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Author's Notes: Can I get a giant OMG, because I seriously deserve one. 13 DAYS. That's right, the longest Cloaks chapter (nearly 10,000 words) was written in just 13 days. I am so proud of myself right now! But actually, I'm not that proud because this chapter just sorta… I don't know, I had to throw a lot of events together: I had to cover the slaughter (and subsequent demonization) of the Faeries, Kharl discovering what Ruin had become, and Lykouleon taking in the possessed Illuser. I'm glad for having a plot to follow more securely now, but some things are really irritating… You know, those damn plot holes! Anyway, like I mentioned last chapter, please don't take anything to heart, I don't know how much of what I'm writing is true. (Maybe it's all wrong!) Anyway, I was really excited about writing this chapter, but it turned out to be a lot harder to write than I expected. Faeries suck—only kidding of course.
Disclaimer: Pssh please. Last time I checked, my native language was English.
Background Music: The Dark (Trans-Siberian Orchestra)
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Cloaks
By Sarehptar
Chapter 14-
After the Fall
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It is hard for me to go farther—impossibly hard, harder. To lose a child... To lose a heart, a beating solid heart; a hand, an eye, a laugh... It is a pain that is not physical but is—I did not know how to feel it, but still it came, oblivious to my ignorance, uncaring of my reason. I felt as if everything inside me was wasteful, useless: I dreamed, for a moment, sitting there, that I might be able to bring him back. I could give my soul now, was it too late? I dreamed, just briefly, that I could be happy dying, could be happy if he was whole, alive. And then your tiny hands closed over my shoulder, gently but feeling like the heaviest blow. I was myself again for a moment, strong, clear-minded, and I realized the madness in what I had been thinking one moment before. Ruin was precious, impossibly so, but to sacrifice myself that he might live would defeat the intention which caused me to create him. To share my heart with him, I had to have one.Then, the clarity of that discovery faded, and there was only the hollow swelling inside me—threatening to burst out. A worried tear traversed your cheek, and I was happy looking at it -no, not happy, never, but relieved- because it felt as if you were doing what I could not, as if your worry had burst free, and even I could see it leeching out of you. To watch you express things so easily, without even thinking of them... I wanted to do this too, to find some way to make my broken form scream out the excruciating loss, the hatred at myself, at whichever god had failed to protect Ruin and I, the self-pity. Like the letting of blood, I wanted and lacked anyway to let it go. I tried to smile for you, to ease some of the fear that I could almost see burning in you, but it failed miserably, your watery stare only darkened. You were too small to lift me, but I think you would have tried to pick me out of the mess of blood and feathers if you could have.
Instead, I had to stand on my own. I was still reeling, but feeling was returning to my fingers, the tremors were stilling slowly, I could feel the blood clotting over the cut on my head and the scratches over my side and back swiftly. Tentatively, I extended the tiniest bit of youki to try and bring my own form back under control. For a moment the power wavered, shaky and unsure, and then its fluidity returned and my felt my wings dissolve, the illusion of dissolving... I was my hidden self again, looking sorely defeated and ready to fall.
It was your suggestion that prompted my movement at all. "Master Kharl, you need to wash those wounds." I jerked at the voice, hearing you clearly for the first time that night. I did need to clean the wounds, as in my weakened state infection was no small threat; this made sense to me in a foreign, distant way, as if the slightly damaged form I was wearing was not my own. With tiny, unsure footsteps, I carried myself from the room where I had lost my greatest dream, where I had forged my own greatest failure. The lit hallway seemed like a strange, overly bright paradise after the darkness and chill of the laboratory. Silent, as unsure as I was, you followed after me, again the puppy dog of your earlier days. It was late, I could tell by the lowly burning candles of the hall, and I thought suddenly that you ought to be in bed, and that the morning would be unpleasant for both of us.
I turned a little, gave you the barest of pushes in the direction of your own room, the only gesture I could manage for the moment.
"Go to sleep Garfakcy, I'll take care of this."
"Your idea of taking care of injuries is just leaving them alone." The cross-armed glare you shot me was almost entertaining, I thought if I had the energy or heart I might have smiled. "You need to wash those wounds in alcohol... Who knows what was in those bottles."
"I'll survive." Though I may not want to. "Go on now." I gave you another gentle push, a touch I meant to be reassuring. It worked, seemed to, because you dropped your arms with a heavy sigh and stomped away. But it was part facade, I could tell, because more than anything, the stiffness of your steps betrayed how unsure you were truly feeling. What was it like for you to see me this way? Me, the unshakable Master, the genius, the even-tempered angel... To see me marred, damaged, lacking control and hardly able to stand? Did you wonder what caused it? Could you ever have dreamed that it was my own child, my own creation that put these festering lacerations on my pale hands and back?
I was so glad, so relieved, that you were ignorant to my failure. Maybe it was self-depreciative, but I was afraid, that night, that if you knew what I had tried to do, what I had failed to do, that you might think less of me. I was really terrified, without even really knowing why, that I might diminish in your eyes. I could not stand the thought of you pitying me in any way, and I determined then, leaning against the wall and watching you shrink with each step down the impossible corridor, that I would never tell you what had happened behind the sealed laboratory doors.
When I finally heard the click of your knob turning back into place, I knew that I could not simply dawdle in the hallway any longer. Forcing myself to move again, I carried my aching form down the winding stone stair (God, was it always this narrow and dark?). The bath seemed miles away, and each step felt as if it was taking more than I had left to offer. I was so concentrated on keeping myself moving steadily forward that it came almost as a shock when the toe of my dirty white boot hit the carven oak door of the baths. Pushing it felt like pushing a stone wall, and I was amazed to find my arms aching.
No, I was not amazed—scientifically, it was logical that I would be weakened. I had given up roughly two and a half pints of my blood, more than enough to leave any human dazed or dead, I had taken an uncertain amount of poisons and foreign bloods in through my open cuts. Across the Eastern wall, a silvery mirror wreathed in gold and immobile cherubs mocked me, showing me more awful than I felt—I was gray-skinned, eyes and veins standing out in stark and sickly contrast in every place that was not coated with congealing blood, dried and cracking already in some places. My cheeks were red with it, my bangs horribly stained… I had cut a place just above my temple on an edge of the stone floor when I fell from the chair. My cloak was irreparable, torn by glass shrapnel and corroded by whatever acids I'd been unknowing nestling in that room.
Leaning down to turn the faucet on elicited a wince, but nothing more, and I knew within a few days my pale skin would bare none of the scars of this night that my heart could never heal from. The water rushed over the marble of the sunken pool, filling it slowly with a sound that mimicked the whisper of rain through leaves. With a sigh, I sunk myself delicately into the water, hissing as liquid rushed into each new mark on my flesh. It was hot, rather too hot, and steam rose of the surface in dancing smoky tendrils that quickly made the air of the room warm and humid. I was glad when the mirror fogged over, hiding from my too alert eyes the reflected scars of miscarriage.
The unchanging warmth seemed to seep through me, attaching to the very marrow of my bones, and the gentle caress of the water, once I had adjusted to it, was pleasant against my bare skin. In the flickering candlelight of the room the fading steam seemed like ethereal ghosts, tentatively reaching for me, dancing away from me, full of some wisdom I did not know, and unwilling to impart it to me. Thoughts like those should have bothered me, but watching the dreamy diffusion of shed-blood cells splitting and breaking apart, clinging each other like desperate lovers until the final moment of dissipation, seemed to slow my mind to the numbed state that is not shock but might as well be. I watched the blood peel itself from my wounds and pale skin, watched it drift through the barely moving water in tiny red clouds, then watched it vanish without a true trace—just like the rising steam, just like the breaking soul.
I can't tell you how long I stayed there, resting my heavy head against the carved stone edge, listening to the gentle drag of the water's surface across my skin. The candles burnt low, the room fell darker and darker and cold. The mirror cleared again, and still I did not bother to move. At last, when the water too began to chill, I knew I was risking falling asleep in the bath, and forced myself to move. It was the first brisk movement since the accident, and it stung but was almost a relieving pain. I pushed my head under the water, running fingers through it to clear away the sticky blood. The entire side where I struck the stone was sore, and I made myself flinch more than once trying to clean the clumped blood from the wound.
Finally, all traces of the stains that had marred my paleness were inside my head and not on its surface, and I pulled myself from the haven of the bath. The air was cold again, and it interested me to watch goosebumps rise over my bare arms. With deft fingers, I tugged a long terrycloth robe over my shoulders. It was black, and on me, the color was unappealing: it lightened my already too alabaster skin. I caught my reflection in the mirror again and it stunned me. There in the glass was a man I could hardly recognize.
Beneath my light eyes were dark circles, signs of the exhaustion I felt but was avoiding. My lilac hair was limp, hanging in my face and dripping down my shoulders. By morning, it would be standing on end just as lively as ever, but now it made me look half-drowned, clinging awkwardly and refusing to dry. Still, it was the marble white skin that shocked me, standing out against the midnight fabric. Looking into mirror was like staring at a statue, the carved form of an archaic angel, fallen half into ruin. It was too easy to picture cracks running over my surface, tiny chips missing from my skin, jagged indentations of an unsteady hand. Time and Fate were wearing me away.
Maybe it was anger that made me turn away from the reflected man, maybe it was disgust. With footsteps more sure than I had offered coming in, I fled the bath and the gazes of the grinning cherubs. I ascended the staircase again, and this time even its darkness did not bother me. The torches in the hall were stumps, nearly to the metal rings that would stop their burning, smoldering in spots and ash white in others. My senses were still clouded, but not enough to miss your steady breath behind the nearby door, like a metronome, telling me you were getting the sleep I desperately needed. I muffled my footsteps out of courtesy, and crossed the distance to my own room.
The moonlight created shadows in the room that would never exist by day, exaggerating every shape and dulling every outline. It was brighter in the room than normal nights; the moon seemed almost too close. Weakly, I slid between the sheets, fresh and smelling like the rain-scented soap you were so fond of. The material was cold against my bare feet and hands, pleasantly cold. I buried my face in my pillow, unable and unwilling to move any more than that. I was sure that sleep would never come this night, but that was an incorrect assumption. Within in minutes, I was unconscious, the deep sort of sleep that doesn't allow for dreams. Thank God, because I surely would have had nightmares.
The morning dawned cold and misty, and I could not have approved of the weather more. After such a dark night, thinking of sunlight disgusted me. I felt honestly that the sun should never shine again. Nevertheless, I felt almost free now that the darkness had ended, and the day made distant all the horrors. I could not move to lift myself from the bed—going about my daily life seemed utterly impossible and revolting. I did not want to eat, to read, to even bother looking at anything more complicated than the unchanging rafters of my ceiling. I wanted silence, a moment to think clearly about where I had gone wrong, a moment to reflect on myself and dream of ways I could have stopped everything from crumbling around me.
This respite seemed far from coming, because just as I pulled the covers further over my face, you rapped respectfully on the door. For a moment, I considered ignoring you, pretending to be asleep, but then this seemed too cruel, because I knew how concerned you were and how helpful you loved to be. It would be unfair of me to seek solace in thinking and leave you wondering and worried. I half-muttered the "Enter," but you did not fail to hear it or to do just what I'd commanded. When you marched into the room, it was carefully, bearing a tray loaded with cakes and a delicate china tea set that I had not even known we owned. The scent of the tea was calming, a hint of lavender and orange that I loved, and even though the thought of eating anything was repulsive, you did not have to work hard to convince me to take a cup from you.
It was hot, warming the porcelain and my palms nicely after the chill of the morning air, and I cupped it in my both my hands just for this reason, taking delicate sip after sip. You drank too, having seated yourself on a plush stool beside my bed. For a long time, between us was only the sound of drinking, the quite half-sigh as each swill of heat warmed our stomachs. Then, and I am not sure who started the conversation, we simply talked. Not of the past night, never of that, but of everything else: of weather and demons and battles and lemon cake. It was pleasant to simply say whatever came to mind between drinks of cooling tea, and I was glad you had come. When we'd finally gone through the pot and you'd eaten half the cakes I couldn't bring myself to touch, and there was nothing left for me to say that did not bring to mind horrible mistakes, you seemed to know that now I needed to be alone. You left without a word and only a miniscule glare at the uneaten pastries.
Before your coming I had thought I would be happy in the silence, but now it seemed lacking, and instead of thinking clearly about my errors, I could only imagine half-blindly what could have been. I had wanted to make myself move on, but alone with only the lingering scent of lavender, I had trapped myself in the past. Over and over again I imagined the pain in the cloudy red eyes, the tiny hand clawing helplessly for my own; over and over I blamed myself and drained my own will to continue, to move from the bed and begin life anew without Ruin. For four days, I simply sat, hardly sleeping, refusing to eat whatever you brought to me, drinking lavender tea and simply dreaming. I was afraid inside but it was not strong enough to pierce the indifference that had spread like ice over my face. I was afraid that I was going to waste away, and could not find reason why I shouldn't!
On the fifth morning, reason came. I had been ignoring everything around me, listening only to your meaningless talk of soap and the garden for several days—but today you brought me news that sent a shock rippling through me, enough to stir my heart again, enough to make me take a teacake: it was snowing. In the middle of the tropical Arinain summer, it was snowing. In fact, you muttered, it was not only snowing, it was raining, hailing, windy, and all of this was plagued by sudden heat waves and sunshine that seemed to declaim everything from the chilly moments prior. You were confused and irritated, but I was only interested, because I knew what erratic weather meant—something was disturbing the faeries.
I pulled myself free of the sheets, shocked by the chill of the stone I hadn't felt in days, and hurried (no, not so much a hurry, it simply felt that way after such a long period of stillness) to the window. It was true, I could see it: delicate, tiny snowflakes were piling up on the sill, while no more than a half mile away, I could see sun shining through the clouds. Some thing was very wrong, and it thrilled me.
How can I explain this feeling? It was like suddenly being given a new reason to continue, a new source of inspiration. I wanted to know, I wanted to go find out for myself what the imbalance was—I suddenly had a purpose to move, to breathe, to eat and dress myself in fine robes again. It wasn't a light-hearted curiosity; some part of me knew something very bad was happening, about to happen. I felt it, instinctively I knew it in the pounding of my heart as I watched the dancing snowflakes: we were on the edge of a precipice and the whole world was about to plunge over the edge. It made me grin; it gave me tremors of exhilaration.
I cannot tell you if it was a conscious knowledge, a subconscious idea, a base yet keen understanding of all I had created—but I knew, knew that as impossible as it was, Ruin had something to do with this all. The snow fell silently through the sunlight and I felt hope like I had never felt before, higher and more clear, taking my whole being into it. I watched each microscopic ice flower glisten in the passing light, glimmer in the falling shadow, staining my world white, and I prayed. Ruin is alive. Ruin is alive. I did not care how, in what way, in what form. I could only blindly forge ahead with the belief that this strangeness was not coincidence, that my heart was not wrong, that the thing I knew was not crazed dream but the knowledge that souls seem to understand, the instinct of fathers and animals that connects us all.
I had to go. I could not stand the sight of my room any longer. I tossed aside my empty tea cup with abandon, ignoring your shout as it shattered. Within moments I had shed the black robe and tugged myself into a pair of pants, a loose white shirt and, suiting half the weather, an over-shirt, common white cloak falling effortlessly into place over all this.
"I'm going across the sea Garfakcy." You almost dropped the pieces of the shattered cup.
"Let me come with you!" It wasn't a shout, but I knew you wanted it to be.
"Not this time, please." It was not an order, or a plea, it was simply a sort of respect between us—I would not refuse if you insisted, but my fear that Ruin lived on and you might see whatever sort of monstrosity the broken soul could have become… I did not want you with me if Ruin was not as I had intended him to be; if even though he had survived it was only as a mangled abomination. I was afraid of my own hope, because hope itself is a weak emotion, easily broken. I was afraid I would find nothing, or would only be faced with more, with worse mistakes. I was praying he was still the child I wanted him to be and praying you would not beg me—I was afraid you two might meet and I would lose something because of it.
"Yes Master Kharl." I was never happier to hear your pouting surrender. Relieved but desperate not to show it, I left you, framed by snowy sunlight and the broken scent of lavender.
Dusis was fairing even worse than our far away home. This was no small disturbance, no small shock to the balance: something –someone– was causing an upset unlike anything I had ever seen. How can I describe to you what I saw there, where I had begun my search for the remnants of Ruin? I had gone directly to the source of the disturbance, and I what I found… It was not the path of the child I had lost but the monster I had created, the soul I had unleashed upon the world. The Faerie Forest, once surely a haven of peace and beauty, was destroyed.
Destroyed is not the right word for the sort of horror I found there—the air was red with it, blood, fine and lingering as mist. The flowers were red with it, wilting and blackened by the touch. As if the very lives of the faeries had sustained it, the forest was dying before me, rotting, poisoned by the footsteps and fangs of a mistake. My mistake, in end, and my fault and no one to blame but myself. But even as I ran my hands over blackened, torn trunks, felt the palms of my gloves become wet with the lingering, thick faerie blood, I did not feel guilty. Disgusted, unsure, afraid to go on and afraid to let things continue without interfering… This all I felt, and it pooled inside me, fighting and denying. But more than any of them was the presence of happiness. This destruction was something a half-broken soul would do.
Unfinished souls are unpredictable, either useless or violent. With as much power as Ruin had, I should have thought that he would never be able to settle and not affect the world. Was he trying to capture the essence of others and repair the gaps in his own heart? It was understandable, but foolish—to finish such a complex soul, he would have had to murder the mass of them. The random path of destruction was not concurrent with devouring souls… Rather, whatever monster Ruin had become seemed utterly confused, racing without purpose, killing without reason; living by the moment, unable to grasp a wider perspective of the world. Thinking of this, even in the devastation, the bane of a Great Race, I felt lighter, happier. Ruin was alive, Ruin had a form: the soul I had crafted had not shattered, was lingering. I could undo my mistakes. I could return him to the innocent I intended him to be.
Do you understand? Can you see me for who I am—constantly dreaming, hopeful, a fool. I was wiping faerie's blood off my immaculate gloves and was happy! I really believed things could be fixed by just finding Ruin, just drawing him back to my side. I was ignoring the sight of destruction, crushing Light flowers under my foot, breathing in the scent of decay, and I was happy—I did not feel guilty in the slightest, because I did not feel for those broken rag-doll creatures. Even looking at their corpses, I did not care. They were only signs to me that Ruin had passed here, that Ruin now had the fangs and claws of a demon, or a monster… Each expression trapped eternally in horror, each drop of blood that stained the hems of my clothing, the toes of my boots, every wilting flower, every scream, every glistening wing… meant somewhere, my child was alive.
Was it cruelty? Was it wrong of me to feel that way, to fail to see the carnage for the evil it was? Was it wrong of me to dream of life in the midst of the death of peace? I can't say that it wasn't cruel, but I can't think of it that way. When I looked into each frozen bloody face, I did not hate them, the species that was my polar opposite, my enemies. I thought I might thank them for proving my notion true, for telling me Ruin was still real. It was love, not hatred that prevented my feeling guilt—for a long while as I wandered between the bodies and the bloody flowers I could only hope. I searched for some sign, some new knowledge among the wreckage, and my mind was too far away to feel guilt over the breaking of bones and stems beneath my feet. Then something happened that pulled me back, pulled me for the first time solely into the grime, the violence and darkness that was Ruin's passing, pulled me into the death… And because of her, in my heart, I began to feel guilty.
The birds who had accompanied me were restless, and I myself became aware of the prickling natural feeling that comes from being in the presence of a soul too pure for my blood. In midst of this chaos, one of the delicate creatures was still alive! It was not hard to find her, back to the trunk of a dying tree. She was covered in blood, nearly all of it her own, but some I knew, was the life Ruin had drained from her companions. This creature was impossibly different from the bodies littering the forest floor, but I can not say in what way. She was as beautiful as any of them, blonde hair draping her shoulders and pooling down her back. In the red half light of the wood, she seemed almost to glow, betraying her own nature.
What was arresting about her was none of that—it was her eyes. They were an aqua color, like water, and wet with tears of pain and horror. They were wide, and she was staring into me as if reading the depths of my soul. Without saying a word, that faerie girl managed to cry out to me in a voice shrill and desolate. Help me! She knew, I could see it, she knew I was a demon and she feared me… But I knew she feared her own swiftly approaching death far more. How intense must her wounds, her terror, have been that she would look at me in such a way? For a moment, aqua eyes stared at me as if I was a savior, an angel.
She was helpless, dying… And without knowing she was begging for help from the very man who had inadvertently caused her suffering. The irony stung me, and I under her gaze, I felt the barest hint of regret. How could she look at me in this way, knowing that I could be there to cause her only more pain? How could she look at me with so much hope in her eyes when I intended to let her die? I wanted to turn away, to continue farther into the destruction and ignore what I had seen in her glance, but I could not move. She was clutching the stump of an arm and her breath was as ragged as the torn edges of cloth, and I felt for the first time that her pain was truly my fault. It was like I had cut her down myself.
I'm not a healer. Maybe I said this aloud, maybe I was silent. In the bloody air silence and speaking seemed to be the same, because I know she understood me. She simply looked into me, with what I feared was trust. A faerie and a demon, and I felt her hope because I too was hoping for something. Seeing my own dreams crushed, I could not bring myself to leave her. Blood ran down her cheeks in a mockery of tears, and when I took a step toward her, I could almost imagine a smile on her lips.
"I cannot save you faerie..." This I know I said, because I heard my own voice too cold and sharp ringing in my ears. She did not seem to hear it as I did, because when I almost flinched she was still, watching me with the unwavering teary eyes. Still, I knew that I could keep her from dying. Like the little bird so long ago, I could save the body crumbling around her—at so steep a cost to her soul, was it worth it? "But I can keep you alive." I did something then that I had never done before: I put out my hand and gave that injured faerie woman a choice. The implications were there, she knew what would happen. Take my hand, and you are selling your soul.
For a moment neither of us moved, and the only sound was the unsteady rise and fall of her breath. And then, shakily, she lifted her remaining hand, black with blood, and touched the tips of my fingers. The fear was still in her eyes, but there was determination there behind the tears. Everything youkai within me rejected the touch, an inherent threat to my very nature, but I ignored this. She grimaced, unable to even enunciate her pain beyond that tiny movement. For a moment everything about her weighed on me, and I wanted nothing more than to apologize. But I could not bring myself do that, not for a faerie, because regretting the damage meant, in some way, that I was regretting Ruin's birth.
Still, it was with a gentleness that I did not know I possessed that I gathered the broken woman to me. I felt the light of my pale youki flood the darkness of the forest, and the birds wheeled once over us. Maybe it took only a few moments, maybe it was just short of eternity—time is lost in the working of a soul. As suddenly as I had begun, it was finished, and with a shaking step, she stood on her own feet beside me. For a minute, we simply stood, observing everything dying slowly around us.
"I cannot cry." Her voice had an air of wonder, of discovery, of fear, but it had retained all the softness of a faerie's. Then she looked at me, and I resolutely looked away, because I knew if I lingered too long I would come to care for her gaze the way I came to care for yours or for Gil's. "My name is Silk." I did not answer for a long moment, and then finally gave her my name in return, out of the sense of courtesy I can never seem to forget. Silk fell silent, and I knew she could think of nothing to say to me—what was there to say? She was surely not about to thank me for what I had done.
"Tell me about the monster that did this." She started at the sound of my voice, and seemed even more horrified at the idea of remembering. I could see her trembling, and she'd wrapped her slender fingers, now restored, around her arms protectively.
"It came from the West, from Kainaldia. It was enormous, with a body made of ice. And…" She stuttered over the words, and I could feel the fear welling inside her. "With terrible fangs and claws, and eyes like… I thought nothing could have eyes like that—like it wanted to swallow the world. I was sure I going to die, because so many others…" She seemed to find this description suitable, or could not bring herself to continue.
"So he has lost his mind…" It was not for her that I said this, but she was listening attentively to my words, and I realized that if I did not leave her soon… She was the kind of faerie who must have listened devotedly to the Faerie Elder: as a demon, this subservience had not left her. I had no interest in another servant; I knew she and I would have to part. "You should leave this forest." It was as polite as I could make it, a way to send her from me without saying so. "You are not a faerie anymore, and this place will not be good for your blood." Obediently she nodded, but did not make any move to go.
In the end, I was the one to flee the forest, training my thoughts on the West, the Demon King's realm. With dreams of Ruin firm again in my mind, I turned my back to Silk, the demon, the faerie who had drawn real pity from me. I could feel her aqua eyes on my back, not blinking as the birds trailed behind me like slowly beating black wings. I did not look back, for fear I might add new regrets to this day—I left Silk, little demon, to her fate, and ignored the stains of faerie blood across my pure white clothing. I had heard recently what became of her after I left: in the wake of the destruction, she was captured by Nadil's minions to serve their ends. The news that reached me was that Silk had been given a new life by none other than Nohiro.
It did not occur to me then—in fact, it did not occur to me until a good few years later, that if the soul had survived the destruction, perhaps the body had too. I should have thought about it in the first moments after discovering the spirit lived on: if I had, perhaps I could have reunited the two before the soul was forced into another form, or stopped another soul from entering the body. You see, with so many faeries souls ripped roughly from their casings, of course there were going to be some powerful enough, with a powerful enough desire to live, to attempt to take whatever working body they could find. If Ruin's body ended up in the Faerie Forest like I assumed, than the soul that is animating it now, the soul that calls itself Nohiro, may be none other than that of the murdered Faerie Elder.
The Faerie Race requires the presence of this spirit—in order to preserve his species, I don't doubt that the Elder would have gone to great lengths. Still, Ruin's body was inherently demon, and youkai and faeries are poor mixes in all aspects. From what I have gathered about Nohiro's state, he lacks his memory, with the exception of a single instance that compels him to live his life with Faeries. He is in possession of a greater purifying power than any faerie before him. He is able to open the Water Realm, and possesses the ability that Rath also has: the ability to save the dying. Nohiro is truly an incredible power, this he undoubtedly does not understand. If my suspicions are correct, and the Faerie Elder had to sacrifice his own consciousness in order to keep his power alive, Nohiro is, in all likelihood, an amalgam of the abilities and ties I built into the body and the Faerie's purifying power.
Darkness and Light may have truly met in Nohiro, and the boy does not, can not even remember it. As it stands, he is certainly not the demon I meant him to be—an effect of having so much pure spiritual energy enclosed within him. Neither is he faerie, though the soul inside him definitely was, with only a shadow of doubt, at one time. Though I only met him once, (and did not even know it at the time!), he strikes me as a pleasant person—much too much like Rath for my comfort. Even so, there is something about Nohiro that reminds me of myself: I think it is the way he laughs, the happy little giggle that has a tendency to make others stare.
I missed the opportunity to restore Ruin –maybe the body was lying just a few feet from me as I wandered!– in favor of traveling to Kainaldia. I could have tracked the monster through Dusis, but I thought that knowing the origin of the new form was exceedingly important as well. I was not likely to lose the soul's trail, with it leaving so much destruction in its wake. So, I traveled quickly through the Faerie Forest, stopping periodically to turn many of the surviving faeries into demons. I don't know why I did this. Maybe it was my attempt to atone for the damage I had caused—but that is making me too saintly. Really, it was a little bit spite, a tiny bit of revenge. Now that she was behind me, I was angry at Silk for making me guilty, for making doubt creating Ruin. I almost hated her thinking of the hope in her eyes which had shaken my own hopes.
Those faeries I kept from dying, I did not treat them like I had treated Silk. I was not gentle, I did not offer them any choice—every pair of light eyes that met mine with fear was her, making me doubt again, adding guilt stone by stone to the scales of heart, and I was afraid looking at them that any moment Ruin might be outweighed by the bloody remnants of an enemy race. By the time I neared the shores, it had become a deliberate hunt: I stopped my straight course several times to find dying faeries far off my path. I turned each one with consternation, only feeling the slightest bit relieved as each aqua depth bled into crimson, into gold, into the other absurd colors only youkai eyes can be.
I had no idea then that this was going to go down on record books of the nation as a deliberate attempt on my part to destroy the Faerie race. I did not mean for it to be that—yet that is what it became, that is what I became. Later, I would agree with what the stories said about me. Yes, I had hated the faeries, of course I had. Yes, I had turned them for my own fun, for sport. Of course. I listened so often to the lies about me that they became my truth. I forgot the way that looking at Silk broken and bleeding had made me feel; I forgot completely the pity that had first stirred my hand. Strange how death brings this back to me, and I wonder how much would have changed if I had not allowed myself to be swayed by the lies—if I had not used others conceptions of me to hide my own heart…
The Western ocean that borders on the continent of Dusis is black and uninviting, spreading out into a misty emptiness that betrays easily the nature of the creatures who live not so far across its surface. At that time, there was nothing separating Nadil's castle from any part of Kainaldia—the Sea of the Dead had only just begun to form, and the castle had not yet been spirited into an alternate dimension. This was back when Nadil believed he had nothing to fear, before he lost Cesia to the Dragons, before I lost Rath to them. The extra protections on the Black Castle were in fact, directly in answer to the rising power in Draqueen, and I was not very surprised when Nadil's generals sealed the castle away into a new dimension, giving the power to reach it to very few. This was no deterrent for me, as alternate dimensions had always been something I could create and disperse with ease.
Still, the simplicity of getting into Nadil's castle was unsettling—there were no guards to stop me anywhere. The entire place was too dark, the air too ominous, and I knew immediately that something was off. After wandering for several minutes, the stillness setting my teeth on edge, I smelt it: the far off scent of blood. It was not fresh, but neither was it dry, and I knew if there was any solution for the deadness of the place it would be found where the blood was pooling.
I did not expect to find what I did in the slightest—the grand room stretched out before me was in pieces, the ceiling precariously perched seemed to sway in every tiny breeze. The ornate pillars were crumbling, the walls were scored by the marks of fierce battle, and a giant hole gapped in the Eastern wall, drenching the room in the harsh red sunlight of Kainaldia. Dust flickered in the rays, and every shadow seemed to stretch grossly out of shape. The entire room was black with quickly drying blood, and I was almost dazed attempting to sort through the scents.
When I was able to level my head, things became a tiny bit clearer in my mind—here was the scent of Nadil's blood, but very little, and I knew whatever wound he had sustained, it had not been fatal to him. There was also an acrid scent that my body seemed to fear completely of its own accord. This, I realized, was the Dragon Lord's blood, pure Light and extremely dangerous. So then the destruction here made more sense: they'd staged a battle… And neither of them had apparently managed to kill the other. What a waste.
Still, there were other scents in the room that made little sense. The air was heavy with demon blood that was not Nadil's or any other demon I knew. And there was something else, something decidedly strange and unpleasant—it was not demon, not completely, because I felt the same revolting feeling that the Dragon Lord's blood held for me. This strange scent was fading more quickly than anything else, and the entire affair was serving to unnerve me. Surely I would find nothing more in the bloodshed… As I turned to leave, the silence shifted, rent by a raspy breath that was more cough than anything. It was unexpected, and I turned around, searching out the source.
To my surprise, the barely breathing creature was one of the ones whose blood was all over the floor. When I crossed to look at him, I was amazed that he was still alive. 'Amazed' probably does not cover my wonder—because this young demon was utterly ripped to pieces, bleeding profusely and yet, he still managed to be alert. He turned his head to look at me, and I saw blood pouring down his face that did not look as if it had been caused by what had done the other damage. His form was in shreds, and there were places where I could see through his body to the bloody floor underneath. By all means, he should have been dead.
He seemed to understand this too, because he laughed –a coarse, bloody sound– at my stare.
"This is part of my power." He said, except I don't think that he did. I simply can't remember exactly what he muttered to me, because much of it was coughing, but I gathered from it that he was not dead because of his own strange demon abilities were keeping him alive. The very idea intrigued me. I knew that demons were inherently unique creatures, and many had powers that no others shared… But I had never heard of a power that allowed one to be so invincible to death. Why was such a creature, (with such an ability!), bleeding away in this broken castle? When I asked, I received an answer to more than one of my questions.
"To protect someone," this the demon said unabashedly, as if sacrificing oneself was an everyday activity. His attitude to nearly giving his life away bothered me: what sort of demon was this that cared so much for another? His powers were almost ironic, as if he'd been made to be self-sacrificing. "From a monster."
"What was it?" It seemed inappropriate for me to be so curious, but I could not help myself. Looking him over, I noticed what I had not before: his right arm was missing, but it did not bare the jagged tears that every other wound on him seemed to have. It was a clean cut, as if he, or someone else had hacked it off.
"Illuser." The name meant nothing to me, and he could see that. "The Dragon Dog." This stirred some memory, and I remembered reading about the strange hybrid creatures kept as pets by the Dragon Lord. Ice and snow demons, infused with the power of Dragons. I remembered being surprised then, and now it shocked me more than anything else. Had I been wrong all along? Had Ruin's soul not survived, and the path of destruction I had followed… Had it simply been caused by a demon dog gone mad?
"Tell me what has happened." I tried hard to keep the desperation from my voice, but it still sounded, as just the barest of wavers.
"Lord Nadil took the Dogs prisoner when he finally betrayed the Dragons. The Dragon Lord attacked, and I don't know what happened, but the Ice dog had Lykouleon's blood inside it. My friend, idiot, wanted to get the Dragon's blood. I followed him here, and Illuser's body was lying there, but…" I understood only half of what he was telling me, and I realized much of the information was subjective, or limited to what he himself, a low-class minion, knew of the situation. "But, there was this sound… And Illuser was alive again. It ripped off his arm." He coughed, as if the memory caused as much pain as his injuries. "It was going to eat him."
He stopped, as if that was all there was to tell. It was all I needed, I suppose, to figure out what had happened—Ruin's soul was alive, and was inhabiting the shell of the ice demon, Illuser. The two demon bloods I had not recognized were of the bleeding youth beside me and his companion, who was nowhere near. Undoubtedly, he had fled, believing his friend destroyed. This news unsettled me, for I was now facing not just any demon, but a Dragon. And what would that tribe say upon discovering their precious pet alive and raging? It was a coincidence that would entangle the lives of Rath and I for years to come.
I don't remember if I thanked the boy, but I might have. I was ready to begin my hunt for the remnants of Ruin, but a side thought distracted me for the barest of moments. Looking at the demon bleeding on the floor, dying but not, I thought I shouldn't let such a scientific mystery slip past me—yet what time did I have to study him? He coughed, a little blood pooling on his lips. I remember looking down and thinking he would never survive. Power or not, a body needs blood to function, and the boy was losing it faster than his body would ever be able to heal.
I wonder if I surprised him when I summoned my youki again and left Kainaldia behind, a few white feathers from the magic the only trace of my presence there. The path through the Faerie Forest had been toward the North, and this did not surprise me. Even shattered and out of control, the demon in Ruin would have known the dangers of Draqueen. It was no difficult matter to follow where the possessed Dragon Dog had been—the rents in the very stones of mountains and buildings were enough to tell me clearly where he was traveling.
His path was winding, but far more pointed than I would have suspected, turning East to skirt the beginning of the Misty Valley, and the plunging recklessly South into the city of Chantel. The streets of the city were in ruin, and every human in the place was still nervous, many choosing to remain in hiding, staring pointedly and frightened when I walked, determined, through the roads. The Fortuneteller's street, famous through-out the country, was the worst of all, and it seemed as if Ruin had skipped killing many of the humans in favor of the creatures with higher spiritual power. Buildings and tents were overturned, half eaten bodies and tattered tarot cards littered the bloody cobblestones, some half-heartedly stacked to be buried, many simply ignored. The sight of the massacre turned even my stomach, and I had to hurry on.
Then I was once again traveling through the wilderness, relying on every broken trunk and scar in the fields to point my way. There was a brief stint through Fiori Forest, and once again, I felt the stirrings of guilt that a pure-hearted soul can bring on, and changed many more faeries into demons. The weather grew even more erratic, but I took no heed it of, even when it began to hail in large, uncomfortably hard chunks. I reached the Eastern shore of Dusis just as the sun was rising, cold and red, dancing between the growing and disappearing clouds.
Here, I was unsure of how to proceed, for two islands lay close at hand, and neither shore revealed immediately which path Ruin had taken. Finally, I had to rely on scent, forcing back the heavy smell of salt in the air and trying to find the traces of blood that would be on his paws, the chill of the ice that made up his new form. It was the larger of the two nearest islands he had gone through, I discovered, and at the heart of the isle, Ruin had used the ice demon's claws and fangs to destroy another large city, seat of the Zurebiggya bureaucracy. There more still more bodies here, and the senseless violence confused and frustrated me. What was he gaining from this? Was he really reaping the souls or was he simply killing because he did not know how to do anything else? What had Ruin become—what had he failed to become because I had failed in creating him?
The air was growing decidedly colder the farther I traveled, and I was glad for my thick cloak despite how dirty it had become. Snow gathered in the shade, oak trees dwarfed me as I passed beneath them. Lazily the birds flapped far overhead, lacking the thermals they needed to soar. Deftly, silently, I crossed the sea to Hyuray. The massive island was barren, uninhabited and rocky. Why had Ruin come here? I could not help but think this had not been his destination—had he been chased here? Suddenly, I worried, worried that maybe I'd underestimated the Dragon Kingdom's intelligence, or the interest Nadil might take in such a powerful demon.
The sun rose on my right slowly and omnipotently, unable to feel my distress or offer me any solace. The dusty expanse spread out before me, and I felt, more than anything, a loneliness that seemed to come more from the land itself than from me. Nevertheless, as I trudged through the rocky terrain, kicking up tiny clouds in my wake, I felt utterly alone, left with nothing but my unuttered prayers, again and again, that over the next hill I would find him, would spot something that told me I was getting nearer to finding him… When I did finally have my prayers answered, it was in the worst possible way. I was truly being mocked by God.
The battlefield laid out before me was awash with blood, and a single draft of the breeze told me instantly that it was Dragons'. He had been pursued. Worse, the destruction ended here, in a wide swath of rent earth and overturned stones. He had not escaped. I don't know how to explain my feelings at that moment—terrified, sick, as if all I had to hope for was lost, all the warmth I had ever dreamed of having was stripped away… I fell to my knees, hands fisting in the rough grain beneath me. It simply wasn't fair! I may have screamed my rage and desolation that day to the heartless sun over me… But maybe I only dreamed I did that, and maybe even howling was beyond me.
I know that I stood after a long while, dirty and cold, and the wind which had picked up made me no more comfortable. I had to clear my mind, to think logically about this. There was no body here, which meant one of two things: Ruin was not dead, only captured, or they had destroyed the body utterly and Ruin was lost to me forever. The first option was far more appealing, and it was this that I chose to believe. Ruin had not been killed, I repeated to myself endlessly, looking at the blood spread out on the ground before me. I could still save my child, I knew it.
But, looking across the jagged landscape, lit by snow and sunlight, I could not find the power within me. If Ruin really was a prisoner of theirs, how was I to stage an assault? Even I knew that the Dragon Lord's Light was protecting the palace. I wouldn't be able to set a foot inside. And what if I managed to enter only to find Ruin dead? What if he was already gone? What would they want with him—what had they done, what did they intend to do? I was afraid for Ruin and weary of my own mistakes. If I come even one day earlier… Suddenly I wanted nothing more than to be curled in my own bed, ignoring the weather and the world. For a moment, it seemed simply too much that I was so far away from home and so alone.
What should I do? I remembering begging for an answer, and receiving none.
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Author's Notes: So, have I totally blown your mind with ridiculous never-shown-in-the-manga impossibilities yet? There's more to come. The Dragon Knights timeline is very screwed up, but right now we're in the flashbacks from book 2 and before the Snowy Mountains incident. I suppose, linearly, we won't be in book 1 and the events that follow that for at least another chapter. Next chapter is the Snowy Mountain scene, probably one of my most favoritous scenes ever, EVER. La la la, exciting. Hopefully, you'll still be reading at that time—this chapter didn't like kill it for you, did it?
Review Responses:
Leearye: I've already replied to your review with like a huge essay, so I'll be very brief here: thank you very much for reviewing, and I hope this chapter was not disappointing?
RandomRathFan: Yes, Nohiro. I tried to clear up in this chapter why I believe he has spiritual powers stronger than the Faerie Elder. We know that he has some intense connection to Rath, I just went and ran with the idea that Nohiro is the body that Rath was lacking. I haven't read farther than book twenty two, as Imoved out of my old house and now no longer have access to a Japanese bookstore, butI have had the plot of 23 and 24 told to me. The Elvish names were actually pointed out by another FF writer, Aquajogger, and confirmed by the Author's page in the back of 22 which stated that "Roobal" was taken from Lord of the Rings. I hope this chapter answered some of the question about what happened to Ruin… And is Kharl going to be okay? No. Hey, lookie, I surpassed my chart by half a month!
xxDKGurlxx: Whee, new reviewer! (Dance!) I'm really glad that you like the story, and I hope this was a soon enough update for you. (It's my fastest Cloaks update ever!) Anyway, thanks very much for the review, I hope you liked this chapter.
Yami-chan and Unrealistic: Loyal reviewers make me so happy and tingly inside. I'm glad you liked the last chapter, and I hope you enjoyed this one, as depressing and weird as it was.
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