Amoro Revidi

Title: Intruding Darkness [Part Seventeen]
Series: Vision of Escaflowne
Rating: PG-13
A/N: Part 17, after much fuss and fighting with me, has finally decided it's ready to be born.

***

    A commotion outside rouses Kira from her light rest. It had been hard forcing the other nobility within the cage, the four young women aside from herself never having been taken to task by another of their own status, to arrange themselves so that they all had room to stretch out their weary bodies on the hard floor of the cage to get some rest, and Kira had been the last to fall asleep. Since they had accepted her temporary leadership, she was also in charge of their emotional well being, they had decided.

    Kira found herself comforting the youngest of them, the daughter of Baroness someone or other from the Barony of somewhere or else, and the train of cages had stopped for the evening, their gecko captors starting small fires to warm themselves around before Kira could arrange herself semi-comfortably on the small space she had allotted herself in the cage and fall into a light repose. Sometime afterwards, she reckons, the gecko had lowered tarps over the cages to keep the worst of the wind and the weather off their captives.

    As she stretches her chilled arms and rubs her hands together she thinks wryly that it didn’t do horrible amounts of good, but it did at least do some good since she can hear icy raindrops hitting the fabric surrounding the cages. Peering under one slightly upturned corner of the mismatching tarps, Kira glances out at their surroundings in an attempt to see what noise had awoken her.

***

    Not even a full hour after he had given the go ahead, Dryden found twelve of the safe nobles standing and waiting in the throne room. The young woman, Nileyah, bowed and took her leave, an assortment of apparent Kathis, eleven others in fact, promising to return as quickly as possible with those missing.

    Dryden stands watching the small troupe of bodyguards as they head out of the castle on horseback without so much as a single tracking animal among them, and shakes his head. He turns to look at Millerna, who dozes with Exeter in her arms napping, the early afternoon sunlight streaming down through the stained glass windows and painting her face with soft patterns of blues and reds and even some greens. He smiles fondly and crosses to her, lifting Exeter from her arms as he stirs and hushing the child before he wakes her, he carries the young man from the room.

***

    “Uncle Dryden?” Chid asks, looking up from the book in front of him as the king of Asturia enters the room and shuts the door quietly behind him.

    “Chid, would you mind looking after Exeter for a while?”

    Chid nods slowly. “What’s going on?”

    “Millerna’s wearing herself out worrying about everything…” Dryden absently runs his hand through his dark hair, “I want to make sure she gets some rest and be assured that Exeter’s all right at the same time.”

    Chid smiles knowingly at his uncle. “No problem, Uncle Dryden.”

    Dryden nods his thanks and hands the young Duke the crown prince before turning and heading back to the throne room.

***

    Lying in his embrace contentedly, Hitomi finds her thoughts drawn back to Earth and what she left behind to come and spend time on Gaea with Van. Outside rain begins to fall, and Van tucks the blankets more tightly around her. “You’re thinking about your home, aren’t you?” he asks in a quiet voice.

    Slowly, Hitomi nods in response to his question.

    “If you’re ready to go back…”

    “No,” she says quickly, turning to look up at him. The years had been more than kind to Van in that respect, he had grown to be at least half a foot taller than she, and as she glances up into the dark crimson of his eyes, she feels a twinge of doubt. “I don’t want to go back, Van… I’m not… ready to go back yet.”

    Van, puzzled, tilts his head as she buries her face against his chest and snuggles down into his embrace. “Hitomi, I don’t think I quite understand.”

    “… sometimes,” she begins in a quite voice, muffled by the wrap of the blankets around her neck and the fabric of his shirt she speaks into. She pauses, inhaling his scent and feeling the fear-heightened beating of her heart slow with that comforting reminder of his presence, “Sometimes I think that I want to go back, Van, but…”

    Van sighs, “Then maybe it is time for you to return home, Hitomi. I hate to think that you’re in danger again just because of me…”

    “But then I remember that there isn’t really anything for me to go back to, Van.” He falls silent, trailing off and lifting his hand to gently stroke her hair. “When I was here last… on Gaea… I was homesick, I missed my family, and my friends. Yukari, and… Amano… but it’s different there now, Van.”

    He swallows.

    “And as for being in danger, I think the accident proves that people are in danger everywhere they can be, on Earth or on Gaea. I could’ve died in that car crash, Van… and then what?” he tightens his grip on her and shakes his head, refuting that claim of hers. “Then nothing,” she takes a deep breath. “I… I don’t have anything to go back to this time, Van.”

    Van listens quietly, his heart nearly breaking as he hears the forlorn note of her voice and her final conclusion. “Well you could… always stay here, Hitomi.”

    “Where?” her voice is soft, quiet, and there is a slight tremble to it as she relaxes against him. “I’ll eventually have to go back. I can’t stay here forever.”

    Van swallows. “But you could stay. With me.”

***

    The small party of Kathis descended upon the wagon train just as the afternoon sun began to sink into the mountains. Planning out their attack they had lain low and waited for the instant when the sun would be at the proper angle to blind the Gecko, and once that moment came they flew forward into the breech, dispatching the remaining guards quickly and then moving to free those nobles that had been taken prisoner.

    Nil manages to be the first towards the wagons and slashes the tarp free of the wall of the first cage, awakening the four gathered within. She glances around as the others circle up behind her to open the cage and let them out, and moves on when she does not find Princess Kira within.

    Revealing those contained within the final cage, Nileyah finds the princess staring at her evenly. With a single down stroke of her blade across the crude lock on the door of the cage, Nil opens the cage, not breaking eye contact. “Who are you?” Kira asks, not making a move towards the opened door of the cage as the other princesses scramble over each other to get out.

    “I am sent by Prince Jasper to retrieve you, Princess Kira.”

    “To retrieve me?”

    “I regret only that I was unable to protect you during the initial attack.”

    “You’re a Kathis, then?” she asks slowly. Nil nods, “Nileyah Calipse at your service, highness. Please, come with me.”

    “How can I be sure of that? How do I know that you aren’t just the rival of whoever sent the Gecko?”

    “Because I give you my word.”

    Kira eyes Nil for a long moment, narrowing her own eyes to violet slits and then nods slowly, getting up into a crouching stance and making her way out of the cage and accepting the hand Nil extends to help her down with. “He likes you a great deal,” Nil responds as she escorts Kira along with the others towards their horses, “and I can see why.”

    “I doubt he would like me so much if he knew I wasn’t really a princess.”

    “Even though your father was elected King that doesn’t mean you aren’t royalty, Princess,” Nil responds, “at the very least in his eyes.”

    Kira glances at the short haired young woman as they make their way through the chilled mud towards the clearing where the Kathis’ horses are waiting, and blinks in confusion, but restrains her questions until later.

***

    Mot stands in her office. It is dark and the only illumination comes from the flickering of the fire behind her and the moonlight streaming in through the window she stands in front of. A glass of wine is swirled gently in her left hand and she glances down, easily able to pick out two figures on horseback making their way up the mountainous tract below the Compound.

    For nearly two hundred years of Gaean history we have done our very best to protect those who are deemed fit and worthy to rule and govern over the land. Mot sips her wine and draws her free right hand up across her stomach as she contemplates the two riders, In the past, we have fallen short of our ultimate goal of world-wide peace, but we have never failed to protect those we are assigned to protect with our very lives, and to look out for their best interests despite their impact on our own.

    This is the life we lead, the life we are brought up in, the one that destiny lies before us, drawing each of us up from the dregs where fortune cast us to place upon our capable shoulders the weight of responsibility we are trained to bear.

    For a moment she stares into the glass and sees her own reflection, high cheek boned face with silver-gray hair framing a troubled brow over dark eyes, and then her vision blurs on that image and she allows her eyes to close to slits as a vision sweeps into the moon and fire lit room around her.

    Since my first years my fate has been bound to that of all Gaea, and this I have accepted complacently, yet it has never been in my nature to be complacent. With these last thirty years those Kathis that have been trained under my high command have failed in their missions to maintain peace, and yet have gone to greater lengths to protect those they are assigned to.

    ‘Perhaps it is simply that you were never meant for a peaceful world,’ a figure behind her says, and she feels the chill rush of memory, and can almost smell the dank depths of the dungeon around her, can vividly recall the temperature and weight of the shackles on her wrists. ‘You Kathis and your high and mighty cause are nothing!’

    The visions of him come more frequently now than they used to. What does it mean, and why must it all fall apart now, why when Sotet is so nearly ready to take his place in the world?

***

    After riding several hours back to the capital through the chilling rain, the Kathis detachment ushers their charges into the waiting gondolas and heads back for the palace, on the final leg of their journey. Kira looks over at Nil, who hasn’t left her side since helping her down from the cage in the gecko encampment, and finds the young staring straight at her, silver eyes as blank as the expression on her face.

    Unlike the other young women, who seem to be steadily avoiding eye contact with their saviors, or the young men who contrarily seem quite displeased with themselves and sullen because of it, Kira stares into Nil’s eyes and smiles. “I’d… like to thank you, Nileyah.”

    “Why would you thank me, Princess?” Nil’s voice is empty and even as she asks the question Kira feels a small chill run down her spine.

    “Is that not what is proper in this situation? To thank,” Kira places special emphasis on her words, “our saviors for their aide in our time of need?” The other young nobles look down or away as she says this, but a few mutter their thanks to the Kathis present in the vicinity.

    “You needn’t do that, Princess,” Nil replies in a tone most obviously only for her ears. Kira glances around and finds that none of the other nobles take note of Nil’s words, so she dares to respond.

    “They… they can’t hear you, can they?” she asks the Kathis protector that had taken her under wing.

    “No, nor you.”

    “Why shouldn’t I thank you?” Kira asks quickly, as though fearing the spell might wear off at some close point in time that she cannot fully grasp.

    “It was my duty to do so, Princess. It does not mean I took pleasure in the act, or that I like you.” Kira ponders that, chewing slightly on the inside of her lower lip.

    “You hate me then?”

    “I do not hate you. I dislike you in the manner I dislike all other women that might attract Jasper’s attention.”

    “You’re in love with Jasper!” Kira exclaims in more of an incredulous manner than an accusatory one. “Does he know?”

    “It is neither my place nor my station to love Prince Jasper,” Nil replies, her voice steady but the blank look in her eyes slipping to reveal something of a wistful glint to them, “A Kathis to their protectorate is nothing more than an androgynous bodyguard until such a time arises in which an heir must be produced at all costs.”

    Kira’s face pales after a moment as she grasps the full meaning of Nil’s speech, and she looks down a moment at her hands, which are holding the slightly dampened blanket around her shoulders securely. When she chances to look up again, she finds Nil’s own eyes are focused elsewhere, and the eerie still and quiet of the prior moment’s conversation is broken.

    “Princess Kira,” one of the other young noblewomen begins, “What’s with that look on your face? Are you chilled still? Hungry?”

    “No,” Kira responds, voice trailing off as she has no other answer for the young lady seated beside her.

***

    As the hours passed at the castle, Millerna slumbered on peacefully in her husband’s protective embrace. He had returned to the throne room and collected the sleeping queen and retired the two of them to their bedroom. Finally almost completely alone, he was unashamed to speak his mind, so he did.

    “You were right about what you said, my Goddess,” he whispers to her in a crooning voice, stroking her platinum pale bangs back from her forehead, “I am quite afraid of you. Terrified in fact. Every time I look at you I grow weak and find myself unable to act the way I normally would. And yet at the same time I know what I want to do when I see you, and I fear every time that the weaker part of me, the part that loves you for who you are on the outside and not what you feel or think… will win out.

    “I couldn’t stand to see you hurt, Millerna, and that’s why I’m always so cautious around you. You must know… you must know that I love you, more than the stars, and the moons, and the sun and my own life itself, but I simply won’t allow the love I hold for you to be of any burden or pain to you.”

***

    While the king and queen remain ensconced in their rooms, the other nobility mixed quietly in the throne room, since it was secured doubly, both by the Royal Guard and the remaining Kathis that had not headed out to rescue those taken. There were several notable absences during the beginning of the very informal mixer, but after a while, even Van and Hitomi made their way down to join the others for social time.

    Dressed, again, in a flowing gown, Hitomi finds herself tucked neatly at Van’s side as they descend into the bedecked throne room, and feels her spirits wither at the harsh glances from the varied ladies in attendance. The doubtful part of her mind makes up several rounds of nasty rumors that are being said about her and the association she has with Van.

    The voices close in around her, effectively putting up a barrier between her and the rest of the assemblage, and the only thing that keeps her steady and stable is the warm, stable presence of Van beside her as he guides her around the crowds with a careful eye on her and those that step close. His over protective manner does not go unnoticed by the others gathered and it begins to circle that Fanelia will not be long without a queen.

    Fuming and about to speak up about the nature of his relationship to Hitomi, in order to quell rumors and put her tense person more at ease, Van finds himself face to face with Jasper. “Your Majesty,” Jasper says, executing a formal bow.

    “Prince Jasper,” Van replies cordially, some of his anger abating to find at least one of the nobles willing to set aside the gossip mongering and speak sensibly.

    “I know it’s frustrating to stand here and let them insult Lady Hitomi, and yourself, Majesty, but…” Jasper speaks a little lower but with the obvious intent that only those around them should not listen in, “Everyone is quite on edge about our missing peers, so I beg you not to be so angry that you would cause a scene.”

    About to rebuke the Cessarian prince, Van is stopped by Hitomi’s quiet voice insisting, “He is right, Van.”

***

    On a rocky path leading higher up into the mountains than the Shrine of Escaflowne, Arik and Tristan ride at a slow and steady pace against the buffeting winds and chill rain. Arik turns back to glance at Tristan, who had never been much of a horseman in his life, and finds him struggling to maintain his grip.

    “You should have let me switch mounts with you back there,” she calls to him against the wind. They had stopped to rest only a few hours before and it was more than obvious that Tristan’s mount had a sincere distaste for being ridden by the High Priest.

    “You said it wouldn’t be too much farther, I trust you,” he calls back from the lag of a horse length or two behind her.

    Arik frowns, You are noble, but you don’t have to act that way all the time, Tristan. She turns back and urges her own mount a little farther ahead through the mud and slippery rocks, beginning to call forth the spell that will open the road to the Bikathian Compound.

    “On a road that leads to nowhere, but is found in every place, at a time when we are called to return to our roots, from forth this bleak path I exchange the present for the hope of the future!” Arik closes her eyes and stands in the stirrups, extending one hand before her to channel the power she has just called forth.

    Slowly, at first, and then faster, mist begins to collect before her on the trail, and as it thickens it begins to take shape, that of an ornate outer gate, one situated on the very edge of the Compound’s land holdings. The ornamentation is old and weathered but not chipped and the locks are still as solid as ever.

    Slipping down from her mount, Arik steps up to the gate and draws off her left glove, which she, chanting some more under her breath, lifts and touches the lock with. As she touches it, the gates swing open, and Tristan’s horse catches up to hers just as she remounts. “How did you do that?” he asks her quietly, leaning a little closer against the wind noise.

    “Nevermind that, this is the way we must go.”

    Without another word, Arik starts her horse off forwards and enters the gate. Puzzled at her reticence to speak about the subject, Tristan follows unquestioningly.