Chapter 2, Truth to be told
The sun sent its rays warmly streaming down into the area of ruins, and the grass was fresh and lush despite the early May. The trees already carried new leaves in the early spring.
"Whatever happened to the soldiers accompanying us?"
Frog shifted a little where he sat on Janus' traveling cloak, leaning against the sun warmed stone wall that once had been the fortification of the Mystics' dark lair. Now it was just a crumbled remain.
"I met them as I searched for an entrance to the cave," Janus said while he directed one final wave of healing magic at his friend's chest, "I told them that Flea was somewhere on the island, that they should get out and leave him to me."
"I am relieved to hear that."
Janus grimly nodded. Then he stretched a little and tried to lighten up.
"Well, I've been gone for two years, what's been going on?" he wondered.
"We hath been working hard on the relationship with the Mystics, and apart from that incident today it has been all well."
None of them bothered about that "today" was highly incorrect. In their view it was true.
"Of course, as I did not revert to a human as thee had promised we began to worry that perhaps Flea had survived the killing blow, alas we had no way of reporting it to thee," Frog continued with a shake of his head, "Lai, the soldiers and myself traveled to the western island after a fisherman reported strange lights coming from the forest, thinking that maybe we had to find the answer for ourselves. I see now, it was surely a trap."
"Definitely," Janus nodded with a grunt, "I don't know how he managed to survive… suppose that damn Mystic just had to have revenge in some way. Anything else?"
Frog smiled a bit, with pride.
"Though I protested His Majesty saw it fit to make me general."
"What took you so long to spurt that out, Glenn?" the wizard said with a wide smile, "you're too humble. That's great!"
"Mayhap so, but I cannot see why he regarded me as worthy of such a post."
"You deserve it and you know it."
Janus chuckled and rubbed the bridge of his nose to emphasis his words:
"Very few can punch the former royal wizard straight in the face and survive."
At that, Frog laughed and cracked his knuckles just for the sake of it.
"And I repeat thy own words: thou deserved that," he stated.
"Painful as it was, indeed. How's that for a job, then?"
"I am still Her Majesty's guardian, but it requires little trouble now. Since we art at peace I am mostly overseeing the recovering of the army, as we suffered much during the war. 'Tis not always a joyful task but I know well I am helping."
"Glad to hear that," Janus nodded with a smile.
He glanced over at Lai who now laid on the wizard's bedroll, still asleep. His smile wavered a little.
"And she?" he muttered.
Frog's lips twitched a little, but not more than that since the happiness he felt was blurred by worry and a little bit of irritation.
"She hast been keeping her air of pride, yet I cannot speak for her soul," he honestly said.
"It doesn't surprise me…" Janus mumbled, somewhat idly.
The general choose not to comment on his friend's find furthermore than the brief comment he had dropped when the truth was told. He knew Janus already was pained enough. Instead Frog choose to thread a parallel path.
"I hath a request," he said.
Janus dragged himself out of his thoughts and turned back at the amphibian.
"What?" he asked.
"When she awakens, put me to sleep with the same spell," Frog said with a faint smile, "for thy privacy and…"
He couldn't help but smirk.
"… I dost not particularly enjoy watching bloodshed."
With a deep sigh Janus gave his friend a look of mocked hurt.
"You traitor…" he grunted and folded his arms.
"'Tis nothing but instinct of self-preservation, which thou apparently sadly lacks."
"Now that's harsh," the wizard complained.
"The harm truth bring is nothing but what thou hast brought upon thyself," Frog smirked.
"I think I should put you to sleep right now…"
They glared at each other for a few seconds until they couldn't hold back the chuckles anymore.
"Well then, and what hath thou been doing?" the general asked after a moment of collecting himself again.
"Not that much, I traveled through history aimlessly for a little, asking around. Then I found a gigantic library in the future, in which I sought for any recordings of a blue-haired woman. That's when I found the tale of your deaths."
Janus had no plans of telling Frog in which book he had found the story. He felt bad enough about it himself, and his friend had a much stronger sense of honor.
"What will thee do now then?" the shorter of the two carefully asked.
The wizard smiled and nodded slightly.
"Duty calls me back to Guardia, so I'll be coming with you back there…"
There was a sound from Lai; a low grunt. It sounded suspiciously like she was about to wake up.
"… Provided I survive her," Janus muttered with a small wince and raised his hand, "shama na se."
"Good luck, my friend," Frog mumbled somewhat ironically as the yellow stars swept past his eyes, "thou will need it."
"Yes, and if I don't make it you'll wake up normally in about three hours."
"A relief…"
The general gently slumped to Janus' cloak on the ground.
'All out of allies…' the wizard sarcastically thought and clenched his teeth against the tension he felt.
Lai stirred and turned over with a mutter, covering her eyes with her arm against the light even if she laid in the shadow of the broken wall.
The first thing she noticed was that her left leg felt much heavier than it should, and somewhere far back in her brain she wondered why it didn't hurt. The rest of her hadn't really caught up yet.
She heard somebody move.
"Welcome back, Lai."
Her arm snapped away as her mind tumbled over itself with memories, triggered by the three words said by that one voice.
"Janus!"
She heaved herself up with her hands behind her back, perhaps not that graceful but she didn't give a damn as she grinned despite herself. Janus smiled back.
"Hello again yourself."
"You've got one heck of a feeling for timing, sweetheart, at least when it really counts," Lai said, much softer than she normally spoke.
"Finally a compliment," he said with a light chuckle.
He reached out and carefully touched her ankle. To Lai it felt like everything below her knee had fallen asleep.
"Does it feel alright?" Janus asked.
"Just bulky, but I prefer that to the alternative."
"Good, we better give it a day or so to heal naturally before I finish the healing. Just to make sure."
Lai sat up better, using her right leg and hands for balance.
"You never answered my question of where you have been," she pointed out.
"Just going through time, it was rather confusing really. But now I'm coming back to Guardia with you to fight Flea," Janus said, smiling.
For the first time in a very long while, Lai actually smiled genuinely.
"Good, things have been awfully normal without you around," she said, but even if she honestly smiled there was an uneven edge in her voice as she spoke.
Janus heard it all too well and shook his head, his smile dying.
"I know. I'm sorry."
"Any luck finding your sister then?" Lai asked, not willing to hang onto the subject.
She'd never been one to show any pain if she wasn't cornered, and it wasn't such an occasion.
"Not yet, I'm afraid," Janus said.
Lai said nothing then, letting her eyes fall to her knees.
So you're leaving again just as suddenly when you're done.
'Damn you.'
Janus coughed, uneasily. This caused Lai to quickly look up again and watch him suspiciously.
He'd never do that if something wasn't horribly wrong.
"What?" she sharply said.
"Yes, there's… something I wanted to tell you..."
Lai tried to stop her mind from getting the immediate image of a woman by Janus' side.
She failed miserably.
"And what would that be?" she said, forcing her voice to stay calm.
Janus reached up and rubbed his neck nervously, only managing to double Lai's tension.
"When I found the text telling me that you and Glenn had been killed I was about to rush through time at once," he rather awkwardly began, "but I… ah, remembered another book I had seen…"
His sense of survival had been screaming at him to start running for quite a while, and it didn't get better as Lai's confusion began to melt into something else for every word he spoke next.
"I went back and looked up the book about ah… mechanics written by… eh, Lucca and…"
Janus hand went down to the ground and he leaned backwards at it to work against the movement that Lai made.
"… Of course, if you had died without… children…"
He leaned further back, starting to move backwards so slowly that it was hardly noticeable.
"… And that book still existed…"
It was hard to suppress the will to teleport far, far away, preferably to some place a few thousand years away.
"… Then… uh… well… you can't really be her ancestor and I…"
The prince of Zeal, hero of Guardia, warrior feared by evil throughout history, gulped.
"… I did a horrid mistake and eh… you're gonna snap my kneecaps, aren't you?"
"Yes, that's a great start," Lai growled, continuing to advance, "then you won't be able to run..."
"A little late for that, isn't it?" Janus rather weakly said.
"Hell yeah."
She grabbed his crag in an iron grip and tore him with her backwards so that he ended up leaning very closely over her, their chests almost touching. His blink revealed that he'd rather expected a punch.
"And stay there!" Lai snarled as her hand forcefully moved to his neck instead.
"Alrimph…"
Then they said nothing for a while.
Janus smiled gently against Lai's lips and broke their kiss, carefully sitting up. Since his arms somehow had moved around her during the past, sweet moments she followed and leaned her head against the soft cloth covering his chest.
She smiled contently as he stroke her hair, removing the ribbon that had the hopeless battle of keeping her disheveled ponytail under control. The strangely brown-purple locks spread over the dark shirt she wore, dancing when his fingers moved them.
"And I was sure you'd crush my vital organs with your bare hands," he muttered with a soft chuckle.
"Don't get relieved yet, I'm still contemplating it."
"Aw, damn…"
She looked up and met his eyes with a smirk, which he returned.
Then her features softened quite a bit.
"In fact, I think I'm going to make you miserable for the rest of your sad life, sweetheart," she said in a lower voice than before.
"You're great at everything you do," Janus said with a soft smile and wrapped a thread of her hair around his pointing finger, "but you, plainly, are awful at making me miserable."
He sighed lightly and shook his head, moving his eyes away from hers.
"That's my job."
"I won't hear another word about it, understand?" Lai firmly said and grabbed his chin so that he turned back to her.
"Yes, Lai."
Janus' smile returned and he carefully ripped the single hair free. The female magician's eyebrows merely twitched a little, as it had done when he had created her necklace.
The wizard reached up with his free, right hand and took a hair from his own head. Then held up his fists with the threads safely held in his strong grip. All he did was nod, at least that was all that was visible.
The two threads flashed with a soft light and flowed inside of his fists. The fingers were pushed outwards a little by the new contents.
Smiling softly Janus opened his left fist to reveal the new item resting in his palm. He waited for Lai to carefully pick it up and then turned his hand, spreading the fingers so that she could thread the simple, golden ring over the finger meant for it.
Her smile was so gentle that it worked against her overall character, but it wasn't anything the two of them minded while Janus took Lai's hand and put the engagement ring made from his hair in place as well.
There was another warm silence.
Lai used less force this time as she dragged Janus down with her, laying her head on his shoulder. He complied, keeping his arms wrapped around her.
The clouds peacefully floated past above the treetops, moved by the brothers of the wind that sang in the young leaves.
"Where's Glenn, by the way?" Lai mumbled after a comfortable silence.
"He's over there," Janus said and raised his hand to vaguely wave in the right direction, "asked me to put him to sleep so that he wouldn't be in the way when you went berserk."
"Weakling."
They both softly chuckled. The wizard's hand came down to rest on Lai's cheek and she closed her eyes with another uncharacteristic smile.
"Speaking of nothing, whatever happened to your eyelashes?" Janus wondered.
"Tried something against those freaks back with Flea, didn't really work," she replied with a light grunt.
"Ah, I see. Guess I better fix that, you somehow look much less threatening without them. Only reason I didn't run when I should have…"
She punched him in the chest.