Stolen Hearts
Chapter 33
"Damnit."
Vegeta cursed as another unforgiving merciless branch snapped across his cheek leaving a vicious trail of red in its wake. How long had he been out here? Where was here? Where was he even trying to go?
Desperation clung to his sides as his only companion on this wearisome hopeless mission. It seems ill-fate would have him lost in the dense of the forest. With every step Vegeta felt his heart breaking. There was no way he could do this. It was folly for him to ever pretend. He would die a captive in these ancient woods. He had failed her. He had failed them both.
With a strangled gasp he fell exhausted and broken to the mossy floor. How good it felt to give up. To struggle no longer. It would have been so easy to lie there and wait for death. His parched mouth and his heavy eyes were both partly opened. Small huffs of air escaped his lips, peeled and curling. In this state of exhaustion it would not take him long to slip away.
But then there! What was that?
A weary elbow propped up a sagging body.
Gold?
Yes gold. Was he hallucinating?
There, along the ground in front of him there seemed as clear as day to have appeared a trail of golden light. It danced and shimmered across the leaves and entranced him. He felt his body rise despite the fearful grip gravity had establish upon him, and he moved after the light almost as if a hand was guiding him, urging him on, telling him not to despair.
The branches cleared. The trunks faded. He was on an incline now. Up up up and forever he spiraled, the golden light swirled around him leading him onward as impossible as it became. As endless as the forest was the mountain's height was even more so. It was heaven's mountain indeed and it would take any normal man next to a lifetime to climb it.
But the golden light carried Vegeta to heights un-dreamed about they were so perilous. Fear more then once struck Vegeta's heart, but more then that he was filled with trust. With faith.
First the smell reached him. A heavenly smell, warm and golden as if all the most delicious fruits and flowers of the world were complied into it.
His eyes cleared. He was not moving any longer. He lay on his back in a garden laced with the softest grass he had ever felt. Smoother then silk. It was gold. All was alight with the brilliant glittering shade. This whole place felt soft and warm and peaceful. Like a mother's arms.
He heard the trickling flow of a crystal stream and was reminded of his thirst and exhaustion. Crawling on his hands and knees he reached the stream and drank greedily from its sparkling water.
As soon as the marvelous cool of the liquid fell down his throat he felt the strength it carried with it. Almost immediately it felt as if life flowed through his veins to every extremity. He gasped at the glory of it. He was renewed. But more then renewed; he felt power in his veins as well. Strange amazing power he had never felt before. Surely this was no ordinary water. Where on earth was this place? He had a feeling he had reached his destination.
"I've been expecting you," a voice smoother then any sound that his tortured ears had ever beheld rang through the air and a strange feeling came over Vegeta. He had heard this voice before and his chest swelled with peace and happiness. He was home. He saw flashes of things long forgotten, feeling long lost, arms long forsaken.
Tears filled his eyes as he turned to behold one of the most beautiful sights he could ever contrive in his mortal mind. She smiled at him and his tears spilled over as he was consumed by the amber light of age that poured from everywhere around the heavenly being that stood if front of him. Her arms reached out towards him in welcome, and he went eagerly to them.
As the arms embraced him and held him close, so close, so warm, and his tears fell on this being's golden skin, he managed to whisper the question that burned in his heart.
"I know you, how do I know you? Your face brings a peace to me I have never known."
"You do know me Vegeta. Once long ago when I was someone else. I was taken from you before you were old enough to know. Vegeta, so long have I waited to hold you in my arms, to say your name. I have watched your life and I have suffered with you, for a mother never wants to see her only son in anguish."
"Son..." Vegeta's voice was shaking along with his body, "Mother?"
"Yes Vegeta, my son, my beautiful baby boy. When your father was possessed by Gorgorath and took my life the gods took pity on me, as they did many of the light elves, and they gave us wings and made us their messengers, angels if you will. I am called Elentari now, the queen of the stars, and it is I who will help you with your most important of quests."
"Mother...I don't even know what to think, all these years I have been alone, I never... I wanted... I've missed you so much, I don't even know you but I miss you so. Life is so cruel."
"Yes, but it is also so beautiful my child. It was wrong that I was taken from you, it was wrong you had to experience so much horror in such a short amount of life, but all toil is redeemed in the end. And now the world's fate balances in your hands. You were destined for this. You have so much power inside you, so much promise, even more so now. Yes, you feel it inside you. You have drunk from the stream of life and its power fills you and proves your intention. If there had been a bit of doubt or ugliness in your heart the river effect would have been the opposite and you would have been deathly poisoned."
"I feel insignificantly small. This is all so much for me right now, it is hard on a simple mortal mind."
"Man is born to sorrow as sparks fly upward. The world is indeed on its last legs; the terrors you must save us from are near unspeakable. The sun turns black, the earth sinks into the sea, the hot stars fall from the sky, and fire leaps about the heavens itself. It is the end. I'm sorry for burdening you with this, it must seem impossible, but love Vegeta, the love in your heart will not be conquered easily.
You see, Gorgorath does not have enough power on his own to overthrow Emeldir, he plans on seducing Bulma into a dark trance so he will be able to make her his bride and join their spirits. If he succeeds in doing this he will have all her powers as a Valkyrie and he will become an unstoppable machine. You must find her before the joining and draw her from the black trance she is consumed with.
What you have given her she will retain Vegeta, for love is immortal, and eternal, and will not wither in the endless depths of death or this sleep he has drawn over her spirit. She will know you, she will feel you, and she will be liberated, and when she is, we will all be safe once again."
"How am I supposed to find her though?" Vegeta questioned trying to soak up all of this overwhelming information, "I am not dead, so how shall I find spirits in the other realm as a breathing mortal?"
"I have three gifts for you to assist you in your quest. The first is a ship of the winds, which will bring you to an island where it is possible to enter the realm of the dead. You will need my second gift though to enter. It is a pendent of Emeldir and it will allow you to walk among the dead as one of them. The third gift is a mighty sword made of the Oldstones. They cannot bear a closeness to iron, the Oldstones, for they were made long before the new metals. There are many dark things down there and you will need a weapon to contest the power of gods. The sword's name is Iphis."
"Your gifts are great but this quest is even greater," Vegeta said, his eyes distant and serious, "I will not fail. I shall try not to. I know I must do this in spite of all impossibility. I will have faith mother, I will be strong. For you. For my love. For everything."
"Go now, time is fleeting, my love and life goes with you. The ship Navasall will carry you to the island and there you must look inside yourself for the gateway. Farewell my son! All the hopes of the stars lie upon you!"
Vegeta reached out toward his mothers beautiful form as she faded into obscurity, the whole land around him faded too as if it were nothing more then a beautiful dream that stole him away from the true horrors of reality.
He felt the wind rush around him in a maddened frenzy and all went grey.
Silence surrounded him until he felt the ground beneath his feet and he smelled something he had not in a long long time.
The sea.
Vegeta opened his eyes to pristine sails flapping in the early morning breeze and out beyond the vessel stretched endless miles of bejeweled smooth shining water that rushed and seethed with tempestuous life, but at the same moment it had the most peaceful ancient rhythm that but his sore heart at ease.
He boarded the Navasall and the breath of life steamed away in the north wind sweetly, and Vegeta realized how beautiful life was, which one misstep, in just seconds, could rip away from him.
And so he stepped aboard Navasall and the wind shifted so the vessel moved lightly off the shore and into the void of blue. Vegeta knew that if he set up a sort of rhythm it would help him in spite of his obstacles.
Before long all had turned into and endless blue stretch that made one feel as if they were nowhere going nowhere, just one tiny part of something too massive to comprehend. The heavens were the only things that changed, but even that was at the same lazy rotation every day. The occasional sea creature would surface and give him an inquisitive look before descending back to their mysterious realm beneath the surface.
In the midst of the night some weeks later the Navasall's keel struck land with a gentle thud. Vegeta's heart jumped. This was it. He jumped up to see, his heart in his throat.
But this loathsome moor was not a place you would be glad to find yourself in, in fact it struck all joy from his heart so he was not able to bring to mind one happy thing. The land did not say "welcome, so glad to see you," it merle threatened, "I dare you to stay."
Vegeta dared.
His footsteps sounded hollow on the mossy stones of the isle. He climbed the embankment and even the moss did not live. There was not one thing left alive, and he came to the dead lake.
Vegeta had never seen water so black and lifeless before. Mist steamed like black clouds from the surface, barely a ripple disturbed its glassy surface. No one knew its bottom, for no wisdom reached such depths.
The place Vegeta found himself in was absolutely flat. In the world we seldom see such flatness for trees and houses and such give a serrated edge to the landscape. Even the grass sticks up in a myriad of blades, but here in the belly of the night, the illimitable, flat wet terrain was as featureless as a dark junket.
In the enormous flatness, there lived one element, wind. For it was an element, it was a dimension, a power of darkness now. In the living world the wind comes from somewhere and goes somewhere, and as it goes it passes through somewhere. Through trees or streets or windows.
This wind came from nowhere. It was going through the flatness of nowhere, to no place. Horizontal, soundless except for a peculiar boom, tangible, infinite. The astounding dimensional weight of it streamed across the water. You could have ruled it with a straight edge. The titanic gray line of it was unwavering and solid. And the lake remained still.
Vegeta, facing into this wind, felt that he was uncreated. Except for the wet solidity under his feet, he was living in nothing- a solid nothing like chaos. His were the feelings of a point in geometry, but with no magnitude. The wind was magnitude. It was power, current, force, direction, in a pointless world. A stream steady in limbo. Bounds had to be set in this unhallowed purgatory.
Far away to the east there was an unbroken wall of sound. It surged a little, seeming to expand and contract, but it was solid. It was menacing, being desirous of victims, for it was a huge remorseless lake. He saw his bleak reflection upon the lake. Into it Vegeta fell, he looked inside himself and dove.
The moment he left the earth the wind vanished. Its restless brutality had dropped away as if cut by a knife. He was in it, a pinion or horizontal air, and he was in the other realm, in the land of the dead.
AN: So Vegeta had found the passage way into the realm of Emeldir. Will he find Bulma and Gorgorath? What obstacles will be in his way? Is it too late already?... till next time, let me know how you like it. Yay for reviewe