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mikkenekoRating: M
Warnings: Violence.
Summary: In which the White God comes.
Author's Notes: And that's a wrap!
There will be an epilogue coming sooner or later, set about a year in the future, to wrap up some of the loose ends. In the mean time - many thanks to everyone who stuck with me in the time it took to get this monster of a fic written.
Halfway down the mountain, shepherding the last of the Ruval refugees from the encroaching ice and the shadowy demons that prowled its edges, Yukito suddenly stumbled and cried out, clapping both hands over his eyes as he swayed on his feet.
"Yukito, what is it?" cried Shougo, the last of the Ceres wizards to remain upright and moving by Yukito's side in the final flight.
"The light," Yukito gasped, eyes squeezed closed behind his glasses. "The door in the sky, that was blocking all our visions. It's gone. It cannot come to pass, now - it's gone."
Shougo took hold of Yukito, glancing about them with some bewilderment. "But that's a good thing, isn't it?" he asked anxiously.
Yukito shook his head, robbed speechless as the images burst upon his altered eyesight. With the veil drawn back at last, visions of the future unrolled before him - visions of fire and blackness, rending earth and roaring oceans crashing into an endless void. Destruction on a catastrophic scale, death - not only the death of a few humans, a few mere creatures, but the death of the world itself.
"Yukito," Shougo beseeched him, looking behind them at the creeping wall of ice that ground deep trenches in the earth beneath it - and the shadows that crept out of those deep rents in the earth. "We cannot stop here, this is no place to rest. Come, just a little bit further, and we can find refuge -"
How could Yukito explain without sounding mad, how could he hope to convey the scale of destruction that was wrought upon them? There would be no refuge, here or anywhere, if these terrible visions came to pass. And there was nothing they could do - not he, nor Shougo, nor any of the Wizards whose wills and powers yet remained to them - to turn them aside.
Borne upon a litter by four imperial servants in the hasty breakneck scramble to evacuate Shirasagi castle for higher and more stable ground, Tomoyo had not wakened from her swoon since their desperate attack on the dark warlock had failed.
Nor did she awaken now, but uncaring of the bumps and jolts as the servants moved her litter over the rough rocky ground, tears began to track down the Tsukuyomi's somnolent face.
And beneath them, though as yet unnoticed in the fury of the unrelenting storm, the earth began to tremble.
Past the body, through the door the dark warrior woman had guarded, a hallway and a short flight of stairs dead-ended in a cavernous gulf. Syaoran spared it barely a glance; it was a sheer drop into the distance below, there was nowhere in that cavern for Sakura to be hidden from him. So where was she?
A cross-corridor ran left and right, curving around out of sight in each direction. Syaoran dithered for a moment between them, unsure which direction to take. Xing Hua had been guarding this door; therefore the way to Sakura must lie behind it. But which way should he go?
For a moment he wished that he still had the ribbon to guide him, the magical link which had led him all the way from the castle at Ceres to here. For weeks it had been his faithful companion, ever guiding his steps when he faltered towards Princess Sakura.
But no, he'd been wrong, the whole time it was a sinister spell cast by the warlock Fei Wong Reed himself. He'd been no more than a dupe. There had never been any red ribbon, no mystical connection between Sakura and himself. And now, when he needed more than ever a direction to follow, he saw nothing.
Don't trust your eyes, a voice whispered to him encouragingly; it sounded like Sensei. Follow your heart.
After a moment with his eyes squeezed shut, Syaoran spun to the right and dashed off down the corridor. Right or wrong, he couldn't afford to hesitate a moment longer.
The hallway led along a series of twisting paths, then ended in an imposing-looking door. Syaoran threw it open to reveal a dark, curving spiral stairwell beyond, and hurtled heedlessly along the path it revealed. The distance flew by underneath his feet, long strides eating up the ground as fast as he could push himself, yet at the same time distance itself seemed to stretch out in front of him impossibly.
He did not know how long it had been before he burst out of the dark descending tunnel into a huge underground cavern. The searing light from below made his eyes water and squint, and it took a long moment of searching before the picture resolved.
Sakura - his heart leapt into his throat at the sight of her, lovely, wonderful Sakura! - stood on a ledge a short way away and above him, its stone formation jagged and half-cracked from some impact. The eerie golden glow that came from beneath illuminated her in stark relief - throwing every hair into sharp visibility, reflecting and refracting off her pale perfect skin and flowing white gown - and Syaoran could not tear his eyes away to look down to see where that light came from.
Behind Sakura, facing her across the short distance of the ledge - Syaoran's teeth clenched, he'd know that solemn visage anywhere even though he'd only seen it once. It was a face that would burn itself into his nightmares.
"Sakura!" Syaoran shouted. His voice was thin and reedy in the cavern air, whipped away unheard. She didn't turn around or react; she hadn't heard him. Neither did Fei Wong Reed, but that seemed a poor consolation. He had to reach her, he had to let her know he was here, that she was not alone. He tried again. "Sakura!"
Coming from below them in the cavern was a muted rumble, a susurration like the noise of a storm or a crowd. It faded into the background of the mind, but it wasn't until he tried to make himself heard over it that Syaoran realized just how loud it was. He spared a glance downwards, away from the tableau of Sakura and Fei Wong Reed - and froze in horror.
The glow coming from below was not from lamps or torches, but from the very surface of what appeared to be a slick, heaving ocean of unnatural light. It reminded Syaoran of nothing so much as standing in the caldera of a volcano - except, of course, that if they were this close to so much molten rock, no mere balustrade or ledge would keep them from being roasted like a chicken in its very proximity. Seized by a new fear for Sakura, Syaoran dragged his gaze upwards, gathering his voice to shout again -
Just in time to see Sakura step backwards off the ledge into nothing.
"Sakuraaaaaa!" The useless cry tore itself from his lips, as Syaoran surged forward to slam against the stone railing and reach out his hand across the empty space - useless, fruitless, she was much too far away for him to reach. Her limbs fluttered as she fell through the space between them, and she did not even open her eyes or turn her head towards him.
And then her tumbling body reached the surface of the light below, and flared for one brief moment before disappearing into nothingness.
Syaoran was screaming, he could feel his throat shredding raw as his knees cracked painfully against the stone, but he could not hear himself over the bellow of molten fury that filled the cavern. It was a howl of rage and frustration and hatred that had been centuries in the making, now loosed from its confines to shake the very walls and foundations of this mountain.
"No!" Fei Wong Reed roared, his face twisted into a paroxysm of thwarted rage. "This cannot be! Not now, not after so long - not after I have come so far! To have come so close, to have her within my grasp at last, only to have it torn away so -"
His tirade cut off abruptly, and the sudden silence that followed it was far more ominous. Fei Wong Reed stood at the edge of the stone precipice, the light from below illuminating his dark robes and the horns of his beard or his hair, casting his face in a lurid glow. Only his eyes glittered with a light of their own, cold as the winds that howled on the frozen tops of mountains. Those eyes landed on Syaoran, who froze beneath their weight, but did not seem to truly see him.
"Damnation upon this world," Fei Wong Reed said, every word clearly enunciated into the quivering air. "Damnation upon the little people who crawl upon its surface, the petty kings and tyrants who think themselves lords. For untold years I have labored in their service, I have sought to bring salvation to this world and its people, only to have my great efforts spurned and thrown back in my face. I will labor no more. Let it all crack and burn, and be damned upon it."
Syaoran had heard much worse language back in Edo - he'd associated with boys of the warrior class, after all - and he'd heard all manner of inventive curses and threats over the years. Yet something about this short, precise speech made his mouth go dry and his knees go weak; Fei Wong Reed somehow didn't sound like he was speaking in metaphors…
Fei Wong Reed raised his arms above his head, and the crucible below him roared to new uneasy life in response to the gesture. Swirls of light heaved and tossed, straining upwards to meet his hands; a dull orange glow began to grow around the warlock, forming sigils and symbols in the air that hurt Syaoran's eyes to look at.
This was bad. This was really bad; Syaoran didn't need any magical training to tell him that, not with the way the stone walls writhed in agony in response to the first few symbols. He had to do something, he knew, he had to find some way to stop Fei Wong Reed from casting his terrible magics - but he wasn't sure what he could do when the warlock was up there and he was down here, with no way to bridge the gap and no weapon except a sword, which for all its versatility was not a weapon for long range.
Before he could work himself up to some course of action, however foolish or suicidal, a motion from overhead caught his eye. He looked up to see a blur of white and blue and black, which resolved itself into his teacher and the wizard Fai dropping rapidly down from overhead. Half-floating, half-falling, they seemed to be descending on some glowing blue strands that looked not-quite-real in the dimness, but it held their weight well enough. The two of them landed with solid crunches on the rock on either side of Syaoran.
"Fai-san -" Syaoran looked up at the pale man, feeling grief rush through him all over again. He remembered now that this was the man that Sakura had looked up to as an older brother. "Sakura - she's dead, he killed -"
"I know," Fai interrupted him. Syaoran wanted to scream at him for how calm his voice sounded, at least until he looked close enough to see the glimmer of tear tracks at the corner of the wizard's eyes. "I felt her presence vanish."
"She fell," Syaoran blurted out. "She stepped off the edge. I couldn't catch her, I couldn't stop her. I called out to her, but she didn't hear -"
"It's not your fault," Kurogane said, his voice gruff but gentle. "But now's not the time to grieve. We've got to deal with this."
Syaoran nodded, words clogging in his throat as tears poured down his cheeks. He swiped them away with a rough sleeve, then took a deep and steadying breath. "Sakura gave her life for this world," he said in a wavering voice. "I won't let her sacrifice be in vain."
"That's the spirit, kid," Kurogane said with a small, sharp, approving smile. It faded as he looked over at his partner, tense and strained. "So. What are we gonna do?"
Fai stood up straight, the furious air currents of the cavern whipping his hair around his face. His blue eye was intent upon their foe, and he spread his hands out in front of him as though testing the temperature. "He's dropped his shield," he said. "Either he can't maintain it and this spell at the same time, or he no longer cares."
"That's good, right?" Syaoran said. "If the shield's gone, we can just take him out the normal way, right?"
"We'll have to get to him first, and with all the volatile magic he's putting out, that won't be as easy as it sounds," Fai said. "I'll do my best to create a safe path for you, but that's the most I can do. I have to concentrate on slowing down the spell he's channeling before it tears the planet apart."
Syaoran stared at Fai in slowly growing horror. He didn't seem to be joking, or exaggerating at all. "He can do that?" he said in a sick tone. "He can't do that, can he?"
"Be ready to strike fast," Fai said, and began to whisper words of power as blue-white magic stirred and flickered between his palms.
"Give me that," Kurogane muttered, and before Syaoran could object his master had pulled the still-bloodied sword out of his hands and dropped into his stance. The shorter blade looked almost ludicrous against Kurogane's height, but it was better than the half-melted sword - now no longer than a dagger, with a comically oversized hilt - that Kurogane pushed into Syaoran's hand in exchange. "I'll keep him busy. You try to get behind him and find a place to stick that."
Fai's magic rose. Blue clashed with orange as the two competing powers raged in the stone chamber. Even with his insensitivity to arcane matters, Syaoran could see that the orange was the stronger, seething in ugly clouds against the walls and pushing against the blue-white arms fit to drown them. Still the wizard of Ceres persisted, and an ethereal bridge sprang into being across the deadly span, offering a path of attack between themselves and Fei Wong Reed.
Syaoran hung back a moment more, wary and dismayed at trusting his weight to such a thing, but Kurogane had no such compunctions; with a howling war-cry he leapt across the bridge and rushed towards his enemy, weapon raised. Syaoran trailed in his wake, wondering if he was going to be any use at all, as injured and disarmed as he was.
It should have been a simple matter, now that Fei Wong Reed had dropped his shield, to close with him and dispatch him with a blade. But the air around him was heavy and thick with simmering magics, which slowed their movements and dulled the swing of a blade. Kurogane attacked the warlock head-on, only to be flung back with a violent thrust of his black-clad arms; Kurogane's sword-swing left a rent in his robe and a gash in his arm, but Syaoran couldn't tell if it was even bleeding or not.
The ominous red-orange light did not disperse; the cavern walls were faintly rumbling, now, and Syaoran had no idea how long they had before the whole place dropped on their heads. Would that be enough to stop Fei Wong Reed? Syaoran spared a glance behind him and saw Fai, crouched on the platform opposite with his head bowed over blue light gathered in his arms. Whatever he was doing, he'd be no help to them in this tangled melee.
Syaoran thrust forward, seeking an opening for the knife - but then a powerful wave of invisible force knocked him backwards. He saw Kurogane, on the other side from him, bracing himself against the stone - but he had not the footing, and the ripping winds continued to force him backwards until he was teetering on the very lip of the ledge, not far from where Sakura herself had fallen.
Sakura… A spike of pain shot through Syaoran's heart, worse than the agony from his throbbing shoulder. Was it even worth saving the world, if she was not in it? No. Don't think like that. Sakura had given her life to protect this world; it was up to him to make sure that her sacrifice wasn't in vain.
Kurogane forced his way forward, one step at a time, sword outstretched with a monumental effort. Syaoran saw his teacher's teeth clenched in a tight grimace, saw the muscles of his arms and legs shaking with the effort of pushing back against that impossible force. In one swift movement, Kurogane stabbed the sword forward into Fei Wong Reed's chest, and -
And nothing happened. He might as well have thrust his blade into a wooden stump. There was no blood, no death-cry, and Fei Wong Reed continued to move with ease, apparently no more harmed than if they'd stuck him with a pin. A cry of despair welled in Syaoran's throat; what did they have to do to kill him?
The warlock had no weapon, but perhaps he needed none, for as he raised his arms the roaring of terrible magics redoubled in Syaoran's ear. A hurricane formed with Fei Wong Reed in its eye, and invisible projectiles screamed and spun in its winds. Something unseen clouted Syaoran on the back of the head, and he fell to his hands and knees on the edge of the rock, barely clinging to the face in time not to be swept over.
That was why, of all the people locked in mortal struggle in this cavern, Syaoran was the only one looking in the right direction when a glittering figure appeared from the blinding morass below.
She rose from the crucible on wings of golden light, arcing high and bright above her. Her body was a small, dark outline against the brilliant aura, but the same white-golden light suffused her features and stirred strands of her hair to float about her. Her eyes were flashing pools of white, and tear-streaks of light ran down her cheeks.
"Sakura?" Syaoran whispered uncertainly.
If she heard or saw him at all, she didn't react; all her furious attention was focused on the stone ledge above him, where the dark warlock still channeled his world-breaking magic. "Fei Wong Reed!" Sakura called out, her voice magnified a hundredfold from its normal soft and demure tenor. Behind it hummed a multitude of voices, a choir of song, a screaming riot, all united for this moment to one purpose.
Fei Wong Reed turned to look at her, as slow and lumbering as a great beast woken from sleep. Were his movements really that slow and clumsy, or was Syaoran viewing everything through time-distorted perspective? Around the edges of the chambers, even the rocks that had shaken loose from the walls had ceased to fall.
As Fei Wong Reed took in the sight of Sakura, brilliant and ascendant, the dark saturnine scowl that was the only expression Syaoran had ever seen on his face evaporated to be replaced by a look of stunned shock.
"My… God," he whispered, and his voice sounded strangely hopeful - almost welcoming.
"You want power?" Sakura demanded, white tears of light streaking down her face and sparking off into nothingness. "Then you shall have power!"
She raised one hand and extended it towards Fei Wong Reed, crackling and alive with power. A brilliant spark flared to life in the palm of her hand, then leapt across the distance to Fei Wong Reed in the blink of an eye. Fei Wong Reed never had the chance to lift a hand or say a word to defend himself, even if he had shown the inclination. Even if there had been any spell in the world that could have saved him.
The light that engulfed Fei Wong Reed filled the whole chamber, so brilliant as to be blinding; it left blue-green spots dancing across Syaoran's vision, yet he could not look away. First Fei Wong Reed was surrounded by the light, all shadows banished as for one brief moment he looked small and unreal. In the next moment the light grew until it shone through him, the dark shadow of his bones playing through clothes and skin and muscle that shredded away. He opened his mouth, but there was no time to scream before his voice, too, was immolated along with the rest.
The light grew brighter yet, and Syaoran couldn't help it; his eyes flinched closed in sheer self-protective reflex. Even behind his closed lids it flared blood-red, and for a moment he feared it would consume them all as it just had Fei Wong Reed.
But then it flickered and went out, and when Syaoran at last dared to open his eyes again, there was nothing left where Fei Wong Reed had been standing at all. Barely even a smear of ash.
The glaring silhouette faded away, and for a moment the cavern looked dim and dreamlike by comparison, lit from beneath by the maelstrom of magic.
Then the light itself flickered - died - left them for a moment plunged into a blackness so absolute Syaoran wasn't sure if the world really had ended -
And then exploded, erupting from the ground beneath their feet to the ceiling lost out of sight high above. A roaring noise like high tide interspersed with the rumbling noise of grating and grinding stone, and then the stone-arched roof cracked and gave way under the relentless pressure. For the first time since the shaping of this world, daylight poured in from the pale sky overhead to illuminate the cavern under the earth.
Syaoran slumped back against the stone wall, too dizzy and shaken to find his feet, and watched a hundred thousand souls scream in triumph as they thundered into the sky above.
Kurogane and Fai had been on opposite points of the stone ledge circling the caldera. As soon as it became obvious that Sakura was going to land, and where, they'd both made a break for her from both directions at once.
Fai reached Sakura first, and Kurogane had to allow that was fair. The mage's face lit from within by an ecstatic glow that Kurogane hadn't seen since that awful moment in the room up above, when Fai had told him that Sakura's magical signature had snuffed out. It was back now and with a vengeance, as Fai stepped forward and stretched a hand towards his beloved little sister whom he'd thought lost forever.
"Sakura!" Fai exclaimed, beaming from ear to ear despite the anxiety that still hovered tight about his eyes. "My little flower-princess, I'm so glad you're safe! Are you all right? What happened to you, did you -"
Sakura turned to face her older brother, and although the blinding glow had lessened somewhat - Kurogane could see her eyes and face underneath it now - golden light still streamed off her like water sluicing off a swimmer emerging from the water. "Oh - yes,"she said, in the tone of someone who had just been reminded of something they'd absentmindedly forgot. She reached up one hand and casually touched it to Fai's, where his arms outstretched towards her.
A white spark jumped from her skin to his, burrowing into his flesh and glowing within his hand for a moment before it disappeared. It looked so much like the force that had just burned Fei Wong Reed from within, but surely it couldn't be - Fai was Sakura's brother and she loved him, she would never bring him harm -
A belief that was sorely tested as Fai dropped to the ground, mouth and eye stretched wide in an expression of total shock. No sound passed his lips except for a hiss of air, but tiny twitches in his arms and legs quickly escalated into full-on convulsions. Kurogane lunged forward, momentarily bypassing Sakura in order to grab his lover's arm and pull him halfway across his lap, searching for some injury or cause for this reaction.
Finding none, he turned on Sakura and demanded, "What did you do to him?"
It wasn't the words he'd had planned for this reunion, if he ever thought he'd have the good luck to see Sakura alive again. He likedPrincess Sakura, he really did; she was tough and smart and kinder than almost anyone he'd known. But that was before she'd been kidnapped by an evil warlock for weeks on end, vanished out of known civilization and dipped in strange wild magics and come back… different.
Sakura replied as though the answer should be obvious. "I made him better."
"The hell you say!" Kurogane's grip shifted on Fai's shoulders as the mage tried to curl in on himself, muscles twitching and jerking as he shook without a sound. "He doesn't look better, he looks like you just half killed him!"
"The structure of his body is changing," Sakura explained. Her voice had a distant, faraway sound, as though she were only half attending - but the unnatural reverberation was slowly fading out of it, leaving only her sweet voice once more. "It's only natural that it would be painful."
And that… didn't really explain anything, but it opened up the field of possibilities in a new and disturbing way, enough that Kurogane swallowed the verbal lash that had jumped to his lips and seriously considered his next words.
"Princess, what's happening?" he said, his voice even and nearly calm.
She turned to face him, and he could see the shape of the iris and pupil of her eyes, now, under the hazy golden glow. Could almost, faintly, see the green color of the princess' real eyes. "They're all leaving," she said, and one faintly-glowing arm spread out to encompass the open space. Behind her, the thunderous cascade of voices and shapes half-dissolved into light continued to pour into the sky. "They wanted to be free for so long, and now that Fei Wong Reed is gone, they can be. They agreed to lend me their power for just a little while, so that I could take care of him, and take care of everything else too."
Everything else? Kurogane wondered. That was such an open-ended statement, he wasn't sure what to make of it. Just how much of Fei Wong Reed's own grand delusions could be caught up in that everything else?
"I'm not sure I'm getting it right, but I'm trying my best…" Sakura trailed off, frowning absently into space with her head cocked to one side as though listening to some unheard voice. "But the more of them go, the less power there is. That's why I had to fix Fai-niisan now, before it all went away."
In his lap Fai uncurled a bit with a gasp, pulling his hands away from his face. He opened his eye, and the gaze that stared out unseeing over the darkness of the cavern was bleary and unfocused and blue.
The puzzle pieces clicked, and Kurogane felt a wave of dizzying emotion sweep over him; half awed gratitude at what Sakura had done for Fai, what Fai and all his fellow mages had long since despaired of as impossible. Cleansing him of the demonic magic that had remade him in the image of the monster, of the geas that had chained him to Kurogane's side with the threat of life and death. At the same time he felt a strange echo of loss and resentment that came with the understanding of what he and Fai would no longer have to share, when the blood bond between them was gone. And above all a surge of anger; sister or no, what right had Sakura to go meddling with Fai's body without asking him first? Who died and made her God?
Oh. Fei Wong Reed. Right.
"They talked to me before," Sakura said abruptly, and Kurogane immediately refocused his attention on her - on this little slip of a girl who casually, if temporarily, wielded enough power to reshape continents. "When I was searching between the worlds, I heard their voices. They called me down here, before I really understood what was happening. And when I fell, they were able to tell me what they needed. But I almost forgot - they wanted to talk to you, too."
"Who did?" Kurogane demanded, tensing up at the prospect of some new foe to fight.
"They do," Sakura nodded to the side, reaching up into the stream of light as if to pluck a hanging cord. A double swirl of ether detached from the flow to wind about her hand and arm, glowing in perfect tandem with the light still filtering her eyes, and Sakura smiled and tilted her head as if listening.
Then the strands of light separated from each other and from her hand, spiraling down towards the stone floor like fluttering streamers. The air around them shifted and condensed, dancing with motes of light like dust caught in a sunbeam, into the form of two people.
Kurogane's mind ground to a halt; for a few minutes he could not even remember to be worried for Fai, let alone wary of Sakura or anything else.
For the faces smiling at him from bodies made of shifting light and shadow belonged to his parents.
"Hahaue?" Kurogane breathed, his voice gone suddenly high and small. "Chichiue? Is it… really you?"
"The one and only, kiddo," his father's shade said. Beaming at him just the way that Kurogane remembered - only the angle of view had changed. His father held his mother's shoulders in the circle of his arm, pulling her comfortably against his broad chest - and she was smiling too, his hand clasped in hers.
"How?" Kurogane forced the word from his lips, powered by a half-laugh, half-sob. "You… were… but the demons destroy souls, they can never be reborn, they -"
"Trapped," his mother corrected him gently, "but not destroyed. He needed us, after all, to provide power for his great schemes. But trapped no longer."
She glanced up at the stream of joyously raucous departing souls, and her ghostly smile took on a sad tinge. "The confinement did take its toll, on some," she said. "Many have forgotten… what memories did, and did not, once belong to them. We were luckier than most."
"Lucky how?" Kurogane demanded, glaring all the more fiercely to try to burn through the tears that wavered threateningly in his eyes.
His father gave a little laugh, and raised his wife's hand high enough to brush the back of it with his chin, a fond gesture familiar enough to stop Kurogane's heart. "Your mother is the best miko in three provinces, you know," he said. "Maybe her wards couldn't keep my soul in my body - really, just as well, considering what else happened to that body once I wasn't in it any more - but they protected me afterwards, kept me sane and my memories whole. And kept us together."
Kurogane's eyes widened with horror as he realized for the first time what had become of his mother's soul at Fei Wong Reed's hands. "Hahaue, you too? I never knew - you weren't killed by a demon, I never dreamed -"
"He sought out the souls of many a strong miko or wizard, for those souls had the most power," his mother explained. A slight smile quirked up one side of her mouth, the mysterious expression she'd so often worn. "I should have been flattered, I suppose, that he regarded my work so highly that he came to harvest me in person."
Anguish roiled through him; for years he'd worked to come to terms with the bloody reality of his father's death, knowing that his soul was stricken from the cycle of reincarnation forever - yet he'd always thought that his mother, at least, would know peace. How could he have been so naïve, so blind - that his mother's spirit was imprisoned in this terrible place for years, with him none the wiser?
"Don't start feeling sorry for yourself now, kiddo!" his father advised him sternly, hugging his wife closer to his side. "It's all over now. We held out hope that someone would be able to break the seals and put a stop to Fei Wong Reed's machinations - although we never dreamed it would be you."
"I sensed you were nearby, Youou." His mother looked at him with soft eyes, and even in their ghostly reflection he could see the love that had always filled them. "We could not depart this world without seeing you one more time, to see the man that you had grown into, and to say goodbye."
Involuntarily protests sprung to his lips - don't go. I missed you. Please don't leave. I only just found you again. - but Kurogane stifled them to silence. They must have read the silent cry in his eyes, though, because the insubstantial pair took a step closer to him, concern and love in their eyes. His mother reached out and trailed one hand along the side of his face; the touch was neither warm nor cold, but sparked along his skin like lightning.
"We don't wish to leave you, dear one," his mother whispered tenderly, "but we have delayed on this world too long as it is. We must move on, but you have a life here of your own - and a miko of your own to look after, and to tend to you in turn." She nodded to Fai, still shuddering with recovery and still wrapped in Kurogane's arms.
"You've grown up," his father said gruffly, and tousled Kurogane's hair with ghost-hands that nonetheless managed to make a mess of the black strands. "I swear you're taller than I was. Not to mention stronger. This demon-hunting business has been good for you, but maybe it's time to consider a safer occupation, hey? Especially now that it looks like we're going to be thin on demons."
"What do you mean?" Kurogane demanded, but his father only gave him a mysterious smile that seemed the echo of his wife's.
"You'll see." They pulled back from him, and their outlines seemed to waver and stream away upwards into nothingness. "Goodbye, Youou. When your lover wakes, give him our regards. He was never unwanted, no matter what he thought."
Don't make me say goodbye, don't make me say it… "Take care of yourselves," Kurogane finally managed to choke out, the closest he could come to admitting it.
"We will," his mother promised, and her smile blurred and ran together with the rest of her features. "Never forget that we love you."
"And never forget that we're proud," his father added, no more than an outline by this time.
Their images wavered and bent like a reflection in a pond disturbed by a rock, and then vanished in gold-white streams into the upwelling light.
"What did she mean by that?" Fai's voice was a weak whisper, but it served to jolt Kurogane out of his trance, straining upwards into the blinding sky as though he could still see traces of their faces there.
"Hey," he said abruptly, his voice gruff and thickened by tears he would not let fall. "Don't move around so much yet." He added a moment later, "How are you feeling?"
"Human," Fai gasped, struggling to pull himself upright. Kurogane helped him to sit up, but pressed down on his shoulders when he made to stand. "Weak. I'm not sure off the top of my head if this was how I always felt before, or if the transformation took all the strength I had, or -"
"Or maybe you're just hungry," Kurogane interrupted him. "God knows saving the world takes a lot of energy, and I don't know when you last ate real food."
"Ah." Fai eased back down into a sitting position, and Kurogane sat next to him, a steadying hand warm on his back. His expression was still troubled, his blue eye dark. "What did she mean by that? That I was, was never unwanted?"
"I saw her in there too," Sakura said unexpectedly, turning away from whatever contemplation of fate and magic had absorbed her. Her hair moved a little separate from the rest of her as she turned, floating in strands away from her head as though she were underwater. She was still glowing, albeit more faintly now. "Your mother, the queen. She tried to protect you, you know. From him."
"Protect me?" Fai's voice was half-laugh, half-sob. He raised one fisted hand to his mouth, his eyes squeezed shut. "That wasn't how it seemed at the time."
Sakura regarded him sadly, solemnly through those uncanny eyes. "She was insane even before Fei Wong Reed trapped her here," she said quietly. "I don't think she really understood what she was doing to you - and she's gone past all excuses now. But it wasn't because she didn't love you, both of you. I just wanted you to know that. It was never that she didn't love you."
Fai said nothing, his face crumpling. Kurogane put his arm around Fai's thin shoulders and hugged him forcefully, feeling a weird sense of déjà vu at the echo of his father's posture to his mother, in those exquisitely sweet and painful moments that he'd had with them. Was it a sorrow or a mercy, that Fai's own mother couldn't have visited him the same way? Either way, Kurogane would take care of him now.
The light in the cavern gradually dimmed, the hue shifting, until Kurogane realized with a blink that he was seeing by no more than plain daylight now, filtering down from the ragged hole in the ceiling far above. The glow around Sakura had faded to a faint coruscating aura, and she had gradually descended until her slippered feet were flat on the stone. Even as Kurogane looked at her, she swayed on her feet; Kurogane would have reached to support her if his arms weren't already full.
"Princess!" Syaoran was already there at her elbow, reaching out anxiously for her. "Are you all right? Say something!"
"I'm fine," Sakura gasped, and she blinked heavily even as she dipped and swayed, fighting off a wave of intense sleepiness or a slide into unconsciousness. "I'm almost there, almost…"
"Don't push yourself," he begged her, catching her gently by the arm and easing them both down against the ground. Somehow he managed to arrange it so that she was half-reclining against him, draped over his lap. "Please, don't give too much of yourself away. I couldn't bear it if anything else happened to you. You've done enough!"
"One more thing," Sakura murmured; the flickering glow seemed to rouse itself for one last effort, and she reached up one faintly pulsing white hand to touch Syaoran's injured shoulder.
Syaoran yelped, swallowing a muffled curse as he sat bolt upright as though an arrow had been shot down his spine. A moment later, the pain faded, to be replaced entirely with surprise and awe. Tentatively, he moved his arm, then rotated his shoulder with increasing confidence. "You fixed it!" he breathed out. "Princess, you didn't have to…"
"I wanted to," Sakura whispered, her eyelashes drooping across her cheeks. "I saved the very last of it for you. And besides…" She yawned once, then relaxed into a boneless slump against Syaoran's lap. "I told you… to call me… just Sakura…"
The look on Syaoran's face, as the realization dawned on him that Sakura had remembered him - despite all the time they'd been apart, all the distance and blood and chaos that had fallen between them - did more to light up the cave than the sun.
Syaoran touched Sakura's face gently, reverently, as though she were made of the finest porcelain. "Is she -" He cut himself off and swallowed hard, seeming close to tears despite the beaming smile on his face.
"Just sleeping," Fai said. He sounded half-sunk in dreams himself, huddled limp and defenseless in Kurogane's arms.
Kurogane looked around them, at the now-empty caldera and the wreckage of magic and stone strewn in pieces around them. He knew they needed to get up, get out of here, move to some more stable ground - a fall from this height would kill them even without the deadly presence of volatile magic - get everyone fed, treat the wounded, gather together enough travel gear to make a return home -
But for now, he let his head fall back against the stone wall with a thump, and vented a soft huff of laughter. But for now, it was enough to just be here, with his family. His living family, he thought - because that's what they were, the four of them together.
They were alive.
Above the desert plain, a great fountain of light shot into the sky as the freed souls screamed in joy at their release. They streamed upwards into the vast, endless blue, no more trapped under dark stone or by confining wards of magic, unbound and unfettered at last. They lingered for a time, still held in human shape and close connections by the force of old habits, before gradually their tenuous connections to the world faded and they dissipated away… elsewhere.
A wave of power rolled out from the epicenter, untainted by the whispering despair of trapped souls; it was pure and clear white, driven by the one mind behind it who had made herself, however temporarily, the avatar of their vengeance.
Now that justice had been done, she had a few minutes before the souls departed this world, a few minutes in which she held unparalleled power at her hands. She was unpracticed at wielding it, but she knew she did not have time to waste in hesitation; every second that trickled away was another one lost.
So she sent the wave outwards through the world, and everywhere it passed the chaos of Fei Wong Reed's savage destruction subsided. Clouds parted; glaciers melted; floodwaters receded; wounds mended; cracks in the earth sealed over boiling mud and scalding lava, leaving untouched earth behind.
From that earth bloomed a plethora of bounty, plants growing unnaturally fast and wild over the scarred and ravaged ground. Plants blossomed without regard to the season, fruits and grains ripening on the vine even as other trees flowered softly beside them. Through the coming weeks the harvest never wilted or rotted, the earth remaining a garden through which any could walk and pluck a meal off a branch or a stalk. Trees and rushes too grew with unnatural speed, awaiting the day when hearts and limbs were strong enough to begin the work of rebuilding.
And then the light flickered, and faded, and went out - bled away in incremental bits in each small miracle, each push of power. Slowly the clouds crept back in over the sky; ordinary clouds now, bearing ordinary rain, without the uncanny malice of dark purpose.
It was not a perfect world. There could be no such thing, not with the steady march of time and the endless restless quarrels of its peoples bringing endless strife. But it was on this evening - through the labors of love, the valor of courage, and the heartbreak of sacrifice - a better world than before.
The world settled in its orbit, peaceful under its green mantle, and kept on turning as it ever had - bearing the creatures upon it into night, then into morning.
~the end.
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Date: 2013-01-21 09:26 am (UTC)But congratulations, because you are goddamn amazing. And while I'm waiting for the epilogue, there's nothing to say I can't just reread it. Again. And again and again and again.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-22 01:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-22 11:08 am (UTC)