,' he sighed, 'They can speak far distances out loud, but their magic wasn't strong enough for this.'
'Oh,' I was getting quite used to the voice in my head, so I didn't hear the breaking of branches behind me, and didn't turn in time to draw my sword before she had her hands around my wrist. I could feel the cold slowly creeping in, and I began to gasp, but I was too weak to even summon my sword, and the others were helpless as I was being used as a human shield.
'Umi are you okay?' Clef demanded frantically in my mind.
'Yes…no…' my mind was clouded and responding was hard. She must have noticed the extra effort in my life force because she grabbed my neck and hissed in my head. 'Stop it Clef! I'll kill her, I will.'
"Let her go Uchiyama," Clef ordered aloud, and she moved her hands away from my skin. I sagged in her arms, barely conscious. "What happened to you?"
"I loved you Clef, and you pushed me away, like you do with everyone. You forced me away and I blamed myself, but they've taught me otherwise. They've taught me it was you and how to make the pain go away, because they loved too." I could almost feel her sadistic smile though I could not see it.
"Revenge will not ease the pain, only deepen it," Hikaru was almost begging.
"We're sorry for your loss, but you can't feel loved by someone who does not love you, and I don't know why you'd want to," Fuu was crying, her voice was cracked and soft, but her words were strong.
"You lie! They don't love us only because of you!" I felt a presence of magic and heard Clef's counterspell. She screamed and shielded us.
'Umi, I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking,' Clef said quickly in my head.
'It's okay, save Hikaru and Fuu, at all costs,' I smiled and then fell into unconsciousness.
§§§~~~
When I woke up I was cold, colder than I'd ever been before. I was in some place dark, but not pitch black, more like a shade of deep gray. I could almost make out walls, but there were no windows that I could see. I wondered where that odd light was coming from, but that wasn't the dominant question in my mind. Where was I? I stood and coughed; the noise echoed around the room and told me the ceiling was high and the walls somewhere far away, but they were there. So I was in a room, the most logical solution then was to look for a door, so that's what I did. I walked around, squinting in the drab light from an unknown source, but I saw no door. Then I decided the light was playing tricks on me, so I began to move my hands along the walls. But when I did, spiders came from them and crept across my fingers. I screamed and pulled back, shaking my shaking hands and trying to stabilize my breathing as the scream faded, and I was met with dead silence once more.
I shook my hands again and put them against the wall. This time there were tiny voices, as small furry creatures wound around my feet. I ran from the walls, shaking, breathing heavily, and crying as I watched the rats flee back into the walls. I tried to keep my mind stable. In the Chinese Zodiac I was the year of the Dragon, and it said, "Dragons are compatible with rats." For some reason that was the prominent thought in my head. The Dragons should love the rat; it made me want to laugh, except this wasn't a laughing matter.
Slowly, I backed away from the walls and tried to stabilize my breathing. I had to be in the Cursed Forest; it was the only place where rats could crawl from the walls.
Laughter filled the room and rang in my ears. It was her shrill, fake, high-pitched laughter, and it sent me to my knees. "Like my game Princess?"
The floor was moving; it was all I could do to not look down. I didn't want to know; I didn't want to know what was crawling around my ankles. I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth as sweat began to pour down the back of my neck. I felt the scales and the tongues against my legs. I felt the fangs dripping with venom dangerously close to my biggest muscles. In seconds they could strike and I would be paralyzed, left for death.
"You're only a pawn on my board Water Knight," she whispered. "Only a pawn, that I'm using to put the King in check."
The snakes disappeared, and she appeared in front of me and walked forward, grabbing my chin between her fingers, "Are you scared yet?"
The cold gripped me and I tried to pull away, but she threw me to the ground, coughing.
"Who's the King?" I ordered when she let me go, and I had breath enough to speak.
She spun on me and flicked a hand before turning and disappearing into the air. The next thing I knew I was being pulled deep into water, and I couldn't breathe. I kicked to reach the surface, but my lungs filled with water and I was dying. I forced myself to the surface, but found I was only sprawled out on the floor once more, sputtering, but alive all the same. What was this room? How could I get out?
"Come out here and fight!" I screamed and tried to draw my sword, but it refused, and I realized that my ovum gem was missing from my hand. My heart clenched and seized up in fear. My mind went numb and for a minute I was frozen solid, paralyzed.
"Looking for this?" someone asked behind me, and I turned and met the eyes of the Dark Lord of Fire. They were a deep flashing red, and as my eyes moved from hers I saw that she was holding my ovum gem in her hand. She smiled and tossed it over my head and when I spun I turned to see that it had landed promptly in the hands of the Dark Lord of Earth.
"Oh I love Monkey in the Middle," she smiled and threw it around me as I dove for it and hit the ground. When I opened my eyes I was leaning over in a puddle of blood, the metallic taste was on my tongue. I pushed myself up and tried to wipe it from my tongue, but it was on my hands, and the taste filled my mouth and surged into my body. Tears washed the blood away and I was once again intact and clean.
They were laughing behind me, pointing and laughing, and I was in Tokyo, in school. I had just lost a fencing match and the other fencer pulled off her mask and it was Presea, she was smiling insanely. Her face melted away into the face of the Dark Lord of Water who was smiling sickly.
"Having fun yet Water Knight?"
"Give me my ovum and let me out," my voice was stronger than my heart, but the illusion was not a good one.
"The show's just beginning. This room brings out your greatest fears. So far we've learned that you don't like spiders or rats or snakes or the thought of drowning or losing or blood, but those are all trivial. Let's see what your greatest fear is shall we?"
"This is sick," I whispered and stared deep into her dark eyes. "Hikaru and Fuu may pity you, but I find no excuse in harming the innocent; we all get hurt in our lives, but we don't all turn evil," I whispered, knowing I was treading on dangerous ground but refusing to succumb to her mind games.
"Innocent? Did you hear that Akuro?" the Dark Lord of Earth stepped next to the Dark Lord of Water, the Dark Lord of Fire close behind her.
"I heard it, but I sure as hell don't believe it," the Dark Lord of Fire shook her head.
"Innocent?" the Dark Lord of Earth continued, "How are you innocent?"
"We're all innocent; we had no idea you loved the men we did!" I caught my slip, and I realized immediately they did too. "But me least of all!" I rushed to fix it, "I've done nothing to you! You love Clef, I'm sorry, but what does that have to do with me?"
"Everything," the Dark Lord of Water whispered. "You love him too."
"No," I shook my head.
"You just said it!" she smacked me across the face, and her nails dug into my flesh. I screamed and pulled away, my hands clenched. "Lying won't get you anywhere in this world my dear."
"You should take your own advice and stop lying to yourselves," I whispered back with venom in my voice.
"Enough of this!" she screamed and turned to the other two. "We'll leave her here and watch her suffer. She'll bring the other two, and we'll finally get our vengeance and the men we love."
"You think they'll accept you after what you've done to them?" I screamed. "You're insane!"
"We have it all worked out Water Knight, don't worry," the Dark Lord of Earth smiled at me with a sick smile on her face, and I saw the faith the other two had in her because of her wicked intelligence. They were just clones gone wrong. They laughed and walked out, and I was left alone in the darkness…
Tori:
"Pulling me under a cherry blossom canopy
Do I have?
Of course I have…
Beneath my raincoat-
I have your photograph…"
~ Tori Amos- Gold Dust- Scarlet's Walk
