The heat of the stew warmed his chest against the night cold, but did nothing to dispel the feeling of uncertainty growing in the pit of his stomach.
A modest shack with a counter, two stools, and a mismatched fence separated Seiya offered a small respite from the throngs of people moving on the main road.
Decades ago, where he sat was a trading post that only garnered the attention of those heading to the hot spring nearby. Now, a land that had once attracted dangerous animals drew out even more savage people.
The desert was just as extreme as the people. The heat of the day suffocated movement to a crawl that bubbled to life as the sun dipped beneath the horizon and the temperature did along with it.
A fire breather pushed through the crowd with his torches tucked under one arm and his satchel under another. Stippled orange tattoos covered his exposed torso in a series of painful curves that left only his eyes untouched. No one even turned to look at him. He was as close to normal as one could see in the cast of characters Nehreen gathered in its gates.
Seiya rinsed his hands in a water bowl and refilled his canteen, not without the owner charging him for a few precious pumps of water.
The midnight markets of Nehreen were the beginning and end of all exchanges on their star. Nothing came without a price.
People flocked to the split rock formation that funneled visitors into its stone gates. Everyone here was desperate for something. Some traveled from the farthest corners of the country to Nehreen's red sands desperate to find riches, while others slipped into the madness of the place looking to be lost.
What seemed to be lost to Seiya now was any hope of getting more information about his present condition.
Nehreen was barely contained before the Chaos wars, and now it had become completely untamed.
Years ago, a young Kakyuu had begged to go to see the notorious Nehreen markets and teleported the Starlights there during what should have been their quiet study time. The four of them had gotten lost in the magic of it all for approximately thirty minutes. Market guards had reported four unaccompanied preteen girls in fancy robes and city accents as soon as they stumbled into the view of the main road. Fighter's mind still clung to the memory of the Queen's unbridled disappointment in her, for hers was the worst tongue lashing of them all. She was young, and was unused to carrying the weight of being the captain of the princess' inner guard. The Queen had reminded that a Sailor Soldier's first loyalty is to their star, then their princess, then themselves. Fun had no place in line.
Seiya wished he could find what he was looking for as quickly as the guards had found Fighter that day. With people all too eager to return to the financial stability that the old Kinmoku had awarded them, the usual crowd had nearly doubled in size. Small sellers abandoned the slow wages of the rural towns for the chance at quick riches in Nehreen.
An empty bowl and full stomach gave him enough motivation to restart his search. In the hours since their two moons had risen to ignite the night sky the markets had swollen as the stars gathered. Outside of the defenses of the makeshift restaurant Seiya braced himself against a wave of people, animals, and carts coming and going from either direction.
His ears twitched in an effort to pick up anything of importance and were met with an orchestra of unsensible noise.
This was his fifth attempt to seek out something useful for Fighter's reports back home and his personal mission. A Sailor Soldier already had no business doing work delegated to spies and emissaries. This was probably the last chance he would get to leave the palace grounds before being called back to Kakyuu's side to oversee her protection before her wedding and coronation.
Anxiety curled around his heart followed soon after by sweat at his temples. On Earth, even with an imminent threat and a missing princess there were still moments of reprieve. Playing the piano in his studio, performing on stage, park dates with a certain blonde haired girl, were breaks from the mayhem. Now, every conscious moment in control of his body haunted him with the thought that it may be his last. This was the longest he'd ever kept ownership of the body he shared with Fighter and it exhausted him to no end, not to mention the fact that the journey had been utterly fruitless so far.
Traders he had met were either uninformed fools or blatant liars. Talented tongues were more versed on the scandals amongst lower nobles than any possible insurgent movement, much less information on what afflicted him.
Finding an information merchant in Nehreen when he had very few of Fighter's memories to rely on was already a difficult task. Every time he focused too much on her, he could feel her spirit bubbling forth. He had to focus on maintaining control and his temper while locating a sensible secret trader in the ever changing, ever growing landscape that lay before him.
Eyes like the ocean spilled over the crowd again. It helped somewhat that he experienced a growth spurt that landed him somewhere in height between the guardian of Uranus and Maker. Information traders operated in the shadows, but their scouts were often out in the open. Ever watching.
He stood off to the side and closed his eyes, leaning a bit on Fighter's powers of perception. Every Sailor Guardian could connect with the citizen's of their planetary body. The power of Kinmoku gave Fighter a sort of sixth sense.
Every time Seiya pushed into her memories or dipped into her powers he felt her pull back, yet it was a risk he needed to take. When the dawn came, he would have to journey back to the palace and relinquish control-if he could even last that long.
Vendors shouted over colorful bowls of some living and freshly killed things. The odor of raw meat and salted fish hung heavy in the air mingling with smoke and the sweat of working bodies. Thousands of people moved with purpose in a place that had no street signs and roads paved only by the continued pounding of feet.
From above the market resembled a yin-yang symbol. On one side a buyer could find food from every culture on their star, clothes, beads, and priceless jewels, while the other side was strictly for services.
Market guards in Kinmoku's royal red kaftans walked up and down the main road but did not cross into either side. The royal treasury was low and slow payments were reflected in the way Seiya had seen the guards unmoved by the myriad of laws being disregarded just outside their line of vision.
The service side was where the black market had sprung back to life with new vigor. There-amongst the handmade signs and tightly packed sheds-one could find a midwife to bring life into the world or an assassin to take it out. The market followed its own delicate set of rules.
Seiya walked the main road that carved the separation in between the two camps.
Stalls that were there only yesterday were replaced by completely new installations. Some sellers couldn't afford the main road tax and rotated stalls with other vendors by the week, others by the day.
On one of the few occasions they had visited on annual patrol, Maker had written pages of critiques on the disorganization of the place. Its somewhat organized chaos was one thing Fighter had found thrilling during the few times she had been. Now the maze caused Seiya's head to pound.
He listened with clenched teeth while one elderly man, maybe days away from succumbing to old age, rubbed two of Seiya's bronze coins between his ink-stained fingers and talked at length about the days before the Chaos wars. Nearly an hour later, the tale was finished with a grand account of his life and maybe two sentences about the state of the kingdom- lamentations that the Queen was selfish to marry before the common people could afford a trip to the palace to see her. It took nearly all of his remaining patience to not rip the payment out of the bastard's twisted fingers.
Seiya stepped away from the service side to avoid the seeking hands of the night workers and the ever present ache at his temple. Fighter had a body trained for little sleep, bare rations, and long missions. Seiya was a nineteen year old Kinmoku humanoid who was physically tired and mentally drained.
More time had been wasted.
Both moons tilted toward the horizon. He only had a few hours before the sun brought the market to a close. It was his last night before he had to return.
Two blurs of brown dashed on either side.
They couldn't be older than ten or twelve. The one on the left was a short, chubby boy, with skin the color of a penny and two from missing teeth. His curly carrot colored hair hung to his shoulders in a wild mess of curls. He had two skewered dumplings in one tucked into his cheek but it didn't stop his lips from flying, though no sound came out. The one on his right was pale with sandpaper colored locks that barely made it past his ears. Unlike his companion, he was all leg and limb.
His eyes fixated on the common treat and her name escaped his lip on its own, and he realized it'd been so long since he said it out loud.
"Odango."
Fortunate children clung to the robes of their parents, watched over and tended to. The less lucky ones trailed behind richer citizens, carrying their items on large copper plates balanced on their sweating heads. Ones with no favor from the gods scurried through the garbage of the fields, parents either dead long before Chaos or simply choosing the new beginning to forget pesky remnants of their past.
These two were unlike the others. They ducked between stalls on muscle memory and between people on pure skill. Maybe it was Fighter's dormant powers of perception, but he didn't know why he felt compelled to follow them. As the three of them dashed through throngs of sellers and buyers Seiya continued to examine the boys who surely knew he was following them but did not seem to care.
Clean fingernails with dirty palms clutched notes written scraps of paper as they snaked through tiny alleys barely big enough for Seiya to move through without twisting diagonally.
Moving at an incredible pace through the bustle of the market, their bare feet narrowly avoided the sticks and glass that outlined the gutters of the road.
Seiya, much taller, much faster, still had a hard time keeping up with them in foreign territory.
They laughed and smiled at each other; speaking with their eyes and motioning with their hands. As they ran, the crowd thinned. The noise of the market was swaddled in the blanket of silence only nature could provide.
Finally, right before Seiya could begin to guess why he had followed two children to the far corner of the market, they stopped short in front of a two level domed house. Waiting.
There at the very edge of Nehreen, most of the service workers had withdrawn to the confines of their homes. Behind them, Seiya had to strain to hear the music that rang so loudly from the main road.
The tall one placed the notes in the shorter one's hand and patted his mouth as if to tell him to finish eating. The carrot top wiped his hand on his tan tunic and smoothed his loose afro back, though each curl automatically returned to their initial position.
A voice with the texture of honey called out from inside. "Dameen, Samrak, you are late."
In unison, they bowed so their foreheads nearly touched the sand beneath them, paused, and entered.
Seiya was watching from a distance of no more than three feet when the voice called again, "The invitation is extended to you too, visitor."
The hall of the palace's North wing was mostly empty.
"Patrolling at this hour? The security team will think you have no use for them." Healer leaned against the frame of her door with arms crossed as she watched her teammate pace the hallways once again.
Maker smiled and covered her gloved hand with a yawn, "I could not sleep and thought a walk would clear my senses". She touched the star in the center of her uniform and leather melted away to a long purple sleeping tunic.
"Still worried about Fighter?" Their leader who had once hated to be away from Kakyuu's side now seemed to jump at every chance to leave the palace.
Maker positioned herself opposite of her teammate and leaned against the cold stone of the hallway wall. Her eyes looked towards the ceiling but her mind was settled on matters far past it.
"I am thinking of a way to broach the subject that will lead to the least amount of conflict."
The three often disagreed on anything that didn't directly concern Kakyuu, but now there was more than a feeling of friendly disagreement between them. Fighter was quick to excuse herself from their shared meals, spent all of her free time in her room or off on irrelevant missions, and rarely ever smiled any more.
"It's Fighter. She was not named for being a conversationalist."
Sailor Soldier training on Kinmoku started at age five. Many of the litter were orphans with no family to dissuade their loyalty and no background to be swayed by fame or money. All of them had powerful star seeds, each twinkling at the potential of revealing itself as Sailor Crystal around puberty. Maker had been raised by monks, Healer worked as a cleaner in a brothel, and Fighter was abandoned at an orphanage. The three of them were inseparable from the beginning, even before their powers were awakened and their lifelong duty linked them as family just as puberty began.
They had argued, once or twice cursed each other, but never had secrets between them.
Maker laughed dryly. "Best case scenario she curses us like a tax collector in Center City. Worst case scenario she denies anything is wrong. The odds are sixty-three percent against us".
Her head hung low and she grabbed the knob to her own door. No matter what Fighter was going through, or her attitude about it, she never hid it from them. Even when she was recklessly in love with another planet's princess -an affection that broke about six of the ten Sailor bi-laws, she had shared it with them as casually as the morning news. Now her issues were unknown to them.
Maker felt Healer squeeze her shoulder. "Times are different now, but they will be better. It just takes time. Our world has changed. Life is sometimes ugly before it gets beautiful."
It was rare to get a non-sarcastic answer from Healer, and she was right-time had changed. Their planet was destroyed. They had fled in its final moments to chase after Kakyuu, but the people were powerless to it. Some, even after the realization they were brought back to life had killed themselves in a series of suicides that tainted the first weeks post Chaos. It scared Maker to believe that people didn't see the opportunity in their second chance, they truly believed it was more logical that they were better off dead.
Healer interrupted her spiraling, "Your hair looks a mess from all this stress. Come in and let me comb it for you…when you decide on how you want to approach it we will take it to the Fighter, and if it comes to it, we will take it to Kakyuu."
The smell of olive blossoms drifted down the corridor, "Take what to me?"
Pressed jasmine filled his nostrils. Candles and dark colored boxes with heavy metal locks lined three of the four walls in the room.
The shorter boy, maybe Dameen, pushed a velvety curtain to reveal a wooden door. His partner undid a series of latches with a key from underneath his khaki tunic and looked back at Seiya who had to hunch to avoid hitting the door frame.
Against all of Fighter's training, and Seiya's better judgment, the three descended down a short flight of stairs into an underground room.
Shelves were dug into the walls where more boxes, candles and trinkets covered the walls. It looked almost like a museum. More candles, of varying length lined the back wall. Many people had lived in this room for many years.
In the center of it all a woman with hair like yarn and the color of copper sat on an ornate pillow propped against the back center wall. Her dress was a simple forest green that exposed her mahogany colored chest. She sat cross legged and lit the five candles that formed a barrier in front of her while she hummed softly to herself.
The boys rushed to her side, careful not to cross the perimeter she had made, and presented the papers to her. She read each carefully before burning them in the flame. In exchange, she placed a copper coin in one hand, and a clay one in the palm of the boy who had been keeping food in his cheek. He started to grumble but she raised her hand covered in stone rings and immediately his whimpering stopped. "Dameen, the next time you are late and smelling of sweets you will be lucky to get anything at all."
A sound similar to sniffle escaped but Samrak grabbed his hand to lead him back up the stairs.
Almond eyes the color of honey looked up at him. A jeweled hand gestured to a pillow and in the light he could see a maze of words tattooed onto each palm in green black ink.
"You are welcome, please sit." She gestured to pillow about two feet away from her.
Sitting eye level from her, he couldn't tell her age. Her face looked young, but each lid was covered in a web of thick scar tissue. Somehow her golden eyes and red flecked lashes looked even more beautiful against a patchwork of raised skin that stretched from one triple pierced ear to the other.
Ignoring his intense gaze, she pulled out a deck of cards from her sleeve. "I am Pazmir. What is your name, visitor?"
Sailor Soldiers did not have names. They had titles. Technically Fighter's name was Fighter but he remembered her heart fluttering when Maker told them of their plans to disguise themselves as humans who would share a family name, even if they were aliases. He was here on a mission. Neither his title nor his name would suffice.
"Haruk-"
She cut him off with the same tone she used to address the children, "Please do not lie to me".
She shuffled a deck like one of the gambling lords in the underground. Unlike the obsidian cover of Fighter's cards, ones that framed the past, this woman's tools were different. Ancient letters criss-crossed in overlapping lines that moved with every shuffle of the deck.
Seiya tried to dig through Fighter's memories, but could only remember the symbols were similar to the ones in the ancient temples. Maker was the student of the three, she would know.
The woman watched his mouth move in an effort to pronounce the words and her eyes sparkled. "It's been a while since I've met someone who even recognized the language as more than scribbles. These are hexed. They will not allow you to read them, visitor"
She placed the deck in between them and selected the first card, the letters again sliding like snakes in every direction.
She was clearly an information trader, and a smart one to use children to stay informed, but the marks made him think she was Catcher. Catchers were few and far in between with more frauds amongst them than true mages. They were once advisors to royals before their visions were discarded as conjecture and many persecuted for speaking of visions that told of misfortune, regardless of whether or not it was true. The hairs on his arms prickled in proximity to power, she was polite enough to ask his name when her cards could easily tell him anything she wanted to know.
"Seiya".
Pazmir smiled and her black dyed lips displayed a dazzling gap. "Ah Seiya, a beautiful name, and why do you think you have you come?"
"I am in need of information, I come at the behest of her Royal Princess Kakyuu and wish to know if any threat befalls her future."
There was no need to mince words when he was in front of a seasoned information trader. The best of them knew more about their world than even some of the palace scholars. Pazmir did not seem moved by the invocation of the crown princess and continued to place down three more cards in a diamond between them.
"My cards, like the one in your bag, only tell a picture of what is happening. The information I gather…provides context."
Seiya reached into his bag and placed a gold coin in front of him. He was foolish enough to disrespect her by breaching the line of her magic. His finger pressed in the face of the coin, "I would like to see that picture".
She waved his hand away.
"I do not need my cards to give you that report. Petty thieves, drunkards, do not have many dignified thoughts worth repeating. The views that are focused on the kingdom are happy ones, Royal engagements are the attractions of the rich and the distractions of the poor.
"The nobles dip into their shallow purses and have purchased the finest linens in Nehreen for it. They are expecting the wedding for the ages, even if they themselves can barely afford to go. The people are happy with Kakyuu. Her reign proves to be a step towards a more peaceful kingdom. There are whispers from some that a Silver Savior is the reason we were all brought back. Anyone with an ounce of clairvoyance felt her power. They add her to their prayers. Some have even added her name in the chant of the gods. Unlike her Royal Princess Kakyuu, They hail her because they know of her and do not know her-"
Her eyes twinkled at him and a scoff slipped past her lips, "-but these are things you already knew."
He released his finger from the gold coin and reached in his satchel to pull out two more. This would feed the boys in her care until the next moon.
"I am in need of one more piece of information, and I am hoping you will be discreet."
With a gesture, the coins disappeared into the shadow of her sleeve. Pazmir smiled with eyes downcast, "The most important part of my line of work is in that which I chose not to share".
As she touched the card closest to him a faint gold aura outlined her body.
"Tell me why you are really here Seiya. The cards will tell me if you are lying"
"I have been feeling unwell."
"Your sickness is not one of the body". She remained unblinking. The air in the room felt a bit heavier. The smell of jasmine and vanilla coated his throat.
"It is the truth," and it was. The will of magic felt like being swaddled in a quilt. It was taking all of his focus to keep Fighter at bay, and not succumb to the pressure of her power building in the room.
"I did not call you a liar. I am merely telling you what I see."
She continued, "Catchers cannot see the future. That is simply a lie taken by a few and spread amongst the many. That lie is what caused people to turn against us, in very…unfortunate ways."
Seiya's eyes flickered back to her scars before looking back to the cards.
"Even the Sailor Soldier who guards the very time gates, the daughter of Chronos herself, cannot see the future. She sees a future. What I see are merely the threads of fate that connect every person in this life, tiny cords that reach out in every direction, intersecting with others across this world, even across the universe. That is the power you feel, and it is one power you do not need to be fighting against."
She reached out and put her hand out, hesitantly he leaned forward to touch it. In an instant the room was covered in a series of threads. He saw the threads expand from the Pazmir's body like a maze of cobwebs.
"The threads of fate can change at any moment. Any action can alter the connection you have to another and sever the cord." Her hand pulled back and he could see a silver string extending from her middle finger to the place he just touched. In a blink, the cords disappeared.
The image of the boys dashing past him flashed in his mind.
"I simply catch the moment, display it in the cards, and show it to my clients. It was the thread I saw stem from myself that showed me you were close, that our destinies were meant to intersect."
She flipped over the first card that was closer to her. The galaxy cauldron appeared.
"There are people who are tied by blood, and there are people who are tied by spirit. The boys in my care, they are tied by spirit. They were market orphans with no parents, no family, they have no magic but communicate to each other with their eyes. Dameen, the mischievous one, has never spoken a word. Samrak can speak but simply does not use his voice because Dameen is the only one he believes needs to hear him. From the moment they met, their lives were intertwined. You are tied to someone's spirit"
The next card revealed two stars. They overlapped in a way that looked similar to a cell dividing.
"You are tied to another person, not by spirit or by blood, but by body. One single body and two spirits. It is rare, but not unknown to me. It is an imperfect birth. The power of your individual Star Seed is barely discernible in this form, and if you did not share a body with a Sailor Soldier you would surely not have made it this far. It is against the law of nature for two start seeds to be in one body. In this case one becomes the host, and the other the parasite."
She said it all as calmly as reporting the weather, not once looking up from her cards.
He had never thought of the meaning of his existence. He questioned the how, never the why. Now the answers to both seemed to be unfolding in front of his very eyes.
He had remembered the feeling, underneath the raw need to find his princess it was there. The naked desire for another, the feeling of wanting to stay on Earth forever. Then, it was a sneaking afterthought, now it felt like his deepest sin. Seiya's chin sunk to his chest.
Was I the cause of this?
"My people believe twins are born of one star seed that the gods felt was too powerful to be kept whole. Though there are times the soul does not split evenly in the womb so one soul must survive and must concede." She flipped the star toward herself. It was completely black.
"One body cannot handle the toll of answering to two star seeds, two minds, and two hearts. It is not a disguise or even more advanced shapeshifting. You are changing the very nature of your being every time you transform. It is an incredible strain that even one with your borrowed powers cannot sustain."
His teeth had burrowed into his bottom lip. Nothing he had heard had shocked him. He had plenty of time idling in Figher's subconscious to think of a thousand scenarios. Yet still, hearing it from another person's mouth put something in his heart neither Fighter nor Seiya ever allowed themselves to fully experience: despair.
What had he done to deserve this? Seiya ran his fingers through his bangs and placed his head in his hands. He should have told Kakyuu after the first time this happened.
Fuck.
He should have told Fighter. Fighter should have told Kakyuu. Why didn't she? Or Maker? Or Healer?
He looked into Pazmir's honey eyes, unwavering, a dark gold that held neither malice nor sympathy. He wished he could bring himself to call her a liar, but something in his bones told him everything she had said was true. He knew from the moment he had followed those boys. He was supposed to be here with her. But for this?
His lips parted to speak and the singer's voice cracked immediately folding the room back into a heavy silence.
It was Pazmir rich alto that spoke first. "My diagnosis is a difficult one to hear, but not a death sentence. It is true I have never seen two star seeds housed in a body outside of the mother's stomach. But the gods work in mysterious ways. There is a reason for this."
With a prayer of thanks to her gods she returned the previous two cards to her deck until one remained.
"We are here because we are wanted. Whether you believe in the gods, or your princess, or even the Silver Savior, the truth does not change."
She placed his hands on the last card. "There is never not an answer. Though it may not always be an easy one. There is more in the cards for you. Your journey does not end here."
They flipped it over together.
Framed in the gold lined card was a cloaked white figure with transparent wings. In one hand held a scepter, in the other a glowing yellow stone.
Dejavu crashed onto him like a wave. He fell back onto his hands and stared wide eyed at the image before him. He had seen her a hundred, maybe a thousand times in his mind since they'd left that rooftop. He'd seen her ghost walk the palace walls, in his dreams, in the dumplings at the market, in the whispers among the people and now she was there, painted on the card.
The first time Seiya crossed paths with Usagi at the airport he had known she was different. In the airplane when she transformed in front of him that difference, in their power, and in their paths, left him speechless. He could describe every detail of Super Sailor Moon. Her face was carved into his mind.
Yet there remained one anomaly.
Seiya would never forget the healing light of the silver crystal, but whatever it was in the figure's hand was not it.
"She is the one you seek. The thread tied to her is not like the others. It is a rope." Pazmir looked down and quickly gathered the cards into the deck before gliding them up again in her sleeve.
Her eyes misted over and her brow furrowed in the first show of emotion she had shown during their brief encounter. Her thin fingers rested on the scars on her face.
"Be careful with those you are strongly intertwined with. With two people with threads as complicated as yours..the threads of fate can be a lifeline…or they can be noose around your neck."
Seiya tried to form the words, but his head was swimming. Days of physical and mental exhaustion made every part of his body sting. He had promised himself to leave her alone. To let her be happy and now he selfishly wanted to see her. Need to. To be another burden. Another problem to fix.
He blinked rapidly. The candles in the room swelled and then flickered out. The light emptied out of his eyes.
Pazmir tilted her head and then rose into a kneeling position. The last card slipped under her sleeve.
A disoriented woman moaned as she clutched her head.
"Sailor Star Fighter, it is an honor."