Chapter 12

"Van. We have Merle. Please come out, I do not want to harm her." Van's brother Folken's voice rang out through the canyon.

Van stood motionless for a moment, then with a shudder snapped out of his reverie. "Hitomi," he said, still looking straight ahead, as if he could see where his older brother held captive the girl he had always thought of as a younger sister. "You and the stranger hide in the gully. I'm taking Escaflowne and getting Merle back."

"No, Van!" She cried, grasping his arm. "It's too dangerous. You'll get hurt, or captured, and then what will happen?"

Van's fierce glare softened as he looked at her. "Hitomi, she's been like a sister to me for as long as I can remember. I cannot, will not, allow him to harm her. She's stayed by me through more than anyone else. I can at least do the same for her."

Hitomi nodded as if she'd made up her mind. "Fine. Then I'm coming with you."

Van was taken aback by her boldness and tried to dissuade her from it. "No, Hitomi. It's not your fight. This is between my brother and I." He hesitated, then added, "Besides-"

"I'll get hurt?" she asked him skeptically. "In case you've forgotten, Your Majesty, I was the one who saved your life a dozen times from getting killed, with my visions. So don't you dare say that I can't defend myself, Van." She finished.

Van, seeing that the only way he could get her to stay was to tie her up, nodded and walked back into the gully, Hitomi close behind. Chrno hesitated a moment, and then followed.

The gully itself was pitch black against the brightening sky. Chrno, his hand against the wall to guide him, almost fell twice and once he put his foot into something soft, smelly and altogether unpleasant. At that point he was rather glad for the darkness, so he wouldn't see just what he'd stepped in.

As his eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness, Chrno could make out what he first thought was a white whale in front of him as he walked closer to it. He could see a flash of red- Van, he supposed- jump onto it along with Hitomi. She reached down and helped him on, his one arm still wrapped around his chest.

"Hold on," she whispered to him. Suddenly he felt the thing underneath him lurch and then they were off, soaring into the brightening dawn. Keeping his eyes nearly shut from the powerful wind, Chrno saw in the morning light that what he'd at first thought was a whale was actually something far different, though perhaps no less rare.

He was riding a dragon. A huge white dragon, easily double, maybe triple the length of any car he had ridden in with Rosette. In the hanging on for dear life in both instances were not so different from each other. Hitomi looked back and saw Chrno looking at what was carrying him. Shouting against the wind, she said, "This is Escaflowne."

Van said nothing as they flew out of the gully towards the encampment they had been captured in. If Folken were anywhere, it would be there. It was the only place where the huge Flying Fortress could set down.

Chrno, meanwhile, was too caught up in his own trouble to worry about Van much. Even though it was foolish, Chrno had been hoping that Rosette would be here, in the first world he'd come across. He'd even directed the Gate to send him to where she was, and it-

Chrno groaned. Now that he thought about it, he didn't ask the gate to send him to Rosette specifically, but the girl outside of her own world. Chrno hadn't thought there'd be more than one, but the Gate evidently brought him to this place because there was a girl who was outside of her own world here: Hitomi.

Before he could bemoan his mistake any more, Van announced, "There it is." He pointed down below them, and Chrno thought they were looking at a mountain. Then he began recognizing the area around it and realized that there was nothing there a few hours ago. He thought that the Flying Fortress was aptly named- not even the hosts of Hell could break through that thing.

Van landed the dragon a short ways away from the gigantic stronghold. Hitomi slid off of it, and Chrno followed suit. Van remained in the pilot's seat and called, "Brother, come out! We're here, now complete your part of the bargain!"

From the vast black expanse of the ship that dwarfed them a small, narrow shaft of light appeared, silhouetting a tall man. As he stepped into the new dawn light, Chrno noticed his blue hair and a tattoo of a teardrop on his cheek. He was carrying in his arms the girl with the cat ears, as still and limp as death.

Van saw her too, and gave a strangled yell as he leapt off of Escaflowne, his hand going to his sword, preparing to draw it from its sheath and run it through the man.

"Hold, Van," the man said with a quiet authority in his voice that made Van stop where he was, looking uncertain. Folken shook his head.

"You should know by now, Van, that I would not do anything to harm you, including hurting Merle. We had to sedate her because she tried to claw my men's eyes out. She will awake in a few hours." He set her down gently on the ground and stepped back.

They stood like that for a moment, a tableaux of impasse; the wind rustling Van's hair and blowing forward the newcomer's cloak towards the sleeping figure between them, neither wanting to break the stalemate for fear of exposing their back to the other, while the tension between them grew. Then Van walked over, lifted her up, and backed up to his position a moment before. He eyed his brother warily.

"I merely want you by my side as my brother again, Van," Folken said. "Why can you not understand that?"

"Because, Brother, it is because of you that Fanelia burned. It was because of you Mother left all those years ago after Father died, to search for you because you ran away during your Kingsmaking Rite, leaving me without a father, mother, or brother." Van replied, unheeded tears falling down his cheeks. "All those years I thought that you had died, that that was the reason you never returned home, even when the rest of Fanelia labelled you a coward. And you know what? I wish you had died." With that, Van turned around and walked away from his brother, back towards the Escaflowne, Merle slumbering in his arms.

"I do too, Van." Chrno heard Folken reply as he turned away. "I do, too."

Suddenly the ground rocked underneath them. "An earthquake-?" Chrno said, even as Hitomi pointed into the sky and shrieked "Zaibach!"

Chrno's head snapped up, but all he could see were clouds, ears ringing from the blast. The sky was empty. Chrno looked at Folken who had whirled around at the noise. He was mouthing something like a name- it was no word Chrno knew. Just then the ground rocked again with the force of a second explosion, this one closer than the last.

"Damn it! They're invisible!" Van shouted. He thrust Merle at Chrno. "Take Merle and hide. Hitomi, you're going to have to come with me- you're the only one who can sense where they are." Hitomi nodded and ran, following Van to the dragon.

Chrno ran to find a tunnel to stick the still-unconscious Merle into when a line of fire shot across the path in front of him and swept around, creating a giant ring of fire that he was trapped in. He turned and from out of nowhere stepped a huge, hulking purple giant with its arm outstretched, claws like wicked scythes extending from it like grotesque caricatures of fingers.

"Prepare to die, little man," the giant said as it lunged towards him.