First of all, I'm sorry I didn't update over spring break. In regard to that… if I EVER see a bucket of spackling mud ever again, I am going to slip away over the border, buy fireworks, come back, and blow it up! I was considering sticks of dynamite, but fireworks are easier to get hold of and less suspicious and they make pretty colors when they go boom…
Don't ask. You're happier not knowing…
Chapter Five: Countermeasures
Xelha took a deep breath and stared at the doors into Queen Corellia's audience chamber. She closed her eyes, for a moment before pushing them open…
Queen Corellia, King Ladekahn, and Duke Calbren were all in the audience chamber, apparently deep in discussion. They broke off as soon as they realized she was there, and all three seemed to be relieved that she was there. Corellia smiled warmly at her.
"I'm relieved to see you safe and sound, Xelha. You were unconscious for so long, and everyone was worried…"
"I apologize, your highness. Both for causing you all to worry… and for…"
"Don't talk like that, Xelha," King Ladekahn said, cutting her off. "You and your friends did everything you could."
"You did more than anyone else could have," Corellia added encouragingly. "For that, you have our thanks. What happened is not your fault, and you need not feel guilty because of it. Is that clear, Xelha?" There was more than a touch of command in that, which made Xelha swallow a chuckle. Her present company wouldn't understand the joke. She did allow a smile to blossom, she had needed the encouragement.
"Yes, your highness. Thank you. If I may ask… what is the situation here?"
Ladekahn answered this time. "Things are bad, to put it simply. Melodia seems to have brought the imperial capital under control with much less difficulty than we were expecting. She must have contacts within the military to have pulled off such a feat."
"She does, your highness," Xelha added with a grimace for Fadroh. "General Fadroh will do anything she tells him to… even kill his own Emperor."
Ladekahn frowned. "That is bad news. We had heard rumors of Geldoblame's death, but nothing we could confirm. Melodia locked down Mintaka's harbor about a day after she gained control, and we've had no news out of Alfard since then. In addition, minions of the darkness have poured into our world through a dimensional vortex. They're only attacking in small groups, but are causing considerable damage nonetheless. Luckily, our ample preparation has kept the damage to a minimum." He gave her a small smile of gratitude and continued. "Three witches have appeared, and offered their aide. Frankly, without their help, the damage would be much worse."
"Is there any news out of Sadal Suud?" Xelha asked. Ladekahn scowled at that question.
"Sadal Suud is largely untroubled by the monsters so far. Lord Rodolfo of Sadal Suud has holed himself up in his manor and refuses to speak with our couriers. Panicking, no doubt." The word 'coward' seemed to hang in the air as surely as if he had voiced it.
"That is understandable, given the circumstances," Corellia said in a halfhearted attempt to defend the lord of Sadal Suud, although Xelha thought that she silently agreed with Ladekahn's sentiments. "Fortunately, the Cor Hydrae has been silent thus far," she continued, taking over the briefing from Ladekahn. "According to the witches, the seals on the End Magnus have not been completely removed yet, and Malpercio has yet to be fully awakened. Although…" Corellia's expression became thoughtful, "…in order to unseal the End Magnus, Melodia would need something equal in power to that which is sealed within. Where in the world does she intend to find a power equal to that of a god?"
I know a place where she could start, Xelha thought, her thoughts drifting to her homeland. She fervently prayed that Melodia had not heard legends of the Ocean Mirror, especially since Catarrene, Glamyss, and Kodelle had left Wazn, leaving the island's defenses shorthanded.
"If we could find out how she intends to completely unseal the End Magnus, perhaps we could devise a plan to stop her… such a pity it would be impossible to slip a spy into Mintaka as long as the blockade is in effect…" Ladekahn sighed.
"This… is all my fault…" Duke Calbren sighed, hanging his head. It was the first thing he had said since Xelha had entered the room, and drew her attention to focus on him. His face seemed more lined, more haggard than when she had last seen him in Mira. The current conflict was clearly taking its toll on him. "I never imagined that my Melodia, or all people, would have such horrible ambitions… Surely I have no apology befitting such an oversight, yet I ask for your forgiveness."
"Please, Lord Calbren," Corellia sighed, her tone saying that this was not the first time that they had had this conversation. "Now is not the time for lament and regret. We must determine what to do. We will have plenty of time for mourning and reflection… if we survive and prevail."
"We must resolve this crisis as soon as possible," Ladekahn agreed. "This is no time for guilt, Duke Calbren!"
"…I understand," Duke Calbren said softly, determination creeping back into his voice. "I must get Melodia to realize the catastrophic consequences of her actions. I will do my utmost!"
No one said anything to that. No one wanted to depress the Duke again, and a peaceful resolution would have been appreciated, but no one else in the room thought it would be very likely that Melodia could be reasoned with.
Xelha decided to break the lengthy silence. "Excuse me, but has there been any word on my friends?"
"The appearance of the Cor Hydrae has created small Interdimensional Cracks on each island, five in all, at the sights where there End Magnus were sealed," Corellia said slowly. "We received sightings of five ships from Mintaka heading for the cracks. Regrettably, we do not have the troops to spare to investigate."
Xelha nodded. "Thank you, Queen Corellia. That's where I'll start looking for them, then."
Everyone looked mildly surprised. "Are you sure, Xelha?" asked Ladekahn. "We won't be able to give you any support, and there's bound to be a trap in this somewhere…"
"Your Majesty, with all due respect, I can't just abandon my friends," Xelha protested respectfully, but firmly. "If our positions were reversed, I'm sure that they would do the same for me. Besides… I am stronger than I appear. I'll survive." Somehow.
All three rulers sighed collectively, not quite believing her, but knowing they would probably have to imprison her to stop her, and they didn't have enough troops to spare for that, either.
"If that is the case, than you will need a ship," Ladekahn sighed. "Feel free to borrow the Mindeer again."
"Thank you, Your Highness," Xelha replied, bowing respectfully before walking out.
Emera scowled openly. Monsters. Monsters pouring out of a hole in the sky, attacking the islands. No one really knew much more than that. Thankfully, the magical barrier seemed to be keeping them out of Anuenue itself, but Diadem and Sadal Suud were having problems, and had been reinforced with almost every available member of Anuenue's military reserve. Rumors were going around about a draft if things got any worse, and that Emera did not like in the slightest.
Apparently Alfard had set up a blockade. No air traffic in or out. No word from Koysta. None at all.
She clutched the cheap crystal necklace he had bought for her in the brief time that he had been stationed in Anuenue, while Emperor Geldoblame had been visiting the queen. Most of the people in Geldoblame's entourage had been really nasty, even when they were viewing the 'primitive festivities'. Koysta had befriended her. He'd bought her the necklace, which she couldn't afford on her own, since all her money went to taking care of her little brother in Opu or helping out the rest of the village. She hoped he was alright…
"Hey, watch where you're going!" snapped an irritable vendor as he stepped on her foot! She simply glared at him. That was all she had to do, and then he realized what she was and backed off.
"My apologies, Miss Emera!"
"I'm sure," she replied, her voice dripping sarcasm. If she wasn't a hunter, he wouldn't have been so quick, and they both knew that. Not wanting to anger someone who he thought was perfectly capable of tearing him limb from limb, he skulked off, back to his stand no doubt. Even though the celebration of the Celestial Tree was officially over, since the thing had actually bloomed this time, everyone seemed to be dragging the celebrations on as long as they could. Or maybe it had something to do with staving off the rumors of the resurrection of Malpercio the Cursed. Emera had never been too great at understanding why people did things… at even why she herself did things from time to time, especially if she was acting solely on her emotions…
"Hey! Give that back!" A young woman's voice trilled indignantly. Emera snapped out of her reflections and saw a young boy dressed a little more shabbily than most streaking through the crowd, clutching a glowing silvery pendant that was definitely magical and most certainly did not belong to him. Although the core gleaming crystal seemed to be cracked somehow, it was still worth more than anything a boy dressed like that had ever even touched before, easily. As a hunter, someone who made her living scouring Holoholo jungle for rare things, she could tell this at a glance.
So, almost casually, she summoned her quarterstaff and expertly tangled it in the boy's legs, causing him to come crashing into the ground. He was up almost immediately, glaring death at her, but she had plucked the pendant from his grasp before he recovered.
"Do not take things that don't belong to you. If you need money, than here," she said, handing him a few gold pieces. He shoved them back at her angrily.
"I don't take handouts!" he snarled, baring his teeth at her like some kind of animal. "I won't forget this, either! You'll both pay, and I don't care if you're a Hunter, scary lady! I'll get you too! No one messes with Jotar!" And with that, he scurried off. Emera shook his head at his stupidity. Pride was one thing… survival was another. Of course, if he turned his nose up at gold so freely offered, maybe he wasn't as bad off as his clothing and actions indicated…
A woman with blonde hair, dressed in the most outlandish pink clothing Emera had ever seen, ran up, panting. "Did you see a little boy with dark hair dressed in green? He took something that belongs to me, something very important…"
"A pendant?" Emera asked, dropping it into the hands of a very surprised and grateful young woman.
"Thank you!" she cried, her light brown-yellow eyes lighting up. "I don't know what I would have done without this…"
"What did it do, before it got broken?" Emera asked, genuinely curious. Although she couldn't use magic herself, she had always been able to sense, vaguely, if an object had magical properties. Since she could still sense Xelha's pendant, even though it was broken, it must have been very powerful indeed.
"It indicated the places where the End Magnus were buried, and…" the stranger clammed up so quickly Emera briefly wondered if she'd bitten her tongue. However, that brief wonder was drowned in shock as her eyebrows shot up into her hairline.
"The End Magnus?" she hissed. If she had been anyone else, she probably would have screamed it. She didn't know what they were, exactly, had only heard rumors from the palace guards over a shared mug of ale, wild tales of glowing golden cards, and a vision of destruction so horrible that it had caused the Queen herself to collapse… "You, a frail little thing who can't hold on to her valuables, you're mixed up in… in everything?" She threw her arms out to indicate the state of the world today.
"I… I guess I'm going to have to explain things. I know of a place that we can go where we won't be overheard. I'm Xelha, by the way. What's your name?"
"Emera," she said simply, and without preamble.
"Y'know, something about you reminds me of a friend of mine. Her name was Savyna…" The girl trailed off, and Emera controlled her shock better this time. Savyna had gotten mixed up with this little… puffball?
Something told her that once she had heard the girl's story, nothing would surprise her ever again…
Green eyes cracked open slightly. It was the night, the silver moonlight that streamed through her window proved that.
"Lyude…" she whispered softly, her green eyes closing again as she tried to make her way back to that barren place that she had gone to in her fevered dreams… because she had made a promise, and she intended to keep it…
Her mother looked down at her, concern radiating from every detail of her diminutive body. She had already lost one daughter to a mysterious illness, she would not lose Anima too. Especially not Anima… not the happy, healthy child that had practically glowed with life and vitality in a way that Vera had not…
She tried to quell the thought, she knew it was favoritism, but she knew it was the truth as well. She had accepted early on that she would probably outlive sickly Vera by a fair margin, that one day she would wake up and Vera would not be anymore. It had not helped when the time came, not really, but it had hurt a little less than this because she had always been expecting it, had been prepared for it. She had not been prepared for this, though. First the nightmares, and now this collapse... just like Vera...
Anima will wake up… she promised herself softly. She also made a second promise.
To find the person, or the thing, that was responsible for what had happened to her daughters, and destroy it. She was a mother, if not a very good one, and her mother's intuition was telling her that there was nothing natural about what had happened to her babies, her darlings. Especially since the incident almost four years ago now, when both her daughters had demonstrated that they were anything but natural. And if that 'something' that had brought this black disaster on her house was currently sleeping in the master bedroom…
Well, she knew where he kept his revolver now, and she had taken and hidden the only set of keys. If he was the problem, he could be dealt with easily. They could buy a smaller house, and even with Vera's plethora of medical problems, they could live quite well off of his life insurance.
If he was the one responsible, then it would be the ultimate irony. That the man who had tried to kill both her babies… twice, if he was responsible for what was going on now… would furnish all three of them with a comfortable existence in death.
And, while she thought this, 'That Man' slept on quite comfortably in his bed, confident that he held the power in the household. Confident that his wife, at least, had forgiven him, even if his daughters had not.
Pity the fool that continues to share a bed with a woman after he has threatened her children, for that man sleeps next to a cobra every night, whether he knows it or not.
Emera took a long sip of beer out of one of her Magnus. She never drank all that often, and it was really just a wheat magnus that had fallen to the bottom of her bag and fermented, but she felt that she needed it today.
First of all, she was sitting in a cathedral. A cathedral she'd reached by jumping into a big blue flower, a plant that she had walked past several times but ignored. A cathedral where one of the priests had nattered on about praying and making her stronger, and she had tried, for kicks, and it had actually worked. That, she found to be eerie to no end. And then, of course, there was Xelha's story…
Dead gods. A quest, an evil emperor (Not that she needed this girl's help to know that Geldoblame was rotten to the core) love, friendship and betrayal. A Guardian Spirit of all things, one that had been given the ability to physically manifest herself in their world, but on top of the rest of the insanity, that almost seemed normal. The way Xelha talked about the spirit… Vera… as if such things fell out of the sky every day with the rain boggled her mind. But somehow, for some reason, the though of Savyna wasting away in some fancy interdimensional prison seemed as strange as everything else put together…
The logical part of her wanted to turn around and walk away. The part of her that had always been naturally curious, the part that had driven her to become a Hunter when she could have made a decent living in several other professions, wanted to go with Xelha, to see the things she spoke of with her own eyes.
And then there were two, illogical voices that interwove themselves intoxicatingly with her reasoning, beating logic into the back corner.
There was the bright voice, that she had usually only heard when she was thinking about her younger brother but had recently been very loud when the subject touched on Koysta, pointed out that this Xelha had a ship. And that this Xelha was planning on going to Mintaka sometime in the near future, and if she was in Mintaka she could find out what was going on and maybe could even help him…
And there was a nasty, dark voice tinged with sickly purple and putrid green that kept on pointing out that it would be really satisfying to see the look on Savyna's face when it was Emera who came in to save her, after that crushingly humiliating defeat the woman had handed her the only time she had challenged her. That it would be rewarding to see that cold, haughty woman who held herself so aloof brought down to the level of everyone else, cold, afraid, alone…
Emera tried her best to silence that hateful little voice, but jealousy is a difficult voice to rub out.
"So, you're clearly used to traveling in a larger group, but now you're alone."
"That's not entirely true, I do have Memai." The little aqua Greythorne poked out of Xelha's hood and trilled happily. Xelha herself seemed nervous though, which was understandable. The man who had been with her almost from the beginning had turned out to be a traitor, and her other friends were imprisoned.
"But Memai, cute though I'm sure she is, can't fight. I can." I can't believe I'm saying this. Who's going to take care of Havar while I'm off gallivanting with this girl I don't even know trying to save humanity?
-Boat- reminded the bright voice. As if she could forget!
-revenge…- said the dark voice. And then the bright voice tried to strangle the dark voice and all was peaceful in her head again.
"Are you offering to come with me?"
"…I am. On two conditions. One, before we go anywhere, we stop in Opu. I have a younger brother, and I'll need to get someone to take care of him while I'm away. Two… I have a friend who lives in Mintaka. I want to make sure he's alright. So, when we get there, I want to take some time to look for him. Is that okay with you?"
"It's fine!" Xelha held out her hand, and Emera took it, sealing the unspoken pact between them.
"So, little princess, where to first?"
Xelha started at the title, her eyes going wide, "I... I'm not a princess..."
Emera stared at her new traveling companion. "I was joking."
"Eheh... I knew that..." Was that someone's nickname for her? Kalas's, maybe? Emera made a mental note not to use that teasing title again. "So, ever climbed the Celestial Tree?"
"Do I look like one of the Keepers to you?"
"I'll take that as a no, then. Well, now you're going to get your chance, because that's where Anuenue's Interdimensional Crack is."