Second Chapter: Differences
Seiryah padded cautiously behind the other three, and since she wasn't quite up to running, it was difficult to keep them within hearing range. She kept her teeth from chattering by force of will, the tile floor was cold, and without socks or shoes the cold seeped quickly through her feet and legs and spread through the rest of her body. Her body shook with the effort of keeping her jaws still.
Feh. You think this is bad? Compared to the Ice Cliffs of Gomesia, this is a cakewalk. I know it was colder there…
Nope, not helping. Not helping in the slightest. Probably because she hadn't had a body to get frozen then. She did now.
"Ah!" a female voice screamed. Seiryah identified it as belonging to the other nurse. What had her name been… Janata, wasn't it?
"Jana, I thought I told you to stay down!" Liris snapped, her voice interspersed with several gunshots.
"Wow, I didn't know you carried a pistol, Liris!"
"I didn't… before I started hanging out with you!" Liris teased cheerily. The gunshots continued sporadically, punctuated by the sound of steel striking steel and flesh impacting with flesh. Seiryah bit her lip. She really wanted to help, but if they were shooting at each other, she didn't dare go out there in her condition. With her weakened body, if she got hit she wouldn't have a prayer.
I'm useless! AGAIN! she thought, snarling softly aloud before she could stop herself. It had always irked her back when she was bonded with Kalas and Xelha that all she could do was give advice and lend her power. She had never been able to help with the actual fighting…
Is this all I am destined to be? Worthless baggage that must be protected by others…?
No. This is my life… and I will pull my own weight. I don't care if I get shot, I'm going to help out. I don't want to be on the sidelines anymore!
With that resolution, she took a single determined step forward…
And nearly walked into an extended knife. Only instincts she hadn't realized she possessed saved her from being skewered as she leaped backwards, landing painfully but on her feet in a good defense position. At least, she thought it was a good defense position. And it probably wouldn't have hurt as much if she had been given shoes… wonder why Liris didn't give me any?
The tough's beady eyes widened as he took her in. "Well, well… lookit what we have here…" She did not like the smile he was giving her. No, she did not like it at all. Why was he staring at her chest? The neckline wasn't that low…
She looked down and uttered a shriek of mortified fury as her left hand came up and tried to hold the offending garment closed. The attack that had almost hit her heart had lowered the neckline of her modest blouse by about four inches.
"You… cad…" she hissed, giving the man a glare that would have done Kalas proud, but the man ignored it, which only infuriated her further.
"What'cha gonna do about it, girlie? Tell you what… maybe if you scream like you did just now, I'll forget about how much I was paid to kill you." his lecherous grin nearly split his face, only emphasizing the fact that his nose was too big and too round and that his eyes were too small and too close together. "I do like it when they scream…"
"So… you want to hear me scream, do you?" she asked softly, looking at her feet and trying to get her temper under control. One… two… three…
His only response was an eager… eager!... chuckle, and he started to lumber forward…
However, in the dim light he missed the way her knuckles whitened as she gripped her blouse so hard her fist shook. He missed the fact that when her head snapped up, her eyes were filled with pure rage, not pure terror. He also, somehow, missed the fact that she took a deep breath…
"I am the Light! The dispeller of Darkness!" she bellowed at the top of her lungs. A crackling barrier of blue energy surrounded her, and the unfortunate would-be assassin was hurled back several paces. His eyes widened in horror and he babbled some plea for mercy that the young woman didn't hear. A smaller orb of blue light formed centered in the surface of the shield directly in front of her as she brought her hands up, as if in benediction. With a shriek of "Shining Seraph!" she brought her arms down in a violent smashing motion across her body. The center of the smaller orb shattered, the shield dissipated…
And a brilliant orb of light smacked down upon her assailant. He crumpled like a sack of rotten meat. Which he was, as far as she was concerned.
Her vision blurred, and she had to clutch the wall for support. What had happened? Why was she suddenly so exhausted? Why…
"Duh, Seiryah, duh…" she moaned under her breath. Of course. Now that she was human, using her Spirit Spells drained her physical and mental energy. She was willing to bet that had she been in perfect health, the spell wouldn't have fazed her, but in such a weakened state…
She snorted at her stupidity. And I was going to expose myself to gunfire like this? I must be crazy! She looked down the hall, blinking off the afterglare…
And saw Arvel Shida staring at her with an annoyingly bemused expression.
"So, you do have the Gift of the Spirit," he said. A short sword was hanging loosely from his left hand as he stared at her in a manner suggesting that many things that had baffled him before were now making sense.
"Gift of the Spirit?" Seiryah repeated. "You mean…" she changed what she had been about to say, "…that light? I don't even know how I did that. What is this… gift?" A little voice is telling me that saying, "You mean the spell? I've always been able to do that!" might not go over so well here.
Arvel came back to himself with a shake of the head. "Later. I don't know how many there are, so you're just going to have to stick with us. Besides, if you can back us up with those spells, maybe we can finish up before the police come."
"What's a 'police'?" she asked automatically. She had never heard that word before.
"Police is the plural. A policeman… or woman, they do hire women as well… is in charge of keeping the peace in the city, although they are still civilians and do not fight in wars unless drafted."
"Okay, gotcha," Seiryah said, wondering exactly how big this country was that it needed a separate force to keep the peace inside its borders and one to counter threats from without.
Arvel took his attention from their surroundings to look askance at her. "Are you telling me that you know what a city is, what civilians and soldiers are, but you don't know what a policeman is? That's some selective amnesia."
"Isn't it?" Seiryah snapped, too tense to lie. "What are you… Arvel, look out!" She snagged the back of his jacket and managed to shift him with her, despite the fact that he outweighed her by at least seventy-five pounds, to the right of the corridor as another assailant suddenly appeared from the left hand of the intersection they had been approaching and lunged. Or maybe it was that he understood her warning and moved with her. But luckily, whatever the case,the shining sword missed them both completely.
Arvel recovered neatly from his surprise and lunged at the new attacker, but it became clear almost immediately that he was outmatched. Despite the fact that his opponent was almost as short as Liris, he (she? With the hood, and the bulky dark cape the attacker was wearing it was difficult to tell) had the advantage of reach with the longsword he/she was carrying. Also, the cloaked figure was clearly faster than Arvel.
Why doesn't he just use another Magnus? Seiryah wondered as she backed up to give the two of them room. Surely he had something better on him than that dinky little short sword. Even a buckler would have been an improvement, he was going to tire pretty quickly if he had to keep leaping backwards instead of blocking…
And then a radical thought came to her: What if he doesn't have any Magnus?
It was impossible. Everywhere she had been used Magnus, even the Empire with all their technological advancements still used them. Magnus were the basis of, well, everything. How could he not have…
Different world, different rules, she reminded herself glumly. Who said anything had to be the same here? If she could wake up in a little green room with a tube sticking out of her arm, why not a world with no Magnus? Or one with a different language or writing system? Come to think of it, when Kalas had retaught her how to read, hadn't he complained about having to do it again? And hadn't he mentioned that she had said that her own world had a different writing system? That had taken some quick recovery. She hadn't told her friends exactly how much of her memory was gone, at first because she didn't want Kalas to panic and later, after she had discovered the truth, because she didn't want him to feel guilty that the spell he and Melodia had cast to erase two years of her memory had instead obliterated all of them. With a sinking feeling, she realized that she was probably going to wish she had been able to swallow her pride and ask Melodia to remove her spell before she had returned to her homeland.
Something silvery flashing past her face brought her back to reality quickly. Arvel had been disarmed. His opponent rammed the hilt of his/her sword into Arvel's unprotected stomach, and he went down gasping in for breath. "I don't have time for you," hissed the attacker in a velvety voice that only a woman could have. "I'm here for the girl."
Seiryah glared and smiled in what she hoped was a menacing manner. Maybe when this was all over she could practice facial expressions, so she could remember what making them felt like. She hated the way this strange woman said 'girl' as if she were saying 'child'. She couldn't remember being a child, but after everything she'd been through she certainly wasn't one anymore. "I am not a girl."
"Oh really? Your blouse says otherwise."
Seiryah didn't look down, but she blushed anyway. She had managed to forget about the damage done to her clothing. Still, that didn't stop her from spitting out, "I am the Water, hear my voice!"
The masked figure jerked in surprise. "We weren't told…!"
"Sacred Spring!" Bubbles burst around the woman, cutting her skin like knives, and she screamed in agony. Once all the bubbles were gone, she dropped to the floor like a marionette with its strings cut. Seiryah fell to her knees, too tired to remain standing. She thought she heard Arvel call her name worriedly before she blacked out…
She was in a cell, she could tell that much. Only a cell would have bars on the doors. There were no windows, which probably meant she was underground, and probably in some utterly remote region in the Unclaimed Lands as well. Beautiful. Just freaking beautiful.
She was lying on her stomach, her back was a mass of bandages and ointment, and a piece of dark blue cloth had been wrapped around her waist to preserve her modesty. Damn considerate of them, she thought bitterly.She gave a prayer of silent thanks that there were no mirrors in her tiny cell, she did not want to see the damage done to her back. It would heal eventually, after all, she couldn't die, no, of course not. She needed to be alive for…
She shuddered. She couldn't continue the line of thought. She was a coward, pure and simple. A coward that skulked in shadow. Maybe if she'd been a little braver, a little more decisive, they'd all still be alive…
"This is just me wasting time. I just don't want to think about it, any of it." And she didn't. She didn't want to think about how her father had screamed as he had burned alive, how her shield had grown smaller and smaller as the flames had pounded it… how her mother, her brother, her older sister had perished…
And she did not want to think about how her youngest sister, seven-year-old Alvira had been dragged away as she screamed in rage and agony, injured too badly to move. No, she did not want to think about that. Not at all...
The fools who had taken her thought her trapped. They knew nothing of what it meant to be Veranen. She could no longer save Alvira, but at least she could stop them from having her.
Slowly, painfully, she raised her thumb to her mouth as skin that was bleeding and blistered broke open yet again. Once her thumb was to her mouth, she bit down on it as hard as she could, hard enough to draw blood. Then she dragged her left arm over and started to draw a six-pointed star in a circle sideways on the back of her left hand, ignoring the screams of protest from her back and shoulders. She could not physically leave the cell, but that did not mean that she couldn't escape. It was a gambler's way out, a fool's way out. But then again, was she not both?
She winced at the encircled star she had made, a wobbly, pathetic thing. She spat on her hand, wiped it off to the best of her ability, and tried again. If it didn't work properly, she could wind up as a wandering spirit for the rest of eternity. Of course, that might happen if it worked, too. Making contracts with the divinities was always a risky business…
Her eyes opened slowly, she felt very groggy, as if she had not slept for ages. Knowing that that was not true, she forced herself upright. She had no time to laze around, for all she knew, the only people in this twisted world of wires and white could be…
Sunlight streamed through the window, briefly blinding but a pleasant change from the harsh artificial light. She looked around her room, blinking owlishly, trying to keep the details of her dream in mind, but they vanished like smoke on the breeze. Only the vauge knowledge that she had been kept in a cell somewhere remained. And the symbol she had scrawled on her hand.
"Paper…" she moaned, clawing at her nightstand. Surely there was paper somewhere…?
"Good morning, Seiryah!" Liris said cheerily from the door. She was holding a rectangular piece of brown wood and holding a pen.
"Do you have paper?" Seiryah asked desperately.
"Well, I have my medical charts, but… hey, give those back! I need those! Gimmie my clipboard! You're going to get me into even more trouble…!" Seiryah had bounded out of bed, snatched the wooden rectangle…clipboard?... from Liris's hands, flipped over the paper, and drawn the hexagram from her dream.
"Do you know what this means?" she asked desperately, shoving the … yes, it did have a metal clasp to keep the papers in place; it must be the clipboard… back in Liris's face.
"Eh… a hexagram? Seiryah, this is used in some rituals to contact the gods! Where did you see it?"
"A dream," Seiryah said curtly, and then proceeded to describe what she could remember. Liris's face got darker at every word.
"Seiryah, that must have been a divine contract of some sort. If that even really happened, there's a strong possibility that it was just a dream and nothing more. But if it did, drawing up such a contract is strictly forbidden, and impossible for anyone that doesn't have the Gift of the Spirit. You mustn't tell anyone else about that dream, not even Arvel or Mihkal. Promise me!"
"Okay, I promise! You have my word," Seiryah said quickly. "Um, can I ask you another question?"
"Sure," Liris said. She visibly braced herself. Probably preparing for another bombshell… Seiryah thought ruefully. Well, this question should be simple enough…
"Who is Alvira?"
Liris winced. "Alvira… is your youngest sister. Do you remember her at all? Red-gold hair, big blue eyes, and the most adorable smile… she was the cutest little seven-year-old you've ever seen."
Seiryah was no fool, and she did not miss the past tense. "You said was, Liris. What happened to her?"
Liris bit her lip and looked away. "Isn't that the million sena question?" she muttered under her breath.
"I heard that, Liris. What is a sena, and why are you avoiding my question?"
"A sena is our currency. Money. Stuff you give to other people in exchange for things you want or services you need preformed," Liris said quickly, pouncing on the question that she did want to answer. "This is a ten sena note. See?" As if desperate to change the subject, she pulled a piece of paper out of the pocket of her white uniform and handed it quickly to Seiryah. It was an off white color with green ink, a dragon on one side and a picture of a man on the other. There was a bunch of notation all over the thing that looked like writing. Seiryah suppressed a groan. They did use a different writing system here! She was going to have to learn how to read and write all over again! She thought of all that precious wasted time and shuddered.
And I'm letting Liris change the subject, again. This is too important to let her get away with that!
"Liris," she said softly, forcing the shorter woman to look into her silver eyes. She hoped that she was giving the other woman a piercing look. She really had to start practicing facial expressions the first opportunity she got. "I need to know this. What happened to Alvira?"
"She… disappeared. One year ago. The day of the accident." The words came slowly, as if they were being dragged out of her. "Of course, a lot of bodies were found charred beyond recognition. Some of them were child-sized."
"Bodies?" Seiryah whispered, a horrified whisper. War-ravaged Mintaka hovered before her eyes for a moment before she forcibly dispelled it. Now that she had a stomach, if she thought too long on that, she would probably throw up. Xelha certainly had. Not all the corpses on the ground that day had belonged to Imperial soldiers… "What happened, Liris?"
"I…" they were interrupted by a woman's voice shouting irritably.
"…awake, than she can have visitors! I have the right! I demand to see her!"
"But, she's in a very unstable condition right now!" came the weak protest. Seiryah didn't recognize the male voice, but that wasn't all that surprising. She had gotten a bit of a feel for the size of this… hospital… when she had trailed Arvel Shida, Mihkal Falharden, and Liris the previous night. At least, I hope it was the previous night… And she had the sinking feeling that it was quite possibly very large, not as big as some of the castles she had been in, but close.
"All the more reason that I be allowed in! The child needs guidance and reassurance in her… condition." The way the woman said the word 'condition', you would think that the man she was talking to was personally responsible for it. Seiryah wondered if the woman had anything to do with her. Judging by the tightness around Liris's eyes and the way her lips had compressed in displeasure, Seiryah was guessing a resounding 'yes'.
"How did that miserable, conniving old witch find out so quickly…?" Liris muttered, exasperated. "Of all people, it just had to be her!"
"Who is she?" Seiryah asked, getting off the bed. She noticed that she was now wearing a red blouse instead of the ruined blue one. She would have to thank Liris later, she had a feeling that she did not want to meet her new guest while exposing half her bosom.
"Saishra Sheyol. She's…" Liris's mouth snapped shut the moment the door opened.
In glided… glided was really the only word for it… a woman in her late fifties or early sixties, whose black curls had turned almost completely a steely gray. Her face was still remarkably smooth, and her gray eyes seemed to gleam silver as she glared at Liris. She was dressed simply in a pale green blouse and a dark green skirt, both of which appeared to be made of high quality material, and she wore a strand of pearls around her throat. Several other people made to follow the woman in, but she kept them outside with a sharp glare and a gesture. There was something cold about her, especially her eyes. Seiryah could almost imagine the wheels turning as she calculated every detail of her surroundings, something that brought her mental guards up.
"You will leave us now, girl," Saishra Sheyol said to Liris. "Be sure to shut the door behind you."
"Stay, Liris," Seiryah said, gesturing for Liris to take the only chair in the room. She liked Liris, and had no intentions of allowing her to be bossed around like a servant. This woman was an unknown, a chilly unknown, and emanated a… presence of someone used to getting her way. Baffled, Liris shot her a look that was a mix of confused and grateful, and took the seat. The stranger had tried to boss around someone who might have been her friend and could be so again; she would stand. "Now, I believe that you were informed of my… condition. So if you would do me the favor of telling me who you are, ma'am?"
The woman's shocked look was priceless, and Liris's face went carefully blank in the manner of a person choking back a grin. "I am the Grand Duchess Saishra Sheyol! I… you don't remember me, do you, child?" Something slipped through her cold exterior. Sadness. Suddenly, Saishra realized that the woman's wavy curls and silvery-gray eyes were so striking… because they were identical to her own.
"How closely are we related?" Seiryah asked.
"I am your grandmother, child. Your mother's mother."
"Then why isn't she with you? Or my father? What about my siblings? I know I have at least one… where are they?" Part of her wanted to bite off her tongue, but she had to know. Her need to know far outweighed her hatred of being so… pathetic.
Her grandmother sighed. "They're dead, child. There was an accident. A subway train… that's something we use to get around the city in, I'll have to show them to you, I don't know how to describe them… malfunctioned and exploded. You and your parents and siblings were on an outing that day, and in the area… you are the only one who survived."
"What about Alvira?" she murmured softly.
The older woman started. "You remember her?"
"Only a little. What about Alvira?" she asked again, stubbornly.
"No one found her body, Seiryah. The flames were…very hot. She could have been simply burned to ash."
Vaporized. Nothing left to bury. Gone.
But what about that dream? That Seiryah had been certain that Alvira was alive, and being held captive somewhere. Most of the details of the dream had faded into obscurity, but that remained. That, and the knife-sharp pain she had only felt once before; the agony of betrayal.
Seiryah decided to file the dream away. She would have to find Alvira on her own. Somehow.
"It was a horrible accident, Seiryah, but we're all grateful that you survived. I'm sure that your memory will return in time."
"I hope so… may I call you Grandmother?"
"Of course," Saishra Sheyol replied, a warm smile temporarily dispelling the coldness that seemed to cling to her like a cloak. "Would you like to meet the rest of your family? They're waiting outside. Members of both sides of the family," she added almost as an afterthought. That fact seemed to displease her for some reason, but Liris looked relieved. Was there some sort of bad blood between Liris and her mother's side of the family? Why would that… unless…
"You said you were a… duchess, Grandmother?"
"Yes. Ah… you wouldn't know what that is, would you? I'd be happy to explain," she said. There was something far too eager about her tone, and Seiryah was suddenly and vividly reminded of the Imperial Elite of Alfard.
"No, I think I remember that much. Am I a… duchess too?" Please, Great whale, Mighty Ocean, Eternal Time, and whatever gods exist in this world DON'T make me a duchess! Anything but a duchess! Better a princess, or a queen, or ANYTHING but Melodia's hereditary title!
"No, you are a Veranen, and a Countess. You'd be a Countess and the High Seat of your house if it weren't for the accident."
It took conscious effort not to sigh in relief. She wasn't a duchess like Melodia. Thank the gods for small miracles.
But she was still a noble. A noble! A Countess! A Countess! At least she wasn't High Seat of her house, whatever the hell that meant. And she wasn't a Duchess. There was that much.
If Kalas ever found out, he would never, ever let her live it down.
Not like I'm ever going to see him again… She crushed that thought ruthlessly. She wasn't going to fall into despair. Not now. Not after so much…
"Um… I have things I need to do. Make my rounds, and things. And you probably want to meet the rest of your family, don't you Seiryah?"
"I don't think that that's…" the duchess started.
"Oh, do stay, Liris. You were one of the first people I met when I woke up, and it is so very nice to have a familiar face around when meeting so many new people!" Seiryah said quickly, throwing an arm around Liris so she couldn't escape.
"I'm going to kill you. This will be worse than unpleasant. Do you know how horrible this is going to be? Sheyols and Veranens trying to be nice to each other?" Liris hissed incredulously through what Seiryah thought was supposed to be a grateful smile. It looked more like a grimace.
"Which is why I want someone around who I know I can trust who will tell me who is lying and who isn't," Seiryah whispered back, smiling cheerily. Liris looked somewhat mollified by the praise, but she still had a cornered expression. "Besides, they're family? How bad can it possibly be?" she wondered softly, shoving a most unhelpful image of Lyude's elder siblings, Skeed and Vallye, leveling their guns at his head out of her mind. Things couldn't possibly get that bad. After all, she wasn't defying whoever ruled this country.
She opened the door…
AN: Yes, that's the end of the chapter. I AM that evil! But wasn't that a fun chapter?
Next up, tentatively titled Of Foxes and Falcons: Meet more of Seiryah's family Watch in awe as they somehow avoid tearing each other's throats out! And other things, of course. Will Liris fulfill her threat to kill Seiryah? Tune in next time!
God, I sound like a cheesy commercial announcer…