Hiya all! I hope at least some of you still remember Fire and Magic from
many months ago. I still have the basic plot in my head, but I know that AU
isn't really my thing, so I laid off the writing for a while. Now that I'm
in something of a block in Taming a Tiger, I hope you like this next
chappie.
.............
"I am NOT sleeping with that.....that....beast!"
It was the new palace magician. She sat herself by the fountain, under the night sky. As she elegantly tossed her head and smoothed out her silky black hair, she protested at nobody in particular. She allowed the mist rising from the fountain at the center of the palace to cool off her heated brain.
"I have done what you have asked. I got myself into the prince's good graces, I removed the Overwrite, and now I'm the palace magician. But I draw the line at sleeping with him! He is a ruthless tiger!"
A mysterious voice answered from the shadows. "It is merely a result of the Eyes of Malice."
Megumi clenched a fist in chagrin.
"Of course, it will help us if you could spread the word about it around here," the voice continued. "The faster his deteriorating reputation spreads, the easier it would be for our master to take over this territory."
"YOU work for Lord Shishio, Aoshi. I am merely forced to work for you," she snapped.
The shadow called Aoshi stepped up to the light. He wore a flowing cloak, dark as the night, and stood before the defiant magician. He raised a small burlap bag, and started to toss and catch it. "Are you complaining, Megumi?"
Megumi stared at the burlap bag with horror, and relented. "No...no...I'm not complaining."
"I thought so," the shadow returned the bag into his cloak. "I know you love your father enough to do anything."
She turned her back on him. "I liked you better a few years ago. Being an evil sorcerer never suited you."
He remained silent for a few moments. "Just do your job, Megumi. I will come back to check on you next week. By then preparations for invasion might just be complete. Especially if complaints like yours spread like wildfire." He covered himself under the cloak, and he blended into the night.
Still sitting by the fountain, Megumi demurely began to cry.
She buried her face in her hands. "The snow prince is annoying, but he does not deserve what's coming to him. I should never have agreed to this..."
"May you please explain, Megumi, milady?"
She was surprised to see another man sit beside her. She never saw where he came from. He wore the simplest of magician's clothes, but they glowed with a brilliance unusual to common practitioners. He asked with a kind smile, and seemed nice enough. Still, he scared the life out of her. She had not even felt the aura of a person arriving from teleportation, he was that fast and that good. She went down on her knees and bowed.
"I don't deserve to be visited by such an honorable wizard as yourself," she remained with face inches from the ground.
"Nonsense, milady," he smiled. "Get up! I have not been an honorable wizard for a long time. I cannot even believe my teleportation skills are still fine; I have been out of practice." He scratched his auburn head, hidden under a large hat, in embarrassment. "Now, milady, what was coming to the snow prince?"
"Lord Shishio has plans, yet again, to take over Prince Enishi's territories," she began. "But this current plan is the most organized so far, and it just might work, if my end of the plan works as well. I suppose I don't have to tell you, but I am the one who disabled that Overwrite placed by the old magician. I would have wanted to actually make it stronger....but....but....."
"Yes, milady?"
"Aoshi has my memory ruby...and if I don't do what he says, he will destroy it.....and.....and...it's my only remembrance of my father...." She broke down and cried a little more.
"I....understand," he replied.
From inside his coat, he retrieved a medium-sized sapphire strung to a chain. He took it into his palm, and looked into it. Megumi did the same.
Inside the sapphire the face of a delicately smiling young woman appeared. Eventually scenes of the lady and the wizard having a good time in the woods appeared and disappeared in succession. They were the memories of a woman worth remembering.
"Beautiful woman," she said with sympathy.
"Thank you," he smiled sadly at the jewel.
He added to himself. "Can I do this...for him..for her?"
He then replaced the sapphire into his coat, and looked at Megumi, "You are working for...Aoshi?! But Aoshi is...."
"Not the same as when you knew him years ago. The power Lord Shishio gave him as chief sorcerer has reached his head. Now he only works to gain more power for his master, and in so doing gain more power for himself.
"Basically, my mission is to ensure that the Eyes of Malice takes its full effect on the prince. Either he will be too selfish to notice he is being taken for a fool, or the people will be so angry at him they will take him down themselves. In either case, he will most likely be killed. And no matter how much I hate that snowhaired annoyance, I do not want him dead."
He nodded. "I thank you for the information, Megumi, milady."
"I'm sorry I can't undo what I have done; Aoshi will know and I will be punished."
"I know, milady. And if I interfere with your spells he will also be suspicious. I will be back. In the meantime, tell the princess to always repeat the chant of the Overwrite, especially in front of him. It minimizes its damage."
With a little swirl of the hand, the wizard of the fiery hair dematerialized, and left Megumi alone.
She smiled at the sky. "Thank you."
................
"I can't believe the princess already knows I stay here!" Kaoru stomped at the hay, a crumpled note in her hands. "She gave me a good-luck note!"
"Word travels fast in the kingdom, Miss former palace magician," Sanosuke explained as he raked away. "Faster than even the chief retainer can run."
"Word is, you've already been replaced!" Yahiko added. "And the new girl is HOT!"
"And the prince's head over heels about her!" Sanosuke continued.
Kaoru felt the blood rushing to her head. "How DARE you talk like that about Enishi-sama! He has a good relationship with the princess; why would he flirt with my replacement?!"
"You're just jealous he didn't flirt with you, you HAG!"
"Why you little...." she took out her wand and began to furiously wave it around, until fairy dust began to accumulate at its tip. "I'll turn you into a TOAD!"
But before she could actually point the wand, a well-aimed stone hit her on the hand and made her release it.
"Please do not set the stable on fire, Kaoru-milady!" Kenshin shouted from the large and wide doors. He then walked into the stable and absently took up a rake.
"You've been out all night!" Sanosuke greeted. "Who's the lucky lady?" Yahiko whistled in turn. Kaoru turned her back on the stablemen.
But he did not answer. Instead he started to rake the nearest stall with lowered head.
The other three endured the silence for a while as they continued cleaning the stable. Yahiko began brushing horses, Sanosuke finished off the other stalls, and Kaoru, with a little instruction, managed to clean a few saddles. But the unnatural silence was unbearable.
From roughly the middle of the stable, Kaoru saw Yahiko pull Sano away, and also saw Kenshin rake the same stall at the other end. "What's the matter with him?" the boy asked the young man.
"Beats me, but I guess we better leave the guy alone for a while," Sano answered, and went outside.
Something was indeed bothering the redheaded stableman, and Kaoru could guess she was partly the reason for it. The man was hiding something from her and his two friends. She did not understand. Everything she had seen and heard so far seemed to confirm her hunch. He was the most powerful wizard, one of the last few with fiery hair. Why would the best wizard in the territory hide himself and his powers? Why did he keep denying what was almost obvious?
When Kaoru looked back at Kenshin's end of the stable, the rake was raking by itself!
She rubbed her eyes, confirmed that she was not hallucinating, and walked toward the stall. When she got there, indeed, the rake moved by itself and took up the last of the hay.
Beside the enchanted rake, the redhaired stableman stood, and looked down at a blue stone on a chain. "Why does it have to be him? Why does it have to be your brother?" He addressed the stone. "Can I do it...for you....for him? Can I really save him? He probably has not forgiven me yet. Will he accept help from me?"
"Why shouldn't he?" Kaoru answered.
"Milady!" he jumped, and the rake fell to the ground lifeless. He quickly hid the jewel.
"I knew it! I knew it from the start!" Kaoru beamed at him, then remembered, and curtsied before him. "Please, great wizard, I beg you, help the prince, before he loses the kingdom!"
"Kaoru, milady, I have told you countless times since you came..." he faltered.
"I'll be extremely lucky if I can get a rake to work as well as this one," she remained in a curtsy. "You are the one I seek. Please, great wizard of kind heart and fiery hair, please, help the prince. Whether he has forgiven you or not, please help him."
"But.....but.....I have told you......"
"Don't you at least care about the kingdom, if not for Enishi-sama?"
"Yes, I do....but....but....."
Kaoru could not argue soon after. She thought she saw a man speed by and look at them from the large gate. The speed was horrific, but it was not the chief retainer. He seemed like an ordinary man armed with magic equipment.
With his back to the gate, Kenshin emphasized his words. "It is a complicated matter, milady. I am not a wizard. Not anymore. That is all."
The man Kaoru saw had returned, with a bow in his hands. In the next second, he fired an arrow at Kenshin's back.
She was not good enough a magician to counter with split-second magic. She just pushed him away, and caught the arrow herself.
It hit her shoulder. She fell to the ground.
In his fright, he dropped all pretences.
"Lock In Place!!" Kenshin quickly pointed at the shooter, and the man froze where he stood.
The stableman teleported to the spot, and touched the man's head. "Word of Truth," he cast. "Talk! Who sent you? What is your purpose? What kind of arrow was that?"
Only the poor man's mouth moved. "Master Aoshi knows you are here, and he wants you dead. The arrow is not magic, but it has been laced with poison at the tip. The victim has three hours at most to live."
"Antidote!" Kenshin demanded.
"A spell only high-level magicians would know, Master Aoshi being one of them. That was all he told me."
Kenshin held the man's head again for a longer time until a warm glow appeared. He then intoned, "You will forget that you came here. You will go back to your town, and you will return to your family. You will not return to your master. Is that understood?"
"Yes, sir," the man replied blankly.
Finally and hastily, Kenshin snapped a finger, releasing the man from the lock on movement. The man shook his head, as if to shake off a daze, and looked around in confusion at the royal stable. But Kenshin did not answer the man's head-scratching. "Go, now." The man dropped the bow and obeyed.
When Kenshin returned to her side seconds after, she was already fading in and out of consciousness. "Why in the world did you do that, milady?" he asked.
She smiled and murmured with faint breaths. "I knew it. I knew it from the start."
He peered down on her, and sighed. "I suppose the fact cannot be hidden any longer."
"Don't worry about me, Kenshin. Save the prince."
"Stop talking, milady! The poison will course faster through your system!"
Hearing the ruckus, the other two stablemen returned at a run. They were surprised to see Kenshin directly over the young lady laid out on the hard ground. "Now THAT's fast!" Sanosuke commented.
"No time to explain!" Kenshin shouted back.
He looked intently at the young lady, who was now deathly pale. "Listen to me, milady. I will do everything I can to save you, but first I have to put you into a long sleep, to slow down the movement of the poison until I am sure what it is. Are you agreeable?"
She could only nod faintly.
He kneeled beside her, placed his hands over her heart and her head. He closed his eyes, knit his brows, and cast the spell. "Deep freeze." He then watched her closely as her body became cold and lifeless by degrees. Within seconds she seemed like a corpse. He checked her wrists and lips, and sighed in relief.
"Is she....will she...." Yahiko asked with terrified gawking eyes.
"She is still alive, but only in suspended animation, you might say," Kenshin answered. "It will buy us a little more time. I hope we make it."
He rose to move Kaoru from the stable floor, as his memory jewel fell to the ground. He first ignored it, and made sure he placed her comfortably on the bed for stablemen on night shifts. Satisfied, he walked back to the sapphire strung on a chain. He peered down at the memory sapphire. "I already lost you to a miscast spell. I swear, I will not let this young lady die!" He gripped the jewel tightly, and looked back at Kaoru's almost lifeless body. "I will not let this young lady die."
..............
The memory jewels were a spur-of-the-moment thing, but I liked them, hope you did, too! I'm a sucker for Nightcrawler in X-men Evolution, hence all the teleportation in this chapter. Thanks for reading!
.............
"I am NOT sleeping with that.....that....beast!"
It was the new palace magician. She sat herself by the fountain, under the night sky. As she elegantly tossed her head and smoothed out her silky black hair, she protested at nobody in particular. She allowed the mist rising from the fountain at the center of the palace to cool off her heated brain.
"I have done what you have asked. I got myself into the prince's good graces, I removed the Overwrite, and now I'm the palace magician. But I draw the line at sleeping with him! He is a ruthless tiger!"
A mysterious voice answered from the shadows. "It is merely a result of the Eyes of Malice."
Megumi clenched a fist in chagrin.
"Of course, it will help us if you could spread the word about it around here," the voice continued. "The faster his deteriorating reputation spreads, the easier it would be for our master to take over this territory."
"YOU work for Lord Shishio, Aoshi. I am merely forced to work for you," she snapped.
The shadow called Aoshi stepped up to the light. He wore a flowing cloak, dark as the night, and stood before the defiant magician. He raised a small burlap bag, and started to toss and catch it. "Are you complaining, Megumi?"
Megumi stared at the burlap bag with horror, and relented. "No...no...I'm not complaining."
"I thought so," the shadow returned the bag into his cloak. "I know you love your father enough to do anything."
She turned her back on him. "I liked you better a few years ago. Being an evil sorcerer never suited you."
He remained silent for a few moments. "Just do your job, Megumi. I will come back to check on you next week. By then preparations for invasion might just be complete. Especially if complaints like yours spread like wildfire." He covered himself under the cloak, and he blended into the night.
Still sitting by the fountain, Megumi demurely began to cry.
She buried her face in her hands. "The snow prince is annoying, but he does not deserve what's coming to him. I should never have agreed to this..."
"May you please explain, Megumi, milady?"
She was surprised to see another man sit beside her. She never saw where he came from. He wore the simplest of magician's clothes, but they glowed with a brilliance unusual to common practitioners. He asked with a kind smile, and seemed nice enough. Still, he scared the life out of her. She had not even felt the aura of a person arriving from teleportation, he was that fast and that good. She went down on her knees and bowed.
"I don't deserve to be visited by such an honorable wizard as yourself," she remained with face inches from the ground.
"Nonsense, milady," he smiled. "Get up! I have not been an honorable wizard for a long time. I cannot even believe my teleportation skills are still fine; I have been out of practice." He scratched his auburn head, hidden under a large hat, in embarrassment. "Now, milady, what was coming to the snow prince?"
"Lord Shishio has plans, yet again, to take over Prince Enishi's territories," she began. "But this current plan is the most organized so far, and it just might work, if my end of the plan works as well. I suppose I don't have to tell you, but I am the one who disabled that Overwrite placed by the old magician. I would have wanted to actually make it stronger....but....but....."
"Yes, milady?"
"Aoshi has my memory ruby...and if I don't do what he says, he will destroy it.....and.....and...it's my only remembrance of my father...." She broke down and cried a little more.
"I....understand," he replied.
From inside his coat, he retrieved a medium-sized sapphire strung to a chain. He took it into his palm, and looked into it. Megumi did the same.
Inside the sapphire the face of a delicately smiling young woman appeared. Eventually scenes of the lady and the wizard having a good time in the woods appeared and disappeared in succession. They were the memories of a woman worth remembering.
"Beautiful woman," she said with sympathy.
"Thank you," he smiled sadly at the jewel.
He added to himself. "Can I do this...for him..for her?"
He then replaced the sapphire into his coat, and looked at Megumi, "You are working for...Aoshi?! But Aoshi is...."
"Not the same as when you knew him years ago. The power Lord Shishio gave him as chief sorcerer has reached his head. Now he only works to gain more power for his master, and in so doing gain more power for himself.
"Basically, my mission is to ensure that the Eyes of Malice takes its full effect on the prince. Either he will be too selfish to notice he is being taken for a fool, or the people will be so angry at him they will take him down themselves. In either case, he will most likely be killed. And no matter how much I hate that snowhaired annoyance, I do not want him dead."
He nodded. "I thank you for the information, Megumi, milady."
"I'm sorry I can't undo what I have done; Aoshi will know and I will be punished."
"I know, milady. And if I interfere with your spells he will also be suspicious. I will be back. In the meantime, tell the princess to always repeat the chant of the Overwrite, especially in front of him. It minimizes its damage."
With a little swirl of the hand, the wizard of the fiery hair dematerialized, and left Megumi alone.
She smiled at the sky. "Thank you."
................
"I can't believe the princess already knows I stay here!" Kaoru stomped at the hay, a crumpled note in her hands. "She gave me a good-luck note!"
"Word travels fast in the kingdom, Miss former palace magician," Sanosuke explained as he raked away. "Faster than even the chief retainer can run."
"Word is, you've already been replaced!" Yahiko added. "And the new girl is HOT!"
"And the prince's head over heels about her!" Sanosuke continued.
Kaoru felt the blood rushing to her head. "How DARE you talk like that about Enishi-sama! He has a good relationship with the princess; why would he flirt with my replacement?!"
"You're just jealous he didn't flirt with you, you HAG!"
"Why you little...." she took out her wand and began to furiously wave it around, until fairy dust began to accumulate at its tip. "I'll turn you into a TOAD!"
But before she could actually point the wand, a well-aimed stone hit her on the hand and made her release it.
"Please do not set the stable on fire, Kaoru-milady!" Kenshin shouted from the large and wide doors. He then walked into the stable and absently took up a rake.
"You've been out all night!" Sanosuke greeted. "Who's the lucky lady?" Yahiko whistled in turn. Kaoru turned her back on the stablemen.
But he did not answer. Instead he started to rake the nearest stall with lowered head.
The other three endured the silence for a while as they continued cleaning the stable. Yahiko began brushing horses, Sanosuke finished off the other stalls, and Kaoru, with a little instruction, managed to clean a few saddles. But the unnatural silence was unbearable.
From roughly the middle of the stable, Kaoru saw Yahiko pull Sano away, and also saw Kenshin rake the same stall at the other end. "What's the matter with him?" the boy asked the young man.
"Beats me, but I guess we better leave the guy alone for a while," Sano answered, and went outside.
Something was indeed bothering the redheaded stableman, and Kaoru could guess she was partly the reason for it. The man was hiding something from her and his two friends. She did not understand. Everything she had seen and heard so far seemed to confirm her hunch. He was the most powerful wizard, one of the last few with fiery hair. Why would the best wizard in the territory hide himself and his powers? Why did he keep denying what was almost obvious?
When Kaoru looked back at Kenshin's end of the stable, the rake was raking by itself!
She rubbed her eyes, confirmed that she was not hallucinating, and walked toward the stall. When she got there, indeed, the rake moved by itself and took up the last of the hay.
Beside the enchanted rake, the redhaired stableman stood, and looked down at a blue stone on a chain. "Why does it have to be him? Why does it have to be your brother?" He addressed the stone. "Can I do it...for you....for him? Can I really save him? He probably has not forgiven me yet. Will he accept help from me?"
"Why shouldn't he?" Kaoru answered.
"Milady!" he jumped, and the rake fell to the ground lifeless. He quickly hid the jewel.
"I knew it! I knew it from the start!" Kaoru beamed at him, then remembered, and curtsied before him. "Please, great wizard, I beg you, help the prince, before he loses the kingdom!"
"Kaoru, milady, I have told you countless times since you came..." he faltered.
"I'll be extremely lucky if I can get a rake to work as well as this one," she remained in a curtsy. "You are the one I seek. Please, great wizard of kind heart and fiery hair, please, help the prince. Whether he has forgiven you or not, please help him."
"But.....but.....I have told you......"
"Don't you at least care about the kingdom, if not for Enishi-sama?"
"Yes, I do....but....but....."
Kaoru could not argue soon after. She thought she saw a man speed by and look at them from the large gate. The speed was horrific, but it was not the chief retainer. He seemed like an ordinary man armed with magic equipment.
With his back to the gate, Kenshin emphasized his words. "It is a complicated matter, milady. I am not a wizard. Not anymore. That is all."
The man Kaoru saw had returned, with a bow in his hands. In the next second, he fired an arrow at Kenshin's back.
She was not good enough a magician to counter with split-second magic. She just pushed him away, and caught the arrow herself.
It hit her shoulder. She fell to the ground.
In his fright, he dropped all pretences.
"Lock In Place!!" Kenshin quickly pointed at the shooter, and the man froze where he stood.
The stableman teleported to the spot, and touched the man's head. "Word of Truth," he cast. "Talk! Who sent you? What is your purpose? What kind of arrow was that?"
Only the poor man's mouth moved. "Master Aoshi knows you are here, and he wants you dead. The arrow is not magic, but it has been laced with poison at the tip. The victim has three hours at most to live."
"Antidote!" Kenshin demanded.
"A spell only high-level magicians would know, Master Aoshi being one of them. That was all he told me."
Kenshin held the man's head again for a longer time until a warm glow appeared. He then intoned, "You will forget that you came here. You will go back to your town, and you will return to your family. You will not return to your master. Is that understood?"
"Yes, sir," the man replied blankly.
Finally and hastily, Kenshin snapped a finger, releasing the man from the lock on movement. The man shook his head, as if to shake off a daze, and looked around in confusion at the royal stable. But Kenshin did not answer the man's head-scratching. "Go, now." The man dropped the bow and obeyed.
When Kenshin returned to her side seconds after, she was already fading in and out of consciousness. "Why in the world did you do that, milady?" he asked.
She smiled and murmured with faint breaths. "I knew it. I knew it from the start."
He peered down on her, and sighed. "I suppose the fact cannot be hidden any longer."
"Don't worry about me, Kenshin. Save the prince."
"Stop talking, milady! The poison will course faster through your system!"
Hearing the ruckus, the other two stablemen returned at a run. They were surprised to see Kenshin directly over the young lady laid out on the hard ground. "Now THAT's fast!" Sanosuke commented.
"No time to explain!" Kenshin shouted back.
He looked intently at the young lady, who was now deathly pale. "Listen to me, milady. I will do everything I can to save you, but first I have to put you into a long sleep, to slow down the movement of the poison until I am sure what it is. Are you agreeable?"
She could only nod faintly.
He kneeled beside her, placed his hands over her heart and her head. He closed his eyes, knit his brows, and cast the spell. "Deep freeze." He then watched her closely as her body became cold and lifeless by degrees. Within seconds she seemed like a corpse. He checked her wrists and lips, and sighed in relief.
"Is she....will she...." Yahiko asked with terrified gawking eyes.
"She is still alive, but only in suspended animation, you might say," Kenshin answered. "It will buy us a little more time. I hope we make it."
He rose to move Kaoru from the stable floor, as his memory jewel fell to the ground. He first ignored it, and made sure he placed her comfortably on the bed for stablemen on night shifts. Satisfied, he walked back to the sapphire strung on a chain. He peered down at the memory sapphire. "I already lost you to a miscast spell. I swear, I will not let this young lady die!" He gripped the jewel tightly, and looked back at Kaoru's almost lifeless body. "I will not let this young lady die."
..............
The memory jewels were a spur-of-the-moment thing, but I liked them, hope you did, too! I'm a sucker for Nightcrawler in X-men Evolution, hence all the teleportation in this chapter. Thanks for reading!