Thicker Than Blood
Chapter 16
Of Past Regret and Future Fear
___________________________
"This is war.
You must be prepared to sacrifice anything for victory."
- Unknown
___________________________
12,002 BC
It took seven days for Siris to round up enough Earthbound to satisfy the
queen, and even then they barely filled the minimum number. In the end, he was
left with only forty warriors -- all but a precious few of them either much,
much too young to hunt or so old they could barely hold a spoon to slurp gruel,
let alone a spear against the likes of the creatures on Terra Continent.
He didn't know whether to break down in tears or laugh himself to hysteria.
So Siris looked on in silence as all the strongest, best trained of his men
were lined up and teleported five at a time to the kingdom above the clouds.
Melchior and Gaspar made all the appropriate sympathetic noises and stayed long
enough to decide they had been left with no choice but to find another path to
Lavos.
Ivy would be furious.
But in the end Melchior and Gaspar retreated, as they always did, to the safe
warmth of Zeal Kingdom and left Siris alone in Algetty, in the middle of one of
the worst winter's they'd ever had, with over two hundred people to feed and
only forty men to hunt with.
They would have to get someone else involved now, someone in a position of
enough power to actually have an effect on the desperate circumstances. Schala
was the only choice.
After the handling the many complaints, after stamping out budding rebellions,
after leading a hunting party into the blizzard, after personally carrying
steaming bowls of roasted venison to the guards at the Beast's Nest, Siris lay
alone in the cool, peaceful darkness of his room.
He reached out his mind to the little girl he had raised.
___________________________
Zeal lay awake in the middle of her bed, blankets drawn up to her chin, fully
clothed. She looked up through the skylight above her at the stars, shimmering
like little snowflakes suspended in oblivion. Like tears frozen on a dark
ocean. Pinpricks of life in the emptiness of existence.
Zeal felt like that. Small, insignificant. A tiny bit of soul swallowed up by
something huge and black and infinitely hungry.
Lavos had left very little of her soul, and that speck was slowly flickering
out. She felt like a candle in the midst of a tornado, a rainstorm, throwing
out her dwindling light into the darkest night ever created.
The beast did not need sleep, and had not left enough of her for her body to
require it, but Zeal still went to bed every night to keep up appearances.
Every night, glazed eyes stared up at the stars, longing for release. Every
night, the tiny fragment of her soul withered a bit more.
Every night, Queen Zeal prayed to die.
She was aware of the things Lavos did through her body, the atrocities he
committed in her name, the things he did to her people, even going so far as to
involve the poor Earthbound. She watched her people slipping farther into him
with the passing of each day, watched him swallow up their minds.
Zeal had fought him, at first, fought furiously for all she was worth, until he
taught her how futile it was to fight him. Like an ice cube fighting a
firestorm. Then she could only watch him devour, slowly, everything and
everyone she cared about. Watch as he literally took away their souls.
Excepting those of her children and the Gurus -- and Dalton, of course. With Lavos'
will smothering her own, with his mind a cage around hers she knew some of the
things he did. The things he allowed her to know.
And a few things he didn't.
Lavos would get very upset, occasionally, when things went wrong, and then, if
she played it carefully, Zeal could get a good look at the mind behind the
shifting shades of darkness.
And on the night Tieron had tried to kill her, things had gone very, very
wrong.
Her near miscarriage of Janus, to be precise.
And oh, how he'd fought for that child. Fought and snarled and clung to that
little life, refusing to let the tiny light burn out before it'd had a chance
to shine.
Zeal could still feel the panic flooding from him in heavy, choking waves when
he'd realized what was happening in her body, the true extent and purpose of
Tieron's attack. He'd been filled with fury and terror all in one sickeningly
intense moment.
She'd seen, then, because he was too terrified of losing her baby boy to hide
it from her.
She'd seen a great deal in that one instant.
So Zeal was aware of Dalton's purpose, as well as
that of his daughter, and would watch the little girl and her son in their
private quest to destroy Lavos and protect Schala from him.
It was the one thing that kept her sane, the one thing that Zeal lived for.
Knowing what she did, watching them, seeing how perfectly it all fit together.
So she knew the what of Lavos' plan for them, if not the how and why.
Because that was his one weakness, those two little children, and he was doing
everything in his power to protect them.
___________________________
No one knew where they had come from -- most didn't even know they existed --
but Masa, Mune, and Doreen were proving to be invaluable in forging the
Dreamstone weapon.
Condensing the stone would be impossible without them, Melchior realized. Not
only did they know things about how Dreamstone worked but they could fasten
themselves to the blade, increasing its strength a hundred fold.
Even so, the number of problems they ran into was ridiculous.
Formulas would go missing. Every time Melchior turned his back on the forge,
the fire went out. He would leave the room and come back to find it locked,
with the keys inside. Any book he so much as thought of disappeared. His tools
rusted over night. The room itself -- a forge, designed to resist such things --
caught fire seven times in one week, and only quit when Schala laid so many
fireproofing spells on it he could barely get the forge lit.
Almost as if something didn't want their work to succeed.
He didn't think the name, didn't let on about his suspicions to Masa, Mune, and
Doreen.
He put the question to his oldest and closet friend.
"You're doing what with Dreamstone?"
"Condensing it," Melchior repeated for what felt like the thousandth
time. "But Bethashar, really, I need -- "
"That's brilliant, Melchior! How did you think of it?"
"I didn't... It... He did."
That silenced the other Guru. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
"...Siris?"
Melchior took a deep breath, leaned back in his chair, and released it. They
were in Belthashar's comfortable, roomy office. A fire crackled softly in the
hearth -- Zeal Kingdom may have had more
technologically advanced methods of heating a room, but there was something
about a fire that relaxed as well as warmed.
Silence settled between the old men, broken only by Melchior's labored
breathing.
It was easier if he didn't think about it. It was easier if he didn't remember.
It was easier if he acted as if she'd never existed.
Melchior had never been one to take the easy way out.
Even though it hurt to see the young man, he did, digging up some excuse to be
down there nearly every day. Just so he could watch, fascinated, at the things
of her he saw so clearly in Siris. The young man was so much like her -- her
hair, her smile, her laughter. It made his heart bleed, as if it were being cut
with a thousand tiny pieces of glass each time it beat.
"I miss her, Bethashar," he heard his choked voice say.
"Terribly. I wake up in the night and I reach out for her and when all my
hands can find is empty sheets it makes me want to scream. I go down there, and
I see him, and...he looks...so much like her I can't...."
"It was a horrible thing Zeal did to you."
Silence settled over them again.
"It wasn't Zeal. It was Lavos," Melchior broke the stillness at last,
the tears in his voice only adding and edge to the quiet fury that laced his
tone. "And if it takes all the strength I have, I swear I'll see to the
end of that beast, and damn the consequences."
___________________________
Schala followed the worn path through the trees, her feet easily guiding her
over the rough spots, her mind very far away.
She did not like using the Earthbound as Zeal commanded; it struck her as wrong
on some level she couldn't name. And when she'd actually seen the poor people
it'd made her want to cry. Most of them had fleas, for Heaven's sake, and now
they're forced to leave their homes and slave away obediently in horrible
conditions to build a palace beneath the sea for a people that don't give a
damn about them.
No wonder they hate us.
But there was no opposing the Queen, not even in this. Especially not in this,
not with Lavos involved.
Schala knew of the rumors running through court, knew of what was whispered
about her mother and this obsession. She knew, too, of the real dangers
involved, and as Zeal took most of the risks herself, there was nothing Schala
could say to her on the matter.
Or at least, nothing valid she could say. No reasons with support backing them
that the Queen might listen to.
Schala's dreams, of course, were not evidence, not even the most vivid of them.
Dreams of Lavos, and the Mammon Machine, and three strange children tied up in
it all. Dreams of fire and death and most of all blood -- oh gods, the things
she saw about blood in her dreams. Dreams that were occurring more and more
frequently.
The trees around her began to thin, a sign that she was nearing the edge of the
continent. It was a peaceful place, a place of solitude. She came here to think
and be alone and just relax and let the rest of the world fall away beneath the
clouds.
The trees parted suddenly, revealing a dying sun that sank slowly beyond the
lip of clouds on the horizon, the edge of Zeal Kingdom just before her, a small
clearing in the trees and land.
It was glowing with a sickly purple light cast by a little child with dark hair
and a very determined expression on her face.
A child, Schala knew for a fact, that was not Enlightened.
___________________________
It took a different kind of control than Ivy was used to, a mental kind, and it
almost proved too much for her. Her blood didn't just burn, it became fire
itself surging through every one of her veins. Her mind kind of sank in on
itself until she was looking at the inside part of her body, the spiritual
part, actually seeing the magic raging through her blood.
The next step was a bitch.
Ivy wrapped the magic around herself, drowned herself in the electric heat of
it until the rush of wind was all she knew, all she'd ever known. Forming the
picture of light in her mind, holding on to the idea of it, she willed a bit of
her magic to break itself off and become a light.
Ivy opened her eyes.
The light glimmered a sickly purple. Warbling, gloomy, greasy looking purple.
She sighed in defeat, and took her mind off of it. It fizzled and crackled back
into oblivion, leaving her with a headache pounding at her temples.
She didn't even want to think about the acid running through each and every one
of her veins, its sluggish, throbbing, eating burn replacing the almost sensual
feel of magic --
'Ivy...'
She jerked, and whirled around, her hand already on one of the many daggers
hidden in her robes. The trees proved to be empty, and she had a moment to calm
down and realize the faint voice had spoken telepathically.
'...Uncle Siris?'
He sounded very far away, but she could still make out the chuckle. 'Sorry.
Didn't mean to scare you.'
Hells. Ivy's eyes narrowed. 'I wasn't scared.'
'Oh, really? Then what do you call it?'
'Startled, is all.' Ivy smiled quietly to herself when he laughed again.
'Now, are you going to tell me the real reason you're talking to me or would
you like to tease me some more?'
Silence.
'Uncle?' She could hear the worry in her tone.
'...I...have some...bad news.'
She waited.
'...Zeal is...' Any hesitation abruptly left his voice, the words
spilling quickly out of him. 'Zeal is building this thing, under the ocean.
Some kind of Undersea Palace, or some shit. She wants it done quick, too,
and...she decided there weren't enough Enlightened to do the job...'
Ivy could feel the anger building in her. 'Nooo...'
'Yes. And that's not even the worst of it. Ivy, she...dammit, that bitch
took everyone. I've only got about forty men left, and only me and three others
-- the Beast's Nest guards -- are even capable of fighting.'
'Siris, no, don't tell me that...'
'...I'm sorry, but the plan isn't going to work. We don't have enough
people. You'll have to think of something else.'
Ivy took a deep breath, closing her eyes tight and counting as high as it took for
the seething anger to settle into something more manageable.
Ivy let her gaze wander over the edge of the kingdom. The sinking sun cast
everything in a bright red glow, like blood spilled over the clouds. A cool,
robust wind lifted from the edge, found her, swirled around her.
'All right,' she thought at last, releasing her breath and anger in a
sigh. 'All right. We can still do this. Maybe not as thoroughly as I'd like,
but there's still a chance.'
'I'm listening.' She did not like the amused, gentle tone to his voice
and frowned.
'...We're closer to him now, in a better position for attack. We -- '
"What the hell do you think you're doing?"
In a fraction of a second, Ivy had her daggers out, whirling to face the
furious voice --
Only to find herself eye to eye with Princess Schala.
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Rast: Mmmm. I like this chapter, for some reason.
Once again, I owe the, uh, 'speedy' creation of this chapter to Ollen70. I
dunno why, just his reviews are for some reason inspirational so I am going to
give him lots and lots of credit for being such a great reviewer. Not that all
the others aren't, but the comment about liking how Janus and Ivy interact
really made me smile...and then start chapter sixteen.
I am working so hard not to make Ivy a Mary Sue, give her an actual
personality, and all the while trying not to shove her down anyone's throat.
Let me know if I end up doing that with any of the original characters, okay?
Sometimes I can't tell when enough is enough.
Also, I realize this chapter was mostly minor characters but it has purpose, I
promise, and it's not just to show that Janus and Ivy aren't the only ones with
direction in this story.
I'm going to start pushing things now, speeding up the plot, so please let me
know if you think something feels too rushed.
I will have part one finished December 27. I will, I swear I
will...unless I get hit any worse with writer's block. That'll be two chapters
a week, instead of what has been one chapter per two weeks. Sigh. No social
life for me, thanks.
Okay, okay, I know I tend to ramble on these things so I'll shut up now...and
go start chapter seventeen.
...Review...?
'S down there...just in case you were wondering.
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