Hey everyone. I'm back from a long break. I've actually been dreading this next chapter, since it has a *very* complex scene at the end, and I do not want to produce a subpar work. It's a matter of pride and dignity to me to try and give you guys the best damn story I can. I don't possess much skill, but I'm trying, folks. Hope this fanfic (and all my others, for big fans of mine) isn't too crappy.
Kudos to Nami&Siegy (who are either two people or one schizophrenzic, take your pic :), Mal, and all my other reviewers. You guys rule.
Enough of this. It's...
"SHOWTIME!"
Chapter 11
And the Center Cannot Hold
Town of the Wind God, somewhere south of present-day Tajikistan. Night.
The entire town was lit up with torches and wreaths, the air was filled with the scent of food and the sound of music, and Talim was boring Yunsung to tears. He briefly wondered, and not for the first time, if saving Talim had been a bad idea. The girl was driving him mad. All she did was talk, and talk, and talk... he didn't think she stopped even when she had her mouth full. Nor did she need to breathe, apparently; her position as a Wind God priestess had apparently given her a wierd relationship with air, allowing her to always have lungs full of air. Yunsung wanted to take the chicken leg he now held in his hands and beat her to death with it. His face showed no emotion, but a small and very pronounced tic had come into being on his right cheek. All Yunsung wanted was to leave, and fast. Unfortunately for him, he was stuck right where he was. As one of the "heroes" of this banquet, he was in a position of honor at the feast, sitting near the priests and priestesses at the head of the banquet "table" (it was actually an enormous cloth spread out over the main road), and to move away would have been a sign of utmost disrespect. Viewing the immediate future with great dread, he steeled himself up for it as best he could, like a warrior facing imminent death on the battlefield.
Mitsurugi, sitting across from him, was inwardly shaking his head at the scene before him. Talim was staring at Yunsung with the big, doe-like eyes that a young person of either sex gets after falling madly in love with someone else. The size of her love-struck eyes competed with her flapping mouth for coverage of her face. Caught in the throes of a young girl's crush, she wasn't noticing that Yunsung wasn't talking at all (and was also conveniently ignoring the tic Yunsung had recently gained) and so she filled in the silence with tales and stories of her life. Mitsurugi didn't know if the situation was sad or funny. He suspected it was both. Helping himself to his third piece of roasted pork (it had some strange sauce he'd never tasted before, but it was heavenly), he contented himself with food and drink, forgetting for a little while his great loss to Tanegashima.
Of course, in the corner of his mind where all the bad things in his life (from the first fight he'd lost, to the day he'd found out that one of his lovers had been killed in war) played over and over again, the loss to Tanegashima and all it's attendant events- the pain in his shoulder, the convulsed and jerky movements of his body, the roar of the crowd crying " Ijuko! Ijuko!". That had been the name of the man who had bested him, but Mitsurugi knew the truth; it had been Tanegashima, the rifle, and not Ijuko who had bested him. And that was the saddest part of his loss. He won battles not because his weapon was great and powerful, but because *he* was great and powerful. It was not right nor fit that a man should lose his place in battle to a machine (Mitsurugi refused to consider Tanegashima- and all firearms, for that matter- as real weapons). That, in a place and situation where the best in man and the worst in him were present, that all of a man's skills and training and willpower should mean nothing at all. It demeaned the act of combat, reduced it from an art and a dance and made it into nothing more than a race to see who could pull the trigger first. A man's skill, and not the power of his weapon, should be the deciding factor in a battle. This Mitsurugi believed.
Of course, the flip side of this coin was the fact of Mitsurugi's travels; he was seeking a weapon that was great and powerful, completely undercutting the skill factor in his desire to possess a weapon that could best firearms. A rather hypocritical quest, to defeat a weapon requiring no skill by finding a weapon that required no skill. As one of Mitsurugi's teachers had said during a training exercise, " If we follow this line of thought through to it's ultimate end, where does it lead?"
And indeed, where did this line of reasoning lead? It was a question Mitsurugi pondered often as he walked the roads leading to the fabled west and the golden lands of Europe. A question he sometimes feared to answer.
But at the moment, such high and vaunted metaphysical exercises were not on his mind. He was busy eating and enjoying himself, mostly by watching the extremely calm Yunsung (Mitsurugi wondered if the man's face was paralyzed; he almost never showed emotion at all, just a sort of calm detachment) getting pestered by the mooning Talim. Good times, all told. He reached forward to get a fourth piece of that wonderful pork (thinking to himself, [I must find out what the recipe for this sauce is]), and unwittingly saved his own life.
The great windmill exploded, sending flaming fragments everywhere. A piece of one of it's immense vanes, whirring and burning like some saw blade from Hell, came spinning out towards the row of feasters. The vane's blade-like end passed right where Mitsurugi's head had been not two seconds beforehand, and he felt the immense heat of it on the back of his head as it passed. It actually brushed the end of his hair, passing through it like a hot wind from some parched desert. Had he not been leaning forward, it would have killed him. As it was, he ducked and leaned forward somewhat after the fact, mind quickly absorbing pertinent facts in a mental shorthand developed from years of warfare and ambushes. Mitsurugi was a hard man to surprise, a fact that was saving his life at the moment. Wine and food splashed the front of his shirt as he dove for cover. Other flaming chunks rained down on the crowd, and as Mitsurugi rolled to get out of the wide open street (which his mental shorthand had rather chillingly deigned as "death trap") and into an alley, he saw the effect these had on those not lucky enough to get out of the way before the flaming meteors struck. Crimson tears rained down across the sky, and the sound of their impacts in flesh was like the laughter of demons in full wonder at the misery of man. Mitsurugi rolled, and as he rolled he saw some of the devastation around him. One man was struck in the face by a burning fragment of stone, and it did not tear his head off so much as *explode* it; one minute the man's face was puffing inward slightly from the impact, the next his face had exploded into a trail of gore that followed the burning stone like the tail of some strange comet. A woman beside him shrieked and fainted. A little girl, probably his daughter, cried out as well, grabbing his now headless and collapsing form and screaming for all she was worth. A woman nearby had just looked up when another piece of the windmill's immense vanes came blurring towards her. It's edge sliced neatly through her, in a diagonal line under her neck and tilting forwards. The momentum of the windmill vane dragged her head, neck, and most of the front of her body off with it as it bounced off the road and continued it's travels to bury itself in the thatched roof of a nearby house, setting it on fire as it did so. What was left of the woman was one of the more gruesome sights Mitsurugi had ever seen; her hands were folded neatly in her lap, staying as they had been when she was alive, looking for all the world like a woman at a tea party... and yet her front was a mixture of blood and gore. He saw her internal organs, and in the split-second Mitsurugi saw her he noticed that gravity hadn't taken hold yet. All the organs were in place, some meat was still left around them, and blood was gushing out of her body. It was a sight that Mitsurugi knew would appear in his dreams later.
Then he completed one part of his roll, and for a blessed second saw nothing but the white of the feasting blanket and the foods he had been eating so calmly just a few seconds ago. Rice, chicken, and assorted fruits passed before him, anecdotes from another time and place that had just recently passed away. Mitsurugi was now most of the way across the banquet cloth, most of the way towards his ultimate goal of an alley (and from there, up one of the hills, where the raining chunks of death would be less likely to reach). It struck him belatedly that he should have rolled backwards, not forwards, since an alley and what little safety it might provide had been right behind where he had been sitting during the feast. Of course, it was far too late to do anything about it now; looked like he'd just have to stay the course for the moment.
During another of those hellish glimpses of the disaster that had befallen this town, he saw Yunsung grab Talim up from a burned, squashed looking corpse- from the flowing robes all about it, Mitsurugi guessed it was another member of the priests of this town- and begin running down the street. Mitsurugi would have shouted out to him, but at the next moment someone stepped on the samurai, and the breath was knocked out of his chest. His roll stopped for the moment, Mitsurugi glanced up at the sky. The crimson tears no longer brightened the face of night, but they no longer had to. Roofs and houses were on fire everywhere. This entire place was going to become a hellhole of flame in a few minutes.
Getting up and running as fast as he could towards the nearest alley (holding his head down the whole way so he could dodge the burning pieces of windmill and corpses that lined the streets), he soon reached the alleyway. Hands on his knees as he paused for a quick breath, he looked up, hoping to see a clear exit up to a hill. Instead, a large piece of windmill vane was stuck crosswise in the alley, blocking the path both with it's own mass and with the flames gouting out on either side of it. Mitsurugi cursed. Looking out into the streets, his mind flashing on red alert, he entered the inferno.
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Main street of the Town of the Wind God. Same time.
Yunsung ran with greater speed than he'd ever believed possible, running for all he was worth down the streets. People were screaming, screaming for their loved ones, for help from the Wind God, in terror at the disaster around them, just screaming their heads off. Yunsung ran, his calm face shaking a little bit at the extent of devastation around them. Talim hung limp in his arms, horror overtaking her, letting out little sobs of fear and pain that were overwhelmed by the louder shrieks all around them. And by the endless drum roll of fire. That was quickly started to overwhelm everything. Yunsung ran, not really knowing where he was going, just trying to get out of the town.
And then, looming up before him, symbols of safety turned into a nightmare of danger, he saw what had become of the town's main gates. They were on fire. Burning and blazing, they seemed less like the gates of the town and more like the gates of hell. As Yunsung stared blankly at them, he noticed the chunk of windmill vane (and what force in the world could have thrown them so far and so hard?) stuck in it like some conqueror titan's broken blade, the small forms of the guards trying to escape the firetowers they now found themselves in, the small forms leaping to their deaths from the blazing gates...
Behind him, panting hard, he heard a gruff voice say, " Come on! You can't get out that way! Follow me!"
Yunsung turned and saw Mitsurugi, already some distance away, waving back to him. For a moment Yunsung resisted following him, thinking [He's going back into the fire! What's wrong with him?] when he realized that he had no choice but to follow the samurai. Carrying the still limp Talim in his arms, Yunsung ran after the Japanese samurai, already disappearing down an alleyway. As Yunsung ran after him, he saw that a large crowd had tried to escape the fires by running down this path as well. Ahead of him, yelling various incoherencies, a large crowd of people had gathered at the top of one of the hills surrounding the town. They were all talking and screaming at the same time, and even from here Yunsung could see no way out. The walls around the castle, made to keep enemies out, were now quite effectively keeping the townspeople in. Already more than half the town was on fire. Like some great, monolithic pyre, the immense windmill burned on and on in the center of the town. Mitsurugi grabbed Yunsung when he reached the back of the crowd, and turned him around to face him. The samurai had to shout to be heard over the noise of the crowd.
" We have to climb!" the samurai said, emphasizing each word. Yunsung nodded. They turned towards the walls, and already Yunsung's trained mind was picking out footholds and handholds, little cracks and niches in the wooden wall where he could ascend up...
In his arms, Talim coughed, an automatic reaction brought on by the thick smoke piling up everywhere. Yunsung looked down at her, and realized something. To save himself, he would have to put Talim down so he could climb up. And there was no way he could bring himself to coldheartedly murder someone like that. His own sense of justice was railing against it.
And something else, closely related, was the fact that he could not just climb up and leave all these people behind. As he looked at the crowd, at the tears streaming down the faces of all these people who were losing their homes and would soon be losing their lives when the fires spread to the walls, the sense of justice in him railed at the coward who would run away and save his own life without attempting to save theirs.
" I can't!" he shouted back to Mitsurugi, who had already begun to scramble up the wall. Mitsurugi looked back, surprised, words already forming on his lips... and then the samurai saw the girl Yunsung was holding in his arms. Mitsurugi said something- Yunsung was quite sure it was a curse- and then dropped down from the wall. Looking at Yunsung, Mitsurugi asked, " What are we going to do, then?"
[ I wish I knew,] Yunsung thought glumly, then looked around for inspiration. Was there something, anything, around here he could use to do... what? Make a ladder for scaling the wall? No, that wouldn't work... what would the people land on on the other side? Maybe there was something nearby to ram the wall down...
Glancing about, Yunsung saw where a section of wall had been partially destroyed by chunks from the great windmill. A hole, about six foot off the ground, lay gaping in the wall. A long wooden beam, from a nearby lumber yard, lay on the ground next to it. So far, it had escaped the fire steadily consuming the town. The beautiful tapestries that had hung over this section of wall were already on fire, separating from the wall and falling down in what seemed to Yunsung like a slowness completely out of proportion with what was happening all around them. The figures on it did not move as they had when Yunsung had entered the town, and for the first time Yunsung noticed that the wind wasn't blowing. It had blown here constantly, from the time they'd entered town to the time they'd sat down to feast, so what had happened? Did the great windmill's destruction have something to do with it?
Pushing the question aside until later, Yunsung yelled to Mitsurugi, " Over here!" The samurai quickly ran over to the Korean fighter, and in a few quick shouts Yunsung got his message through. Mitsurugi nodded and ran over to the beam. Putting Talim down in what he hoped was a safe spot (she still had that look of utmost horror and shock in her eyes, and Yunsung briefly worried that she might never recover from this) and grabbed the front end of the beam. Looking back at Mitsurugi, who nodded curtly and briefly, Yunsung ran forward with the beam, putting all his weight and strength behind it. He aimed at a weak spot in the wall, a place where the massive chunk of burning stone had knocked some of the boards loose. He gripped the beam and slammed forward with everything in him.
The boards shattered under the strength the two men put behind the board, breaking open into a small doorway big enough for a single man to walk through. Yunsung ran back to the crowd while Mitsurugi tried to clear out as much of the small opening as he could. Hating to do it but having to anyway, he used Shishi-Oh to hack a few lingering boards away. He glanced at the sword as he finished, and inwardly groaned. It was nicked, and badly. He'd paid a lot of money for this sword, and now it was already halfway to the breaking point. Turning around, Mitsurugi glanced at Yunsung and the crowd.
The head priestess of the Wind God was milling about, eyes wide open, her vaunted status forgotten in her need to escape and save herself. She was not yet so far gone as some of the other townspeople were- some were even now scratching and flailing at the walls in their panic, like rabid creatures stuck in a pit- but she was close, caught between utter denial and total shock. Yunsung shouted at her, trying to get her to turn around, but she kept glancing about madly, looking for hope in every place but the right one. Grabbing her shoulder, he jerked her around, and in her panic she struck out at him, hands flailing at his face. Dodging her attempts to scratch out his eyes, Yunsung smacked her with his left hand. The shock of the blow (as a priestess, she was as used to getting hit as a mole was used to flying) stopped her, and the mad glaze departed her eyes for a moment. Yunsung yelled at her, trying to reach her before she went into shock again.
" WE HAVE AN EXIT!" he shouted, roaring over the crowd. " GET EVERYONE OUT OF HERE!"
Her eyes widening with understanding, she nodded to him and turned around. As Yunsung began running back to the exit, he heard her practiced orator's voice, sounding far more rough now, calling out to the townspeople to follow her to freedom, to safety. Yunsung ran to Talim, picking up her limp form and running for the small exit he and Mitsurugi had made. As he reached it, he saw Mitsurugi standing outside, hand on his swordhilt (now tucked back into it's scabbard), staring off into the distance with a look of wonder and shock. Not having time to ponder the samurai's actions, Yunsung ran on to safety. Behind him, the townspeople flooded out, widening the hole as they went, causing the upper portions of the wall to sway dangerously without support. And even as the upper wall finally gave up it's grip and tumbled down, the last of the townspeople had run out onto the plains.
The town burned.
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Town of the Wind God. Three minutes before.
Taki smiled as she walked through the streets of the burning town, her calm and measured stride the complete antithesis of the panicked flight of the townspeople about her. Mekki-Maru, blazing fiercely with the strength of it's latest meal, burned in her right hand. The townspeople instinctively avoided her, treating her in their panic like they would treat a leper in their calm. None of them even remembered having seen her, afterward- she was like a ghost of death, come to feast on the slaughter of the town and determined to eat her fill. Which she had, a few minutes beforehand. In that great windmill she'd just left.
Taki smiled again, her teeth seeming oddly sharper than they had any right to be, when she remembered what she'd just done. Oh, the pleasure and power of it... Mekki-Maru, as if sensing her thoughts, set up a sympathetic throb in her right hand. It, too, had sated it's fill up there. And it, too, was enjoying the sensation of *power* that flowed within her now, within both of them.
And why not? Mekki-Maru was hers, and Taki had come to understand that she was its. They were now one and the same. Mekki-Maru and Taki. Interchangeable terms for the same being.
Taki had been walking the roads of Asia when Mekki-Maru had trembled on her back. Pulling it out, it had seemed to tremble in her grip, like an overly eager hound dog on a leash. Not quite knowing what to do in her conscious mind, she instead obeyed what her subconscious was telling her to do. She placed the sword on the ground and stepped back from it, giving it room to do- what? What had it wanted to do? She hadn't understood what it had wanted when she'd placed it on the ground, but she understood now. It had spun around, pointing itself to the south, to this place. She'd picked it up and, deciding to trust the blade, walked down the road where it had pointed. That had been three days ago. Now, as she walked towards one of the walls of this doomed town, she understood why it had guided her here. She thought it over now, musing over what she had just done, and the power she'd taken...
She'd waited outside of the town until nightfall, Mekki-Maru's power easily disguising her from the humans inside the town. Mekki-Maru's power was stronger at night, although Taki knew that this wasn't because of the darkness present at night- rather, it was the exact opposite, and that the light present at night was what gave the sword its power. Silver moonlight, drifting down from above, empowered the sword somehow, gave it strength. And her instincts (or was it Mekki-Maru's? It did not matter now; they were one and the same) had told her that they would need all the strength they could muster for whatever lay ahead. So she'd waited. And as the sun went down and the moon went up, she had arisen from her position in a tree outside the village and leapt on top of the town's spiked walls. Landing with complete safety onto one of the wooden spikes that made up the town's barricade, she had observed from her vantage point that some sort of feast was going on. She'd smiled at her luck and ran across the rooftops, heading towards the great windmill in the center of town. Mekki-Maru had already told her it wanted to go there; when she'd glanced at it from outside the town, it had throbbed on her back, an aching symphony of need. Running on the rooftops, she'd reached the great windmill without anyone spotting her, and had started looking for a way in. Glancing upwards, she'd spotted an open window and smirked. She'd ran straight up the tower (a skill she'd picked up from her new companion) and entered through it, dropping onto the wooden boards of one of the top floors. Mekki-Maru had started shaking almost violently on her back, and she'd pulled it out. Mekki-Maru's flame, bright red in the moonlight, had brightened the room up so that she could see the great gears and wheels all about her. A stairway had stood before her, leading onto the top balcony, and she'd walked up it, Mekki-Maru trembling with excitement in her hand. Her eyes, burning with Mekki-Maru's power (as they always did when she held the sword), had been above a grin that showed the same excitement as was within the sword. Something was up here, yes. Something very, very valuable.
As she'd stepped onto the top balcony, a great voice had spoken to her, saying, " WHAT CREATURE IS THIS, WALKING HERE? WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE, HELLSPAWN?" The voice had seemed to swirl like the wind, coming and going like a breeze on a summer's day. The top of the windmill, creaking slightly with the noise of many gears spinning and turning, was a windy place, and the breeze had begun to grow stronger. Taki had said nothing, just holding onto Mekki-Maru. They stood there, waiting. Waiting for what, Taki did not know; but Mekki-Maru was with her. Nothing could best them, much less some strange, disembodied voice.
A gust of wind, strong enough to have picked up a normal human like a rag doll and toss the unfortunate soul far away, had blasted across the platform. Taki, who was far more than a normal human, had stood her ground easily enough. Mekki-Maru's flame had brightened at the blast of wind, as if feeding off it, almost like it was savoring a nice entree before the main course. The breeze stopped then, and Taki had the strangest feeling that the being behind all this was confused.
" WHAT IS THIS? SOMETHING...," the voice had stopped, and the breeze, which had started blowing again when it spoke, died down into nothingness. It had picked up when the voice asked, " WHAT ARE YOU? WHAT PURPOSE HAS BROUGHT YOU HERE?"
" My own," Taki had said, grinning and raising Mekki-Maru. The sword's red flame had brightened, had grown and widened and deepened. The noise of roaring flames, a song of fire, grew louder and louder in Taki's ears. The voice shouted something, something deafened underneath the drum roll of Mekki-Maru's fire, and as she listened to the growing sound of fire in her mind, it reached a crescendo...
The explosion completely destroyed the windmill. Taki, as bound to Mekki-Maru as it was to her, had floated unharmed and smiling in the raging, fiery madness that had replaced the top of the windmill. She had gazed into the sky, and what she had seen there had made her grin widen.
An air elemental, the Wind God of this town, had been before her, writhing and screaming in the flames. They had been dancing across it, consuming it, making it's airy form visible for all to see. It had faintly resembled some great bird, and through the crimson sheath of flames Taki had thought she saw the outline of two wings and a pair of great talons... but the head was not the face of an eagle, but the face of a lion. The great lion's head had been roaring and shrieking its pain, the screams becoming cyclone-force blasts of wind that had blown burning chunks of the windmill all across the town below them. Neither of the beings atop the tower had noticed the screams of pain and fear now echoing up from the town.
" WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?" it had cried in it's mighty voice, which had already started to weaken and die. " WHAT... HAVE YOU... DONE?"
" This," Taki had said, pointing Mekki-Maru at the dying being. Mekki-Maru's blade had glinted, and Taki had noticed that it was oddly free of flames, the first time she'd ever seen the real sword beneath the burning edges it created about itself. Strange, twisting designs flowed over it, and the blade was made of no metal she'd ever seen before. The metal seemed to shift, to unbalance and flow and flicker like lightning bugs seen at night. Taki had watched it, fascinated. Such a beautiful weapon. Hers.
As she had stared at the sword, the flames on the Wind God had become stretching spider-legs of fire, a net of blazing webbing that had seemed almost to grab the Wind God, to bind that airy, insubstantial form. And then, as the Wind God thrashed and screamed, trying to break from that thin but immeasurably powerful binding, the sword glinted once. The Wind God had shrieked again, a cry of pain... and then was utterly consumed by fire. It's form was burned up, consumed into nothingness. As Taki watched, part of her will concentrated with the blade's,the entire great mass of the burning air elemental had been devoured by fire. The flames had raged and roared, an onslaught of need and hunger. The hunger of Mekki-Maru.
Eventually, the burning had slowed to a mere shadow of it's former blaze. Taki was never sure how long that had taken, for it had seemed to be an eternity of burning... but in reality it had barely lasted a minute. And as the embers had begun to die, the flames had drifted back, back towards Taki, to Mekki-Maru. The flames touched it's shining metal blade and were sucked into it, like leaves consumed by a tornado. Soon the entire blazing form of the Wind God had been absorbed into Mekki-Maru, and nothing was left of the being once believed to be a god.
That event, so recently completed, had marked a change in Taki and her sword. What kind of change, how far reaching it would be, and how long it would take were not questions she could answer. But that didn't matter. Mekki-Maru was hers, and she was its. Nothing could stand before them.
These thoughts passed through her mind in the few seconds it took her to reach the wooden wall surrounding this portion of the town. Grinning and deciding to test Mekki-Maru's power, she raised the sword before her. She concentrated her will on the wall before her, and called to the sword. It answered her, with a blazing shriek, with flames that gouted forward. The wall before her vanished, burned into nothingness in the merest part of an instant. Stepping into the breach she had made, Taki smiled. Mekki-Maru made life so much easier.
She began walking calmly across the fields, already heading back to her original course, one that aimed for Europe and the shards of Soul Edge gathered there, her steps calm and measured. And then, as she rounded a small hill, she saw him. A man in samurai armor, back turned to her, his hair in the odd style so fashionable to the Japanese nobility these days. He was looking at the burning town in front of him, shaking his head slowly. Taki slowed down to a stop, wondering. She knew this man, didn't she? He seemed familiar, somehow...
He turned around, and she caught a glimpse of his face. And he saw her as well. Both of their eyes widened in surprise as they realized who the other was.
[Mitsurugi!] Taki had thought, her mind a confused jumble of thoughts and memories. They'd met many times before, and neither of them were on exactly good terms with the others. Like ninja everywhere, Taki thought the samurai were fools, and their honor the greatest stupidity they delved in. For his part, Mitsurugi, like samurai everywhere, thought the ninja were gutless cowards, unable to win in a real fight. He'd proven it several times as well, besting her in some of their more violent meetings. She'd won battles against him as well, but she'd been traveling with Sophitia at the time, and the Greek woman had always told her never to kill anyone. The main reason certain people (including Mitsurugi) had kept coming back to haunt them further down the road.
Sophitia's kindness, however, had not been the only reason she'd let Mitsurugi live. There was more to it. Far more. Differences in ideology and combat methods aside, they had been allies once. On a burned out battlefield in China, where their respective Samurai and Ninja clans had been stuck in the incongruous positions of having to rely on each other. Taki felt an odd (for a ninja) dislike for killing someone who had once been an ally. And, of course, there had been that ambush...
Why was Mitsurugi here?
She shook her head, not having time to ponder it now. She wanted to get away from this town and see what all she and Mekki-Maru had gained in this little excursion. She smiled at Mitsurugi, her teeth glinting wickedly in the firelight, and then turned away from him. Soon, her feet were hitting the ground at a rapid pace, and her figure was no more than a shadow at night.
In her hand, Mekki-Maru pulsed.
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Mansion of the Lions, Valencia, Spain. Daylight.
The battle with Cervantes might as well be occurring miles away from her. She wasn't watching it. She was too busy pondering what she would do now. Now that the hope she'd had of finding out who her real father was had turned into a nightmare. Now that she knew what would await her in the darkness beyond death, no matter what she did in life.
[ Why bother fighting?] part of her mind, a part both weak and arrogant, like a fool's queen, said to her. [ Why go through all the torment and peril of life, and suffer in this mortal coil? You'll have suffering enough to do in the next life, no matter what you do here. Let it end. Fall into whatever peace you can find in hellfire. For whatever else it may hold, Hell has this one virtue. While you suffer and bleed and burn, it may let you forget what you are.]
Ivy pulled her sword out of it's sheath. It made a slight ringing noise, which neither of the warriors before her heard. At the moment, Kilik was stabbing forth with his staff, piercing the strange being's great eye underneath the false coverage of Cervantes' form. So understandably, neither he nor Siegfried noticed what Ivy was doing.
[ Why try to redeem what is irrevocably fallen?] the voice asked her in her mind, laughing and crying with both shame and a black humor. [ Everything you've done means nothing. All your worships and prayers... nothing! God will not forgive you for this!]
A small part of her mind, gripping to sanity and logic when everything else was falling apart, spoke out against this lie.
[ You're wrong!] it shouted out at the pain in her mind. [ It says in the Bible that everyone can be forgiven!]
[ Please!] the other voice shouted back, deafening the small part of her that still had a grip on the truth and forcing it down into darkness. [ As if you really believe all that!]
Ivy placed her sword against her neck, closing her eyes as she did so. One quick, sharp blow. End it here and now. Let it all fall through...
She heard Kilik's cry but ignored it. What could he know? He, who gazed at the world as a monk, perfect in his own mind? What could he know of spiritual torment?
As she prepared to cut her own throat, to open the great vein in her neck that fed her mind, to spill her lifeblood and enter the yawning, gaping maw of Erebus, the flaming gate of Hell, something struck her on her forehead. She fell unconscious into darkness.
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" The Crying Dove", an inn in Valencia, Spain. Half an hour later.
Ivy lay on the bed, coming out of her unconscious in steps, moaning softly with pain. Above her eyes, almost dead center between them, a large and angry looking knot was rising where the chunk of plaster Siegfried had thrown at her had struck. He looked at it, wincing. That was going to hurt like hell for a long time. He hadn't meant to hit her so hard, but he'd freaked when he'd seen what she was going to do. It was all he could think to do at the time. He would not have been able to reach her fast enough with the wound in his side (now bandaged by Kilik), and Kilik had not been in any position to get to her either, chunks of fallen plaster and wood blocking the monk's path. So Siegfried had dropped to the floor (causing his side to shriek with pain) and in one swift movement grabbed a chunk of plaster, aimed, and fired. He'd originally intended to smack her sword and stop her for a second, giving Kilik time to stop her (the monk had been frantically working his way through the fallen piles when Siegfried dropped) but in his fear, he'd accidentally struck her in the head. Which was just as well. Kilik had reached her just in time to catch her unconscious form before it hit the floor.
Siegfried looked down at Ivy, waiting for her to swim upwards through the layers of her consciousness and reach full awareness. He was alone at the moment. Kilik had prepared a small medicine that would nullify the pain in Ivy's head for a little while. Kilik had said that with the few materials he had, the medicine wouldn't work for long, but that was alright. Siegfried needed to talk with Ivy, but he doubted the conversation would last long. Siegfried had asked Kilik to leave after preparing the medicine, stating that he wanted to talk to Ivy alone. Kilik, honoring his wishes, had left to prepare for his own journey. He was heading east, to Asia. Siegfried had no idea where he and Ivy were going next (although part of his mind quipped that it might well be a morgue if Ivy's suicidal tendencies hadn't let up when she awoke), but he'd asked Kilik to prepare small packs for them as well. The monk was a nice, decent man, and Siegfried would miss traveling with him when Kilik moved on. But that was part of being a wanderer; gaining friends and losing them was just part of the road. Still, honest men were hard to come by.
While Siegfried was musing over this, Ivy's eyelids fluttered up, and she blinked. Raising her hand to her forehead, she moaned, " Oh... my head..."
Before she could remember whatever had caused her control to snap in the mansion outside Valencia, Siegfried pushed the cup of Kilik's tea towards her mouth. He poured the semi-bitter liquid in. Ivy coughed and gulped, an automatic reaction to avoid drowning in the tea. It wasn't the best thing Siegfried could have day, but the day seemed determined to make him resort to such heavy-handed tactics. Oh well. Hopefully the tea would take to work quickly, so he could figure out what was wrong.
Coughing and spluttering, Ivy looked at him and said, " You bastard! What did you do that- Ohhh." She reeled for a second, holding her forehead with her hand. Laying where she was on the bed, she looked like some figure from a Shakespeare tragedy, awaiting the end on her deathbed. Pushing that image from his mind as fast as he could, Siegfried waited for the tea to take effect.
Ivy, for her part, felt the headache leave her like it had never existed. The rush of sudden calm was almost like a rush of air to a drowning man. Ivy touched her head gently, not wanting to provoke it into any more sudden rushes of pain. She found a knot there, and probed it softly, wondering all the while. Where had it come from? She remembered walking into that mansion outside town...
With an almost audible snap, her mind refocused. Oh God. The mansion. She'd forgotten about it. About her father.
" No," she moaned out loud, clapping her hand over her eyes.
" What is it, Ivy?" Siegfried asked, dreading the answer. Whatever it was, it had to be mighty unpleasant to provoke this kind of reaction from the stalwart Englishwoman.
She surprised him by laughing weakly, a self-deprecating and somehow frightening series of chuckles that reminded him far too much of Inferno in his more melancholy moments. " Oh, nothing," she said, her voice falsely carefree, " nothing at all. Just the fact that I now know who my father is."
" Who?" Siegfried said, understanding eluding him. He'd completely forgotten about the portrait of Cervantes in the mansion outside town. It had freaked him out, to turn around and see that long dead face behind him, but the ensuing battle and Ivy's suicide attempt had driven it from his mind. " Who is it, Ivy?"
" Oh, no one," she said, still in that self-mocking, self-hating voice, " nobody you'd know. Just a pirate named Cervantes."
Siegfried stopped dead, blinking at her for a second. It all came together now. The portrait. That weird creature. Ivy's wonder about whether a parent's sins carried over.
Oh shit.
Noticing the way Siegfried was looking at her, Ivy's demeanor changed. Despair washed over her. " You see?" she said weakly, shaking her sad, sad face, " This is my truth. I'm the daughter of a monster. Even God Himself could not forgive me for this."
" That's not true," Siegfried snapped, sounding harsher than he'd meant to. Something in him had actually gotten mad at this turn of events. Who in the bloody hell had decided that this should happen? Ivy deserved a better father than Cervantes.
" Isn't it?" Ivy said. She opened her mouth to say more, but Siegfried cut her off.
" No, it isn't," he said, parting the air with his hand in a chopping motion. " Listen to me, Ivy. Think back on the Bible. The first people, Adam and Eve, betrayed God. Betrayed His direct command! And yet their son Abel was a good and Godly man. How much less is Cervantes' evil? He has killed many, but that is a crime more people than either you or I can imagine are guilty of. Every king and queen who has started a war is guilty of the same things Cervantes has done. You," here he stopped, shaking his head and pausing for breath, " You've not done a damn thing wrong that I know of. You have killed no one. Your father is Cervantes. So what." Surprising even himself with this vitrol, Siegfried said, " That doesn't matter. Everyone can be forgiven. Evil follows down the generations, but everyone has someone in their family who's a monster. Maybe not as bad as yours, but not a single damn person has perfect ancestors. If having an evil ancestor was a sentence to Hell, no one would be saved! Not one soul on this earth." He shook his head, turning it away to look at the wall, his speech finished for the moment, save for one thing. " If you give up now, if you kill yourself in your pain, you are doing what the devil wants. He wants people to give up their lives and take the easy way out. Hold on, Ivy. For a little while, at least. It is the better path. Believe me on that. I know."
Not knowing what might happen next, where this conversation might lead- to what things in his past it might lead to- Siegfried turned to leave. There were no weapons in the room, and though Ivy might break out the dirty glass window and kill herself with the shards of glass (they were on the first floor, eliminating suicide jumps), but Siegfried doubted she would do that. Suicide was a way to take the weaker, easier path, and it lost it's attraction when it became hard to do. As he opened the door, trying to figure out from where that speech had come from, he heard Ivy say, " Is that it, then? Do you really think I can just pick myself up and be all happy again, knowing what I know?!? Do you?!?"
Siegfried turned, and the face he turned on Ivy caused her to move back in shock on the bed. She'd leaned up to spit her last words at him, leaning on her arm, but the sight of his face made her draw back. It was not the cheerful, happy face of the Siegfried she'd always known. Rather, it was the look of a much older man, a man so used to suffering and torment that they had marked his face. The lines on his face, lines she'd never noticed before, had deepened until his face looked as though it was carved from rock. It was haggard, weary, the face of a man who had been through more than his share of troubles. His eyes were pits of the deepest sorrow, seeming to speak of things far worse than mortal concerns. His blonde hair, hanging over this marked ruin like a death shroud, seemed less full of life somehow, not the bright strands of gold that normally blew about him, but pallid and lifeless gray things, sad things of ruin.
This was what hid behind the mask Siegfried lifted before the world, the face he kept secret even from himself. The face that held in it the sum of all he'd been through.
" No," this immeasurably sad stranger told her, words slow and solemn, " I don't think you can do that. And in some part of your mind, so deeply buried you're not even sure it's there, you never will. But that is the meaning of being human. To take all the experiences and twists and turns that life throws at you, and make what you will of them. Take what you know, and place it before who you are. And make your decision on what you will do about it. Both paths before you have suffering, but one has the promise of something greater at the end. The other ends in nothing but more suffering. I have been at the crossroads you now stand before, and I made my choice. And I have never looked back since."
He turned and walked out the door, shutting it as he went, feeling the weight of all his terrible experience on him. Ivy stared at the shut door, wondering what had happened to him, long after he had left.
- Whew. What a long chapter. Hope it was worth the wait. Read and review please!
Kudos to Nami&Siegy (who are either two people or one schizophrenzic, take your pic :), Mal, and all my other reviewers. You guys rule.
Enough of this. It's...
"SHOWTIME!"
Chapter 11
And the Center Cannot Hold
Town of the Wind God, somewhere south of present-day Tajikistan. Night.
The entire town was lit up with torches and wreaths, the air was filled with the scent of food and the sound of music, and Talim was boring Yunsung to tears. He briefly wondered, and not for the first time, if saving Talim had been a bad idea. The girl was driving him mad. All she did was talk, and talk, and talk... he didn't think she stopped even when she had her mouth full. Nor did she need to breathe, apparently; her position as a Wind God priestess had apparently given her a wierd relationship with air, allowing her to always have lungs full of air. Yunsung wanted to take the chicken leg he now held in his hands and beat her to death with it. His face showed no emotion, but a small and very pronounced tic had come into being on his right cheek. All Yunsung wanted was to leave, and fast. Unfortunately for him, he was stuck right where he was. As one of the "heroes" of this banquet, he was in a position of honor at the feast, sitting near the priests and priestesses at the head of the banquet "table" (it was actually an enormous cloth spread out over the main road), and to move away would have been a sign of utmost disrespect. Viewing the immediate future with great dread, he steeled himself up for it as best he could, like a warrior facing imminent death on the battlefield.
Mitsurugi, sitting across from him, was inwardly shaking his head at the scene before him. Talim was staring at Yunsung with the big, doe-like eyes that a young person of either sex gets after falling madly in love with someone else. The size of her love-struck eyes competed with her flapping mouth for coverage of her face. Caught in the throes of a young girl's crush, she wasn't noticing that Yunsung wasn't talking at all (and was also conveniently ignoring the tic Yunsung had recently gained) and so she filled in the silence with tales and stories of her life. Mitsurugi didn't know if the situation was sad or funny. He suspected it was both. Helping himself to his third piece of roasted pork (it had some strange sauce he'd never tasted before, but it was heavenly), he contented himself with food and drink, forgetting for a little while his great loss to Tanegashima.
Of course, in the corner of his mind where all the bad things in his life (from the first fight he'd lost, to the day he'd found out that one of his lovers had been killed in war) played over and over again, the loss to Tanegashima and all it's attendant events- the pain in his shoulder, the convulsed and jerky movements of his body, the roar of the crowd crying " Ijuko! Ijuko!". That had been the name of the man who had bested him, but Mitsurugi knew the truth; it had been Tanegashima, the rifle, and not Ijuko who had bested him. And that was the saddest part of his loss. He won battles not because his weapon was great and powerful, but because *he* was great and powerful. It was not right nor fit that a man should lose his place in battle to a machine (Mitsurugi refused to consider Tanegashima- and all firearms, for that matter- as real weapons). That, in a place and situation where the best in man and the worst in him were present, that all of a man's skills and training and willpower should mean nothing at all. It demeaned the act of combat, reduced it from an art and a dance and made it into nothing more than a race to see who could pull the trigger first. A man's skill, and not the power of his weapon, should be the deciding factor in a battle. This Mitsurugi believed.
Of course, the flip side of this coin was the fact of Mitsurugi's travels; he was seeking a weapon that was great and powerful, completely undercutting the skill factor in his desire to possess a weapon that could best firearms. A rather hypocritical quest, to defeat a weapon requiring no skill by finding a weapon that required no skill. As one of Mitsurugi's teachers had said during a training exercise, " If we follow this line of thought through to it's ultimate end, where does it lead?"
And indeed, where did this line of reasoning lead? It was a question Mitsurugi pondered often as he walked the roads leading to the fabled west and the golden lands of Europe. A question he sometimes feared to answer.
But at the moment, such high and vaunted metaphysical exercises were not on his mind. He was busy eating and enjoying himself, mostly by watching the extremely calm Yunsung (Mitsurugi wondered if the man's face was paralyzed; he almost never showed emotion at all, just a sort of calm detachment) getting pestered by the mooning Talim. Good times, all told. He reached forward to get a fourth piece of that wonderful pork (thinking to himself, [I must find out what the recipe for this sauce is]), and unwittingly saved his own life.
The great windmill exploded, sending flaming fragments everywhere. A piece of one of it's immense vanes, whirring and burning like some saw blade from Hell, came spinning out towards the row of feasters. The vane's blade-like end passed right where Mitsurugi's head had been not two seconds beforehand, and he felt the immense heat of it on the back of his head as it passed. It actually brushed the end of his hair, passing through it like a hot wind from some parched desert. Had he not been leaning forward, it would have killed him. As it was, he ducked and leaned forward somewhat after the fact, mind quickly absorbing pertinent facts in a mental shorthand developed from years of warfare and ambushes. Mitsurugi was a hard man to surprise, a fact that was saving his life at the moment. Wine and food splashed the front of his shirt as he dove for cover. Other flaming chunks rained down on the crowd, and as Mitsurugi rolled to get out of the wide open street (which his mental shorthand had rather chillingly deigned as "death trap") and into an alley, he saw the effect these had on those not lucky enough to get out of the way before the flaming meteors struck. Crimson tears rained down across the sky, and the sound of their impacts in flesh was like the laughter of demons in full wonder at the misery of man. Mitsurugi rolled, and as he rolled he saw some of the devastation around him. One man was struck in the face by a burning fragment of stone, and it did not tear his head off so much as *explode* it; one minute the man's face was puffing inward slightly from the impact, the next his face had exploded into a trail of gore that followed the burning stone like the tail of some strange comet. A woman beside him shrieked and fainted. A little girl, probably his daughter, cried out as well, grabbing his now headless and collapsing form and screaming for all she was worth. A woman nearby had just looked up when another piece of the windmill's immense vanes came blurring towards her. It's edge sliced neatly through her, in a diagonal line under her neck and tilting forwards. The momentum of the windmill vane dragged her head, neck, and most of the front of her body off with it as it bounced off the road and continued it's travels to bury itself in the thatched roof of a nearby house, setting it on fire as it did so. What was left of the woman was one of the more gruesome sights Mitsurugi had ever seen; her hands were folded neatly in her lap, staying as they had been when she was alive, looking for all the world like a woman at a tea party... and yet her front was a mixture of blood and gore. He saw her internal organs, and in the split-second Mitsurugi saw her he noticed that gravity hadn't taken hold yet. All the organs were in place, some meat was still left around them, and blood was gushing out of her body. It was a sight that Mitsurugi knew would appear in his dreams later.
Then he completed one part of his roll, and for a blessed second saw nothing but the white of the feasting blanket and the foods he had been eating so calmly just a few seconds ago. Rice, chicken, and assorted fruits passed before him, anecdotes from another time and place that had just recently passed away. Mitsurugi was now most of the way across the banquet cloth, most of the way towards his ultimate goal of an alley (and from there, up one of the hills, where the raining chunks of death would be less likely to reach). It struck him belatedly that he should have rolled backwards, not forwards, since an alley and what little safety it might provide had been right behind where he had been sitting during the feast. Of course, it was far too late to do anything about it now; looked like he'd just have to stay the course for the moment.
During another of those hellish glimpses of the disaster that had befallen this town, he saw Yunsung grab Talim up from a burned, squashed looking corpse- from the flowing robes all about it, Mitsurugi guessed it was another member of the priests of this town- and begin running down the street. Mitsurugi would have shouted out to him, but at the next moment someone stepped on the samurai, and the breath was knocked out of his chest. His roll stopped for the moment, Mitsurugi glanced up at the sky. The crimson tears no longer brightened the face of night, but they no longer had to. Roofs and houses were on fire everywhere. This entire place was going to become a hellhole of flame in a few minutes.
Getting up and running as fast as he could towards the nearest alley (holding his head down the whole way so he could dodge the burning pieces of windmill and corpses that lined the streets), he soon reached the alleyway. Hands on his knees as he paused for a quick breath, he looked up, hoping to see a clear exit up to a hill. Instead, a large piece of windmill vane was stuck crosswise in the alley, blocking the path both with it's own mass and with the flames gouting out on either side of it. Mitsurugi cursed. Looking out into the streets, his mind flashing on red alert, he entered the inferno.
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Main street of the Town of the Wind God. Same time.
Yunsung ran with greater speed than he'd ever believed possible, running for all he was worth down the streets. People were screaming, screaming for their loved ones, for help from the Wind God, in terror at the disaster around them, just screaming their heads off. Yunsung ran, his calm face shaking a little bit at the extent of devastation around them. Talim hung limp in his arms, horror overtaking her, letting out little sobs of fear and pain that were overwhelmed by the louder shrieks all around them. And by the endless drum roll of fire. That was quickly started to overwhelm everything. Yunsung ran, not really knowing where he was going, just trying to get out of the town.
And then, looming up before him, symbols of safety turned into a nightmare of danger, he saw what had become of the town's main gates. They were on fire. Burning and blazing, they seemed less like the gates of the town and more like the gates of hell. As Yunsung stared blankly at them, he noticed the chunk of windmill vane (and what force in the world could have thrown them so far and so hard?) stuck in it like some conqueror titan's broken blade, the small forms of the guards trying to escape the firetowers they now found themselves in, the small forms leaping to their deaths from the blazing gates...
Behind him, panting hard, he heard a gruff voice say, " Come on! You can't get out that way! Follow me!"
Yunsung turned and saw Mitsurugi, already some distance away, waving back to him. For a moment Yunsung resisted following him, thinking [He's going back into the fire! What's wrong with him?] when he realized that he had no choice but to follow the samurai. Carrying the still limp Talim in his arms, Yunsung ran after the Japanese samurai, already disappearing down an alleyway. As Yunsung ran after him, he saw that a large crowd had tried to escape the fires by running down this path as well. Ahead of him, yelling various incoherencies, a large crowd of people had gathered at the top of one of the hills surrounding the town. They were all talking and screaming at the same time, and even from here Yunsung could see no way out. The walls around the castle, made to keep enemies out, were now quite effectively keeping the townspeople in. Already more than half the town was on fire. Like some great, monolithic pyre, the immense windmill burned on and on in the center of the town. Mitsurugi grabbed Yunsung when he reached the back of the crowd, and turned him around to face him. The samurai had to shout to be heard over the noise of the crowd.
" We have to climb!" the samurai said, emphasizing each word. Yunsung nodded. They turned towards the walls, and already Yunsung's trained mind was picking out footholds and handholds, little cracks and niches in the wooden wall where he could ascend up...
In his arms, Talim coughed, an automatic reaction brought on by the thick smoke piling up everywhere. Yunsung looked down at her, and realized something. To save himself, he would have to put Talim down so he could climb up. And there was no way he could bring himself to coldheartedly murder someone like that. His own sense of justice was railing against it.
And something else, closely related, was the fact that he could not just climb up and leave all these people behind. As he looked at the crowd, at the tears streaming down the faces of all these people who were losing their homes and would soon be losing their lives when the fires spread to the walls, the sense of justice in him railed at the coward who would run away and save his own life without attempting to save theirs.
" I can't!" he shouted back to Mitsurugi, who had already begun to scramble up the wall. Mitsurugi looked back, surprised, words already forming on his lips... and then the samurai saw the girl Yunsung was holding in his arms. Mitsurugi said something- Yunsung was quite sure it was a curse- and then dropped down from the wall. Looking at Yunsung, Mitsurugi asked, " What are we going to do, then?"
[ I wish I knew,] Yunsung thought glumly, then looked around for inspiration. Was there something, anything, around here he could use to do... what? Make a ladder for scaling the wall? No, that wouldn't work... what would the people land on on the other side? Maybe there was something nearby to ram the wall down...
Glancing about, Yunsung saw where a section of wall had been partially destroyed by chunks from the great windmill. A hole, about six foot off the ground, lay gaping in the wall. A long wooden beam, from a nearby lumber yard, lay on the ground next to it. So far, it had escaped the fire steadily consuming the town. The beautiful tapestries that had hung over this section of wall were already on fire, separating from the wall and falling down in what seemed to Yunsung like a slowness completely out of proportion with what was happening all around them. The figures on it did not move as they had when Yunsung had entered the town, and for the first time Yunsung noticed that the wind wasn't blowing. It had blown here constantly, from the time they'd entered town to the time they'd sat down to feast, so what had happened? Did the great windmill's destruction have something to do with it?
Pushing the question aside until later, Yunsung yelled to Mitsurugi, " Over here!" The samurai quickly ran over to the Korean fighter, and in a few quick shouts Yunsung got his message through. Mitsurugi nodded and ran over to the beam. Putting Talim down in what he hoped was a safe spot (she still had that look of utmost horror and shock in her eyes, and Yunsung briefly worried that she might never recover from this) and grabbed the front end of the beam. Looking back at Mitsurugi, who nodded curtly and briefly, Yunsung ran forward with the beam, putting all his weight and strength behind it. He aimed at a weak spot in the wall, a place where the massive chunk of burning stone had knocked some of the boards loose. He gripped the beam and slammed forward with everything in him.
The boards shattered under the strength the two men put behind the board, breaking open into a small doorway big enough for a single man to walk through. Yunsung ran back to the crowd while Mitsurugi tried to clear out as much of the small opening as he could. Hating to do it but having to anyway, he used Shishi-Oh to hack a few lingering boards away. He glanced at the sword as he finished, and inwardly groaned. It was nicked, and badly. He'd paid a lot of money for this sword, and now it was already halfway to the breaking point. Turning around, Mitsurugi glanced at Yunsung and the crowd.
The head priestess of the Wind God was milling about, eyes wide open, her vaunted status forgotten in her need to escape and save herself. She was not yet so far gone as some of the other townspeople were- some were even now scratching and flailing at the walls in their panic, like rabid creatures stuck in a pit- but she was close, caught between utter denial and total shock. Yunsung shouted at her, trying to get her to turn around, but she kept glancing about madly, looking for hope in every place but the right one. Grabbing her shoulder, he jerked her around, and in her panic she struck out at him, hands flailing at his face. Dodging her attempts to scratch out his eyes, Yunsung smacked her with his left hand. The shock of the blow (as a priestess, she was as used to getting hit as a mole was used to flying) stopped her, and the mad glaze departed her eyes for a moment. Yunsung yelled at her, trying to reach her before she went into shock again.
" WE HAVE AN EXIT!" he shouted, roaring over the crowd. " GET EVERYONE OUT OF HERE!"
Her eyes widening with understanding, she nodded to him and turned around. As Yunsung began running back to the exit, he heard her practiced orator's voice, sounding far more rough now, calling out to the townspeople to follow her to freedom, to safety. Yunsung ran to Talim, picking up her limp form and running for the small exit he and Mitsurugi had made. As he reached it, he saw Mitsurugi standing outside, hand on his swordhilt (now tucked back into it's scabbard), staring off into the distance with a look of wonder and shock. Not having time to ponder the samurai's actions, Yunsung ran on to safety. Behind him, the townspeople flooded out, widening the hole as they went, causing the upper portions of the wall to sway dangerously without support. And even as the upper wall finally gave up it's grip and tumbled down, the last of the townspeople had run out onto the plains.
The town burned.
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Town of the Wind God. Three minutes before.
Taki smiled as she walked through the streets of the burning town, her calm and measured stride the complete antithesis of the panicked flight of the townspeople about her. Mekki-Maru, blazing fiercely with the strength of it's latest meal, burned in her right hand. The townspeople instinctively avoided her, treating her in their panic like they would treat a leper in their calm. None of them even remembered having seen her, afterward- she was like a ghost of death, come to feast on the slaughter of the town and determined to eat her fill. Which she had, a few minutes beforehand. In that great windmill she'd just left.
Taki smiled again, her teeth seeming oddly sharper than they had any right to be, when she remembered what she'd just done. Oh, the pleasure and power of it... Mekki-Maru, as if sensing her thoughts, set up a sympathetic throb in her right hand. It, too, had sated it's fill up there. And it, too, was enjoying the sensation of *power* that flowed within her now, within both of them.
And why not? Mekki-Maru was hers, and Taki had come to understand that she was its. They were now one and the same. Mekki-Maru and Taki. Interchangeable terms for the same being.
Taki had been walking the roads of Asia when Mekki-Maru had trembled on her back. Pulling it out, it had seemed to tremble in her grip, like an overly eager hound dog on a leash. Not quite knowing what to do in her conscious mind, she instead obeyed what her subconscious was telling her to do. She placed the sword on the ground and stepped back from it, giving it room to do- what? What had it wanted to do? She hadn't understood what it had wanted when she'd placed it on the ground, but she understood now. It had spun around, pointing itself to the south, to this place. She'd picked it up and, deciding to trust the blade, walked down the road where it had pointed. That had been three days ago. Now, as she walked towards one of the walls of this doomed town, she understood why it had guided her here. She thought it over now, musing over what she had just done, and the power she'd taken...
She'd waited outside of the town until nightfall, Mekki-Maru's power easily disguising her from the humans inside the town. Mekki-Maru's power was stronger at night, although Taki knew that this wasn't because of the darkness present at night- rather, it was the exact opposite, and that the light present at night was what gave the sword its power. Silver moonlight, drifting down from above, empowered the sword somehow, gave it strength. And her instincts (or was it Mekki-Maru's? It did not matter now; they were one and the same) had told her that they would need all the strength they could muster for whatever lay ahead. So she'd waited. And as the sun went down and the moon went up, she had arisen from her position in a tree outside the village and leapt on top of the town's spiked walls. Landing with complete safety onto one of the wooden spikes that made up the town's barricade, she had observed from her vantage point that some sort of feast was going on. She'd smiled at her luck and ran across the rooftops, heading towards the great windmill in the center of town. Mekki-Maru had already told her it wanted to go there; when she'd glanced at it from outside the town, it had throbbed on her back, an aching symphony of need. Running on the rooftops, she'd reached the great windmill without anyone spotting her, and had started looking for a way in. Glancing upwards, she'd spotted an open window and smirked. She'd ran straight up the tower (a skill she'd picked up from her new companion) and entered through it, dropping onto the wooden boards of one of the top floors. Mekki-Maru had started shaking almost violently on her back, and she'd pulled it out. Mekki-Maru's flame, bright red in the moonlight, had brightened the room up so that she could see the great gears and wheels all about her. A stairway had stood before her, leading onto the top balcony, and she'd walked up it, Mekki-Maru trembling with excitement in her hand. Her eyes, burning with Mekki-Maru's power (as they always did when she held the sword), had been above a grin that showed the same excitement as was within the sword. Something was up here, yes. Something very, very valuable.
As she'd stepped onto the top balcony, a great voice had spoken to her, saying, " WHAT CREATURE IS THIS, WALKING HERE? WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE, HELLSPAWN?" The voice had seemed to swirl like the wind, coming and going like a breeze on a summer's day. The top of the windmill, creaking slightly with the noise of many gears spinning and turning, was a windy place, and the breeze had begun to grow stronger. Taki had said nothing, just holding onto Mekki-Maru. They stood there, waiting. Waiting for what, Taki did not know; but Mekki-Maru was with her. Nothing could best them, much less some strange, disembodied voice.
A gust of wind, strong enough to have picked up a normal human like a rag doll and toss the unfortunate soul far away, had blasted across the platform. Taki, who was far more than a normal human, had stood her ground easily enough. Mekki-Maru's flame had brightened at the blast of wind, as if feeding off it, almost like it was savoring a nice entree before the main course. The breeze stopped then, and Taki had the strangest feeling that the being behind all this was confused.
" WHAT IS THIS? SOMETHING...," the voice had stopped, and the breeze, which had started blowing again when it spoke, died down into nothingness. It had picked up when the voice asked, " WHAT ARE YOU? WHAT PURPOSE HAS BROUGHT YOU HERE?"
" My own," Taki had said, grinning and raising Mekki-Maru. The sword's red flame had brightened, had grown and widened and deepened. The noise of roaring flames, a song of fire, grew louder and louder in Taki's ears. The voice shouted something, something deafened underneath the drum roll of Mekki-Maru's fire, and as she listened to the growing sound of fire in her mind, it reached a crescendo...
The explosion completely destroyed the windmill. Taki, as bound to Mekki-Maru as it was to her, had floated unharmed and smiling in the raging, fiery madness that had replaced the top of the windmill. She had gazed into the sky, and what she had seen there had made her grin widen.
An air elemental, the Wind God of this town, had been before her, writhing and screaming in the flames. They had been dancing across it, consuming it, making it's airy form visible for all to see. It had faintly resembled some great bird, and through the crimson sheath of flames Taki had thought she saw the outline of two wings and a pair of great talons... but the head was not the face of an eagle, but the face of a lion. The great lion's head had been roaring and shrieking its pain, the screams becoming cyclone-force blasts of wind that had blown burning chunks of the windmill all across the town below them. Neither of the beings atop the tower had noticed the screams of pain and fear now echoing up from the town.
" WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?" it had cried in it's mighty voice, which had already started to weaken and die. " WHAT... HAVE YOU... DONE?"
" This," Taki had said, pointing Mekki-Maru at the dying being. Mekki-Maru's blade had glinted, and Taki had noticed that it was oddly free of flames, the first time she'd ever seen the real sword beneath the burning edges it created about itself. Strange, twisting designs flowed over it, and the blade was made of no metal she'd ever seen before. The metal seemed to shift, to unbalance and flow and flicker like lightning bugs seen at night. Taki had watched it, fascinated. Such a beautiful weapon. Hers.
As she had stared at the sword, the flames on the Wind God had become stretching spider-legs of fire, a net of blazing webbing that had seemed almost to grab the Wind God, to bind that airy, insubstantial form. And then, as the Wind God thrashed and screamed, trying to break from that thin but immeasurably powerful binding, the sword glinted once. The Wind God had shrieked again, a cry of pain... and then was utterly consumed by fire. It's form was burned up, consumed into nothingness. As Taki watched, part of her will concentrated with the blade's,the entire great mass of the burning air elemental had been devoured by fire. The flames had raged and roared, an onslaught of need and hunger. The hunger of Mekki-Maru.
Eventually, the burning had slowed to a mere shadow of it's former blaze. Taki was never sure how long that had taken, for it had seemed to be an eternity of burning... but in reality it had barely lasted a minute. And as the embers had begun to die, the flames had drifted back, back towards Taki, to Mekki-Maru. The flames touched it's shining metal blade and were sucked into it, like leaves consumed by a tornado. Soon the entire blazing form of the Wind God had been absorbed into Mekki-Maru, and nothing was left of the being once believed to be a god.
That event, so recently completed, had marked a change in Taki and her sword. What kind of change, how far reaching it would be, and how long it would take were not questions she could answer. But that didn't matter. Mekki-Maru was hers, and she was its. Nothing could stand before them.
These thoughts passed through her mind in the few seconds it took her to reach the wooden wall surrounding this portion of the town. Grinning and deciding to test Mekki-Maru's power, she raised the sword before her. She concentrated her will on the wall before her, and called to the sword. It answered her, with a blazing shriek, with flames that gouted forward. The wall before her vanished, burned into nothingness in the merest part of an instant. Stepping into the breach she had made, Taki smiled. Mekki-Maru made life so much easier.
She began walking calmly across the fields, already heading back to her original course, one that aimed for Europe and the shards of Soul Edge gathered there, her steps calm and measured. And then, as she rounded a small hill, she saw him. A man in samurai armor, back turned to her, his hair in the odd style so fashionable to the Japanese nobility these days. He was looking at the burning town in front of him, shaking his head slowly. Taki slowed down to a stop, wondering. She knew this man, didn't she? He seemed familiar, somehow...
He turned around, and she caught a glimpse of his face. And he saw her as well. Both of their eyes widened in surprise as they realized who the other was.
[Mitsurugi!] Taki had thought, her mind a confused jumble of thoughts and memories. They'd met many times before, and neither of them were on exactly good terms with the others. Like ninja everywhere, Taki thought the samurai were fools, and their honor the greatest stupidity they delved in. For his part, Mitsurugi, like samurai everywhere, thought the ninja were gutless cowards, unable to win in a real fight. He'd proven it several times as well, besting her in some of their more violent meetings. She'd won battles against him as well, but she'd been traveling with Sophitia at the time, and the Greek woman had always told her never to kill anyone. The main reason certain people (including Mitsurugi) had kept coming back to haunt them further down the road.
Sophitia's kindness, however, had not been the only reason she'd let Mitsurugi live. There was more to it. Far more. Differences in ideology and combat methods aside, they had been allies once. On a burned out battlefield in China, where their respective Samurai and Ninja clans had been stuck in the incongruous positions of having to rely on each other. Taki felt an odd (for a ninja) dislike for killing someone who had once been an ally. And, of course, there had been that ambush...
Why was Mitsurugi here?
She shook her head, not having time to ponder it now. She wanted to get away from this town and see what all she and Mekki-Maru had gained in this little excursion. She smiled at Mitsurugi, her teeth glinting wickedly in the firelight, and then turned away from him. Soon, her feet were hitting the ground at a rapid pace, and her figure was no more than a shadow at night.
In her hand, Mekki-Maru pulsed.
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Mansion of the Lions, Valencia, Spain. Daylight.
The battle with Cervantes might as well be occurring miles away from her. She wasn't watching it. She was too busy pondering what she would do now. Now that the hope she'd had of finding out who her real father was had turned into a nightmare. Now that she knew what would await her in the darkness beyond death, no matter what she did in life.
[ Why bother fighting?] part of her mind, a part both weak and arrogant, like a fool's queen, said to her. [ Why go through all the torment and peril of life, and suffer in this mortal coil? You'll have suffering enough to do in the next life, no matter what you do here. Let it end. Fall into whatever peace you can find in hellfire. For whatever else it may hold, Hell has this one virtue. While you suffer and bleed and burn, it may let you forget what you are.]
Ivy pulled her sword out of it's sheath. It made a slight ringing noise, which neither of the warriors before her heard. At the moment, Kilik was stabbing forth with his staff, piercing the strange being's great eye underneath the false coverage of Cervantes' form. So understandably, neither he nor Siegfried noticed what Ivy was doing.
[ Why try to redeem what is irrevocably fallen?] the voice asked her in her mind, laughing and crying with both shame and a black humor. [ Everything you've done means nothing. All your worships and prayers... nothing! God will not forgive you for this!]
A small part of her mind, gripping to sanity and logic when everything else was falling apart, spoke out against this lie.
[ You're wrong!] it shouted out at the pain in her mind. [ It says in the Bible that everyone can be forgiven!]
[ Please!] the other voice shouted back, deafening the small part of her that still had a grip on the truth and forcing it down into darkness. [ As if you really believe all that!]
Ivy placed her sword against her neck, closing her eyes as she did so. One quick, sharp blow. End it here and now. Let it all fall through...
She heard Kilik's cry but ignored it. What could he know? He, who gazed at the world as a monk, perfect in his own mind? What could he know of spiritual torment?
As she prepared to cut her own throat, to open the great vein in her neck that fed her mind, to spill her lifeblood and enter the yawning, gaping maw of Erebus, the flaming gate of Hell, something struck her on her forehead. She fell unconscious into darkness.
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" The Crying Dove", an inn in Valencia, Spain. Half an hour later.
Ivy lay on the bed, coming out of her unconscious in steps, moaning softly with pain. Above her eyes, almost dead center between them, a large and angry looking knot was rising where the chunk of plaster Siegfried had thrown at her had struck. He looked at it, wincing. That was going to hurt like hell for a long time. He hadn't meant to hit her so hard, but he'd freaked when he'd seen what she was going to do. It was all he could think to do at the time. He would not have been able to reach her fast enough with the wound in his side (now bandaged by Kilik), and Kilik had not been in any position to get to her either, chunks of fallen plaster and wood blocking the monk's path. So Siegfried had dropped to the floor (causing his side to shriek with pain) and in one swift movement grabbed a chunk of plaster, aimed, and fired. He'd originally intended to smack her sword and stop her for a second, giving Kilik time to stop her (the monk had been frantically working his way through the fallen piles when Siegfried dropped) but in his fear, he'd accidentally struck her in the head. Which was just as well. Kilik had reached her just in time to catch her unconscious form before it hit the floor.
Siegfried looked down at Ivy, waiting for her to swim upwards through the layers of her consciousness and reach full awareness. He was alone at the moment. Kilik had prepared a small medicine that would nullify the pain in Ivy's head for a little while. Kilik had said that with the few materials he had, the medicine wouldn't work for long, but that was alright. Siegfried needed to talk with Ivy, but he doubted the conversation would last long. Siegfried had asked Kilik to leave after preparing the medicine, stating that he wanted to talk to Ivy alone. Kilik, honoring his wishes, had left to prepare for his own journey. He was heading east, to Asia. Siegfried had no idea where he and Ivy were going next (although part of his mind quipped that it might well be a morgue if Ivy's suicidal tendencies hadn't let up when she awoke), but he'd asked Kilik to prepare small packs for them as well. The monk was a nice, decent man, and Siegfried would miss traveling with him when Kilik moved on. But that was part of being a wanderer; gaining friends and losing them was just part of the road. Still, honest men were hard to come by.
While Siegfried was musing over this, Ivy's eyelids fluttered up, and she blinked. Raising her hand to her forehead, she moaned, " Oh... my head..."
Before she could remember whatever had caused her control to snap in the mansion outside Valencia, Siegfried pushed the cup of Kilik's tea towards her mouth. He poured the semi-bitter liquid in. Ivy coughed and gulped, an automatic reaction to avoid drowning in the tea. It wasn't the best thing Siegfried could have day, but the day seemed determined to make him resort to such heavy-handed tactics. Oh well. Hopefully the tea would take to work quickly, so he could figure out what was wrong.
Coughing and spluttering, Ivy looked at him and said, " You bastard! What did you do that- Ohhh." She reeled for a second, holding her forehead with her hand. Laying where she was on the bed, she looked like some figure from a Shakespeare tragedy, awaiting the end on her deathbed. Pushing that image from his mind as fast as he could, Siegfried waited for the tea to take effect.
Ivy, for her part, felt the headache leave her like it had never existed. The rush of sudden calm was almost like a rush of air to a drowning man. Ivy touched her head gently, not wanting to provoke it into any more sudden rushes of pain. She found a knot there, and probed it softly, wondering all the while. Where had it come from? She remembered walking into that mansion outside town...
With an almost audible snap, her mind refocused. Oh God. The mansion. She'd forgotten about it. About her father.
" No," she moaned out loud, clapping her hand over her eyes.
" What is it, Ivy?" Siegfried asked, dreading the answer. Whatever it was, it had to be mighty unpleasant to provoke this kind of reaction from the stalwart Englishwoman.
She surprised him by laughing weakly, a self-deprecating and somehow frightening series of chuckles that reminded him far too much of Inferno in his more melancholy moments. " Oh, nothing," she said, her voice falsely carefree, " nothing at all. Just the fact that I now know who my father is."
" Who?" Siegfried said, understanding eluding him. He'd completely forgotten about the portrait of Cervantes in the mansion outside town. It had freaked him out, to turn around and see that long dead face behind him, but the ensuing battle and Ivy's suicide attempt had driven it from his mind. " Who is it, Ivy?"
" Oh, no one," she said, still in that self-mocking, self-hating voice, " nobody you'd know. Just a pirate named Cervantes."
Siegfried stopped dead, blinking at her for a second. It all came together now. The portrait. That weird creature. Ivy's wonder about whether a parent's sins carried over.
Oh shit.
Noticing the way Siegfried was looking at her, Ivy's demeanor changed. Despair washed over her. " You see?" she said weakly, shaking her sad, sad face, " This is my truth. I'm the daughter of a monster. Even God Himself could not forgive me for this."
" That's not true," Siegfried snapped, sounding harsher than he'd meant to. Something in him had actually gotten mad at this turn of events. Who in the bloody hell had decided that this should happen? Ivy deserved a better father than Cervantes.
" Isn't it?" Ivy said. She opened her mouth to say more, but Siegfried cut her off.
" No, it isn't," he said, parting the air with his hand in a chopping motion. " Listen to me, Ivy. Think back on the Bible. The first people, Adam and Eve, betrayed God. Betrayed His direct command! And yet their son Abel was a good and Godly man. How much less is Cervantes' evil? He has killed many, but that is a crime more people than either you or I can imagine are guilty of. Every king and queen who has started a war is guilty of the same things Cervantes has done. You," here he stopped, shaking his head and pausing for breath, " You've not done a damn thing wrong that I know of. You have killed no one. Your father is Cervantes. So what." Surprising even himself with this vitrol, Siegfried said, " That doesn't matter. Everyone can be forgiven. Evil follows down the generations, but everyone has someone in their family who's a monster. Maybe not as bad as yours, but not a single damn person has perfect ancestors. If having an evil ancestor was a sentence to Hell, no one would be saved! Not one soul on this earth." He shook his head, turning it away to look at the wall, his speech finished for the moment, save for one thing. " If you give up now, if you kill yourself in your pain, you are doing what the devil wants. He wants people to give up their lives and take the easy way out. Hold on, Ivy. For a little while, at least. It is the better path. Believe me on that. I know."
Not knowing what might happen next, where this conversation might lead- to what things in his past it might lead to- Siegfried turned to leave. There were no weapons in the room, and though Ivy might break out the dirty glass window and kill herself with the shards of glass (they were on the first floor, eliminating suicide jumps), but Siegfried doubted she would do that. Suicide was a way to take the weaker, easier path, and it lost it's attraction when it became hard to do. As he opened the door, trying to figure out from where that speech had come from, he heard Ivy say, " Is that it, then? Do you really think I can just pick myself up and be all happy again, knowing what I know?!? Do you?!?"
Siegfried turned, and the face he turned on Ivy caused her to move back in shock on the bed. She'd leaned up to spit her last words at him, leaning on her arm, but the sight of his face made her draw back. It was not the cheerful, happy face of the Siegfried she'd always known. Rather, it was the look of a much older man, a man so used to suffering and torment that they had marked his face. The lines on his face, lines she'd never noticed before, had deepened until his face looked as though it was carved from rock. It was haggard, weary, the face of a man who had been through more than his share of troubles. His eyes were pits of the deepest sorrow, seeming to speak of things far worse than mortal concerns. His blonde hair, hanging over this marked ruin like a death shroud, seemed less full of life somehow, not the bright strands of gold that normally blew about him, but pallid and lifeless gray things, sad things of ruin.
This was what hid behind the mask Siegfried lifted before the world, the face he kept secret even from himself. The face that held in it the sum of all he'd been through.
" No," this immeasurably sad stranger told her, words slow and solemn, " I don't think you can do that. And in some part of your mind, so deeply buried you're not even sure it's there, you never will. But that is the meaning of being human. To take all the experiences and twists and turns that life throws at you, and make what you will of them. Take what you know, and place it before who you are. And make your decision on what you will do about it. Both paths before you have suffering, but one has the promise of something greater at the end. The other ends in nothing but more suffering. I have been at the crossroads you now stand before, and I made my choice. And I have never looked back since."
He turned and walked out the door, shutting it as he went, feeling the weight of all his terrible experience on him. Ivy stared at the shut door, wondering what had happened to him, long after he had left.
- Whew. What a long chapter. Hope it was worth the wait. Read and review please!
