![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mikkenekoRating: M
Warnings: Violence, character death.
Summary: In which Sakura encounters gravity, Fai and Syaoran fight in duels, and Fei Wong Reed hits his enrage timer.
The world was not as she had left it.
It seemed unfair, Sakura thought, that so much could go wrong when one was asleep (or rather, tranced a thousand miles out of one's own body) and unable to keep up. She had closed her eyes on the familiar, staid setting of the stone-walled throne room; she opened them to a cataclysm.
All around her the rock was trembling and roaring, cracks appearing in the curved walls and fissures opening in the floor. Overhead arched the familiar orange-lit lines of Mister Reed's wards, but they were no longer curving stately loops of power. The pattern warped and sagged, broken into fragments in some places and in others looking to have melted and run in virulent orange streams.
"What?" Sakura began to ask, the words escaping her mouth in a breathless whisper, moments before a tremendous explosion roared somewhere in the depths of the citadel. The stone chamber shook; the orange ward-lines flared, then twisted and sagged further out of the pattern.
"My lady, you're awake!" a female voice exclaimed, and a figure rushed towards her. In her blurred confusion Sakura was slow to put a name to the face, although she knew enough to recognize instantly that it was not Fei Wong Reed nor Xing Hua. Sakura was glad of the reprieve at not having to face Mister Reed yet, but she couldn't help feel a pang of lonely disappointment that her best friend and mentor was not here.
Hinata, Sakura remembered after a frozen moment, with her pale eyes and dark soft hair in a short bob around her face. A cluster of three or four of Sakura's ladies-in-waiting huddled a short way away, clustered on one of the few bare unbroken stretches of ground. They were obviously frightened by the noise and the wreckage and the twisting streamers of burning magic, but Sakura couldn't help but admire the way they clung to their duty in the face of everything.
"What is happening?" Sakura gasped out. She tried to rise from the throne, only to find her limbs too weak and shaking to bear her weight yet. The maid caught her arm and helped her to stand, then to stumble down the broad stone steps towards the floor. The throne alone among all else in the chamber stood unmarked and unperturbed by the destruction, yet none of Sakura's ladies had chosen to retreat there for safety or stability.
"Chosen One, you must come with us," Hinata begged, and her trembling fingers were icy-cold on Sakura's arm. "We must get to safety. We could not disturb you while you were in the trance, but now that you are with us again -"
"What's happening?" Sakura repeated forcefully. As if to answer her, another boom rolled through the stone chamber; the walls rattled, and fine dust filtered down from the ceiling.
"We are being attacked, milady," Hinata said reluctantly. "Invaders have broken into the citadel, infidels seeking to destroy all we have worked for, seeking you. The Herald has gone to hold them off, but it is not safe to stay here, so close to his terrible magics."
"Invaders?" Sakura gasped, and sudden startled hope and fear bloomed and twined together in her chest. Perhaps someone had come to rescue her after all; if Mister Reed was really as bad and evil as Yuuko had said, then surely anyone who was his enemy must be Sakura's friend. Instead of running away like the maid wanted, maybe she ought to be running towards the battle? Maybe the invaders would see her, and pick her up, and they could stop fighting, and Sakura could go home...
The greater part of Sakura tried to crush the hope, warning her that she had no way of knowing who or what the attackers wereexcept that they were apparently willing to bring the citadel down on everyone's heads to get what they wanted. They couldn't be from Ceres; all the wizards were dead, her own father had killed them. Anyone who was left alive was fleeing from the glacier with the rest of her people, far away on the other side of the mountains from here. These new people, who knew who they were or what they wanted? They might be Mister Reed's enemy, indeed, but that didn't mean they would regard her as a friend. And if she ran out there now, in the middle of a fight between two mages, she was just as likely to get killed.
"Milady, come!" Hinata is pulling at her wrists, anxious and pleading as she tries to pull them both towards the other group of ladies-in-waiting and from there to the opposite door, and Sakura knew she should go. She should do as she's told, but she didn't want -
She resisted the pull, and hesitated with a wavering step towards the battle and noise. She didn't want to have to fight with Mister Reed, even if she'd promised Yuuko she would. He'd get angry at her again, like he did before, and Sakura cringed and crumbled at the thought of his thundering voice, his stern eyes. Even worse than his wrath was the thought of his disappointment, that she should fail in the promise she'd given - that in the end she should be no use to him at all.
Useless. Worthless. Like she was in Ceres. Like she had been to her father. Like she was to everyone, in the end. All she'd wanted to do was help people, but somehow everything went so wrong -
"Lady Sakura!" Hinata said, and her voice has gone shrill with desperation. "We must go!" She pulled at Sakura's arms, no longer deferential and gentle but instead half-dragging Sakura across the stone.
"No, wait -" Sakura said, digging in her heels and pulling back. Maybe she couldn't go towards the sounds of battle, couldn't run to the arms of whoever was attacking the citadel - but that didn't mean she had to obey Mister Reed's people, either. Maybe if she could get out from under their eye, she could hide somewhere until this all blows over. Maybe she could sneak out, and run away, and never have to face Fei Wong Reed at all.
She hesitated just a bit too long. A crackling roar sounded from the chambers beyond, worse than all the other explosions put together; it sounded like nothing so much as the anguished bellow of some monstrous beast, screaming its death throes as it was rent limb from limb. The entire chamber shook, vibrating like a bell; the last dull-orange lines of magic convulsed and slid off the walls as though they were merely paint.
White-gold light shot up suddenly from the cracks in the ground, spearing upwards towards the roof overhead. The floor underneath their feet heaved and dipped as though writhing in agony, then cracked into a hundred pieces each outlined in brilliant light -
And then the floor was gone, and Sakura fell.
Syaoran circled warily, keeping his distance from the strange woman who had appeared to bar his way. He felt carefully for footing on the rough stone floor, while his mind raced over everything his master had ever told him about the kusarigama and - more importantly - how to fight it.
What he could remember wasn't very reassuring. Kurogane had told him, in his usual blunt way, that there were only two kinds of wielders of the chain-and-sickle - clumsy fools, and total masters. A fool of the first variety was as likely to hurt himself as any opponent with his own weapon, but among wielders of the second class, only the most masterful of swordsmen could hope to oppose them.
Syaoran wasn't certain which kind this Xing Hua was, but he had a sinking feeling she was no clumsy amateur. Her arms rose gracefully above her head, the wickedly curved blade poised to strike as the long weighted chain beat a steady, humming circle through the air. Her face could have been carved out of ivory, with cold glittering onyx for eyes.
Syaoran licked his lips, and decided to try talking. "I don't really want to fight you," he tried, honestly enough. "I just want to find Sakura. I know she's in here somewhere -"
"Nor I you," the woman said in a voice of cold indifference, "and yet I will, if you continue to press your attentions upon the Chosen One. I am her guardian, and I was always meant to be the final line of defense should any assailant make it this far."
"I'm not going to hurt her!" Indignation flared at the very idea. "I would never hurt her! I just want to keep her safe, to keep something terrible from happening to her!"
"That you would keep her from her sacred purpose, deprive her of the duty and privilege to which she was born, would be a violation more profane than any mere assault," Xing Huo told him. "Yet even now, I would spare you. Turn back, and you can yet live to see this world's redemption."
"I'd sooner die," Syaoran declared defiantly. He planted his feet and squared his shoulders, lifting the tip of his sword as he shifted into the first form. No more circling or talking or running; it was clear that he wasn't going to get past this door until he defeated this opponent.
"So be it then," Xing Hua said, and she lunged. Launching herself from the foot of the stairway towards him, the high ground gave her the momentum that her relatively slight form might otherwise have lacked; the broad arc of the chain gave him no space to dodge in the trammeled corridor.
Startled, Syaoran raised his sword in instinctive defense, even though he knew perfectly well she was still too far to strike him. The chain in her right hand licked out, lashing through the air to clash with the blade of his sword. Impact jolted down the spine of the blade into his hand, accompanied by a strange tingling bite that could only be magic.
The length of chain wrapped around Syaoran's blade, then jerked it powerfully to the side. Syaoran managed to retain his grip on his weapon despite the biting pain, but it pulled him off-balance and wide open. Xing Hua stepped smoothly forward, the curved blade of the sickle whistling down towards his open, undefended body.
Syaoran knew in a flash that he would not be able to free his weapon in time to counter the strike, nor would it do any good to try to block the blade with his open hand. Acting on a sudden instinct, Syaoran stepped into Xing Hua's blow, turning his shoulder forward as a battering ram. Xing Hua's strike went wide; she lost her footing and stumbled backwards. The chain wrapped around Syaoran's blade rattled loose, going from a tight vise to a slack encumbrance.
Syaoran scrambled after her, trying to pursue his momentary advantage - but Xing Hua regained her footing and fell back smoothly. The chain unraveled itself, once more nearly yanking Syaoran's weapon out of his hand, and then came whipping around in a deadly strike. Syaoran had to leap backwards to avoid it, and even then was barely in time. The cold edge of the iron weight at the end clipped the very edge of Syaoran's jaw; he saw stars and his teeth cut into his lip, flooding his mouth with blood.
To fight defensively was to lose. That was truer here and now than ever; somewhere beyond this hallway was Sakura, and they had to reach her before time ran out. Syaoran shifted his weight and took a deep breath, focusing on his center. He drew on the lessons his mentor had taught him, drew on the fire in his belly, calling it down through his legs and up through his arms, down his sword -
And launched his attack, charging across the short distance with a fierce yell on his lips. He saw the line of his sword's path like a rent in the air, a red slash across his opponent's center of mass.
Xing Hua did not flinch; she remained cold as stone, her movements smooth as water. She stepped precisely away from the blow, angling her body and sweeping her sickle down and across her chest. Sword and sickle clashed with a scream of steel, and Syaoran's momentum jolted to a stop; his blow averted, sword canted wildly off-center to the side.
Before he could recover, wrest his weapon free or back away to try again, Xing Hua's left hand came whistling mercilessly overhead. The iron chain wrapped over his shoulder, and the heavy weight slammed into his collarbone with a muffled crunch of bone. Syaoran's vision went up in an ugly red flare of pain; he screamed and stumbled to his knees.
His breath came in harsh pants, his blood beating frantically in his ears. The dark walls of the hallway swam and crawled in his vision; the staircase ahead, beyond Xing Hua's shadowed silhouette, seemed an impossible cliff to scale. He'd always known, of course, from Sensei's teachings - and the chatter of the other boys - and the legends and songs and stories that were popular in Edo - that a samurai must always be prepared for death. He'd thought he was, he'd thought he was ready when he prepared to march off to war the previous winter against Ceres. But nobody had ever talked about how much it would hurt.
As his vision cleared he realized, with some surprise, that Xing Hua had disengaged - she'd fallen back into her guard stance, blocking the stairway but not advancing on him in his moment of weakness. "Not going soft, are you?" he gasped.
"I do not need to kill you," Xing Hua announced. "I need only to hold you here. You cannot win against me."
Syaoran wobbled to his feet, swaying on his feet until he found his stance. He shifted his arm awkwardly against his chest and raised his sword in his other hand. His left arm was useless, but he still had one working arm and while he had that he could fight. "I'm not giving up," he said.
"Why do you press forward so heedlessly, child?" Xing Hua asked, and although her face remained cold and emotionless, a certain edge crept into her voice; half-exasperated, half plaintive. "What is Princess Sakura to you?"
Syaoran gritted his teeth against the pain of his broken shoulder, tried not to sway too obviously on his feet. "She is my most important person," he said simply. "I never knew my parents - not my real parents, anyway, and I never had a mother. Fujitaka was always a father to me, and after he died I had Sensei, so I never really felt the lack... but it wasn't until I met Sakura that I understood what real love is."
Xing Hua made an impatient sound her throat. "A person whom you knew but a handful of days," she said. "Is that enough to drive you so relentlessly across half the world, through deadly peril and to your doom? Do you think she even remembers you at all?"
Syaoran shook his head, keeping his gaze steady on his opponent. "It's not like that with me and her," he said. "Whether I'd known her for three minutes or three years wouldn't matter. She's special, and I knew it as soon as I saw her. She's the warmest person I've ever known, and she cares more about people than... than anybody I know. I want to protect her because she's worth protecting, not just because I want something from her in return.
"It's not about how she feels about me, whether she loves me or likes me or even remembers my name. I wish that she'd care about me like I care about her, but it doesn't matter if she does nor not. Sometimes in life, if you're lucky, you have that moment where you realize that the person in front of you is more important to the world than you'll ever be; and you want to do anything, cross the desert or die or tear the world apart with your bare hands in order to make their dreams come true. Can you understand that?"
Xing Hua hesitated for a moment - although she stood as still as a statue, there was something about her that seemed to waver, a tiny shift of muscles in the corners of her eyes and mouth.
And then - "I do," Xing Hua said, and the words were like a gate of iron clanging down. She raised her weapons again, and a nauseating halo of dark light rolled out from them.
Move! Kurogane's training roared at him in his head, and he did - blindly, by instinct and by feel, ignoring the disorienting flashes of dark light. He remembered what Kurogane had shown him out in the desert: how to use his ki-senses to distinguish what was hidden, what was alive from what was dead.
Xing Hua was a roaring maelstrom of chaos before him, her vibrant life-sense overgrown and almost overpowering by the dark pulsing energy that imbued her weapons. How it had come to be there, how it had taken her over, Syaoran couldn't even begin to guess - he only saw it, all at once, and in the same flash of instinct he perceived a weakness and moved for it in one lightning-fast movement.
When he blinked again Xing Hua stood before him, her chain arm swung wide and her sickle hand raised overhead, ready to crash down in a ripping blow that would have butterflied him open like a shrimp -
And his sword buried between her ribs, slipping smoothly in the front and protruding several inches from the back.
Her weapons drooped, sagged from their attack positions as the strength bled out of her arms. She stared at him, her face white and eyes pale as she slumped, and the shock of what he'd done crashed on Syaoran like a wave. For all the years he'd trained with Kurogane, tussled with the other Edo boys in the lot and dreamed of marching to war with Ceres - he'd never faced an enemy in live combat before, and never had their blood on his hands.
He had it now, spilling dark and hot and heavy over his hands as he shifted back slightly, tugging at his weapon to bring it free. Xing Hua reached up to pull weakly at the weapon, and when her mouth opened a river of blood spilled forth.
"I always knew..." she gasped, her voice a thick liquid gurgle.
And then she stopped. Speaking. Moving. Breathing.
For a long frozen moment Syaoran stood there, waiting for he knew not what - for Xing Hua to finish her last words, perhaps. For her to explain what she'd meant; always knew what? For her to get up and keep fighting, and reassure him that whatever he'd just done, it hadn't been permanent.
But then the walls rocked with an explosion that paled all those that went before it by comparison; the walls shook, and the floor under his feet actually canted wildly and did not resettle. Syaoran's sword pulled free of Xing Hua's body as he stumbled towards the wall and put a hand out for balance, and the impact reminded him of what he'd almost forgotten.
"Sakura!" he exclaimed, and ran off down the hallway, leaving his opponent sprawled in a pool of blood behind him, dark hair spread against dark stone.
The world around him trembled; in this great stone atrium, the high stone walls and curved vaulting captured the vibrations of each blow and cascaded it back down upon them. Windows set high overhead might once had let in daylight, but the falling dust of pulverised rock and the rising black belches of smoke from each of Fei Wong Reed's strikes combined to shut out any trace of the sun. The warlock raged and thundered, calling up blasts of flame from the molten heart of some distant world; everywhere he glanced or pointed, fire exploded at the point of impact and reduced anything caught in its radius to a charred husk.
Fai was beginning to get into the rhythm of this.
If he'd been a human he would have run himself to death long before, or drained himself of so much magic that his body had not even enough energy left to keep itself alive. But his demon nature sustained him, let him maintain a speed and endurance he never could have matched before, let him draw on a finite but steady command of magic. He could keep doing this for hours, if he had to. He had to.
He ran like he'd never run before, crossing the floor in a sprint ahead of the devouring trail of flame that followed him. When he reached the wall he did not stop but turned his feet and body and ran up against the wall, tilting the local gravity to his aid even as he used a variation on his shapeshifting spell to reduce his weight and impetus to near-nothing. The stone under his feet hissed warningly and he leaped, floating into the air like a leaf on the wind while the patch of the wall where he had just been bubbled and melted. He felt his hair curl from just the bare edges of the conflagration, and sweat mixed with blood ran into his eyes.
He ignored it. In that free-falling moment he had a clear shot and he took it, twisting in midair to return fire to his enemy. Bright blue magic leapt along his hands and crackled in his fingers, before spinning off in a bolt of incandescence that was almost invisible to the naked eye - the very faint blue of the hottest of flames. They thudded into Fei Wong Reed in rapid succession; the first three hit his shield and crackled uselessly into nothingness, but the last two got through. Fei Wong Reed grunted, just slightly, from the pain.
It was his shield that was the problem. Not only did it render him immune to all more mundane sources of threat - like Kurogane's sword - but it shrugged off fire, electricity, poison gas and concentrated entropic decay. Such a shield required a constant expenditure of energy, and the more it had to block, the more energy it drained. At first Fai had hoped to chip it away gradually, wear it down and so exhaust his enemy's reserves, but as the battle ratcheted into higher and higher gear Fai realized that Fei Wong Reed was drawing on a power source of astronomical scope. There was no way Fai was going to drain it; he'd have better luck trying to drink the sea.
In order to have any hopes of getting through that shield at all Fai had to fall back on a dangerous, highly specialized form of magical energy whose frequency was so high and duration so volatile that only a handful of wizards in the world had ever treated it as more than a theory. It was magic in an unbound state, bound; in the natural course of things it only existed in trace amounts in the most intense of crucibles, such as the heart of great stars, where the laws of reality themselves began to fray around the edges.
Fai had made it into a weapon.
If he'd had any choice, he wouldn't have; it was hell on the surroundings. Each missed bolt of energy that winged off and buried itself in the stone walls, Fai knew, did not stop there; it sheared onwards, leaving a hairs-thin rent in the rock as it went, and it would not stop for many long miles. One such fissure would not be a problem, but the more of them he cut into the walls of this place, the less stable the entire structure became. And Fei Wong Reed, with his relentless blasts of explosive flame that rocked the newly weakened walls on their unstable foundations, was not helping.
Between them they were in danger of bringing the whole mountain down around their ears. Fai would not have minded so much, except that Sakura was still in here somewhere.
But Fai knew he had no choice. Even with the most dangerous of all weapons at his command, he was barely enough to scratch his opponent. He could, if he kept up the spell to dissolve the integrity of the shell surrounding Fei Wong Reed - an older lexicon of shamans would have called this a curse - manage to penetrate the shield long enough to get in a few hits. One hit should have done it; a force that would tear solid stone like rotten fabric should have made bloody meat of the man. But whatever secrets Fei Wong Reed had learned in his long years of study, he had done something to make himself more than human, because he'd absorbed a dozen such hits and wasn't dead yet.
Fai wasn't so lucky. He had no shield, no invulnerability; he needed to hit Fei Wong Reed a thousand times to kill him, but Fei Wong Reed only had to hit him once.
So far, he hadn't. He'd worked out a rhythm, a complicated high-speed dance of movement and evasion. He'd memorized the timing of Fei Wong Reed's attacks, the exact count of heartbeats between when he began to cast and when the spell left his fingers, the exact distance between the point of impact and how many paces to a safe different. He danced and weaved and outran every hit, and the spells he managed to fire off in between dodges would - slowly - add up.
Fai grinned exultantly, even as heat-crisped hair whipped across his face and dragged in his mouth. He heard Fei Wong Reed's voice rise in frustrated incantation behind him, and put on a burst of speed; at the instant the fire erupted behind him, he leapt into the air and floated across space.
"Enough!" Fei Wong Reed roared.
Abruptly the tone and rhythm of his spellcasting changed; the by-now familiar spell he was casting shifted red-to-blue and slid away. Fai was caught out in mid-air, without a stone wall to push against to change his direction or speed. The half-seconds seemed to stretch agonizingly as Fai hung helpless in the middle of nowhere, scrambling desperately for a route of escape or the words of a counterspell -
He hit the floor and whirled around, searching for the source of the new attack and for a safe path to avoid it. He caught sight of Fei Wong Reed's face, flushed and smug and triumphant, in the instant before a portal roared up and open beside him and ripped across the space where he was standing.
In the moment before it hit him Fai had time to realize: while he'd been memorizing Fei Wong Reed's rhythm, the warlock had also been calculating his.
Then he was swept by a wall of blue ice, howling frozen some from sunless desolate wall, and all thought shattered into blue.
Another chandelier crashed to the ground, and Kurogane dodged nimbly out of its path. He hadn't been the one to drop that; it had shaken loose from its own moorings with the unforgiving roaring and rattling of the rock walls around them. What the hell was that idiot doing?
After what seemed like an endless battle against the black-clad, steel-clawed mooks, Kurogane had finally run out of enemies to fight. By that time Syaoran had been long gone along the corridor, and Kurogane had no way of knowing which way he'd gone. The muffled explosions and blasts of magic, however, gave him a very good idea where his other companion had gotten to.
Through the open doorway he'd caught sight of the battle; brilliant, eye-tearing flashes of fire, heaving clouds of smoke. He'd caught his lover's lithe, bright form leaping from ground to wall to air, and the dark thunderhead of the warlock on the stairs above him.
He could have run in, but Kurogane hesitated. He longed to join the field of battle, rush in and add his sword and fire to Fai's magic, but Fai had told him in no uncertain terms to stay out of it. Kurogane wasn't a fool; he'd had it emphatically demonstrated to him that he couldn't lay a hand on Fei Wong Reed. He couldn't help, and if Fai had to spare magic and attention to protect Kurogane as well as himself from Reed's attacks, the distraction would probably be fatal.
The most Kurogane could do was to hold the doorway, killing any of the black-clad guards who got close, and have faith in Fai. It was hard, standing back and letting Fai take the field alone. Kurogane had never been one to let other people do the fighting, not since he was barely old enough to swing a sword. But he could see in the brief glimpses over his shoulder, spared between one opponent and the next, that more of Fai's strikes were getting through than before. Fei Wong Reed's shields were weakening; if Fai could wear him down to the point where Kurogane's sword could get through, then...
"Enough!" Fei Wong Reed shouted, and Kurogane couldn't help a sarcastic twinge of resentment; he sure did have a high opinion of himself, didn't he, if he thought he could end a battle just because he was sick of it? He forced one of the dark-clad guards back, and glanced over his shoulder -
Just in time to see a sickly blue-green wave of writhing mist sweep over Fai, engulfing him in mid-step.
The blue mist seethed and boiled into a vapor, dissolving and disintegrating even as it mushroomed out in every direction; a few seconds later, the wave of cold slapped him in the face as the trailing edges washed over his position. That had only been the fading, lingering edge of it; how cold must that poisonous mist have been, at its center? He looked for Fai, and his heart jumped when he saw Fai still standing, upright and defiant, in the center of the room.
Then crashed again, when he realized Fai was not moving.
Kurogane dispatched his last enemies with a blast of ki and burst into the shattered, melting, freezing chamber. He was dimly aware off to the side that Fei Wong Reed was standing hunched over, eyes closed, breathing heavily as though he had finished running a race. A part of Kurogane urged him to strike now, while his enemy's attention was diverted; another part of him warned that the warlock would not show such utter disregard for his entrance if he posed any kind of a threat to him.
But the rest of Kurogane's vision was captivated by that one familiar figure, graceful as a heron, one hand half-raised and extended as he stood poised to turn and fly away. But he wasn't moving, why wasn't he moving, he stood still as a stone statue, still as a corpse -
Some of the blue-green mist still lingered in the air, swirling around Kurogane's boots and tangling in the hem of his cloak. A foul smell wafted up to his nose, sharp and nauseating and unlike anything he'd ever smelled before. A crumbling noise distracted him and he glanced down, to see that the threads at the edge of his cape had gone stiff and rigid, crumpling and shattering when the cloth folded.
"Fai?" Kurogane whispered, terror seizing his throat and choking his voice down to a ghost of itself. Despite the bloodstains and char marks on his clothes, Fai seemed pale and oddly bright - a bleached copy of himself - no...
Frost was forming on Fai's skin and clothes, thickening even as Kurogane watched. He stepped around at last to look in Fai's face - his blue eyes were wide open, lips slightly parted as though midword... but no breath passed over those lips. His eyes did not shift, nor did any part of him. Had the foul sorcerer somehow turned Fai to stone?
Hesitantly, afraid of what his fingers would touch, Kurogane reached out and cupped his hand along Fai's cheek. Fai's skin, normally so soft, was hard and unyielding; the first touch sent a painful shock of cold up along Kurogane's hand through his arms, and his fingers quickly numbed. They left behind a darker patch along Fai's cheek, smudged where the frost had temporarily melted.
Not stone. Ice. Fai was stone-cold, frozen solid through. Not a hint of life or movement left to him.
Movement behind him, a shuffling footstep but not even Kurogane's well-honed battle reflexes could tear his gaze away from Fai now. At least, it could not until a shadow fell over his shoulder, and a hated voice intoned, "He brought this upon himself."
All reason deserted him. Kurogane forgot that he could not harm Fei Wong Reed, forgot that the warlock could crush him like a bug, forgot everything: he turned and lunged in one smooth moment, his gaze mapping his enemy's position and aiming his blow all in a single instant. A wordless scream rose in his chest, all the ki he still had left in him surging up along with his breath and down his hands into his sword.
He felt resistance, and then - then the point of his sword punctured through, and for a moment triumph swelled high in Kurogane's breast. But even as the blade approached Fei Wong Reed's dark scowl, it hissed and writhed like a wooden brand thrust into a fire. With every inch he forced the weapon forward, more of it crumbled into rust and fell away, until at last Kurogane stopped, shaking, with the naked hilt of his father's sword buried at the edge of the barrier that protected Fei Wong Reed's unmoving, untouchable face.
For a moment the tableau hung, as though all of them had been frozen in place and not just Fai. But time ticked on, and ice melted; Kurogane had only a whisper of warning before the icebound form of his lover and comrade shifted, then slowly toppled to the side.
Kurogane got himself around faster than he could have imagined; a terrifying vision of Fai's body shattering when he hit the ground filled his mind. He caught the freezing body in his arms and lowered him gently the rest of the way. But even the lessened impact of Kurogane's arms around him brought terrifying crunching noises, and as he laid Fai's stricken body on the scorched and frosted ground deep ominous cracks began to appear along his skin.
"He brought this on himself," Fei Wong Reed repeated in a growl. "He would have destroyed everything, even now. I had no choice but to strike him down."
Almost. They'd almost done it, Fai had managed to work down Fei Wong Reed's shield until steel weapons could almost pass through it into his flesh. If only they'd had more time - if only Fai had been able to hold out a little longer, if Kurogane could have helped him, if, if, if - how was it they could come so far, and sacrifice so much, and yet have it be all in vain?
His muscles screamed to lash out, finish the job, yet even if he'd been free to move it was impossible to penetrate that arcane shell. Kurogane's throat worked, tears clogging his downcast eyes even as threats and curses blotted like ash upon his lips. He could almost hear himself saying to Fai, to Syaoran, For fuck's sake don't waste time talking to him...Yet what else could he do, when action failed and prayer failed and hope failed with it?
"I could kill you," the warlock growled, and his voice wavered between stone-cold indifference and red-hot, depthless fury. His expression, too, wavered between an unmovable scowl and a furious snarl, lips peeling back over white gums and the whites of his eyes shot with black veins. "I should kill... you... you have tread upon my domain, inconveniently destroyed my servants, you dared... you dared..."
One hand jerked towards him, out from under that hated, hated sigil on his sleeves; it looked more like a claw than a hand, outlined with black scorch marks But then it twitched back again, and the expression of icy calm settled back over Reed's face. "But I will not," he said, his voice hoarse and roughened from shouting but now forced back into a semblance of civilization. "For I... am abenevolent man, and I do not need to... slay those below me..."
He drew himself up, raising his bearded chin in the perfect picture of patriarchal dignity. "I am a benevolent man," he said again, as though by force of repetition he could make true such a foul and palpable lie. "So I will forgive your sins. I will spare you, that you might see the coming of the end."
Fei Wong Reed turned and walked away, and his hold on Kurogane dissolved as he did. He did not even fear to turn his back to Kurogane, and why should he? He was weaponless, alone, and hopeless.
Fai...
The ice was slowly melting in the chilly air, the frost running and dripping down in a spreading puddle along the ground. Along with it went the delicate beauty of frost; nothing about Fai was perfect or untouched any more. The terrible cracks spread and gaped as the body thawed, giving way dark ugly rents in the flesh that did not even - yet - bleed. Patches of mottled black began to appear underneath Fai's skin, shifting as his body did as the frozen limbs stiffened and twitched. Kurogane clutched Fai's body to him, transfixed and horrified, unable to let go or turn his gaze away even as he watched his lover disintegrate in front of his very eyes.
And yet -
Even as Kurogane watched, the horrific gaping wounds retracted, slowly sealing themselves even as blood began to ooze from their lips. Kurogane's breath stopped, his eyes flying wide as his hands clutched at Fai's shoulder and hip. Was Fai -
His body was healing itself. Even now, his demonic nature tried to repair the damage that should have killed him outright. Even with his heart and lungs frozen and blood congealed, Fai's body yet lived and struggled to put itself to rights.
But not fast enough. Fai's flesh was thawing ever more rapidly now, a great spreading dark pool of melted frost and dark blood underneath him, and even more wounds inflicted by the freeze began to appear on his body. The bruised, dead patches of flesh darkened even further and spread, necrotic growth spreading along his veins and tissues and threatening to engulf him. There was too much damage, too many wounds even for his supernatural nature to overcome.
No. No, he couldn't lose Fai now, not after all this, not when he'd seen a moment of hope at the end of this darkest tunnel -
He heard Fai's voice as if from far away, miles and years distant. It seems there are benefits to my state, he'd said, in a sunny spring clearing when he'd first become a vampire. As soon as I provided my body with the proper fuel, it was able to heal itself.
"Damn it, you crazy vampire," Kurogane muttered, finding his voice at last in familiar curses and insults. He lurched towards Fai's head, scrambling awkwardly to arch his body over Fai's glassy-eyed visage. One trembling hand grabbed at the wound on his side, clawing aside his filthy sticky clothes to reveal the three sluggishly bleeding wounds the guard had left in his side. Heedless of the pain he pressed the wounds open again, forcing blood to run down his side and into Fai's mouth. "Don't give up, don't give up on me now, come back, open your eyes, damn you..."
The next few minutes that followed were painful, messy and tense. First he could not get enough blood to flow, then he could not direct it into Fai's mouth. At last he gave up and used the truncated, pitiful fragment of steel that was all that was left of his father's sword to gouge a new wound on the inside of his arm, cupping his hand close to Fai's face while the blood flowed. Then he could not get Fai to swallow; the blood pooled and rapidly congealed in Fai's mouth while he shakily stroked his throat, trying to trigger the reflex. Blue-black bruises followed his touch no matter how gentle he tried to be. "Come on, Fai, come on..."
But at last, just when Kurogane thought his heart could bear no more, he saw it: movement. The flicker of Fai's eyes, the convulsive movement of his throat. Kurogane held his breath, lightheaded and painfully dizzy, as Fai hitched and gasped and swallowed, coughed and choked and swallowed again. As his eyes closed, then opened again with cold tears of melting frost running down along the outside of his temples, and this time they shifted and squinted in focus. "Ku -" Fai said, then coughed again, his body twitching convulsively against the floor.
"Shut up and drink," Kurogane hissed, and squeezed another handful of blood into Fai's mouth. This was going to leave him unfit to fight at this rate, but it was necessary; Fai's body was healing up faster than ever as he finished thawing, but there was still a catastrophic amount of damage done.
Finally Fai was able to move again, stiffly and shakily at first, but he pushed himself up on one stiff arm and clumsily reached the other hand to hold onto Kurogane's wrist as he drank. Kurogane watched, fascinated, as long ugly weals broke open along Fai's skin, then chased themselves closed again. When no more new wounds broke out with every minute shift, he gathered Fai into his arms to try to share body heat, chafing his skin and rubbing his arms and legs to try to bring warmth back into them.
At last Fai gulped the last drop of blood, and pushed Kurogane's bleeding wrist away from him with a gasp. "That's enough," he rasped. "We've got to get going."
"You've got to be kidding me," Kurogane hissed. "Lie still, you crazy mage, you almost died -"
"I'm fine," Fai gasped, and he rolled over onto his hands and knees, blinking blurrily as he crouched there. "Though that... wasn't fun. It would have killed anyone but a vampire; it almost killed me. But we don't have time to sit around here, Kuro-chan; Fei Wong Reed is getting away, and if he finds Sakura before we do -"
"What are you going to do even if you catch up with him?" Kurogane objected strenuously. "I don't even have my sword, and you look like death on two legs. What hope do we have?"
Fai shook his head and made his feet, staggering a little as he did. Already his movement was becoming easier, more fluid, though it was still a far cry from his usual grace. His voice was still hoarse and breathless, but there was no surrender in it. "I don't know, Kuro-sama," he said. "But we've got to try. It's all or nothing now."
Sakura's hands were going numb, clinging to the gouges and ridges in the rock face. She pressed her face against the crook of her elbow, hiding her eyes from the violent churn of light behind her. Her hands weren't all that was numb; she'd hit her leg on a rock as she fell, and her leg was numb below the knee and throbbing fire above it. She was afraid something was wrong with her knee, but she couldn't get enough room to look to find out.
The cave-in that had destroyed the floor above had violently reshaped the crucible chamber, as well. Cracks and gashes marred the previously smooth curving stone of the walls, sifting down dust and occasional rattling landslides of gravel and larger rocks. The walkway that had extended all around the room had smashed and crumbled nearly to oblivion; only a tiny stone ledge, barely more than a lip, ran along the edge of the great yawning pit below to reach the dark round mouths of the tunnel ahead.
Sakura had no idea how, in the scrambling sliding free-fall of space and falling rocks, she'd managed to hit the broken ledge with a jolt and seize hold of a fragment of rock with her now scraped and bleeding fingernails. She'd been lucky; she'd been the only one. The rest, the handmaids and rocks and fragments of ceiling all, had fallen screaming into the pit behind her and been silenced there.
She'd seen only glimpses of it, little flashes of frozen horrified sight over her shoulder. Hinata, her pale eyes staring wide and her mouth open in a wail, had struck the golden surface and vanished into glowing vapor in less time than it had taken her to scream. The rocks that had pelted down in a rain behind her lasted a little longer; they sat as if on a pool of molten rock, hissing and bubbling, until their hard dark outlines too dissolved into light. Sakura alone had survived, hanging on with her aching arms and numbed hands to the edge of broken stone a hundred feet above the vortex of boiling light.
She had to get to more solid ground. Carefully, making each moment with excruciating slowness, Sakura shifted her weight forward and slid her foot along the stone. She felt like she was teetering backwards over the precipice no matter how firmly she clung to her handholds, but she couldn't just sit there and wait; sooner or later her grip would give way, or the walls would shake again and she'd fall. She had to move, had to get to safety, for the mountain was still coming down around her head.
Her first step was good; Sakura shifted carefully along the walls, prying one hand loose from its grip and lunging spasmodically forward to find a new handhold. Now she was plastered spread-eagle against the wall, trying the best that she could to keep her close to the rock face so that she would not fall. Her other leg would not move to her command; she had to drag it along like a dead weight to the safety of the wider ledge, before at last she could lean forward and move her other hand.
Like that, moving one limb cautiously at a time, Sakura pulled herself along the wall towards the wide part of the broken walkway. Once she was on a ledge as wide as her shoulders she began to relax slightly, heaving great breaths of air into her lungs as she began to shake in reaction. Water sprang to her eyes, smearing the maelstrom around her into one indistinguishable blur of yellow light, and when Sakura reached up to wipe them clumsily away it left long wet streaks of red and brown along her hand and arm.
Deep shakes were beginning to grip her now, starting in the pit of her stomach and spreading in waves out along her arms and legs. Over and over again she saw it, replayed the moment where Hinata's horrified expression dissolved into nothing. Her stomach heaved with violent nausea and she arched onto her hands and needs, retching helplessly onto the stone. But you were supposed to feel better after throwing up, were supposed to feel a relief and she didn't; she still felt sick as though she could keep vomiting until all her stomach and lungs and heart came out of her and she would still feel sick inside.
Dead. They were dead, they had dissolved into boiling light in front of her very eyes and the worst of it was that she couldn't even remember all of their names.
She hadn't known any of them that well. They had been background noise to her, guards and attendants like she'd been surrounded with all her life, to be taken for granted as part of the landscape; and yet they hadn't been the familiar men and women who'd been in her life since childhood. They'd devoted their lives to her and she hadn't gotten to know them, she hadn't even bothered to learn their names, and now they were dead dead dead and it wasn't right that she should feel worse about her hurting leg than about the fact that six women had just died before her eyes.
It was that more than anything, guilt rather than grief, that finally managed to squeeze a few hot stinging tears from her eyes. She gulped back bile and gasped for breath, the shakes increasing in potency until the very air was squeezed from her lungs. A fuzzy white numbness swam back and forth over her vision, and she was terribly cold.
Had the shaking of the earth stopped? She couldn't feel it, but perhaps she was just too deep under the earth. Was the battle finished, had Fei Wong Reed been defeated? She couldn't just sit here and weep all day; she had to get up, stand on her feet and move. If she couldn't find Fei Wong Reed's enemies, she had to at least remove herself from the great stone citadel so that none of the Heralds could find her and force her back into their care. She would, she would... she would think of a better plan later.
Sakura took a deep breath, tight iron bands spasming around her chest as she forced it to expand, and pushed herself shakily upright again. Her leg screamed in white agony as she tried to step on it, but for all that it was numb between the ground and her knee it did take her weight, and that meant it couldn't be broken. Could it?
She took a limping step towards the entrance of the tunnel, then froze up when movement stirred in the darkness beyond. Flickers of green-yellow light, the smell of ozone - and that heavy, deliberate footfall all told her who was there before his face came forward into the light. Oh, no. Please, I hoped I wouldn't have to...
"Princess Sakura." He filled the whole tunnel, the edges of his voluminous cloak flickering and melting in the coruscating darkness; only his head showed clearly in the gold-white light. "You live. Thank the White God that you are safe."
"She had nothing to do with it," Sakura said automatically. She remembered in a rush what it had been like to be there with the God, looking into that endless well of light and warmth and goodness. For a moment there was nothing she wanted more than to be back there, where the God's power would enfold her and blot away all her pain and anguish with the sure warmth of a mother's touch, a touch Sakura could never remember knowing. But that was something she knew now she could never do. "She's still far away, she wouldn't be able to help me even if she knew I was in trouble at all."
Fei Wong Reed stiffened as though turned to stone, and he drew himself up slowly to his full height as triumph gleamed across his face. "So you have found her," he said. "As my diviners predicted, today was the day that our purpose is fulfilled at last. We must make haste, girl. The great throne is destroyed, but I have other, lesser scrying chambers that can be used, now that you know the way. You shall show me, and I shall open the gateway between worlds -"
"No," Sakura said. "You won't. I won't."
He had never been smiling to begin with, but the pleased expression slid off his face as he stiffened. "The danger is past," he said, an edge creeping into his voice. "I have dispatched that fool charlatan who had the temerity to invade my home; he is no more than dust on the floor of the hallway now. We will begin the ceremony at once, before anything else interrupts."
"I won't help you," Sakura repeated. "I know who you are now, and I know what you're trying to do, and I'll never help you again."
"Sakura," Fei Wong Reed said, and the edge in his voice had grown more dangerous, straining at the seams with some lurking menace. He took a step forward, hand outstretched, and Sakura took a step back. "My patience grows short. I have coddled your insecurities and your childish displays of temper for long enough. Now come with me, girl!"
Sakura searched inside herself for anger, a hot fury that she could use to give herself courage. She found none - all she felt was cold and numb. But in that stillness there was a kind of freedom she'd never felt before, freedom from both anger and fear, a calmness as solid and unbreakable as stone. "No," she said.
"You stupid, useless little brat!" Fei Wong Reed exploded. The carved stone facade of his expression seemed to crack, fury blazing through from underneath like the red heat and light of molten lava. "Do you understand the tiniest part of what you are dealing with here? I have weathered the endless ages of this world, I have bent and reshaped continents to my will, I have scoured the earth and sky for power, I have toppled kingdoms and rained fire down upon empires, I have ripped the souls screaming from the countless bodies of men, all in preparation for this day! I... will... not come so far, only to be stymied in the very hour of my triumph by the weak quaverings of a simple, simpering, stupid little wreck of a child!"
Sakura took another step back, trembling from head to foot, but froze again as her heel brushed against the lip of the precipice. That was it - that was as far as she could go. There was nowhere left to run, nowhere to hide, and the good and obedient part of her quailed in the face of Fei Wong Reed's fury even as the rebellious part of her froze in panic for lack of any escape.
He was just getting warmed up, it seemed. "Because I am a kind man, I tried at first to cater to your simple vanities. When those failed to hold your interest, I tried reason: I thought I could make you see the truth of this corruptible world and how it needed to be corrected. But if you will not see reason, then I will try force; I can bind your spirit to your body so that you will not die throughout a thousand agonies, until you can no longer even dream of defying me, and you will do my bidding in the end all the same! Do you understand me, girl?"
Sakura didn't answer - couldn't answer, with her blood beating so hard in her ears that she couldn't even hear herself think. Here she stood at the end of things, no mother no father, no big brother, no friends, no defenders. Just her, and the end of the world.
A flash of soundless light sears the sky, a tumult of what is and what was and what will be roaring like a wave; and she sees what future he brings with him, she sees the doorway in the sky framed by a hellish light, she sees what Fei Wong Reed desires, and all that will become if she submits to him…
A rush of sliding images played before her eyes: the vision she'd seen, in the grip of the throne, of the mad Valerian queen's last moments. Careening sky and tilting ground and Fei Wong Reed's hand outstretched, dark stone flashing by... the queen's voice, crying and laughing. I will never serve you!
"Come with me, Sakura," Fei Wong Reed ordered her, holding out his implacable hand. "You will serve me willingly, or I will break your mind into a thousand pieces and you will serve me unwillingly. But one way or the other, you will serve me; you have no choice."
"Yes," Sakura said, "I do."
I will never serve you!
Her slippered feet slid over the stone as she shifted her weight. She forced one foot behind the other until her next step found nothing beneath her foot at all.
And then the air was all around her, and she was falling.
Fei Wong Reed was slow to catch on, too slow to realize what she was doing, and outrage and horrified shock were just beginning to show on his face when the edge of the dark stone ledge rushed up between them and broke their line of sight. Sakura heard laughter, and she didn't know whether it was the echo of the dead queen's triumph, or of her own.
I will ne -
And then the world boiled away into light.
~to be continued...