Chapter Four: Heart of the Volcano
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The inside of the castle was dark and quiet. Deep red fires burned low in forgotten torches. The black vaulted ceiling and crumbling columns looked like they might collapse any minute; parts of the roof looked like they'd already collapsed, and the grey-green swirling sky could be seen through the gaping holes. Patches of rubble littered the marble floor.
The tapping of their footsteps echoed throughout the entire chamber.
"Sam, wait," Danny heard himself saying. She turned to look at him with a raised eyebrow. "I really am sorry I didn't tell you why we were coming here. I should have. I just… I didn't know what to say. I was still worried I'd really messed up the other day, that maybe you wouldn't want to try again." But it felt like the words she'd laid down on him outside on the castle steps were still resonating in his bones. He'd been stupid to think Sam would hold what happened against him.
"I'm not angry or anything," she said. "I just wish you'd stop treating it like you're a villain and I'm a victim. I'm not a victim. I chose to be with you Danny. Don't forget that, okay?"
Ouch. She really saw through him didn't she?
Danny suddenly smiled. "Okay," he agreed, taking her face in his hands. "No more victimizing." He kissed her softly. For a moment his world consisted only of her, and lava monsters could've swarmed and he wouldn't have noticed.
They continued on from the main hall into a long narrow corridor. Long cracks ran along the marble floor here. Through the cracks in the wall there seemed to be thin lines of lava running through like veins. It gave Danny a crawling feeling on the back of his neck, like this whole place was sort of alive.
"This place gives me the heebie jeebies," Sam said, reflecting his own thoughts, "and that is saying something considering our day-to-day occupation."
They peered into open doors as they walked past, some with doors that were completely gone from their hinges, some with doors that were locked and wouldn't budge. All led to more empty chambers. It felt like some long abandoned ruin that used to be full of vibrant life. He wondered what had happened.
"I can't imagine living here by myself," Danny muttered. "It's gotta be lonelier living here than in Vlad's mansion."
"I'd still rather live here," Sam snorted.
They came upon a wide spiral staircase that stretched away in both directions. Danny peered over the railing, but the passage faded into deep darkness both above and below. He glanced at Sam, who shrugged.
"I'd toss a coin but I don't have one," he joked. "Let's explore… downward." There was a mental image in his head of this place being one large volcano, even though it really wasn't. But if it was, then to get to the heart they'd have to go down. So down they went.
Those strange rivulet cracks of running lava ran along the walls and floor of the stairwell too. At a few places lava seeped out like blood from a cut in the walls and floor. There were no torches here so these veins provided the only deep red light that washed the descending stairs. He watched Sam carefully to make sure she stayed well away from these cracks. At first when they'd arrived he'd been worried that the severe heat would hurt Sam, but he'd soon realized that if she stayed close to the radiating chill coming from his own body that she was fine. Even so, when they passed by one of the freely oozing veins he could see her skin flushing from the pulsating heat. He took her by the hand almost possessively and pulled her closer to him, away from the seeping wall. He allowed the chill from his skin to bleed more freely into the air around them, cooling off Sam.
Hopefully he wasn't pushing his luck. He had to remember that he was way out of his element here, and tried to remind himself of what Frostbite had said.
From then on as they descended he kept her pulled flush against his body protectively, and she didn't protest. She seemed to be relieved to be shielded from the heat. They walked circles and circles and circles, spiraling further downward with every turn. The castle seemed to extend forever underneath the lake of lava. He thought they must be deep underground by now. They kept expecting to come across a door or an entrance to a lower level floor, but the stairs just kept descending. It was like a one way street to the basement level. Danny wasn't sure whether to take this as a good or a bad sign. He was even less certain when the lava veins began to slowly dwindle away. The deeper they got the more the cracks appeared to be crusted over. There were less freely oozing pores in the walls. And the less lava there was, the darker it became.
Danny was reminded of the creepy feeling he'd had that the lava cracks were like arteries and the castle was alive- except now that they were drying and disappearing he was hit with the foreboding feeling of death.
By the time they stepped out onto an even platform Danny was holding a sphere of glowing green ectoplasm out before them to light the path. The flickering light cast sickening shadows all around them. Danny had reigned his cold energy back in by this point. Sam no longer needed it, though she was still hanging onto his arm. It wasn't at all hot down here.. in fact it was almost cold.
Danny pushed open the heavy door that rose in front of them. It must have weighed hundreds of pounds. When it finally wrenched inward, he saw why. On the other side fragments of ice had been freezing it shut.
The room seemed to be glowing faintly blue, but where the light was coming from he couldn't have said. Tall crumbling arches rose up from the floor to the ceiling a hundred feet above them shrouded in shadow. There were no veins of lava in this chamber. Instead cracks of ice ran along the floor, creeping up the carved rock columns like vines. Other than the broken columns and the ice, the room was as empty as all the others.
But as they stepped cautiously down the central aisle, Danny was struck by the strong feeling that they were no longer alone. Unlike other people, Danny had a more surefire way of knowing if that intuition was correct. And just like that his ghost sense went off, as if simply to prove him right. The icy mist escaped his throat suddenly and he and Sam scanned the room quickly, searching for the unseen occupant.
He felt a cold breeze run through his white hair, disturbing the stagnant underground air. It swirled around them and then whistled away, trailing to the other side of the room like a sigh.
"You have returned." A woman's voice echoed across the room, and it sounded like she was whispering from the bottom of a well. Her soft voice was eerie.
Before Danny could answer, the breeze was surrounding them again. "I knew you would return for me," she was saying demurely. "And here you are."
Danny tossed his head back and forth, trying to pin down where the voice was. But it seemed to be everywhere. Sam's back pressed in on his side, her eyes eagerly searching the room.
"It has been so long, love, so very long. But I have waited for you."
And suddenly a pair of liquid orange eyes were an inch from Danny's face. They were wide and without pupils or features, but yet they didn't seem beast-like to Danny, just thoughtful. They didn't seem to be looking at him at all in fact.
Sam's head snapped toward the eyes. She had opened her mouth to speak when the ghost interrupted with another thought.
A blue hand appeared before Danny and reached slowly toward his face. He was seeing the shape of her slowly coming into focus. A tall wispy body, faint and bluish-white. His eyes fell on the faint outline of a silver necklace wrapped around her neck, hanging from it a glowing blue pendant. Her hand that wasn't reaching toward Danny rested on the necklace. He tried to reconcile this woman with the fiery drawing of Narira, and failed. What had happened to her?
"I felt it when you returned," she was saying softly. He could feel her cold breath on his cheeks. "I felt the cold change in the air when you came home."
Danny's eyes flashed toward Sam, wondering wildly what to do. She looked just as lost.
"Narira?" he said to the glowing orange eyes. He had to make sure. Her reaching hands pressed against the sides of his face, freezing to the touch, brushing searchingly against his skin. Her eyes seemed to widen a bit. Danny was struck with the thought that maybe her eyes could not actually see him.
"You are not.. You are not him."
And like that the glowing white figure vanished again, swirling away in a gust of wind.
"Wait!" Danny called, running after her down the hall. "Wait, stop!" Damn it, where did she go? He wheeled around to find Sam, and saw that there was a pair of orange eyes floating just above Sam's own eye-level.
"Why have you disturbed me in my solitude?" he heard the soft voice purr.
Danny flew quickly to Sam's side. "We just wanted to talk to you," he offered.
The wispy figure was coming into focus again. She seemed to be made of faint blue fire. The orange eyes turned back to Danny, though they could have been focused anywhere. "And who are you?" She circled around him, coming to rest a faint misty hand directly on his chest, where he could feel ice radiating outward in response to her icy hand. "Why do you feel just like him?" Danny couldn't help but feel his heart break a little bit at the way Narira said that last line. She sounded so utterly forlorn.
"He has the same powers that Icehand did," Sam supplied, stepping in closer to Danny. "That's why we wanted to speak with you."
The orange eyes seemed to increase in luminescence. "I see." She swirled away and reappeared by Sam's shoulder again. Her blue hands were pulling Sam away before Danny had time to think, leaving Sam to stumble down the aisle as the orange eyes surveyed her. "And who are you?" Her voice contained unhidden curiosity.
"I'm- I'm a friend-"
"A friend," she repeated mysteriously, her orange eyes glowing brighter.
Danny was flying to their side again, reaching for Sam, but Narira went intangible again, this time bringing Sam with her as she swirled away, reappearing at a platform at the far end of the row of arches.
The orange eyes flared in Danny's direction as he whirled towards them. "He is so very protective for a friend." Amusement laced her tone. And by the time Danny reached them again they had vanished; he heard Narira's echoing laughter as she dancing invisibly around the room. "I have to wonder." Danny wheeled in circles, trying to find where her voice was coming from. It was impossible with that echo. "What brings a young ghost with ice powers to this forgotten world?" Narira and Sam appeared down at the ground level again. "And why is there a human with him?"
This time she didn't object as Danny wrenched Sam from Narira's grasp. She let Sam slip easily from her arms, and circle back around them thoughtfully. "In all these lonely years I have not had a visitor come here. I thought you were my love returning for me, but I should have known better."
"Narira," Sam whispered, apparently undeterred by the slight kidnapping. "What happened here? What happened to you? What happened to... him?"
The orange eyes flared and turned to Sam. Danny inched slightly in front of her instinctively.
"He is gone."
"But why?" Danny heard himself saying.
Narira was quiet for a moment and he thought he'd really angered her. But then she answered with a softer tone. "It was his choice," she stated coldly. "He chose to protect his realm of ice instead of staying here with me, where he would have been safe. He was destroyed. It was long, long ago." The flare in her eyes dimmed again, and they were almost white instead of fiery orange. Danny wondered idly if her loss had something to do with this cold death here at the heart of the castle.
"What do you want of me?" she asked sadly as her wispy body slowly drifted backwards down the aisle, away from Sam and Danny.
Danny faltered. He realized he did not know what he wanted of her. "I…"
The orange eyes flashed again. "Not you, heart of ice." She said it like it was an insult. "It's not what you want of me but what she wants of me." Narira disappeared again and there she was pulling Sam out of Danny's grasp once more. He could not keep up with Narira's erratic movements- she moved as wishy-washy and freely as flames did.
"Because we are the same, you and I," she demurred.
Sam wasn't struggling to free herself as Narira twirled into the air, wheeling Sam around like they were waltzing. She didn't protest what Narira had said. "It's clear why you've come."
"Oh is it?" Sam said sarcastically, but Danny could hear the uncertainty in her voice.
Danny gazed up at them from the floor, not sure what to do. He was crouched low, ready to come to Sam's defense. But he wanted to give Narira the chance to speak, hoping it would be something helpful.
"But why?" Narira whispered to Sam wistfully, almost longingly. "Do you not see what has become of me? Do you see what love has done for me?"
Sam voice betrayed annoyance. "I can see just fine."
"Then why invite in the sorrow? My fire is long dead. He took it with him. I am nothing. I am a ghost of a ghost, girl, do you want to become what I have become?"
"Everything that happened here happened because you chose it," Sam replied scathingly. "Nobody took your fire. You gave it up."
Narira's eyes suddenly flared up red, bright seething flames. "How dare you."
"I know it's not what you want to hear," Sam was saying. "But Icehand moved on like so many other ghosts eventually do, and he's probably at peace. Wherever it is that spirits go when they finally move on. And here you are dwindling away into eternity, holding onto your grief. It's really.. it's really sad. I'm sorry for you."
"I don't want pity, human," Narira's voice was sharp. She abruptly let go of Sam, allowing her to fall quickly through the dark air. Danny leapt into flight and caught her instantly. "It is I that pities you. You're as naïve as I once was. As I will never be again."
"There's nothing naïve about being in love!" Sam shouted through clenched teeth and clenched fists. Danny kept one hand on each of her arms this time, determined not to let Narira sweep her away again. This was beginning to get a little bit out of hand. "You're just bitter because you were left alone! If you really loved him, you would move on yourself, and join him, instead of lingering here nursing old wounds."
The orange eyes appeared in front of them, their fire having dulled a bit. "You speak of love as if you know. You may be a human adult but in my eyes you are a child. I have loved for hundreds of years. What could you possibly teach me about love, child?"
"I can teach you that love isn't in that necklace you keep holding your hands over every time you mention him," Sam said coolly.
Narira's hands flew up to the pendant protectively, her eyes narrowing at Sam. Danny hadn't noticed Narira doing that. He knew shouldn't second guess Sam's eerie perceptive abilities, though. "He gave me his heart," Narira whispered, as though that was an answer.
"That's not his heart. It's just a token, nothing more. And look at you. It's taken over your whole existence. Your whole world is dying because you can't let it go."
Narira was phasing the necklace off her neck to examine it more closely. She held it to her face but didn't seem to actually look at it, and once again Danny wondered to himself whether the ghost was blind. She drifted in close to Danny and Sam once more. If Danny didn't know better he might have thought the look in her eyes was a kind of amusement.
"And you want it," she stated, without any hint of a question.
Sam's eyes widened in response. "I-"
"Your heart betrays you," Narira whispered sadly. Without warning her icy hands were on Danny's chest, sending him reeling backwards. "And you betray hers! You would do to her what has been done to me? Look! Look at my home, ghost! Look and see what your icy love will do to her warm heart!" Danny could only stagger backwards at the onslaught, and Narira seemed to glow brighter with every word. He didn't want to attack her and he couldn't think of a thing to say. His mind was completely numb with shock. "You long for her, to touch her, as Icehand once longed to touch me." She shook the silver-blue pendant in Danny's face angrily, as if trying to force him to see. "Your love will destroy her."
"Stop!" Sam was screaming, running after them. "Danny don't listen to her! She's wrong!"
Narira suddenly wheeled around to face Sam.
"Love didn't destroy you Narira, you destroyed yourself! Don't you ever blame Icehand for what you've become!"
Narira's eyes spouting columns of flame, and for the first time flickers of flame appeared at her wispy hands. "Do not speak of him as if you knew him!"
"I know enough." Sam had reached Danny's side and she was wrenching him away. He was still reeling from Narira's words. "I know you two loved each other and chose to be together. No one forced you to accept that necklace."
"No," she said sneeringly. And abruptly her temper was gone again, her eyes dulling back down to that soft hazy white. She really was as fickle as a flickering flame. She reached a hand over and rested it on Sam's face. Danny expected her to flinch back but she didn't. "You really are just as I was," she whispered, "so long ago. I wish that I could see your face, your eyes."
"Narira," Danny breathed, nearly wishing they'd never come. "We never meant to hurt you. We shouldn't have come."
The wispy ghost was fading again, less pronounced than before, drifting slowly away down the dark aisle.
"Do you think you could still love him," she whispered at Sam, and again her voice filled the entire chamber, "if he left you alone? To wait, for eternity?"
"I wouldn't wait," Sam replied without hesitation. "I would follow him."
Danny glanced quickly over at Sam but she was avoiding his gaze, staring directly at Narira.
Narira stopped in her retreat, and then swiftly flew toward Sam once more. "You speak with such certainty, child. But we do not know what is beyond. I do not know," she added quietly.
Neither Sam or Danny had anything to say to that.
And then, after a moment of silence, Narira held out her hand and let the necklace fall to the floor. The tinkling noise of silver on tile echoed all the way to the ceiling. And she was fading again, drifting back through the arches and columns toward the raised platform.
"I don't understand," Danny felt himself saying aloud. Sam reached down tentatively to pick up the necklace, turning it over curiously in her hands.
"Be gone from here," came Narira's seering voice from all around them. "I have no more to say."
"But why?" Sam called, searching for those orange eyes that had vanished. "Why did you give it to me?"
A soft whisper came from between Sam and Danny- "Because I was in love once too." And they both turned to it but they didn't see her eyes, they only saw each other's astonished faces. The invisible breeze swirled around them once more and swished away down the hall, and Danny thought he could hear her light laughter, soft like the sound of bells, as it disappeared down at the end of the hall.
Damn this chapter was difficult to write! I got MAD writer's block like BAM fresh out the grease.
So you better have enjoyed it. Maybe a bit angsty on Narira's part.. but I would be angsty too if I'd been left to dwell on my lost love for a few hundred years.
Reviewmekaythanksbye
One chapter left! I'll try to get it up soon.
