AN: K, we've covered a lot of ground (and time) with Yarege's side...  Time to see what Harena's been up to ;p

Rating: R maybe PG-13 (R in standing with ff.net's policy of picking the highest rating)

Disclaimer: SG characters are (c) MGM (thankie to Morrigan for that :p).  FF8 characters are (c) Squaresoft, original characters are mine – ask nicely and I might let you play with them, s'long's you don't break them...

Warnings: SxS Maybe angst (I do like to torture my characters sometimes :p), language (prob nothin u ain't heard b4, but still...)

~Chapter Thirty: Anger~

Harena emerged from the shack feeling frustrated and with her hunger only slightly diminished.  Kiros had been most unsatisfying as a victim, refusing to cry out until the very end, and then, somehow, managing to gain enough slack in his bindings to lunge forwards as she reached into his open chest to tickle his heart once more.  Most frustrating.  She had wasted a lot of time, nearly nine hours, for almost nothing.

Now she was hunting in earnest.  But not for prey.  She was following the faded trail of Squall and, she realised with a sour grimace, Seifer.  But Seifer was near death, had to have been anyway for her not to sense his presence near the shack.  He hadn't been near enough to stop him from stealing her knight though.  She cursed softly as she pushed through the undergrowth that hung over the faint path.  The only benefit from this would be if she found them both in time and turned them both to her side.  Already she was weak from the early birth, had denied herself the birth screams of her 'mother' in favour of feasting on Kiros, and that had been a mistake.  Much as she hated to admit it, the arrogance that had made her believe Kiros would be almost as good as Rinoa did not stretch to blinding herself to the fact that she could make mistakes.

The other was alive too.  Which was irritating.  Why couldn't that bitch Ultemecia have truly died, and taken the other with her?!  But Harena knew why.  This matter would only be solved by direct combat between herself and the other.  Combat that, at this point in time, she knew she couldn't win.  Not without help.  But that help came with a high price, one she was not willing to pay unless she had no other choice.  And, as yet, her options remained open.

Harena pushed aside another set of branches, emerging into a small clearing with another broken-down cabin.  She sniffed, scenting the history of the place.  Kiros had come past here, but he had not been aware of Squall and Seifer.  If they had been here then, they had not announced their presence.  She sniffed again.  Some powerful magic had been wrought here, but it was neither sorcery nor mortal magic.  Guardian Forces.  She snarled.  Meddlesome elementals most of them, who were barely powerful enough to be incarnate.  But there were a few, a very few, who, either through having no elemental allegiance to limit them, or having multiple allegiances, posed a threat.  It was the magic of one – or more – such GF she could smell on the air, like an acid fog surrounding the cabin.

Closing her eyes, she reached out with her mind, searching for creatures in the nearby area.  There was nothing, and she cursed.  Had there been a cockatrice around – usually the damn things were everywhere – she would have been able to use its sight to examine the magic more closely, perhaps enabling her to see what its effect was.  Still, if she had to guess, Harena thought it was a fairly safe bet that it had been a teleportation-type spell.

Abandoning the vague hope that she would catch up with her errant knight before Seifer delivered him to the Other, Harena walked into the cabin.  Her nostrils flared at the thick stench of the GF's magic, and, grimacing, she almost backed straight out again.  But a scrap of paper on the floor caught her attention.  Intrigued, she scurried forwards and snagged it in one hand, using the other to hold her nose.  Not that the purely metaphysical 'smell' of the magic could be blocked by such physical means.  Harena was faster leaving the cabin than entering, stopping on the other side of the clearing, where the magic was less offensive.  She was suddenly grateful that the stuff could not cling to her as it would mortals.

Huffing disdainfully, she studied the letter with those senses that only a sorceress possessed.  Seifer had written it, a little over a week ago, and Squall had handled it within the last twelve hours.  That meant that Seifer had seduced him away from her some time in the midnight hour, and that they had left the cabin in front of her some time before midday.  She ground her teeth, wishing that Seifer had managed to get himself killed during the Ultemecia incident.  It was surely too much to hope that he'd died having stolen Squall and making it this far.  The teleportation had likely been directly to wherever the Other was, and she wouldn't have let her knight die.

There was a faint ripping noise, and Harena suddenly realised she had crumpled the letter, tearing a hole in it with her sharp nails.  With a grimace she laid the ball of paper on her open palm, and waved her other hand over it, speaking a single word of command.  The letter sprang back to flatness, the tear sealing itself closed as though it had never been.  Smiling faintly, she began to read...

The smile quickly faded.

There was little new in the letter.  She had suspected something was amiss with Ultemecia dying as easily as she had.  That the SeeDs had been tricked into fighting an illusion only confirmed her low opinion of them.  She was also quite aware that Seifer would not have been the Other's father.  Nor was the fact that Laguna had located her and Squall news.  Although she still fully intended to use the information to bait her knight.  It was unlikely that she could bait him back to her side, but he would not be able to fight if his mind was clouded by doubt.  She of all people knew how insecure he was, however well he hid it from the outside world.

No.  What angered her was how thorough Seifer had been when writing to avoid giving her any clues as to their whereabouts.  They could be on any continent, in any city or village.  Except she *knew* the Gate had been used, that something – someone – had come through into this world, and she knew the Other would know the same.  The question was, where was the Gate – other than the somewhat vague south-west pull she had felt as it activated – and would the Other be looking for it, or for her?

Harena looked around, the falling night as bright as day to her glowing golden eyes.  Kiros would be missed, and, whilst whoever came to look for him might well provide her with more sustenance, it would also indicate to the Other where she was.  Snarling again, she reached out with her mind, searching.  It was the right time of day, or night, and she quickly found the mind of the creature she was searching for.  Moments later the sound of a large creature pushing its way through dense forest drifted to her ears.

The Ruby Dragon emerged into the clearing with a roar of anger.  It had just enough intelligence to know that the compulsion to be where it now was, had not been generated by itself but an outside force.  Understandably it wasn't happy about this, and wanted everything in the area to know it.  Harena ignored its posturing, using her mind once more to force it to obedience.  The Ruby Dragon crouched, still as a statue whilst she mounted, then it lumbered awkwardly into the air, flattening the cottage with its tail in the process.

Harena didn't care.  She closed her eyes, revelling in the feel of the night wind rushing past her face.  The cold didn't touch her, she wouldn't let it, but she knew that her hair – glowing silver in the moonlight – would be streaming out behind her, making her look truly ethereal.  No one would mistake her intentions for anything other than the evil they were.

In a fit of irony, Harena flew to the Sorceress Memorial, butchering the Ruby Dragon after she dismounted.  Its screams were like the sweetest of wines after Kiros' pitiful offerings.  Feeling somewhat stronger, Harena curled up at the base of one of the giant statues, a lute player.  It galled that she had not managed to feed enough to go without sleep, for there was so much that she had yet to do.  But her most important tasks would need energy, and for now that meant sleep.  Besides, there was no way the Other could know where she was, or what she planned.  A cruel smirk settled on her lips as the darkness of sleep fell, and Harena drifted into dreams of power and never-ending screams.

***

It was the early pre-dawn when she awoke, the first rays of sunlight just beginning to creep over the horizon.  It was not a sense of the sun's rising that had woken Harena from her shadowed slumber, more a sense that time was growing short if she were to locate both the Gate and a new knight.

Slowly Harena stood, then sat again, cross legged, her back against the statue's leg.  This work would be metaphysical, but she would still need all the accumulated energy from her night of rest.

Gradually she allowed her breathing to slow, and her heartbeat with it.  Her mind became empty, and slowly her consciousness began to expand beyond her body.  Then there was a tearing sensation, and Harena opened her eyes to see herself, seated cross legged at the foot of the statue, eyes closed, chest barely moving.  She looked around, revelling in the way the world looked to her mental eyes.  Everywhere the landscape was stained with dark and violent hues, anger and hatred, death and poison.  This was the domain of the Malboros and the site of many a past war. 

Turning away from the delicious sight before her, Harena concentrated her will.  With a single step she moved miles, towards Centra.  The pull of the Gate was stronger now, she was getting closer.  Harena followed the pull, pausing only as she sensed a large number of people.  Then, after a moment, satisfied by the lack of reaction to her presence that the Other was not there - at least, not yet – she moved closer still.

The Gate was almost blinding to her metaphysical sight, but there was one aura that stood out from the rest nearby.  A soldier's aura – she could tell by the colour and texture.  Its owner had killed, many times, defending something else.  Not like a SeeD, who fought only for money, but like a rebel, fighting for a cause...  Or a knight...

She slipped closer, closer, finally slipping inside the aura, inside the soldier's mind.  And she was in paradise.  This mind was so strong, and yet so weak.  Like and yet totally unlike any mind she had come across before.  The thoughts were so clear, and yet so random that it was child's play to toy with them, changing their meaning, their mood.  Intrigued, she sank deeper, allowing her eyes to see through their eyes, hearing with their ears, influencing their words.

In a way, the wave of silence that preceded Yarege's arrival was all that saved Harena from discovery.  It was enough to break the trance-like state that she had fallen into, seduced by the stranger's aura and mind.  With a cold shock of fear, she realised how close the Other was, and fled back to her body, still seated where she had left it, at the Sorceress Memorial.

Oh yes, she decided.  He would be her new knight.  Not only was he already within her enemy's ranks, but with his mind at her disposal, she could sacrifice him to gain the upper hand over the Other.  Besides, she had seen Laguna through his eyes – she knew their weak point now – and how fortunate that she was in the perfect position to take full advantage of the new information.  Harena cackled and rubbed her hands together gleefully, then set her mind to the more serious matter at hand.  The destruction of Esthar.

AN: *shakes head despairingly*  I'm really starting to confuse myself now... *groans*  teach me to try and do maths exams at the same time as writing...  Anyway, I hope people aren't ~too~ confused (unlike me @~@), and I apologise for the length of time between updates *smacks hand* bad zephyr!  Ahem, anyway, gomen for that, and the confusion and I will try and be a bit more frequent, just bear with me  *grits teeth and shakes muses* it~will~be~finished!