Trails and Turmoil
The sight before Zed was familiar, his throat tightened and body felt cold as he stared into the containment cell in front of him. The body lay still in the middle the cell's floor. Snow colored a hair draped around the lilac blue skin, limbs splayed out cold and motionless.
'no.' Zed felt something dropped from his hands as he saw the ghastly site. 'Oh, please not again.' He could not, would not relive his greatest mistake. He didn't have room in his heart to continue shedding tears for such a thing.
He ran through darkness the sound of feet ringing against metal signal to him that he was in the brig of the Velvet Glove. Deftly he made his way through light and dark, past the central control room and into his father's throne room.
"Father!" He shouted into the chamber, but his father was not there.
Zed was left staring into the darkness where his father would be. He moved up to the platform where he and all the others went to talk to his father, and peered into the darkness below it usually filled with the exhaust that kept the leader of the Evil Horde alive. Turning his head back to the main area of the chamber his blood ran cold once again, Cy-Chop, Leach, Modulok and Multi-Bot. All members of the Horde elite, heroes of horde world and capable of unspeakable terrors in war, mangled and dead at his feet.
Zed shook feeling faint at the loss of life. As he felt like his knees were about to give out, he saw across the room the dead bodies a familiar shadow approached him "Uncle…" He weakly addressed Hordak "What's going here?"
Lord Hordak did not answer him, making his way across the deceased Hordesmen. If made Zed's stomach twist as Hordak remined emotionless, as he made his approach up the platform.
This ugliness he felt with became a bubble of anger as he let out a shout "Answer me!" He snarled down at Hordak, is gray eyes leering in accusation "You did this! I command you to answer me!"
The Lord of the Horde's armada did not answer, even when he stood toe to toe with the High Prince. With unexpected movement Hordak shot out his armored hands at Zed and lifting him up forcibly by the neck.
Zed struggled to keep to keep his seat purchased on the railing to the platform, to prevent him from dangling above empty space "…Uncle." He choked out to Hordak.
"It's such an honor to finally be rid of you." Hordak coldly hissed to Zed "Horde Prime should have done away this you long ago. You, useless excuse for a Hordesmen." His technologically enhanced hands began to crush the young man's neck.
"Please…stop." Zed choked out to Hordak, as his vision swam and filled with darkness.
With a gasp and retching cough Zed sat up with the start, his eyes fluttering open. His chest felt like it was going to explode, while his heart struggled to find its rhythm. He to turned to take in his surroundings with the cold stone for and walls with crystals that changed and pulsed with color. He had fully accepted now that there was something truly unnatural with the cave that held the Crown of Knowledge, now that he adventured so deep into the cave system in which this labyrinth of shifting color and form. Whether the influence on this cave was technological or preternatural that it was testing him and his companion and desired them dead or forever disorientated before finding the Crown.
"Bow?" The sound of the other young man's tossing and turning beside him, jarring the Prince from the pain in his dream had induced.
Zed moved closer to investigate Bow's condition. He was asleep, possibly having a nightmare like Zed had, he would not past this place to mess with their sense of reality internally as well as externally. Silently he debated to himself if he should wait for Bow to wake up, or wake him up himself and save the other young man the pain he had experienced.
The Horde Prince relented seeing Bow's pitiful face. Gently he reached out and shook Bow's shoulder "Hey!" He spoke harshly to the other boy's sleeping face.
Then Bow get something that was completely foreign to Zed. Lunging up from his nightmare Bow wrapped his arms around Zed as he cried. The Prince didn't understand, hug's where a rarity on the Velvet Glove usually a particularly done by himself and the rare visitor to the ship. Yet. To embrace someone else at his sadness or fear wasn't something he had ever done, and it made him feel so strange.
"Are you okay?" It was all Zed could say.
"I just had a nightmare, I lost everyone I loved." Bow's voice wavered not releasing Zed "It was my fault to!"
"I had a nightmare too, this might apart of this trail." Zed to bring confidence back to his companion.
Bow then let out a faint whisper "I want to leave… I don't want to continue on. The crown's not worth it anymore."
"Why?" It shocked him to hear Bow say that, after how deep they went into the caves. How could a nightmare destroy one resolve so quickly? He didn't understand.
"I'm afraid, if we find the crown of loose everyone I love." Bow confessed.
Zed could feel wetness forming on his shoulder. The fact that another being was producing tears so willingly made, it made him strangely jealous. He was trained his whole life to pull the thoughts that created them into captivity. He assumes that those emotion was a shameful sign of weakness across all sentient life, like an illness in where the symptoms had to be tended to or destroyed completely.
"I've made a mistake." The choked-out words ring in his ears.
"No, you haven't!" Zed pulled Bow off his shoulder and made him look the prince in the face. "Don't you understand this place is trying to make us give up!" His gray eyes peering into the other young man dark ones "There's nothing wrong with completing this quest! If completing this means, you were shunned by people you once associated with, then they are petty."
Bow tried to fight back tears and failed "-but, my friends!"
"Listen! If your friends cannot support your desire to find the crown, knowing all the good that it might do for them. Then they are not your friends!" Zed gripped Bow tighter, yet a impression of guiltiness washed over him in his tone softened. "Please trust me, mo ghile mear." He didn't like shouting at Bow, the other warrior wasn't a subordinate he could bark orders at. The young man he was holding onto wasn't even a part of the Horde.
The Bow sighed and moved his hands so Zed would release him. "Are you ever going to tell me what that phrase means?"
Zed stood up simply said "After we get the crown." And then with a smirk held out his hand "Mo ghile mear."
Bow took Zed's hand and got to his feet then gave a friendly shoulder bump before leading the way. The Horde Prince smiled seeing the other young man's attitude change before following him. Together the two young men to traverse their way through the tunnels of ever shifting light in color, to an area of the maze where the crystals grew translucent. The rock formations becoming long and flat curving with the cave walls slowly becoming reflective.
"Mirrors." Zed said out loud, he had a feeling whatever entity was behind this maze had created this area just to spite him.
Is feeling quickly you can the truth as a unnatural cave system give away to an angular maze of mirrors, each reflective surface framed with the unique etchings of metal. I'm comfortable seeing himself from multiple angles the Horde Prince resorted to watching the Bow's shoes, making sure his thoughts where kept locked away so he wouldn't stare his reflection.
"Why did you stop?" The red headed boy asked me early smacking into Bow's back before looking ahead, seeing that there was an unfamiliar figure standing in one of the reflections of the wall ahead of them.
Within the reflective glow of the mirror ahead of them stood a girl with short sparkling purple hair. With a large sliver staff in one hand and a glowing orb in the other, she stared at Bow furiously with her lavender eyes. From another mirror a blonde-haired girl stared at them with equal contempt she held a massive sort of a golden hilt between her hands as if she was ready to attack them.
Zed was startled by the second girl, her clothing matching that of a Horde's force cadet. He was certain that his father would've been made aware of defectors from Hordak. Especially since his uncle long ago, the members of his chosen elite mutinied against him, therefore making an entire star system cut off from the Horde for a possible eon.
"Glimmer, A-Adora?" Bow said nervously to the scowling images.
With a shimmer of light, the purple haired girl that was within the reflection had appeared before Bow "How could you! To told you to never go after Wisdom's Light!" She began to scream at Bow "I thought I could trust you!" She sneered jabbing her finger into his face.
Bow stared with his mouth agape as glimmer continued to shout at him, keeping an eye on a door who was emerging from the other mirror. "Listen I!" He looked at his two friends both frightened and confused before being backhanded by Glimmer.
Something snapped and Zed's head at the girl's behavior. It infuriated him that this snarling stout girl is what it Bow considered the best type of person to keep in his company. Gripping his multi tool readying to charge and defend his companion against the brat before him, only for the blonde-haired girl to ram him into the mirror. Instead of smacking against the reflective surface he fell into the reflection tumbling out into identical, but empty pathway as he was just in.
The horde Prince spun around placed his hands firmly against the unyielding mirror he felt from "Bow!" He shouted at his reflection trying to see past his own projected image.
"Zed where did?! Adora stop!" The worried and pained voice of his companion echoed out from behind the mirror "Calm down you two!" Bow's voice continued to shout punctuated by harsh snide words.
Moving from mirrored pane to mirrored pane Zed tried to figure out how to get back to where he once was in. He pulled out his multitool with the intent of smashing one of the mirrors open, yet he stopped himself seeing the figures staring at him.
Tall and strong with braided white hair she stood imposing really in the space where he shouldn't have been. Golden arm and ankle bands shining stunningly against lilacs skin, while deep violet tattoos snaked along indigo armor. He only the Silaxian warrior in that state once in his life, the day she had tried to kill him and his father.
"No, not again!" He turned away from the image only to be greeted the image once again "You're not here! you're dead! Stop it!" He could hear her bow shouting to him over his own panic screams "Stop it!" In his head he cursed the creator of these trials for forcing him the face his first and greatest failure.
Seamlessly emerging from the mirror that held her the purple skinned female began to approach him. "There's not need to fight mo ghile mear." The woman's accent while harsh held the hint to gentleness for the young man.
Zed nearly chocked at the speaking to him, using the phrase of endearment that he had started to address his Etherian companion with.
"You tried to save me, but you have to accept that you failed." The woman spoke the truth, once he had begged his father to spare the assassin. His father relented but only if Zed can perform a simple mission.
Two simple tasks that Zed, who could barely even read at the time was tested to be capable of accomplishing. The first was to have her confess her crimes against the Evil Horde and who paid her to do so. The second one is for her to denounce her place in Silaxian society and become a force captain under the High Prince.
After arduous months of silence from the assassin it was only confessing to her that she would be saved she began to comply. He had learned things about his would-be killer that didn't imply with the mission's goals, like how her family was separated in a planetary wide Civil War that forced her to become a sell sword. How she personally blamed the Horde for the civil unrest that had befallen the planet. Most importantly how she was told to kill his father and himself from a divine premonition from an Ancient One called The Goddess.
It was soon after that confession she vowed to give her life to Zed and his father.
She died by a self-poisoning, twelve hours before she was to be freed. While he was never reprimanded for her passing, he never was able to forget it. For it was her death that showed to him that he was unsuccessful in saving her, no matter what she had said to him.
"I'm so sorry!" He begged the Silaxian female fighting back his need to cry at her presence. He had contained his feelings at her loss for so long he would shatter if he set them free. She didn't have to die, but she was dead despite all his efforts.
The well-built woman and embraced the now trembling Prince, letting him muttered incoherent apologies into her chest. With a gentle whisper she said to the young man "You don't even know what those words mean, Horde vermin." Then swiftly stabbed Zed with a stunned sword ramming the electrified blade into his side.
With tears welling up in his eyes Zed let out a short scream, before his throat seized up as she twisted the blade and deeper inside.
"Zed!" Bow shouted hearing his comrade fall silent after a horrific shout of pain. He had been too busy avoiding his friends blows to accurately look for him and had relied on the fact that as long as he could still hear him that the other boy was okay.
Now that he could only hear his own breathing and the snide shouts of his two attackers he began to panic. Glancing around to find a way out of his current situation both finally looked up at the ceiling and noticed something strange. Beyond what appeared to be the case ceiling there was another image of a second ceiling angular and straight of the glowing red crystal hanging from its center. Instinctually he shot an arrow at it, but the projectile fell short of its target.
Then quickly dodged the image of Glimmer's attack as she hissed "What are you doing? Big doofus, I'm right here!"
He had quickly learned that whatever was attacking him wasn't his friends, but their snide condescending tone were familiar enough to him to make his irritation grow stronger. It felt like whatever had generated the doppelgängers of his friends was feeding off the worst traits he saw in them.
"Come on Bow, stop being such a stupid boy! What are you trying to hit?" The Adora look-alike taunted him before bursting out in laughter.
The Glimmer look-alike joined her before letting out "Maybe he wants to go blind! We should teach him not to play with pointy objects, or go places he was told to not to go." Then lunging for his quiver to her nails scratching his shoulders.
Bow force of will he gripped the doppelgängers hand and tossed her side as he readied another arrow to be fired "Shut! Up!" While mistakes expression heard a part of him there was another side of him that felt relieved to see this Glimmers shocked expression. Just like venting to Zed about the things his best friend did to bother him there was something cathartic in the action.
Then taking aim he shot a sonic arrow through the illusion of the ceiling and into the ceiling beyond hitting its target. The reverberating sonic blast causing the Crystal the crack making pieces of the gem falloff before the room fell into utter blackness.
Bow then swung his weapon around believing that the doppelgängers would attack him from the shadows, instead he stumbled around places where he had thought there was mirrored walls seeming to have disappeared. "Zed, where did you go!" He began to run around realizing that Zed was still silent.
Meanwhile the horde Prince kneeled on the ground his body slumped, his throat sore and incapable to catch his breath. Around him lay incorporeal shades of light that resembled the mirrors that had entrapped him in the Phantom's image still looked over his body. Carefully he moved his hand around where he felt the stinging wound of the stunned sword, only to find that such a wound wasn't actually there.
"Zed, this isn't funny!"
Zed hearing Bow cries for him gave him the will to stumble up on his feet. Then shuffled towards the sound of the other man's voice desperate to get away from the image of the female assassin.
Bow jumped to nearly punching the other teen feeling Zed crashed against him "There you are!" He said only to feel Zed to fall at his feet "You okay? Come on Zed get up." Bow said helping them up once more.
"It felt so real." Zed let out a startled croak his eyes still staring at the impression of the one who stabbed him from afar.
"You're right, this place isn't messing around." Bow answered gravely before putting on a more confident tone. "So, you think you can use your special eyes here?"
With more serious the Horde Prince examined the room at the shadows of power that seem to make up every physical object around them "I think we'll need lights for this." He stated turning the flash light feature of his multitool .
"Where did everything go!" Bow stated using his scanner light to help searched the area, there beams of light only revealing a solid even floor leading off into a dark void "Where are you heading?" He asked seeing Zed start wandering away from him.
Still feeling the effects of the illusions wound, Zed made his way to a narrow opening holding a set of stairs that ascended to a pale light "This seem like the only way out." He looked back at Bow, then started to ascend the staircase using the wall so he wouldn't stumble and fall back.
Bow shifted awkwardly before speaking "Hey, before we go up, I need to ask something?"
Zed turned pointing his light at Bow "What?" tilting his head at the unfamiliar expression the other teen face
Bow looked up at Zed then turned his gaze to focus on where the two beams of light intersected. "Never mind… well." He shifted his scanner from hand-to-hand trying to find the best way to ask his question.
Zed rolled his eyes at the return of Bow's wishy-washy nature "Say it." He leaned against the wall to give himself arrest as he talked to the other teen.
"What are you going to do after we get the crown?"
Zed blinked as he had to resort to lie "I don't know." He wasn't sure what he was going to do with Bow once he had received the crown.
There was a stretch of silence between Bow and the other young man before he worked up the courage to ask another question. "Do you think we can go on another adventure after this?" Bow looked up at him with a nervous smile "Like maybe we can go-"
A sad sigh escaped Zed's lips causing Bow to stop. "Let just try to survive this adventure frist." It was the only thing he could things you can say without thought of telling Bow that there wouldn't be a next time. A new a blossomed in his body matching the sting from the phantoms attack. For he knew the best thing that he could do for his companion was to return to the Fight Zone and pretend like he never knew Bow existed.
Bow gave a cheerful nod, though his eyes held a hint of disappointment at the other teens answer. With a pregnant silence go between them and they ascended the stairs. Making their way to landing at the top that opened out into a spacious chamber a lined with doors. The floor cluttered with trinkets and treasures of every size as various crystals on the ceiling pulsed a light in tune with their footsteps.
Before he either of the two men could say a word, a feminine voice echoed across the room "Bow!" The act though of Glimmers voice continued as the outline of her and Adora came into focus.
With the start Zed activated his shock baton panicked at the idea of repeating the ordeal that they had just escaped from.
"Zed no!" Bow did his best to restrain him, not wanting the other teen to jump to conclusions.
Zed moved his head to his companion looking at him in confusion "You can't tell if these will attack too!" He said with genuine concern for their safety.
Bow blinked his expression becoming apprehensive as the two girls stopped a few feet away "I can tell." He told Zed before looking at Glimmer and Adora "Right?" He asked them.
Glimmer looked a bow and then to Adora perplexed before simply answering. "Yes."
With glittering eyes bow and ran to the two girls wrapping them in a hug the single word being enough to convince him "What are guys doing here?" I he asked his two best friends with a smile.
"Saving you! What where thinking getting yourself in this mess." Glimmer answered with a deep sense of relief.
"Well…" Bow scratched his head before looking over at the other boy in the room "Guys this is Zed, he was very persuasive." He introduced his friends to him
Glimmer examined him curiously "Zed uh?" but then seem to dismiss her curiosity with a welcoming smile.
Adora on the other hand was a little more suspicious of the other young man. "Do I know you?" She examined his scruffy hair and tattered clothes. She didn't know exactly what she was looking for but something about his name and his appearance was familiar. The impression of the memory of an she was young still clouding her thoughts enough to make the strong enough connections.
Zed narrowed his eyes at the blonde girl. If he wasn't trying to keep his cover, he would snap at the defector first so brazenly wearing the Horde uniform as a traitor. "I don't think so?" Though there is something all around familiar about the girl's bright blue eyes, though he convinced himself that he must be mistaken.
Bow watched Zed and Adora stare at each other disappointedly. He wasn't happy that his friends were taking to Zed as warmly as he would've liked them to. Surely, it must've just been the stress of the situation making them all on edge and they get all long a lot better once they got out of the cave.
With a shake of her head Adora turned back to Bow and said "You can't what this place has put us through." Eyeing Zed carefully she pulled out the Sword of Protection "My sword doesn't work in place, it's kind of weird." She explained.
Bow scanned the first one sword, to no avail due to massive amounts of interference. It appeared no matter where they went inside the mountain his scanner would be only useful as a source of light.
Briefly bouncing in place Glimmer "There was this long stair case and we had to ride a shield to…" The glittering haired Princess stopped hearing one of the piles of treasures getting knocked over.
The trio of hero's looked over at Zed, as he dropped things against the floor staring at the crystals on the ceiling. His gray eyes focused on the changing of color and intensity of light as each falling object made a noise against the stone.
Gritting your teeth slightly Glimmer spot out "Hey! We were talking!" Irritated by Zed's behavior.
Bow looked up at the ceiling to try to figure out why said would be compelled to mess around with the hanging crystals, and then he saw it. "No, wait, he's on to something." He ran to one of the piles of treasures and rummage through it until he found a worn down, but still well-tuned violin.
Putting the violins bow to the strings, he watched how the sound affected the crystals as they try to light up and the color snakes their way to one of the doors. Bow gave Zed a know smile and tossed the teen a stray Bodhrán drum.
Zed looked at Bow and gave him a reaffirming nod, thankful that he wasn't handed another flute. Then began to play with the percussion instrument more attentive playing his own song to open one of the doors than to cooperate with Bow. To the Horde Prince's surprise, the young marksman was playing just along with playing off the rhythm of the drum and overpowering it.
"You feel that?" Glimmer stated to the other girl.
"Uh?" Responded Adora
"Their music it's like a storm is brewing." The princess's eyes glittered before searching through a pile of trinkets in jewelry to find a small wind instruments to join in.
Not want to be left out Adora managed to find two wooden poles and began to echo the beat of the Zed's drumming.
The crystals above them began to glow in swirled like an Aurora above them. Then with one coordinated blinking of the crystals a door opened with a loud pop. A cold icy wind swirling out of the entrance and stopping the quartet's performance.
The door was the first to notice the open door the chill whipping at her hands "Where does it lead?" She asked the rest of the group.
Bow turned to look at the door and smiled "Well, there's only one way to find out."