This Glorious Sadness; Ch 1, Keanu

[covenmouse]

Title: This Glorious Sadness
Verse:  Their Silent Reverie
Genre(s): Angst/Dark, friendship, action/adventure
Length: 12,300 w (both parts)
Summary: The Shitennou live, reborn to new lives but haunted by demons of the past.  Their task is simple: they must cleanse the Earth of the Moon Princess's taint.
Warnings: dark themes are touched upon, including mental disorder, emotional, physical and sexual abuse, death and murder.
Disclaimer: I do not own Sailor Moon and make no profit from this work of fictional fun.
A/N: This will make no sense at all unless you've read This Sweet Madness, at the very least.
Status: Ongoing

Prologue  [Note: this is also the final chapter of Viva La Vida, but it's important enough to reitorate.]

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Keanu

He opened his eyes to stone above him and a distinct lack of darkness in the tiny subterranean chamber. Keanu took a deep breath, and held it. Slowly, evenly, he let the air out of his lungs as he willed away the faint itch of magic beneath his skin. When it had faded, and the darkness returned to its proper inky depths, he pulled himself up and his feet found the threadbare rug which did nothing to mask the chill creeping through the granite.

Shivering faintly, he reached for his blanket. His boots he’d left beside the bed, and lately he’d taken to sleeping in his clothes. Still, it was only after he’d wrapped his blanket about him that he slipped out the door and up the stair to the surface.

A fine layer of frost crunched beneath his boots as he made his way to the shrine steps. It covered everything-the granite floor, the roses, the crystal at the middle of the shrine. He pulled the blanket more tightly about his shoulders for what little good it would do.

At the head of the stair he stopped.

Fog billowed through the field beyond, so thick that it seemed as though the shrine were adrift in a grey, tempestuous sea. Every so often wildflowers would peek from beneath the clouds, but in an instant they were gone again. The soft morning light filtered through a sky which looked much the same, and there was a promise of rain lingering upon the wind that kissed his cheeks. Soon enough it would turn to snow.

“The weather hasn’t changed in many years.”

Pythia stepped into his peripheral vision, her robes clutched tight about her frail body. One of the two shrine maidens who had survived in the Golden Crystal with Helios, Pythia had spent the last few months acting as mother and housekeeper to the tenants of the temple. Though she looked young, yet-Keanu would have guessed no more than twenty had he not known the truth-her demeanour and grace set her apart from her sister, Dodona, who was as rowdy as any of the rest of them. More so, in fact; Keanu could no more imagine Zoe or Jun or Nick playing as others their age did, than he could imagine himself throwing away duty and responsibility to play the fool. This thought was sad, and he turned it away before it consumed him.

“What do you mean?”

“We have been awake for a long while,” Pythia said carefully, her dark eyes lingering upon the fog, “As Helios has surely told you, there has not been much change since. This includes the weather-it had not rained, not once, until your friends returned. And there was nothing natural about that occurrence.”

“So this...?”

“Is good.” The maiden offered him a smile. “We may yet see a proper winter. It means that Elysion has begun to heal.”

Pythia went back in, toward the steps that lead into the subterranean temple. Keanu watched her go, and then looked back toward the distant line of trees. Three large mounds stood a barren island in the mist. “No,” he said to the wind, “It means that we have to work faster.”

The pit was roughly fifteen feet wide by seven feet deep. It had taken days of tireless effort for the four of them to dig it out, and Keanu worried that it still wasn’t big enough. There was no time, though-with the frost on the ground the soil had already begun to go hard. They stood on the one side which had been left clear of dirt mounds, staring down into the void below.

“It starts rainin’ an’ that’s gonna be a deathtrap,” Nick announced.

“Good thing they’re already dead, huh?”

Nick gave Jun a dirty look, then spat on the ground next to his shoe. “Y’know what I meant.”

“Can we not?” Zoe stuffed her hands into her pockets, and rolled her eyes. “Lets just do what we have to and get this over with. If it starts raining, we’ll take a break.”

As always, the three looked to Keanu. He tried not to fidget as he rubbed the back of his neck. “We’ll do what we can,” he said after a moment. “But we need some way to...we’re going to be in close proximity with them. We’ll need to cover our noses and mouths, and find gloves.”

“Ain’t gonna help the smell,” Nick laughed sourly.

“It’s not for the smell.” Keanu shook his head. “I don’t know how long diseases can last down there, but I’d rather not find out the hard way.”

They started with the outlying fields, where the bodies had been burned so terribly that they were hardly recognizable. Without the ghosts that milled restlessly about, they never would have been able to distinguish citizen from intruder. The bodies of the fallen enemies were left where they lay-for now. One by one, the children carried out the corpses of their brethren and set them side-by side in the fresh pit.

When a layer had been laid at the bottom, they packed dirt over it and built another. Layer by layer, the pit began to fill.

From the field, the four moved inward. First were the houses where peasants had been slaughtered where they stood, then the cellars where mothers had slit the throats of their own children to save them. It was there that Zoe began to weep; still she worked on as diligently as any of her brothers-in-arms.

Next was the second battle field, fought between the village and the Noble's quarters. With each body removed came a spirit in its wake. They lined the field next to the pit, their eyes tracking every move the living made.

It was late afternoon when the rain began. During the slow drizzle, the four struggled to complete their last layer. When the mud began to suck at their boots, they climbed back out of the pit and hoisted up their ladders.

“We’ll finish this tomorrow,” Keanu barely muttered, but their nods indicated that they heard him. His clothes were soaked through, and there were things he didn’t want to think about coating his shirt and arms. He closed his eyes and raised his face to the water. The rain ran rivulets down his body and chilled him through the bone, but not even Neptune’s oceans would wash away the filth that covered him.

At the shrine he would be free of the eyes upon him, but Keanu did not return to the shrine. The others had gone on before he’d moved, and thus there was none but the dead to see him as he returned to the city before the castle. Alone, he walked between the rows of shops and houses, of broken doors and windows, of food strewn to rot in the streets. In his minds eye he saw what it had been before, with women hanging laundry on lines over the street, and vendors harking their wares on the corners. In this vision, children would run by, laughing and playing, with their dogs chasing them.

The memory overlaid itself with screams of pain, a clash of swords. Keanu stopped, eyes closed and head reeling.

“You’re holding up traffic, boy,” a familiar voice barked.

Hematite slapped his back, pitching Kunzite a few steps forward. He caught himself before he fell, and jogged to catch up to his father’s side. They wove through the crowded streets; no man nor woman paused so much to glance at either of them, or else clear the path as they might have another noble. Kunzite did not for a moment believe that there were truly none here who marked them, but those who did were careful not to make any noise of it. In their work-worn garb they went unmolested through the streets, as any other common huntsmen might be. The Kings of the South had never insisted upon what some might call their “proper” due, not unless they were in uniform, and the people of Elysion had long grown used that tradition.

Once through the market square, Hematite slipped through a back alley and Kunzite followed with hardly a sound on the pavement to mark their footsteps. That a giant such as the old Lord could walk so soundlessly was a miracle Kunzite wondered if he’d ever know the secret of. As though reading his thoughts, Hematite glanced at his son with a crooked smile.

“Do you remember where we are?”

The alley was long, and muddy, and enclosed on two sides by towering stone buildings. Dogs were fighting somewhere nearby, and someone slopped piss out a window just shy of bathing them with it. His nose wrinkled.

“That was intentional,” he muttered.

Hematite nodded, fixing the window it had come from with a disapproving eye. There was a woman scowling down at them, drawn and frail. She lifted her chin and met their gaze with no remorse for her disrespect

With a shake of his head, the giant warrior lumbered on and, after a pause, Kunzite continued in his wake. “We’re...” Kunzite hesitated, and lowered his voice, “We’re in the Mud Pits.”

“Boy,” warned Hematite with a shake of his head at the slang. Yet he did not deny it. They rounded a corner and slipped through another, shorter, alley before coming out onto a small square. Directly across from them was a tiny, beaten down shrine whose roof looked ready to cave and front door swung on a single hinge. Across the lintel someone had blacked out the circle of Gaea and re-drawn in chalk a simple crescent.

A chill ran from Kunzite’s forehead to his toes. “Who-” Turning to look at his father, Keanu realized that he was alone. The wind made a lonely, appropriate noise through the tunnels of empty streets. Slowly, Keanu returned his gaze to the chapel whose door flapped lightly in the wind. Behind it was naught but a blackness so deep it made his skin crawl. Though the lintel was wet from rain, the chalk crescent still stood strong upon on it as though it had been spelled to stick. In his heart, he knew that it had been.

Under the scrutiny of a thousand unseen eyes he turned and ran.

Jun was sitting on the outer steps when Keanu approached the shrine. The blond looked up, icy blue eyes watching Keanu from beneath a screen of curls. They were wild again, Keanu noted with some unease; it was a look Jun only got when-

“Kunzite,” Bachiko giggled and trotted down the steps to wrap her gangly arms about his shoulders. He caught her with his hands at her sides. Past the wall of red frizz in his face, he saw Jun stand up. The boy cast them a disgusted look, but only drifted a few steps up the stair.

The girl cooed in his ear. “You were gone. We were all so worried.”

“I took a walk,” he said as he pried her carefully from his person. She was much stronger than she looked, but she didn’t fight him. Her eyes, dark as pitch in this incarnation, roved over him and her nose wrinkled.

“You went to that place,” she hissed. Her hand cracked against his cheek, and she fled toward the stair. Keanu let her go. Putting a hand to his stinging jaw, he drudged the last few steps to Jun’s side, turned, and sat. After a moment, Jun sank down beside him.

They listened to the wind rustle through the windflowers, and there came a distant roll of thunder. There’d be more rain before the morn.

“Where did you go?”

Keanu shrugged. He considered not answering, but soon found himself going on anyway, “Headed for the castle. Thought I’d just see what was out there.”

None of them had dared the fortress since the first night they’d been allowed back within Elysion. Neither Nick nor Jun would so much as look in the direction of the castle, their gazes skimming across it as though it were a surface too slippery to grasp. Zoe had been briefly fascinated with the idea of returning to it, rather than living at the temple; an idea which had been curtailed the moment she’d learned the identities of the dark shapes dangling from the parapet. Eventually they’d have to remove the bodies, but Keanu figured they would breach that topic when they came to it.

Several minutes ticked by and Jun hadn’t said anything else. The sky rumbled again, closer now. Jun gave a soft huff and combed one hand through his curls to push them out of his face. “What if it floods?”

“Pythia said it hasn’t rained in years, so it probably won’t. If it does, we’ll just have to wait. Let the water absorb.”

“If it hasn’t rained in years, why are there things still growing?”

Keanu frowned. It hadn’t occurred to him to question that, but now that Jun pointed it out...”This place doesn’t respond to sense, does it?”

Jun shrugged loosely. “You could ask Helios. I don’t remember this being an issue before.”

Nodding slowly, Keanu pursed his lips as he tried to match what he was seeing with his memories of the past. Since Beryl had returned their minds to them, he’d had little problem recognizing things or accessing what knowledge he’d had in previous lives. This was not a trifling amount of information, but there were yet many gaps in his teachings which had been iced over as things “intrinsic of the universe.”

That was the problem when you relied on culture to explain itself-concepts you believed you understood perfectly would fall apart under close inspection, as they lacked the structural support of proper education. There were fixes for this. Were Elysion live and well, he could have found the answers he needed at the castle library.

He’d seen no evidence of looting the one time he’d gone to the castle, before his memory had been returned to him, and thus could assume the library may yet be intact. Unfortunately, Keanu could not force himself to re-approach the gates where he now knew his father’s body hung decomposing. Kunzite’s father.

A soft patter announced the beginnings of the storm. Together the boys rose and returned to the cold shelter of the temple.

Much like an ice-burg, the complex beneath the surface shrine was quite a bit larger than the top platform suggested. Built to be as much a bunker for the priesthood and royal families as a place of worship, the Temple of Gaea was comprised of an expansive nest of tunnels and caverns which riddled the Parnassus mountains, east of the castle Valeia. The caves, which had been in place long before any there was any thought to live in them, had been carefully reshaped into hallways and rooms, so that if a person discounted the lack of windows they might think themselves in any normal castle of the period.

Poverty was a vow all clerics took before entering their order, and one which they claimed to strictly adhere-it was not they who owned the expensive carpets, or robes, or furniture, but the temple, and thus their beleaguered status was assured. Looking at the dining hall now, Keanu could not help but wonder what might the Lords and Ladies say whose funds had paid for the tapestries and silverware and heavy oaken tables which filled it. Certainly their investments had held, for nothing here was in disrepair...but it was in disuse. No longer were there candles to light the high reaches of the cavern and show the woven masterpieces that lined it. Hardly any hands existed to use the plates and cups and forks that stood in place upon tables which had not seen diners in several centuries. Only the dais, reserved for the high priestess and immediate royalty, had any lighting or persons to attend it.

Helios, Pythia, and Dodona had moved to a lower table when the quartet first arrived, he remembered with a sad smile. The trio had felt their place to be as servants, as they once might have been. To Keanu’s surprise, it had been Bachiko who had convinced them to stay. While the others tried to use persuasion, she merely ordered the three to remain exactly as they were. Then, she served them tea. It wasn’t even poisoned.

For all that Bachiko had her moments of crazy, as his stinging cheek reminded him, Keanu had to admit that the girl had come far in the few weeks they’d spent in Elysion. Tonight she sat by Helios, and he didn’t seem to mind that she treated him as though he were still a child under her care. Keanu jerked his gaze away before the priest noticed his staring.

Helios didn’t speak much these days. He was still kind and polite, even friendly, to them all, but something had changed in him after he’d gone to Endymion.

“Pythia,” said Jun, “What did you mean that it hasn’t rained in years?”

All other conversation stopped. Pythia glanced between Jun and Keanu, for a moment seeming lost as to who she’d said that to, then her eyes settled on the King of the East. “Exactly as I said, my lord.”

Keanu cleared his throat. If Jun noticed his annoyance-and Keanu doubted there was much emotion Jun wouldn’t take note of-the boy didn’t seem at all uneasy for it. “There just don’t seem to be any signs of a drought,” he said to all three of the clerics, “If this is the first time in years, shouldn’t everything be dead?”

A high-pitched, goblin giggle arose from Bachiko’s end of the table. She collapsed against Helios, who let her bury her head upon his shoulder. Dodona gave the girl a perplexed look.

“I’m afraid I can’t offer much of an explanation,” Helios said after a long moment. He sipped his drink, and wetted his lips. “I told you that there’s much about what is going on which I don’t understand. This event is, after all, unprecedented. We three have spent our time studying as much as we could, around tending to our own survival.”

“Shit, man, we get it,” Nick grumbled. “You don’t fuckin’ know for sure, but you got a guess so give it.” Then he cursed, and Keanu suspected from her glare that Zoe had kicked his ankle.

Helios coughed slightly. “Well. From speaking with our...esteemed priestess-”

Bachiko giggled a little more loudly.

“-I believe what you suspected is true, that the Ginzushou is what blocked you from Elysion in your second, ah, lives.”

Keanu nodded. “Beryl got us as close as she could before that attempt...”

As content as the others with talking around the elephants in the room, Helios merely nodded in kind. “That which was blocking you out is also blocking Elysion in, so to speak. Elysion has always had a shield, of course, to protect it from outside interference. But it was altered by a foreign contaminant, and used to completely seal Elysion from even the flow of time. Much like the way that we three were purposely put into stasis, in the Crystal itself.”

“Wouldn’t that kill it, though?” Zoe drug her feet up into her chair and wrapped her arms about her knobbly knees. She tipped her cheek upon them and gazed through her eyelashes at Helios. “The energy of the earth, it’s balance, is what keeps Elysion alive. Isn’t it?”

“That’s the simple version, yes,” Helios said slowly, “The governmental structure was founded on the very real need to keep to the innate mystical forces of the earth in check, in order to maintain the-” He cut himself off with a shake of his head. “I’m getting ahead of myself.”

“Take your time.” Keanu set his goblet of water down and leaned forward, fingers steepled. “I remember the songs in the shrines, and the lessons we were all given, but to be honest these were more things that I knew by rote, not...not understanding.”

His fellows about the table nodded in kind and Helios sighed. “I was only nine when this-”

“I know how old you were,” Keanu cut him off, perhaps a little too sharply, and he winced. “Helios, please. We need your help.”

Pythia placed a hand over Helios’, but it was Dodona who spoke, “Queen Beryl, why don’t you explain it?”

Bachiko looked up, and the giggling stopped cold. Before any could object, she sat upright and straight, and all traces of herself slipped away.

“Explain?” Beryl’s eyes flickered among the group of them. Jun, who until now had been sitting languid next to Nick, went taunt as a bowstring.

Keanu met Beryl’s gaze evenly. “We were wondering if you could explain to us in detail the power structure of Elysion and it’s importance.”

The queen rolled her eyes and reached for Helios’ drink. She set is aside again after swallowing a fair portion. “You children were never inclined to your studies, were you?”

Despite the exasperation in her voice, there was a tease in the smile she favoured him with. “If you truly cannot remember...”

“We can’t,” Jun spat.

Beryl’s eyebrows shot toward her dark roots, below the puffy nest of frazzled hair. She stared at him only a moment before shaking her head. “Remember, if you will, that all life exists because of the flow and ebb of energy within our planet. It fuels us-animal, plant, mineral-and shuttles us through the cycle of life. My favorite of the metaphors for this was always water. Rivers, specifically. All rivers are composed of currents-the Earth has four, which correspond to the four cardinal points.”

As a man of science, and Keanu did consider himself to be such, this made little sense. Yet his memory argued that it had once seemed perfectly reasonable. While the war of logic waged within him, Beryl continued.

“Naturally, the power structure of Elysion mimics that from whence it came. Four cardinal points,” she paused for significance, and favoured them all with a smile, “and the fifth who represents the Earth itself to hold them, like the earth holds a river.

“Without this balance, the Earth heaves and sours...or floods. So, too, will Elysion.”

“But this power structure only mimics,” Zoe said, lifting her head. “It has nothing to do with the Earth.”

“Ah.” Beryl chuckled softly, and a shiver ran up Keanu’s spine. The goblin giggles of Bachiko did nothing to move him, but the cold smile upon Beryl’s lips... “But there is power in mimicking, is there not? We humans have so few natural abilities, or defenses. We make daggers and swords in place of claw or fang, shoes and clothing in stead of pad or fur, we wear jewels in place of feathers. And when it comes to magic, perhaps it is not so much that we were made to the ability, but that we were fastened to it. Somewhere, far down the line, the mimic-the apprentice-became both the master, and the slave.”

She gave a soft sigh and leaned back in her chair, with Helios’ cup still clutched in hand. “No, child, it has everything to do with the Earth. It is us, you see, and we are it. We have forced it to be so.”

A hint of dread, not unlike the itch of magic, wormed beneath his skin. “Are you suggesting that the Earth is out of balance?”

The girl’s eyes glinted red in the candlelight. “I am saying it is so,” Beryl replied smoothly, “You have made it thus.”

Zoe frowned. “We haven’t done anything.”

“Mam-Endymion,” said Helios. His voice was but a whisper, but that name was like a lightning bolt to everyone at the table. The priest stared at his plate.

“Yes, Endymion,” giggled Beryl, who sounded more like Bachiko for a moment. Then her grin faded and she looked again to Keanu. “The high king exists to hold the power, to anchor it in it’s place. Without him...or her...”

“No.” Beryl and Jun stared at one another again, the latter beginning to tremble ever so slightly.

Keanu frowned. What Beryl was saying struck a chord with the memories buried inside of him. Old lessons about Gaea and her gifts to man, about her tying their dreams and powers to kingdom of Elysion. He’d had it drilled into his head that the balance must always be maintained, no matter what. What would happen if wasn’t?

“There must be another way to fix it,” he muttered.

“Oh there is, princeling. Someone tried it before, did they not?” Beryl leaned forward again, her gaze fastened to his own. “Would you sever our ties to the Mother, as those demons would? Have us return to worshiping the false goddess, and kiss the toes of her whelp?”

Before he could answer, Pythia whispered, “Severing our magic would kill us.”

“I’m not killing anyone,” Keanu said.

“Anyone?” They all looked to Helios, who in turn was staring at Keanu. The priest’s voice was so small, so...hopeful...

Keanu stood and marched from the room. Distantly, he heard Zoe say, “No. Let him go.”

That night his sleep was tormented by dreams he didn’t remember, and in the morning it was still raining. Though the hatch that lead to the shrine proper was sealed against weather, they could hear the howl of wind and rain beyond it. It sounded like wolves, or banshees.

“I guess we get to sleep in,” he muttered to the others and turned from the door. It wasn’t that he missed the looks they exchanged, it was that there was nothing he could do about it. He didn’t dare ask them if, standing there, they felt the same stirring of power within their veins, the same sense of slipping upward, into the storm.

No matter how his eyes itched and bones ached, Keanu refused to return to bed. Instead, he walked past it, and the dining hall, and through the first door he didn’t recognize. It took him to foreign hallway after foreign hallway, and fairly soon he was so turned about that he couldn’t have retraced his steps if he’d wanted to.

Despite knowing how large the temple was-at least, having a rough idea of it-Keanu hadn’t considered that it would have a library. That was an oversight. Of course a temple would have a library. Historically, religion and education tended to roll hand in hand; being a member of clergy, or a noble granted leave to study with them, was usually the only method of obtaining any sort of scholarship. Granted, whatever knowledge was available was often tainted by the religion’s views upon morality, creation, and whatever else they felt was too “obvious” to need factual backing, but it was still knowledge. Usually there would be some form of useful information one could extrapolate, if you kept in mind the context of the author.

It was very dark this far within the temple. The three who’d lived here the past several years seemed to keep to within only a handful of the tunnels, and Keanu couldn’t blame them. Not everyone was a veritable glow worm, and they were limited in supplies.

Everything here was covered in a fine layer of dust. Spiderwebs appeared frequently, and in a dorm off of one of the halls, Keanu found a section of floor which had begun to form small spires reaching up to similar ones hanging from the ceiling. A pool of water had formed around the base, and the steady drip, drip drip from above lent an eerie music to the old temple. Whatever magic was keeping the rest of Elysion from aging didn’t seem to be quite so strong here. The mountain was reclaiming itself.

“It’s dangerous down here.”

Helios had stopped at the door, watching him. The horn on his forehead glowed a soft golden light. Unlike the kind Keanu emitted, this cast shadows down through Helios’ bangs and threw his eyes into dark recesses. Keanu resisted a shiver. “I was trying to find the library...how did you know where I was?”

“I didn’t, exactly.” Shrugging, Helios took another step into the room and Keanu thought he might have been looking at the stalagmites. “This is my home. I know its passages much more intimately than you ever did. And you left a trail.” He gestured loosely behind him to a collection of footprints left in the dust of the corridor.

“You said it’s dangerous...?”

“Yes.” There was a pause, and then Helios said, “Maybe. I admit, there are areas we’ve not explored since we woke, and these are a part of why.”

Looking at the structures himself, Keanu nodded briefly. “The lower the caves go, the harder they are to air out, even in the best of times,” Helios said faintly. “I dared not waste the energy to clear them when there was no need to go so far down.”

Keanu chewed his bottom lip. He nodded again and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Can you show me the library?”

After a moment, Helios nodded and turned to lead Keanu back through the tunnels. Some of the passages he was lead through had marks where Keanu had been there before, but the further they went the less derelict the temple became.

“How will you fix this?”

Startling, it took Keanu a moment to recover from the sudden question, and the accusing tone. Helios had not turned to look at them, but there was a defensive stiffness to the boy’s shoulders and stance. The realization that he yet thought of Helios as a boy struck Keanu suddenly and he found himself smiling. He was glad for the dark.

“I told you I’m not going to...to sever us from the Earth’s magic,” Keanu repeated slowly. “I’m not killing any of us.”

“I know.” Helios stopped before a small, wooden, iron strapped door. He turned to face Keanu, and between them their magic was strong enough to see one another’s faces.

They were of an age, now; physically, at least. This jarred with Keanu’s memories of the chubby-cheeked baby he’d held, the toddler he’d been forced to hand over to the priests, the growing boy he’d visited every chance his duties allowed. And the sadness that was there, the accusations hidden behind those golden eyes in which he’d once seen naught but love and joy. He forced away a sudden urge to hold the boy, to plead with him for his trust.

“We have to restore balance, don’t we?” Keanu searched those eyes, praying for some kind of redemption. “That’s why it was so important that there be a proper successor, someone who can represent the Earth. If we keep it out of balance, Elysion will...”

“Dissolve to chaos, in theory,” Helios supplied. “It hasn’t yet, because of the stasis it was under. That’s why it hadn’t rained, why the bodies never fully decomposed, why more of the buildings have not gone to ruin.”

“But that stasis was slipping.”

“Yes.”

Helios pushed the door open and snapped his fingers. Four candelabra lit themselves in the chamber beyond. Keanu stopped just over the threshold, unable to mask some amount of disappointment. A part of him, the modern part he supposed, had been expecting shelves upon shelves of books-at least a thousand. What he got was a small chamber with two walls worth of books and three long tables with benches in the middle of the room.

One table had a map strewn on one end, a short stack of pulled books at the other, and a collection of quills, paper, and ink jars in its middle. Other than that, it was quite obvious the room had seen little use in recent times.

If Helios noticed his disappointment, he said nothing.

Keanu pulled a book from the nearest shelf and opened it. The pages were covered in tiny, precision perfect handwriting. He skimmed through the first few passages before he realized it was a diary of some kind, apparently written by a priest.

“That would be journal of the first abbot of Delphi,” Helios said. “It’s concerned primarily with recipes for mead, and bad poetry.”

Looking up to find those golden eyes on him again, Keanu nodded and shelved the book. He rubbed his sinuses with his thumb and index finger and sat upon a nearby bench. “Are there any regarding where our magic stems from? Or better yet, on the moon kingdom?”

“Yes, and not exactly.” Helios went to another shelf, reached up and drew a fat tome from the second highest shelf. He brought it over and set it reverently on the table next to Keanu. “Though these are stories you...your past self should have known.”

The priest flipped through the heavy linen sheets, each painted in ornate scenes not unlike the illuminated manuscripts of the middle ages. Keanu was fairly certain the Christian monks had stayed clear of subjects such as goddesses and nude water-women, though.

Finally, Helios laid the book open. On the left-hand page was a depiction of a woman with brown skin and green hair. She had flowers twined into her braids; they were so long that her hair spread to every edge of the page. Her hands were extended and cupped around a sphere, upon which was drawn what looked to be an ancient map of the earth. There was only one continent on it, whose shape roughly resembled the sketches of Pangaea he’d seen in science textbooks. This, Keanu’s senses told him, was Old in the same way as the caves they lived in.

On the right-hand page began the legend in a careful, blocky script, “Gaea, the mother of us all...”

As Keanu read through the mythology, Helios went to his workstation on the other side of the room for the stack of books he’d left there. His notes soon followed, but the map stayed where it had been.

Keanu got through a sketchy story about Gaea’s sister, Selene, attempting to subvert the Earth into her worship before he closed the book with a sigh. Such an event had occurred, but it was in his--Kunzite’s--own lifetime, not eons before. Or perhaps the witch had tried it twice. He didn’t want to know. “You said something about the Ginzushou?”

Helios nodded and page of careful notations he’d taken. “I said there wasn’t ‘exactly’ anything on the Moon Kingdom. There are mentions of things, mostly scattered through journals of priests who have dealt with them. It was through these that I was able to deduce what was going on, and learn to recognize the...the taint within the shield.”

That was sketchy at best. Keanu glanced over the notes, then frowned. “You’ve...she was here. They were here.”

The priest fidgeted. “Yes. I told you about the witch, Nehelenia, who had escaped her prison and desecrated Elysion. Further.”

As he flipped through the pages, Keanu hummed. “Right...wait. Nehelenia was...”

Keanu looked up to find Helios staring pointedly at the table. As he watched, the priest picked up a book and flipped hastily through its pages. “The priestess who tried to steal the Golden Crystal.”

The firelight flickered along the horn which sprouted from Helios’ forehead. Keanu was reminded how, only a few weeks prior, it had seemed so strange to see a boy with such a growth upon him. Now, it was probably the most normal thing about the boy. And a reminder of...

“But mother...”

Helios set his book down with a faint clatter and shook his head. “No. Mother tried to kill her. She didn’t...didn’t succeed. Nehelenia was merely sealed away into the sort of stasis-”

“-That apparently everyone ever gets put into,” Keanu snapped. This was followed by a groan, and he rubbed his sinuses in an attempt to relieve a sudden pressure. “But she was defeated this time?”

“Yes. It was close, though, and there weren’t many around to stop her...except the Princess.”

Sighing, Keanu looked at the boy sitting across the table from him. It occurred to Keanu that Abida had left him well defended against all but the most skilled of guilt trips, and Helios had a long way to go, yet, if he thought to break Keanu’s resolve. Abida. Mother. His mother.

“So they came here, defeated Nehelenia, and...” Looking down, Keanu skimmed the notes over once again, “That was when the break down began.”

“Yes,” Helios said. “It was Nehelenia that woke us from our slumber in the first place. Had she not interfered, we might have stayed within the crystal indefinitely. Her tampering drew us from it, and then she imprisoned us elsewhere. Thankfully, the temple’s shields were still in place. She was unable to break through them.”

The priest hesitated, his fingers toying with the cover of a journal. “She may have gotten me to unlock them, had my time in the crystal not strengthened my bond with it. Using meditation techniques, I was able to separate my consciousness from my body and retreated back into crystal itself. From there, I reached out to the minds of those connected to it.”

Keanu frowned. “You mean you can-”

“Beryl taught me.”

That was cause for no small amount of unease. The woman was still here, in the shrine, and if she could...Keanu refused to pursue that thought any further. “Alright. So you went, ah, mind hopping?”

“So to speak.” Still toying with the journal, Helios’ eyes did not raise from it as he continued on, “I was relieved to find the prince that way, but his mind is shielded against such intrusions. I also found four tenuous connections near to him, but they were so light I dared not to try them. There was another, though, and through it I was able to reach out for help.”

A sick dread rolled through Keanu’s stomach, this time having nothing to do with Beryl. Someone else, beyond the shitennou, who had been close to Endymion, and with a tie to the Earth’s core? Helios would not look up, no matter how long Keanu stared at him, and he knew he’d get no answer even if he were to ask.

“And so you let them into Elysion.”

“Let,” Helios muttered. “The prince had his own doorway here, as did you. I merely showed him how to find it.”

Now Helios looked at him, but it was only to glare. Biting back the reprimand he yearned to give, Keanu tore his gaze from the priest’s, and stared at a candelabra on the far wall. “At what point did you realize it was the Ginzushou responsible for the lock upon Elysion?”

“Shortly after Nehelenia was sealed. After...After I had seen it in action, I was able to distinguish the power traces from the Earth’s.”

That was a lie. Keanu knew it as surely as he knew that Helios still aligned himself with Endymion, no matter that they had established the “prince’s” guilt in the matter. Perhaps Helios thought Endymion changed. Perhaps the moon witch had already extended control over him. That would certainly jive with the pieces missing from Helios’ story. Either way, it no longer mattered, save for the sick thought that his own brother might hate him. Kunzite’s brother. Bah.

Despite the holes, the basics of the report were true. However the information had been gathered, Helios had good reason to suspect the Ginzushou to be responsible for the seal. Distantly, Keanu remembered again the conversations he’d had Beryl pertaining to the barrier between them and the center of their--her-power. It was only after her careful examination of it that she’d turned her attentions upon the crystal and it’s bearer.
Part Two