Just Coincidental
Authoress: Ankaris123
Disclaimer: I disclaim all copyrighted materials in this story and only claim right to the plot.
Start Date: February 21, 2008
End Date: February 24, 2008
Reviews:
chelsea34: Thank you, dear. Li is just acting the way he thinks. If he were Sakura, he would want (at least, my Li would) a little time to sort out things after their abrupt reunion and reconciliation so naturally that's what he's doing. Here's an update, hope you enjoy it!
yumeniai: Sorry sorry sorry for taking so long that you'd forget the plot. ;3;. Here's another chapter. I hope you didn't forget everything again in the wait.
A/Ns: I'm such a bad person. I went and started a new story for a different fandom. I am ashamed. Okay, I'm not, I love the new story but at least I managed to progress the plot of this story a while ago in my head. Now let's stop talking about me and let you start on this chapter.
Remember to let it simmer and cool before enjoying.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
The darkness was suffocating. It was thick like heavy water but it was also warm inducing a fuzzy sensation throughout her body.
Limpid pools of light swam far above her but she had not the strength to try and reach the surface.
She wanted to sleep for all of eternity without a worry.
Her mind slowly started to sever its connection to her heart's true desires to rest and forget.
Rest and forget.
A warbling voice broke through the water and touched her ears with a sharp concern.
Those feelings rippled the liquid darkness that surrounded her and cut into her sense of being.
The light was clear.
Closer.
And then.
Then she woke.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
Sakura opened her eyes a crack. Wherever she was, it was dimly lit. Her vision blurred in and out of focus. There was someone hovering over her.
"Sakura-chan! Are you okay? You're okay, aren't you? Tell me you're okay! Are you awake?!"
The Japanese girl groaned softly and tried to move her arm to touch her head. She found she could not move her left.
Strange.
She shifted her right hand up to her head from on top of her abdomen where it laid, rubbed her eyes wearily and gave a weak smile.
"I'm awake now, Nakuru-san. Sorry for worrying you." Nakuru rushed to help her sit up. They appeared to be in some sort of cave. The ground underneath her was layered in soft tree needles as a makeshift bed.
"I'm so glad. I was so worried, you know. When you didn't wake up for so long I mean. We both were worried. Deeply," Nakuru babbled while beating the dust off over Sakura's wrinkled clothes none too gently in her haste and exuberantly expressed relief.
"Both who?" Sakura asked in a daze. She screwed her eyes up and probed at the blank part of her memory.
What had happened? I don't…I don't quite remember.
"Li-kun, of course. My master's cute little descendant? He may not have looked it even though he was definitely worried but he's got some weird personality issue going on so I don't know," Nakuru continued now combing twigs out of the younger girl's honey brown hair.
Sakura's groggy mind seemed to clear. She looked down at her immovable left arm and spotted a familiar dark green cloak draped on her. She brushed her fingertips over the travel-worn forest green material; her heart skipped a beat.
"Sakura-chan?" She looked up startled.
"S-sorry. I must've dazed out for a moment," she laughed sheepishly. "I don't remember what happened though; do you think you could tell me?" Nakuru smiled kindly at her, a strange dullness clouded her eyes momentarily.
"Sakura-chan…" she started, twiddling her thumbs nervously and played with the beaded braid that hung next to her ear. Sakura gripped the cloak underneath her right hand tensely.
At that moment a shadow cast itself across the wall to the side. Stealthily light footsteps followed as Syaoran Li came into view in a torn dark grey windbreaker. Perspiration matted his chestnut brown hair to his flushed face and his blade was unsheathed in his hand that gripped it so tightly the knuckles were ghostly white.
"Ah. Li-kun, Sakura-chan woke up. The wallop to her head seemed to have knocked a couple memories out of her too but otherwise she's alright, right, Sakura-chan?" Nakuru exclaimed, jumping up from her squat on the ground.
Wallop?
The teenaged girl touched her forehead tenderly and felt the thick layers of bandages wound around it. It was curious discovery. Syaoran approached the two but kept a short distance between them, collapsing gracefully against the stone walls of the cave.
"S-syaoran-kun," Sakura paused to swallow her stuttering, "your arm. It's hurt." She tried to stand so she could move over to where the Chinese boy was and tend to his wounds but her depleted energy and weariness prevented her from doing so. Instead, she sat forlornly as Nakuru bounced over to inspect it.
"Only a surface wound, we should get it wrapped up so it doesn't get infected though," Nakuru mumbled, squinting at the gash and scraps that peppered his arm. "Now what's that little spell again…?…uh… ' Nakuru wiggled her fingers above the wounds, "Ferula."
There was a loud crack and a long strip of white bandage popped into existence in front of Nakuru's hand, fluttering uselessly to the ground.
"Hmm, wizard spells are hard to do without their silly little stick things, you'd think I'd be getting better at it after all this," she said waving her hand in Sakura's direction. With a bemused expression she snatched up the bandage and started to wind it around Syaoran's arm in a disorderly fashion.
"Nakuru-san…S…Syaoran-kun," Sakura began resolutely. The two looked at her expectantly. "What happened while I was asleep? How did we get here? Why are we in here? What happened to the others? Why…why can't I move my arm?"
There was a numb silence during which no one moved a muscle.
"Please, tell me," Sakura pleaded softly, vision averted to her cloak-covered lap. "I want to know."
Nakuru and Syaoran exchanged a brief look. The Chinese teen nodded begrudgingly and Nakuru let out an uncharacteristically depressed sigh. She tied the ends of the bandage together and propped herself against the wall of the cave as well before she began.
"I suppose you do at least remember up to that part where you started the ritual, right?"
Sakura nodded stiffly.
"Well, right after you read out the spell, everything went weird. There was like a hole being ripped in the sky and this ominous feeling flooded into the atmosphere…"
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
The hole in the sky contorted and skewered itself erratically, unable to retain a static shape. Distant, hollow groans and howls filled the air tearing through the unbearable wind that only seemed to speed up. Gray clouds whirl-pooled into the centre of the void and vanished without a trace.
Everyone could feel the presence of something impossibly overwhelming, unbelievably powerful and extraordinarily ancient press against their very existence.
Then at last, from the centre of the enlarging void came a drip of darkness.
But as it descended through the air, its size grew at a frighteningly rate, threatening to swallow the blue that was the sky.
And with hardly a sound at all, it landed. The darkness was thick like sludge, swamping everything and every person.
The beast held within thrashed and struggled through the restraining quality of the substance and let out a hideous cry of fury, rage, hate.
Dripping with congealed shadows, it fixed an enormous feral yellow eye at the two who dared to summon it from the world beyond.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
"No one moved, they couldn't," Nakuru continued. "The black gunk started to slide off the monstrous thing but only enough to see that there were endless lengths of chains holding it down, they were all attached to those stands things with the bowls of flowers on them. It was then we thought we were safe and waited for it to do its job…"
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
The creature, tall as a tower and wide as a barn, towered over them and held them in a petrified silence with his mere presence of his looming shadow. With a slow, deliberate movement, it bent down and lent its head towards the now visible bonds of shimmering golden magic that looped intricately around the wrists of Sakura and Harry. Their hands were still held in each other's tightly.
Though the chalk circle could no longer be seen, it burned through the miasma with enchanted light as the chains strained against the creature. The irises remained untouched, the only ballast to their survival.
The beast breathed over them a waft of nothingness, dangerously close.
Savagely yet in a delicate way, it sank an obsidian black fang into the bond.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
"Everyone believed at that moment that we were successful. We all stood at our positions with just the barest of smiles and waited for it to go back to wherever it had come from but it didn't. And then…"
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
The creature roared thunderously as the last of the enchantment slipped down its throat and dissolved into energy. With a rock of its body, it wrenched at its restraints frantically.
No one dared to move.
No one knew what was happening.
So no one did anything.
As even magic will corrode for they never last forever, the rusted chains put out one last fight before shattering into dust.
It was then that everyone in the vicinity came into realization.
That nothing was going right.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
"It lifted a hand, paw, whatever it was and it…it grabbed you, Sakura-chan. It snatched you up from the ground so easily! And you called out but we didn't hear what it was you really said. We were all still in shock except for Syaoran…"
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
"Sakura!"
Wrestling the grasp of the clinging darkness from his body, Syaoran dragged himself into a nearby tree and pulled out his sword from its sheath on his back. The blade glowed brightly as magical energy charged it full and its master set it free towards the otherworldly creature as lightning.
The electricity seeped into the darkness that reached out to welcome it and vanished, absorbed with a single point of damage.
The Chinese teen gritted his teeth, his amber eyes darting left and right looking for an opening to strike at. Almost at once, he spotted Windy; the gentle spirit was hovering over the miasma with a clueless face, staring up at her mistress.
"Windy!" Syaoran yelled; his voice was growing hoarse. "Save Sakura!"
The spirit looked at him with befuddlement.
"Save your mistress, Windy! Save her before she dies!" Syaoran yelled again, panic was creeping into his voice. The urgency in his eyes pressed into the pupils of the magical entity with every word that passed over his lips.
At once, Windy gathered her dying winds and launched upwards towards the bulbous black end of the limb that encased her mistress. She wounded around the darkness and pushed to disperse it but it was fatal.
Her magical duration ran out and she reverted back to her original form of a pink Sakura card. Hovering uncertainly in the air, the card finally decided to slice into the thick shadows to return to the Card Mistress' pocket.
The creature bellowed again as Syaoran sent another wave of magical charges at it only for them all to be absorbed into the creature's body.
Gritting his teeth, he drew the element of wind underneath himself and soared uneasily through the air, which was thick with an invisible substance that constricted and suffocated his being.
He did not turn back even to the cries from the wizards below who begged him not to do it.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
"…and he jumped into the black void where you were without a thought," Nakuru said. She glanced next to her to find said teen staring absentmindedly out the entrance whether as a precaution or in embarrassment she did not know. This brought a glimmer of a smile to her face as she continued the story.
"He somehow upset the thing. Must've stabbed it or something, no one really knows. It screamed and threw you. Threw you right into the lake…"
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
There was a resounding splash as Sakura's body hit the surface of the lake and sank into its lonely, cold depths. The last bubbles of oxygen escaped through her mouth and rose, rushing to the surface.
Moments later another joined her, this one willingly and conscious. Like a sack of bricks, Syaoran came to a stop in the water.
Desperately, he rushed to the Japanese girl who was sinking lower and lower towards the bed of the lake flourished with a meadow of seaweed.
With each stroke of his arms, each kick of his legs, his strength was draining from him. The battered forest green cloak wrapped around his shoulders dragged through the water like a parachute. He too was running out of air.
At last, with a distressed burst of power he propelled himself downwards with a strong kick and grabbed hold of Sakura's arms. With the burden of his waterlogged cloak and the unconscious girl in his arms he struggled to reach the surface.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
"I was so relieved when I saw Li-kun break to the surface. We all were. The thing was looking around and it approached the castle while we were trying to get free…"
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
The beast reached the castle's front gate in five strides and appeared to sniff at the foundations curiously. It opened its mouth and bit down on an invisible ward that protected the ancient school. The wards flickered into existence as a translucent half sphere that encased the castle within itself.
It did not hold.
It couldn't.
Clenching its black fangs on the enchantment, it shattered like a pane of glass under the pressure and each fragment disappeared into the mouth of the creature as an orb of magic.
The creature stood on its hind legs and let out of a cry of triumph before attacking the next protection ward.
The professors could only watch in horror as their school became closer and closer to disenchantment and the crumbling of its foundation for that was held up by the ancient spells of the Founders.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
"It was surprising that it ignored everyone else. Dumbledore-san got free first. He raised his stick thing and shot this brilliant light into the sky. It didn't do much but it did catch the attention of the thing…"
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
The creature craned its head towards the blazing light behind it, marveling at the surge of energy that emitted freely from its source.
The miasma that stuck to the grounds lapped at its limbs that rested on the broken cobblestone path and began to withdraw into it, freeing the others at last.
The light still burned as brightly as ever and the creature turned around, starting its journey towards the alluring meal it could obtain.
Dumbledore, his expression though old and usually kind was harsh and grave, held his wand stiffly above his wizard hat covered head and slowly began to step back towards the edge of the Forbidden Forest.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
"Li-kun fished you out finally and I ran towards you two. It was then that Dumbledore ran into the forest, taking the weird light and the professors who followed with him. The thing got really upset for some reason and all the leftover black gunk started to swirl around and everyone got caught in it. I managed to stay with you guys by grabbing onto Li-kun's cloak but everyone else…" Nakuru looked to the dirt-covered ground with a dark expression. "When the darkness settled, we had been blown into the forest somewhere. Everyone else was gone.
"Afterwards, Li-kun and I found this cave for shelter and checked you over. You got a nasty bump to the head from something and your left arm…" Nakuru paused, biting her bottom lip. "We don't know what exactly is wrong with your arm. The skin looked like a giant bruise so we wrapped it up. Then Li-kun went out to scout the area for the thing and the others while I stayed here with you in case you woke up and that's it. I was so glad when you finally opened your eyes, Sakura-chan." Nakuru's eyes glistened with what might've been tears.
Sakura sat silently, allowing herself the time to absorb this information. It seemed so impossible.
"You've been asleep for half a day," Syaoran inputted now that the story was over. He stood up again, wobbling slightly on his feet. "Anyways, I'm going to go scout some more. I haven't found any of the others yet nor have I sighted the monster."
"Don't joke around! You're obviously exhausted! If anyone's fit to go scouting, it's me," Nakuru interjected vehemently, grabbing onto the back of Syaoran's torn windbreaker.
"Guys, I have a question," Sakura finally spoke up. The pair paused in the middle of their one-sided quarrel but did not look at the Japanese girl.
"Go ahead."
"What happened to Harry?"
Neither of them answered her. Concern welled in her empty stomach, fearing the worst.
"Did something happen? Did he get hurt?! Tell me! Please!"
"Sakura-chan…" Nakuru said, pained. She did not look at her as she spoke.
"When the thing grabbed you, Harry disappeared. We don't know what happened to him or where he is."
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A/Ns: D: Got it all done in this one night. Be glad that I went through it all the way. And don't forget to thank tonight's beta, Meru, who edited this for you guys at the hour of 12 in the night. A huge sorry for the delay to those who wished for a fast update.
Beta's Note: Surprisingly there wasn't much to fix. Anka-chan's definitely improoooving 3 8D I'm quite pleased. It went pretty quick. Though I am kind of tired, now… x-x;
Thank you for reading and if you have the time, please review and tell me what you think of it, what mistakes you caught, etc. I'll see you next time for the next installment of Just Coincidental. Until then, live a wonderful life.