"Follow That Same Old Road"
Title: "Follow That Same Old Road"
Author: Rissy James
Rating: 14A (possible eventual 18+)
Summary: DG is the only hope of a country laid to ruin by an evil Sorceress. An elaborate, carefully constructed trail awaits her, but will she forge her own path?
Warning: Technical AU. All series spoilers apply.
Author's Note: Written for the second annual "Big Damn Challenge"; a link to my table. Inspired by the Everworld quote: "It doesn't count if the plan works by accident!"
Follow That Same Old Road
Eight
Dawn
She watches the stars fade, the suns rise. As the sky lightens, turns pale gold and then truest blue, she keeps her eyes trained on the horizon. Not to the east, not the mountains beyond which help the suns play their lazy peek-a-boo, no, but north.
For almost fifteen annuals, she's never given the north a second thought. Aristocrats hiding in their icy mansions, ignoring the troubles of the country as they discussed the failings of the military and lower classes to put an end to the Great Famine, the transformation of the Papay, and the fall of Central City. The Northern Guild had never stood in her way, though she'd ordered her men to take great interest in the holdings of the richest in hopes of finding the Emerald.
Now...
There is a great likelihood that the girl is heading north.
The Sorceress' most trusted scouts - more productive and loyal than the most capable of Lonot's men - have been sent to find the girl. As she waits, they scour the countryside, peek into every window, watch every road. The girl and her companions - the Mystic Man especially - will be found.
She's decided on a special end for these traitors.
You just have to catch them first...
She shakes her head, the corner of her lip twitching. “They will be caught and dealt with... but what if they get away? Of course they won't get away... but - no, no. It's too close.”
She hears the footsteps coming down the hall long before her advisor announces them; her general and the captain that led the raid on the old man's apartments. She hides her rage behind a mask of loveliness; she knows she's terrifying in her calmness, that the razor-edged threat concealed in her voice is more dangerous to them than any display of power.
The men stand at her back while she stares up at the sky; they will stand for an eternity, awaiting any order she might give. She has no misgivings; she knows these men are only loyal as long as she is the most great and terrible force in the Outer Zone.
She thought she'd done everything possible to hold herself above anything that could bring her down. This close to the eclipse, it isn't possible to lose what she's gained, to fail so incredibly...
The men wait. She watches the sky, waiting for that telling black speck on the horizon. The girl will be within her reach soon, and the old man will be crushed beneath everything she can throw at him. Both are deserving of their fates.
Title
It's as quiet as a tomb inside the palace. Her wet sneakers squeak as she crosses the floor. There is neglect in the air, and abandonment. It's barely warmer inside than out on the ice, but she's too absorbed with taking in the sights the massive hall has to offer to notice the frigid temperatures.
The group separates to explore the great hall. Glitch meanders off left while DG and Raw break right; the Mystic Man stays planted in the center of the endless room, Mr. Cain just behind him. Her dog runs wild from group to group, until he meets up with Glitch and begins to bark excitedly, his howls echoing until it sounds as if he's one of a thousand pups.
“Your journey truly begins here, child,” the Mystic Man calls out, as if speaking to a grand assembly in general.
DG sighs, staring up at the vast ceiling. No one has lived here for years, and the protection of ice accumulated around the palace was a shell to shut out intruders. Has this place been waiting for her? It certainly seems so.
“Truths will reveal themselves here,” the Mystic Man continues, walking a few leisurely steps with his hands clasped easily behind his back. “You need but to remember them, for they are yours to take.”
She rolls her eyes at more of the same enigmatic prattle, frowning deeply as she moves slowly around the periphery of the hall. Interspersed between banners and mounted crests are portraits of men and women - mostly women - dressed in beautiful regalia. Furs and medals adorn the formal clothing; elaborate hairstyles and serious faces dominate most of the paintings. Her artist's eye takes over and she gazes long and hard at each.
She's reminded of her dream, her own notepad doodles ornately framed, something simple and real encased by something more important but less palpable.
She doesn't trust this place, this hollow, empty place.
She's not surprised when she finds a portrait of her mother, though she's not sure where the expectation comes from. What does surprise her is the man standing at her mother's back. It's the coat that throws her, in all honesty. As Glitch wanders up to her side with impeccable timing, she realizes that the straight-laced uniform in the painting is now in rags and tatters beside her, so familiar and friendly that she has to look twice.
“I don't -” she says first, and then stops. Glitch looks up at the painting, and an absent smile crosses his face.
“Huh,” he says bemusedly. “Look at me, all fancy.”
The others join them, the little dog coming to a sliding stop near her feet. The Mystic Man is smiling, while Raw's face is a mask of disbelief.
“My -” she starts.
“Lavender,” the Mystic Man corrects. “Fifth Queen of the House of Gale.”
She quirks her head to the side, too intrigued to trip over why this hadn't been mentioned sooner. She's heard too many tales about the last fifteen years to be petulant. She's going to find her mother, even if finding this great treasure is the way she has to do it.
“What else do you have to show me?”
Life
“I know this place,” the girl says quietly, as if only to herself. Her companions had all watched as she'd mounted the subtly undulating staircase, and had followed her through a twist of passages. It's at the dead-end hallway, tucked into a far north corner, that she'd stops. Her face has yet to shift from its expression of pure wonder.
“How do you know this place?” the old man asks her; from his position in the doorway, Wyatt Cain watches the entire scene with his thumbs tucked into his belt. The Viewer and headcase watch uneasily through the panes of glass, cut into curved, elongated sections by intersecting branches of pure white elm.
The bedroom is filled with the weak morning light. The girl turns in a slow circle, and when she's finished and facing the doors again, her face has changed from wonder to absolute befuddlement. She's listening hard to something, cocking her head to the side again. She turns towards the bed and covers her mouth with her hands to hide a gasp. “Mother,” she whispers faintly, walking closer to the mammoth bed draped in protective canvas. She's staring as if she sees something, but all Cain sees is the bed and annuals worth of undisturbed dust.
Then the girl hums something, pretty and haunting but altogether inaudible. He strains her ears as she touches her cheek. “I don't remember any of this,” she says, glancing up at the Mystic Man.
Cain can hear a smile in the old man's voice as he replies. “You're remembering now,” he says. There's a hint of the dramatic in his words. “You must unlock -”
“Wait!” the girl exclaims, hopping to her feet. She looks to the door, but not at Cain. Her eyes are staring at something over his shoulder and then pass him by; though there is no way for him to know, she doesn't see him at all. Her eyes follow a path cut slowly across the room, and she's backing up a few steps to keep her distance from whatever she sees. The Mystic Man has fallen respectfully silent, and Cain curses what his mundane blood disallows him to see.
The girl's hands return to her mouth; there are tears glistening in her eyes as she stands frozen in place, staring at the bed. Behind him in the hallway, Raw is whimpering quietly. The loudest sound by far is the dog's paws clicking as he worries back and forth in the hallway.
“Azkadellia,” the girl says suddenly, her hands falling away from her mouth. “She's my sister.”
“Drawn to darkness,” the Mystic Man tells her, shaking his head.
Then the girl is shaking her own head vehemently, closing her eyes and looking away from the bed. “I don't understand,” she says, looking down at her hands. “I'm not dead.”
Cain's inkling of the girl's true identity had been gnawing at him since leaving his cabin to guide her across the fields; her importance surpassed that of all their sorry hides put together. But still she was just a kid, undisciplined and stubborn.
Minutes pass and the kid returns to the bed. The tears that had clung to her eyelashes now spill down her cheeks. “But I died,” she insists; she looks around the room and her eyes seem to see the old man once more, Cain standing in the doorway and the others in the hall. She seems to be coming out of a daze.
“Second life,” the Mystic Man says. “A great gift that came at great cost.”
The girl goes back to looking at her hands. “Emerald,” she mutters, “I don't remember. She told me, I think.”
“You'll remember,” the Mystic Man tells her, and there's an encouraging smile on his lips when he turns back to Cain. For the life of him, Wyatt can't understand what the old man would have to smile about. If anything, Azkadellia's scouts are going to notice that the palace has been awakened; they've already lingered too long.
The girl will have plenty of time to chew all this over on the journey out of the north.
Shell
The prisoner does not eat. The prisoner does not sleep. The prisoner only watches an unending, unchanging sky, waiting for the next inevitable meeting. The visits come with no regularity; at times her captor comes demanding information, at other times approaches her with kindness and promises. All for naught.
The sound of the Sorceress' arrival echoes through the high-domed glass chamber. She holds something in her gloved hands, which she immediately gives to her prisoner. There is no readable expression on the face of the Sorceress, but her prisoner manages that feat infinitely better, and with a grace to be envied.
Her first reaction is a gasp; what she holds in her bare hands is cold. Though desert sands shift about her feet endlessly, her prison is neither hot nor cold; there is no effect to the weather unless the Sorceress deems it so. But this... this. Her heart leaps in her chest as she turns the piece of ice in her hands. It does not melt, does not diminish, only gleams brightly beneath the perpetual high-noon sky.
She doesn't question what it is, or where it came from. She recognizes the piece of protective shell as easily as she'd recognize a part of herself. She sees the beautifully curved edges; this was not broken off. The Northern Island has been opened.
“Did you find what you sought?” the prisoner asks, waiting with bated breath for a response.
“My Xora brought that to me this morning,” the Sorceress says, a wry smile curving her pretty lips. “All the way to the farthest north and back again. Imagine that.”
“You disparage her because you've forgotten her.”
“She won't succeed,” the Sorceress says forcefully. “I will kill her myself, again. You've honestly made all this too easy for me, mother.”
The queen closes her lavender eyes, so very tired.
“The old man has come out of his exile of annuals to help her,” the Sorceress informs her prisoner. The queen has only the smallest reply in the form of a willowy sigh. “His death won't taste nearly as sweet as your precious angel's.” When still the queen doesn't react, the Sorceress squares her shoulders, the draping fabric of her black gown pooling at her feet. “Lonot has gone to intercept the brat,” she says, and there is a malicious glint in her eyes. “She'll follow that same old road south as she did north, and my men lie in wait. You'll see your darling little girl again before the suns set.”
The queen shudders inwardly, though the entirety of her focus is centered on maintaining the hardened appearance she's given her captor through the annuals of her incarceration. She will not show emotion, she will not break. She won't give that last satisfaction in the destruction of herself.
Choice
“You are the only one,” he says. Insists.
The girl wants to see where it's written in stone. She doesn't realize that somewhere it is, though that location is unknown to the living generations of the Outer Zone.
She fumes and paces; he stands easily in the doorway with his hands in his pockets. “We're wasting time,” he tells her; she knows it, and glares at him for pressing her. Nothing on this journey will be clear to her unless she remembers, but her first memory was so strong and so upsetting that she's baulking at going on.
“I can't fight a witch! I'm just... just, well -”
The old man rolls his eyes. “You witnessed the power of your bloodline, of your sister and mother! Your light is remarkably strong, child!” He smiles at her, and gestures around him. “The palace was waiting for you to reawaken it,” he says. “Gods, did you think it was coincidence that brought the ice down the moment of your return?”
She's at a loss for words; she doesn't understand this light he keeps mentioning, and she can't defend herself against it. All she knows is that she's got a tattoo on her palm that decides for itself when to shine, and that she's having a hard time swallowing all the explanations that life continues to throw at her.
“You've lost a lot before you knew you had it,” the Mystic Man says when it becomes clear that she isn't going to give into him and his attempts to get her talking. “There is more yet to discover, but everything here is frozen.”
She looks around at the forsaken bedroom. She realizes now why she was sent away, and has seen a glimpse that her mother truly loved her. Thinking about those who wait for them downstairs, the old man knows that the girl won't be the only person searching for something lost during the war. He doesn't know if that will still be the case when the child learns the whole truth; he can only hope.
“Your mother means for you to take the Emerald and stop your sister,” he says with a great deal of finality. “Will you help the O.Z., or am I sending you back to your colourless, humdrum life as if all this was a dream?”
She raises a skeptical eyebrow. “You can do that?”
He refuses to answer, and as turn-about is fair play, she thinks about it. There's no question that there's nothing to go back to. It leaves her with no choice but to go forward, but she doesn't know where she's supposed to go from here. Azkadellia's war has destroyed most other paths previously open to her; did her mother long ago intend to be here waiting, to help and guide?
No, she's known it all along; finding the Emerald will mean finding her mother.
“So, where are we going?” she asks the Mystic Man, who grins.
“South. I've got a vague idea, but I'll wait for you to tell me yourself, my dear. Shall we?”
Index
One | Two | Three | Four | Five
Six | Seven