There will be magic, chapter 40, RukaxYomi, KaixRuki, AoixReita
Title: There will be magic
Author: yukigafuru
Chapters: 40/?
Pairings: RukaxYomi, KaixRuki, AoixReita for now
Bands: Gazette, Naitomea, D... (and a surprise)
Rating: PG-17, for this chapter
Warnings: will be angst, yaoi, a bit of gore here and there
Genre: AU, Angst, Romance
Disclaimer: I am not connected to the real persons. This is just a figment of my imagination and I don't make any money nor profit in any way out of this (well, except gathering your love that is).
Summary: The age of magic and mystery is coming towards its end. But what if someone that has the gift to see the future can join forces with others who have the power to stop it? What will be born then? What will be found?
Chapter 40
If it meant running towards Aoi, Reita found it easier to put one paw in front of the other, tighten his muscles and stretch his neck so as to achieve top speed. Dunes flew by and just about the time the sky over the horizon started to become bloody with the birth of a new day, the tiger reached the place where the fight had happened. Everything was still and for a few moments Reita stopped too, to breathe the heavy air, feel the fine sand tickling his paws, look at the night sky where the stars had already started to fade. And then, after he had caught his breath and changed back into human form, gotten an eye full of his surroundings, he slowly turned towards the place he had left Aoi's body.
To others it must have looked exactly the same as any other place in the desert: dunes of sand and the sky, a stone or two here and there. But to Reita, who had his tiger's senses to guide him, there was no other place like this one in the desert. Every minute change in the shape of the dunes, the scent of the surroundings, the position of the stars had been engraved in his memory. Finding his way to Aoi had been easy.
What was heard was facing him, force oneself to see the indisputable evidence that Aoi was no more. Until he had the body in his arms again, he could still hold on to the remote, infinitesimal hope that this was all a dream, that Aoi hadn't really been dead. Every step he now took was a step towards shattering that hope, his body knew it and that's why despite his hurry till now, he seemed to move in slow-motion, as if time itself had heard his pleas and decided to stand still and bear witness.
He reached the burial place at last. Trusting the desert to preserve and hide the body, the tiger, in his animal form again, had not dug very deep before laying Aoi in the ground and now, his front paws dug at the sand, sent it flying left and right, searched deep within the shifting layers for his mate. At a certain point, when the hole had already become several inches deep, Reita finally stopped, tilted his head sideways, moved his tail restlessly and growled.
It was difficult to make sense of the situation. He knew that he had buried Aoi here. He could even faintly trace the smell of blood on the sand. And yet, there was no body. This couldn't mean that the basilisk was alive, could it?
“Take you to him, I will.” An unusual, high pitched, tinkle-like voice resounded in the still desert air and Reita jumped in his skin and then turned left, right, and then completed the circle, without managing to spot or sense anyone around. He did not reply.
“No need to fear.” Another voice, similar to the one before but this time having a far away quality to it addressed the tiger.
“Where are you?” Reita would have shouted but settled for calmly -as calm as possible- speaking.
“All around you.” A deep, guttural sound, like the ringing of a bell shred the silence.
And then without any warning, right in front of his eyes, a mist-like form emerged from mid-air, formed by tiny particles of sand and dew coalescing together. It resembled a human and yet it looked like nothing Reita had ever seen, with its almost transparent body and hollow eyes. Reita was positive that if he would try to attack the thing, he would only meet air.
“What are you?” He asked.
“Not which you see, but that which you feel.” The first voice spoke.
“We are the desert.” The deep one continued.
“Look, I don't care who you are. Where is Aoi?”
“Do you trust us to lead you to him?” The second voice asked, through the mouth of the sandy vision now in front of him. “Then accept the sand. Trust it.”
“I must be losing my mind.” Reita mumbled. There was no way he could trust anything at the moment, especially some weird voices that he could hear all of a sudden and a hallucination-like sand form that had appeared out of nowhere.
Aiming to get more information out of the thing or things, whichever the case may be, speaking to him, he asked: “What have you done with him?”
“Done? Nothing. Could do.” Was the hollow answer, lacking weight and vibration, feeling and modality, the voice of the sand and air in front of him, no longer the same ones that had addressed him before. Reita planned on asking what had happened to the other three that had spoken before when he was stopped in mid-speech by the thing's next statement: “The desert takes life away but it can also give it back.” The last part echoed throught every cell in Reita's body, the first concrete hope, absurd as it was to be given to him by a being he couldn't even fathom, absurd yet painfully clear and beautiful, the hope to have Aoi back. Just for that ray of light Reita would have done anything asked of him, and yet he could not trust.
But the shift in his emotions must have been read and considered sufficient for suddenly, the shape disintegrated into its components and the cloud of sand rushed towards Reita, shrouded him and got inside him, inside his clothes, covered his skin, inside his mouth and nose and even under his eyelids. It was annoying and slightly painful and he would have screeched his teeth and strived to endure if only each time he ground his teeth tighter he wouldn't have met fine specks of sand. Calming down he noticed that the sand had stopped moving and at the same time, the world around him did not give off the same smells and noises anymore. To Reita, it felt like being shrouded in a cocoon, in a matrix, a melting pot, a place where there was no beginning and no end and no life, nothing but his breath and the loud sound of the beating of his heart.
And then the voice was inside him, speaking to him through his senses, boiling his blood, exciting his corneas, confusing him with its acuteness and frailness, like the fall of a waterfall, concrete, loud and mesmerizing yet frightening and ever changing. He tried to speak yet his voice failed him, only to discover that there was no need for vocal chords in this space. The entity communicated with him without any specific effort from his part. He just thought or felt, and he would get his reply.
“Where am I?”
“With us.”
“Who are you?”
“Life in a dead place.”
“You're talking in riddles.”
“What else is life?”
The communication would have been nice if it weren't frustrating and leading nowhere.
“Why get angry?”
“Because you're not answering to any of my questions.”
“Perhaps you ask the wrong questions.”
“Where is Aoi?”
“With us.”
“Is he here?”
“Yes.”
“Can I see him?”
“How do you wish to see him?”
“What do you mean? What happened to the body?”
“No body here. Life flows into death that flows into life. It is a circle. Trying to break it only distorts its shape, but its infiniteness stays the same.”
“Is he alive?” His heart spoke before he had even formulated the thought and the hope.
“Nothing is ever dead.”
Reita felt like going mad. He wanted straight answers yet it seemed like he would never get them. Was there anything he could do that would allow him to get them? Out of nowhere, a memory tickled the back of his eyes. He could see it vibrantly now in the darkness surrounding him. The conversation between him and Aoi: “There is no water here.” Why was that relevant now? Why remember this now? Unless...
“Is there no water in the desert?”
“Water is everywhere in nature.”
“Then...” he grasped at straws, bending his way of thinking to accommodate the evasiveness of this unusual dialogue. And like ice thawing under the spring sun's rays, he felt his thought processes melting and expanding, leading him to... “Then that desert isn't a part of nature. It was created by something. That's why we lost sight of the mountains and suddenly found ourselves trapped there, without even realizing anything. Why were we trapped?” It was a question for himself, knowing already that the entity would not answer this, feeling that his weird conversation partner would not deign to answer him because he already had the answer. “There is something we must find in here […] It's magic.”
“Do you have what I am supposed to find?” He asked, this time sure that he indeed had to find something and that was why he had been brought here.
“No.” But then...
“Do I have it?”
“Yes.” And that was like the tinkling of the small bells humans liked to attach to the necks of cats to let them know where their pets were, a clear soft sound, evoking hope and reunion. He had the key, he knew that now, he just did not know what the key was, what it was for or how he was supposed to find it. But it must have something to do with Aoi.
“ You're not tied to me, I'm tied to you” Aoi had said. And just like that, like a lightning shredding the sky on a stormy night, Reita remembered their dialogue just a few days back. How it felt like ages. The medallion. It was what connected him and Aoi, what tied Aoi to him. If that was true, then some part of Aoi was still alive in him, with him.
“Is it the medallion? Can I use it to bring him back?” Reita asked and for the first time, there was so much hope in his tone that he couldn't have hidden it even if he had wanted to.
“Conduct it is, but not solution.” Just like that, Reita's hope deflated. Still, he was on the right track. If the medallion was the key, then what was missing? He just had to think but he couldn't, no matter how many times he played back over and over all the conversations he had had with Aoi, or even with the others, he couldn't find it. And yet, he knew that it was out there, so close that he could practically feel it breathing down his neck.
“No more time.” The guttural voice suddenly said and cold shivers assaulted Reita. He needed more time, no matter what it took, he needed Aoi back.
“No, please. Just give me a clue, please, I beg you. I'd do anything to have him back.”
“Would you die for him?” The deep voice asked and Reita had to suck in a breath. Would he? It was what he had come here to do but there was something disturbing him. Maybe his instincts telling him he should for once think before he acted.
“I'd die to protect him, yes.”
“Would you give your life now in exchange for his?”
Reita had to make himself clear, answer as honestly as he could.
“I value his life, more than anything in the world. And I also know that he values mine. He's gone as far as tying himself to me before he even found me again. I just think he'd follow me again if he were the only one left. What would that accomplish?”
There was no answer and for a long while - or it seemed that way to him - he had to suck in his breath in fear that he had lost his chance after all. But then, the first voice, that surprisingly sounded softer, a bit playful now, gave him what he had asked for: a hint.
“A bond you seek. Fate will it break, world will it change, and if your love not strong enough, you will it destroy. Chaos mother of creation it is.”
It was still a riddle, but now Reita had his answer: he was looking for a bond, and one between him and Aoi probably. It also involved the medallion. So could it mean he had to tie himself to the other man? But Aoi was dead. How did he do that? The other warnings he couldn't care less about: fate was of no concern when Aoi's life was at stake and he could care less if he would be hurt or if the world would change for better or for worse because of it. He knew that the entity probably had good reasons to warn him, but at the moment, Reita just simply didn't have it in him to care.
Aoi had never told him how he had tied himself to him. Reita did not know of anything of the sort. But if Aoi had only half of the medallion, then Reita should create the other half, right? Easier said than done. He tried pouring his magic into the tiny round thing tied to his neck and order it, but nothing seemed to work.
“Please. I think I need to bind myself to Aoi. But I don't know how. Help me.” He wondered if the entity was even partial to pleading in the first place. He certainly hoped so.
“Aoi controls water and sand. What do you offer? Who are you?”
Another tricky question, tricky because Reita simply did not have that sort of powers. Tigers did not control any elements, as far as Reita knew.
“Have you ever been told you were like liquid metal?” Ruki had told him and he hadn't paid it much attention then. But now that he thought about it, out of all the elements, he liked water and metal best. And yet those two didn't mix, well, not normally. But he didn't like the idea of him being a cold hard piece of block. It seemed alien.
Then, he didn't have to think hard about it anymore for light stronger than he had ever seen flooded the space, blinding him. After he got used to the sudden brightness and was able to open his eyes, Reita noticed the table floating just a few centimetres in the air in front of him, in an otherwise non-existent room. Non-existent because Reita seemed to be sort of floating too. There was no floor, no walls and no ceiling, no nothing except the table, the bottles on the table, the blinding light and Reita.
Getting closer to the table, he saw better the five bottles standing on the table. They all had the same size but had different colours. And they all had labels on them, thank heavens for that, for Reita was certain he could have never guessed otherwise what the liquids inside were. Liquids... yes, they were liquids and yet the labels said: “gold”, “copper”,“bromine”, “osmium” and “mercury”. He now wished he would have paid more attention to his teachers in school because that might have given him a clue about what the last three were. He only knew gold and copper and was fairly certain that they were not supposed to be liquid. The bottles must have been at boiling temperature on the inside while cold at the outside.
He just knew he had to pick one, and well, gold would have been the obvious pick, if not for the sheer obviousness of it. And well, he wasn't really a fan anyway. Copper seemed too plain, and he already had that in his body. The other three bottles, he had no idea what they were. Should he go with colours? Bromium was a reddish-brown pretty colour, osmium was blueish and mercury was grey. The reddish colour attracted him the most, and he reached for it just before retracting his hand quickly: it was pretty, but it was more Aoi than Reita. The blue one more or less resembled his eyes, and he was fairly sure that he couldn't pick it for that reason. Which left him with mercury. It was plain, grey, looked like silver but wasn't, therefore it probably wasn't valuable at all and yet... He reached for it and picked it up. It was damn heavy, such a small bottle weighed a lot more than he had ever imagined. That was perhaps the only thing special about it yet somehow, somewhere deep inside Reita, it struck something. Perhaps it was precisely the fact that he, himself, unlike any others, apart from his physical force - his weight - didn't have any special powers. Whatever it was, Reita's gut feeling told him to pick that one, and Reita hadn't gotten this far with Aoi precisely due to his intelligence. The moment he had decided, the heavy voice was back and the table had disappeared into thin air.
“Mercury is also called liquid silver. Like you thought, apart from its weight, there doesn't seem to be anything special about it. Except that it is liquid. Except bromium, which is a gas-metal, the others are all melted, but not mercury. And one more thing, it is extremely poisonous. It is probably the closest to Aoi's poison. If you chose wrongly, only smelling it can cause severe irreparable damage. Drinking it ends in instantaneous death. But if you are mercury and control the element, then it will do you no harm.”
It was the first time the entity had spoken that much and Reita was surprised. He had gotten used to its riddles and short answers. This time, its message was clear: he had to drink it, it was his test. If he failed, he died. If not, Aoi would live, maybe. It wasn't really a choice. Reita uncapped the bottle and quickly poured it all down his throat. An intense heat starting form his bowels consumed him and it seemed as though every cell in his body was simultaneously on fire and ice cold. And then, all was over.
A/N: I am really proud of this chapter. Not just because it's longer than usual but also because I think it's fresh. For me, it is, since the whole bottle and metal idea really isn't something I would normally come up with. I hope you liked it and are looking forward to seeing what will happen with these two.
On another note, let me know if you're bored with the story. Because I can't even see the ending of this one, (my plot bunnies are a bit crazy at the moment) which tells me that there might be around 20 chapters to go and I'm not sure whether I should just write it at this pace or be over with it sooner. I'd hate to rush it and if it would make me unsatisfied with the writing, I would probably put it on a hiatus, which I'd hate to do, really, since I promised myself when I started writing fics never to leave one unfinished. That's why I really do hope you like it as it is and are willing to join me for the rest of the ride. Your opinion matters a lot to me, so let me know. Squishes to my lovely readers.
Author: yukigafuru
Chapters: 40/?
Pairings: RukaxYomi, KaixRuki, AoixReita for now
Bands: Gazette, Naitomea, D... (and a surprise)
Rating: PG-17, for this chapter
Warnings: will be angst, yaoi, a bit of gore here and there
Genre: AU, Angst, Romance
Disclaimer: I am not connected to the real persons. This is just a figment of my imagination and I don't make any money nor profit in any way out of this (well, except gathering your love that is).
Summary: The age of magic and mystery is coming towards its end. But what if someone that has the gift to see the future can join forces with others who have the power to stop it? What will be born then? What will be found?
Chapter 40
If it meant running towards Aoi, Reita found it easier to put one paw in front of the other, tighten his muscles and stretch his neck so as to achieve top speed. Dunes flew by and just about the time the sky over the horizon started to become bloody with the birth of a new day, the tiger reached the place where the fight had happened. Everything was still and for a few moments Reita stopped too, to breathe the heavy air, feel the fine sand tickling his paws, look at the night sky where the stars had already started to fade. And then, after he had caught his breath and changed back into human form, gotten an eye full of his surroundings, he slowly turned towards the place he had left Aoi's body.
To others it must have looked exactly the same as any other place in the desert: dunes of sand and the sky, a stone or two here and there. But to Reita, who had his tiger's senses to guide him, there was no other place like this one in the desert. Every minute change in the shape of the dunes, the scent of the surroundings, the position of the stars had been engraved in his memory. Finding his way to Aoi had been easy.
What was heard was facing him, force oneself to see the indisputable evidence that Aoi was no more. Until he had the body in his arms again, he could still hold on to the remote, infinitesimal hope that this was all a dream, that Aoi hadn't really been dead. Every step he now took was a step towards shattering that hope, his body knew it and that's why despite his hurry till now, he seemed to move in slow-motion, as if time itself had heard his pleas and decided to stand still and bear witness.
He reached the burial place at last. Trusting the desert to preserve and hide the body, the tiger, in his animal form again, had not dug very deep before laying Aoi in the ground and now, his front paws dug at the sand, sent it flying left and right, searched deep within the shifting layers for his mate. At a certain point, when the hole had already become several inches deep, Reita finally stopped, tilted his head sideways, moved his tail restlessly and growled.
It was difficult to make sense of the situation. He knew that he had buried Aoi here. He could even faintly trace the smell of blood on the sand. And yet, there was no body. This couldn't mean that the basilisk was alive, could it?
“Take you to him, I will.” An unusual, high pitched, tinkle-like voice resounded in the still desert air and Reita jumped in his skin and then turned left, right, and then completed the circle, without managing to spot or sense anyone around. He did not reply.
“No need to fear.” Another voice, similar to the one before but this time having a far away quality to it addressed the tiger.
“Where are you?” Reita would have shouted but settled for calmly -as calm as possible- speaking.
“All around you.” A deep, guttural sound, like the ringing of a bell shred the silence.
And then without any warning, right in front of his eyes, a mist-like form emerged from mid-air, formed by tiny particles of sand and dew coalescing together. It resembled a human and yet it looked like nothing Reita had ever seen, with its almost transparent body and hollow eyes. Reita was positive that if he would try to attack the thing, he would only meet air.
“What are you?” He asked.
“Not which you see, but that which you feel.” The first voice spoke.
“We are the desert.” The deep one continued.
“Look, I don't care who you are. Where is Aoi?”
“Do you trust us to lead you to him?” The second voice asked, through the mouth of the sandy vision now in front of him. “Then accept the sand. Trust it.”
“I must be losing my mind.” Reita mumbled. There was no way he could trust anything at the moment, especially some weird voices that he could hear all of a sudden and a hallucination-like sand form that had appeared out of nowhere.
Aiming to get more information out of the thing or things, whichever the case may be, speaking to him, he asked: “What have you done with him?”
“Done? Nothing. Could do.” Was the hollow answer, lacking weight and vibration, feeling and modality, the voice of the sand and air in front of him, no longer the same ones that had addressed him before. Reita planned on asking what had happened to the other three that had spoken before when he was stopped in mid-speech by the thing's next statement: “The desert takes life away but it can also give it back.” The last part echoed throught every cell in Reita's body, the first concrete hope, absurd as it was to be given to him by a being he couldn't even fathom, absurd yet painfully clear and beautiful, the hope to have Aoi back. Just for that ray of light Reita would have done anything asked of him, and yet he could not trust.
But the shift in his emotions must have been read and considered sufficient for suddenly, the shape disintegrated into its components and the cloud of sand rushed towards Reita, shrouded him and got inside him, inside his clothes, covered his skin, inside his mouth and nose and even under his eyelids. It was annoying and slightly painful and he would have screeched his teeth and strived to endure if only each time he ground his teeth tighter he wouldn't have met fine specks of sand. Calming down he noticed that the sand had stopped moving and at the same time, the world around him did not give off the same smells and noises anymore. To Reita, it felt like being shrouded in a cocoon, in a matrix, a melting pot, a place where there was no beginning and no end and no life, nothing but his breath and the loud sound of the beating of his heart.
And then the voice was inside him, speaking to him through his senses, boiling his blood, exciting his corneas, confusing him with its acuteness and frailness, like the fall of a waterfall, concrete, loud and mesmerizing yet frightening and ever changing. He tried to speak yet his voice failed him, only to discover that there was no need for vocal chords in this space. The entity communicated with him without any specific effort from his part. He just thought or felt, and he would get his reply.
“Where am I?”
“With us.”
“Who are you?”
“Life in a dead place.”
“You're talking in riddles.”
“What else is life?”
The communication would have been nice if it weren't frustrating and leading nowhere.
“Why get angry?”
“Because you're not answering to any of my questions.”
“Perhaps you ask the wrong questions.”
“Where is Aoi?”
“With us.”
“Is he here?”
“Yes.”
“Can I see him?”
“How do you wish to see him?”
“What do you mean? What happened to the body?”
“No body here. Life flows into death that flows into life. It is a circle. Trying to break it only distorts its shape, but its infiniteness stays the same.”
“Is he alive?” His heart spoke before he had even formulated the thought and the hope.
“Nothing is ever dead.”
Reita felt like going mad. He wanted straight answers yet it seemed like he would never get them. Was there anything he could do that would allow him to get them? Out of nowhere, a memory tickled the back of his eyes. He could see it vibrantly now in the darkness surrounding him. The conversation between him and Aoi: “There is no water here.” Why was that relevant now? Why remember this now? Unless...
“Is there no water in the desert?”
“Water is everywhere in nature.”
“Then...” he grasped at straws, bending his way of thinking to accommodate the evasiveness of this unusual dialogue. And like ice thawing under the spring sun's rays, he felt his thought processes melting and expanding, leading him to... “Then that desert isn't a part of nature. It was created by something. That's why we lost sight of the mountains and suddenly found ourselves trapped there, without even realizing anything. Why were we trapped?” It was a question for himself, knowing already that the entity would not answer this, feeling that his weird conversation partner would not deign to answer him because he already had the answer. “There is something we must find in here […] It's magic.”
“Do you have what I am supposed to find?” He asked, this time sure that he indeed had to find something and that was why he had been brought here.
“No.” But then...
“Do I have it?”
“Yes.” And that was like the tinkling of the small bells humans liked to attach to the necks of cats to let them know where their pets were, a clear soft sound, evoking hope and reunion. He had the key, he knew that now, he just did not know what the key was, what it was for or how he was supposed to find it. But it must have something to do with Aoi.
“ You're not tied to me, I'm tied to you” Aoi had said. And just like that, like a lightning shredding the sky on a stormy night, Reita remembered their dialogue just a few days back. How it felt like ages. The medallion. It was what connected him and Aoi, what tied Aoi to him. If that was true, then some part of Aoi was still alive in him, with him.
“Is it the medallion? Can I use it to bring him back?” Reita asked and for the first time, there was so much hope in his tone that he couldn't have hidden it even if he had wanted to.
“Conduct it is, but not solution.” Just like that, Reita's hope deflated. Still, he was on the right track. If the medallion was the key, then what was missing? He just had to think but he couldn't, no matter how many times he played back over and over all the conversations he had had with Aoi, or even with the others, he couldn't find it. And yet, he knew that it was out there, so close that he could practically feel it breathing down his neck.
“No more time.” The guttural voice suddenly said and cold shivers assaulted Reita. He needed more time, no matter what it took, he needed Aoi back.
“No, please. Just give me a clue, please, I beg you. I'd do anything to have him back.”
“Would you die for him?” The deep voice asked and Reita had to suck in a breath. Would he? It was what he had come here to do but there was something disturbing him. Maybe his instincts telling him he should for once think before he acted.
“I'd die to protect him, yes.”
“Would you give your life now in exchange for his?”
Reita had to make himself clear, answer as honestly as he could.
“I value his life, more than anything in the world. And I also know that he values mine. He's gone as far as tying himself to me before he even found me again. I just think he'd follow me again if he were the only one left. What would that accomplish?”
There was no answer and for a long while - or it seemed that way to him - he had to suck in his breath in fear that he had lost his chance after all. But then, the first voice, that surprisingly sounded softer, a bit playful now, gave him what he had asked for: a hint.
“A bond you seek. Fate will it break, world will it change, and if your love not strong enough, you will it destroy. Chaos mother of creation it is.”
It was still a riddle, but now Reita had his answer: he was looking for a bond, and one between him and Aoi probably. It also involved the medallion. So could it mean he had to tie himself to the other man? But Aoi was dead. How did he do that? The other warnings he couldn't care less about: fate was of no concern when Aoi's life was at stake and he could care less if he would be hurt or if the world would change for better or for worse because of it. He knew that the entity probably had good reasons to warn him, but at the moment, Reita just simply didn't have it in him to care.
Aoi had never told him how he had tied himself to him. Reita did not know of anything of the sort. But if Aoi had only half of the medallion, then Reita should create the other half, right? Easier said than done. He tried pouring his magic into the tiny round thing tied to his neck and order it, but nothing seemed to work.
“Please. I think I need to bind myself to Aoi. But I don't know how. Help me.” He wondered if the entity was even partial to pleading in the first place. He certainly hoped so.
“Aoi controls water and sand. What do you offer? Who are you?”
Another tricky question, tricky because Reita simply did not have that sort of powers. Tigers did not control any elements, as far as Reita knew.
“Have you ever been told you were like liquid metal?” Ruki had told him and he hadn't paid it much attention then. But now that he thought about it, out of all the elements, he liked water and metal best. And yet those two didn't mix, well, not normally. But he didn't like the idea of him being a cold hard piece of block. It seemed alien.
Then, he didn't have to think hard about it anymore for light stronger than he had ever seen flooded the space, blinding him. After he got used to the sudden brightness and was able to open his eyes, Reita noticed the table floating just a few centimetres in the air in front of him, in an otherwise non-existent room. Non-existent because Reita seemed to be sort of floating too. There was no floor, no walls and no ceiling, no nothing except the table, the bottles on the table, the blinding light and Reita.
Getting closer to the table, he saw better the five bottles standing on the table. They all had the same size but had different colours. And they all had labels on them, thank heavens for that, for Reita was certain he could have never guessed otherwise what the liquids inside were. Liquids... yes, they were liquids and yet the labels said: “gold”, “copper”,“bromine”, “osmium” and “mercury”. He now wished he would have paid more attention to his teachers in school because that might have given him a clue about what the last three were. He only knew gold and copper and was fairly certain that they were not supposed to be liquid. The bottles must have been at boiling temperature on the inside while cold at the outside.
He just knew he had to pick one, and well, gold would have been the obvious pick, if not for the sheer obviousness of it. And well, he wasn't really a fan anyway. Copper seemed too plain, and he already had that in his body. The other three bottles, he had no idea what they were. Should he go with colours? Bromium was a reddish-brown pretty colour, osmium was blueish and mercury was grey. The reddish colour attracted him the most, and he reached for it just before retracting his hand quickly: it was pretty, but it was more Aoi than Reita. The blue one more or less resembled his eyes, and he was fairly sure that he couldn't pick it for that reason. Which left him with mercury. It was plain, grey, looked like silver but wasn't, therefore it probably wasn't valuable at all and yet... He reached for it and picked it up. It was damn heavy, such a small bottle weighed a lot more than he had ever imagined. That was perhaps the only thing special about it yet somehow, somewhere deep inside Reita, it struck something. Perhaps it was precisely the fact that he, himself, unlike any others, apart from his physical force - his weight - didn't have any special powers. Whatever it was, Reita's gut feeling told him to pick that one, and Reita hadn't gotten this far with Aoi precisely due to his intelligence. The moment he had decided, the heavy voice was back and the table had disappeared into thin air.
“Mercury is also called liquid silver. Like you thought, apart from its weight, there doesn't seem to be anything special about it. Except that it is liquid. Except bromium, which is a gas-metal, the others are all melted, but not mercury. And one more thing, it is extremely poisonous. It is probably the closest to Aoi's poison. If you chose wrongly, only smelling it can cause severe irreparable damage. Drinking it ends in instantaneous death. But if you are mercury and control the element, then it will do you no harm.”
It was the first time the entity had spoken that much and Reita was surprised. He had gotten used to its riddles and short answers. This time, its message was clear: he had to drink it, it was his test. If he failed, he died. If not, Aoi would live, maybe. It wasn't really a choice. Reita uncapped the bottle and quickly poured it all down his throat. An intense heat starting form his bowels consumed him and it seemed as though every cell in his body was simultaneously on fire and ice cold. And then, all was over.
A/N: I am really proud of this chapter. Not just because it's longer than usual but also because I think it's fresh. For me, it is, since the whole bottle and metal idea really isn't something I would normally come up with. I hope you liked it and are looking forward to seeing what will happen with these two.
On another note, let me know if you're bored with the story. Because I can't even see the ending of this one, (my plot bunnies are a bit crazy at the moment) which tells me that there might be around 20 chapters to go and I'm not sure whether I should just write it at this pace or be over with it sooner. I'd hate to rush it and if it would make me unsatisfied with the writing, I would probably put it on a hiatus, which I'd hate to do, really, since I promised myself when I started writing fics never to leave one unfinished. That's why I really do hope you like it as it is and are willing to join me for the rest of the ride. Your opinion matters a lot to me, so let me know. Squishes to my lovely readers.