[ Watashi ]

[ Tomodachi ]

[ Saint Seiya ]

[ Clamp ]

[ Fanfiction ]

Siel's garden was heaven. At least, that was what I had decided when I had first laid eyes upon it. Each time I came to spend my time in it, the sensation grew. Shifting my position against a column of the Pisces House's parvis so that it could completely support my back, I stared at the field of red roses through half-lidded eyes and heaved out a faint sigh. The flowers frightened Shane and just about everyone in the Sanctuary. They all viewed them as terribly efficient, delicate instruments of death. They were the last line of defense protecting the heart of this place: the temple of Athena. That name belonged to a goddess of antiquity--the goddess of Earth, Wisdom and War. Guardian of humanity. They all believed, Shane and Siel included, that this goddess had truly existed, that she had clothed herself with flesh and bones and walked this place, talked to their predecessors, advised them, led them--loved them.

It would have been a fantastic tale worthy of a prime-time multiple seasons' flick on IFN, complete with its warring gods and endangered humanity--but Siel and Shane believed it. They were no brainwashed, crazy cultists...and then there was Brennan Aries. The madman claimed to have seen this goddess with his own eyes, to gave been her right hand during the last of their titanic wars no history record had ever kept track of--but Brennan Aries also claimed having been around during the great tragedy that had struck Azure Traverse more than two centuries ago, when almost all the jumpships--the first generation of them, capable of only a single In Dive and Out Fall--had been lost, truly lost, gobbled up by the greatest storm ever known to have engulfed the Deep.

I didn't know what to make of this. Perhaps I should laugh at the absurdity of it all, but what had happened to us, happened to Fi, was no matter for amusement or mirth. I knew I should reflect on this, ponder the possibilities and try to find a way to use the knowledge, but it was just too insane. What could one do when faced with a group of people who considered themselves holy warriors sworn to a goddess of old--a group that also wielded considerable power, be it in trade, transport or even in the world of politics? Perhaps I could try getting the story out to an investigation journalist, yeah, sure, he'd listen and help--shit, the guy would laugh me in the face, and with good reason.

Not that I could get any kind of story out of here anyway--or myself.

So here I was, taking a nap at the edge of Siel's garden, basking in the warmth of the afternoon sun and in the intoxicating perfumes of the roses. A smile crept up my lips as Irecalled Shane's repeated warnings that the flowers would make me sink into coma-like slumber, rob me of my senses and kill me--gently, elegantly kill me. Flowers were flowers, and even though sometimes perfumes could be addictive, they didn't kill, and they certainly didn't act like sentient beings.

"Hiding here again?" A snort escaped me when I heard the gentle chiding in Siel's voice. A shadow touched mine as he came to stand beside me, bent over me and rested a hand upon my right shoulder. "Shane is waiting for you," he added.

Turning my head to the right, I leaned my cheek against Siel's arm and closed my eyes. "Yeah," I breathed, "let him wait." Reaching up with my left hand, I closed my fingers upon the rough fabric of his sleeve, and gave the weakest tug on it. It would be so easy to pull him down upon me. Heaving out a sigh, I let him go instead, and focused on the field of roses. Siel's hand on my shoulder squeezed, ever so slightly. "It's not as if I could learn any of the things he tries to teach me anyway," I said in a quiet voice, willing the flowers' scent to eclipse the absurd, foolish whims of my undisciplined brain.

"That," Siel retorted, releasing my shoulder as he straightened, "isn't true." He was smiling. Even though I couldn't see it, I knew. It was in his voice and in the feeling of him. "Shane teaches you control, and even though you fight him every inch of the way, I can feel the changes in you. Small and insignificant though they may seem to you, the progress you've made is close to ensuring you'll never lose your mind when you call upon your talent."

"Not that that'll ever be of any use," I scoffed, bitterness tainting the tone of my voice, mixed with pain and anger. "You'll never let any of us fly again. You'll never allow us to touch the Deep again." My jaw set, I hissed air between my teeth. It was stupid to tell Siel this, to spit my anger at him.

"Shane said they needed to run some more tests on you. That's why he's been looking for you," Siel said, untroubled. He had a knack for ignoring any outburst of mine, as if malice and rage slid over him without ever touching him. "That's also why you should go."

Head bowed, I stifled the laughter crawling up my throat. "Sure," I whispered, my voice carefully devoid of emotion. "Sure, I should go and let them prod me some more. They can't do anything." A smile curled up my lips. "There's nothing they can find in my blood, in my brain, in my liver or anywhere else that'll help them devise a means to heal Fi and the others. I'm almost convinced they're aware of that, and don't give a damn. I told you before," I said softly, quietly, "we need the sea. Only the sea. Its waves and its tides, its currents and unending motion."

Silence followed my words for a while, then Siel sighed. "Not while Brennan leads us. He must never know this, never hear of it. You must understand." Something cold and harsh abruptly came to Siel's voice as he went on, "Shane's apprenticeship must end, eventually."

Before us, a sudden, brutal gust of wind troubled the ocean of red roses, come out of nowhere.

"Hush," Siel absentmindedly waved toward the garden, and the violent wind died in an instant. The myriad of petals it had carried away slowly showered over the garden.

Blood red snow.

"Enough delaying." Siel looked down at me. "You'll go to Shane now." There was no gainsaying him, not when he stared at me with that unfathomable gaze. So I stood up and moved to step past him. "Fury is all right," he said, his voice soft, so very soft that it was barely audible. "Pain and bitterness are all right." His left hand clasped mine, our fingers intertwined. "It's all right. Just never, never lock them within, Loki."

"Aye." I stared at the entry of the small temple before me, and blinked.

Balance.

Center.

With a nod, I walked away in the same time he released me.

Getting back down the impossibly long and steep flight of stairs was easy--much faster than climbing up, too. The small temples were always empty whenever I traversed them, which was weird. Even though some were uninhabited, a majority of them were home to what people here called the Gold Saints, the highest rank in their order. Somehow, those Gold saints always managed to be away when I was there. Siel had laughed when I had mentioned this, and told me that his peers had far more important things to do than to care about my comings and goings, or to stay there to greet me as if I had been a guest of theirs. They knew I was expected in the Pisces House, and that was enough for them.

Shadows and swirling currents met me when I entered the third temple, as they always did--blind rage that felt like a physical blow. Teeth clenched, I hurried outside before it could find an echo in my own heart and revive things dead and past. Never again had I asked Shane about the savage feeling I got in this place. There was something dark here, even worse than in the fourth temple, something dangerous he seemed to be oblivious to--as did Siel. Perhaps I should tell them again, but there was never a right moment for that...and it felt wrong to talk about it. So I held my peace, and went through the House of Gemini as quickly as I could every time my steps led me to it.

I found Shane waiting on the threshold of his small house, busy opening amygdalia, sat on the porch. Sniffing my presence out of thin air as was his habit, he lifted up his head and scowled at me. "Where did you hide this time? I asked Siel, and even he didn't know."

Snorting, I shrugged. "Here and there." So Siel hadn't told him, and Shane hadn't felt my presence up the great Stairs. Well, Siel had mentioned he was good at dissembling things. Obviously that included me, and he intended to keep to himself the bond he had agreed to seal with me--I had agreed to seal with him.

At first, I had thought he was simply waiting to see whether it could work, whether he could really be my anchor. It was unheard of for a pilot to bond with another than the one he or she had originally been teamed with. We went in pairs, together from the day of our first In Dive until the day we died. That Siel could fill the terrible wound of silence generated by Fi's absence was in itself a kind of miracle I couldn't understand, but--Siel had never doubted, never wondered. Perhaps there were things common between those so-called Saints of the Sanctuary and the Azure Traverse pilots. Maybe our roots were the same, our hearts shaped from the glistening flow of starlight that was the Deep's substance. In any case, it had now become obvious that Siel didn't want anyone else to know about this. Likely it was for the best.

"Of course," Shane heaved out a loud sigh, and went back to opening his amygdalia. "Before we go," he said, his voice quiet--free of anger and frustration even though he must be mightily pissed by my constant misbehavior, "there's something I have to tell you."

"Fi?" the question rushed past my lips, unstoppable. "Is it about Fi?" I asked him, my heart hammering in my chest so hard it hurt.

He glanced at me, then refocused on his careful work. "No."

So. Letting out a deep, shaking breath, I sat down beside him and waited. For a while, there was only the song of the wind and the crack of amygdalia peels opening under the pressure of Shane's nimble fingers. I didn't say anything. I was weary of hearing how the Graad Foundation's scientists found this and that in my system but that it gave them no clue as to how to silence the Deep's madness.

"We have taken over Azure Traverse," Shane told me all of a sudden, his voice neutral. "The Graad Foundation now controls all transport to and from the colonies. We're reestablishing links toward the remotest places where no jumpgates can be built. At least, people won't starve or run short on essential goods out there."

"Taken over?!" I scoffed, and stared at Shane, but he wouldn't meet my gaze. "And how about Threshold and the Nyah? How about Shore?" I scorned him, even though it wasn't his fault. There was no place for fairness or restraint in my mind--only disbelief and anger. "How about the Dwellers? Will you explain to them how dangerous and forbidden the Deep is? How we had to be taken out?"

Shane bowed his head, and drew in a breath. "I don't know. I travel a lot, I go to places and observe," a smile tugged at the corners of Shane's lips, "so I know a bit about Nyah and Dwellers, but this is all strange and alien to many people on Earth and in the Inner Colonies...things distant, beyond the horizon that may exist or simply be the stuff of legends. But," he looked at me then, his blue eyes clouded. "I've heard that Shamira Goldstein herself decided to step down and relinquish control of Azure Traverse to us. She'll cooperate with us and hand over the trade routes that only the Azure Traverse pilots knew, as well as everything Azure Traverse has on the Nyah and whatever trade agreements there are with them, what contracts and how to talk to them."

"Shamira did what?!" I exclaimed.

"She gave up Azure Traverse," Shane told me softly. "With all of you gone, it didn't make sense for her to hold on to it any longer. Besides, it's better for all the people in the Outer Colonies, who depend heavily upon trade."

I laughed in his face. "Better for the Outer Colonies?! Better for Earth, yes!" I spat. "Better for Earth which needs ores and uranium mined by the old space-faring clans!" With a wild shake of my head, I clamped my jaws shut before I could say worse and betray things that belonged only to the ancient families who lives in worlds where Earth had lost all meaning and hold on them.

It didn't make sense.

Shamira couldn't yield. She couldn't surrender and give up. She was strong, she wielded power--she could gather many votes within the house of representatives on Carré. She could make things move, start inquiries, investigations.

She could look for us.

Help us.

"As to the Dwellers," Shane was saying, unaware that I had stopped listening, "I have no idea what they are. Brennan must fear them, because he said that Shore would be left to rot, and its name wiped from the stellar maps."

"She can't--" I whispered in a blanched voice, "she can't." I blinked. It wasn't possible. She was our roots. Our beginning. "She can't have abandoned us. She can't have decided to leave us in the Graad Foundation's clutches!"

"She has," Shane replied at once, quiet. Merciless. "To her, you're all dead. She has no reason to go on, with all of you lost in hyperspace with your jumpships. Certainly you understand that--"

"No!" I hissed, and hugged myself. She must know it wasn't so, that we couldn't get lost in the currents, that we sailed the Deep's flow with perfect mastery. She must know--she must feel!

"I'm sorry," Shane whispered, and he reached out to me.

"Don't touch me!" I snarled, jerking away. I stood up. It was all over. There no longer was any hope--any hope of ever being free again and plunging down the Deep. Down on my left, there was a series of thumps as the amygdalia fell from Shane's lap and rolled on the ground. There was no hope.

No hope of healing for the others.

No hope for Fi.

"Loki!" Deaf to Shane's desperate cry, I ran away from him. Shamira had given us up, betrayed us. There was nothing left--nothing! Blindly I ran, I ran toward the great flight of stairs leading up to what they claimed was the temple of a goddess who had once walked the Earth and loved humanity.

Panting, I staggered to a stop and bent over, hands clutching at my knees. Air was burning my lungs, and the echo of my frantic heartbeats must be deafening. All around me, the shadows were lengthening with the setting sun. I watched them glide closer, closer, until eventually they touched me. Swallowed me.

Cold.

Unable to suppress a shiver, I looked up and a feral grin split my face. It was yet another shadow, but this one was darker and colder, and dreadful. It was the shadow of the third temple along the great Stairs: I had stopped at the threshold of the House of Gemini. For a long, ugly moment, I stared at the darkness waiting inside, at the storm imprisoned there, famished but locked up, unable to snatch lives away. It was a storm of the Deep, I had felt it when I had first gone through this place. It would lay waste to anything unlucky enough to cross its path and fall down its gaping maw. It would devour everything.

Gazing at the obscurity, I laughed in the face of it. "I don't fear you!" I shouted at it, even though it could neither hear me nor understand me. Shamira had betrayed us, abandoned us. I had nothing left for the storm to gobble up and tear away from me. On impulse, I stepped inside.

The currents were everywhere. They were flooding the place and making little eddies around the columns of marble--little spirals coiling up to the columns as if they hoped to grasp them and tear them apart, as if they hoped to make the temple crumble into dust and to shred the Curtain that kept the storm at bay. "Silly," I chuckled at them, and I reached out. It was a Curtain, nothing more. Like the one separating the human sector of Shore from the Dwellers, it could be parted to release the storm.

It might obliterate the whole Sanctuary.

It might even ravage Earth.

Betrayed. My heart skipped a beat as the icy, ethereal whisper pierced through my mind. Killed. It was coming from the Curtain, from the storm beyond it, and it had won through when I had touched the thin layer of rippling space and time that was the border between the world and the Deep. Yes, this was like Shore, or like touching one of the Graad Foundation's lockgates.

Shining light.

Gold.

As I caught a glimpse of what lay beyond the Curtain, I blinked. Kin, it whispered, and its rage and despair engulfed me. That it was, kin in pain and fury at betrayal--kin in despair. In a slow motion, I saw my right hand part the Curtain and I felt it go through--and meet something.

Touch.

Fire.

Ice.

Hissing, I stepped back. I was holding a trident in my right hand. It was taller than I was, and made of pure, shining gold. Killed! the howl filled my mind--crushed it.

Black.

It's night all around. It's night, and it never ends in space--in this vast, timeless ocean that knows neither limits nor boundaries. It's as it should be. A small, insignificant pebble glides through the black waters, making its slow way from a moon to a blue planet. A tiny fraction of the unending night brushes against it, and its heart smiles as it touches frail creatures of flesh and blood--its own. Borne by the waves, the small shuttle is making its way to its destination, safe and protected from the Deep's capricious currents. Inside its metallic hull, it bears a part of the Deep's very essence. If the Deep were warmth, it would warm the fragile lives within that pitiful shell.

Quietly set in his seat in the economy class cabin, a child follows the direction indicated by his father's held out forefinger. Beyond the reflection of the young boy's red hair and clear green eyes in the diamond and silicium window that allows the passengers aboard the Earth-Moon shuttle to look outside, his father is pointing toward a huge ball floating dead in space. It's blue, this ball, and stained with white, and smaller spots of brown. They're the oceans, the clouds and the continents--the land, his father explains. The voice of the child's father is beautiful and gentle--he's beautiful and regal and kind and wonderful. The child loves him, and his mother, who's sitting on the other side of him. He had no particular interest in the big blue sphere, he's fascinated by the great night outside and the ghosts of sparkling currents which flow through it endlessly--but as his father explains, he listens.

The sphere is a planet, like all the other planets they've seen from other ships before, circled by great space stations that shine in the dark and float with the currents. It's a planet, but a very special one, because it's where everyone comes from. The cradle of humanity, his father says. The child looks down, dutifully focuses his attention on it, but he doesn't think there's anything special about it. It's just another world, a gravity well, solidity and an absence of motion. He doesn't say so, of course, because his father knows best, as he's the best, nicest father in the whole universe. They'll be safe there, they'll stay with an old friend of his father's family who has invited them over in one of the most wonderful places of the world called Earth: a small island in a country named Greece--an island, with beaches and the music of the waves and the scent of the sea everywhere. A smile comes to the child's lips, unbidden, and for the first time he thinks that he might like this new place--really like it, and perhaps even grow to love it.

Power rises from the blue and white and brown world in a vertical shaft, a spear of insubstantial light.

The Deep's currents abruptly pause, as if the Deep itself was turning its gaze toward the planet called Earth.

In the most absolute of silences, the spear of light pierces through the shuttle's fragile hull.

Inside, everything is chaos. There's a terrible noise, a screeching sound that means the shuttle's structure is being torn apart and that the integrity of its hull has been compromised. People scream in shrill voices, they cry out all around the child. Numb, terrified, he watches as the decorated ceiling that separates the economy class from the business class above it moves, strangely distorted, and then gives way.

People fall.

Great pieces of metal slam down and crush people's bodies into a pulp of torn flesh, ground bones and blood.

It crushes limbs.

It crushes arms.

It crushes legs.

It crushes faces whose eyes are wide in terror and knowledge of the coming, inescapable death, and whose mouths are open to let out a cry of horror, denial and despair. The sounds cannot make it to their lips, the child sees them stuck in their throats as the torn metal cuts through the flesh and slices through skin and muscle and bone. And kills them.

Kills.

Sirens are howling, mixing with people's screams. Automatic emergency procedures kick in, sealing of the hull and pressurization of the cabins. The lights go out, because all the unessential energy is redirected toward feeding the force-fields and life-support system. That's the way of ships. The child knows this like one knows how to breathe. It's his life, everything he has ever known, so he shouldn't be afraid, really. But just as the lights go out, another panel of sharp steel gives way and falls, right above the child's head, in a slow motion.

In the cabin's failing light, a shadow masks the child's vision.

A heavy weight pins him down in his seat.

Warm.

"Loki!" The cry comes from his mother and father both. It's their bodies he feels pressing against him, their arms that wrap around him to shield him, to-- There's a sickening thud, and the child is savagely pressed down in his seat.

It's dark.

There are no more lights.

There's no feeling of vibrations from the shuttle's engines, no telltale hum. There's only darkness--horrible. This isn't space. This isn't night. This is Dark. The Dark, and there are sounds in it. Muffled.

Sobs.

Moans.

Gasps.

Labored breathing interrupted by sickening gurgles.

There aren't only sounds in this Dark, there are also feelings that fill it and smother the child.

His parents' weak breaths like a fading breeze against his left forearm and his neck.

His parents' failing heartbeats.

A liquid, warm and viscous that soaks his clothes.

Pain where the sharp, heavy panel has pierced through his father's abdomen to pierce through the child's left hip, stopped only by the bone there.

Salty tears that shake his body and choke him.

A cry locked in his throat and unable to win free.

The pain should eclipse everything else. The deep wound in the child's hip should be enough to send him into shock and bring him the release of oblivion. It would be welcome, but it's not so. The child is blind in the Dark, and mute, but he keeps hearing. He keeps feeling.

The Dark crushes everything.

The Dark drinks blood and lives.

The Dark is Death, and it's everywhere. Places where there were sobs or moans of pain grow silent. Pressed against him, the bodies of the child's mother and father grow soft, as if they were giving way, as if they were losing some essential thing that holds them together. The caress of their breaths against his skin is now mixed with something wet and warm and thick. They don't say anything. The child, the little boy wants to call out to them, wants to cry and sob and beg them to take him in their arms--but that is useless. He knows. He watches.

The Dark.

Death.

The silence crushes everything, crushes life and tears it apart. It--the child blinks. He can no longer feel the wet breath of his parents or their fluttering heartbeats. The cry locked deep inside his throat wins free, but as the child releases it, as it rips through him and hurt--hurts!--no sound can be heard in the cabin. The silence has swallowed it.

Everything is still.

The Dark hovers above the child. It's satisfied, but barely. It would wish for more. Its anger and hatred aren't sated. Nothing can quell them. It hates, and hates, and hates. It hates the child's father, it hates him so much that that hatred is enough to extinguish the light of all the stars in the sky. It hates the child's mother for daring to love his father, and of course it hates the child--it hates the child most, for what he means, the continuation of a thing it dreads--hates. It hates everything.

Hidden under his parents' rapidly cooling corpses, the child watches, paralyzed. He feels, bound--squashed. He's going to drown in the Dark, but before that happens he withdraws far, far inside his mind, in a small piece of himself that holds sparkling motions and currents like those of space--but it's gone. Gone! The child cannot breathe. Certainly the Dark will have him too, certainly it will devour him and be done.

Everywhere in all the many worlds and stations of human space, jumpgates are shut down in emergency, and jumpships Out Fall in beautiful drizzles of starlight, feeling the danger.

In alien Shore, a hush comes over the Dwellers.

If the Deep could know fury, rage and grief, the storm that now spreads in its infinity would be it. It watches, as ships tow away the damaged shuttle, aware of the small, broken life it's still holding in its midst.

Aware of the will behind the spear that struck the tiny vessel.

Standing next to the statue of one who once was the Deep's immortal enemy, a man clad in the glittering Cloth of Gold is looking up at the sky, long white hair flown by the wind. The hatred shining in his purple gaze is no longer human, it hasn't been human for many years. The Deep watches that man who dared crush the lives of its own. There is only hatred in the man's eyes, and despair.

The Deep watches, and the storm in its heart batters, powerless, at the insubstantial Curtain set in a small temple along a great flight of stairs. Along six of the other Houses set on the path leading to an ancient, sacred place, shining lights have darkened--tainted by what they have witnessed, and chosen not to stop.

I didn't cry out.

I didn't scream.

Unblinking, I held the trident that had been imprisoned behind the Curtain of reality. I focused on my fingers grasping its shaft, knuckles white. There was laughter bubbling up inside me, and a howl wanting out. I held the trident tighter. Betrayer, it whispered. Murderer. I nodded at it. I knew. I remembered. From very far away, I felt tears run down my cheeks.

"He's gonna pay," I told it in a soft, soft voice that was almost steady. "He's gonna pay, I promise." There was no doubt in my mind. No hesitation--no choice. Dragging in a breath, I stared at the magnificent weapon. "You'll help me," I told it, and currents enfolded me, coming from it. It was of the Deep, like me. We were kin, after a fashion. In a slow motion, I held it up and again parted the Curtain to replace it in its prison. It allowed me to do so. It had shielded me the whole time, and it continued to do so while I locked it away from the world. Once that was done, I turned toward the exit of the House of Gemini--toward the place the great Stairs led up to.

I must act quickly. For the moment, the trident's shield would hold and protect me from Shane and Siel, preventing them from reading me. It wouldn't last, though. Briefly I wondered whether I shouldn't wipe the tears from my face, then decided against it. Hands closed into tight fists, I flung myself forward, and ran.

Up the Stairs.

To where a man whose purple gaze held only hatred and despair lived.

Strength was flooding through me--or perhaps an absence of feeling. There was no pain in my legs, no air burning my lungs, no weariness dragging me down as I ran up the great Stairs and traversed the small pools of shadow set along its path.

"Hold." The voice was female and beautiful and quiet--very quiet. Currents and streams, frighteningly strong accompanied it. I stopped, right upon the threshold of the sixth temple's exit, and in a slow motion I pivoted to confront the one who had chosen to reveal herself.

It was a woman, I hadn't been mistaken. She wasn't particularly tall; she was thin, petite almost, and her long golden hair was tumbling down to reach the back of her knees. Even though she seemed to be staring straight at me, her eyes were closed--blind. "You shouldn't be here," she told me with the same eerie calm. There was something regal and dreadful about her--something not of this world.

Unearthly.

"Who are you?" I asked her, holding on to the currents shielding me with all of my will. If she ever heard the mad beating of my heart, if she perceived the storm of ashes growing within-- She laughed.

"You should be the one answering that question, but it doesn't matter anymore." She smiled. "I am Dominique, Gold Saint of Virgo, and you shouldn't be here," she repeated, sobering. "The clouds spiraling around your spirit are dark ones--too dark," she finished in a thoughtful whisper.

"Yes," I nodded, "I know." There was no time to shape some convoluted lie, and besides I was almost certain that woman wouldn't have been fooled. "That's why I'm going up again--" she must know of my regular traversing her House, she must, and she must also know the reason why, at least in part, I prayed even as the words rushed out, "like all the other times. But I'd never seen you before."

She took a step toward me. "Indeed. You're going up the Stairs." She pursed her lips. "A shiver ran through the House of Gemini, mere moments ago. It was a cold, cold wind, like the beginnings of a great winter storm, when the roar of the waves reaches out to us. It vibrated through the Stairs--but it's gone now." She gave an almost imperceptible shrug. "So, go up if you must, and do what you have to do." The smile that had curled up her lips was unreadable. For a moment, I stared at her closed eyes, I tasted the horrible strength of the streams of insubstantial light swirling around her--muffled now. Then I bowed, and ran out of the House of Virgo.

The echo of my steps was filling the center corridor of the twelfth temple. Setting my mind on the sound, I slowed down to a walk. This was my alleged destination, and there was no running through. I stopped on the exit's parvis, and looked at the garden. Where was he? I should see him somewhere in the field of roses, either that or he should have met me inside his House--

"Loki?" Briefly I closed my eyes, then I turned to face Siel. "What are you doing here? Is something--" he paused, and a shadow flickered in his eyes. "Shane told you about Shamira Goldstein," he sighed, coming toward me. Before he could reach out to me and touch the traces of tears still visible on my cheeks, I stepped aside. He mustn't touch me or he'd know, even the currents wouldn't be able to protect me.

"Yes," I hissed, my voice shaking with the smallest fraction of the grief and fury locked within.

The clear blue eyes watched me for a while, but he didn't try to reach out to me again--mindful of my earlier refusal. I didn't deserve that. I didn't deserve that attention or his gentleness. I deserved none of it--none of him. But Brennan Aries had killed and destroyed everything I loved, and they had allowed it--Siel had stood by and let that atrocity happen. So I embraced the storm within, I clutched the currents close, and didn't break.

"I'm sorry," Siel bowed his head, all of a sudden. "I don't know why she did that, even though--" again he sighed, and he waved his own words aside. "Loki," he added, staring up at me once more, "I cannot stay. I must go, and you'd be alone here--"

"It'll be all right," I summoned a smile to my lips, trembling, but that was okay because he'd mistake it for a sign of distress at Shamira's betrayal. "Please," my hands closed into fists at my side. "Let me stay here, in the garden. Your roses will allow me to find sleep, at least."

"They will, it's true," he mused, "and I should be back in time to check that they don't gift you with more than simple rest..." he let his voice trail off into silence, then eventually he gave a shake of his head. "Very well. If you think it can help, stay here." He smiled at me, a warm, gentle smile. "You can spend the night, I'll tell Shane not to search the whole Sanctuary for you."

I blinked and looked away, so I didn't have to see his smile. "Thank you," I murmured, head bowed, and I went to sit down on the parvis' edge, next to the garden. Looking out at the flowers, I focused on them, on their perfume rising in the wan light of dusk, and waited. Soon, I heard the fading echo of Siel's footsteps as he went away, off on some mysterious errand or to teach his two students under the starlight as he often did. I waited, while silence reclaimed the garden, and waited some more. Once I was reasonably sure Siel had left the small temple for good, I stood up.

At my feet, the myriad of bright red roses rustled with an ethereal breeze, as if wanting to tell me to stay--to stop while I still could.

"Tell him--"I began, and then I sighed. "No," I breathed, "don't tell him anything." With that, I jumped down the parvis and ran through Siel's garden. The roses were the Sanctuary's last, lethal line of defense, but I was no enemy. I was familiar to them, I was Siel's. So they allowed me through, to the great temple of Athena.

No guard was standing watch at the building's entrance. It was deserted. Unable to suppress a shiver, I went in. It was cold and dark, inhuman. This wasn't a place for people to live in. Gods or goddesses might perhaps find that icy perfection to their liking, but no human being could remain here long. In quick, brisk strides, I walked to the great double doors barring the entrance to the main hall. Then, in a slow motion, I lifted up my hands and leaned them against the varnished wood. There were no doubts to harbor. No hesitation.

None.

When I pushed, the double doors yielded with a muffled creak, and I stepped inside. This was the place where I had confronted Brennan Aries upon my being brought to the Sanctuary, where he had condemned all of us and defiled all that we were. There was some kind of throne at the other end of the hall, up a short flight of stairs, and white curtains behind that, which led to the place from which Brennan Aries had turned his gaze toward a small shuttle entering Earth's atmosphere, seventeen years ago--when the eight years old child that I had been had discovered a sphere of blue and white and brown floating in the night.

"Who dares?!"

A smile curled up my lips and twisted the corners of my mouth when I heard the furious snarl, and the echo of quickly approaching steps. "The Deep," I replied, even as Brennan Aries strode inside the room.

"You!" he hissed, purple eyes narrowing. In the darkness of the place, I saw eddies forming all around him--power. "What are you--"

"The Deep," I repeated, and I reached out with my left hand, beyond the Curtain of reality, beyond the insignificance of space, of place and time that had no meaning. "Fragments of it," I added as I freed the golden trident from its prison and brought it to my side, "fragments that you missed."

"Impossible! You cannot touch it! You can't--" he staggered backward, eyes wild.

Mad.

"Morgenstern," I told him in a low voice, summoning the storm and clutching the trident's shaft, "was my mother's name." In answer to my call, the savage streams flooded the air around me, swirled around me, struck at me, hammered at me. "You," I added between clenched teeth, "murdered hundreds of innocent people. You murdered my parents and left me to die in the dark." A howl was clawing up my throat, and I was shaking inside. "And you're gonna pay."

Currents lashed out at me.

Power clashed against the trident's shield, and rebounded back. It was futile, I could have told him so. The Deep was infinite, there was no harming it, no controlling it--no stopping it. "You," I began.

"Loki!" Even as the horrified exclamation reached my ears, eddies formed beside me and behind me--strong, strong eddies that belonged to the brightest of stars.

"Master, please run!" it was Shane, a distant part of me recognized his voice, full of pain and anguish. I laughed at him, I laughed at them all, at the beautiful, proud stars that they were--eddies that could never truly interrupt the Deep's flow.

Never.

"Loki, stop! Stop it! It's devouring you!" Again I laughed, at Siel who should know better, who should understand and flee lest he be swept away by the Deep's storm. Once more, currents lashed out at me from all sides. Awfully strong, they tried to win through the storm and the trident's barrier. Around me, something small and fragile and pure white spiraled, gliding upon the streams of power.

Siel's.

A white rose.

I saw it, and discarded it from my mind. "You," I repeated, a snarl splitting my face, focused on mad, insane Brennan Aries who should have heeded his apprentice's advice instead of attempting to pit his formidable--insignificant--strength against that of the Deep, "are dead."

In a slow, easy motion, I threw the trident.

Brennan Aries watched it cleave the air, and didn't even try to escape it.

There was a sickening thump as it pierced through flesh and bone, and found its way to the heart. I felt it as the weapon tore it apart, I tasted the bright red blood that tainted the golden shaft and splashed in small puddles at Brennan Aries' feet. I snarled as I breathed in the Dark closing its gnarled hand upon him and as I tasted the life fading from him.

His heart had stopped beating.

He fell back, and something like the ghost of a smile touched his lips, even as Death claimed him.

There was a loud clang as the golden trident hit the marble floor.

Around me, its shield evaporated, like ephemeral drops of morning dew.

Then, the currents struck. The stars' fury engulfed me and struck, and struck again. Thorns--I gasped as a stream of black light coiled up to me, insubstantial briar which paralyzed me and whose sharp, sharp immaterial thorns tore through my flesh. Again, I gasped as the white rose plunged down the currents, no longer a lazy, delicate flower swept away by the spirals shielding me--gone, gone! The white rose plunged down, dived, and buried itself in my chest.

I fell back and cried out as the thorns of my unreal bonds tore at my flesh and harshly held me in place--and drew blood in deep, deep cuts.

It was done.

It was over.

The storm within was abating, and the overwhelming, all-encompassing feeling of the Deep had withdrawn. Through the haze of pain fogging my mind, I knew that the trident of gold had gone back to being a lifeless ornamental weapon. We had served our purpose, it and I. Slowly I let myself sink.

"No, you don't," came a faint whisper. "Stay awake, Loki. Stay with me." There was warmth, reaching out through the pain and the eerie sensation of something tearing at my heart, sucking up my lifeblood--warmth, and anchor. Unable to deny the voice, I obeyed. I held on to the warmth, even though it hurt to do so.

Touch.

I willed my eyes to see again. Siel's left hand was resting against my cheek--his hawklike gaze set on me, distant. "Good." He smiled, and all of a sudden he slashed the empty air between us with his right hand in a sharp, violent motion.

Silence.

Silence--warmth, torn asunder.

From very far away, I felt my eyes widen, even as a howl crawled up my throat. I opened my mouth to let it out, to release the mad sounds of it, but silence was the only thing that passed through my lips--and short, ragged breaths. Silence, absolute, had claimed me in the instant a part of my soul had been severed--

Blue eyes watching me, watching, their gaze remote and indifferent.

Siel.

On instinct, my right hand jerked up--tried to do so, in a desperate attempt to reach out to the man at my side.

Clad in glittering gold.

Shining figure of old.

One of the bright, bright stars in the heavens.

The immaterial thorns stopped the movement, and more blood dripped down my hand and my fingers, raising ghostly echoes in the great hall. Siel didn't move, didn't even blink.

"He's dead."

The baely audible whisper cut through the heavy silence like a knife, and struck me. I saw him then. I saw Shane down on his knees at Brennan Aries' side. The young man's right hand was resting above the corpse's eyes, trembling ever so slightly. "He's dead," he repeated, his voice thick with grief--grief so terrible that nothing, no howl, no scream could express it. The heartrending emotion lingered in the air, intertwined with silence. Before me, shining, gold-clad silhouettes had frozen.

A low, keening sound abruptly filed the air.

Inhuman.

Along the great Stairs, it rose. All the way from the first temple, and it grew, enfolding the Houses and the six gold-clad silhouettes. It was Brennan Aries' other half, his anchor and center, and it was as if the glittering Cloths the others wore joined their ethereal voices to it, so they could mourn for the dead together.

"Go, child," the woman named Dominique sighed, even as the soul wrenching song faded. Nodding at Shane, she added, "Take him away, to the altar of Athena so he can rest, and wait until we can give him a proper burial." As Shane woodenly moved to obey and bore the corpse up in his arms, the other six rounded up on me.

"Lock him away," a dark man said, his charcoal eyes alight with fury. "Tear his five senses apart and put him in the dark. Let him rot there, until we have nothing other to do than to put him to trial."

"No," came Siel's quiet reply beside me.

"Enough, Siel!" a man with fiery gold hair growled, stepping toward us. "Enough with your protecting this--" Virgo Dominique held out her right hand horizontally in a halting gesture.

"I'm not protecting anyone, Shay," Siel smiled, calm, composed--indifferent. Cold. "I'm simply saying that Carey's suggestion won't work. The Bloody Rose is draining his lifeblood as we speak. He won't last till dawn. If we want a trial to be held, it must be now. That's the only thing I wanted to point out, before we sent Shane away. If a trial there must be," Siel finished softly, "his is the right to stand beside us and judge."

"Who cares about a trial?" the first man, Carey, scoffed.

"I do," Virgo Dominique retorted with the shadow of a smile on her lips.

"As do I." I closed my eyes and clamped my jaws shut. The toneless whisper had come from Shane, who was still bearing Brennan Aries' dead body in his arms, head bowed.

"A trial there will be, then," a short-cropped haired woman sighed. "Go, Shane, and come back quickly. We'll wait." He gave her a slight bow, then walked away.

A hand touched my shoulder, but it was a dead touch. There was no warmth, nothing but silence. "I'll free you from the Black Roses' hold," Siel told me, his voice flat, emotionless. "Once I've done so, you'd better stand still. The more you move, the quicker the Bloody Rose will drain you dry." Looking away, I nodded my understanding. Its stem buried deep in my chest, the pure white rose's petals had started reddening, the stain growing and spreading with each beating of my heart.

"Death, obviously," Carey was saying, an easy smile on his lips. "The only question open for debate is the manner of it." There was a dark kind of hunger in the man's charcoal gaze. Like lust.

"Oh, please," the woman with short brown hair and a hard, angular face that could have been sculpted by the wind snorted, disgust plain in the tone of her voice, "control your urges a bit better, Carey." Something deep inside me would have laughed at the exchange, but the words and their procession of sounds waltzed past me, reflected by the silence within.

The cold.

It was death coming, crawling up to me, and pain tearing at my being. It was emptiness, worse than anything--worse than the nauseating sensation of the white rose gorged with my blood. Worse than the faint dripping echo of the warm liquid falling to the floor in darkening puddles at my feet. I hadn't made a single move since the moment Siel had released me from the black currents full of thorns--I had neither the strength, nor the will to do so. It had taken Shane the eternity of a thousand heartbeats to lay Brennan Aries to rest--temporarily--and then come back. They had formed a semi-circle around me, like some court of justice they weren't.

But then this wasn't justice--no more than my exacting the price of blood from Brennan Aries had been.

Before me, the woman glanced toward Shane. "No," the young man shook his head, and looked straight at me, the light in the blue eyes dark and unreadable. "I don't trust myself to judge fairly, but," he sighed, a shaking sound full of harshly restrained pain, "I would understand how this came to pass. The trident," he hissed the word, "it was His, wasn't it?"

"Yes." Virgo Dominique nodded. "It belongs to the vengeful god of wrath, oceans and storms. Poseidon."

"Then," Shane gave another shake of his head with a wiping gesture of the right hand, as if he was trying to keep a nightmare at bay, "how could he use it--hell, how could he even find it?"

"Because it was hidden here," Siel replied in a soft voice. "Because, more than two centuries ago, Brennan ordered it locked away in the dimensional prison of the House of Gemini. Sagittarius Karan had wrestled it from Daniel Solo before being overcome--before dying. On the eve of victory, the Goddess vanished from the Sanctuary--she was gone, and there was no way to seal it. So Brennan had it locked away safely--or so he and all of us thought."

"Then how?" Shane asked again, eyes bright with unshed tears. "How?" he repeated, his gaze still set on me.

"It was there," I heard myself tell him in a hollow voice. "I could feel the currents swirling past the Curtain and reaching out. All I had to do was to open my hand and take it." A joyless smile twisted my lips. "It was easy." I saw Shane flinch when he heard the answer, and that hurt. I had expected the reaction, but it hurt nonetheless.

Virgo Dominique opened her mouth to say something, but Shane made a step toward me. "Why?!" he cried out, and because it was Shane, because his cry resounded within and his grief found an echo in my own soul--because Brennan Aries didn't deserve it, didn't deserve that someone be in such pain over his death, I answered his question.

"He murdered my parents," I said, willing myself to sustain Shane's gaze. "He murdered hundreds of innocent people who had the bad luck to be aboard the same shuttle we were. He thought he had killed me as well, but he was wrong. I felt it all," I added in a weak snarl, "I felt them all agonize slowly in the dark. I felt them all die--and I felt him. Hatred, mad, mad hatred. Mad," I bit my lower lip, and went silent.

On my left, Carey whistled between his teeth. "So. The line wasn't truly broken. It explains much." The dark, darkness-marked man smiled at me. "It must have been hard to wait during all those years so you could avenge yourself."

No.

With difficulty, I dragged air inside my lungs. The pain in my chest where the white rose was buried was a throbbing ache that troubled my vision. No, it wasn't so. It was-- Shane walked up to me, and rested his right hand upon my temple, blue eyes focused.

Touch.

I tried to shy away, but I was too weak.

Absolute darkness.

Dead weight pinning me down.

Dead--dead!

Blood everywhere, soaking my clothes, as dark as the night--choking.

The Dark--the hateful Dark crushing lives, crushing me.

"No!" The hoarse whisper was mine. I tried to step back, but Shane held me in place effortlessly. "No!" I begged him, my voice almost inaudible. "Leave it be! Please, leave it be!"

He didn't. I closed my eyes tightly shut, but there was nothing I could do to shield my mind. Broken sobs shook my shoulders, muffled sounds that nobody else heard, while Shane sorted through memories that were the stuff of my nightmares, while he snatched away things that belonged only to me, that I hadn't even told Fi.

"It's true," he sighed as he released me. "It's all true--" his voice broke. His mouth drawn in a taut line, he faced the others. "He didn't know," he told them, his hands closed into fists at his sides. "He didn't know any of it," he repeated in a whisper, "like me."

"Do you mean to say that Brennan's murder wasn't planned?" It was the russet-gold haired man, disbelief and anger warring in his tone.

"Until he touched the trident, he didn't know anything," Shane laughed, a harsh sound that sent shivers through the air, "not even his own name!" Then, sobering, he turned toward me. "But after that, yes. Everything after that," he said, a frightening light inflaming his eyes. Beside him, Siel let out a short burst of laughter.

"All right," Carey clapped his hands once silence had reclaimed the hall. "It looks like everything is known. We should never have allowed him to live among us--we should have done away with him when he didn't go mad like the others. It was out mistake not to guess at why he had escaped his fate, our mistake to allow him to walk up the Stairs. But," he grinned at me, "Brennan's blood is on his hands alone. He's the last of the cursed Solo line. I say we finish what Brennan started and kill him."

With a single shake of his head, the russet-gold haired man heaved out a sigh. "It's not that easy. What was done seventeen years ago was evil--monstrous even. The one we are to judge was a victim before he became a murderer. We must be fair and consider this."

"True enough, Shay," Virgo Dominique beamed a smile at him. "It's a strange day when wisdom comes from your words." The woman turned toward me and opened her eyes--blue eyes, clearer than even Siel's. "Tell us, Loki Morgenstern, last of the Solo line, is there still place in your heart for regrets, or has fury devoured you? Would you take back what you did, if you had the power to do so?"

I looked back at her eerie gaze. The questions were absurd, both of them. "No," I told her. "I would no more do that than you would stop Brennan Aries from murdering all these people, were you given the same possibility. I would part the curtain again," I added in a low hiss, something like pain-filled anger rising inside me. "I would welcome the Deep's storm and let it engulf me again."

"I thought at much," she nodded at me, a strange, wistful smile on her lips. "Then we may not forgive you--or judge you." Turning her back on me and stepping out of the semi-circle, she said softly, "You belong to the gods, and they alone should decide--condemn or forgive."

"Sounio, then?" Carey asked hungrily.

"Aye," Virgo Dominique bowed her head, and her long golden hair hid her face as she said, "but not as you would have it. There is a possibility of hope in that darkness--a place for forgiveness." She let out a small sigh. "What say you?"

Carey laughed. "That even I would be more merciful, but I agree." With that, he turned his back on me. They all did, all but Shane, who bowed his head and hugged himself. They all did, Siel included--Siel, who looked at me but whose eyes didn't see me. It was as if I was already dead to him.

"It's decided then." Virgo Dominique pivoted to face me again, and said in a quiet voice, "Tomorrow at dawn, you'll be taken to the cell below Cape Sounio, and locked away there. You will die, or you will be free if you can win the gods' forgiveness." With that, she and all the others left the great hall--all but Siel.

It was insane--the mock judgement they had delivered. Everything. The white rose's stem was planted into my heart, and it would drain my blood and kill me. It wouldn't be much longer now. The dull, throbbing pain there was radiating through my rib cage, engulfing me.

"Be still." I blinked, as the quiet whisper reached my ears. Siel had come to my side, and pressed my shoulder with his right hand. I hadn't seen him move, I hadn't heard him. In a lightning quick motion, he closed his other hand against the white rose and snatched it out of me. A weak cry of pain escaped my lips, and I reeled back. His hand squeezing my shoulder so hard I thought he'd break the bones, he held me back. For a moment my vision swam, and he did something. Currents, streams of light swirled around me and bound my wounds.

The obsessive sound of my blood dripping on the marble floor faded into silence.

"Come," he said, and he drew me to the left. Stumbling along, I obeyed. There was nothing else to do. I was empty.

Empty.

Siel led me to a small room, through a hidden door behind the high columns of marble supporting the hall's ceiling. There was a window, through which one could get a glimpse of the stars, and a bed--and clothes folded in a neat pile on a chair, waiting to be stored in the wooden wardrobe that was the only piece of furniture in the Spartan room. "It was Brennan's," Siel said, and a shiver ran up my spine. "You'll stay here until the sun comes up. If you try to escape," forcefully he made me face him, "I will kill you."

Numb, I looked back at him. I was beyond tears and beyond words, beyond understanding. Somewhere deep inside, I knew I deserved much worse than the harshness in his voice. I had deceived him, used him--my anchor, my--

"Here." He shoved something in my left hand.

A bright red rose, whose thorns cut into the tender flesh of my palm.

"It's the last gift that's mine to give," he said, then he walked away. Already, the flower's poison was invading my body and pushing it toward oblivion--toward dreamless sleep and rest.

Toward peace that he was offering me, if only for a few hours.

Tears spilled from my lips, and a lump tore at my throat. Still, I held the sounds back, until I thought I heard the door open and then close. "I'm sorry," I murmured at the faint starlight coming through the window, and a muffled sob shook my shoulders. "I'm sorry," I repeated in the obscurity.

Then, there was silence.

End of Chapter 6.

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