*AUTHOR'S INSERT*
I think the God of Indirect Retribution is trying to tell me something. First I give you all a cliffhanger, then I have several near-death experiences in an overcrowded mosh pit. Fear not, I've learned my lesson!
Syvia- Well, not so much the whole empire, but Turel was talking mostly about his own clan. This chapter explains his part in the Turelim madness, in a roundabout way. :p Don't worry, I'll clear it up later on.
plink- I'm afraid the mystery won't be fully explained until... Chapter Ten or so. Stick around. ;)
Mana Angel- Heh! Well, think of it this way: after years of being locked up by the clan lord, she has a right to be a little miffed. ;) I like your idea, but at that point Turel was mostly thinking aloud to himself; I have a feeling he would have spoken aloud even if Raziel hadn't come along. But I might go back and give him a short little section in Chapter Four, his thoughts just before Raz arrives. *ponders*
Lilith- Thanks, I'm glad you like this! I'm also a fan of your story, despite the first few paragraphs. ;) BTW, that Sarafan Antar-ass... do give him a few kicks for me, will you? And yeah, sorry about the cliffie. I paid for it.
Digital Jessie & Chibi Thing- Yeah, I took liberties with Turel's appearance. Compared to the other clan lords, Turel looked so normal in the concept art. Now he's screwed up like all his brothers! *proud smile* Oh, thanks for telling your friend about this little story. It makes me glowy. *pats your chibi thingy so (s?)he doesn't feel excluded* I love you too, little thing!
MB- *ducks head* Me sorry! It won't happen again!... hopefully... *gulp*
Rocker Baby- Ayah, you are too kind. *rattles your donation around in an empty coffee cup* Haha! It's more money than I ever dreamed of! *goes off and buys a year's supply of Ramen noodles*
Ruff Collie- Aww, thanks a lot! Hope this chapter resolves the cliffie satisfactorily? *whimper*
Lora Helen- I'm SOOOORRRRYYYYY! *sniffsniff* I hope you and Twowa weren't waiting out in the cold. But. *drumroll* The next chapter is here! *cliffie melts into a shadow of its former self*
Thanks again for the reviews!
*/AUTHOR'S INSERT*
6- Noble Blood
Ishtar heard her father make an odd choking sound in his throat. She had seen his reaction in visions, the way his glowing eyes flared and his wraith blade died into hibernation. Her patriarch would not have known this, though; he did not yet know she was only half-blind.
"*What*... did you say?" Raziel choked.
She tilted her head. "Interesting way of greeting your children, father," she said with a quiet smile.
A beat of silence. "You are a Razielim?"
Ah, he could not have known how vulnerable he sounded. So desperate and yet unwilling to hope. In answer, Ishtar slowly unfurled the massive black wings upon her back. "Is this proof enough?"
His footsteps rang closer on the stone. She knew how he hesitated before reaching out and running his claws over her wings just as Kain had over his own so long ago. Her patriarch's talons were cold but she kept her wings as still as she could, letting him explore what he knew would have been his.
"Impressive," Raziel murmured. "I... did not think any of my children had survived in this degenerate age."
"Many more did not."
His talons ran down the edge of her right wing and trailed off its tip. "What has become of us?"
"I owe you that story, Raziel. But as you can hear, this is not the best of places to tell it."
"I hear noth-"
On cue, a chorus of battle cries burst from the rocks in the distance, followed immediately after by an opposing chorus. Though distant, the rocks amplified the sounds of battle until it sounded as if armies were clashing. Beneath that was the soft hiss of fabric shifting on flesh as Raziel looked for the source of the sound.
"Indeed. Shall we?" Ishtar turned and stumbled blindly across the rock span.
"Will you not, at least, indulge me with the gift of your name?"
"Oh, you are a hard bargainer!" she said with a laugh. "But yes. I am Ishtar."
"A pleasure," he said when he caught up to her.
Ishtar passed her claws along the stone rail of the rock span, stopping when her claws reached a corner. "Turn right," she said.
Raziel slipped past the bulk of her wings, walking in front of her. "Are you so certain?"
"Yes. Why do you ask?"
"The stone is on fire ahead."
"Right." She kept walking, keeping her claws on the rail as a guide.
"Ah... that means the way is blocked."
Ishtar grinned in his direction. "No, not really. You'll see." Her wings bent as she walked past him. Ah well, he'd catch up. She stumbled on until she could feel the heat of the flames against her face and she stretched her arm toward the unnatural fire. Raziel had been mistaken: the stone was not on fire, it had been turned into fire. The arch of the rock span continued unbroken in a flame bridge. The mutated Turelim were more powerful than she had thought.
"Ishtar," Raziel said behind her.
"Shh..." She let her eyelids fall as she concentrated, talons still outstretched, her mind doing its best to block out the cackling of the far-off Turelim. Were they approaching, running the other way, or remaining where they fought? Impossible to tell. Soon the sounds dropped like a stone from her consciousness. Their replacement hit her in a cold wave, a welcome chill that coiled down her spine, through her nerves. The familiar black power. For an instant she could see, both in front of her and behind: the flames hardened as if frozen and turned to stone, Raziel's white eyes grew huge. She saw his thoughts, the suspicion, wonder, and pride. She could taste the prey in the mouth of a millipede ten miles away.
Ishtar shook her head and let it go, and she was blind again.
"Now then," she said, and plunged ahead before Raziel could ask any questions. Immediately she winced. The points of the petrified flames burrowed into her hooves most uncomfortably.
"Wait," Raziel called as he caught up to Ishtar a second time. "What manner of sorcery did you just display?"
"I *will* tell you, Raziel. Soon." Though his curiosity was still palpable.
They worked slowly but steadily through the Turelim city. The sounds of battle faded but became more violent, as if the combatants had become desperate or simply eager for a conclusion. Raziel and Ishtar had almost left the city when the cataclysm came. A crackle of warning came first, then the booming roar that made the rocks, even this far out, tremble. She remembered how the pinnacles of obsidion tilted and fell while others plummeted straight down. Oh, and the blue lightning that flared into the sky. Mustn't forget that.
The rocks crashed and echoed and finally, everything was silent.
"It must have been a decisive victory," Raziel commented.
"Not quite." Ishtar turned and inched her way toward the path that led south out of the city. "The blast killed both packs. Though that may have seemed a victory to their diseased minds."
"Surely you could not have known that."
She shrugged. "The Turelim are predictable anyway... to an extent."
"How is it you know so much of these creatures?"
"Simply, I have lived among, or, beneath them. For..." She frowned. "...ages."
The two walked down the path from the Turelim city and both remained silent. Ishtar let him brood; she could not imagine how she would react in Raziel's position. Doubts, hidden hopes, wishes- all shifted about in the space of an hour. He must have had so much to say, so many hopes he was afraid to shatter.
Or, she thought with a smile, he was not much of a conversationalist.
A strangely tense hour passed before Raziel at last spoke.
"This cannot be..."
"Hm?"
"This forest. It could not be so close to the city."
"Hm. Are you certain you weren't lost the first time you passed through?"
"It would not have taken so long, still."
"Ah... well. I suppose I found a shortcut."
"Indeed." Three, two... "Now, I believe you owe me a narrative or two."
"Wait... just a bit more." Surprisingly, Raziel obliged her and they descended the low hills that slipped into the petrified forest he had passed through the night before. When they reached a low dip in the forest surrounded by a kind of deadfall of bowed trees, Ishtar turned to him. "Now then," she said, lowering herself into a sitting position, "What did you want to know?"
********************************************************
Now that it was finally time to speak, Raziel's mind presented nothing to say. He sat down facing her, looking into the neutral eye sockets that did not gaze back.
"Who are you?"
She smiled. "Ishtar."
"I believe you have imparted that information already. Who is your progenitor? How have you endured these ages in the territory of my brother?"
Ishtar's tail straggled like a dying snake on the ground. "My progenitor was Strane, son of Leander, your son. As to how I survived... I did not endure alone."
"Are they also in the Turelim city?"
"No, in a keep far to the southeast. We fled there, in the beginning, and for a while we were tolerated.
"And then?"
Ishtar looked away. "We were not."
"Nevertheless, you live."
"Because of the pride and ambition of your brother."
"Kain must have known."
"He did. But... he did nothing."
Raziel silently shook his head. The story made no sense, but he had no idea what to ask to make it clearer. When he looked up, she was gazing directly at him.
"You can see?" Raziel asked.
"No." Ishtar bit her lip with her elongated fangs. "Not with my eyes, that is. It is difficult to explain... but I suppose you could say, I see in time. Moments in the past, the future. Very fleetingly in the present, and not always nearby."
"Such a strange evolution."
"I am not so certain it is an evolution, Raziel. It seems... it has spread, in a bastardized form, to the Turelim."
"How do you know this?"
"I have seen it."
"Is it this 'seeing in time' that drives them mad?"
"No, not by itself. It is part of a greater gift. You glimpsed it on the bridge that had turned to fire."
Raziel tilted his head. How could he forget? That was a power beyond him, beyond even Kain. Had all his children become gods? It had to be an evolution, though from the way she described it, 'disease' seemed more fitting. Yet, evolution or contagion, it had destroyed the Turelim but not his daughter.
He looked down at the tattered wing he had been unconsciously toying with and half-shivered. His daughter.
"It was quite remarkable," Raziel said. "With power of such magnitude at your bidding, it would seem ludicrous that Turel would have you under his power."
Ishtar smiled wickedly. "I was not at his mercy, and he knew it. All the years he offered me such *gracious hospitality* in return for my knowledge, my sight... I stayed willingly."
"Even when he took your eyes?"
Her smiled faded. "I did not need them."
Raziel shook his head slightly. "You awaited something?"
"This day."
The statement hung in the air ominously, and he felt a growing urge to slash something with the Soul Reaver. He had heard enough talk of fate and destiny to last several decades. Even his daughter knew more of it than he.
They were interrupted by the sound of distant conversation growing closer. Ishtar grew perfectly still, almost vanishing into the shadows. Raziel inwardly grimaced but followed suit.
"...but all the hair was gone!" one of the voices said.
"What did you do?" the other asked.
"I dunked him in gravy."
"Was the color deified?"
"Of course, none but the best."
"I can't imagine a better setting."
"It is a very well-placed stage."
Of course. The Turelim monstrosities.
"Let them pass," Ishtar whispered. "In three minutes they will start arguing, in ten minutes only one will be left, and in twenty-five minutes it will have joined the others.
"The others?"
"The other packs headed toward the human citadel."
Raziel's eyes flared brightly. The human citadel housed only one person for him... one person, and rows of vegetables.
"My God," he muttered, jumping to his feet. The Turelim didn't notice, but continued their nonsensical conversation. "We must reach the citadel. Quickly."
"Must we?" Ishtar said, but she seemed resigned to the idea and rose with him. He set off at a fast lope and Ishtar followed as best she could, sometimes unerringly, sometimes stumbling and blind. Raziel slowed impatiently, hoping he wouldn't travel in a circle this time. It had taken him hours to get from the citadel to the forest. With growing anxiety, he remembered the empty streets of the Turelim city, how unnatural it had seemed. How many of the warped creatures were now at the citdael's gates?
Behind them, angry voices rose in the first exchanges of a heated argument.
I think the God of Indirect Retribution is trying to tell me something. First I give you all a cliffhanger, then I have several near-death experiences in an overcrowded mosh pit. Fear not, I've learned my lesson!
Syvia- Well, not so much the whole empire, but Turel was talking mostly about his own clan. This chapter explains his part in the Turelim madness, in a roundabout way. :p Don't worry, I'll clear it up later on.
plink- I'm afraid the mystery won't be fully explained until... Chapter Ten or so. Stick around. ;)
Mana Angel- Heh! Well, think of it this way: after years of being locked up by the clan lord, she has a right to be a little miffed. ;) I like your idea, but at that point Turel was mostly thinking aloud to himself; I have a feeling he would have spoken aloud even if Raziel hadn't come along. But I might go back and give him a short little section in Chapter Four, his thoughts just before Raz arrives. *ponders*
Lilith- Thanks, I'm glad you like this! I'm also a fan of your story, despite the first few paragraphs. ;) BTW, that Sarafan Antar-ass... do give him a few kicks for me, will you? And yeah, sorry about the cliffie. I paid for it.
Digital Jessie & Chibi Thing- Yeah, I took liberties with Turel's appearance. Compared to the other clan lords, Turel looked so normal in the concept art. Now he's screwed up like all his brothers! *proud smile* Oh, thanks for telling your friend about this little story. It makes me glowy. *pats your chibi thingy so (s?)he doesn't feel excluded* I love you too, little thing!
MB- *ducks head* Me sorry! It won't happen again!... hopefully... *gulp*
Rocker Baby- Ayah, you are too kind. *rattles your donation around in an empty coffee cup* Haha! It's more money than I ever dreamed of! *goes off and buys a year's supply of Ramen noodles*
Ruff Collie- Aww, thanks a lot! Hope this chapter resolves the cliffie satisfactorily? *whimper*
Lora Helen- I'm SOOOORRRRYYYYY! *sniffsniff* I hope you and Twowa weren't waiting out in the cold. But. *drumroll* The next chapter is here! *cliffie melts into a shadow of its former self*
Thanks again for the reviews!
*/AUTHOR'S INSERT*
6- Noble Blood
Ishtar heard her father make an odd choking sound in his throat. She had seen his reaction in visions, the way his glowing eyes flared and his wraith blade died into hibernation. Her patriarch would not have known this, though; he did not yet know she was only half-blind.
"*What*... did you say?" Raziel choked.
She tilted her head. "Interesting way of greeting your children, father," she said with a quiet smile.
A beat of silence. "You are a Razielim?"
Ah, he could not have known how vulnerable he sounded. So desperate and yet unwilling to hope. In answer, Ishtar slowly unfurled the massive black wings upon her back. "Is this proof enough?"
His footsteps rang closer on the stone. She knew how he hesitated before reaching out and running his claws over her wings just as Kain had over his own so long ago. Her patriarch's talons were cold but she kept her wings as still as she could, letting him explore what he knew would have been his.
"Impressive," Raziel murmured. "I... did not think any of my children had survived in this degenerate age."
"Many more did not."
His talons ran down the edge of her right wing and trailed off its tip. "What has become of us?"
"I owe you that story, Raziel. But as you can hear, this is not the best of places to tell it."
"I hear noth-"
On cue, a chorus of battle cries burst from the rocks in the distance, followed immediately after by an opposing chorus. Though distant, the rocks amplified the sounds of battle until it sounded as if armies were clashing. Beneath that was the soft hiss of fabric shifting on flesh as Raziel looked for the source of the sound.
"Indeed. Shall we?" Ishtar turned and stumbled blindly across the rock span.
"Will you not, at least, indulge me with the gift of your name?"
"Oh, you are a hard bargainer!" she said with a laugh. "But yes. I am Ishtar."
"A pleasure," he said when he caught up to her.
Ishtar passed her claws along the stone rail of the rock span, stopping when her claws reached a corner. "Turn right," she said.
Raziel slipped past the bulk of her wings, walking in front of her. "Are you so certain?"
"Yes. Why do you ask?"
"The stone is on fire ahead."
"Right." She kept walking, keeping her claws on the rail as a guide.
"Ah... that means the way is blocked."
Ishtar grinned in his direction. "No, not really. You'll see." Her wings bent as she walked past him. Ah well, he'd catch up. She stumbled on until she could feel the heat of the flames against her face and she stretched her arm toward the unnatural fire. Raziel had been mistaken: the stone was not on fire, it had been turned into fire. The arch of the rock span continued unbroken in a flame bridge. The mutated Turelim were more powerful than she had thought.
"Ishtar," Raziel said behind her.
"Shh..." She let her eyelids fall as she concentrated, talons still outstretched, her mind doing its best to block out the cackling of the far-off Turelim. Were they approaching, running the other way, or remaining where they fought? Impossible to tell. Soon the sounds dropped like a stone from her consciousness. Their replacement hit her in a cold wave, a welcome chill that coiled down her spine, through her nerves. The familiar black power. For an instant she could see, both in front of her and behind: the flames hardened as if frozen and turned to stone, Raziel's white eyes grew huge. She saw his thoughts, the suspicion, wonder, and pride. She could taste the prey in the mouth of a millipede ten miles away.
Ishtar shook her head and let it go, and she was blind again.
"Now then," she said, and plunged ahead before Raziel could ask any questions. Immediately she winced. The points of the petrified flames burrowed into her hooves most uncomfortably.
"Wait," Raziel called as he caught up to Ishtar a second time. "What manner of sorcery did you just display?"
"I *will* tell you, Raziel. Soon." Though his curiosity was still palpable.
They worked slowly but steadily through the Turelim city. The sounds of battle faded but became more violent, as if the combatants had become desperate or simply eager for a conclusion. Raziel and Ishtar had almost left the city when the cataclysm came. A crackle of warning came first, then the booming roar that made the rocks, even this far out, tremble. She remembered how the pinnacles of obsidion tilted and fell while others plummeted straight down. Oh, and the blue lightning that flared into the sky. Mustn't forget that.
The rocks crashed and echoed and finally, everything was silent.
"It must have been a decisive victory," Raziel commented.
"Not quite." Ishtar turned and inched her way toward the path that led south out of the city. "The blast killed both packs. Though that may have seemed a victory to their diseased minds."
"Surely you could not have known that."
She shrugged. "The Turelim are predictable anyway... to an extent."
"How is it you know so much of these creatures?"
"Simply, I have lived among, or, beneath them. For..." She frowned. "...ages."
The two walked down the path from the Turelim city and both remained silent. Ishtar let him brood; she could not imagine how she would react in Raziel's position. Doubts, hidden hopes, wishes- all shifted about in the space of an hour. He must have had so much to say, so many hopes he was afraid to shatter.
Or, she thought with a smile, he was not much of a conversationalist.
A strangely tense hour passed before Raziel at last spoke.
"This cannot be..."
"Hm?"
"This forest. It could not be so close to the city."
"Hm. Are you certain you weren't lost the first time you passed through?"
"It would not have taken so long, still."
"Ah... well. I suppose I found a shortcut."
"Indeed." Three, two... "Now, I believe you owe me a narrative or two."
"Wait... just a bit more." Surprisingly, Raziel obliged her and they descended the low hills that slipped into the petrified forest he had passed through the night before. When they reached a low dip in the forest surrounded by a kind of deadfall of bowed trees, Ishtar turned to him. "Now then," she said, lowering herself into a sitting position, "What did you want to know?"
********************************************************
Now that it was finally time to speak, Raziel's mind presented nothing to say. He sat down facing her, looking into the neutral eye sockets that did not gaze back.
"Who are you?"
She smiled. "Ishtar."
"I believe you have imparted that information already. Who is your progenitor? How have you endured these ages in the territory of my brother?"
Ishtar's tail straggled like a dying snake on the ground. "My progenitor was Strane, son of Leander, your son. As to how I survived... I did not endure alone."
"Are they also in the Turelim city?"
"No, in a keep far to the southeast. We fled there, in the beginning, and for a while we were tolerated.
"And then?"
Ishtar looked away. "We were not."
"Nevertheless, you live."
"Because of the pride and ambition of your brother."
"Kain must have known."
"He did. But... he did nothing."
Raziel silently shook his head. The story made no sense, but he had no idea what to ask to make it clearer. When he looked up, she was gazing directly at him.
"You can see?" Raziel asked.
"No." Ishtar bit her lip with her elongated fangs. "Not with my eyes, that is. It is difficult to explain... but I suppose you could say, I see in time. Moments in the past, the future. Very fleetingly in the present, and not always nearby."
"Such a strange evolution."
"I am not so certain it is an evolution, Raziel. It seems... it has spread, in a bastardized form, to the Turelim."
"How do you know this?"
"I have seen it."
"Is it this 'seeing in time' that drives them mad?"
"No, not by itself. It is part of a greater gift. You glimpsed it on the bridge that had turned to fire."
Raziel tilted his head. How could he forget? That was a power beyond him, beyond even Kain. Had all his children become gods? It had to be an evolution, though from the way she described it, 'disease' seemed more fitting. Yet, evolution or contagion, it had destroyed the Turelim but not his daughter.
He looked down at the tattered wing he had been unconsciously toying with and half-shivered. His daughter.
"It was quite remarkable," Raziel said. "With power of such magnitude at your bidding, it would seem ludicrous that Turel would have you under his power."
Ishtar smiled wickedly. "I was not at his mercy, and he knew it. All the years he offered me such *gracious hospitality* in return for my knowledge, my sight... I stayed willingly."
"Even when he took your eyes?"
Her smiled faded. "I did not need them."
Raziel shook his head slightly. "You awaited something?"
"This day."
The statement hung in the air ominously, and he felt a growing urge to slash something with the Soul Reaver. He had heard enough talk of fate and destiny to last several decades. Even his daughter knew more of it than he.
They were interrupted by the sound of distant conversation growing closer. Ishtar grew perfectly still, almost vanishing into the shadows. Raziel inwardly grimaced but followed suit.
"...but all the hair was gone!" one of the voices said.
"What did you do?" the other asked.
"I dunked him in gravy."
"Was the color deified?"
"Of course, none but the best."
"I can't imagine a better setting."
"It is a very well-placed stage."
Of course. The Turelim monstrosities.
"Let them pass," Ishtar whispered. "In three minutes they will start arguing, in ten minutes only one will be left, and in twenty-five minutes it will have joined the others.
"The others?"
"The other packs headed toward the human citadel."
Raziel's eyes flared brightly. The human citadel housed only one person for him... one person, and rows of vegetables.
"My God," he muttered, jumping to his feet. The Turelim didn't notice, but continued their nonsensical conversation. "We must reach the citadel. Quickly."
"Must we?" Ishtar said, but she seemed resigned to the idea and rose with him. He set off at a fast lope and Ishtar followed as best she could, sometimes unerringly, sometimes stumbling and blind. Raziel slowed impatiently, hoping he wouldn't travel in a circle this time. It had taken him hours to get from the citadel to the forest. With growing anxiety, he remembered the empty streets of the Turelim city, how unnatural it had seemed. How many of the warped creatures were now at the citdael's gates?
Behind them, angry voices rose in the first exchanges of a heated argument.