Thicker Than Blood
Chapter 8
Humpty Dumpty
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One of the problems of taking things apart and seeing how they work -
supposing you're trying to find out how a cat works - you take that cat
apart to see how it works, what you've got in your hands is a
non-working cat. The cat wasn't a sort of clunky mechanism that was
susceptible to our available tools of analysis.
- Douglas Adams
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Timeless
I still don't understand how the destruction of our star caused all of this mess. It hardly seems possible that such chaos would result from something so simple and natural as a supernova. And in a 'system with no other life that would be affected, aside from you and I, and assuming we could be defined as 'life.'
It's called cause and effect, love. Surely you have seen enough of the universe to understand that now. This damnable balance the higher-ups support; light and darkness, life and death, good and evil, piss and puke. Bullshitters trying to make sense of something not meant to be sensible. Midge flies contemplating the nature of the universe.
You're getting off the subject.
Deal with it. I'm always off the subject. Haven't you noticed by now? It makes me sick, the way they are always trying to define what was created to be indefinable. A balance, yes that makes sense. The universe neatly tucked away on some comprehensible little scale, only right, only sane if all the parts are equal. As if anything is ever equal. Have you heard their theory on it?
...If I say yes will you answer my question?
Dear, I am answering your question. Raw power is neither 'good' nor 'evil', it merely is. When this 'balance' is right, the universe remains neutral, each side evenly set against the other. When something happens to upset the balance -- such as our star exploding -- the power shifts, the balance shifts, and depending on the direction of the shift we in the mortal realm experience good or bad effects.
What a load of cock.
Well, you asked.
What's your theory?
My theory? Love, when you've been alive half as long as I have you will know there is no theory. The universe cannot be summed up in a bunch of mathematical equations, cannot be understood by any creature that obeys its laws. It simply is.
...I was just asking about our star...
And I was just answering.
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12,002 BC
Janus was not having a good day. Someone'd had the bright idea to hold a celebration for the recent completion of the Mammon Machine -- probably his mother -- and Schala had not let herself be deterred from dragging him along, insisting he socialize with others. So that's why he was sitting at the children's table in the banquet hall, throwing grapes at the adults nearest him at the end of the big people table.
A lot had happened in the year since he'd been sent to Algetty, but most of it was numbingly boring. He'd been doing his level best to find out more about that Lavos thing, and had even copied down all Schala's notes from that one day, but that was all he had. He'd read nearly every book in all the libraries in Zeal, with absolutely no reward. He was beginning to give up.
A badly aimed grape sailed over its intended victim and landed with a plunk in the bowl of wine. Schala looked up from her conversation at the head of the table, on Zeal's right, and shot him a warning glare. Janus shrugged, smiled with what he hoped was innocence, and started flinging grapes at his own table instead. These fancy dinner things were always so pointlessly boring. Nothing to do but throw food at people when they weren't looking. A piece of roasted chicken found its way into the hair of the girl across from him. Ice from the bowl of chilled fish into the robes of the child on his left. The fish's eyes into the wine cup of the chicken girl's neighbor. It was too bad Schala had pulled him away at the last minute or he would have had time to plan something good, like that stunt with Dalton and Zeal's bedsheets.
The children nearest him began to show signs of retaliation, so Janus started aiming the grapes at those farther down the table. It occurred to him suddenly that if he did something inexcusably horrible -- say, setting the tablecloth on fire -- Schala would have no choice but to let him go.
So, naturally, he set the tablecloth on fire.
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Ivy's problem was speed. She simply wasn't fast enough, and there was no way to really fix that. He was a giant demonic deer, she a child, and the disadvantages imposed upon her because of that were insurmountable. Snowshoes could only do so much, and despite keeping her above the snow they were very awkward, and she'd need all the maneuverability she could get. The logical solution to the problem was to fight him somewhere that speed wouldn't matter, but the only such place was from the branches of a tree, and if it came to that he would simply walk away.
So, in the end, she had decided on a trap to hobble him before the fight. Ivy was not worried that he would refuse to be led into it -- she could not step foot near the forest without him hunting her, and only in Algetty would he not follow -- but that Bloodreaver would be too strong to be held by anything she could make. A net? Ropes between trees? The only thing Ivy could think of that would detain him long enough for her to break one of his legs or something was a pit -- but how in hells was she, a little girl, going to dig a pit through the permafrost large enough to hold the Bloodreaver? Would a pit even hold him?
The solution came from a most unexpected source.
It had been over a year since Ivy had rescued Janus from him, but Roderrick still had not forgiven her. He was attacking her more and more often -- more in this last year than in all the years since her mother had been killed combined. There wasn't much Siris could do about it either -- not as if she really needed him to -- so she'd taken to retreating to either her room and her books or the forest, though Bloodreaver Alpha would not leave her in peace out there.
Most of what Ivy knew came from the books Melchior smuggled down -- she wasn't supposed to know they were from Melchior, but then she wasn't supposed to know a lot of what she did. Siris seemed to sense this much, at least, and never made refused her requests, mostly because the advanced herblore she'd learned from the books had saved his life on more than one occasion. But there was a big difference from reading about the symptoms of magic first appearing in a child and actually experiencing it. The books told her that magic first surfaced in a child around the age of three, and consisted of wild power flarings manifested in temper tantrums, setting fire to things, illusions, ect.
It had taken a long while for Melchior to bring this book, and she was eight when she first read it. That had certainly thrown off her plans. Ivy had been very disappointed. One more reason for her to hate the man that had gotten her mother pregnant. The least he could've done was passed down his magic. That had been when she'd decided to finally slay Bloodreaver Alpha. She'd only been putting it off in hopes of the magic -- how else was an eight year old girl supposed to fight a demon?
And he had to die. There was no question about it. He'd slaughtered her mother and eaten her while two-year-old Ivy watched from her Uncle Siris' arms in horror and he was going to die for it. And if Bloodreaver killed her instead, what of it? The Earthbound were already working on her other plan, to kill Lavos, and she'd given everything she could to helping them. There was nothing else important she needed to do with her life. Sure, the Enlightened would need to rebuild their civilization after Lavos' destruction, need to find another power source, but for that there were people like Schala. They wouldn't need her. And besides, who took advice from an eight-year-old? No one who belonged in a place of authority.
Ivy had been out gathering herbs to strengthen her supply before the encounter with Bloodreaver, and they attacked her when she returned. That much she had expected. What she had not expected was the trap, mostly because her thoughts were on the cannibal deer.
It was in the dimly lit tunnel that connected the entrance to the interior of Algetty, and it was complicated enough to tell her that the adults had helped, though they were no where to be seen. A rope was snapped up suddenly from either sides of the tunnel, catching her at her ankles. She fell flat on her face, arms over her head, and felt another rope beneath her wrists. Two seconds later, the ropes had become nooses and she was hanging from the tunnel's roof by her ankles and wrists, staring down at the triumphant albeit dirty faces of Roderrick and about a dozen other children.
Ivy was furious. More at herself for walking into something so obvious than at them for catching her off guard. "Roderrick, let me down or I swear I'm going to kill you." No one there doubted the sincerity of her words, but Roderrick merely smiled, pulling a dagger from somewhere in his tattered clothes.
Something snapped inside Ivy. Maybe it was because of his smirk, maybe it was because she was tired of being abused, maybe it was just the feeling of helplessness and injustice. This cold, controlled anger didn't do her much good at first. She could only glare at him, and breathe deeply through her clenched teeth as she tried to ignore the taunts from the others while they worked to cut her down. They couldn't very well kill her there, hanging in the hallway for everyone to see. Siris would get them for that. So they cut the ropes holding her up but not the ones holding her defenseless. The ropes were all severed at once and she dropped forcefully to the ground.
That was the first mistake.
For all of ten seconds the ropes were the only things holding her, and it took only a fraction of that time to free herself. In a single fluid movement, Ivy jerked her knees against her chest between her arms, pulled her dagger free from her boot and sliced the ropes over her ankles then flipped the blade around in her grip to severe the ropes on her wrists and was standing with a dagger in each hand and her back to the wall before some of them even pulled their knives away from the ropes that had held her up. Roderrick was staring at her in mixed horror and awe -- good, he knew what he was up against -- but all of them were momentarily stunned -- the keeper's fear of the tiger when it is suddenly loosed in their midst.
That was the second mistake.
Killing was not a problem for Ivy, but the repercussions for slaying the Earthbounds' children would have been too great so she knocked as many of them into unconsciousness as she could. There were only about twelve, the fight didn't last too long. Most ran away. They were used to facing her in larger groups, and they were only children, after all.
She was gathering up the bundles of herbs that had fallen from her pack in the beginning when she realized they had given her the perfect solution to her Bloodreaver problem. Of course, she would have to make a few adjustments -- ropes for his neck and antlers as well as his legs -- and work out some problems -- how was she supposed to draw the ropes tight on her own? -- but that was all trivial stuff that could easily be remedied with a few trees in the right places. Ivy began to smile.
She was going to need a lot of rope.
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Rast: Once again, turtlerad17 - no, he doesn't go with Lucca. I don't really have any problems with that pairing, and Lucca's a great character, but them together would totally screw my plot. Thank you for reviewing again!
A note about time - BC goes backward, sort of. Like right now in real life it's 2003 AD and because its AD it goes 2003, 2004, 2005, ect. But if it were BC, it'd be 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, and that would be forward. 12,002 is a year after 12,003. Got that? I just remembered most people don't know that. If it still confuses you, just remember 12,003 is three years before the events in the game, which hits Zeal in 12,000.