Author's Notes: Well, here we are. The next bit, as promised. Beware the PLOT! *cue spooky music* Thank you for reviewing! It always makes an author happy when people say they like her work.
Oh, yes: once again, I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh! or anything else even remotely interesting besides my lurvely katana. *Cries* I wanna own Pegasus! The only characters that are mine (to date) are Le'lorinel and Niata.
Onward, mein piggies!
-D.E.
What would you do if your world disappeared? If it hung shining like a droplet of water and then the wind blew and shattered it on the ground? If the darkened walls of your world melted away and you found yourself in a strange place, dry and tough and dun-colored? What would you do then?
The wind was mostly what wakened Le'lorinel. She could not recall clearly what had happened after she left the path in the Shadow Realm- there had been singing, and light, light so brilliant it threatened to burn her eyes to nothingness.
Her fingers twitched. The ground was hot and gritty against her face and her right arm, which was flung out before her. The other was bent at an uncomfortable angle. She must have been lying on her chest. But she couldn't remember falling asleep, and the Shadow Realm certainly didn't feel like this.
Her fingers twitched again, curled into a fist around grains of desert sand, soft and golden in her palm. Her eyes opened a crack, and she instinctively pulled her legs up to her waist, curling into a ball as she pushed herself into a sitting position. Blinking, she opened her eyes all the way.
She shut them hastily with a groan of surprised pain, and clapped her hands over the lids. At that moment, four burning questions flashed through her mind, befuddled with exhaustion and light. Where was she? How did she get here? Who (or what) brought her here? And how in blazes was she going to get out of here?
Crouching there, she gradually allowed her eyes to slide open a crack behind her black-skinned hands. It was only at that moment that she slowly began to realize that she was hearing voices. Voices of men and women, ranged all around her. The language was strange, like none she'd ever heard before.
It took a while for her eyes -eyes made for the darkness of underground caverns and starless nights- to adjust to the light that, while dim, still stung her vision. She was in a wide, oval chamber, the floor hewn from what appeared to be sandstone. That would explain the grittiness she'd felt upon her cheek and hand. Hot bars of sunlight shone in from slats in the walls, pooling in certain places all about the area.
"Vel'bol zhah aluin phalor? Vel'klal uil usstan?" Le'lorinel wondered aloud in her native tongue, rubbing her head. The smooth cascade of silvery-white strands hid her face from view, concealing her fiery, scarlet eyes behind a curtain as pale as moonlight.
A dark shape to her right turned, looking at its companion. It pointed at Le'lorinel, speaking again in that strange language with a woman's voice. Then, slowly, it advanced.
The speaker was indeed a woman, robed in loose white linen. Her black hair was cut short, scented with some exotic, floral perfume. Her skin was the color of antique gold, and almond-shaped eyes ringed in black kohl silently appraised the ebon-skinned elf, at the moment sitting confusedly within the center of a tentagrammon, which had been drawn upon the floor. Around the woman's neck hung a slender silver amulet, disturbingly similar to Le'lorinel's own- a thin T with a slender band forming a loop at the top of the crossbar. She squatted down at the edge of the pentagram, peering at her strange visitor with a gaze that could have cut through steel. Pointing to Le'lorinel, she rattled off a stream of gibberish, pausing expectantly at the end. Le'lorinel shook her head to indicate she didn't understand. The woman furrowed her brow disapprovingly, and said the same line again, slowly- as if speaking at a less intense rate would make the nonsense more comprehensible. Once more, she received a vehement shake of the head in way of reply.
Sighing, the stranger turned to a man standing to her left, dressed in robes similar to her own, and asked a question. He nodded, flicking a strange gesture towards the drow with his wrist.
Searing pain ripped through Le'lorinel's throat. She tried to scream, but was only able to force out a thin, choking cry. The pain spread like wildfire, lancing into her brain where it exploded, sending sparklers of colored light across her field of vision. Then, as swiftly as it had begun, the pain had stopped, leaving only its memory behind.
The white-robed woman turned her attention back to her supernatural visitor. Slowly, deliberately, she spoke. "Do you understand me?"
"I do now," Le'lorinel replied as she shook her ice-pale hair out of her eyes, her tone at its driest. "What in the name of the gods did you just do, human?"
"A simple spell," the lady remarked mildly. "It enables you to speak our language. It should have been easy and it most certainly should not have hurt you."
Le'lorinel decided not to comment on her opinion of the woman's skills. "Who are you?"
"I am called Niata. High Priestess of the temple of Isis." The woman calmly folded her arms, gripping each near the shoulder with the opposite hand. "And now it is time for my question. You will tell me your Name."
"What?!"
"Your Name, demon, I asked for your Name."
The request was not the innocent one it may have seemed to an unenlightened observer. Names held power, and the one this priestess asked for was not Le'lorinel's usename, which had no strength, but her true one, which could be used to bind her utterly to Niata's will.
"I cannot give you what you ask. If you are done speaking to me, I shall go."
The priestess gave her an odd smile. "You are welcome to try."
Ignoring her, the dark elf rose on unsteady legs and tottered towards the northern point of the tentagrammon. She stretched out a hand as she prepared to step out
And a complicated pattern of thin, actinic lines of light suddenly decorated the dusty ground about her, following the lines of the pentagram. She smashed against something hard.
Le'lorinel fell back with a grunt of astonishment. What the HELL?
She lunged forward, slamming against an unseen barrier yet again. For several wild moments panic threatened to overwhelm her as she clawed ineffectually at... whatever it was, but slowly, doggedly, reason fought its way to the fore.
A long moment to catch her breath and get her bearings, then the elf was probing frantically at whatever enclosed her. Something was there, yet not--curving up over her head to enclose her in a dome-like structure, anchoring at each of the five points.
It was some sort of bizarre trap, and the strange, glowing lines were evidently the key. She tried to touch them, but the edge of the dome blocked her. She studied the lines; every time her otherwise ultrakeen eyes attempted to trace their pattern they seemed to blur and shift sickeningly, but she kept at it. The pentacle seemed to become a little easier to look at after she'd grasped its shape. The light, the patterns, they wormed their way into portions of her elven mind she'd never used before, and she began to see things within it all. Lines of--juncture, Le'lorinel supposed... planes of interlocking forces. It was almost like some enormous circuitry diagram. The more she looked into it, the more she began to comprehend its strange logic, and the more Le'lorinel saw of the structure of what held her.
But it didn't do her any good; the arcane structure was set so it couldn't be taken down from the inside.
"You see?" Niata asked with a shrug. "Only my priests and I may take down the wards." She squinted, considering, and slowly, realization dawned upon her. "You are not a demon after all," she drawled, almost to the air. "But if not then, what are you?"
By this time, Le'lorinel had begun to get very annoyed with the entire scenario. She fairly yelled her reply. "I am a drow, human! Now LET ME OUT!"
"A drow," Niata echoed, choosing to ignore the last demand. "A drow? But that is a dark elf." Her eyes roved over the elf's exotic, dark-dyed clothing, her silver hair, lingered on Le'lorinel's crimson eyes and inky skin. "That explains it." Her voice lost some of its hardness. "Forgive me. I thought your kind were no more."
"I see," Le'lorinel snapped. "So, you dabbled into the Shadow Realm hoping to catch a demon, but got a dark elf instead. Will you release me now?"
Niata gave an almost imperceptible nod. "Step forward."
Le'lorinel cautiously poked a toe out of the tentagrammon and, heartened by the fact that she was not stopped by the invisible force, took a step. Then another, and another, until she stood outside her temporary prison.
"Forgive my previous welcome," Niata said, in a more casual tone of voice. These are troubled times. Just a few days ago, our most gifted seer predicted a great shadow would be cast over this world. We thought perhaps a demon could give us further information."
"No hard feelings," Le'lorinel replied, not meaning a word of it. "Where have you brought me, priestess?"
"Elf, tell me. Have you never heard of Aegyptus?"
"Aegyptus." Le'lorinel thought hard, running over names and terms in her mind's eye. "Egypt?" She glanced up, questioning. "That explains the heat, then." One corner of her mouth twitched in a sardonic smile. "That is all well and good, but I would rather you sent me home."
"Alas, that is beyond our power," one of the priests sighed, spreading his hands out beseechingly. "Lady Niata drained herself bringing you here."
"Until our power is restored," a priestess little more than a child put in, "you will have no choice but to remain here. We are sorry."
"You must understand," Niata explained hastily, upon seeing the inner flame of anger flickering in the drow elf's eyes, "with a demon, we would have simply destroyed it after its usage was worn out. They are vile creatures, preying upon the emotions and life energy of other beings. But, they do see things that we cannot." Gesturing to Le'lorinel, the High Priestess began to walk from the room. "With an elf, such as you, things are considerably more complex. This will require much contemplation."
She pushed open a door of dried, woven reeds, and stepped into a narrow corridor. "Rest assured we will make you as comfortable as we can during your stay." She pushed open a second door, and Le'lorinel had to throw up an arm to shield her eyes from the sudden glare. "You may even partake in our studies, if you so desire." Niata could not help but smile. "Certainly the presence of such a creature as a drow would make our neophyte priests and priestesses go about their studies with more fervor."
Seeing no alternative to the suggestion the High Priestess offered her, Le'lorinel nevertheless found it necessary to argue. "Suppose I simply walked out that door? The world is vast. You would never see your precious experiment again." She allowed herself a wolfish grin.
The priest from earlier, who was walking on her left side, laughed. And where would you go?" He gestured to the scenery outside the woven door. Before the small group, there spread a massive waste- a veritable sea of sand that heat rose from in waves. The only stretch of green was one that bordered a great river, and even that was small in comparison to the desert that bordered it. "Beyond the Nile, there is only the Great Desert, which stretches endlessly in all directions. You would be dead within a mere three days' travel." He bowed apologetically. "And you live long, my lady drow, but against the wrath of Ra's wastes, you will not live forever."
"There is truth enough in your words," Le'lorinel agreed, peering at the landscape through slitted eyes. "Very well. I shall remain here, in your temple. But only until you are rested!" She held up a cautionary finger. "I do not intend to stay here overlong."
"Even so," the High Priestess replied. She paused suddenly, and she eyed Le'lorinel with a curious gaze. "If I may ask why is it that you squint like that?"
"I have spent eons trapped within the Shadow Realm," Le'lorinel replied. "The light of your sun hurts my eyes." She grimaced, and Niata clapped her shoulder with a hand, chuckling.
"You will grow used to it, in time. Until then." She gestured to a young priest, who drew from his robes a long strip of black silk. Instructing Le'lorinel to bow her head, he tied it firmly across her eyes. When she opened them again, the cloth cut down on the glare enough for her to find the light tolerable. Slits were cut into the silk for her to see through, and while it narrowed her field of vision, the drow was grateful for the device.
"And now," Niata instructed, gently steering her companion back into the temple, "we must find you some proper clothes"
Author's End Notes: So, there you have it, the first chapter of Starless Night. There's much more to come... oh yes, much more. *rubs hands and cackles* In the next chapter, Pharaoh Yami makes an appearance, things take a turn for the weird, Le'lorinel gets a sword, and the author gets a tic-tac. Sit tight!
- Literally, "What is going on? Where am I?"