8/?: When the Captain Woke Up.
Teela awoke that morning as she always did: instantly and completely. Having become attuned to the Eight Spheres, her awareness was sharper than most mortals, even for her highly advanced age not having dulled it much. This was a blessing as it had saved her life, Adam's life, and those of her children on many an occasion. Dearest Alayan had moaned of it of late, but that was the child's manner.
Because of this greater awareness, Teela immediately knew that where she lay was not where she'd gone to sleep. The mattress was a bit lumpier for one thing, and another was the acoustics of the room she was in held a distinctly different pitch and volume from what she normally heard. The air had a different, almost electric scent to it, and there muted sounds of movement and voices all around.
Most importantly, however, was that she was lying in bed alone. She could sense the powerful lifeglow of her husband and partner somewhere near, but his physical presence was missing. Few things could frighten the Queen of Spheres and Great Serpents, and for her other half to be missing from her side was the single greatest. Caution and control was forgotten as she threw aside the coverlet (made from a different, rougher weave than the spiders-silk they normally slept under) and stood, eyes searching all about and fingers instinctively forming Shapes-of-Forces.
Just as well the latter was more instinctive than conscious, as several new surprises hit her at once: how familiar the room was, how rich the air was now with energies, and how wide her range of vision had suddenly become. This last hit her hardest, literal decades having given her time to become accustomed to missing half the world in sight.
Weaver! She was sure that malignant bitch of an illusionist was at work here. No other explanation could be made for the world suddenly made whole before her eyes.
That comforting notion faded to nothing as she caught sight of herself in a lengthwise mirror standing beside an otherwise unadorned bureau of drawers. The looking glass was just that, glass and reflection. Further proof she and Adam had been translocated somewhere beyond their home, given the glass clearly lacked the natural charms she herself had affixed. The familiarity of the place – from the walls to the echoes beyond to the birdcalls just beyond the open window to the currents of untapped Forces beneath it all – was at the same inescapable. Teela had lived long enough and was practiced enough to discern the differences between the Forces now under her very feet, and those of home…and those differences instantly completely up-ended the very definition of "home". Pride had Teela grit her teeth against the moan of pain and distress her roiling thoughts brought up.
Pride, and not a tiny strand of fear.
In a last-ditch effort to disprove and disbelieve this new reality, Teela approached the mirror and slowly turned her head to the right. Her fingers probed under her left jawline and neck for the mark, Adam's mark, which would unambiguously prove this was still her world. No sorcery or illusion could mask it, never mind remove it; she knew this from owned experience.
But it was gone, and she felt that loss so keenly it was literally a physical pain. She so numbed she was only distantly aware of gathering the hem of her nightshirt and lifting it, uncovering a smooth and firm and unmarked torso. Gone were the silvery striations ("tiger stripes" her husband often teased) that she'd carried on her sides since forever. There were a handful of small scars in evidence, ones like so much else were instinctively familiar and consciously alien.
To master the Nine Spheres of Forces, Teela had trained herself to gaze into the lowest depths of any abyss without flinching, and to stare into the dead eyes of the Fendrahl-acc-thul-yull with equal calm. Even Adam could not have managed this, and his eyes were all but soaked in the blood of monsters and madmen. She had never told or even hinted to him at the blasphemies now hidden within her experience, guarded and contained within her own flesh, bent and held by her will.
Yes, mastery of the Ninth Sphere was a horrible and soul-shattering experience…and it was nothing in comparison waking to the loss of all signs of the life's true treasures one had accumulated. Teela made no move to wipe away her tears at the sudden loss. She didn't dare seek out Adam, not yet, not until she'd calmed enough to…
A flicker of movement out of the corner of her left eye (Teela would realize she could see through that eye only later) broke this line of thought and calm, her hand snapping out as a thinblade shimmered to existence, then let the same fly afore her mind fully caught up to it!
She was about to reach for the thinblade…conscious and horrified at the realization she wouldn't catch it before it hit the poor girl it targeted…when she likewise realized that it had stopped, and barely a hair's width from piercing the girl in the eye. Stopped, but not because she'd been able to reach it. Stopped, thank The Goddess and all her myriad Child'ren, by an all too familiar hand. That hand was connected to an equally well-recognized arm.
The rest of the girl's savior quickly moved into view, and it was all Teela could do not to collapse into an incoherent puddle at his feet. It was Adam, thank the mother wyrm! Not the half-infirm statesman and grandfather of the night before, but Adam as he was upon their waking in the White Wastes, a lifetime and more ago!
Instinctive caution held her from rushing him. Impossible as it might be, Teela knew now that she had been returned to Eternia. There was no guarantee that Adam had been as well, or that this was even the Eternia of her dim memory.
So she stood her ground, and made an effort to curtsy before her Prince. Her joints, though no longer stiff and argumentative, proved as unpracticed as ever in the move. Worse, her efforts at proper greeting of royalty betrayed a voice of deeper shade, bespeaking greater age than in her youth. Their children had been merciless in documenting them through the ages, and even one as tin-eared as herself could perceive the difference. What would Adam think?
"It's me, Tee," came an equally aged, equally restored voice. Propriety, however false, was forgotten and she was in his good arm, clinging with matching strength as he clung to her. Her grip proved oddly precarious, as if his body was…malformed somehow. Yes, Adam had grown in their years together, becoming a true mountain of a man. Age and strife had weathered him there a little, but even so the absence of one arm had made him easy to hold. So why was she having such difficulty now?
Quick as she might be in the heat of battle or confronted by the offspring of shadows, Teela still retained her impossible blind-spot for the obvious. Thus it took her several long moments pondering this conundrum for the reason to penetrate her thoughts. No sooner did she realize Adam stood there with both arms intact (albeit one hanging limp) – the final proof that they'd been returned to Eternia – than all feeling fled her own limbs. Adam appeared no better, his own legs folding beneath him nearly the same instant.
"Its been three days here…" Whatever Adam's intent in telling her, it left Teela teetering upon the mental precipice. Hysteria threatened to break her apart at any moment then, and it was all Teela could do to keep herself from literally clawing into Adam's own flesh, suddenly frantic and certain that they were about to be torn from each other's grip once more.
"Teela? Honey?" It was a familiar voice that broke through that frantic madness in her mind, and Teela resisted the call towards its source, instinctively distrusting any pull upon her heart. Her resistance hardened to stone, then Especially when it was her father, forever looming large in her mind yet still further distant from easy memory, doing the tugging. Teela couldn't yet summon the strength to release Adam's nightshirt.
"Tee?" Adam murmured. "Go to him, Love." No other could order her thus, and she released her death's grip on him and turned, eyes still on the floor. She rallied herself, pausing to recall memories of a moment equal to the trial ahead.
A single moment came forth, when she'd stood before a towering warrior in the desert, with only her carved staff and a handful of unreliable magicks at hand, certain she was about to meet her end…and equally certain that the monster who charged her, who had butchered hapless caravans across her domain, would meet his. Irony abounded in the moments that followed, as that the warrior believed the same, for the very same reasons.
She'd felt such peace in their graceful exchange of blows, learning a heartbeat later who this giant of a man was, and why his brave and foolhardy army crossed the wastes to find and confront her loyal travelers. She'd come so very close to killing her Adam, believed dead ten full turns of the world, that day without even realizing it; her magicks were reputed (somewhat inaccurately, she'd thought) to be nigh unto unbreakable. Yet break them Adam had, a sensation he'd later likened to grabbing a lightning bolt barehanded. Storytellers would thereafter tell of how the Captain of the RagerBrothers had disarmed the Queen of Serpents - an act no other might achieve - then fallen to his knees before her and wept and begged for death, clinging to her as a newborn would.
But that moment was long in the past, and the one who stood before her was no monster or giant to her. "Poppa? I…I forgot…" What nonsense words was she saying? Teela could no longer connect words to thought, and could only let herself drift with events as they swirled about her.
She briefly came back to herself when the healer had moved them to his infirmary and they were discussing Adam's suddenly lame arm. "Tell them!" she'd ordered her husband, her authority on this point absolute. And, as always, Adam refused to speak to it directly, thereby forcing Teela to admit her personal shame to them all. Adam wasted no time in admitting his own, which led them to recall Nyssa's last admonishment to them both; how could they forget, when even the Scaled Horde recoiled in fear at her calmly-delivered threats?
The Queen's momentary hysteria had the salutary affect of dispelling her own incipient breakdown, and allowed her to focus herself upon helping Adam subdue her. Teela found herself reacting as of old, instinctively, and thankfully properly. She hoped Adam's lack of reaction to her moves was born of trust, as opposed to the same numb shock she herself was wrapped within.
Soon after she found herself back in her own room, sitting upon her unmade bed, her father hovering nearby and looking…frightened; were she of sounder mind, Teela would have tried to make some gesture or move to reassure him. As it was? All she could do is heave a sigh and stare at her hands, oddly fascinated at the lack of weathering and sigils. Sadly, her hands had no easy answers for her confusion, and her father was showing no signs of wishing to leave.
"Poppa?"
Duncan noticeably perked up. "Yes, dear?"
"Please go," Teela implored quietly, unable to face his response. Indeed, she made a show of cradling her face in both hands, her voice muffled but understandable. "I need…I need some time to collect myself. Please leave me be for a bit. Please?"
Perhaps it was the genuine plea in her voice – doubtless something so alien to the Teela of his memory it must have thrown his already shaky internal equilibrium completely off - but Duncan apparently agreed, and he quietly withdrew without any further urging. Later Teela would reflect on this, concluding his nerves were so completely shattered by then that he'd done the only sensible thing and retreat to regroup himself. This realization gave her a hollow pang that her father, so long one of her touchstones and examples, was brought low like that.
But that was for later. Her only thought at that very moment was to return to the one place she felt steady and secure. Without conscious thought, Teela muttered a choice Word, causing the wall separating her from her husband to fall away. Easily a hundred bodies worth of stone and steel melted away, replaced with a convenient illusion of what was before, and provided her instant access to her husband's bedchamber.
But once she found herself there, Teela felt her own nerve falter. Adam lay on his bed, looking pensive and lost, a state of mind she could not reconcile to her voluminous memory of the man. For him to look so unsure, it was nearly enough to send her fleeing. Thankfully, it took but a single glance between them to put such nonsense behind her.
She was there, her Adam was there, and but three short strides and she was once more ensconced in her husband's arm. Teela couldn't resist reaching out and touching his once-missing arm. It wasn't until Adam's fingertips brushed over her now unmarred face that Teela fully realized her own restoration. Words passed between them, though Teela was unsure over what, awareness too awash in sights and sounds that time and age had dulled.
A single, certain question fell from her lips as they lay together: "Were they real?"
"They were. They are." Teela released a breath she hadn't consciously realized she was holding, Adam's certitude enough to convince her, if only for that moment. She tightened her hold on him, and he on her, their breathing immediately synchronizing as it always did.
Teela gave a silent offer of thanks to whatever agency had brought them to their past-home, and for the first time since waking, felt at peace. Everything else – their parents, Greyskull, the hustle and bustle of the castle and beyond – could wait.
TBC...