Woohoo! Chapter 2! And now I have finished uni FOREVER! Hahahahaha! Never again will I have to animate anything! Can you tell I'm happy about it? I just need to find me a job now…
Anywho, onwards with the next instalment of the story. We're getting closer to the Underverse. I think on more chapter with Lord and Dame Vaako after this one and then it's into death we go! Please lemme know if this chapter works okay, I'm a little unsure about the ending so if you have any ideas and constructive criticism please feel free to shred away!
Thakies to you all for your great reviews! They really make my day! I love 'em!
TotallyRiddickObsessed- Yup, I just love writing Dame Vaako, she is such a cow and Thandie Newton was so amazing in the film. I tried hard to keep her in character. To me she seemed more evil than her hubby.
JackieStarr- wow, thankies! Here is more! Sorry it wasn't sooner.
Blacke's-Girl- Here's the next part hope you like!
FitMama- Heh. That was my favourite line too! Hee! She's a super bitch! Glad you liked that, hope you like this next one and thanks for such a lovely review!
a- here's the next part, sorry it wasn't sooner and thankies for reviewing!
traptroque6- Yes! I totally agree! I think that was my one qualm with CoR. Riddick would not have been lead so easily into the Quasi Dead chamber. Riddick wasn't that stupid Mr. Twoy! Anywho, yes, that's my little rant over and done with. Thankies for reviewing and expect to see more of Riddick putting the Uber Bitch in her place!
JohnMayer1207- aww, shucks, you make me blush! Thankies for your review and glad you like it so much. Hope this chapters okay too!
Well, Happy Reading!
Gem
xxx
Chapter 2: The Fate of Us All.
Riddick rubbed furiously at his itching eyes as he leaned back over the heavy, dust coated tome and forced them to continue taking in the small, spidery script. The vast library of the basilica was dark save for a scattering of candles, flickering and casting a pale golden glow around Riddick where he sat hunched over his chosen books, bathing him in the soft, dancing, dawn-like light. A large callused finger smoothed across the page from left to right, tracking the words, hunting them almost, his mercury eyes darting in his finger's wake seeping in the information and his lips moved minutely, silently speaking as his brain registered what he was reading.
Though even the dim light irritated his eyes, the source of their incessant itching, he needed such illumination to actually read by and his mild discomfort was a small price to pay for the research that he was doing. It was vital that he knew what he was up against when he set foot over the Threshold as the Necro-boy had called it. He needed to know the rules of this new game…just so he could break them all and bring her back. Back from the bleakness of death. Shit, he'd go charging blind, deaf and dumb right into hell to get her if he had to and the Devil would pay if anyone so much as tried to stop him.
There had to be some way of reaching her. The past Lord Marshal had, according to his current choice of literature, ventured to the Threshold himself, had stepped into the very Underverse and returned to speak of it. He'd returned to gloat of it. Arrogant son of a bitch he was!
Riddick allowed a smirk to twist his lips as he remembered the look of pure horror on the man's pale face as that blade, the very one that the Lord Marshal had bestowed upon him after Riddick's victory against the best Necromonger warrior, had pierced his skull, driving home to his brain with as much force as Riddick's aching arm could muster.
His revenge had been short lived, however, before the taste had become sour upon his tongue. Seeing Kyra's body, unable to hold her own weight, her eyes barely focusing upon his face as he took her into his arms like he should have so many times before and asked tentatively, fearing the answer, if she was still with him. She had looked at him then, fleetingly, her eyes only seeing him for long enough to speak those final words that had etched themselves onto his heart forever…
…I was always with you…I was…
Then the fierce emerald of her gaze had faded, their usually ardent light dimmed, paled as she looked not at him, but through him. Staring half-heartedly into the face of death, only a small smile gracing her cold, blue tinted lips. A smile filled with a mixture of sorrow that she was leaving him, of pain from her injuries, of satisfaction and pride that she had saved him. She had saved him. She had saved him twice! Once from the Lord Marshal and the second time…from himself…from his own lack of humanity though that had started when he had first clapped eyes on her, clad in boy's clothes. Barely twelve years old. Fierce to the last. Her tough-ass demeanour had all been an act, the shaving of her head, finding goggles like his, swearing. The true Jack had shone through all of that bravado regardless though and only for him. Never would she drop her guard for anyone else. Only him. Always only him.
Riddick swallowed hard to clear his throat, his silvery eyes stinging again for reasons other than the irritating light. Clamping his jaw determinedly, he returned to the task at hand. The sooner he figured out what the hell the deal was with the Threshold and the Underverse, the sooner he could get her back, beside him, where she belonged.
The entire Necromonger history was written down in thousands upon thousands of huge, leather bound volumes making them one of the final races in the Multiverse who preferred parchment and ink to the glitch ridden computers that were adopted more for convenience and speed rather than accuracy. Despite his admiration for the patience needed to complete the mammoth task of penning their entire heritage by hand, Riddick cursed them harshly for their efficiency. Everything from the first Lord Marshal's birth, to the third Lord Marshal's romantic tendencies, to the fifth Lord Marshal's eating habits where catalogued in such immense detail that each subject warranted it's own shelf of books, if not more in some cases.
Riddick glanced over his shoulder briefly, taking in the hundreds of floor to ceiling bookcases made from some magnificent form of ebony and slate, every single shelf filled to bursting…he was going to be there all night…and it was going to be a long assed night at that!
A breeze caressed his cheek. A mere shifting of the warm night air of the basilica library but he knew she was there. He'd known that she would come at some point. Actually he was remarkably surprised that she hadn't made her presence known sooner being the meddling old woman that she was.
"You'll not find what you are looking for in here." came her soft but regal voice. Though she came and went like the wind, Aereon's voice, her poise, her entire disposition rang with a power, not physical like his, but an amazing power none-the-less. He respected her for that.
"What took you so long to wheedle your way out of the woodwork?" he snorted, not even glancing up from his page. "I'da thought you'da been the first out, shouting your mouth off 'bout how your prophecy came true." his voice came out as an amused rumble that tingled through the warm air.
Aereon smiled at him from where she stood, draped in new robes of white and pale yellow, hemmed with golden thread. She looked like a queen, Riddick noted absently and perhaps she was. No one save the Elemental race knew who their queen was. No one besides them had seen her face. Sure, there were tales and rumours, idle gossip speculating who she was but those same gossip-mongers had dubbed both Butcher's Bay and Crematoria inescapable when Riddick had escaped from both without breaking little more than a sweat each time. Overall, he wasn't one to heed the hearsay of the rabble.
Aereon's soft chuckle broke Riddick's train of thought and he glanced over at her, watching, ever wary, as she moved closer to the table where he sat. The pale candlelight lit her age and care worn face, making her look for the first time since he had met her, old and weary. Wars did that to people and she was no doubt there, disrupting Riddick's concentration, to discern if there was still going to be a need to fight, to see if he could be trusted not to wage his own war on the Multiverse to pay it back for his many years of mistreatment.
"You are wondering if I am the Elemental Queen, aren't you." she stated, smiling tiredly, rather than asked.
Riddick simply shrugged.
"Makes no difference to me." he responded quietly, licking his thumb and using the added friction to flip to the next page in his book.
"Oh but it does. It will make a great difference to you, Lord Marshal." she replied enigmatically and Riddick's luminous gaze turned stormy.
"Don't call me that." he growled, a deep vibration disturbed the still air and caused Aereon's body to ripple between her physical and elemental state.
"Why not? It is your title now. Is it not?" she queried laying an age smoothed hand across the page that he was studying intently.
Riddick grit his teeth, desperately trying to keep himself under control. She was beginning to annoy him, Elemental Queen or not. That was why he hated people. They just wouldn't leave him be. They simply couldn't it seemed, always intent on sticking their noses where they didn't belong, meddling in affairs that weren't their own. His fists clenched either side of the great book, turning his knuckles to ice white and Aereon chuckled again.
"Do I try your patience, Lord Marsh-"
Before the sentence had left her lips, and before she could breeze from his grasp, Riddick's powerful hand had lashed out and encircled her throat, though not with the force he had unleashed upon Dame Vaako.
"You came here for a reason, old woman, not to simply annoy me, so do us both a favour and cut to the fucking chase!" Riddick seethed, teeth clenched and jaw set as his silver gaze hammered into her steely blue one.
She was silent for a long moment, eyes intent on his until she dipped her head slightly.
"Very well." she murmured and his hold loosened automatically, allowing her to step back and away from his overpowering form. Her small, soft hands smoothed down the front of her robes with exaggerated care, her eyes were lowered as if she was steeling herself for what she was about to say to him, dreading his reaction. Finally she sighed, clasping her hands together in front of her and glancing back up slowly to meet his questioning stare. "May I give you some advice?" she queried quietly and Riddick snorted, his shoulders lurching up and down again in a vague motion of amusement.
"You're free to try…" he responded with a quirk of his lips, linking his hands and folding them behind his head in a gesture that was normally associated with relaxation. He, however, was waiting intently upon her next words. Words that would perhaps decide whether she lived or died that night at his hands.
Taking another deep breath to still the flutter in her heart, she continued.
"Do not make this pilgrimage into the Underverse." she spoke, her tone desperate, her sapphire blue eyes pleading with him though she only saw his stoic glare hardening as she spoke. "As soon as you cross over the Threshold you know they will try to take your Lordship from you." she did not need to explain who exactly she was talking about. Riddick had seen the greedy hunger in both Lord and Dame Vaako's eyes and with that the icy hatred that would fuel Lord Vaako to do almost anything to see Riddick destroyed. Dame Vaako was much better at controlling and concealing her emotions than her livid husband and in turn was a much greater threat. Lord Vaako he could deal with. A man shaped by war and battle. Fighting Riddick knew well and if he was ever challenged by the Necromonger commander, the slim, pale man would go down harder than a ton of bricks. It was the cunning, the manipulation of that scheming woman that he was concerned about the most, though not so much that he was losing sleep over it. All he needed to do if things became too much for him to control was to slit her throat while she slept. Her pathetic excuse of a husband too, if he got in the way.
Aereon cleared her throat softly, drawing Riddick's gaze to her and his mind back to the situation at hand.
"If you return through the Threshold, with or without this girl that you risk so much for, they will kill you both. The will kill her first, for the second time, just so that you have to watch her life slip out of her body again. And then…they will kill you." she sighed again, placing a hand upon Riddick's shoulder beseechingly. "I am begging you, Riddick. I am an Elemental. My life is to calculate and the odds of you returning from the Underverse with your woman and remaining alive are slim…very slim. The Multiverse cannot survive another Lord Marshal like the last and Lord and Dame Vaako would rule with more ruthlessness than we have ever seen before."
Riddick remained silent for so long the Aereon opened her mouth to speak again, demanding if he had listened to a word she had said. Riddick simply spoke over her. His voice slicing through the suddenly muggy air and causing the elderly Elemental to fall into silence once more.
"I want her back." he stated firmly, shrugging her hand from his shoulder and turning his back on her.
"Please, Riddick!" she implored him again. "Take a Necromonger wife. Take two if you must, but do not turn your back on Vaako even for a second or it shall be your last."
His shoulders stayed hunched and tense, fury emanating from him like a brilliant white light. He was stubborn. Truly a Furyan if ever she had seen one. What the Furyan wanted the Furyan always got and that was the truth of the matter. Riddick would go into the other side of life, straight into death itself to save this girl that he held so dear that he would gamble entirety to have her again, with or without Aereon's help. Defiant to the last.
Aereon allowed herself a small smile and nodded her head as if confirming to herself what she must do.
"She is that important to you?"
"Yes…" his reply was little more than a murmur and Aereon was unsure that she had heard him speak at all until he repeated it.
And then she smile with more feeling, a more genuine smile than she had smile in years.
"Very well then." she spoke gently. "It can be done. She can be saved and I shall aid you in your quest even though I fear where this path you choose will leave the fate of us all."
-ooooo-
Please gimme a review…or two…or three…maybe….hah! I'm a poet and I didn't know it! I know I'm being silly now…ahem…please review if you feel like it!
