04-Sep-2002
Twisted Fortune - An Escaflowne Fanfiction
By Bonnejeanne and Nixers
Contact: bonnejeanne@yahoo.com and nixerchan@aol.com
Warnings: Spoilers
Notes: Set a little over one year after Vision of Escaflowne's end.
Chapter Seventeen - The Priestess
Part 41
It was three hours later when a messenger and guardsman had been sent to the rooms of the guests, knocking politely for entrance. Getting no answer at the quarters, the harried man found his way back down to the shipyard. Stopped by the broad form of Pile, he stumbled back a step, sucked in a lung-filling breath to steady himself and said. "I'm looking for your Captain and his guests, by theirs and the request of the honorable Prince Cid. I'm to take them to the temple."
Pile shrugged his massive shoulders, half turned around to shout up to the deck hovering lazily under the tethers, "Boss! This guy know what he's talkin' bout?"
Allen leaned over the rail taking in the messenger quickly and called, "Aya, we're coming down."
Sending someone to roust Van and Dilandau, the captain turned to Gaddes. "I want you to come," he said shortly.
Gaddes shrugged, leaning over the railing himself to eye the man detained by the large crewman. "No skin off my nose. Beside, I gotta admit, by now I'm pretty curious."
Allen brushed a hand down his tunic absently. "I don't know what is up with this priestess, but it involves Van, and I have a gut feeling that it somehow involves my... Serena and *him*. I need your less... involved eyes and ears on this."
The first mate nodded, with a slight frown and an upward glance. Whatever the gesture had been a prequel to, it was cut off by the arrival of the last two.
"They're early," Dilandau said, his voice showing only a hint of displeasure as garnet eyes flicked up to take in the angle of the sun.
Van did not reply to the remark, his expression showing none of the occasional recent changes, returned to the impassive mask of the boy who had seen his country burn. He was attempting to steel himself for what he was about to face, without any very clear idea what it was, only the apprehension based on nothing more than his life's experiences that it would involve loss. He glanced at Allen quickly then away. Moving forward with the determination to get on with it, he brushed by his silver-haired companion almost rudely, secretly taking a moment of comfort from the all too brief contact, and headed down the ladder.
Dilandau blinked then smirked, throwing a slight shrug in the other two men's direction. Between Escaflowne and the situation, Van had turned into somehow more what he had expected the boy to be when he met him again in Zaibach. It was as annoying as it had been disquieting the past few hours. With a more irritable expression, he glanced at the others to ascertain if they would follow or not and made his own way after the Fanelia.
Allen took a deep breath and followed quickly on the young Captain's heels, secure in the knowledge that Gaddes would be at his back.
On the ground, the messenger gave an audible sigh of relief as the last of the men followed the Asturian knight, and the big man in front of him stood down. Conscious of the expectant and strange mood of the guests, the man smoothed down his clothes fussily for a moment before nodding to all four. "This way."
The walk was perhaps not as long as it would have been expected, as the temple was closer to that particular airfield that the palace. The temple itself, as it came more and more into view, was little more than a triangular structure completely composed of wood. There were scattered copper plates lining various corners and intersections, the fruits of an incomplete project, and on the various stratums and trellises of the structure there were the rough hewn shapes of carvings in progress.
More impressive, however, was the barricade to the temple itself, the fence more of a heavy wall, completely forged of steel plates sunk into the ground, and the aura of sheer depth and weight amongst them. They could easily withstand some of the most powerful guymelef attacks. Around and upon the gates themselves, some etching had been done into the metal, some half-finished attempt at aesthetics, though the artist was nowhere to be seen. Heavy metal gates had been opened and wedged widely enough for the group to pass single file.
Within, the grounds had been cultivated in the year, the priests and priestesses of the order apparently taking time and turns to keep the grounds immaculate, and arranged. A simple stone path lead up to the main doors to the temple itself. At the messenger's approach, the doors were opened by two burly, bald headed guards.
As the copper doors opened, it was obvious that the doors had not been built to keep anyone out as much as to keep something in. A wave of invisible power lapped across the nerves of anyone remotely sensitive, feeling vaguely like the waves of heat off of a forge.
At the first touch of the trapped power, Dilandau paused a step, feeling the reactive burn and hidden glow of the pendant beneath. "In there?" he asked, a scowl clear.
The messenger, who had stopped at the first notice of a delay simply nodded. "The high priestess's quarters are in the left wing."
Van turned to look at Dilandau. After an almost unnoticeable hesitance he said, "If you'd rather not, it's okay." He exerted an effort to maintain an unemotional exterior, while panic and relief at the thought fought a vicious confrontation in his heart.
"Hmph," Dilandau said, straightening slightly. The focused look on his face broke into a wide smirk. "Can't let you get a one up on me. Lead on," he said, managing to make it sound like a direct order to the messenger, who sniffed slightly in return.
Van ducked his head and turned, but in a brief flash, the combined struggle of emotions under the surface flared in his eyes long enough for the silver-haired boy to see them. A bunched muscle at the side of the tanned jaw twitched, drawing attention to the pulse in the vein beside it, too fast.
As their guide moved ahead, Dilandau's stare narrowed, and with a quirk of his lips caught Van at the wrist with his hand, and tugged roughly. "Too slow," was the complaint he gave as an explanation.
Strong, callused fingers moved to twine instantly with his, and a sudden tight clasp that disengaged seconds later. Van's skin was bone-dry and for once, cooler than Dilandau's to the touch. Without looking back, the Fanelian king made a soft growl and increased his stride, loosening his hand and moving ahead to follow their guide.
Gaddes simply shook his head slightly to himself and followed in their wake, trying not to check obviously on Allen's expression.
The interior passageways were twisted enough to give the temple twice the feeling of size that it should have had judging by the exterior. Along the maze of passageways, the messenger stopped once or twice to ask a quick question to the orange-robed residents. With something of a resigned expression, after the third answer the man changed his course and led them to a single doorway. Outside of it he stopped and gave them an apologetic look.
"Mistress Freya's outside of her room, and is a little unwell during those times. I should apologize in advance for whatever she says."
With that simple statement, he knocked three times on the door he'd stopped before and opened it.
The interior was sparse, hardly more than a nearly bare shelf as an altar, and a small mat. The woman sitting cross-legged to the side of the cushion looked at best mousy, pale brown hair, a slightly rounded face, and seemed to swim in her robes. Black eyes opened and caught the light like onyx as the sudden presences caught her attention.
Deliberately, she stood, a slight sway to her. Catching Van's eye, unexpectedly, she smiled. "You're late."
Van looked at the woman as if seeking the answer to some particularly frightening mystery. Then he smiled back, and just as unexpectedly, swept her a full court bow with as much grace as Allen could have given.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "But I am here."
"That's all right, I'm not," she said, "Here that is, though I shouldn't be sorry either. There's too much and too little for that." She suddenly looked at the small group outside her door with irritation. "Waiting for what?" Pointing at Dilandau she said, "You two," then Van, "Wingboy, in or go away, The rest, in, out or up."
The messenger choked for a moment. "Lady Freya, that's the king of another country."
"Fine. Wingboy-sama," she said, crossing her arms.
Van simply stepped into the door, obeying instructions, as well as he could decipher them. Her oddness did not surprise him, between the message, and the remarks made by Kaeran and others.
"Wingboy is fine," he said very softly.
Stepping inside behind the other, Dilandau shot Van an incredulous look before shaking his head. "And here I thought Gimpy was bad," he mumbled to himself.
Van shot Dilandau a sudden, wide-eyed look before composing himself.
Behind them Gaddes gave a questioning look towards his Captain.
Allen came into the room, placing himself a pace or two behind the younger boys. His face was schooled to polite attention and he was observing everything minutely.
The first mate automatically stepped in at Allen's side, but as the guard came into the room, the placid features of the women suddenly screwed up into a scowl. "Not you. Untied to this, you're ears don't have to work. Go away."
The man sighed and backed away, "I'll be outside."
As the door closed behind the guard, Freya stepped toward Dilandau and Van, studying both quietly for a minute, only breaking the scrutiny to occasionally snap at Dilandau for some distracting fidget. Finally, she sighed, stepping back. "Not a wonder the three snapped, have an extra connection where I've gone missing, only different. One to a demon divine and the other two fight each other."
Van's eyes widened again, but he closed his mouth over an intaken breath. His eyes did dart sideways to seek the garnet ones of his companion, half expecting to see one red and one blue.
The eyes were actually closed, brows drawn above them tightly, and the stormcloud of tightly held patience on the boy's expressive face. He hadn't quite had as much warning besides the vague comments he overheard and half discarded, and what he could make out he wasn't particularly liking.
Seemingly oblivious to the two, she continued on, this time with a sigh. "The fourth connection roots too deep to pull out, break the root or break the soil. Didn't care a month ago, but she with wings asked so nicely."
Van's mouth opened again but nothing came out. /She... with wings.../ As brief as the statement, those three words together conjured up only one image for the boy, a memory kept in a heart-shrine. *Mother...*
"So quiet. Fine then listen. One follows the other who follows the other. You're off, Wingboy, by bond that took blood and wishes for soul. If not broken, then you break, then the pyro and the sleeper he protects. It's the way of any Three."
Red eyes snapped open at that, a frayed temper mingling with defensive anger. "Anyone can talk nonsense and have it sound like it makes sense. Fortunetellers are the same kind of scams." About to turn on his heel he glanced over at Van. "You aren't buying this?"
Van turned to face the taller boy, the impassive mask wiped from his features as if it had never been there. He reached out and took Dilandau's hand, simply holding it between them. "I am..." he said quietly, ducking his head a bit. He lifted his chin with an effort and met the angry gaze. "It makes... sense. I guessed, but I didn't understand completely. I still don't, but enough."
The albino paused, frozen by the other's touch. With an effort the wound muscles beneath the thin fabric of his clothes relaxed. It took more than an effort to ignore the pressure of the same disconnected feeling he half remembered back in Basram and the additional headache that the woman in front of them was so conveniently providing. Instead of a verbal answer garnet eyes broke away from cinnamon, back to regarding the priestess, and pale fingers curled slightly around tanned.
Van twined his fingers tightly to those pale fingers, not letting go. He turned towards Freya as well. Swallowing -- the clasped hand betraying a brief tremor -- he said, "How can the bond be broken?"
Freya had sat back down, staring up at the two while the brief exchanged played out. As Van addressed her, she blinked, "Not here, words don't work well enough, but you're halfway there, why it's so hard?"
Van bowed his head slightly, trying to control the distress of waiting longer for a better answer. "She fights," he murmured.
Instead of answering the statement, she looked at Dilandau with some curiosity. "Neither of you should be, but are somehow, lucky for all three. Boy saved by girl who's saved by the boy later. Strange how nature works out, or science, but science is really just nature twisted a little, no matter what the creepy ones tell you. I wonder who wished for you, sister or mother, either has the bloodline."
Absolutely blank faced for a moment, and fancying he could feel the gaze on his back, he put on his best careless look, the only tension betrayed in the sudden tightness of his hand. "I didn't think we were here about me."
"Doesn't matter, separate, apart and the same. No difference when you are that connected." She frowned again, the expression wrinkling around her eyes.
Allen took a breath, unclenched the hand that had curled into a fist and said, "Mother. Mother wished for him. Until her last breath."
Freya looked passed the two boys to Allen, black eyes sharp for a moment. "Amazing. That much seer, that little dragon kin, could go that far," she shook her head and looked back at Van, "And so little seer, so much dragon. Wonder what you'll wish." Before he could answer, she sighed again. "Got tired of waiting and left, but words don't work here. You'll come with me."
Van darted a look back at Allen, his hand tightening again in Dilandau's. His confusion was unmasked but so was a newly born fragment of hope. He searched his companion's face quickly before moving to follow the priestess, retaining the lifeline joining.
Van felt his arm jerk as Dilandau neither moved, nor released his own grip. Garnet eyes were focused on Allen. "What did you mean by that?"
The blond swordsman moved up, to the albino boy's other side, to talk while they moved, if the other decided to budge. His face and voice were well controlled, keeping the emotion to a minimum. "Serena was born with a twin. A boy. His... body... apparently... died. It seems his spirit did not."
Dilandau stared for a moment, caught between the clash of what he'd always known and what he was uncovering. The conflict between the two was violent and too hard to swallow.
Allen saw the turmoil and reached out, clasping the boy's shoulder for a bare instant. "You are *not* the construct of some demon sorcerer," he said in a voice both urgent, and too low for anyone but the two in front of him to hear. Then he dropped his hand and stepped back.
A multitude of emotions flashed quickly over the other's face from fear, to hope, to confusion and finally settling on anger. Resuming the step after the departed priestess, he simply hissed, "Nor am I a replacement."
"Agreed," the blond said just as quietly from behind him.
Van's hand kept a pressure on Dilandau's fingers as he waited for this to play out. Allen's words startled him, but more in the nature of something fitting too well, than something admittedly unexpected.
Freya had stopped some half way down the hall. The man that they had come in with was no where around, obviously shooed off by the priestess. She stood with one curled fist on her hip, in an almost childlike gesture of petulant impatience. Upon seeing the four she nodded, her expression clearing to the slightly disconnected smile of their first meeting and turned, wordlessly to lead the way.
The last few passages of this shorter excursion around the temple, Gaddes trailed behind the three, watching the two interlocked and his own Captain with half hidden discomfort.
Allen dropped a pace to come even with Gaddes, glancing at the other man, his face carefully composed.
Gaddes shot Allen a rakish grin and in a low voice said. "As honored as I am in you taking me along, can't help but feel I should'a been in the hall with the nervous guy. Private's private, whether it's from a loopy lady or not."
Allen acknowledged with a flicker of his eyelids, but returned in the same low tone, "I need at least one person to drink myself into a blind fog with after this, who has some idea what I may be babbling about if it comes to that."
Gaddes slid a bit more into his accustomed half slouch. With a slight grin at the blond swordsman, he drawled, "You know I'm always up for that order anyway. May not have the first clue what's going on now, but half a bottle down the road, those gaps ain't nearly so annoying."
Allen returned a brief tightening of the lips that could be considered a smile.
A few moments later, the narrow hall broke into a rather large antechamber. The room within was fairly sparse as well, but shown more signs of future plans than the barren room they had left. Lamps with carefully etched glasswork cast unusual shadows across the room from their irregular placement along the walls. Two more guards sat in front of another set of metal doors, this holding the tint and faint edges of tarnish of silver, inlayed with glowing energist chips. Whatever artist had worked outside hadn't even gotten to touching the otherwise smooth surface.
Freya stopped and examined all four again, her eyes passing over Gaddes and Allen quickly but with some strange approval. Again her attention fixed on the two younger boys. Turning first to Van she said, "Take off your shirt. There's too much truth within to keep anything hidden. What is kept by the doors is the ebb and flow of what was sought here." Turning to Dilandau, she bit her lip and fidgeted for a moment before saying, "You wait out here."
Already reaching up, one-handed, to pull at the laces on his shirt, Van stopped, feeling a great deal more than reluctance to break the physical link between he and his companion.
Dilandau's eyes narrowed, the frustrations of the day coming to a peak, "Why?" he snapped.
Freya, unperturbed, simply shrugged. "Don't know what will happen. Your risk, not mine."
Van took a deep breath and slowly loosed his fingers from the other, more unwilling to cause any kind of threat to the silver-haired boy. "I need to find out how to break the bond of blood," he said quietly.
Looking at his free hand a moment before crossing his arms quickly. Looking from the door to Van to the priestess he asked, "What kind of risk?"
"The kind of any unknown, maybe nothing will happen, maybe there will be both of you outside, or maybe lose one." Freya nodded to the guards, who were obviously well acquainted with her. The moved the door open with some effort. A light, not unlike the column that the pendant called, crackled in the threshold.
Van looked at Dilandau and his eyes clearly said no, no risk, but his mouth stayed closed in recognition of the fact that it was not his decision. Though he made it clear what it would have been if it was.
Torn between the multiple forces of curiosity, apprehension and Van's silent urging, he simply watched as Freya disappeared past the white barrier. The color almost washed out by the light, the woman on the other side looked imperceptibly different, even from behind.
Van pulled the red shirt off over his head and pulled it through his belt to hang at his waist. Taking a deep breath, he followed the priestess.
THE END OF PART 41!