Sole Dorato: Lui Restaurarà

by Tafkae

Chapter Seven: Friendlier and Friendlier

"Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!" Ivan shouted in a panic, springing from his seat.

"What?" said Isaac, startled.

"I got caught. I got – how could I get caught? Aghh – do they think I'm with you guys now? Damn it!" He paced from one end of the small room to the other and back again, pulling at his hair with both hands, and clearly in danger of hyperventilating.

"Okay, breathe," said Isaac, standing.

"What happened?" Garet asked.

"The guy from before! The blue-haired – Alex. He knew, guys! I mean – I think – I don't know—"

"You cut it off, right?" said Isaac.

"Yeah, of course – but I think – he got something. Oh, god, they know about me! What am I going to do!"

Garet made a face. "Look, Ivan, I don't understand a word you're saying—"

"Calm down, guys, calm down," Isaac ordered. "Okay, now hang on. You got caught. Does that mean Jenna got caught?" Ivan nodded rapidly. "But Felix is there, so whatever side he's on, she's not in danger?" Another, slightly less anxious nod. "Okay, then. That's good. Do they know where we are?"

Ivan swallowed against a dry throat. "I – I'm not sure. I don't think so."

"And do they know that we have the Mars Star with us?"

Ivan blinked. "You have it with you?"

Isaac ran his hand through his hair and let out a deep breath, relieved. "Okay. What you don't know, they don't know. Good." He straightened up. "I think we're still in the clear for tonight."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, even if they know that we're alive and chasing them, it shouldn't make a difference. If they don't know we have the Mars Star, then they have no reason to come after us."

Garet nodded. "Yeah, good point."

"But—" Ivan shook his head, confused. "I don't know, guys. I've got a really bad feeling about this."

"Don't worry too much," said Isaac, looking out the window at the overcast and dusky sky. "Get some sleep tonight. You'll need energy to make it back to Kalay."

Ivan tried to shrug it off and agreed. Still, unrelated to the gathering storm outside or the fact that he'd volunteered to sleep on the floor that night (since there were only two beds), he lay awake for hours, too worried to fall asleep at all, the nameless fear wrapping itself around him.

"Ivan!" Alex shouted as he recovered his balance, pointing at Jenna. "You were talking to Ivan, weren't you?"

"I wasn't – who's Ivan? You're crazy!" Jenna yelled back.

"The mind reader from town, you know that!"

Saturos leapt to his feet. "Did you say a mind reader!"

"Yes, yes, I met him earlier, but the point is—"

"Why didn't you SAY anything!"

"Why didn't you ASK anything!"

Saturos glanced to Menardi and back with a wild grin. "Can you believe this? Lady Luck isn't just smiling on us anymore, gentlemen, she wants to bear our children!"

An awkward silence followed. Alex smiled back uncertainly. "As wonderful a mental image as that is, Saturos, what are you talking about?"

"What kind of adepts do we already have?" said Saturos.

"Earth, fire, and water."

"And what kind do we still need?"

Alex ticked them briefly off on his fingers. "Wind."

"And what is one ability absolutely unique to wind adepts?"

No one knew, except Menardi, who finally filled the silence. "That would be mind reading," she said sternly, folding her arms across her chest.

"Exactly," said Saturos.

"So if Ivan is a wind adept, we need him to come with us to light the Jupiter Lighthouse," Alex assumed. Saturos nodded an affirmative. "Okay. But how are we going to do that when he's already thrown his lot in with Isaac and Garet?"

Menardi recognized the names, though Saturos had already forgotten them. "What? Those kids from the inner sanctum?" she asked in disbelief. "Didn't they die in the eruption?"

"Apparently not," said Alex. "And apparently they're following us, and apparently they've managed to enlist the aid of the wind adept, Ivan – oh, and apparently the Mars Star wasn't destroyed after all," he tacked on with an I-told-you-so look in Menardi's direction.

"How do you suddenly know all this?" said Felix suspiciously.

Alex furrowed his brow. "You know, I'm not sure." He turned to Jenna. "I think your sister might have an idea."

Jenna froze; all eyes were suddenly boring into her. "Eh – I—"

"Leave her out of this," said Felix, stepping between her and the others.

"She's the one Ivan was contacting," Alex pointed out. "Isaac put him up to it."

"They just wanted to know if I was all right!" Jenna suddenly blurted.

"Shut up!" yelled Saturos. His voice, combined with the coincidental thunderclap immediately following it, silenced the rest of his party very quickly.

"You know what?" he continued. "I don't care how he knows, I don't care who this kid's traveling with. This is our one chance to get what we need before it disappears." He glanced around the circle. "It's a given that our next stop is Imil, now that we know about the Mars Star. We can return to Vale later for that, but right now – this is our one chance to get what we need for the Jupiter Lighthouse. Once we have him, the beacons are as good as lit." He pointed to Alex. "Alex, you and I are going into town the second it's dark enough. Menardi will stay and watch the others."

Alex looked up through the rustling leaves at the deep grey cloud cover. "More kidnapping, huh? This mission just keeps getting friendlier and friendlier."

There was another peal of thunder, and Jenna shivered. Her train of thought had automatically descended to the worst-case scenario, which involved more bloodshed than she wanted to imagine all at once. Anxious, she watched Saturos until he turned and leaned against a tree, staring restlessly down at the town below. Then she switched her attention to Alex, who had gone back to staring at the sky and wondering if it would rain. After a few seconds' deliberation, she reached over and tugged at his sleeve. "What. Yes?" he asked, lowering his vision to her.

For a moment, she couldn't say anything, but his bright cerulean eyes continued to watch her quizzically. "I—" she stammered at last. "—They didn't mean anything by it – they just wanted to know if I was all right, d—don't hurt them, please—"

To her surprise, Alex actually smiled at that. "Your friends mean a lot to you, don't they?" he replied quietly.

She paused, taken off-balance by the interruption. "Y-yes."

Alex nodded once and bowed his head. "Then on my healer's honor, I promise none of them will be harmed."

Jenna forced a worried smile, then blinked and looked up, feeling a drop on her head. "It's going to rain soon," she whispered.

"I think you're right," Alex replied, although she hadn't meant him to. "It's all the ash from the eruption, you know, that's got the weather so upset. I don't really mind, myself, but…"

There were another few drops, which quickly escalated into a steady drizzle. Saturos pushed off from the tree. "Alex! We're going."

They stepped quickly across the open, grassy expanse between their camp and Vault. As they walked, Saturos outlined their plan in brief. "Do you know where they are?"

Alex thought for a second. "You know… actually, I think I do. Roughly."

"Good enough. We'll start there," said Saturos.

"There's one thing I wonder, though, Saturos—why is it so imperative that we abduct this wind adept, specifically?"

Saturos glowered at him. "Because there are no wind adepts anymore."

Inside the inn, Ivan lay on the floor, still awake, vaguely wondering what time it was. It was late enough that most of the candles in the hall had already been put out, so he must have been lying there for hours, trying to put himself to sleep by the steady drone of Garet's snoring and the tapping of rain on the roof above, but at the same time wishing both would stop. He couldn't concentrate on much of anything, as his mind flitted between worry and focusing excessively on small, alien noises that probably weren't anything.

As he was trying to listen to the rain again, he heard a slow creeeeeeak from the direction of the hall, near where his head lay. He shut it out and pretended to be asleep, hoping he'd believe himself. All the same, the persistent sense of danger stuck in his mind began to grow again.

Just then he felt a drop of water hit his face, and his eyes flew open in a sudden blossoming of full-fledged panic. The soggy blue hair hanging over his head was clear to see even in the dim light. He almost managed to get out half a yell before Alex clamped a damp rag over his face. Frantically, Ivan grabbed at the intruder's gloved hand, but his grip weakened quickly, and within seconds, his vision blackened and all the muscles in his small body went slack.

Alex quickly surveyed the scene; Isaac hadn't moved in the quiet commotion, and the buzz from Garet's side of the room hadn't stopped. So far, so good. He nudged Ivan's head a bit to make sure he was sufficiently unconscious, and then, satisfied, took him under the arms and began to pull him from the room, toward the back stairs that Saturos had found with little effort, and where he'd convinced the Proxian to wait.

He had just about reached the door when he felt his leg bump hard against something. The involuntary yelp of pain he could stifle, but unfortunately, the loud clattering of broken pottery on the hard wooden floor, formerly on the end table next to him, was outside his control.

Before he even had time to wince, Ivan's two new friends were wide awake; among their shouts of "Hey, you!" he heard the sound of metal pulled from sheathes. An unexpected wave of Psynergy, with a quick motion of Isaac's free hand, yanked Ivan free from his grip and shoved the water adept into the hallway. For a second Alex thought he'd been winded by his back's loud impact against the wall across from them, but realized he'd had the good fortune not to, and quickly recovered as he tried to think what to do next.

"Get out of here!" Garet bellowed, stepping broadly into the hall not two feet in front of him. "Who do you think you are!"

"Name's Alex," Alex tried pleasantly. "Sorry, it's just we need Ivan's help with something very important and would you mind if—AI!"

He ducked left as Garet's blade barely missed his face and stuck two inches deep in the wall behind him, and came to a halt a few feet down the corridor, hunched defensively. "Look, I don't want to fight you!" he protested.

"You should've thought of that sooner!" Garet shouted back, pulling his sword from the wall and lunging at Alex with a yell.

This time he didn't reach him. Alex threw forward his hand, and the sudden torrent of water that issued from his fingertips broke Garet's momentum and hurled the boy down the hall almost clear to the main stairs. He tried to get up, but then slumped down again. Alex cringed, remembering his promise. Maybe I just won't tell her about this.

"Garet!" Isaac burst out of the room, first glancing at his friend, then whirling to face his new enemy blade first. "Don't move!"

Alex didn't at first, but not because he had any worry about beating a kid probably seven or eight years younger than himself and at least four inches shorter. The other patrons of the inn were starting to come out of their rooms, wondering what all the noise was about; some of them came armed, and a good number of them were considerably bigger than him. Even with the advantage of Psynergy, he began to sense that it would be downright stupid to pick a fight with the entire hostel.

He flexed his fingers sheepishly, then waved with a smile. "Some other time, perhaps," he said cheerfully, and then, after quickly freezing the water he'd already spilled on the floor, he turned tail and bolted down the back stairs.

From the surprised shouts and thuds behind him, it seemed a few of the other guests hadn't seen the ice in time, he noted with an amusement that was probably inappropriate given the circumstances. As he turned at the landing, he glimpsed Isaac reaching the top of the stairs, and took the second half of the staircase three steps at a time. The door opened easily and he slammed it shut behind him.

Saturos was there waiting for him. "About ti— where's the kid!"

"We're leaving," Alex replied urgently, quickly forming a three-inch-thick barrier of ice over the door. He was just in time – he heard Isaac ram himself against the door a scant half-second after he was finished.

"What did you do?" Saturos demanded, glancing back at the inn as the dim shouts within intensified. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Alex already breaking into a run in the opposite direction. "Alex—!" he protested, and gave chase.

Alex only stopped once they'd been zigzagging through the streets of Vault for at least ten minutes, after his lungs decided they'd had quite enough of this. Saturos skidded on the wet cobblestone a second later and drew up next to him; he looked about as tired as if he hadn't been running at all. "Alex, what the hell!" he roared, easy to hear even over the still-worsening storm. "How is it possible to botch something this simple? You were supposed to go in, drug a small child, and bring him back out! It doesn't get less complicated than that! And yet where is he!"

"Still drugged in the inn, most likely," said Alex, trying to seem unruffled. He'd gotten most of the self-chastisement out of his system while he was running, but now that Saturos had started haranguing him, too, his own mind was agreeing in force again.

"Perfect. Just PERFECT!" Saturos groaned, putting his hands on his hips.

"Look, I just about had him," Alex defended. "The rest of the inn decided to make a scene on me at the last minute. One against twenty, what do you want me to do?"

"Well golly gee, you're right. It's not like you're an adept or anything!" yelled Saturos. "I've seen you fight back in Prox, and you're not crap enough that you couldn't handle it!"

Alex straightened up. "Unlike some people, I don't care to harm people when they become inconvenient, thank you," he snapped.

Saturos' face twisted into a sneer. "'When they become inconvenient.' I knew I shouldn't have trusted you'd do this right. You don't even know why we're here, you're wasting my time!" He doubled back and started to storm off in what was probably the way back to camp.

"This is not a waste of time!" Alex retorted. "Don't act like we failed."

"Where's the kid, Alex?"

"That's just it. He'll be following us now."

Saturos turned his head and shot him an odd look, prompting Alex to explain. "He knows we're after him, and he has nowhere else to go, so he'll probably stay with Isaac for his own safety. If he's with Isaac, and Isaac's tailing us, then we can just snag him later on."

While Saturos' face remained like a hard shell, his eyes betrayed his realization that his train of thought had, once again, been bettered by Alex's rationalizing. His aggravation at being proven wrong was only slightly less intense than the aggravation of failure, but it was still less, and gave at least the appearance that he had begun to calm down, if not the reality.

"And even if nothing else, we at least know he's out there," Alex continued. "It's not over, Saturos."

"Damn right it's not over," snapped Saturos, facing him. "But—" he added, pointing at him harshly "—if you ever fumble this badly again, I don't care how neatly you manage to word your excuses, you're out. And I mean out."

"Lighthouse," Alex gently reminded him.

"Your sister in Imil's a healer, too, isn't she?" Saturos replied shrewdly.

Without waiting for an answer, he turned his back and swiftly disappeared down the street, leaving his stunned comrade alone in the drenching torrent of the rain.

I know this chapter's really short… but had I left it part of the last chapter, it would have been too long…

Ah how I love those dilemmas :(

Read and rev— oh, I guess you already read if you're here… um… just review then…
Man, way to throw off my rhythm…