Chapter Four: Continue?

Xelha groaned. The room flickered blearily, and she hurt all over. The guards had beaten her once Kalas and Vera and Melodia had left, taking the others the Whale knows where. They had hit her with fists, with feet, with rifle butts… but she wasn't dead, or… don't think about that, she scolded herself. She was alive. Barely, but alive.

"Hello?" she called out weakly. There was no answer. "Hello?" she pleaded, this time more loudly. "Gibari? Savyna?" Still no response. "Lyude? Mizuti?" The last name was almost a shout, as close to a shout as she could come in her condition, and caused her to cough. When the fit subsided, her hand was sticky. She looked at it, and, to her horror, it gleamed crimson in the dull and unreliable light.

Congratulations Xelha, commented her sarcastic side, you've broken a rib. Or maybe three or four. Or maybe all of them. "Is anyone there?" she pleaded brokenly. This time, she was rewarded with a plaintive squeak. She looked down… and there was her loyal Greythorne friend, looking up at her with its large blue eyes.

"Meemai!" she exclaimed happily, hugging the Greythorne. However, that was all that was good about the cell. It was filthy, cold, and dark. Was it supposed to be so dark? Or was it only her eyes?

"It's so dark… Meemai, I'm scared…" Xelha whined, hugging her pet Greythorne. She had known from the start that Kalas was bad news (Yes, and that's why you've been mooning over him like a lovesick puppy…). However, Vera had given off such a light… Xelha had been certain that neither of them were really… evil.

Oh, how wrong she had been.

She knew that she should be breaking out of here, or at least trying to, to find her friends, to figure out a way to destroy Ka…

No, to save Kalas, and Vera.

Could they be saved? She could understand why Kalas had turned… but why had Vera chosen to join the darkness?

Pointless question… you know that there's no answer. At least, not in this world.

This world… wait. Could it be possible to go to Vera's world?

Wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. I have to get out of here first…

A clicking sound drove Xelha to her feet, and she groped around for a weapon. Finding none, she raised her fists as the door swung inward…

To reveal Vera standing in front of her.

The Guardian's appearance had changed from when she had first seen her in the Lava Caves. Vera now wore a flowing white dress with a square neckline, trimmed in gold. She wore a gray cape, a charcoal shade near her shoulders fading to an almost white at the hem and splitting into a cut that reminded Xelha strongly of wings. Around her neck hung a ruby dark as blood and as long as Xelha's thumb dangling from fine golden chain, stolen directly from the treasury of the Imperial Palace, no doubt. There was a wide crimson belt around her waist, so wide it was almost a sash, and embroidered with golden dragons.

"Xelha? Is that you? I had thought…" she trailed off, her yellow-flecked scarlet eyes darkening. "Well, never mind what it is that I thought. They really let you have it…" she fell silent again, or mostly silent. However, the rest of her rant was a buzz too low to make out. "Sit down, fool, you're going to make yourself even worse if you strain your body. Just hold still." Vera pushed Xelha gently, and the young witch fell on the bed.

"W-what are you going to…?" Xelha gasped as Vera laid a hand on her shoulder.

"Water. Time." Xelha gasped, her vision blurring… and suddenly, she was lying on the bed, panting. She felt slick and sweaty and a little feverish, but she was no longer a mass of bruises and broken bones. She swung herself over the edge of the bed and tested her feet. She would be able to walk, at least.

" Now, what was I here for… Ah, now I remember. Here," Vera said simply, tossing Xelha's Magnus deck and her golden staff on the bed. "There are few guards at the moment; Melodia is busy crushing what is left of the Imperial resistance. You can escape easily. If you head for Mintaka, maybe you can find a boat and get yourself off this rock."

"V-Vera?" Xelha asked hesitantly, hardly daring to believe what the fallen Guardian was saying.

"That was my name the last time I checked. Hurry up and get going! There are few guards now. It's not going to stay that way very long."

"But… why help me?"

"…because I choose to," the Guardian replied, her expression unreadable. Before Xelha could ask any more questions, she melted into the floor, disappearing.

"Do you have any idea why Melodia told us to let Xelha go? It would have been so easy to kill her now…" Vera asked Kalas as they watched the dragon that Xelha had boarded fly into the distance and disappear. Odd thing, the dragon. And Wazn's witches. Why would they come for Xelha personally? Didn't they have better things to do than free one silly little girl from an area that was crawling with Malpercio's monsters?

"Something about aiding in the full resurrection of Malpercio. She seems to think that Xelha and the Five Losers can get power equal to a god," Kalas sighed. They both chuckled at the thought, but there was a bitter edge to their laughter. In truth, they both missed their friends. However, neither was willing to admit that to the other, for fear of ridicule, and the gap between them grew a little wider. "Ah, why are we talking about them? Who cares, anyway? I don't need them, I have you," Kalas said with a dark smile, stroking Vera's cheek and shoving thoughts of a yellow-haired woman who dressed in pink forcefully aside. "You're far more beautiful and powerful than Xelha will ever be. I don't miss her at all."

"Mm," Vera sighed, leaning against him and ignoring the lie. "I really like this, by the way," she said, holding the ruby up so it glinted in the moonlight. "Thank you for giving it to me. I shall cherish it always."

"As I shall cherish you. I love you. Vera."

"And I you, Kalas…"

The moment, however, was interrupted as a man cleared his throat nervously. Both teens rounded on the man who had interrupted them and glared violently.

"Ah…" the man started hesitantly. He had been an Imperial once, judging by his uniform. He didn't know that he wasn't one any longer, of course, and wouldn't find out for a few weeks yet. Alfard was a large nation and it would take some time to bring everything under control. "Lady Melodia and Lord Fadroh wish to see you both."

That was another part of their deception. Let the common soldiers think that Fadroh was pulling the strings and Melodia was his mistress instead of the other way around. Mere humans could be such idiots.

Anima drifted and flickered. Her head spun, her vision blurred. She was being carried inside. She was drifting in a void of swirling colors. She was being driven home. She stood beside a man with red hair, in a militaristic uniform. The floor of the place he was being held in was stark stone, and so was the only wall. The floor ended abruptly in three directions and a multicolored nothingness hung behind them like a veil.

He was tired, and bound to something that reminded her of the stockades that people had thrown miscreants in hundreds of years ago. Three feet in front of him lay a gun of some sort, with cards scattered around it. He raised his head, as if he knew she was there. His scarlet eyes scanned the room dully. "Hello?" he called out, a half-whisper. "Is anyone there?"

"I… my name is Anima. Anima Corey."

"I'm Lyude… agh!" he groaned, flinching.

"You're hurt!" Anima cried, gliding/rushing/floating over to his side. "Tell me where! I'm not all that good, but I can heal you!"

"It's… nothing…" he lied, smiling weakly at her. "You… don't seem to be bound here. You should get out while you still can. Before they… come back… don't waste your energy on me…"

"Don't be an idiot. I'm not going to leave you in this miserable place…" she growled at him. It would be hard to heal him. She always needed a focus to perform magic, and if that focus was a color associated with the element, all the better. She could use scraps of her tank top for the water element needed… but she didn't have anything green to represent time, and the last time she had used a healing spell with no focuses… well, it was probably better not to think about that. I'm sixteen years old now, almost seventeen. I think I have a better idea of what I'm doing now than I did when I was thirteen. She had one focus color this time. Maybe that would be enough… I could always look for something green… maybe one of those cards is green… She leaned over and inspected the cards on the floor. The majority of the cards seemed to be horns on vanilla, white, or black backgrounds. "What were you doing with all these pictures of horns, anyway? Are you some sort of musician?"

Lyude looked confused. "Are you talking about my Magnus?"

"What's a–"

"Anima! Anima, please wake up!"

Xelha groaned, and stretched, relishing in the feel of fine linen sheets against her unbroken skin. The sun shining in through the window…

Sun? Window? She wondered. Hadn't she been in a cell just yesterday?

Xelha sat up, blinking. She was in a guest bedroom someplace fancy, and red, with a balcony...

These decorations. I'm back in Anuenue, she realized. The last thing she could remember was half-collapsing against Kodelle on the White Dragon…

How… long have I been asleep? She wondered. It was morning. She had left Mintaka by night, but that could mean that this was the next morning… or some morning a month later. Xelha didn't think she could have slept a month, but she had a sinking feeling that she had slept far more than a few hours. Whatever healing Vera had used on her had been exhausting, and would have required more than a night's rest…

She started and almost cried out when a servant entered the room with breakfast (sweet rolls and an assortment of fresh fruits). How humiliating. After everything I've endured since I left home, now I start jumping at shadows.

"It's good that you're awake, Miss Xelha, you've been asleep for four days!" the young woman exclaimed.

Xelha winced. Four days? Wonderful. If the witches were right about her friends being moved out of the Fortress, (and they probably were, she knew that from experience) than they could be anywhere under the sun. Alive, she hoped.

Xelha wolfed down her breakfast, ignoring the servant who was hovering there as if afraid that the young witch would vanish in a puff of smoke. She needed to talk with Queen Corellia and King Ladekahn as soon as she could. She wondered if Duke Calbren had joined them yet, as he had said he would. She wondered if he knew about Melodia yet.

She certainly didn't want to be the one to tell him.

"Um… if you're done with breakfast and feeling up to it, Her Majesty requests an audience with you…"

Huh? Why so formal? If Kodelle and the others told them about… I'll…

Xelha forced that thought out of her head. She had enough on her plate without getting angry at the witches for no reason. "I'll be there shortly." Kodelle, Catrenne, and Glamyss had agreed not to tell, and they would not. Besides, it wasn't like anyone was going to guess the truth. After all, most people thought Wazn was only a myth. And she wanted things to stay that way for as long as possible…

Blearily, a woman with dark hair cracked her eyes open. She was rewarded by a huge drop of water that rolled off one of the leaves above her and landed directly in her eye. With a cry of pain, she jerked upright, and hissed as the action strained her ribs. She pulled out a random healing magnus, a sacred wine, and quaffed the contents. The pain in her side diminished to something bearable, and she leaned over to take a closer look at her side. There was a huge blood covered rending gash in her clothing, and she got the dubious pleasure of watching her skin knit together and cover the white bones of her ribs. Aah, the joys of healing magnus…

Her silvery eyes darkened as she tried to remember what had happened, but she found a blank spot in her memory. One moment she had been fending off a skeleton, then… nothing.

She was a hunter, someone who went into the deep reaches of the Holoholo jungle in search of monsters to sell for magnus ingredients in Komo Mai, and she disliked not being able to remember how she had been injured. It was even worse than having to remember that she had been injured in the first place. Savyna never got more than a few scratches, no matter how many days she was out here… she quashed the jealous thought. Savyna had been excellent at what she did, she had paid her Hunter's Guild dues, and she had helped the village of Opu to survive. Sure, she hadn't been the most sociable of people, but that had no bearing on how she got her job done. Jealousy was… unprofessional. Especially since she had been silly enough to challenge Savyna to a duel two weeks after the woman had shown up, in a fit of irrationality. She still had the scars that the woman had given her…

"This isn't getting me to Komo Mai any faster," she muttered. She cast around in her pack for her Locator Stone Magnus, which was issued to every Hunter when they entered the guild. Numbly, she realized that it wasn't in her pack. In an increasing panic, she scrambled around the clearing where she had fallen, trying desperately to find the magnus. Just as she was about to scream in frustration, a glint of pale red caught her eye. Absently, her hand went to her neck, and she realized her necklace was gone. She cursed her stupidity at losing it, one of her few precious possessions, and dove to grab it as if something would come and snatch it away. As she retied the crimson ribbon that held it on her neck, she noticed a magnus sitting beneath where it had lain. She picked it up, and sure enough, it was her Locator Stone.

Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. Two of the most valuable things that she owned, stacked neatly in a pile, as if someone had left them there to find. No monster was that smart…

She scanned the area to see if anything was moving, but the forest was still and quiet. Eerily quiet. Quickly, almost nervously, she went through her possessions to see if anything else had been added or removed. Finding nothing out of the ordinary, she scanned the clearing again, this time for tracks. She found no human ones save her own.

Damnably strange. Could one of the skeleton warriors have…

"Get a hold of yourself, Emera," she hissed, smacking herself lightly across the face. It was time to get to Komo Mai, She hadn't managed to catch anything live this time, but she had gotten some good ingredients, and even found a rare magnus to sell off, and she was running low on food; she'd been out in the wilds for a week. Maybe there would more post from Mintaka, she was so eager to see his response to her last letter… "And stop being so silly," she growled, smacking herself again. "Point me!" she muttered at the Locator Stone, and a beam of light shot off directly behind her. As if the forest itself had picked up on her mood and decided to spite her, it started to rain again, adding sopping wet to the list of things that were pissing her off. With an irritated snarl, she snatched up her bloodied quarterstaff and stalked off.

Sorry this took so long… I got writer's block on a certain part… so I decided to reformat things and stick that in the next chapter.

And for those of you who also read Crimson Rain… I will update it! I just got a little sidetracked. A lot sidetracked… Stop looking at me like that!

Yes, I added an OC. There is a reason… All will be reveaaaaled!

Eventually…