Fanfiction:V Translanka Magness 4
<1025A.D.>
TEMPORAL VORTEX REPORT
-REPORT NO. 4-
[UNKNOWN TRANSFER RATE, SYSTEMATIC DATA MALFUNCTION]
CRYPTIC TEXT SYNCH RESULT - MULTIDIMENSIONAL TIMELINES
CODE - "MAGNESS"
CODE EX. - "EXCHANGED NAMES"
The little fire cast many shadows in the late of the night. Its flame seemed to switch from blue to green and back again very faintly, going almost unnoticed. The shadows filled his face, consumed his form. She wondered a lot about him, but none of the questions she had came to her. Ones that did didn't seem appropriate. She didn't know what kinds of questions were appropriate at this time. What could she say? How would she have to say it?
"Where are you headed?" He asked her, popping her thought balloon and snapping her back into the moment.
She had stood there, just as stunned (and bloody) as the nuns. With his hands still up, he walked toward the impaled wolfs' bodies. With a small flick of his wrists, the two sickles were back in his hands, and, just as quickly, behind him, at the small of his back. They still pulsated, but the light was fading, dying out. It was still very much dark out, but the moon had begun to set.
His right hand raised and the candles of the little church sprung to life again, as if nothing had happened. The only difference was that there were now two more candles lit for mourning and, of course, the broken windows and the door, bursting inwards. He assessed the church, the damage, the lone standing pedestal of holy water near the entrance, the large pipe-organ in the corner, the nuns, the bodies, and lastly, the girl. What was the point? He could only think that this ultimately changed the future and that made him somewhat pleased.
He turned and went for the door. There was nothing for him there.
"Wait!" The girl asked in what she thought was a shout, but as it turned out was more of a heavy squeak. He didn't turn and he didn't stop.
"It's dark. This church has lost its appeal as a place of safe haven." He said, opening the door and before stepping out, he paused, "I must set up a camp and make a fire."
She must have stood there, dumbfounded at the entire sequence of events of the past ten or twenty minutes before actually doing anything. The nuns were shifting now, finally getting their bearings. Two of them wandered into a back room that was added on five years ago when traffic was at its peak. One collapsed to her knees before getting there, the other fell face first onto one of the beds. The other two wondered and pondered over the bodies of the wolfs. How would they get rid of so many bodies? Who did they report this to? And more importantly: what role did God have in this and what purpose could it have? Was that man their heavenly savior, or something else; something far more sinister?
She bolted to the door, at the last minute, stopping at the pedestal of holy water to splash and scrub off some of the blood. Her skirt remained stained and flecks of dried blood still entangled her hair. She opened the door quickly. In came the dead body of a large wolf, thudding dully on the hard floor of the inner church. She jumped back in natural response before stepping over it warily, cautiously.
No backward glances at the distraught nuns or the face of the church lying in rubble. She had a singular goal. This man could help her. This man had the answers. She knew it instinctively and without question. This man would help finish her quest. There was no doubt and she was right.
"W-what?" She said, suddenly back in the present, getting used to her own tongue all over again. He seemed annoyed, but went on anyways.
"I said, 'where are you headed?'."
"Oh! Yes, right, I'm..." She thought about apologizing, but it didn't seem right, it wasn't what he wanted. She got the feeling that an apology would just make him more annoyed, "I'm heading to the festival."
"The-the Millennial Fair?" He wondered where in time Prometheus had truly sent him.
"No, of course not. Why would you think that?" She asked. She was too young-she was only four at the time-to remember the Millennial Fair of Truce, and she hadn't been around fairs much in her youth, "I'm headed to the United Festival."
"United Festival?" He asked. His stomach was already churning. The Millennial Fair had been a test of wills for him to endure before; another such experience would be too much to bear, "For what occasion is this 'United Festival' being held?"
She looked at him inquisitively for the briefest moment before answering, "The factions of Guardia, Porre, & the Mystics of course."
"Of course..." He said.
"Although I'm not going to enjoy the festivities..."
"Oh?" He didn't know if he wanted to know, but he decided to humor the girl for giving him information that may prove valuable in the future, "Then why are you going?"
"I'm looking for my brother." She said looking deep into the fire. His brow line rose at this. It was too coincidental, too similar, and too obvious. He too looked into the flame which he had created magically moments before. Before the girl had come up and propped herself at the opposing end of the fire sitting cross-legged. He knew she would come. He saw it with the eye of The Wind.
"You truly hope to find your brother there?" He said, almost with a mask of condescension.
"Yes, it's a large grouping of many people. It's my best hope for finding him...or someone who knows how to find him..." She said. He looked into her great sparkling sapphire eyes; those eyes that didn't look up from the fire. The discussion was personal for both of them, it was getting uncomfortable, "My-my name is Marcy; I'd like to thank you sincerely for saving me-and the nuns-back there."
He nodded to this. It seemed to her that he was going to give her his name. She hadn't expected him to, but the pause after his nod seemed to extend and accentuate her thoughts. Was she welcome here? Here beside his fire? Here in the same forest? Here in this unreasonably uncomfortable moment in time?
His eyes never left her own. Hers were gazing around rapidly, looking for something; a way out? Was she afraid of him? Were people so automatically afraid of him? She bit her lip and scratched at her nose. She wasn't afraid of him. She was just uncomfortable with his lack-of-response.
It was only a moment, but she still felt it, and he had come to realize it, "My name is Ma...Gil. You can call me Gil." He thought for another moment and added, "You are welcome for the assistance with the wolfs, but you didn't have a chance against them."
She was happy to know he had a name and was equally happy that he had told her it. His last comment seemed abrasive, but it wasn't intended, "We would have died in there. So I stood up to fight."
"Die fighting, hmm?" He stated more then asked.
"Well, yes, exactly." She said, looking up from the fire with an excessive blinking of her eyes as if waking from a dream, "You-you didn't know about the Festival, where are you headed?"
She thought better of asking where he was from. Something about him, his light blue hair, his weapons, his pale hardened skin, and even his voice all said to her, 'you don't want to know little doe, just know I come from harder times'. This was not far from the truth, not at all. "I search for a scientific mind." He said, not wishing to give all the details, if not necessary.
"The Ashtears perhaps?" She said, finding a stick and poking it into the core of the flame, "They're supposed to be on the forefront of the major techno revolution. There's supposed to be next to nothing the great Lucca can't do."
"That's good to hear." Gil said. The connections were adding up, but it was too soon to tell. He hadn't meant for this comment to sound like it did fortunately enough. He was simply thinking how it must be to be so recognized as Lucca at this point in her life. Again, he was drifting back to them as if they were childhood friends. He risked it, "I heard she hasn't been as active recently though."
"Huh?" She was popped out of another realm of dream, one of sheer surprise, "Uh, actually, I think you're right. She's getting older now though. I don't think she's married yet. I wonder where all that talent's going to go after her."
"I'm sure she has understudies or the like." He said. His chance paid off. It seems that she had been slowing down & getting old. What Prometheus said about her Time Egg could be true. Gil's face showed obvious dissatisfaction.
"So then, you hope to find one of those understudies I take it?" Marcy asked him after he shook off his thoughts.
"Yes, that's what I have planned exactly, if Lucca cannot help me." He said with all honesty. He actually doubted whether or not he should approach Lucca at all. Perhaps a raid was in order, he thought to himself with a cynical sort of pleasure. He doubted she would allow him to use it if she thought it wouldn't work. So he wondered if she knew whether or not it would work. Perhaps only Prometheus knew.
"What need?" She asked inquisitively.
"'Need'?" He asked, searching the recent conversation, "Oh, I-I too am looking for...for someone I lost."
"What?" She had never come across anyone with a similar goal in her entire life, "You're kidding."
"About this, I never kid." The statement would have made him laugh. He thought briefly of his sister, "It happened long ago, I was much younger then even you."
"Wow. My brother-I lost him when I was too young to remember much." She said, the story needed to be told, and this was her chance to tell it, "I just remember a large dark silhouette taking him and a heavy smell of burning tobacco. I remember screaming loudly. I've found out that the man I seek wears a patch over one eye."
"So which do you think you'll find first; your brother or the man with the patch over his eye?" He said, knowing exactly what she wanted, "Which do you want to find first?"
"My brother of course!" She said, surprising him at first. She paused, lowered her head, shadows swallowed her eyes, "Sometimes though, all I'd like is just one crack at the bastard. Just once, right across the cheek."
She grinded a knuckle into the dirt beside her and he understood. It was too coincidental. He would have to do something about it and he knew, "I'm going to turn in."
"Yes, okay." She said meekly. She had wanted to ask about his amazing ability, but it still didn't seem like the proper time. Tomorrow would be her chance. He rounded a great tree and sat at its base. She laid herself down by the fire, warming herself, and drifting off into sleep.
A great deep white mist rolled into the forest, engulfing everything, smothering the fire. The forest fell back; Gil was now inside Lavos' core again. He could hear it breathing all around him. In and out in large sucking gasps. There was a great white light coming from the center of the shell. A blue flash shocked him, pulsating in surges of brilliant blinding light.
A dream
He was on his side; his face covered in deep cuts and marks, one eye was bleeding and battered shut. Blood trickled from his lip. He was screaming something, blood spattering out his mouth in all directions. There was furious and panicked anger swelling across his face. His arm flashed forward, trying desperately...
Just a dream
The birds twittered, both in her sleepy mind and in the waking forest. She was still deep and sound asleep. Dreaming a dream she had dreamt for many of the lost years of her own youth: her brother was dead. She finally found him and he was dead. The man with the eye patch was no where to be seen.
A dream
Her focus shifted. She was stalking the man, hunting the man. Her own eye was adorned with an eye patch now. Her bright dress darkened to black as she swept through sleepy little villages and wet shingled rooftops, wide open grassy fields and sandy deserts, windy & rock-strewn mountains, boundless frames of existence. Nothing would stop her.
A dream
Gil blocked her way, stolid and calm. She was a wraith of fury and anger. She beat at his chest, demanding he let her go, but he did nothing but stand there, looking down at her petite little form with a kind of sadness-a kind no one had ever seen him give. She cried in his arms, wishing the dreams away.
Just a dream
Marcy awoke suddenly as if coming up from the deep for a refreshing breath of air. Her dreams had choked her, the wolfs had jolted her. The fire was long out, nothing but a burnt char in the earth. Someone had mashed dirt into it in the morning.
The sun had risen hours earlier. She had slept late. Looking around, she noticed that Gil was gone. She circled the tree he had slept against and found nothing but moss and a lot of empty space. She was alone again. She cursed out loud. The tip of the cross atop the church could be seen just barely floating above a few trees in the distance. Would he have gone back there? Of course not she thought to herself.
The fact remained; he ditched her. She didn't know what to think. Why was he being a jerk to her? What was he hiding? Did he know something about her brother? No, it was something else, something personal, she knew.
When she gave herself time to think, she often found that she could find some relatively good answers to any question she might have. Too many people she had talked to always jumped to conclusions before really thinking things out. They acted like children. Even the wisest elders she'd met thought in that same regard. Sometimes she felt the need to pound them into little bits with her fists. She really loved the feeling she had decided long ago. Fighting was in her spirit, it was part of her.
He left at the crack of dawn. He looked down on her smallish figure in the light of the new day and his eyes did a slight smile. She reminded him of better times, when he was just starting out. Ready to be molded into a killing machine bent on vengeance. It was all there. It was practically fate he thought, slightly amused. With his boot he kicked some dirt over the dying ashes of the fire.
He floated out of the environs without so much as a single twig snapping or a leaf crunching. The need to say goodbye was not even so much as a drifting thought in some deep corner of his brain. He knew what he was going to do, what had to be done. If this was what it was, then he'd let it, but not until he knew. There were too many important things on the line. Too many whole lives.
This girl was innocent enough and strong to boot; her destiny was, in effect, his to take. It was he who saved her from the untimely fate which awaited her. In the original timeline, she died, the nuns died, the wolfs fed and grew and the chapel turned to a decomposing graveyard to passing travelers, never to be entered again, never to be torn down. Perhaps it was this that guided things. There was no fate to be found here, just timelines interweaving with change, rolling with the punches, re-stitching itself whole again, if not with just longer sleeves.
The Wind was blowing now; hard and swift.
Do you hear that sound around you...?
From: Fanfiction
