The Dragon Priestess
AvalonReeseFanFics
A/N: And hello there my wonderful readers. Are you guys ready for the end of this episode? Cause I know I am! It's taken way too long to get you guys through this episode so I'm hoping that it's worth the wait! At least you guys won't have to worry about me running out of chapters for a good month of so! I'm hoping for longer though but I'll keep you guys posted! As always don't forget to leave a review, cause I love to hear what you guys are thinking, and I'll see you guys next Sunday.
Chapter 9: The Gallant Swordsman pt. 3
Once they were down into the tunnel the man handed her her bag. Brooke was actually super surprised he had it, let alone that he was handing it over to her.
"Okay… now I'm really confused, I think we need more of a backstory here."
The man walked away from them, leading them through a cavern to another spot where he promptly sat down and began to dig again.
"I'm just a poor thief, really," he said. "I made a mistake a while back and ended up get stuck under the castle. Not too smart I uh… must admit." He paused there to laugh as if the joke was funny. But Brooke and Van exchanged glances and uh… yeah… neither of them found it funny.
"I went for a walk last night and while I was out the pretty lady's stone caught my eye."
Brooke glared at him, she knew that she was the pretty lady, but she didn't know what the stone was.
"Stone. There it is again with the stone…"
"The necklace."
Ah, see now Brooke got it. "Really? You attacked me for my necklace?" she asked dryly.
The man turned to her, a sheepish sort of grin on his neck. "I thought I'd bring you that bag as an apology. Didn't know it was yours though, that's just lucky I'd guess."
Brooke glanced down to her bag and then back up to Van. "I guess it followed us when we got lifted from Fanelia."
The mole man broke through the wall and lead them through it, Van climbing through first and then helping Brooke out. Once they were out and into the cavern the mole man turned to them since he seemed to guess that they were confused.
"This is the Guymelef store house."
Van pushed forward, torch in hand, looking through the different suits until he found his.
Suddenly the mole man was excited. "What a magnificent guymelef! That's an Yspano design, isn't it?"
Yeah cool, his suit was a specific design, they had bigger issues here. "What are you planning to do, Van?"
"I'm going to leave this place and return to Fanelia."
"Okay… and… I can… can I…"
"Well I assumed I'd be taking you with me… did you not want to come?"
He turned to look at her, there was a bit of a red tinge to his cheeks but she figured that was cause he had been holding a torch above his head for like thirty minutes.
"Well no duh, where else am I going to go?" she asked. "Just… you know… wanted to be sure."
"Well alright then," he said handing her the torch and going towards his guymelef.
"Hey, wait, though, wait a second…" she called going after him. "What if Fanelia really is burned to the ground? What are we going to do if there's nothing left?"
"We'll rebuild."
"Oh okay. Cool!" But that wasn't the end of her questions. "Wait… wait…" she cried and once again Van turned, having only gotten up to his guymelef's lap.
"What now?" he asked clearly getting frustrated.
"Well… well… what if… what if they come back. How are we going to fight an invisible enemy?"
Van clearly hadn't thought about that, his focus had just been on getting back. "We'll… I guess we'll worry about that when we come to it."
Brooke nodded and went to open her mouth again but Van put up a hand. "Brooke, can we… you know… can we get out of here first?"
"Yeah sure, that's fair. Makes sense."
Turning his back on her again, Van went back to his guymelef. He put his hand to the large pink stone in the middle of the guymelef's chest and it glowed, before the cock pit shot open. That was pretty cool, it probably recognized Van's blood, like a bio lock or something.
He got himself up into a standing position and then bent down to pick Brooke up and then deposited her onto his shoulder.
"You good?" he called up to her, his voice muffled and tinny from the cockpit.
"Yeah I'm okay."
But then he took one step towards the door out and it whooshed open to reveal another suit of armour and a bunch of men.
"Well… this ain't good," Brooke hissed to herself as the cockpit of the rival guymelef opened to reveal Allen. Yep definitely not good.
"Van Fanel, I thought I told you not to leave the castle."
Well right there, Brooke can already tell there was a problem. Firstly, he should not be using that tone with Van, even if he weren't king. It was a tone she already knew Van responded poorly too. He barely handled it when she gave him that tone and he kind of liked her… tolerated her was a better word actually. He definitely wasn't going to like it coming from this guy. No matter how right he was.
When Van said nothing, Allen continued. "But if you insist, my friend, you're just going to have to go through me."
"Oh, no, see, no, I vote we don't do that. Cause I'm here, and just… that wouldn't be safe," Brooke called down to Van.
"The chances of you going through me though… I think you'll find that highly unlikely, however."
Ah shit. They were definitely going to fight now.
Brooke groaned. "You're going to put me down, aren't you?"
Van merely lifted the guymelef's hand. "Better do it quick, who knows how… honorable he'll be in a fight."
In his cockpit Allen jerked like Van had already hit him. "Ohhh…. Burn!" Brooke cried. "That was a good one. Again, bad timing, but a good one nonetheless."
She stepped onto the palm of the guymelef and slowly Van placed it to the ground. But Brooke didn't get off. "Are you sure this is a good idea, Van? Why can't we just talk it out? Like normal people?"
"Get off Brooke," he ordered.
"But…"
"OFF!"
Brooke stumbled off before he could yell at her some more and then he was walking off towards a fight with Brooke chasing after him.
"I really think… if we could just… If you could just calm down… and maybe… maybe… Van… come on! Please! My little legs can't keep up with your giant ones!"
He took one step to the right a little too closely to her and a gust of who knows what that almost blew her back. If it wasn't for Allen's man Gaddes she might have actually gone flying.
"Careful now. This is no place for you," he said as he pulled her away from Van's guymelef's feet and towards the sidelines.
She stood there anxiously beside the men all cheering for Allen and jeering at Van, suddenly nervous. Something was wrong with her head. Maybe it was the heat of the noon-day sunn. Maybe it was all the fatigue from her situation suddenly catching up to her all once. No matter what it was, it was hurting her. She put her hands to her temples as if to block it out.
She wanted to concentrate for Van but… it was all too painful for her to do that.
Folken always tried to avoid her the best he could. Especially when the feelings of attachment became clearly reciprocated. But no matter what he did he always found himself drawn to his Kaydence.
As per usual he found her in her scrying room, standing in front of the table he had made up for her. The surface was entirely mirrored, and it was the one she used the most, though she did have the walls of this room covered in mirrors as well.
In theory she should have been able to use mirror to walk through as well, but she had yet to master that spell. In fact, she had yet to master any spell other than scrying.
"Van is out in the Escacflowne," she said without actually turning to him. "We'll get news that it's been spotted soon."
Folken inclined his head in a slight nod. "But that's not what you're looking at."
"No."
And he could see, she was looking at Brooke. She had the mirror framed onto her sister's face. The girl looked an awful lot like Kaydence, and Folken supposed that was what was throwing him. Because the girl was in pain, and the face she made, looked exactly like the same face Kaydence made when she was in pain.
He longed to put a hand out to her, just to ensure that she was alright. Though that was ridiculous because she very clearly was okay, he could see the evidence of this with his own two eyes.
"What are you doing to her?"
"Well… I figured… if Brooke could block my scrying then maybe I might be able to block her own powers and abilities."
That was a smart thought. And quite an interesting experiment to try out.
"It looks like you're hurting her."
Brooke had her whole head in her hands now, she was practically crumpled over she was in so much pain. But beside him Kaydence was smiling. The sort of sick sadistic smile that Dilandau wore when he killed things.
"Yes… I guess I am."
She then turned that dangerous smile onto him and his traitorous heart skipped a beat. It was a sin that she could look so beautiful while thinking such clearly wicked thoughts.
"Anything for our sake of our divine destiny."
Yes. Anything. That was what he had promised. He had watched his kingdom burn for that destiny. But Folken didn't want the same guilt to lie across his Kaydence's thin shoulders.
If given the chance he would tell her that he liked her the way she was. That he never meant for her to take on Dilandau's psychotic qualities. But he never got the chance.
There was a sudden screeching from the table and then both of them were thrown back.
The screech came shaped in words.
Get off me!
And it darkened the whole room. Folken managed to pick himself up first and as he did, he noticed that there was glass on the floor.
Beside him Kaydence groaned. "Are you okay?" he asked, reaching a hand out to her, but he was too far to reach her.
"Yeah, I'm okay."
"Okay, well be careful, there's glass on the floor," he told her. He knew right away where it was from but Kaydence bolted up echoing the word: Glass?! sounding horrified.
She got up quickly, her eyes turning to the table that had been a gift from him. "No. No."
He listened to her, the sound of her boots crunching against the glass as she went to the mirror to confirm what Folken already knew.
The table was shattered. But that wasn't all that was shattered.
"No! She… she shattered the table."
"Yeah it wasn't just the table," Folken said and only then did Kaydence look around. Every single mirror in her scrying room had been shattered. She couldn't use a shattered mirror, she could but it diluted her powers. But most of the mirrors weren't just shattered the glass was flat out off of mirror and lying on the ground.
"Oh my god."
Well… they had learned something today. Brooke was definitely a lot more powerful than Kaydence, but she clearly had absolutely no control over what she was doing. He wasn't sure what this meant for their divine destiny but it was clear that it was definitely in jeopardy.
At first her head had been killing her, literally killing her. It felt like it was splitting in two. Like someone was pushing down on her.
It went from a dull ache to a throbbing terrible pain. She suddenly couldn't breathe. She found herself doubled over.
It felt like someone was trying to kill her.
Trying to wrap her up in some bubble so she couldn't get out.
She could have sworn it was coming from somewhere, somewhere above her. And then she screamed. She hadn't meant to do it aloud, but it just ripped from her.
This sonic, booming voice she barely recognized as her own screaming: "GET OFF ME!"
And with that wave of power she felt exiting her body the pain went away. And in its absence came the fire.
The fire, and the death and the scream of metal against metal.
Before she knew what was happening, she was screaming.
Run! It's the invisible enemy!
But as quickly as that vision came it left her. And it left her reeling. For some reason she was suddenly exhausted. She felt like she had run a full mile.
Once the vision was gone Brooke was quiet, then her eyes rolled back and she collapsed. No one had rushed to grab her, she simply hit the dirt and then just lay there.
"I hate this planet."