[ Watashi ]

[ Tomodachi ]

[ Saint Seiya ]

[ Clamp ]

[ Fanfiction ]

“All right,” Murali shot a quick glance below us before nodding at me, “we should be high enough.”

We had left our post on the lowest tree branch to regain a higher perch, close to the trunk and safely away from the black serpent guarding the pool. Even though the monster’s task was clearly to watch over those strange waters and nothing more, there was no telling how it would react to our attacking what the squirrel had described as their common core. The thought of the foul little beast wrinkled my nose. “Logical and coherent though this seems to be, we’re trusting in information torn from a treacherous furry rat,” I said quietly as I joined Murali’s side.

Peering at me from the corner of an eye, he retorted, “Caution? From hot-headed Aries?” The left side of his mouth was drawn into a half-smile. Unmoving, I stared at him, then I blew air out of my nostrils.

“We strike in sequence,” I told him, refusing to heed the cold spreading from my spine to engulf my ribcage, “and aim for the same spot.” Reluctantly the snake inside me loosened its viscous grasp. From the moment when I had realized that our one way out was to damage the tree enough to release whatever hold it had upon us, it had wriggled its way up my bones. No longer.

“I know how to chop trees,” Murali scoffed on my right.

“I know how to bring down pillars,” I countered, and he started, surprise flashing dark in his eyes. Good, it was what I had been aiming for: to destabilize him, lest too strong certainty became a weak spot in his armor. “I’m going first,” I lifted my chin up. “You follow me.” With that, I set fire to my cosmo and flung myself at the trunk.

Here, a free area between a nest of honeysuckle vines. Blinding golden light came to my right hand, and I--

Hissing sound.

A shadow, thin and blurred.

--struck. Pain exploded in my left flank, obscuring my vision for a fraction of a second. Even as I snarled at the white hot cloud fogging my mind, something whipped around my left arm and leg, whirling me around with awful strength, and slammed me against the trunk. Savagely. “Fi!” I didn’t hear Murali’s crying of my name. When my back crashed against the smooth, hard bark, air was pulled out of my lungs.

“Fi!” Golden light at last rent through the mist hampering my brain, and my eyes saw again.

Vines. Uncomprehending, I stared at them. They were snaked around my left arm and leg, and the throbbing weakness in my left flank-- With a hiss, I refocused on the feeling of Murali’s presence, and I willed myself to his side.

Even as I was winking out of reality, a small golden rod struck at the vines that had held me, with a terrible strength no observer could have thought possible coming from someone as slim as Murali. I rematerialized less than two steps away from where I had been standing, in time to witness the end of my friend’s motion. Sorento’s golden flute crushed the vines--the flute, that he could use as a deadly weapon in more than one fashion.

On our right, silvery liquid was oozing from a deep cut in the trunk.

“Murali!” I heard myself shout. “Again! Once wasn’t enough!” Without waiting for his reply, I jumped back and flung myself at the tree once more, Aries’ fire blazing hot in my hands.

This time, I didn’t even manage to reach the trunk.

From everywhere at once, vines whipped around my limbs and my neck, choking me through the sheer pressure they were exerting on my Cloth. For the second time, I slammed into the hard, hard wood with crushing force. With a desperate effort of will, I denied the devouring pain and the grey hands of unconsciousness clawing at me. I made myself focus on the blurred shape of yet another vine hurling itself at me--at my heart.

Too fast.

On my right, the golden flute fell, so swift it shaped a wall of gold in the air it cleaved. The vines holding me on that side burst into a myriad tiny green bits. With all of my strength, I pulled on my remaining bonds. “Fi!” I blinked back the sweat burning my eyes. “I’m here!” Teeth clenched, I reached out to Murali’s mind. It was instinct, easy, as easy as sensing my own heartbeats. Murali was always there. Close. Closest.

The spear-like vine hit. Someone screamed. Clinging to the feeling of Murali, I teleported myself to wherever he was.

My left foot was first to touch the branch’s floor. It gave way. For a fleeting moment, I watched myself fall, then I caught myself, shifting my weight on my right leg and blindingly reaching out with the right hand. My fingers clutched at something cool, metallic.

Gold.

Murali’s right arm. I sucked in a breath. His other arm came around me, and he kicked at the branch beneath our feet, jumping the both of us back to safety.

As soon as his balance was stabilized, I gave a gentle push at his right shoulder, meaning to step away from him, but his hold on me tightened. “You can’t stand on your own!” He snapped. I froze, then looked up at him. Rage had blackened his gaze, so strong and burning it was leaking out of him in small bursts of cosmo.

He was angry at me--at me. In a slow motion, I laid the palm of my right hand against his chest, and pushed at him. “Let go, Murali,” I told him, my voice soft.

The grimace distorting his face in answer wasn’t quite a snarl. “Stupid fool!” he hissed. “Do what you wish, then!” With that, he released me, and I stepped back.

When my left foot rested on the branch’s surface, pain exploded in my left side, a blood-red spear which robbed me of breath, or I would have screamed out all the air in my lungs--as I had mere moments ago, I realized even as I was stumbling back. That pain-- I slammed my left hand against its source, biting my tongue and willing my fucking foot to bear me. It did. Again, I blinked back the sweat searing my eyes, and focused on drawing in slow breaths, not on the tearing sensation it was causing inside me or on the warm, viscous fluid drenching my left hand.

It was dangerous to remain immobile for so long. It was foolish, more than stupid. Whatever the will behind the honeysuckle vines was, it could attack again. And I couldn’t move. Releasing air from my lungs in a faint, shaking hiss, I fought that absurd reality. I couldn’t run and save myself in case we were attacked. I could only be a burden, a dead weight. “Shit!” the furious curse had come from me. At last, I tore my eyes from their empty contemplation of the vines-embraced trunk and the ridiculously small wound we had dealt it. At last, I made myself look down at where my left hand was still pressing with desperate strength, as if to master the debilitating pain growing there by changing its nature.

Spear-like vines, indeed. Unbidden, a grim smile twisted my lips as I scanned the damage they had wrought. My cloth was Aries, and it was Gold, stronger than any weapon or power humankind would ever possess. Only a god could destroy it, or a thousand days and nights battle with one of my peers. Yet, mere vines had pierced it through twice, at the junction between the hip piece and the one shielding my flank. Blood was oozing between my fingers, dark crimson blood, its flow much weaker now. The wounds were almost in the exact same place, but they weren’t lethal. “Well, no internal organ was touched,” I mused, then I looked back up my left shoulder, at the spot where Murali was standing. “I’ll live,” I told him in an even voice, “and I’ll also stand on my own.” Catching a sight of cracks on his Scales, I frowned, “What about you?”

For a moment, I thought he would refuse to answer, then he strode to my side, his steps brisk and quick. “Mere scratches,” he spat, which was true enough where his flesh was concerned, but his Scales had taken horrible blows. There were cracks everywhere, some of them deep, and the flute of Sorento he was clutching in his right hand--

“No scratches,” I pointed at the flute with the right forefinger. “Your Scales require healing--”

“That you cannot provide!” He shouted. “Look at yourself, Fi!”

I blinked, taken aback by the rage still riding his voice. It wasn’t lessening, on the contrary. It was clinging to him, refusing to let go. “I have,” I sustained his dark gaze, shrugging. “I’ll live. I told you so.”

In a lightning quick motion, he snatched my left hand from its spot on my flank, wrenching away it so harshly that it rekindled the pain there, and I went blind for the time of a heartbeat. “And what’s this, then?!” He snarled. Somehow, I had neither cried out, not dropped to the floor. “Fi,” he hissed out a shuddering breath, “damn it, Fi,” he repeated, his voice reduced to a faint whisper, “look at you. You’re so pale from fighting the pain and from blood loss you look like the dead!”

Something half-cackle, half-moan won past me. So, that was the nature of the undercurrents lurking beneath the flames of my friend’s rage. Worry, so sharp that it had burst into anger. “Stop fretting, *dad*,” I put a strong emphasis on that last word, payback for his calling me mom earlier. Freeing my hand from his grasp, I went on in a calm voice, “It takes much more than that to kill Aries.” Pausing, I shot a quick glance at the trunk, less than a furlong away, and at its thousand garlands of vines. Then I set my eyes on Murali once more. “I’ll trust you to have put us at safe distance from those things. They look like they’ve gone quiescent and care only if we try to harm the tree.” I pursed my lips, considering the likelihood of my being correct, as well as the gravity of the twin wounds in my flank, then I heaved out a slight sigh. “Will you help me with this?”

The question earned me a baleful glare, and Murali growled, “I should leave you here to rot.” But he bent over me and sparked his cosmo. His hands gloved in a soft, soft golden glow, he set them against the wounds, careful not to press against the holes in my cloth, and closed his eyes. “You’re insane,” he breathed in an absentminded murmur. “It was crazy to go back for it a second time. Those vines have vicious minds of their own, and they move almost as fast as we do. And there are thousands of them. A fantastic system of defense.”

I let his words flow past me unchallenged. The deep-seated pain in my left side was receding in slow, lazy waves, and the lessening of the tension tearing at my body allowed me to spare a bit of strength to assist Murali in his rudimentary healing. It wasn’t as bad as I had first thought. The worst of it was the damage to my Cloth, but it could wait--not that there was any choice in that matter. Of course Murali was right, and my second attack could be viewed as reckless.

No choice there either, not if we wanted to do some real damage and escape from this crazy fairy land. I didn’t tell Murali that, he knew it as well as I. Still, he was correct in his assessment that the vines were too numerous for us to control and win past. There were attacks I could use, a dreadful power which would get the job done. I hadn’t even envisioned using it. Perhaps I was a fool, perhaps something deep inside me kept shying away from that thought. Perhaps it had been too long since Gold Saints and Marine Shoguns had had to fight for their survival against a true enemy.

Pointed ears. I blinked, but they didn’t go away. It was as if my shadow had sprouted a new pair of furry ears. On impulse, I snatched at the small, scurrying presence perched on a branch right above us. “Why, hello there,” I whispered. As it had before, it tried to bite at my spirit self, but I was ready for it this time. With ethereal hands, I grabbed its body and arched it with a violent twist, stopping just short of snapping its spine.

To his credit, Murali didn’t flinch when the silent screech filled both our minds. Oblivious to it, he continued binding my wounds with delicate strands of his own cosmo. Evil! The squirrel hissed. Evil, stupid thing! It tried to wriggle free, but I held it effortlessly. It will die. It will stop and be gone! The Sisters know, they will turn their gaze upward! The vines will choke them and strangle them, and-- With a thought, I willed fire to embrace the squirming little beast.

“Murali,” I told my friend in a conversational voice, “would you like some roasted squirrel for our next meal? It’d be a welcome change from drinking from those natural basins, don’t you think?” The Marine Shogun’s only answer was a snort, and a shake of his head. Above us, the hateful little rat had gone limp in my hold, and silent. I willed the flames to grow, until a sizzling sound reached my ears. Then I said in a deceptively gentle tone, “Now, I’ll let you go, and you will go, and never, ever come within a hundred miles of us or talk to us, or I will serve you your own tail to eat.” With that, I let it go.

In the blink of an eye, its presence was gone, without even a trace of festering resentment lingering behind. Beside me, Murali straightened. “I’m done.” He gave me an inquisitive look.

“Good,” I nodded, making a tentative step to the left, and then bending down. It was hard not to wince and grimace, but I managed it. “It’ll do nicely,” I grinned at him.

The quirking of his lips meant doubts, but he kept them to himself. Instead, he gestured toward the trunk. “What now?”

The vines’ embrace of the trunk was an inextricable one. We couldn’t to get to it the way we had tried to. And using other ways--no. Not yet. With a clack of the tongue, I replied, “I still think we must damage that tree somehow. Not here, but higher, where the vines stop and the tree is without protection. If we keep low enough, far from Cinaed’s domain, well--”

Something like a sigh of relief escaped Murali’s lips, as if he had expected me to insist on attacking the tree at this level. “Okay,” he nodded, “I’m with you. Let’s go up--” he paused, then he gave me an apologetic look. “Sorry. Do you need help?”

Laughter rippled in the air, coming from me. “Help?” I drolled. “From you, Sorento?” Waving his offer aside, I added, “Come, let’s get moving!”

Eyes closed, I turned my gaze inward, following the colorless liquid as it spread into my stomach and as tiny tendrils of spicy-sweet power filled my being, restoring most of my strength. There was no sound around me, other than Murali dipping his hands into the basin-like pool we had stopped by on our way up, and the ever distant rustle of leaves. It wouldn’t be hard to allow myself to be lulled into sleep by the peaceful sounds, not hard at all. Shaking off the delicate veil of drowsiness that had almost closed around me, I drew in a deep breath.

“This is potent stuff,” I smiled at Murali. The pain in my left flank had receded to a dull, smoldering ache. Of course, the drink hadn’t mended the severed flesh or repaired my Cloth, but it had brightened the embers in my heart, as would a light breeze on a campfire right before the coming of dawn.

“It is,” he nodded at me, then his gaze strayed to the trunk’s bulk before us. “Are we high enough, you think?”

I gave myself ten heartbeats to taste the question. There were no vines here, no net of viscous spears protecting the great tree. We had left the last of them some two minutes away. At relativistic speeds, it meant one hell of a distance, provided this place was subject to old Einstein’s laws, same as our space-time continuum. There was no way to ascertain that. “I’d say yes,” I replied in a thoughtful voice. “I’d go no closer to that rainbow barrier Cinaed uses as a border line.”

“Me neither.” Murali’s mouth was drawn in a thin line. Eyes still set on the trunk, he plunged his right hand into the clear pool and brought it to his lips, absentmindedly drinking some more of the water that was no water. Looking down, I froze when I caught my own hand gathering some of the drink in the same thoughtless gesture.

Potent stuff.

Dangerous.

I made my hand tip over, and watched as the liquid spilled in shining droplets, raising soft musical echoes when it hit the pool’s surface. Beside me, Murali started, his eyes darting toward me. Locking my gaze with his, I gave a brisk nod of the head. “Let’s do it,” I whispered, keeping the tension inside me from my words, “we’ve tarried here too long already.” With that, I stood up, and he followed suit.

“Blows in sequence?” He asked with apparent unconcern.

“Unless someone changed the accepted methods to bring down pillars,” I beamed at him.

Together, we called up the flames of our cosmo.

Hold!

Head reeling under the assault of that harsh command, I staggered back in the same time Murali did. Two steps before us, a slim human shape had appeared out of thin air.

Clad wholly in white.

Eyes of crimson red set on us, unblinking, the light in them icy and alien.

In a split second, I made my decision. Grasping Murali’s left hand in my right, I willed the both of us past the eerie figure.

The scream tearing at my throat came out as a weak groan. Upon stepping outside of reality, I had crashed into the diamond-hard arch of a rainbow. A tiny, presumptuous ant, I had been flung aside without so much as a hint of power wasted upon me. “You okay?” I asked Murali, hating the shaking of my voice as I did so.

“Somehow,” he replied, his lips folded in a taut line.

You will not harm the tree, Cinaed’s sharp thoughts cut the air like a knife, and buried themselves inside our minds. It seemed he hadn’t moved from where he was standing. The ethereal rainbow arch was gone, as if it had never existed in the first place--as if it had never obliterated my telekinetic ability. Try, and you will be snuffed out.

“Damn you,” Murali spread his arms horizontally, “you leave us no other choice!” A hint of desperation had tainted my friend’s words.

Denying the stiffness in my back, I took a step toward the sentinel barring our way. “We don’t relish the prospect.” I willed calm to my voice, reason, and went on, “We have no wish to harm anyone or anything. We just want to go back where we belong. Release us, and no twig or leaf on this tree need be hurt.”

Music filled the air, coming from him--the first sounds I had heard him utter. He wasn’t mute, then. Dragging in a breath, I refused the reflex which sent my right foot back. Away. Away from the beautiful melody, from pure bell chimes like water cascading down great stones. From muffled undertones, almost imperceptible undercurrents.

Laughter, riding on the wings of a keening so deep it was all I could do not to look away, break out and run.

Laughter, standing on a bed of a grief so heartrending and alien it scorched my soul.

Laughter, pure and terrible, and mocking.

“Fi, he won’t listen,” Murali called from behind me, his voice very, very soft. Blinking back the absurd sensation of burn searing my eyes, I bowed my head in a slow motion, and acknowledged the truth of Murali’s words. He was correct: the being standing before us wouldn’t listen--couldn’t listen probably, not with the insane sorrow riding him in this instant, not when haunted by a grief such that it sent the air shivering and silenced both birds and wind.

“I hear you,” I replied in a voice devoid of emotion. Neither Murali nor I needed another word. We shared no thought. In unison, we acted.

In a fantastic explosion of cosmo, the Marine Shogun flung himself at the obstacle barring our way.

And I ran, straight for the trunk.

I tore Einstein’s laws apart.

When a shadow appeared at the leftmost edge of my vision, I ignored it. “I’m your opponent!” When Murali’s bright cosmo clashed against an insubstantial spear of rainbow that had been aimed at me, I ignored it.

Less than a heartbeat away.

Less than a scrap of eternity away.

“Fi!” A tiny, tiny part of me recognized the cry as Murali’s, and heard the urgency in it. “Fi!” A great star was falling upon me, hurtling down so fast that it would send the grand stream at the heart of the sea of chaos recoiling in mad storms that would crush all ships from Earth to Pillar and beyond.

Nothing would change its course.

It would engulf me, crush me lest I teleport away--no. I could no longer stop; I could no longer recall the fire I had summoned to my hand.

Something bumped against my back, pushing me aside.

A blinding shaft of white light shot past me, an inch away from my right shoulder.

Bright red rain sprayed over me, blurring my vision, and again something bumped against my back.

Heavy.

Then I stopped, just as the absurd shower of bright red rain did. I stopped, and I pivoted in time to have Murali’s tall frame slump back against me--push me down. “Hey?!” I heard myself exclaim. That startled yelp hung in the air.

Time derailed from its tracks.

With painful slowness, I fell to my knees. In a reflexive gesture, I grasped Murali’s shoulders, but still he bumped against my chest and my lap when I hit the smooth, cool surface of the gigantic branch.

The black-haired head rolled to the side, even as his body slipped from my grasp. So heavy. In frantic, sluggish movements, I tried to catch hold of him, and failed. With a muffled thud, he hit the branch’s floor. Numb, I looked into rapidly darkening eyes.

Time hiccupped and regained its tracks.

My right hand pounced on Murali’s left shoulder, eliciting nothing other than a mechanical reaction. Murali! I willed the thought past the unseeing wall of his eyes, past the limp barrier of his body. Murali! Past the winking-out light of his cosmo, past boundaries nobody had the right to cross, I raced his spirit to the gate that opened on an ocean blacker than the sea of chaos, a place there was no returning from. Murali! For the time of a heartbeat, I thought I had him. Murali!

Silence.

Murali!

Nothingness.

Murali!

A golden arrow exploded into light before me, blazing. I recoiled. It was instinct, undeniable, a reflexive shying away of the soul when one’s other half suddenly manifested its will--Aries.

From very far away, I felt my heart beat, beat, beat inside my chest. The light was gone from Murali’s charcoal eyes, and yet my heart kept beating in my chest. His body resting limp in my lap was weighing more than Achernar’s sun, and still my heart kept on beating. On, and on. I sent no other thought in chase of his spirit, not because Aries wouldn’t allow my doing a heinous thing tantamount to suicide, but because the husk of flesh and bones I was holding in my arms was empty.

There were multiple cracks in Sorento’s Scales, deep rends in the proud Scales, but my eyes froze on two spots where it had been blown to bits. One in the right side of the chest plate, and another, right at the heart’s level. No blood had trickled down Murali’s chin, no blood had dripped from his mouth. It was as if the one who had dealt the blow had aimed for the heart after having delivered the first, lethal blow which had pierced through Murali’s right lung--as if he had wanted to spare Murali from being forced to wait for death while his own blood slowly drowned his lungs.

As if the one who had done this had wanted to give my friend the mercy reserved for downed predators.

Gently I released Murali’s corpse, and brought my hands before my eyes. The blood staining them was bright red, same as the light shower of rain which had sprayed over me.

I hadn’t sensed it.

When he had been struck, I hadn’t felt it. He hadn’t cried out, he hadn’t reached out to me in spirit. His cosmo hadn’t flared up to touch mine. I had felt nothing of it. He had placed himself between me and death, and I had sensed nothing. It was absurd. Pulling at the strings of my own body, I made myself stand up.

Reaching within, I touched Aries’ Fire.

I didn’t have to ask. Leaping up to embrace me, the flames engulfed my being and filled the raw emptiness of my soul. There was no thought, no conscious or sane will behind the Fire rising within me. It had no name, and neither needed nor cared for one. Leaning some weight on my left foot, I pivoted.

On the second branch above the one I was standing upon, a tall, slim man in white clothing was watching us in silence, his arms crossed over his chest and his russet-gold hair tickled by the breeze. The light in the blood-red eyes was unreadable--not that reading him mattered. With a thought, I willed myself at his level and flung myself at him. I struck at him with all the Fire that was Aries. Shaping my life into a spear, I struck without a word.

There was a great whoosh as the impossibly high flames hit a rainbow barrier not unlike my own Crystal Wall. Snarling, I arched my left arm backward, and again I struck.

I struck.

I struck.

When that many-colored shield curved to glove my left forearm, I didn’t stop. When it closed around me and started squeezing, I didn’t stop. When it crushed my Cloth, I didn’t stop. When it crushed the bones of my palm and my wrist, a scream traversed the air--mine. Abruptly the flames of Aries parted, and I clamped my jaws shut, refusing to cry out as the veil of insane anger lifted. Beyond my bloody, trembling left arm held in a case of rainbow light, Cinaed was standing, watching it, his face expressionless. All of a sudden, the red eyes flicked up to meet mine.

You might want to postpone this game, if you wish to bid your companion farewell. I blinked when the thought hit me. It was senseless, as absurd as he was. As I was about to discard it, a great gust of wind rushed past me, coming from below. Unable to help myself, I looked down.

Streams of leaves were twirling above Murali’s corpse, waltzing at the wind’s whims. Mesmerized, I watched what could have been a beautiful, utterly alien ceremony for the dead. Little by little, the wind abated and the leaves rained lightly down, covering Murali’s body with a blanket of silvery-green. Fighting the lump in my throat, I sucked in a breath, and willed the mist impairing my vision to lift. Murali’s body seemed to be shrinking, as if it were sinking into the wood.

It was sinking into the wood.

It was--

In an instant, I was kneeling by his side. Frantic, I reached down and grasped what was left of his shoulders. My nails grated against the wood and my hands, slipped, unable to find a correct grip. Beyond the cold feeling of the golden Scales, I heard it at last.

A faint, faint song.

A mourning chant, almost imperceptible.

Sorento’s Scales were weeping, the way Cloths did when their other half faded from the world and they remained alone, condemned to know, love and lose another, again and again.

For all eternity.

But not Sorento.

No longer Sorento.

The Scales’ grieving song was weak, because it was fading as well, drowning into the grey wood. I didn’t reach out to it. I didn’t save it from the tree’s embrace. They were glad for this, almost grateful for this true ending. So I watched, silent, while the wood swallowed the one man I had loved.

I watched, as Murali’s ebony black curls were enshrined in the wood.

I watched, as the tree cradled him and held him close, and finally consumed him.

I watched, motionless, the smooth surface of grey wood. I watched, until the pain of smashed bones in my left hand at last managed to find its way to my mind. Then I closed my eyes tightly shut, and I bit back the howl crowding my throat. Beyond the searing pain, silence and emptiness were gnawing at me, abruptly clear. I didn’t need to look up to make sure.

Cinaed was gone.

Something moved me from where I was kneeling--a wordless whisper in the breeze, or the throbbing pain encasing my left arm and eating at my being. Of their own volition, my eyes settled on the spot where Murali’s body had been resting before being absorbed by the tree. Unblinking, I stared at the grey wood. It was as if Murali had never lied there, as if nothing of what had happened had been real. No shred of him remained, no broken piece of his Scales, no silent shadow of Ligea.

Nothing.

It had been a long time since the gentle breeze had scattered away the leaves that had blanketed the closest thing to a tomb Murali would ever have. It didn’t make sense, any of it: his absence, the dulled embers in my heart, the universe-encompassing tree--my being here. My breathing air in and out of my lungs was absurd. Insignificant. Stubborn, as stubborn as the Gold Cloth clinging to my body, refusing to let go. Aries was heavy, was growing heavier with each moment that passed. The weight of it was pulling at me and dragging me down.

Thirst.

The sensation was spreading within, reaching up to my mind with pleading hands. The dry feeling of parchment in my throat had grown sharp enough to hurt. It would no longer be discarded. In slow, sluggish steps, I walked away from Murali’s ridiculous grave and went back to the pool we had initially stopped next to. There was no purpose behind my movement when I squatted down next to the natural basin in a hollow of the branch, or when I dipped the right hand into the clear waters.

Cool, tingling liquid tickled my fingers. Something that wasn’t a smile twisted the corners of my mouth, and I bent down to drink.

Lies. I froze in mid-motion. The faint tendril of thought twirled up my outstretched arm and brushed against my mind before dancing away. All of it, lies. The soft, soft murmur cupped my darkened soul, a gently supporting hand. Illusion. Nothing is true here. Nothing is real. My vision wavered, and I bent further down, my eyes burning, stroked, encouraged by the sweet ethereal breeze. It didn’t happen. It couldn’t have happened, it crooned, or you would have had his body as proof.

No.

In a jerking movement, I straightened. A strangled gasp echoed in the air, followed by a series of weak coughs. The pain burning my lungs had engulfed my whole body, as meaningless as the sensation of water dripping from my hair and down my cheeks. The caressing, muted words were gone. False. “False,” I repeated in a wheeze. Again, I coughed, and spat out water in the palm of my right hand I had reflexively pressed against my mouth. “False.” No lies, but the truth, all of it.

The darkening light in Murali’s eyes.

The faint mourning song of Sorento’s Scales.

Blinking, I stared down at the pool of water, and failed to catch sight of my reflection in it. Instead, a woman no older than I was peering at me, her eyes the palest shade of blue. Headstrong enough to turn aside a gift it desires more than anything. A glint in her gaze, mirrored in the string of laughing beads that rattled the edges of my mind, teasing.

Mocking and haughty.

Ice.

“Who are you?” I asked aloud.

Silent laughter answered my question. There’s a price to be paid for daring to breach our domain. It would have been wise to pay it this time. With that, the fey woman’s face in the waters rippled, and then was gone. On impulse I dipped my right hand into the pool once more, and flexed my fingers in it.

Nothing, beyond a now familiar tingling sensation. Cupping my hand, I brought water to my lips and gulped it down. There had been no warning, no feeling of her presence, as if she didn’t exist. Or as if she was so completely part of the tree that the scent of her could no longer be distinguished from it. While pondering this, I drank some more. There was no warming sensation when the liquid flowed down my throat, no feeling of being replenished. Still I drank, and drank, in futile attempts to fill the void within. Yes, void. There was no pain, no festering wound oozing poison. The ghost woman’s words had forced me to clutch at the raw memories of Murali’s death, but that--didn’t matter.

Murali was dead.

Cinaed had killed him.

The tree had taken his body, and extinguished Sorento’s Scales.

I wouldn’t let them finish the job with me. I wouldn’t do them the pleasure of handing them victory. I was alive: the pain raking my body and the crushing weight of Aries were proof of that. The embers in my heart were dull, but not yet grey ashes. I looked down at my shattered left hand, and grimaced. It had started swelling, and though there was no gaping fracture, the damage was worsening with time. A shuddering sigh won past me when I chewed my lower lip and blew on the dying embers within.

Reluctant, their dark reddish hue brightened, then little flames started licking at them--and grew. As I tore Fire out my soul, the weight of Aries lessened, and a small, small hum rose inside me. “I know,” I breathed in a husky voice at the Gold Cloth which shared everything I experienced and felt. “I know.” With an effort of will, I visualized the broken pieces of the Cloth that had used to shield my left arm. Some had fallen, scattered to the branch’s surface, and had somehow failed to sink into the wood in the same time Murali had. Others had fallen far below. No matter. Eyes closed, I called out to them.

In a spiral of golden dust, they came, and they settled in place, pressing against my broken hand and wrist. Teeth clenched, I sucked in a breath. It hurt, and I wasn’t done. Gathering Fire in a mantle around me, I wove ethereal flames like threads to knit the shattered pieces together, and I willed them crush the swollen limb inside a tight golden splint. Once I was done, I let out a shuddering sigh, and wiped beads of sweat from my brow. Then I made myself look around.

Aries’ flames were burning again in my heart. It was nothing joyful. It didn’t stem from any will to live on my part. Their light was a dark red one, that wasn’t anger. I snorted, and forced my sluggish mind to focus on what my eyes could see. Up was Cinaed’s domain and certain defeat, death if I went there. Tempting, but not allowed. Down at the roots was a pool of black waters, a gate leading out of this nuthouse, guarded by an even blacker serpent that cared nothing for Einstein’s laws. A bit above that, honeysuckle vines were embracing the tree, the myriad of them affording it unbreachable protection. There was no going either up or down, not as I was.

There was but one way out.

“Hamal,” I murmured, but alone the distant rustle of leaves answered me. My jaw set, I stared at the faraway canopy of silvery-green leaves, and shaped my will into an arrow.

Hamal! I called in spirit, and I stretched myself. I glided up with the thought, high, higher--until I reached a transparent wall. I pushed at it, and it started glowing.

A faint, rainbow-colored glow.

A weak gasp resounded in the air around me when I fell back into my body, swatted like a fly. “Not so easy, then,” I said between short, ragged breaths. “It figures.” Harshly I discarded the fog of weariness enshrouding me, and I called again, Hamal!

There was no other way. It was either regaining Hamal, or dying here, wasting away, going mad and eventually killing myself.

I wouldn’t give them that--my life and Aries’.

Never.

So I tore at myself, I snarled at pain and exhaustion, and I flung myself against that invisible wall fettering my spirit. I lashed out with all my strength at the rainbow wall that was causing it. Always it pushed me back, and always I hurled myself back at it. Hamal! I willed the mental cry into rays of golden light so thin they would slip between two colors of the rainbow, but the faint arch shifted and caught them--caught me.

“No.” I gritted my teeth. I was Aries. I was Gold. Weakness and despair, defeat were forbidden me. Harsh and cruel though that was, it was the truth. It was what we were, what we had to be, we guardians of the Goddess Athena, and of the humanity she cherished. I wouldn’t stop. I wouldn’t give up. Setting my eyes on one of the higher branches, I teleported myself to it, and in the instant I stepped out of reality, I called again, Hamal!

For the time of a heartbeat, nothing came in my way, then the wall slammed down upon me. Violently. Almost, I lost my balance and plummeted to the ground far below when I stepped on the branch I had been aiming for. Through the tearing pain of exhaustion, I smiled. It had been late in catching me. It had been surprised. “So,” I grinned, in spite of myself.

And I teleported myself again.

And again.

And again.

“Hamal!” that faint croak hadn’t even met the mental barrier. From very far away, I felt myself stumble back and collapse in a heap against the trunk. It didn’t matter. I summoned fire from my heart, but only weak sparks came to my hand, so weak that they shimmered and dwindled into nothingness in less than a second. I could no longer shape my thoughts into arrows. No matter how I tried, my mind refused to obey. I tried to stand up, but the crushing weight of Aries forced me down. The silvery-green canopy was growing hazy, as hazy as the painful, slow beatings of my heart. I needed rest. I blinked, but couldn’t gather enough strength to laugh. I needed rest, but sleep, I-- I laid my head back against the trunk, and stared up at the maze of forking branches above.

Waves of grey wood.

So many.

Swaying waves, moved by invisible tides.

Darkening.

Cradling me, gentle.

Careful.

The breeze dancing between them was music.

A lullaby to sing my abused mind to sleep.

Sleep.

Adrift.

Held by the forever moving grand stream.

Swung by the sea of chaos.

Supported by the black waves.

In the glistening night strewn with gates opening.

Toward reality.

White, the pillow upon which my head was resting. White, the sleeve covering the arm whose hand was laid upon my own left arm, folded and broken.

White.

I blinked, but the absurd sight didn’t vanish. The reality of the warm, white pillow beneath my right cheek refused to go away. The hand’s long, slim fingers remained folded upon my left arm, their pressure a gentle one. Again I blinked, but the solidity of him didn’t vary. Pain was spreading in muffled waves from my right hip, which had been resting against the wood’s smooth but hard surface for the Goddess knew how long.

There was a gap between then and now. A void, during which a beautiful killer had sat down by my side and decided to use his lap as a pillow for my human head. The hand resting upon my forearm was linked to an arm he had hooked around me, as one would do to protect a child from its nameless fear of the dark--from monsters lurking in the night, and waiting to spring upon their prey.

For a moment, the thunder of my heartbeats deafened me, and the rush of blood obscured my vision. Deep within, the flames of Aries’ Fire roared high--and then whooshed out in an instant. Against me, the eerie guardian of the abyss-encompassing tree shifted his position, ever so slightly. The hand he had laid upon my forearm lifted as he released his hold on me. For a few seconds more, I lay still, my mind a blank. Then I sat up and leant the palm of my right hand on the wood to do so, my fingertips less than an inch away from his left thigh. Dizziness gripped me, and from very far away I felt myself sway, as if I had just awoken from a deep, hundred years-old slumber. Once the sensation had faded, I found myself peering at Cinaed’s fair face.

Silent, I stared into the eyes of pale blood. There was nothing there, as there was nothing inside me. Aries’ Fire was quiet in my heart, so quiet and low that I couldn’t feel its hum resonating through my being. Fury was out of my reach, impossible to grasp, as was grief. To sleep in the arms of the tree brings lasting peace, an oblivion without end. The sending had been light, not laden with awful strength as he had done before. Flames danced in his gaze. It would be strange to yield to that most gentle pull after denying one of the Sisters. The quirk of his lips had to be a smile. Numb, I looked at it--I looked at him. There was a weird coherence in the absurdity of this place, of everything that happened in it. Perhaps if I focused on the necklace of events, I’d find a key to understanding it, but I couldn’t bring myself to even try.

Cinaed’s thoughts were a warning, his presence a shield that had most likely saved me from the fate he had hinted at. “Why” brushed against the surface of my mind and then was gone, forgotten. He had killed Murali. He should kill me. I should kill him. I turned away from the mocking thoughts twirling before me, tapping the edge of my right shoulder, nagging at me. There was a taste like iron in my mouth, and a searing sensation in my lungs each time I was drawing in a breath. Still, I sustained that unfathomable gaze, and didn’t drown in the pools of thick blood that were his eyes. For a mere instant or an eternity, I did so, until the pain in my right wrist started sending needles piercing through my arm and my shoulder.

Perhaps I should thank him and then kill him, mused a little voice inside me while I stood up. He didn’t move, he didn’t react or say anything at all, even though he must be aware of the faint, tasteless thoughts pacing to and fro in my mind. His rainbow barrier and my Crystal Wall were kin. Yes, he must know. A grimace pulled at my face when I unwittingly tried to reach for my throbbing wrist with the left hand. “Moron,” I heard myself murmur even as I turned my back on the trunk and on the fey bringer of death still sitting against it.

In slow steps, I walked away.

A bright glint caught my eye, and I stopped. Squinting, I strained my vision, and noticed it again: a greenish light hitting a spot of pure whiteness and splitting into rays of many colors. I stared at it for a long while, and at last I remembered the vault of frost-dressed leaves Murali and I had encountered when we had first stepped into the tree’s treacherous embrace. It was another such thing, and it was still so far it was nothing more than a shining flicker, a dot on the horizon. It had been hours since I had left the trunk’s immediate vicinity, and yet I could feel it looming over me. Walking all the way to the giant branch’s edge would take me weeks, perhaps even years, so insanely huge it was.

Perhaps if the walk lasted a whole lifetime, it would be enough to wear out the void dulling my soul. Rage would have torn me to shreds, as hatred would have, but those were denied me. With a small sigh, I pivoted and took a good look at the trunk behind me. Yes, it was still close, very close if truth be told. In an absentminded gesture, I reached for my left forearm and ran the fingers of my right hand over the Cloth piece covering it. The simple touch hurt, but the pain was growing dim. The bones would mend, as shattered and unset as they were, and sinew and muscle would find a way to link that hand and its arm together again--or they wouldn’t. It was beyond me to worry or care. The cracks in the Gold were still there, but the delicate threads of cosmo had held.

It was good.

It meant that strength had returned to me. The oblivion-like sleep had been useful for that at least. Glancing up at the silvery-green sky, I discarded the idea of draining myself to call for Hamal again. It would be futile: I couldn’t overcome the dreadful power that was Cinaed’s. Staring at the distant canopy without seeing it, I circled around the cold truth brought up by a part of me which was neither afraid of ghosts, not impaired by sharp arrows of emotions--dulled now, but still.

We had been right, Murali and I: there was no breaking the chains binding us to this place. Our strength could never be enough, unless we managed to divert a significant fraction of the will set upon imprisoning us here. That meant hurting the giant tree.

Murali’s and my power hadn’t been enough.

Sorento couldn’t be enough.

As for Aries-- I folded my lower lip, and chewed at it. My back was to the wall. I wouldn’t lay down and die, and I wouldn’t go down in a ludicrous blaze of glory that would serve no interest other than my own selfishness. Why I had shied away from using one of the terrible means at my disposal couldn’t be put into words. My predecessors hadn’t balked, pushed by the brutal tides of the wars between gods. It was weird to regret those times, obscene even, and yet I found myself doing so. I found myself wishing I was as certain and bereft of choices as those who had worn the name Aries before me had been.

But then, I was bereft of choices.

Laughter spilled from my lips, the bitter sounds of it covering the constant rustle of leaves. Murali was dead, I had let that happen before coming to a conclusion that was as obvious and true now as it had been then. I laughed harder and faced that reality, looked the ugliness of it right in the eye before casting it aside. Regrets were empty things clawing at my heart, and I had no need for them. Later, perhaps.

Drawing in a deep breath, I closed my eyes. It would have to be quick, I could afford no hesitation. Once I hurt the tree, every one of its inhabitants would turn on me, on Hamal. The guardian of the pool of black waters would still be there, coiled around its shores and waiting for trespassers to mark brief pauses in its boring eternity.

Cinaed would feel it. He wouldn’t wait until I had struck to intervene. The memory of his rainbow barrier twisted my mouth into a smile. The sequence of events that had to follow was now clear in my mind.

Crystal Wall, I invoked in a murmur, rising the iridescent shield and closing it around me like a cloak.

Now.

I blinked. Now. There was no later, no other time. Now. Steeling myself, I dived deep within, past the blinding flames of Aries. Deeper.

Deeper.

Lightning struck at the Crystal Wall on my back, bouncing harmlessly away from it. Stop it! The mental spear would have pierced through my mind, but I was too deep. I was falling too fast and too deep within to even feel it.

Deeper.

Deeper.

Again lightning battered the Crystal Wall, so awfully strong that the iridescent current coursing it shivered. Stop! Had I been aware of that silent command, I would have laughed the one who had uttered it in the face. It was too late for that, far too late.

There, enfolded by the innermost flames of Aries’ Fire.

Fettered.

Hidden.

Contained.

A small, small fire, so weak a child could have put it out--black. Blacker than the void between stars and the empty night beyond the Rim. Come, I bade it, cupping unreal hands to receive it.

It obeyed.

A tiny seed of blackness, it grew. Releasing a shuddering breath, I opened my eyes, even as a third bolt of lightning slammed into the Crystal Wall, the raw violence of it such that, for a fraction of a second, my shield faltered. I stumbled forward, but didn’t let go of the black fire blossoming in my heart.

Now I would have to drop my Wall.

STOP! the thought would have crushed me, it would have reduced me to a huddling little ball of insane dread, but something inside me rose and met it.

You killed him, the inner voice that was mine and then wasn’t said. You killed he whom I loved. Now, the calm which was spreading within me was so absolute nothing could disturb it, feel this sundering for yourself.

Aries’ voice.

“Oh, Aries--” I clamped my jaws shut, and willed the Crystal Wall to part, and unfold before me.

The trunk’s grey wood filled my vision, full of a life so immense it defied logic and understanding, so strong that it was bearing the whole sky upon its canopy of leaves and branches. I watched it in silence, while little tendrils of black flames started coiling down both my arms like ebony bracelets.

Behind me, a giant blue star went nova.

The Crystal Wall shattered.

"Starlight Extinction!" I summoned in a ringing voice, and the twin fires burnt black in my hands. Then they winked out.

And roared to life as they struck the trunk.

Unwilling to witness what would come next, I turned around. The dark flames would rip through reality, through the fabric of life itself to bridge the abyss between this place and the realm of the dead. A black disk, shimmering dark fire would grow and spread upon the tree’s trunk, and it would consume it--the gate through which its strength would be drained, leeched out by an obscurity to which there was no end.

I didn’t even have time to get a glimpse of Cinaed’s proud figure flinging himself at me. Instinct made me try to escape an attack I didn’t really see coming. White, blinding fire struck me, an incandescent blade that cut through the left side of my face and would have split my skull open if not for my Cloth’s helmet. Tiny bits of Gold showered my feet, their fall slow. Slow. Like snow.

Blood hampered my vision.

It mattered not: I knew what I must do now. Hamal! I shouted silently, stretching myself.

Low hum.

Engines hum.

Hamal! My heart went with that cry, and my will, all that I had left.

Metal beneath my feet. I couldn’t see, blinded by the blood soaking my face, but I knew Hamal’s bridge as I knew the palm of my hand. A heartbeat, and I was sitting down in the pilot’s seat. Too small. I hissed air out of my lungs. The chair wasn’t designed to accommodate a Clothed pilot, but I couldn’t shed Aries. I wasn’t strong enough. In a reflexive gesture, I wiped at my face, which triggered another hiss from me. My fingertips encountered a cut so deep it had reached the cheekbone and had almost sliced it in two. Somehow, I managed to get some of the blood off of me, and I regained a very much impaired sight. Only my right eye could still see.

No time for that.

“Holding net,” I muttered, teeth clenched against the searing pain that wanted to devour me and drown my mind. Even as I willed life to Hamal’s engines, the force-field rose around me, and pinned me to my seat. Good. Nothing would be able to shake me from there. I couldn’t trust the failing strength of my body. On my right, warning systems flashed orange, reminders of Hamal’s current frailty. The jumpship’s auto-repair gear had patched most of the hull damages, but--it would have to do. Hamal would have to hold through whatever was about to come our way. “Down!” I snarled, discarding the stubborn lights, and plunged the jumpship down toward the roots. “Faster!”

Hamal was a jumpship. Its only weapons were the sharp angles of its hull and its speed--and its pilot. As such, it was unarmed. It stood no chance of withstanding one of Cinaed’s attacks, and I could no longer maintain my hold on the black fire that had shaped the Gates of Hell.

With a hoarse cry, I extinguished its dark flames, while absurd proximity alert systems screeched through Hamal’s bridge. They would be the vines greedily reaching for the jumpship, eager to fling it against the trunk and to smash it to bits. “Not a chance!” I scorned them, and led Hamal through their thousand snares.

A black gleam on the front view.

I willed Hamal to dive even faster, even as the lake-sized pool’s edges shifted and reared up to meet with the plummeting jumpship. Without a care for the serpent, I pushed at Hamal’s engines. The giant black snake was nothing, but Cinaed could stop me if I was delayed long enough for him to be done taking care of the damage to the tree he had been unable to prevent.

The serpent opened its mouth wide, revealing fangs that were dripping corrosive venom. I ignored it, as well as its rearing head now reaching Hamal’s level. Behind it, the pool of dark waters sparkled, stroked by the wind. With the last of my strength, I reached out to them.

Shivers rippled on their surface.

Deepening.

For a moment I wavered, lost in the liquid alienness of them, and then I found my way. Less than a hundred miles below, the black waters parted.

The serpent snapped its jaws shut, too late. Cheating with old Einstein’s laws, I had stolen a few drops from the sea of chaos, and I had splashed them over Hamal, so that we could jump even before cleaving through the pool’s surface.

So that we could be snatched out of reality by hyperspace’s familiar currents.

End of Chapter 6.

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