The Dragon Priestess

AvalonReeseFanFics

A/N: It's been a long time, but I have the update. I've been having a lot of trouble with updating recently, mostly because I have a full-time job now and not as much time to write. So, what we're going to be doing is going on a bit of a hiatus while I try to finish chapters so I can keep up a posting schedule for you. I'm so sorry for that, hopefully I still have some readers when I come back! Thanks for your understanding and I hope to see you all soon.

Chapter 25: The Day the Angel Flew pt. 3

Brooke was not in a good place.

She was unsafe, she was upset, and her internal filter was gone.

She had been sassing their captors right, left and center, and though Van hadn't said anything to her, he was giving her odd looks. Looks that probably meant: shut up but she just couldn't. She literally could not stop herself.

Miss. Gribly had told her over and over, her sarcastic wit was going to get her hurt some day, mainly because she kept using it in all the wrong places and at all the wrong times.

Well, today was probably going to be that day.

Once they got Van out of Escaflowne, they had taken him, tied him up, strung him up and then just gone about beating the shit out of him.

They were on round three of this beating. The man was counting, she wasn't sure what he was counting but he wasn't the amount of times he was hitting Van, because he hit him between each number.

Brooke had also been delaying this whole process by just being problematic from the start. The soldier that had caught her had been bit so hard he was currently getting first aid, the second one that came close to her got kicked in the nuts, he was still on the ground moaning about it. The one that had her now had gotten lacerated by her nails, which she didn't think she could do, but she did. And of course, she was being sassy.

Every time the Pink haired leader asked Van a question, she would answer for him.

Yeah, that guy didn't like that. Probably because he could tell that she was lying. She was being blatantly obvious about it, but honestly she was just trying to stall.

They finished up round three of wailing on Van. Brooke had two men holding onto her, and she was still struggling to get out of their grip, and failing. They were, however, trying to keep away from her, no doubt afraid she'd lash out again.

Brooke, hadn't given up though. And she hadn't stopped the sass either.

"Stop it! Let him go!" Brooke cried. "Or at least fight him like a man, instead of the coward you are!"

The man with the pink hair turned, snapped his fingers and someone whacked her over the head with a stick.

"OW! Really?!" she cried once the stars left her eyes, cause that one hurt. They actually might have given her a concussion, but that wasn't going to be good for them either because it lowered her inhibitions, and made her even more prone to sass and sarcasm. "You're not even man enough to hit me yourself?"

See.

Now she was certain her filter had been turned off entirely.

And it was all their fault, not hers, theirs.

He turned again, snapped those fingers and Brooke's eyes, hot with an indignant rage turned to the soldier that was already moving forward with that stick raised. The look alone froze him in place.

"Let me make this perfectly clear, if you hit me with that stick again I will kick you so hard your nuts will go up into your throat."

Brooke then held his gaze, hoping to keep him frozen in place. "I'm serious. See that guy down there, he's still in pain… and I wasn't even trying to kick his nuts up into his throat," she warned.

His eyes darted to the other man who had managed to sit up, but was still cradling his junk and moaning. Now it was about phantom pains, like his balls were reliving the pain over and over again.

His eyes turned back to her and she snorted at him, her nostrils flaring out. "Try me," she growled in her deepest demon-esque like voice.

"Well don't just stand there," the man with the pink hair said but the soldier didn't move, he kept glancing between them until he finally stepped back.

"I don't really want to chance it…"

"Are you serious?! She's just one girl!"

At that Brooke turned that angry glare onto the man in charge.

"And that goes for you too, you walking Furby. You don't know what that is, but it's an insult. Trust me!" The man with the Pink hair took a step forward and Brooke added: "And I bite."

"It's true she does," the soldier who caught her said. He lifted his arm to show the bandage around his arm. As if they didn't remember she had bitten him so bad he was sure he was missing a piece of his arm. She really hoped he wasn't, because she didn't know where that chunk had gone. She hadn't spit it out, if she had taken a chunk out of him she might have swallowed it.

And thinking about that was making her stomach sick. She was already nervous too, so that wasn't helping the situation.

It did, however, make the man with the pink hair backed away.

"I'll deal with you later," he muttered and then turned back to Van, who they were miraculously done beating. "So you must be the dragon that Emperor Dornkirk's been looking for…"

"Nope, as I keep saying, we're traveling minstrels," Brooke said for the millionth time. "I can sing you a song if you'd like."

She didn't wait for a cue, in fact, she just immediately broke out into the most annoying song she could think of.

This is the song that never ends, and it goes on and on, my friends… some people—

The pink haired man slammed his elbow into Van's stomach causing him to grunt and Brooke came to an abrupt stop. She hadn't meant to get Van hurt… she figured he'd take his anger out on her.

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry, I'll stop."

That made him smirk at her, like he had won. And in a way he had, because he now knew that she was Van's weakness—evident because he had surrendered for her—and he was hers.

When he was done smirking at her, he turned back to Van. "Come on now, talk to me. What are you after? How did you find out about this place?"

But wouldn't answer, which was why he was getting beat up in the first place. Just tell the man she was psychic. She wouldn't have been mad at him for telling them, she'd even confirm it.

When he didn't answer he elbowed Van in the head and then he was stepping towards Brooke. Now why would he be doing that? She had been behaving. Well… for the last twenty seconds she had been anyway.

"Unbelievable… what an unreasonable young boy," he seemed to be saying to himself. At least… she figured he was talking to himself, because no one answered. Not even Brooke. He got on one knee in front of her and illogically Brooke thought this might be a marriage proposal, but nope, it was much, much worse. "Allow me to introduce my friend, young lady. This is Nina."

Nina was a fucking snake. Like a giant python type thing that had been winding around him this whole time.

"One bite from her and you're dead. But don't worry, she listens to me!"

She had been sort of hoping that he'd stay away from her because Brooke had a thing about snakes. It would have been smarter if she hadn't been sassing him and making major blows against his ego this whole time.

She could hear Miss. Gribly's I told you so even though she was a planet away from her.

She refused to show too much fear, instead she chose to show sheer insane anger.

"Right. You have two seconds to get away from me, or I'm going to make you look stupid."

The man with the pink hair laughed at her. She figured he thought her reasonably detained. Brooke didn't even bother to count out loud… or for that long. She got to two seconds in her head and jumped. She put one foot to his face and the other to his chest and then pushed off. She used him as a sounding board to shove herself away. She had pushed off with such force that she knocked him down to the ground and sent herself flying. The two men holding onto her, hadn't been able to compensate either, so all three of them went down to the ground.

She disentangled herself from the two men and quickly got herself up. She wanted to go to Van, grab a sword, get him down, though she wasn't sure she could actually swing a sword.

The problem was, the second she took a step forward, the man with the Pink hair sat up. His eyes were wide with anger, quickly scanning the area until he spotted her.

Brooke froze like a deer in the headlights. She knew if she got any closer to that man, he'd grab her. She glanced around herself and saw that the soldier were all up and ready for her, arms outstretched like this was a game of Red Rover and they thought she was going to rush at them.

She did not have the upper hand, this was not the time to be sassy but… well… she just couldn't help herself.

"Hey, I warned yah," she said with a smug sort of smile and a bit of a shrug.

Wrong thing to say.

The man with the pink hair went a shade of red that clashed with her hair, and she knew she had messed up.

"Nina! Get her!" he shouted and Brooke yelped.

She didn't even have time to sass, no time to plead, or ask him to call the snake off, as the snake was already unwinding from around the pink haired man at a surprising speed. Brooke turned right away and just dashed away, trying to avoid the reaching hands of the soldiers that had been inching towards her and the snake that was no doubt on her heels.

How fast were snakes anyway? She was figuring pretty fast.

She dove under the arms of one soldier, tucking and rolling once she hit the ground. She got up, dashed to the side and completely missing a lunge from the snake.

"No! Stop! Leave her out of this." Van screamed.

It was the first thing he had said. But the pink haired man wasn't listening, and Brooke was too busy avoiding getting captured and death by snake bite to call out a thank you, you know for caring.

She continued, found herself basically outnumber and semi-circled. She ran at one solider and jumped up, she used his chest as a wall to both push her back and flip backwards over the snake that was lunging again.

The snake bit that poor soldier as he was falling. Brooke hit the ground, but with a that much momentum she should have flipped again, but she wasn't sure what was behind her any more. She lost her balance and hit the ground a lot harder than she was equipped to handle.

Everything in her jolted and by the time she remembered something other than the pain in her side, it was too late.

The snake was coiled up in front of her, hissing horribly at her, fangs displayed.

You know, completely unnecessary.

"No!" Van screamed. "Brooke! Move!"

You think she'd just be sitting there if she could move?

She was screwed.

The snake reared back and she covered her eyes with her hands so she couldn't see the death blow se was about to get hit with.

Someone help me! she internally screamed in her head and was answered with a squelching Splat!

That horribly disgusting noise, that made her want to vomit, had been accompanied by an earth-shaking thud. Brooke moved her fingers first, peaking through them to see what had happened. Had someone thrown a rock at it? Was it her powers? Cause she didn't really have control of those, and this was totally something they'd do, even though she seemed to be more water based. Or was that just because she was usually around water when they decided to work for her?

What she found was a glint of metal in the sun and something much bigger and smoother than a rock. She lowered her hands completely and found that it was Escaflowne's hand in front of her, having flattened the snake.

"Oh Van you got into the…" she started and then spotted him just past the hand, mouth open in shock, still hanging there. She then glanced to Escaflowne who had no pilot and yet, had moved. "He can move on his own? Since when?"

Everyone was kind of in shock.

She was assuming because normal Guymelefus couldn't just move on their own. But Escaflowne was just… special right?

They were all frozen though, waiting to see what it would do next. Even Brooke was frozen, even though she kind of wanted to be climb up onto Escalfowne's lap where she figured it would be safer. But she was also worried if she moved it would break the spell that had descended upon the group.

Soldiers were whispering about it, wondering if it was a ghost 'meluf and other conspiracy theories, but none of them wanted to move, so that was good.

What broke the spell was Van.

He started swinging, out of nowhere. It took one pump, and then he kicked a sword out of a scabbard attached to a near-by solider and up into the air. The sword came down, cutting the rope that had been holding Van up before landing in the dirt by his feet.

Van's feet were already on the ground at that point. He stooped down, got that sword and immediately went about killing everyone between him and Brooke.

Soon all that was left was the pink haired man, who had drawn his sword, not to fight Van but to get to her.

Brooke, who had been cheering Van on, dove out of his way. The man slid to a stop, just shy of the edge of the little embankment that had been behind her. He turned ready to go for her again, but by that point Van had gotten to her. He was in front of her, his borrowed sword out in front of him.

She couldn't see his face, but she could guess that he was glaring at this man.

"You little twerp…" the pink haired man started.

"Get him Van!" Brooke cried.

Van just had to take one step forward and the man actually backed away.

He was a full grown adult, why the hell was he afraid of them? Two kids? Though to be fair, they had been kicking his butt, even while they were captured.

He teetered on the edge and lost his balance, falling down. He slid the short way, but into rocks, where he hit his head.

He did not get up again.

"Did that just kill him?" Brooke asked. Both her and Van were craned over that edge watching his prone body as it just lay there. His eyes were open, not-blinking and she could just make out the start of blood that would no doubt begin to pool around his head.

"Oh yeah, he's dead."

Together the two seemed to catch their breaths before Van turned to her.

"How did you do that?" he asked her.

For a moment she was confused as to what he was talking about it. It wasn't her fault that man fell off the cliff. But then she noted that his eyes were darting between her and Escaflowne, only then did she understand what he meant by that question.

"Me? I didn't do that! I thought you did! You mean that wasn't some autopilot function the Escaflowne has?"

Van turned to her. "What's an autopilot?"

Oh my god what was happening?

Van thought about it for a moment, then decided it wasn't worth it. Probably because there was a roar of charge from the soldiers and he realized they were about to get swarmed.

He pushed her away and into the opposite direction of the noise.

"Go find Merle and hide, there are more soldiers about."

"Wait, Van," she cried grabbing his arm. "Come on, we just got free. Let's… let's go. Please! Can we go. Let's just go!"

Van tugged his arm out of her grip, a look of angry confusion on his face. "I'm not done yet!"

Brooke wasn't going to let him go that quickly. "But you're hurt! And Escaflowne is doing things I'm assuming is not normal for a guymelef…"

"I'm fine, just go hide!" he called before rushing over to Escaflowne and climbing up into the cock pit.

"Ugh! MEN!" Brooke screamed as the Escaflowne took to the sky again.

The bad feeling was back and she couldn't even warn Van.

God she hoped she was wrong this time, because she couldn't handle any more danger or disasters today. She just couldn't.

Van should have been nervous about flying the Escaflowne so soon after it had… well… it had moved on it's own.

Guymelefs weren't supposed to do that.

He knew Brooke had something to do with, she was the one with magic powers. But… it might have been him too. Before it had moved on it's own, Van had been frantic trying to save Brooke while tied up. He kept thinking, if only he was in the Escaflowne, he'd be able to flatten that snake no problem.

And then Escaflowne had, in fact, flattened that snake, just like he had wanted it to.

He didn't have time to figure out what that was about though, he was still in a battle, he still had to put a dent in Ziabach's energist source. If he could just do that, they'd have a fighting chance against this country, who had clearly been planning for this war long before the started putting their plans into motion.

He took to the air heading for that massive store house they had. It was filled to the brim and then some of energists. If he could just destroy it, they'd be good. He could pick up the girls and leave, knowing that he had caused some sort of damage to Ziabach. Anything that might have slowed them down, even a little bit.

He knew it wasn't as bad as Zaibach destroying Fanelia, but it was a mark against them. He'd be a little bit closer to getting even with them.

As he got closer Escaflowne's energist started to glow, it was odd to see that, energists didn't just… glow. But as if answering the call of Escaflowne's energist, the energists in the store house began to glow too. All of a sudden Van was blinded by the glow coming from it.

"The Energists… they're resonating."

No sooner did he get that out did they all just explode. Escaflowne went limp against his controls, the shockwave from the explosion had it's sails. He was stuck riding the current until he could get control again.

But through the wind and the explosion he heard a scream he recognized. A scream that tugged at his heart and him scanning the ground below.

He had told Brooke to find Merle had hide. He could see a dot of pink hair that he knew was Merle's cause he could see her black spots accompanying it. The explosion had put cracks into the ground, it opened up chasms that were devouring guymelefs and carts of energists that were to be sent to the store house.

But it was also devouring Brooke.

A chasm had opened up at the bottom of the hill the two had been hiding on. She must not have been able to hold on.

She was dropping down into the dark, and Van had no control over Escaflowne at the moment. He wouldn't be able to rescue her.

Knowing nothing except that he had to save her, by any means necessary, he dove off of Escaflowne and fell after her.

Brooke had found Merle right away.

Once Van had left with Escaflowne, she had turned a corner and the cat girl was there hugging her.

She wasn't worried about Brooke, she was sure to tell her, she just wanted to know if Van was okay.

She informed her that he was, and then the two of them went to hide again.

They had picked a little gully to hide in, just below the edge so people wouldn't be able to see them, not that they were looking for them. They had realized that Van was heading for the storehouse for the energists, so they were trying to make it there. To stop him if they could.

Like they could.

Van had a head start and he was better than them too.

They weren't sure what happened but suddenly there was this defeating explosion and the ground around them began to shift and break apart.

Brooke hadn't had a grip on the ground when it had started to shake. A glow had been emanating from the front of her dress and when she investigated, she found that her pendant was glowing for some reason.

When she looked up, she could see the energists in the fossils around them were also glowing.

She had just been wondering if her pendant was of a similar material to the energists, and now she had that confirmation.

However, that meant that she wasn't holding onto anything when the ground beneath her and Merle opened up.

Merle had reached out for her, but she could see Merle's grip faltering and she didn't want her to fall with her. So she swatted Merle's hands away from her and then she was sliding down the hillside towards the darkness.

She remembered the pink haired man who had hit the ground the wrong way and crossed her arms over the back of her head so that wouldn't happen to her.

Not that it mattered because seconds later she was free falling into the darkness below.

As she watched as the light above her started to get smaller. It was so similar to that dream she had been having but this time, there wasn't going to be an angel to save her.

She squinted up at the fading light and for a second, she swore she saw something in it. She was sure she was dreaming, that she had passed out from sheer fear, that she was dreaming again because that speck in the light grew bigger and bigger until she realized that it was something coming towards her.

A someone with wings.

And angel.

Now in her dream, she had always wondered if it was Allen with the wings. The literal angel, rescuing her from whatever peril she had found herself in.

And while it was someone she recognized, it wasn't Allen.

She reached a hand out to him, and his gloved hand caught a hold her wrist, the wings flapping, stopping her descent with a painful jerk.

She… she wasn't dreaming.

He had saved her. He had the wings of an angel and he had saved her.

Brooke's heart was practically exploding in her chest, the darkness creeping around the edges of her eyesight wasn't the chasm they were in but spots in her vision. The adrenaline was running off and she was about to faint.

As she faded into black, she managed to whisper one thing to her saviour.

"It's you…"

And then things went dark for real that time, and he was left to rescue her all on his own.