Key:
Words in italics – thoughts of the characters
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There was a fog. Two dragons were running past her, Silver and Cloud. She wanted to follow them and they beckoned her with their flapping wings and sunlit eyes in the lush meadow. Then, the wind pulled her back, she spun round for a second and they were gone. There was only the fog. And a voice.
Hitomi?
Wake up…
… it called her back and she shot up straight and alert.
Or was she still dreaming?
There, in the dim blue light of a cold morning, stood…
"Varie?" Hitomi called, but after she blinked, Van's mother was gone. In her state of confusion, she was only remotely aware of the panicked footsteps starting outside her bedroom before Merle crashed into her room.
"What-"
"Attack! Get changed!"
Hitomi caught the white shirt and brown pants thrown at her before she sank down in a wave of nausea.
"Hitomi? Sorry Hitomi, I shouldn't have thrown it-"
"No…" she shook her head strongly. The dizzy spell had not been due to the overwhelming turn of events that she had been flung into the last two days, she knew this feeling only too well. She grabbed Merle's arm tightly.
"Where's Van?" she asked hoarsely. A chill went down Merle's spine. Not again. Please, not again.
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"Send another volley of fire balls!" Van ordered before he surveyed the damage angrily. 3 minutes. In 3 minutes, an eighth of his city had been burnt, twenty people had died and fifty lay injured. 3 minutes. The number of dragons attacking the city this time round was double the usual count and the nearest country to his, Asturia, was not answering his call for help. The "speed eagles" he had trained should have been back with an answer by now. What on earth was Asturia doing!
"How many of those bastards are down?" He asked General Keyes.
"Two! Two out of twenty!"
Van cursed in a very unpretty fashion.
"And my Lord! Attacking us does not seem to be their main motive, they keep veering off towards the east!"
The east? Van's eyes narrowed. What could they possibly want in the east? The only thing that lay in the east was the Fairy Forest…
"Van!" Hitomi stood, framed in the doorway of the landing, still clothed in her nightshift. "Escaflowne, Van! It's Escaflowne!"
In a flurry of white feathers, the young king leapt from the castle and sped off in the direction of Escaflowne.
But he was not going to make it. It was all so clear now, the actual motive of the sky dragons. Some of them had already broken through and three of them were on their way to the East. They could cover twice the amount of distance he could. Panic gripped Van in its merciless poison and he slipped momentarily into that irrational Van of five years ago, who believed in miracles and things impossible.
He called Escaflowne to wake up and fly away. On its own.
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Allen saw it clearly from where he was fighting. As his guymelef cut cleanly through another land dragon, there was a luminous green column that broke through the forest foliage in the east. Escaflowne hung suspended in mid-air in its dragon form while Van was at least 1 mile away from it. For one moment, Allen was sure he had gone mad. Only for a while, his ego and confidence did not allow for more than a second of self-doubt.
"What on earth?" He asked in awe. Escaflowne could not possibly do that. It did not even have an energist in it, what he was seeing was simply impossible.
He snapped back into reality as a land dragon's pungent breath came from behind and he did not even have the luxury to look up again.
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"So, it awakens," the Keeper breathed in relief.
"And he is the one," Kalmwaiter continued.
"Yes, truly. Only his reincarnation could possibly have such a strong psychological link with Escaflowne," Moonage, the wisest of the Elders confirmed.
"Come, it is time to push on to the next stage," she commanded softly, her scales tingling in anticipation. She stretched her graceful gold neck straight up and sang. Hitomi closed her ears, she had no idea that a dragon's singing was so frightening to hear. The sound, a disconcerting hypnotic cross between a horn and crashing waves, resounded throughout the entire mountain's cradle. As the sound faded, she forcibly pushed herself up and saw that a circle of dragons had surrounded the singing dragon, who was covered in a green nimbus similar to Escaflowne's.
"Van-sama…" she heard the half-conscious Merle murmur. As Hitomi swept her gaze across the landing, she saw that most people had collapsed at the sound of the dragon singing. She giggled nervously and rather hysterically then, not liking the idea that she had some kind of strange resilience against the dragon's singing. Van was almost onto Escaflowne now.
The singing sure had freaked him out but it was going to take more than a dragon's wailing to shake him off his course. With a fierce flap of his white wings, he leapt onto Escaflowne's back and stirred it in the direction of the circle of dragons.
A burning sensation pulsed against Hitomi's chest and she looked down in shock. Her pendant was glowing a dark green.
Van, run away with Escaflowne! VAN!!! Hitomi's voice cut through his focused thoughts and confused him. He halted Escaflowne just inches away from the dragons. There was no turning back now, he was sure of it. With a swipe, he hacked off the nearest dragons' head. And another. And another. It was surprisingly easy to accomplish the killing of dragons right now. It was almost as if, he subconsciously knew where their weakest spots were.
His massacre did not last for long. All of a sudden, the dragons became deathly quiet. The gold dragon had stopped her singing totally and she arrested him with her unblinking ruby eyes. Van swung his sword from side to side uneasily before he suddenly felt the solid metal beneath his feet parting.
Hitomi gripped the railings in fear, Van was being sucked into Escaflowne. "VAN!" Gasps and screams could be heard from the Fanelians. The golden dragon had begun her chanting again and the other dragons had ceased their fighting to join in. As they began their chanting, Van began to sink faster, quicker.
Their language was foreign.
Or was it?
Strange images she could not recognize flashed past her at the speed of light. The misty dragon from her dream was in each and everyone of them. Staring at her with green eyes. Cool forest eyes, a shade like her own.
She shook her head free of this distraction. Van was disappearing fast, only his shoulders were still above the metal. She could feel him panicking. Van needed her.
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Merle's vision swam as she finally came to. Hitomi stood in front of her, rockstill.
"Hitomi?" She called weakly. She was totally disorientated. "Hitomi? What are you chanting?"
She watched, confused as Hitomi ripped off her necklace and held it high above before she disappeared. Merle blinked.
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Van struggled against the metallic mire futilely, concentrating mainly on keeping his head above it.
"La'liet, do not move so much," a quiet familiar voice commanded. Van looked up and saw Hitomi standing over him. He followed her orders, not so much out of blind obedience but because he saw newfound age and wisdom in her eyes that he simply could not ignore. She looked away and cocked her head slightly to one side, as if she was remembering something or listening out for an invisible voice. Her posture was regal and confident in a way that was not her own. With a few incantations by her, he found himself once again lying on the firm metallic back of Escaflowne.
"Who are you?" Keeper hissed at Hitomi.
"It is not important. We will meet again, I think, but I will not let you take him now," the threat Hitomi's words implied was obvious and the Keeper nearly bit off the young lady's neck in pure frustration and anger. Something warned her though, that there was a power here that could not be messed with.
"Very well," the Keeper agreed and with an elegant swoop, she left and her entourage of dragons followed soon after. She only turned back once and allowed herself a bitter smile. This delay was non consequential. They had accomplished their main goal of today, as the young lady magician would see.
Van scrambled up right shakily, the feel of the liquid metal swallowing his entire being into the robot still fresh in his mind.
"Hitomi?" He called and his mouth was set firm in worry. She was just standing there.
"Hitomi!" He shouted now and was moving forward and reaching out to make sure she was all right.
"Hitomi! Are you all right?" Merle and Allen shouted as they ran over. Hitomi looked frighteningly pale in the glaring hot sunlight of mid-morning. Something about the scene unnerved Allen to the bone, she was too still, like an ice statue that might melt in the blinding heat. Then she moved with jerky movements, as if she had just woken up and she had no idea what she was doing on top of a floating escaflowne. In actual fact, she was really clueless as to what had happened and she reacted in a way anyone would if they found themselves standing precariously on the arm of a floating robot 4 floors above ground, she panicked.
And slipped and fell.
"Shit!" Van spat out and a carpet of white covered the sun for the second time that morning as he plunged after her, the wind speeding past his ears and deafening him in his roar. It was so loud that the wild fearful heartbeat resounding of his was almost silenced. His mind knew that he would definitely reach her in time but the knowledge did little to erase the danger that she was in now. When he had not reached her yet. Nor did it block out that nauseating cynical voice that told him he might fail.
That was why he held her so possessively, almost crushing her fragile frame into his when he finally caught her.
"Van, I'm fine Van. You caught me," she smiled and laughed in embarrassment at his gestures. But secretly, she was touched.
They floated gently to the floor and an uproarious cheer started from the civilians who witnessed the heroic rescue and the cheer spread like a contagious windsong as they celebrated the victory of Fanelia over the dragons. Merle and Allen enveloped the two of them in a hug before Merle helped Hitomi away with the intent of helping her to rest. Celena kissed the two of them soundly on the cheek as she ran from where she had been helping to treat the fallen soldiers.
"Get some rest your majesty, this battle was hard fought and won-"
"We didn't win," Van cut in harshly, making Hitomi and Merle whip their heads back and Allen back away.
"Van-sama…" Merle whispered.
"We didn't win. They pitied us. And they'll come again,"
Allen turned his head away, he knew what Van said was true but he wished the young king would not be so realistic and cruelly unforgiving to himself.
"Van, you did your best-" Hitomi comforted, her voice still a little weak and she flinched when Van's head snapped up in anger.
"NO! I didn't!" His fists were locked in balls of self-contained anger and blood trickled from his left. "The defenses should have been stronger than not so many people would have died and… and… you were in danger again."
"Van?" Hitomi's heart palpated wildly in fear, he didn't look right.
"If something had … happened to you, I would have killed them. I would have made them pay…" he threatened, coldly, darkly and with pure hatred. Hitomi's breath caught in her throat, this was what the premonition this morning had been warning about, she just knew it.
Celena was the first to see it.
"Look up!" She pointed at Escaflowne, still suspended in mid-air. Hitomi's hands flew up to her mouth while Merle's eyes widened and Allen simply gaped. Blackness, like spilled ink from an unknown source was spreading from the green energist chamber of Escaflowne. Why? Why was this happening?
"Van?" Hitomi shrug herself free from Merle's supporting arm and ran to him but stopped a few inches from his face. "Van."
Dark dark eyes, cold whispery ashes of brown oaks, charred abandoned and dead. Cold cold eyes, that looked as if he didn't know her.
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[ Author's note: Yes, cliffhanger, I know. I couldn't resist it! I picked up the pace a little in this chapter because I thought that chapter 2 was perhaps a little too draggy and slow. Let me know what you all think! This is my first fanfiction which I intend to go beyond 2 chapters ^_^ So I'd really appreciate reviews and advice on doing this kind of long fanfiction. Arigato! Btw, I hope I got this 3rd chapter up fast enough, will be working on 4th chapter soon. ]