As Luck Would Have It
A/N: Hmm. The first Mercury Lighthouse chapter. But first:
Lioness Blackfire: No, I'm not missing Djinn. The two Djinn you are talking about, Granite and Breeze, don't come until Kolima Forest and Kolima, which I haven't done yet, because it would seem pointless to have them beat Tret Tree, then trek all the way to Imil, beat the lighthouse, then trek ALL THE WAY BACK TO KOLIMA FOREST. Instead, they're doing Kolima all in one shot. Later.
Griffinkhan: (note: ignore my terrible spelling. Ff.net downstairs, story upstairs, you get the idea) I like what you said about Zoe's element having to do with her attack calls. But as you probably know, depending on the Djinn a character has, their class changes. Nice guess though ;).
Chapter Twelve: Puzzling Climb
"I thought you said you weren't ever going to climb a lighthouse during the night," Zoe teased as they entered the next room.
"Well, I can't very well let Mia go up there by herself, can I?" Isaac shot back. "Would you want me to do that to you?"
"I wouldn't climb this lighthouse all alone," Zoe reasoned. "I'm terrified of heights."
"Please just be quiet!" Garet yelled at them both, running his hands nervously through his hair. "I can barely stand all this water!"
"Uh, guys," Ivan said hesitantly, and the others turned to look at him. Suddenly noticing what was in the room with them, they gasped. A giant statue of a woman with hands folded and a sparkling red stone on her chest sat across a rectangular pond with a half-submerged pedestal in it. Directly in front of Ivan was a pillar of a sort with writing engraved on it.
"What does it say?" Zoe asked, as she and the others gathered around the pillar.
"It says, 'He who honors the heart of the goddess shall stand at the center of all, like a swan in the center of a rippling pond," Ivan read, his voice growing more confused by the moment.
"Then that statue must represent the goddess, whoever she is, and that flashing red jewel is her heart. But how do we 'honor the goddess's heart'? We can't even get across the water!" Isaac stopped, face red in frustration.
"Not like we want to cross the water," Garet muttered. "Or at least, I don't!"
"I'm with you there, buddy," said Forge, appearing on Garet's shoulder. The Djinni shivered. "What possessed me, to come popping out like this in the Mercury Lighthouse?! Am I crazy?"
"I really hope that was one of those questions where you don't want an answer," Garet shot back, and with a red flash Forge disappeared.
"Come on," Isaac said finally. "There's another door…wait…there are two other doors!"
"Well, then let's split up," Ivan said rationally. "It's not like any of us will be alone."
"Well…I don't really like that idea much…but it does make sense," Isaac conceded finally. "Alright, Zoe, you and Ivan take the right door, and Garet and I will take the left one."
"Alright," Ivan said aloud, but groaned inwardly. I have to try my luck with her, of all people, he thought bitterly. Sighing, he switched his Shaman's Rod to his left hand, his dominant hand, and walked through the right door, Zoe right behind him. Isaac and Garet, shoulder to shoulder, walked through the left door.
The two groups found themselves face-to-face with each other almost instantly. "Guess we could have taken either door," Ivan said sheepishly. Isaac grinned and ruffled Ivan's hair, causing the Jupiter Adept to glare at him fiercely. Isaac only grinned wider. They walked slowly and a bit warily through the next door.
Across a short channel of water in this room was a doorway leading to a set of stairs. Garet, knowing what they would have to do, looked a little green at the thought.
"Water never bothered you like this before," Isaac said, raising an eyebrow at his friend.
"There's never been so much of it before. It's like it's constantly pressing down on me…like I'm going to drown." Garet shivered. "But let's keep going. The sooner we get out of this place, the better." Gritting his teeth, Garet was the first to leap from their platform to the nearly-waterlogged pedestal, and from there to the dry area with the door and stairs. The others quickly followed, Ivan casting one last glance at the way out. He had the feeling that, once they climbed those stairs, there was no turning back.
Climbing the stairs put them in a hallway, though almost directly in front of them was a turn. Isaac had the feeling they would come to many blind corners like this. Slowly they went around the first turn, collectively breathing a sigh of relief when they found nothing lying in wait. Nothing was around the next turn either.
"Isaac! Zoe! Garet! Ivan!" cried a familiar voice. Startled, the four turned. Standing there was Mia, looking very frustrated but also more than a little excited. "You don't know how happy I am to see you!"
"What are you doing, Mia?" Zoe asked angrily. Mia, startled, took a step back. "Climbing this lighthouse all alone in the dead of night, with who-knows-what waiting inside?! You could be killed! I'd think you had more sense than that!"
"Well I…you see…" Mia looked at a loss for words. Finally she shrugged. "Well, anyway, I can't get any farther." She pointed to a statue that was identical to the ones in the entrance hall: A woman with long blue hair pouring a jug. It was across a narrow chasm, blocking the only route across.
"I can move it," Isaac said, with a glance at Garet. "If you promise one thing, that is."
"What?" Mia asked. At that moment, she was desperate to beat whoever it was to the top of the lighthouse and stop them from lighting it.
"Stay with us. Don't rush up ahead all alone or run off somewhere by yourself."
"Agreed. I think I'll like climbing this lighthouse with the four of you anyway. You're all very powerful Adepts." Isaac nodded to her and stood on the edge of the gap, facing the statue. He held a hand out towards it and whispered, "Move." Instantly a Psynergetic hand grasped the statue and pulled it towards Isaac, filling the gap and allowing them to walk across.
They did so, being careful not to slip on the statue. Around another blind curve was a doorway. "One question," Ivan muttered. "Why is there always missing floor between us and the next room? Huh?!"
"Don't know. Must be some weird 'fate' thing," Garet muttered back. "And don't even think about frying my head, little Jupiter boy. Won't work in a place devoted entirely to water."
"I'd already reached that conclusion," Ivan said with a wicked grin before he took his turn jumping the hole in the floor. "Honestly, are all the Fire Adepts as dense as you?"
"No," Isaac and Zoe said in unison, causing everyone except Garet to laugh. Still laughing, they walked through the door. The room they entered silenced all laughter.
Most of the floor was nothing but one immense grating, obviously there to let water from the three towering waterfalls fall through to a lower level. Slowly and cautiously, the five Adepts walked into the room. Mia, obviously unafraid, walked right out onto the grating and reached a hand into the waterfall. Without warning, a strange creature leapt from the tumbling water and let out an inhuman shriek.
"A Siren!" Mia gasped, backing away quickly. The creature grinned wickedly, tossing its long, blood-red hair with a hand tipped in long, sharp, green-tinged fingernails. Suddenly, it jumped at Ivan, who dodged out of the way well before those nails would have found their mark.
"Pays to be fast," he said with a grin.
"It also pays to be smart! For Mars's sake, duck Ivan!" Garet yelled, and Ivan ducked a split-second before the Siren's deadly nails would have found his throat. As it was, they grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked—hard.
"Yaaaaaaaah!" Ivan yelled. "Le'go of my head!" Frantically he beat at the Siren's arm with the Shaman's Rod, which was abruptly yanked from his hands and used to beat him over the head. With a final cry, Ivan slumped, unconscious.
"Flint unleash!" Isaac yelled, and the Djinni dove on the Siren, backed by all the power of Venus. The blow was enough to cause the Siren to let go of Ivan's hair and shriek in pain, dropping the Shaman's Rod.
"Fizz unleash!" came Mia's voice, and the Mercury Djinni dissolved into a soft blue light, which descended upon Ivan, now laying knocked out on the floor. As the light slowly faded, Ivan's eyes opened, and he immediately reached for the Shaman's Rod, raising it high as he stood and slamming it down on the Siren's head. The creature opened its mouth, but to all appearances no sound came out.
Gasping and falling to her knees, Zoe clamped her hands over her ears, but still the sound of the Siren's unnatural screech filled her ears. She felt numb, unable to move, unable to think, unable to even breathe. Her one quick glance at the others had told her that they heard nothing. She felt herself suffocating, knew that it would all end here, and accepted her end without a fight. And in that moment, a memory came to her.
A forest. People. Her friends, they were. One of them was smiling. The others were serious. So serious. But then their game was serious. A girl with shoulder-length brown hair took a blue hat—baseball cap—from Zoe's head and put it on her own. She said something, and the others laughed quietly.
Somewhere far away, she heard a voice yell, "Vorpal Slash!" and suddenly the shrieking ceased. Zoe realized she had been screaming as well, and suddenly her arms gave out and she slumped towards the floor, only to find herself being caught by a strong, reassuring pair of arms.
"Whatever it was," a voice nearby said quietly, "it's over now. Everything's ok, Zoe." That voice. She knew that voice. But she was having so much trouble remembering…she knew that voice, but she couldn't place it in her slowly lightening mind.
"Come on Zoe, say something," said a different voice. "Please." This voice was almost begging her, she realized. But who was talking to her?
"Zoe," another voice broke in, and this one she knew instantly, as well as she knew the accompanying hand that touched her shoulder. Isaac, her brain told her, and slowly she turned her eyes to him. "The Siren is gone. You're ok. Stand up and shake it off." Though she desperately wanted to stay here, held in someone's—Garet's—strong grip, she could not deny the command in Isaac's voice. She stood.
"Isaac, you're good," Mia said with a nod of approval. "Even I haven't gotten the whole voice thing down."
"I've had a lot of practice," Isaac replied with a grin, throwing a quick glance at Garet.
"Hey!" Garet said with a laugh, playfully shoving Isaac. "Stop that!"
"Are we here to start a shoving match or climb a lighthouse?" Ivan asked impatiently. His arms were folded, his Shaman's Rod clutched in one hand. He stood in front of the doorway into the next room.
Garet, about to come back with a sharp reply, suddenly realized just how close he was standing to the waterfalls and edged warily to the edge of the room that was real floor and not metal grating. In single file the five walked through the door, Isaac going first and Mia last.
The next room got a collective groan from everyone. Almost instantly Isaac knew it was a maze, and a maze of water pipes at that. "We'll have to push them, I guess," he said with a heavy sigh.
"I remember this," Mia said. "You have to get the pipes so that the water flows evenly through them. That's how you get through the room."
"Then lets get pushing," Garet said resignedly. Placing both his hands against a free section of pipe, he heaved against it. "A little help here?" he asked agitatedly, and Isaac and Zoe both began to push with him. Slowly the pipe slid into place between two unconnected sections, and their way was cleared. Water was now shooting from little pipe jets.
They soon found that the water propelled them along a series of twists and turns within the pipe maze. Going down and up more stairs than Ivan liked to think about, they soon found themselves pushing the same pipe back into its original position so they could get to the next part of the maze.
"Whoever designed this lighthouse was cunning indeed," Ivan said at one point. "Though they could have done without the stairs."
"Somehow I get the feeling this is a repeat performance?" Mia asked, startling a laugh and a nod from Zoe. Still, as Mia caught Zoe's eyes, something didn't seem quite right to the Mercury Adept. Something dark lurked there, behind Zoe's cheerful attitude.
"Well would you look at that!" Isaac said in mock surprise. "A doorway of all things!"
"Oh very funny, Isaac," Garet said. Despite his happy demeanor earlier, he was still looking a bit green. In that instant Zoe knew she could not be a Fire Adept, or she would feel the pressure of this lighthouse just as much as Garet did.
In the next room, they found themselves facing a fork. One side led into a series of blind turns, the other to a chasm that would take some serious jumping to cross.
"Well guys," Isaac said, resignation in his voice, "let's get to it."
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Somehow, all five of them fit on the single pedestal in the room with the giant statue. Though Ivan had to lean on Zoe for support because of his tiredness, they had somehow made it through a hole in the floor and onto the platform in the water. Directly across from them was the giant goddess statue.
"He who honors the heart of the goddess shall stand at the center of all, like a swan at the center of a rippling pond," Mia said in a monotone, as though she had learned the words by rote. And she probably did, being the last of the Mercury Clan, Isaac reasoned. Balancing precariously on the edge of the pedestal, Mia leapt in one fluid motion to stand on the folded hands of the statue.
"Ply," she whispered, and a thing that Isaac could only call a spirit came forth from her outstretched hands as she glowed with Psynergy. Nodding, she jumped back to the pedestal with the others just as haloes of light surrounded them.
"What do we have to do?" Garet asked warily. "How do we get out of here?"
"Easy," Mia said, an evil smirk on her face. "We jump across the water."
"JUMP ACROSS THE WATER?!?!!?"
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Vil: Done at last! Ok guys, 50 reviews and we're set for chapter thirteen! Which has a title! Chapter Thirteen: High Water. Yay! A title! So, now, we're halfway through Mercury Lighthouse. Reviews and comments are appreciated!! ~Vil.