<1025 A.D.>
TEMPORAL VORTEX REPORT
-REPORT NO. 7-
[UNKNOWN TRANSFER RATE, SYSTEMATIC DATA MALFUNCTION]
CRYPTIC TEXT SYNCH RESULT - MULTIDIMENSIONAL TIMELINES
CODE - "MAGNESS"
CODE EX. - "CUTTING CLEAR OF CLOUDS"
He was right; it was messy. Gil looked like Marcy had after her attempted fight with the Wolfs. The boomerang still clutched in his soaking, scarlet hand-as if both had been thrust in a sloppy bucket of paint. The rage and anger had left him after the Amulet fell from the petite corpse's hand and back into his own. It had actually begun to dissipate before, when he saw her cowering down there on the ground. There was a change-a shift-that he had felt; something...else.
After shouting, "Watch out!" to Gil, more in surprise or reactive impulse than in any kind of care or concern for his safety, Marcy had stood there, transfixed by him once more. She didn't think he needed anyone to watch his back. His skill, his precision, he was a sight of horrific amazement. He had actually managed not only to catch it, but it didn't seem to hurt him at all. None of the fresh blood-for there was some dried dabs and flakes on his palm from when he entered the era-covering his hand and the weapon was his own.
He was a warrior with the heart for killing like that of a demon born from brimstone and flame. He was a vicious spirit sent up from hell. He was the archangel falling from the heavens. For one reason or another, this magic man was let loose upon the world as she knew it. Then it ended, the haze cleared, and he was her mysterious savior once again. Her eyes did not convey fear; they sparkled with an awe the likes of which he had never seen before. This is peculiar because he would have seen it, had he a mirror handy as a child, watching his sister work her magics in a brilliantly lit section of their home: their great palace in the sky.
"My god, what magic." The words formed on Marcy's astounded lips without her thinking of them. She no more knew the words on her tongue than she knew the man standing before her, splashed in the blood and bits of brain of a girl not less than a year younger than herself.
"We've got him." The first officer said aloud to his subordinates, sitting at various control panels around the small room, filled with various machines and computational devices, "We've got some major temporal flux going down; both sometime mid-summer. It's...it's during the United Fair."
"Sir...?" One of them asked. The thick Plexiglas windows flared with their regular, irregular blue flashing light.
"This could be very big shit." He replied, "There have already been several deaths."
"...Prevented or prompted?" Another asked. The first officer looked at him with a grave look spread on his face. The monitor in front of him glared and flashed striking red with bold numbers and words representing temporal dates and the effects of the alterations.
"Both..."
Gil ran and she followed him. There was no alternative. He had drawn too much attention to himself already. The guards at the bridge would not be long after Marcy. Add on to that the fact that he was close to drained. Over the course of his travels so far, he had expended the little energy the temporal rift had imbued him with.
He was on her level, if not a few inches abover her in relative height, as they fled.
He didn't have the energy to even float, which always seemed to come so effortlessly before.
"Where do you come from?" She finally asked between quick intakes of fresh air. The sun, glimmering and shining through her hair, drew his eye to her. Great blonde strands had broken free of her buns and trailed behind her as they ran; whipping back and forth in her motions. Aside from seeing her before, with the Wolfs, this was an image he would not soon forget.
"Why do you ask this of me now?" Gil almost spat the words. His own, fair, blue hair whisked behind him in one long, great, swirl.
"You must give me some answers." She pleaded, "I need to know."
"It's..." He searched for the words in his mind like a bat in the night. His eyes glanced up for a quick moment as if he saw something-expected to see something-there, but there was naught but the ever dazzling cerulean skies of the early summer afternoon, "It's...complicated."
Gil understood her position now. He had answers. She had questions. It is the very essence of youth to ask these questions and to seek knowledge in whatever form. But she was also looking for something else. Marcy was looking for something he was accustomed to and that he knew so well that there was nothing but a whisper coating of ice between all of his memories, dearest and cheapest, and it: vengeance.
"We have to find someplace to go for the day." Gil at last said aloud, "Someplace no one will look for use and where no one will find us."
The sun, now beginning its decline into the western sea, flashed in and out of existence between the trees. The brightness carved not just shadows into the ground, but deep holes in reality where everything within was lost in forever black. The light was so luridly light and the dark was so dazzingly dark that each iris would flicker, refocusing, going into one and exiting the other. It was a strobe of serene summer sunlight.
There was a palpable stench of decay festering in the air. A large crowd of luscious leaves was spread throughout an encompassing tree, standing out in the middle of the wreck like some ancient signal, there to draw the eye. Two crumbling walls were around it: one on the right and one behind. Dirt and grass littered the surrounding grounds. Their traveling boots, both trail-worn, kicked long-settled dust into large, billowing clouds that enveloped their knees. Anything that might have resembled a floor of any kind had long eroded to earthen ground.
To the sides of this ancient building were random markers in the ground. Most were just sticks jutting in all directions, some were toppled over and others seemed to have caught their drunken friends. Others were of great stones with old pictogram runes that reminded them both of long-faded family crests or magic spells. There were one or two more obvious ones though, that would have told almost anyone what they were; they were sticks too, but theirs also held that horizontal line of vine-twine and wood: their cross.
Marcy went about these, wondering who they were and when they were buried. As far as she knew, no one had ever seen them. She had never known it was there. It was a moldering mausoleum out in the western woods where no animals lurked and no birds sang. Her hand went out to them as her heart sank with wonderment and an all-engrossing sense of confusion.
He paid them, the graves-or her for that matter-no current attention though. Gil's interest lay within the great tree standing tall in the middle of the ruin. His gloved hand stroked the bark of the tree. Through the cuts from his nails and the boomerang, something else under his glove, and the long dried blood covering his hand, the tree's hard skin felt rough and real.
There were six letters forming two conglomerations of nonsensical words and other marks or characters struck into the tree that he didn't quite understand: a lower-case "e", an upper-case "N" followed by another "n" (this one lower-cased), a vertical, cutting slash, a gnarled knot in the tree, another lower "e", an "F", and a lower "f", another slash going up and down, and then another lump of a knot. The slashes were deep and the knots protruded about an inch. It was all so deliberate and seemed important to him, but he couldn't think why exactly.
"What...is this place?" The words finally managed to choke out of Marcy's dry throat.
"It is a long forgotten place." He said with a little, displeased sigh, "Once known simply as 'The Cathedral'."
"The Lost Cathedral...?" She asked, gasping in awe.
"It is obviously not lost." He said, motioning not just to them, but to the gravemarkers before them, "It is hidden. It is hiding if anything."
She looked at him with a sort of squint and head-tilt you see in people when something profound and unexpected happens. This was not profound though, especially not to him. It was truth. That fact made it somehow more unexpected though. He was so mysterious and knowledgeable. Like some lost poet or philosopher sifting and shifting through the world as if he knew everything and wanted nothing to do with any of it. This was also truth.
"Who are you, really?" She asked, no longer able to sustain the absolute agony of holding it in.
"I've told you already. The answer is the same as where I am from." Gil said with a touch of finality. He wanted to say no more, but she could not leave it as such. She could not just leave it with, 'it's complicated'.
"But you must tell me." She pleaded again, "I need to know. Don't you feel it, that...connection? You have the answers I need. I need you to help me."
Gil felt it alright. He had felt it before he even really saw her proper. Standing outside that little church of FIona's, he had seen that one, lone figure stand up against the Wolfs in a last, desperate attempt at life. She would have fought to her death, "What do you fight for? Where are you from? Who are you?" He shot each question out like a little accusation, "I have no answers. Now, I am simply Gil. If you must know, I am searching for my past. I am hoping for a future and I am most certainly, hating this...present. You should stay away from me if you value...anything...anything at all."
"I have nothing to value, Gil." She said. The words formed from her small, pursed lips and the look smeared across her face dug into him like a rusty nail. There was a memory he had that was very much the same as this. Perhaps he was the one who had spoken those lackluster, yet poignantly moving words and formed that frown of a face. Or did someone say it to him? Another girl...? A woman...? Perhaps it was actually a man...?
"But, I'm trying...I think." She finished, dropping through the dim cloud and dubious fog of his memory. These are odd moments. The thought jabbed at him. Why is this happening like this? It didn't seem to make sense. There he was, reliving his memories. What was he doing here with this girl, hungry for answers? There he was again, acting a fool, trying to defy it. So he gave in.
"I'm here..." He started, "To find the answers I seek. I am certain you will find yours if you follow me. But I don't know if you'll like the answers you find. I don't know if you'll survive them. I just know it's just as important that you find your answers as I find my own."
"Yes, I know it too." She said, losing her own thick, frustrating, surface of murky fog, "Like something wills it so."
"Annuit coeptis, perhaps, but we will it so." He declared in a thin voice, "No matter what could be guiding these things, we choose the paths we lead. No one wears your shoes for you."
"There is no such thing as fate." She said, her voice just as plain, finishing his thought.
Marcy helped him gather wood for the fire as he fetched some water for her. She watched him recite the words and watched the flame rise from nothing and burn cleaner than any fire imaginable. There was no smoke to give signal and only the barest bubble of noise. The sun was swallowed by the sea more than a few hours ago. They had worked in silence gathering, making sure not to take any of the markers, not even the fallen ones. No more questions would be answered, for that night at least.
She drank in short, steady gulps from Gil's leather flask that had the shape of a kidney and wiped her mouth when she was finished.
Gil removed his gloves, taking his time. The fire's bluish light made his skin glow. The glove that was covered in the blood of the girl whose name was Mel had another glove underneath it. A mesh of denadorite links, a chain mail glove. Marcy's eyes widened at this, but she was not particularly surprised at his cleverness. She was warmed by it.
One of his hands had four distinct crescent moons imprinted on the palms, spattered with his own dried blood. It had coagulated very soon and it had been flaking off for some time. Gil rubbed his slender hands together, wiping it all away. This was not the first time he had done this. Not with his own blood or with that of someone else. He didn't think that it would be the last time he would do it either. Not by far.
Gil looked down at his hands when he was satisfied and in his mind he smiled. His eyes showed it for a brief moment and Marcy had enough time to glimpse it. Blood spilt into his hands was so natural of an occurrence. He loked up at her then and studied her bright eyes, her now blank face, and her youthful body. His look lasted long enough for her to begin to blush.
"Rest..." Gil said at last, looking down to the ground at her feet and she proceeded to lie on the solid, earthen ground without so much as a word or even a simple nod. She looked at him one more time, and then turned to the stars for a moment before shutting her eyes. He sat and observed her there for an hour or more, breathing slow, in and out; watched the steady rise and fall of her petite little breast and the flicker of her eyes as she reached REM and began to dream.
The movements made him tired. He wondered what he was supposed to really do with this powerful little girl. What her purpose was in his journey or what, perhaps, was his purpose in her own quest. The unanswerable questions cluttered his mind. They had no real use. They would be answered when, and only when, the time came. So he swept them up and put them away. And he too slept...and drempt.
Don't waste your time...
<1025 A.D.>
TEMPORAL VORTEX REPORT
-REPORT NO. 8-
[UNKNOWN TRANSFER RATE, SYSTEMATIC DATA MALFUNCTION]
CRYPTIC TEXT SYNCH RESULT - MULTIDIMENSIONAL TIMELINES
CODE - "MAGNESS"
CODE EX. - "e N n | @ e F f | @"
Fear for one, then absolute, uncontrollable madness. It must have been. There were hundreds of them and just one to stand against; one little girl with her hair bunched up and hidden on the top of her head. That's all it could have been, was madness. But still she stood, unwavering in this great peril. The Wolfs of the forest were ravenous.
Their heads were hunched down like the dogs they were, ready to pounce. They were ready...to kill. This was reflected in her own eyes, even if she hadn't the power to do so. She was still just as ready. More than ready, she knew her life was on the line. The hazard signs were all there, she could have thought; alone in the forest in a church in its decline and the howls getting ever closer. The howls that were put aside and not thought of until it was too late and they came crashing through the chapel windows.
Her fists beat into the square jaws of those first Wolfs with fury. Their fur was mostly grey with splotches of blacked mud and dirt. Most of it was neither dirt nor mud. It was dark and red and it was not paint. Their claws were tiny daggers protruding from the tip of each finger. But they were sloppy and shaky from hunger, so their deadly hands missed, where hers had held true.
In the end, of course, it wouldn't have mattered how true her tiny fists, with their big, gloved knuckles hit those first couple Wolfs. It wouldn't have mattered if she had hit each one with a good, solid blow. There were simply too many. They would have flooded her and her blood would have spilt and stained the glossy, wooden floors of the church. It would have happened just like that, in the flicker of a moment in time, if not for him.
She tried to hold onto the image of him and his glorious entrance not just into that place in the woods, but into her life. He would change her forever. It had already begun. This image slipped away from her though and it was replaced with a much more familiar one: a lone doorway.
The heavy oaken door seemed to stand without any support. The hinges were attached to nothingness. Upon the door, three words were writ. No, they weren't written, they were engraved, they were part of the door. The edges of the large black letters seemed brimmed with gold. This is what they said:
--- (YOU Fate) ---
<(Loss)>
The handle was the same type of shining gold that lined the letters. It beckoned to be held, to be turned, to be pulled. She had no choice. A hand reached out and grasped the knob: Marcy's small, gloved hand. It turned the doorknob without her actually willing it to. Although she wished very much to see beyond the door, at the same time, she feared the other side. For a quick moment the thought of why the words were writ as they were swamped her mind. The first two words were wrong: mismatched or misspelled? They weren't in the right order. They didn't make sense. No, they made sense. They were important, but they also didn't matter at all.
The door opened easy as paper and she was swept away...
The hall was great and made of stone. It seemed a dark remnant of an ancient castle. Now the hall was a great staircase leading down in a maddening spiral...down and down and down. These were dizzying depths. The torch glow changed from a regular and natural orange & red to that of an uncannily eveil and unsteady flame of black & blue. They became brighter and brighter as the stairs crept downwards.
There were great sweeps of faceless people that kept falling. They would approach a gloved hand-somewhere close in the foreground-and for whatever reason, they would duck down or crouch or lie down or tip backward and fall. The gloved hand held something; something that was shown very quickly to the people and then put away again. What was it? Only a flare of shining white or silver could be seen when it was taken out.
Light blue strands of something (string...? hair...? impossible to tell in all the blur...) kept getting in the way and were swept aside from view. The hands continued into the depths until finally the end came and there was a door with something writ upon it. After the door, writing overlooked and quickly forgotten, there were more people who laid down and someone else as well. The same thing was shown to her as well, although by that time, it was as if the showing was that of an over-enthusiastic child: very proud and uncaring for the thoughts of those who were shown their prize. The hands were just moving out, showing everyone in sight. It was shown to this last one the quickest of all and yet time seemed to stop altogether for it.
This last one, the most unexpected of them all, let out a small gasp. Perhaps it was of terror, but it sounded more like shock, dismay, regret, and anguish all rolled into one little exhale. No, it wasn't from her. It was from that whose hands were doing the showing. The coldest of chills ran up and down both their spines and for the first time he not only felt, but actually revealed-in sunken face, stuttering hands, and sulking posture-his ultimate surprise at this, his ultimate of failings.
There was a tremendous shift and he was no longer there. For a prolonged moment there was only darkness. Only there wasn't only darkness. There was his immense misery...and along with it, a sound. It was surprising how familiar it was. It was like laughter, but it was not jovial, no joy or real sense of cheer could be discerned from the sound. It was malicious like only he had ever known anything to be.
Then it was gone and the darkness faded with it. He saw a smoky house emerge from the sinister depths of the gloom. It too was surprising how familiar it was. There were a few major differences though. It seemed larger than his memory's image of it. There were also many people inside, banging at the sturdy windows. The doors were nailed shut from the outside. And the most major and significant difference of all was the most clear-cut; it was alight with enormous flame.
At the top floor he saw and recognized a single face. Although it seemed older and finer than he remembered, her face was still wrapped in large, round glasses that held onto those bright, blue-green eyes he knew. Tears welled up in those eyes. Flames danced behind her and caught her back aflame. She banged on the glass either to get his attention or out of desperation from the fire, he couldn't tell. She mouthed five words into the shadows of the forest, "Save the children. Save Kid."
"Lucca!" Gil screamed to her. But he was no longer asleep. That last word in his dream had struck him awake like a splash of cold water. Marcy awoke at his outburst with the same sort of acuteness. Neither of them said anything. They just sat for a moment and breathed deep breaths. Both their dreams had led into frightening depths of unknowingness. Just dreams, they thought at the same time, but these things were more than mere dreams and at the heart, they both knew it.
Gil checked the stars and noted that he had been asleep for several hours. It felt as though no time had passed in the forest. The moon was a sliver that was mostly tucked between the rim of trees and the awaiting waters of the western sea. What could be seen of it cast an eerie azure light on the assembling of trees.
A faint glow flickered to one side and he looked in its direction: toward the middle of the once grand cathedral, toward the tree. The strange non-words, the markings, and even those two contorted bumps, shone strangely. A deep white that was the nearest to gray he had ever seen light shimmer, shot fiercely from these marks.
"What is that?" Marcy asked. Her brow twitched with a confusion and fearfulness that was all too well deserved (whether she knew it or not at the time was another matter). The tree seemed to shudder and a lone leaf drifted from an innermost branch down to the waiting ground below.
"I...don't know." He answered with his eyes concentrating on the radiance of the grand tree. The light exuding from the letters and marks intensified and seemed to seep into the tree itself. The light grew and grew until they were forced to shield their eyes-now pinpricks floating in white-from it. Marcy averted her gaze slightly, but kept peering back and forth in quick, little bursts. Gil put up a steady arm, but still tried to see what was happening to the tree inbetween his fingers.
There was a rumbling sound that seemed to be coming from the earth itself. This grew like the light and the rumbling turned into a thunderous noise that shook their footings loose. Marcy fell straight on her ass and Gild toppled over to one side, catching himself at the last moment before he would have struck his head into a jagged rock that would have split his skull in two. I certainly don't need that again, the sardonic thought flashed in his mind at the brief memory of his previous encounter with the future's metallic floors. He continued to look in the direction of the tree, with its blazing white light.
And then, as soon and sudden as it had all started...It stopped.
"I...I..." Marcy started, stuttering, "Uh...Un err...earthquake?"
Gil glowered at her with slit-eyes in a brief moment of contempt. She overlooked this.
"Then...What the hell was that shit?" She asked with only the briefest hint of fear in her voice, his anger had brought out her own.
"I'm not sure." He said, looking at the enormous tree. Had it grown? There was something different about it that he saw as soon as he looked at it closer, "The marks..."
"They're gone..." She finished his statement in surprise. A flash of a memory entered Gil's mind. A fire and a house and a woman he knew. When did that happen? Just now, right now? Was it happening now? Not a memory, a dream. Was it truth?
"Lucca..." He whispered the word. And like magic, it conjured up a horrific storm in that part of the forest the likes of which he could never have constructed himself. The other trees shivered with anticipation-or fear?-and leaves fell around them like snowflakes. Great groans were replaced with terrible shrieks and cracks that fille dthe forest with their clamor.
It took him by the ankle and up into the air before he knew exactly what was happening. It was a flash of movement that neither of them really saw until the deed was done. His sickles clattered to the ground. More and more struck forth from the ground: some straight and others like curled toes. Long and slender roots sprung forth that were more reminiscent of branches or even hands. The one that grabbed Gil swept around his ankle and proceeded to spiral up his leg several times, overlapping itself.
They seemed to dance in the darkness in deep, swaying movements, pretending there was a strong breeze. There was no breeze. No noise at all but the crackling, shifty movements of the root-branches and Gil's grunts as the root squeezed harder and harder, digging it's tiip half an inch into his inner thigh. The pain jolted him just as he was getting his wits back. If only...the sickles...The scattered thought flashed.
Marcy was busy dodging numerous root-branches as they sprung forth from the earth and tried to grab at her: her legs, her arms, her hair, her skirt. One finally reached up high and swung in a large, sweeping arch and bashed her across the side of the head. Gil saw this in slight glimpses as he was flung about by his leg. His eyes were opened wide as windows upon seeing her body sailing off into the forest. Her hair was coming undone and as she disappeared, her movements resembled that of a swimming dragon.
There was pain looping up his leg again and then another root circled his other leg and up his spine until it held his skull like a great pitchfork of a hand. He saw the great tree again before he was smashed into it head-first and knocked unconscious.
Huh...Was it...Another dream? The thought seemed to float out of him from far away. No, this is the dream...How I tire of dreams...
Don't we all? The voice entered his head. There was some kind of chilling resonance to that voice; like it came from a great aluminum hall and a vast, open field at the same time. He only knew it was a kind of husky, deep voice; the smith on the bridge, Zappa, came to mind, but only because he was on the surface of his memory. The voice laughed at him. Reading his thoughts?
His mind swirled for a moment and a kind of background emerged. It was scenery in a sense. It wasn't any kind of reality. It wasn't a place or a time. It reminded him of clouds; how they can so easily be cast off as nothing more than sky. Something up there in the heavens to mark the ground from everything else, like a huge gray & blue backdrop. But if you looked close enough and with just the right kind of eyes, you could really see and think of clouds as they are; dimensional and substantial things of weight (although limited) and size that float and move about in the air.
Your mind be in the clouds, I see. This voice was different.
It...It's that stupid frog. He thought this with a kind of wonderment.
Aye and nay...The thought echoed as the other had. He heard it clear with his mind's ear, his heavy-not to mention heavily unmistakable-Old English accent mingled with a sparse assemblage of those familiar rumbling gutteral ribbity frog noises. For thou art dreaming and yet thou are not...
What do you mean to say? This is more than a dream? He saw in his mind's eye the short, but humanoid, frog there at the summit again; that's what this particular backdrop was, that summit in Denadoro.
How many times have thou knowest thou were dreaming? This was true He could not think of many, if any, times where he was fully aware, right from the start, that he was dreaming. And of course he had never dreamt that a dream questioned him about his state of dreaming. Most dreams felt the same to him. You never really 'see' anything in a dream, that's not possible; you just know things for what they are.
Cyrus, the fool, appeared beside him at a small distance. There was something frightful and wrong with him though; although it was a common occurrence in his dreams of Cyrus. He seemed to shimmer and change with his movements. One moment he would be decked in his full regalia of knight's armor. The next he would be a flaming corpse of blackened bone and charred meat turning to ash. It was a common occurrence of many of his enemies which he had laid to waste. There was a countless number: not just of laid enemies, but of frightful dreams.
You're going to need help this time, Janus of Zeal, son of Zeal. The fool said this last part with a sort of smirk that faded when he shimmered and the smirk was replaced with a skull; the smile faded somewhat because of this.
They'll die as you died. He said to them, thought to them.
To find our answers, we do what we must. They both said this in remarkable unison, mouths moving like puppets. Their voices mingled together and died in the vastness of the fake landscape surrounding them all.
You didn't have to die, Cyrus, you fool. You died for the pathetic belief in your country and for your even more pathetic King; your ignorant beliefs in boundaries. They're nothing but imaginary lines separating the imaginary rights between two nations. His thought was cut off as the scenery dropped around him to reveal...
Dizzy, that's all, she was just a little dazed. Marcy stumbled out of the forest somehow. That had to explain the change. But how could she explain the intense heat, the vast coldness, the blinding light, or the heart-breaking darkness? All these drastic things flooded her senses at the same time.
Then all became clear. Clear enough anyways to see what was meant to be seen. There was a city of some sort. A kind of city she had never seen. It had buildings, although mostly obscured from her view, that were very large in scope, but they seemed to serve no real purpose. She saw only one place she recognized, a place that held some kind of memory in her mind. It was a playground. But it wasn't whole. It was destroyed.
The entire city lay in ruin now that her eye-her mind's eye-focused on the surroundings. The slide broke off prematurely into nothing, there were only three bars on the partial set of monkey-bars, and the sandbox was hard blasted to a reflecting glass. Something beyond horror happened to this place, this dead place.
But it wasn't dead. She heard it echo in her head like an oncoming train: the steady beat of a drum or bass. She looked up to where she thought the sound was coming from and saw that it was neither of those things. It was something living. It was...A heartbeat...It was...A lone crow riding the top of a squall high in the sky.
It was surrounded in life. The Shadows swallowed it. The Flames burnt it. The Water drowned it. The Lightning struck it. And the Wind...The Wind of the Darkness...It rode it like a steady breeze. With the ease of one under constant pressure from forces such as those...Surrounded in life & death...Casthing both in long shadows of shimmer light...On and on it flew, gliding the crest of an awful and wonderful wave, and nothing could stop it...
IPSO FACTO! The words blared into her head like a siren and everything was gone. Where had she heard those words? Had she? Ipso facto!
The fake scenery dropped around him to reveal...reality. He was surrounded in it; root, branches, bark, wood...tree. One eye was blocked from the outside world, along with most of the rest of his body. Blood ran into the other, blurring his already limited vision. Gil was weak as well, a terrible weakness. It was draining him not just of his blood, but of his ability as well. The sound of humming enveloped him. No, it was not a hum. It reminded him of something more like a purr and under difference circumstances, he might have smiled (inside his head anyways). It was excitement. It was ecstasy. It was coming from the great tree in which he was encased.
"Whff...gar...char...yu...tree..." He tried to speak, tried to ask what it was.
I can hear you. A voice said in his head. It was soft, kind, and innocent. It was the voice of a child. Don't worry...Janus...Janus Zeal...of....Zeal...son of Zeal.
The voice smiled in his head. It laughed at him. He could feel it swarming his mind like a nest of hornets when it searched for his name. Get out of my head. He thought, his tone was calm. Calm was the only way he could make his tone. He was too weak to be ferocious, even in his mind, if not especially.
You spoke of the master. Its voice now boomed on a direct channel into his brain. You spoke of our creator. So you shall be drained and your knowledge will become my knowledge. Your power will be my power.
It won't work. He thought, but he knew it would. It smiled, looking him directly in his mind's eye. The images he was thinking of flew into his mind. The markers they saw as they entered: the graves. No passings strangers had done those burials. The markers weren't struck into the ground, they came out of it.
Oh, but it will work...Oh how it will...
Monster...
Yes, I've been called that before, Janus Zeal of Zeal, son of Zeal. If you must label me though, I'd prefer my name as much as you would like me to stop calling you by yours. She called me...NioFio.
She...Lucca...? Created...You...? The words were getting harder and harder to think. They were slipping from his mind almost as soon as he thought them. It was as if the creature-now known as NioFio-was eating his thoughts.
Yes...Lucca...Our master...Our creator...
Im...Im...possih...bull...Gil could not manage the one word, could no longer think. He only gazed through his own blood and swelling tears out into the red darkness of the early morning.
"Let him be!" A sharp and angry voice shot out from that same red darkness. NioFio's grip (its roots and branches) on Gil lessened a bit at this voice; at the fury in the voice. Then it tightened again, like a child holding on to a toy during clean up time.
"NO!!!" The defiant voice of NioFio was the same as the one that talked in Gil's mind, but this time it was much louder. It screamed the words, "I DON'T WANT TO!!! YOU CAN'T MAKE ME!!!"
In a flash it shot snaky tendrils of roots into the forest where the anger voice seemed to come from. Gil was in a heavy daze, but he was picking up parts of what was happening. The roots came back batter, broken, and...cut? How was that possible? Of course, this question did not occur to him. He was too far gone, too lost. The great tree, however, did wonder this, and that thought, that panic, transfered to Gil's mind.
You...die...Gil thought to the creature known as NioFio.
Two lines, streams, of light flew and caught hold of the mighty tree. Two more followed. They glowed with blue fire. They were blue fire. Then he saw her. The lines stretched up to her, high in another tree, and she jumped, and for that moment, she was an angel floating down to save him. Her eyes though...Her eyes were bleeding...But it wasn't really blood, but he couldn't see and thought as much. It was black it was grey. It was dry, but now wet with tears she didn't feel. It was ash and it covered the sides and corners of her eyes like badly smeared mascara and eye shadow.
"Let him GO!!" She said again, the hatred was lingering and was being companioned with a stern look of irritation, impatience, and annoyance: pure abhorrence. There was neither hesitation in her voice nor falter in her movements. She tugged on the streams of light (memory of this later would surface in Gil's mind, reminding him of the shackles from the future) somehow attached to her hands-or was it her fingers?-and the creation of vegetation screamed in mind-numbing hurt that trailed off into a hoarse cry, "Now!"
"C'mon!" Marcy said, hauling him carried over her shoulder. She wiped at something she didn't truly perceive next to her eyes with her free forearm before trying to steady him with it. He bent down to pick something up, and toppled over onto it instead. She picked him back up and they left, he managed to clutch his failing hands around his belongings and his sickles. The streams of light followed behind Marcy as they went, still attached to the great monstrosity.
"Let...let us go..." NioFio cried out into the darkness like a small and frightened child, "Let us go...Please...!"
If one were to follow those blue vines of light, one would find that same tree, dying or dead. As Marcy & Gil left the forest, the lines of blue firelight were attached to the tree and they led to a small bunching of bushes which she had tied and broken them off at.
"I hope you die." She whispered under her breath, glancing back a moment as they left that damned forest with Gil's slack arm around her shoulder. Neither of them knew if he would ever regain anything, but they knew of only one person who stood any chance of helping...
At this rate, you too, will meet a hideous fate...
