Title: The Wizards of Ceres, chapter 10
Rating: M in this part. See warnings!
Warnings: This chapter contains graphic violent imagery, including a depiction of cannibalism. If you are easily disturbed by things of that nature, you may want to go to the second scene, or skip this chapter entirely. Please read responsibly!
Summary: The countries of Ceres and Nihon are on the brink of war again, but Kurogane Demon-Queller has more important things to think about; like protecting the borders of his country from the dark and hungry beasts that roam the wilderness. At least, he did, until his path crossed with the King of Ceres' latest gamble to win this war...
It was cold. He was underground, surrounded on all side by cold and silent stone, and no light had ever reached this far under the earth. In the dead silence he could hear his own breaths echoing endlessly from the hard stone walls; high, short, shallow breaths. His hands scraped over the cold hard stone, rough calluses over rough cut rock.
Hungry. He was so hungry...
The sound of his breathing grew even louder in the closed space; short whimpers and pants as he scrabbled desperately further and further, seeking hands reaching but touching nothing. He needed... he needed to find... he was so hungry. He needed...
Only his breath echoed in the stone chamber; only his heartbeat pounded in the darkness. He was alone, and as his hands closed over something, stone-cold, stone-hard, but something that wasn't stone, Fai knew he'd found what he was looking for.
He was underground, and at the same time he was sitting in a warm, brightly lit dining chamber. Festive red hangings decorated the walls, brilliant stained glass windows fractured and sent back the light. He was seated in a chair that was just as rich, plush cushions over ornate carvings. Delicate china and brightly polished silverware graced the embroidered tablecloth; a beautiful goblet sat at his right hand, full of a wine so rich and dark it looked like blood.
All around him, people were talking, laughing, and he smiled and nodded in return to their comments, endlessly smiling. A line of chefs brought out the dishes, an endless parade of silver covered platters, and Fai's stomach growled. Hungry. He was so hungry. His hands tightened on the arms of his chair, hard and cold as stone, and his breathing echoed harshly in the small, silent chamber.
One of the chefs pushed the covered platter before him, removed the cover with a flourish, and Fai's smile froze on his face, like his skin would shatter at a touch. It was a severed head, the eyes gouged out, blood still leaking from the stump of the neck to pool on the platter beneath it. With the eyes gone, it took Fai a long moment to recognize the face as Captain Kurotsunagi.
He looked up, and other dishes were being unveiled. There was the arm and hand, perfectly roasted and carefully basted, still holding Ryuo's sword. There was princess Sakura, gutted and quartered on the large platter with fruits and flowers strewn delicately about her corpse. There was Kurogane, eyes rolled back and mouth stretched around a decoratively placed apple; out of his armor at last, and his bulky height had required the chefs to serve him on two seperate platters.
All around him the guests laughed and chattered, smiling, endlessly smiling. He looked up at the head chef and it was Ashura, smiling so gently at him, nodding, encouraging him to eat. The chef moved forward and slid one dish closer to him than the others. A child, drawn into a tight frog-like curl on the center of the gleaming silver platter, wild blond hair spread out around him like an offering. Ashura smiled and nodded, and all around him, the banquet guests laughed.
Emptiness pulsed inside him, pulling and sucking out from his stomach to a ravening pain that encompassed all his limbs, and he was so hungry --
His breath echoed around the small chamber, no light, no heat, no water, no food, and his hands closed over dirty cloth, around an arm as cold and hard as the stone, but was not stone. And in a beautiful banquet chamber, he raised the flesh of his brother to his lips, and bit down.
Fai came awake out of the nightmare with a strangled scream in his throat and tears in his eyes. For several long, thundering beats of his heart he did not know where he was or how he'd come to be there; it was cold, and dark, and dim shadows of stone wavered in his vision. His head hurt, and he could not seem to move his arm and leg at all. He was back there again, he'd never left, everything else had been a dream, only the nightmare was real --
If there was no light, how could he see the stones?
Bile stirred in his throat, and he struggled to take long, deep breaths, and swallow against it. Memory was returning in a discordant rush, and he was certain that Kurogane would not want him to waste their precious supply of water by vomiting.
"Hey. You awake?" The shadows shifted, moved; as Kurogane stood up and turned around Fai caught a glimpse of the source of it, a tiny fire crackling against the stone. It illuminated the space in which they were trapped, if barely; fallen, splintered timbers braced against a rush of broken black stones, creating a little bubble of safety in the devastation.
Safety, yes -- but now they were trapped here, with no way out. Fai felt laughter bubbling in his chest, hysterical and unreasoning, as he considered their situation. He let his eyes fall closed, concentrating on the steady rhythm of inhaling and exhaling.
"What happened?" Fai asked. He had a feeling like he should already know the answer to that, but the link between cause and effect seemed to dance tantalizingly out of reach just now.
Kurogane snorted. "A mountain fell on us."
"Oh," Fai said. That explained some things, like why it was so dark and where all the rocks came from. But not everything, such as why reality seemed so remote or hazy, nor why his left arm screamed in agony every time he tried to use it. More disconcertingly, why he could only seem to move it an inch or two before it seemed to be stopped by something. "Why can't I move my arm?"
"Because a mountain fell on us, idiot." Kurogane stood up, outline seeming to flare and shrink against the light, and came over to crouch next to him. "Your arm's broken, and your leg. I splinted you up the best I could, but you won't be going anywhere on it anytime soon."
"Oh." He didn't quite understand Kurogane's concern for not being able to walk on it, considering that right now there was nowhere to go anyway.
Kurogane's hands were on him, strong hard fingers brushing over his leg and his arm, checking that the splints were still in place. Then the fingers moved up to his chin, forcing his face to tilt upwards. The change of angle made him dizzy; he could see the light of the fire, almost blinding him, but Kurogane was only a dark shadow. He couldn't see the color of Kurogane's eyes at all, and for a moment he felt like he was falling.
Kurogane finished by saying, "You're just lucky that your head didn't break like your arm and leg did."
A month ago Fai would not have been able to identify the thread of emotion, of buried fear and concern and protectiveness, in Kurogane's voice; a day ago he would have been unable to accept it. Now, though, it just reminded him that he wasn't the only one who could be hurt. "What about you? Aren't you injured?" Fai asked, frowning. He remembered the rockfall now, dimly; remembered wanting to protect Kurogane from it, trying to protect him. But he wasn't at all sure he'd succeeded; he'd never managed to protect anything else in his life, after all.
"Me? I'm fine," Kurogane snorted, and dropped his hands away from Fai's face. He regretted the loss of touch, his skin feeling cold where Kurogane's fingers had been. "A little knocked around, but nothing worse. I was wearing armor, unlike a certain mage, who decided to take his off to climb."
His thoughts seemed fuzzy, hard to grasp, and it took time and patience to sort through them. At last he managed to identify what was bothering him about that light. "Should you have started that? That fire, I mean," he said. "Fire needs air to live, and so do we. It'll burn up all the good air if you let it..."
"I know that," Kurogane said with some irritation. "I'm not stupid. I felt a draft coming through the rockfall over there, although I couldn't find where it was coming from. We can keep the fire going as long as there are things to burn. We might still get crushed by an aftershock, freeze to death when the fire dies, or die of hunger or thirst before anyone finds us, but we won't smother."
Fai had to laugh, albeit weakly, at Kurogane's litany of gloom. "It won't come to that. I hope."
"What, you think someone is going to find us?" Kurogane's voice was colored by skepticism.
"Someone might." It took Fai a few minutes to sort out his thoughts, but at last he was able to remember why. "It depends on who won the battle, out there. If my people are still in charge, then the wizards will be able to sense me, although it may take some time for them to pin down my location, or to dig that way through the rockfall." Assuming that they'd spare the effort to do that; assuming that Ashura wasn't still angry with him for failing to kill Kurogane. "If Nihon has taken control of the pass, we'll probably die down here."
"Speak for yourself," Kurogane growled. "I don't have any intention of dying here -- or of waiting for someone else to get their ass in gear and rescue us, either. I'm going to find a way out through that rockslide."
"Okay," Fai said agreeably, and closed his eyes. He couldn't really argue Kurogane out of that plan, and he was too sleepy to try.
The lingering horror of the nightmare wouldn't let him doze, however, and he lay blinking slowly, watching the shadows shift as Kurogane moved around the walls of their little chamber, sometimes stooping or stretching, testing the rocks. He made his full way around the little chamber once, before coming back to sit between the little fire and Fai with a disgusted sigh.
Fai ventured, "Can you just... you know, blast your way out? With those special sword-moves that you do?"
Kurogane made a noise of disgust, and turned away from the pile of loose shale. "I would if I could, but I lost hold of both of my swords in the cave-in. They're probably buried back along the hallway somewhere."
"Oh." Fai considered this. "Can't you just do them anyway?" he said doubtfully. While having a physical item to act as a focus for one's magic was often very helpful, in a pinch one could always do without.
Kurogane gave him an odd look. "Of course not. How am I supposed to do sword moves without a sword?"
"Maybe you could just imagine the sword," Fai suggested helpfully.
"Maybe I could, if I were as crazy as you."
"Mm." Fai felt the smile slide off his face. Maybe he really was crazy, a nightmare voice whispered from the back of his mind. Maybe he was just cursed.
Kurogane was watching him closely, Fai realized, and knew that he hadn't missed the lack of response. He made an effort to summon the smile again, although he didn't think it was really fooling anyone. "What?"
Kurogane hesitated, then said, "You're taking... all this... awfully calmly."
"What, being buried alive?" Fai's mouth twitched.
"Well, yeah. Given how much you were freaking out before, I was wor... well, I didn't know how you'd take it. But I didn't think you'd be quite this laid-back."
Fai considered this. "There's not much point to being afraid now, is there," he heard himself say, to his own surprise. "Fear is... fear is a reaction to help you act. To run away, or fight back. But it's too late, isn't it? There's no escaping from here, and there's nothing to fight. So what's the point of being afraid?"
"I guess," Kurogane grunted, and rose to his feet again.
And besides, Fai thought, I always knew I'd end up back here, someday.
With no sun and no moon to mark the passing of the day, time in their underground prison seemed to crawl on interminably. Kurogane prowled the edges of the rockfall, relentlessly searching for a weak point he could use to dig their way out. He spent what seemed like endless hours studying the fall of the stones and rotted timbers against each other, trying to determine what rocks could be moved without bringing the whole mess down on their heads. It was futile, though; even when he threw all his considerable strength and weight against the stones, they refused to budge, wedged tight by immeasurable weight crushing from above.
Breathing hard and fast from his exertions, Kurogane sat down heavily beside the fire, and surveyed his companion. Fai's halting conversation had trailed off into silence some time ago, and he seemed to be asleep. Or unconscious. Either way, Kurogane saw no hurry to wake him.
Exhausted by his struggle with the rocks, Kurogane drifted into sleep for another long, uneasy, markless time. When he awoke, his hand was flexing hungrily for the sword that was no longer in his grasp.
The wizard's suggestion from earlier floated through his mind, and Kurogane hesitated, then extended his hand and arm as though the sword were still in it. Imagine a sword? At the time, he'd rightfully dismissed it as nonsense, but... really, what else was there to try?
Feeling a little ridiculous, he dropped into his stance, and moved through the patterns of a kata. He took a deep breath and focused his ki, letting all his anger and fear and frustration come out of their tight suppression, flowing through his veins like honey. He went through the motions of a strike, the energy and momentum flowing in a circle to focus on a point in front of him; blast outwards, towards the hallway that lead to freedom... "Senryuu hikogen!"
Nothing happened. Kurogane's frustration peaked, along with a feeling of foolishness. With no sword, no length of steel along which to channel the fire, how was he supposed to complete the move? It was ridiculous. He vented an exasperated sigh and dropped out of the stance, turning to find the wizard's eyes open, watching him.
Caught between frustration and embarrassment, he snarled, "Look, can't your magic do anything useful? Clear away the rocks, send a message for help, conjure water out of the air, anything at all?"
Fai shook his head slowly from side to side, a small, wistful smile lingering on his lips. "Sorry, no."
"I knew it." Kurogane plopped back onto the stone floor and crossed his arms over his chest, glaring into the darkness. "What's the use of even having it, then?"
"Sometimes I wonder," Fai said, in a voice so soft it was almost a whisper.
"You were the one who decided to become a magician, instead of doing something useful with your life," Kurogane retorted.
"It was what King Ashura wanted of me," Fai admitted. "And... I wanted it for myself, as well. I guess you could say I wanted power... but more than anything, I wanted to learn. I wanted to understand. I hoped that magic could lead me to the truth."
"And doesn't it?"
Fai let out a long breath, not quite a sigh. "I... don't know. Magic itself can't lie. It's against its nature. But just because it doesn't lie, doesn't mean it always tells the truth, either."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Kurogane said scornfully. "Either something's true, or it isn't."
"An incomplete truth can be as bad as a lie, sometimes," Fai said. "And what do you do if the magic shows two different things, two opposite things, and both of them are true?"
"Then one of them must be lying," Kurogane reasoned.
Fai sighed, but for a long moment didn't say anything. Kurogane eyed the piles of loose shale on the far wall, and considered whether his swords might be buried under them.
When Fai spoke again, his voice was low and drifting. "Someone, we always thought Nihon, has been trying to get a spy inside our court for years. That's why we have the border wards, detection spells for any hostile magics. Two years ago, the guards brought a man to our castle, a traveler. He wasn't from Nihon; he was a scholar, he said, traveling from far away. We don't get very many outsiders... They had arrested him because the wards had sensed a spy spell when he crossed them."
Kurogane stiffened as a bolt of recognition shot through him, at Fai's drifting tale. Surely it was a coincidence -- but how many traveling scholars could have been arrested in Ceres, two years ago?
"He didn't even try to deny it -- being a wizard spy. He confessed to everything, there could be no doubt. And yet..."
For a long moment, there was silence, until finally Kurogane prompted him to continue. "And?"
"They brought me in, to examine him. There were no spells on him. Nothing! No magic residue at all. He himself had no magic potential. As far as I could determine, with every means I could try, he was just an ordinary man!"
Fai sighed. "But... something set off the border wards, without question. Two different spells, both told the truth, but they both said opposite things. How can I know which was right?"
Kurogane said, keeping his voice as casual and unemotional as possible, "What happened to the man?"
"Ashura executed him." Fai stared into the darkness.
There could be no doubt; the traveling stranger could only have been Syaoran's father. Kurogane bared his teeth in a snarl. "And you call my people barbarians."
"What else could he do? The man had declared himself an enemy of Ceres." Fai's hand balled into a fist, he drew a breath. "But it was so unnecessary! There was no proof, no evidence of wrongdoing at all. If he was so strong a wizard as to somehow completely fool me -- then how could the wards sense him in the first place? And if he truly was innocent -- then why would he lie?"
Kurogane considered pointing out the obvious answer -- that the man had been covering for the real spy -- before dismissing the idea. He'd known Syaoran for years, and while the boy certainly had reason to hate Ceres, he was certainly no one's spy, and there was nothing magical about him at all.
Fai was still talking, his rambling words growing more slurred, less sensical. "All the things I can see... but I couldn't see the truth when it really mattered, and a man died for it. Why does that happen? Why is it that no matter what I choose, I make other people unhappy? Why always..."
His words trailed off into silence, and Kurogane stared at him uneasily. It was hard to tell in the firelight, but he thought that Fai's skin was clammy, and his breathing was shallow and fast. No doubt about it, the wizard was getting worse.
Another endless night crawled past. Kurogane made increasingly frenetic passes around their underground prison, alternating searching for his swords with searching for a way out; but the rocks refused to budge even when he employed Ginryuu's empty scabbard as a lever against them. It was rather daunting; he would have expected that at least some of the smaller stones would shift, but it was as if the entire mass of stone was frozen in place. Eventually, the futile efforts left his hands tingling and numb, and he stopped for another rest, and to put some serious thought into their options.
He still hadn't given up the possibility of escape, but he had to admit that it was getting lower and lower on the list of probable outcomes. As for rescue, he still didn't have much hope in Fai's wizard friends; putting any kind of faith in magic at all had not worked out for them so far, let alone putting faith in one's enemies. Crossing off those two options led him to consider the very real possibility that they would both die in here.
In an ultimate sense, he wasn't too bothered by the prospect. There were a lot of ways to die in this world, and most of them were gruesomely unpleasant, compared to only a bare few that could be considered peaceful. Freezing or starvation did not particularly appeal to him, as deaths went, but they did have the advantage of not having his soul ripped out to feed demons, which had been a higher-than-average possibility in his line of work.
No, he couldn't say he was enthusiastic about the idea, but he wasn't particularly afraid, either. For some reason, the only thought that upset him was that he wouldn't be able to save Fai.
It seemed ridiculous, that he should be so worried about a man who'd tried to kill him in his sleep not two weeks before, but Kurogane didn't blame Fai for that any more. It was obvious that he hadn't wanted to do it, that he had been forced into doing it by magical compulsions, and that offended Kurogane's sensibilities deeply.
Kurogane had seen the haunted look on Fai's face, when he'd spoken of his king; seen the naked terror in his eyes, when Kurogane had proposed fighting him. Kurogane didn't think much of kings that ruled by terrorizing their subjects, by fitting them with magical leashes and sending them out to do their dirty work for them. Kurogane intended to have a lengthy discussion with this King Ashura about how he treated his subjects; ideally, a sharp and pointy discussion, too.
It just felt natural to care for Fai, to worry about his well-being and want to protect him. For a while he had assumed that it was Fai's resemblence to a woman which stirred these misplaced, protective feelings towards him, but he knew better now; weeks of traveling and fighting by his side had left him with no illusions of what the magician was capable of.
He didn't want to protect Fai because he thought Fai was weak, but because it hurt him to see the silly mage hurting. And he got hurt so easily, over such foolish things, even feeling guilty about killing in self-defense men who'd tried in all earnestness to kill him first. How he'd survived this long in the world Kurogane still had no idea, but clearly he needed someone to look after him and keep him out of trouble, and obviously no one in his home country was capable of doing it, or Fai wouldn't be such a wreck now.
It was hard to mark time, but the insistent demands of his body told Kurogane that they'd been under the stone for at least a day, and hadn't eaten anything since at least morning of the first day, before descending the path. He left off the futile search for a way out and instead turned to his small bundle of supplies and belongings that was all he'd carried with him off the horse. Under his breath, he cursed the half-blood urchins who had made off with the majority of their food -- and Fai, for convincing him to go along with it -- but there was no recovering it now.
They did have a decent amount of water, at least. But of the food, they were left with a few handfuls of meat jerky, a collection of walnuts that Fai had picked up before they'd crossed the treeline. Not more than two days' food, all together.
A more immediate problem was going to be how he could get the mage to eat, since he'd been drifting in and out of consciousness since the rockfall. Kurogane considered the mechanics; eventually he decided to keep the nuts for himself, and do his best with their limited supplies to boil the meat into a sort of broth, that he thought Fai could manage. This also had the advantage of getting food and water into him at the same time, or would, if he could get it down him.
"Here." Fai's eyes flickered open as Kurogane came and sat beside him; the mage's eyes were dilated in the low light, only a thin rim of blue showing around the pupil. His chest heaved and his nostrils flared as he smelled the food, and he blinked into some sort of focus, attempting to sit up a little straighter against the rocks. "You should at least try to eat. Well, drink."
"What is this, breakfast in bed?" he whispered, and Kurogane spared him a brief smile at the attempted humor.
"I did the math," Kurogane said. "We have enough water to last us for at least a week. If we make the food last as long as possible, it'll probably be dead even heat between when we run out of water and when we starve to death."
"So cheerful," Fai said with a twisted grin, but then he sighed and his eyes fluttered shut again. "I'm sorry -- that I made you give our supplies to those... children. I never thought..."
Kurogane didn't really have anything to say to that; it had been a mistake, but neither of them could have foreseen becoming trapped so close to their destination. Instead, he said, "This is yours. I've already eaten mine."
Fai didn't respond, and for a moment Kurogane worried that he'd blacked out again, before angry impatience shouldered that feeling aside. This was just more of Fai being stubborn and stupid. "If you let it get cold, it'll be vile," he prodded him, "and I'm not going to cook it again for you."
"Kurogane," Fai said, eyes still closed, and his voice was barely over a whisper. "We've got to be realistic. We don't know when help is going to arrive. If only one of us is going to make it out of here... then maybe you shouldn't waste your supplies on me."
"You aren't going to --" Kurogane broke off, and he couldn't help but glare upwards, as though magically he could penetrate the layers of rock above them and appeal to the heavens for an answer. He was tired, he was aching and hungry, he did not have the patience and he did not have the endurance to go over the same moronic fight with Fai again.
"I just don't want you to waste what you have," Fai murmured. "I don't want to --"
"If you don't drink this in the next five minutes," Kurogane said, holding on to his calm with both hands, "I'm going to pour it out on the floor. Then it really will be wasted."
Fai started a bit, his eyes opening wide as he looked at Kurogane in shock and disbelief. Kurogane held his gaze, conveying with his expression just how serious he was. Fai's mouth opened as if to argue further, then all at once he gave up. "All right," he said, with a tiny little shrug of his unbroken shoulder.
Since it was Fai's right arm that was broken, and his left was none too steady, Kurogane had to help Fai drink the broth out of the bowl; but he counted it as a victory all the same.
"Thank you, Kurogane," Fai said. "You're a good man."
Kurogane said nothing; he felt a pang of irritation and hurt whenever Fai called him by his whole name, instead of one of the stupid nicknames Fai had always plagued him with. Those nicknames felt like a relic from another life now, and one he missed with a longing that was almost painful in its intensity.
Instead, awkwardly, Kurogane reached out and took Fai's hand; the wizard's skin was cold.
Fai smiled, sweetly, slowly; it was an expression that made Kurogane's breath catch. "It's all right," Fai murmured, and his fingers squeezed weakly against Kurogane's palm. "We'll get out of here. We'll find away to escape. Don't be afraid."
"I wasn't the one who was afraid, was I?" Kurogane pointed out.
Fai continued as if he hadn't spoken. "If we can get out, I can use magic," he said. "We'll look out for each other. My magic is even more powerful than the King's. He won't be able to beat us, as long as we're together."
Kurogane tensed, his senses coming to full alert. "The King? I thought you were the one who said that you couldn't disobey the king."
"We can get out," Fai said, his voice in a near-whisper as though sharing a secret. His eyes were all black now, the pupils dilated to hide even the smallest hint of blue. "We'll go to some other country, someplace far away. Nothing will separate us any more, I promise."
Kurogane's throat was dry, at the surge of unexpected hope that Fai's confidences gave him. His thoughts spun wildly -- if they could get free from here, run from Fai's dreaded king Ashura, run away from Kendappa... from Tomoyo. Free from demons and battlegrounds and duties and loyalties that would tear them apart. Free...?
He cleared his throat. "Aren't you assuming an awful lot, there?"
Fai just smiled, his eyes black, the strength in his fingers feverish. "You and me, Fai. We'll do it someday, I swear."
Kurogane stared at Fai in shock, felt the warmth of moments before suddenly draining away into dread, leaving him feeling sick and cold. Those words, those eyes -- whatever the wizard was saying, and whatever he was seeing, it wasn't reality.
"Don't be afraid of the dark, Fai," the other man whispered, his voice slurring as his eyelids drooped. "You aren't alone. I'm here."
But as his breathing leveled off into sleep, leaving Kurogane alone in the shifting firelight, he felt very alone indeed.
Fai was wrapped in every blanket or coat they'd brought with them on the last hike, and moved as close to their fire as Kurogane dared without actually setting something on fire. It didn't seem to be doing any good, though -- the fire's heat spread too quickly into the cold air of the stone room, and all the blankets and coats in the world couldn't seem to stop the chill that was creeping over Fai.
Kurogane was no doctor. He knew, at best, a rough kind of field medicine; just enough to patch himself up after a bad fight, at least long enough to get back to the city where he could get real treatment. He knew how to stop bleeding, to set broken bones and keep them braced, to keep wounds clean so that the demon filth couldn't poison them. He knew that keeping warm was important, that wet chills could be dangerous, and that you had to keep your body properly fueled with food and water to keep your strength up.
But there was a lot he knew he didn't understand, about things that could break and bleed inside where you couldn't staunch or bandage them, about fevers and chills, about subtle wounds to the head that could worsen over the course of days. Whatever was afflicting Fai now, it was chilling him down more than the cold air and stone could account for, stealing his heat and his color and stifling his breathing. And whatever inside his head was broken, Kurogane couldn't fix it. For all his strength and prowess, this was a demon he couldn't fight.
Fai had raved for hours, after that first frightening break with reality. It was all the more unnerving for the casual, conversational tone of his voice; Kurogane would say something, and Fai would reply as though continuing a conversation, but what he said made no sense.
Eventually, the words had stopped being ones that Kurogane could understand; whether he had switched to some secret language or speaking simple gibberish Kurogane didn't know, but there was one word he had no trouble making out. Fai. Fai. The wizard called out his own name to some unknown, unseen presence, for all the world like he was calling to someone.
After hours passed in the darkness and the cold, he'd wound down into silence. And he was silent now.
Kurogane reached down to touch his neck, checked his pulse again; it was rapid and shallow, like his breathing, more like the beating of a rabbit's heart than a man's. His skin was cold and clammy under Kurogane's fingers, his face wracked with some unconscious strain, and he mumbled a little and turned his face towards the heat. The color of his lips had gone beyond pale into blue-gray and Kurogane brushed his hand over those too, feeling a powerful urge to drive the chill away. He leaned forward, almost in a trance, half-hypnotized by the idea of touching his lips to Fai's.
But this was no fairy-tale, no enchanted sleep to be broken with a kiss, and anyway Kurogane was no prince. He sighed and pulled away with a pang of regret, brushing his hand over the pale blond hair. The fine, soft strands were so caked with sweat and dust that they had matted over, and felt under his hand like nothing so much as feathers.
It seemed unfair, somehow, that he'd only been able to come so close to Fai, to touch him with such intimacy, when Fai was gravely injured, not even all there in the head. They'd had all the time in the world out there on the trail, but Kurogane had guarded his privacy and reserve closely. Always keeping a distance from the other man, although as it turned out, for all the wrong reasons. Hadn't realized what Fai meant to him because he hadn'twanted to realize, hadn't let himself think about it.
He realized now, much too late, that he wanted Fai in his life, didn't want to lose him. Wherever he went from here, he wanted Fai's presence by his side; his bright laugh, his easy chatter, his quick wit, his lithe, elegant form and bright blue eyes.
He was such a fool. All the arguments and excuses he'd made to himself about Fai's motivations were nothing more than that, excuses to justify the decision he'd already come to. He'd already forgiven Fai with no conscious thought on his part. He couldn't hate this man, even if he wanted to, even if he knew he should.
His life would go on without Fai, he had no doubts about that. But he would be going on to a world drained of color and meaning, bound by the narrow, dark horizons of an endless cycle of loneliness and violence. Somewhere in there, Fai had become as precious to him as his duties, as his princess, as his revenge. Fai had come to matter to him.
And Fai was dying.
And there was nothing Kurogane could do to save him.
He sat down before the dim warmth of their tiny fire, and covered his face with his hands.
What roused him out of his despair was not so much a sound as a vibration.
Kurogane raised his head from his hands, staring at the dark rocks, listening intently. After a moment, he was sure he heard it again; a tap-tap rhythm, followed by a scraping sound.
Jumping up, he strode to the stone wall and pressed his bare hands against it, ignoring the biting tingle of the cold against his skin. After a few minutes, it came against, a palpable vibration against his hands. Again the impacts started, continued for a few moments, then trailed off in a faint shuffle.
Kurogane drew in a deep breath, and slammed against the wall with all his strength. "HEY!" he shouted, wincing slightly as the crowded stone walls echoed his voice back at him. "HEY! IN HERE! IS ANYONE OUT THERE?"
There were a few minutes of silence, then a series of shuffling thumps against the wall, growing slightly closer and louder. Was that a human voice, coming faintly through the stone, or just his imagination? Kurogane slammed against the wall again, then stepped back, grabbed Ginryuu's empty scabbard, and used it as a hammer. The sound of the blow shook the small chamber, and Kurogane had a moment's apprehension, but not a rock budged. "IN HERE!"
Another few minutes of cracking and scraping noises, and this time, the sound of a human voice was unmistakable, although he still couldn't make out the words through the muffling rock.
"There are two of us in here!" he called through the rock. "One of us needs a doctor! Can you get us out?"
A pause, and then more calling, this time in a reassuring tone; he could definitely make out the word 'yes.' Satisfied, he struck the wall with the scabbard one more time to mark their location, then stepped back and waited.
It took ages. Kurogane stood jittering, listening to the noises from outside. There was an endless series of noises from the corridor outside, thumps and rustling and the cracking of stone, but no matter how much closer the noises seemed to get, there still seemed to be farther for them to go. Kurogane alternated between pacing the fire and obsessively checking on Fai's condition -- he was no worse, but no better, either, and it would be just like the man to die on him right when help was finally at hand.
The voices stopped on what felt like just the other side of the wall; he could hear the murmurings of several male voices now, consulting with each other. He was tempted to call out to them again, encourage them to hurry up already, but he managed to rein in his impatience and stood fuming.
When they finally broke through the last wall, Kurogane was expecting a few stones to fall out of a weak spot in the wall, creating a hole they could enlarge from both sides. At most, he was expecting to have a hole blasted in the wall, and had carefully placed himself between any possible flying shrapnel and Fai. But he was definitely not expecting what actually happened, which was for the entire north wall to shimmer like the air in high summer, and then abruptly dissolve into sand.
The fall of the sand rose a huge dust cloud in the cavern, and Kurogane had to cover his mouth to keep from suffocating while he coughed. At least he heard some mirrored coughing from the other side of the dust cloud, which made him feel marginally better. He saw several figures moving in the tunnel that had suddenly opened up in front of him, and strode forward before the sand had finished sliding over itself on the rock floor. "About time! What -- " he snarled, before coughing again.
When he stepped out of the other side of the dust cloud, he stumbled; he'd badly underestimated just how long he'd been in the subterranean darkness, and his eyes burned painfully from the silver light flooding in from in front of him. The far end of the tunnel, he realized, blinking watering eyes against the stabbing light. He saw a number of figures moving around, silhouetted against the dust and light, and rounded on one of them.
"What took you so damn long?" he said, voice hoarse from the dust and shouting. "Is one of you idiots a doctor? My friend is injured, and he needs --"
He stopped when he realized that they were all staring at him, and straightened up, looking around him more slowly.
There were six men arrayed in the tunnel before him. They were easy to see against the dark stone of the rock because they were wearing white and blue robes, heavily furred and glittering with a wealth of silver decorations. Although the cut and style varied from one to another, there was no mistaking the full regalia version of the white-and-blue robe he'd seen only once before; on Fai, the first time they'd met.
The wizards were staring at him; their faces were still blurred to his eyes, but he didn't need an interpretor to detect the astonishment, outrage and hostility directed his way. None of them moved, however, or responded to his question; he realized they were all deferring to the seventh man, taller and more imposing in dark brown and sable robes that nearly matched the dark native stone.
He'd felt this pressure, this imposing presence, many times before when taking audience at court with Amaterasu and Tomoyo. But he'd never felt it so cold, so alien, or so hostile; and when Kurogane was able to focus against the light at last, he realized that he was standing face to face with the King of Ceres.
~to be continued...