I cleared my throat. "Now," I said darkly "we kill him."
"Whaat??" Amelia was horrified. "You can't do that! It's - it's...."
"Do you have a better solution?" I snapped at her. "If we let him live, he'll just keep hunting Lina, Zelgadis and me until we're killed; is that what you want?"
That blew the color right out of her face.
"Yeah, whatever happened to your 'Champion of Justice' routine?" Lina reminded her.
"This is some gratitude, Ana," Rustiven interrupted. "Perhaps I shouldn't have saved your life in the first place...."
(That got him some attention.)
"That ... is not true," I stated, a little off-balance but still very firm.
"Of course it is," he smiled. "Remember."
It must have been some kind of spell trigger; it was as if the heavy wall sealing off my memory had fallen on me - and behind it -
I gasped, and started coughing. I dropped my lance and staggered back, staring into the past: I saw my origins, my previous life; I saw Rustiven take all of it doubly; I saw what he was and what he'd done. And while I was on my knees, crushed and crippled by these horrors, I was not holding Rustiven at knifepoint, and I was drawing important attention from him as well....
His decision to attack me at that moment (I was only distantly aware of this and what followed) only exhibited his congenital cowardice. Whatever bolt he threw at me, Zelgadis stepped in and deflected it neatly with some sort of wind shield, and Lina attacked and stunned Rustiven with something - it might have been an Elmekia Lance.
I couldn't breathe, I couldn't think; I was choking to death on memory, gruesome nightmares that poured out at me too fast to isolate or resist. On all fours now, I thought I was going to be sick, but when I opened my mouth, all that came out was blood, blood, blood - reflecting back on the blood in my memories, as if it all happened again/now/here -
Something was struggling to surface through the memory-shock: it was anger, only a hint of a deep and potent primal rage as hot and bright as magma. I grasped it in desperation, rode it like a wave, and with this anger and the instinct for survival, I enclosed the hazardous new/old memories, shoved them back and sealed them off with a wall of my own.
With the new barrier established, full consciousness switched back on. I stopped coughing and caught my breath.
Now, I hated Rustiven.
" - with Miss Ana!" Amelia was saying as she hovered a little too close for my liking. I knelt up quickly and wiped my mouth and chin (I must have looked like a stone vampire). Now Rustiven was on his back, about four paces from his previous position, and held in place at swordpoint by both Gourry and Zelgadis. They seemed the tiniest bit hesitant to skewer even a villain so helpless.
(Why was everyone looking at me?)
I stood up very straight and gave Rustiven a Look. Was that real fear on his face? - Gourry said my name -
"Rustiven!" I interrupted. "You're going to die!" I smiled brightly, and ran away.
Or so it must have looked at first. Actually, I went to an outcropping ridge of stone, nearby to the southwest, and climbed up to its peak. I was only about twenty-three hands up, but I would need the vantage point - and the stone.
"What is she doing?" someone asked.
I knelt down and put my hand flat on the weathered rock. I'd never done this before, but I knew it would work: I charged up the weird living stone of my body, and channeled the full brute strength of my Beastmastery straight down into the bedrock. I used the very heartstone of the mountain to amplify and transmit one powerful command to wolf and stag and hungry shadow:
NOW
The magnitude of the power under me was incredible. For the few seconds I held it, it was the world. There was no forest, no humans; just me, and the stone, and the power. It almost felt - sometimes I dream - as if, somehow, I was the mountain....
I let go and put both hands on the rock to catch my balance. In the ring of shadow beyond the range of the lighting spells, eyes began to gather, shining yellow, green and amber. As their numbers increased, my army began to creep forward into the light: they were grey timber wolves and huge black dire wolves, keen-antlered stags called from the rut, tusked wild boars, and even a few rams called from the frozen heights. No doubt they had made short work of Rustiven's last few trolls en route. They were watching Rustiven, and me.
"Zel! Gourry! Fall back!" Lina directed wisely, and they did not hesitate. Gourry and Amelia were thoroughly unnerved; Lina and Zelgadis were observant, but harder to read....
Rustiven was terrified. He got up, and so did I. This was the moment ... he looked torn between begging for his life and trying to defend against the horde....
"Now," I asserted, "Take him!"
The beasts fell on him as one. I saw a buck catch Rustiven in the back with his antlers, and throw him down to the wolves ... this was their vengeance, not mine. He only screamed once. The others stood stunned and Lina called in her lighting spell as the beasts dragged him away, trailing timber wolves.
I laid down very quickly, before I could collapse where I was standing. It was slightly easier to breathe on my back; the pain where the troll had struck me was nothing next to the ache in my chest ... but I wouldn't have to deal with it, soon. The night's fog had not yet crept in to obscure the stars, and it seemed very cold. Someone was scrambling up the rocky ridge on my left.
" - caused considerable damage to her lungs," he was saying.
"Gee, and I thought you guys were invulnerable," Lina commented, close behind him.
"Now you must - be sworn to secrecy," I couldn't help but joke, as I suffocated.
"Hey, you're awake!" Now I could see Lina; she was kneeling next to me.
"I'm very tired," I murmured. It was true. My lungs made a scary, painful noise, and suddenly every breath was a gasp. I wanted to turn on my side, but I couldn't quite move.... I started coughing again.
"Hold on, Miss Ana!" I heard Amelia say, but I could make no reply, because ... I was losing consciousness. It was a strange sensation, as if I were falling in on myself perpetually. Levels of awareness were stripped away like onion skins, until I drifted in a soothing black place where I didn't have to worry about things like breathing. Exhausted, I fell freely toward the sweet abyss.
A little black bat came to mind....
A vague thought formed: a wry hope that my life wouldn't flash before me -
There was something else, in the perfect void; a distant, coruscant speck. I admired it for an unmeasured period of time before I realized it was getting bigger - no, it only looked bigger, the nearer it approached. I watched the white glow in puzzlement. It grew faster, bigger, closer, until I could make out that it resembled (this is as near as I can describe) a luminous mist, spun into a gauzy veil. Immediately following this revelation, I was alarmed to realize it was bigger than I could ever have imagined, and it was barreling straight for me at an impossible speed. By the time I considered getting out of the way, I was already overwhelmed by the vast cloud of brilliant steam - it blasted right though me -
my child
I opened my eyes and saw more mist, but this was only ordinary predawn morning mist. I lay admiring the drift of the vapor until I realized I was awake - and alive!
I sat straight up, on the same stone crag where I had lost consciousness the night before; it felt so strange to have spent the night on the ground, instead of in a tree.... I had a big yawn, a good stretch, and a moment of fantastic bliss when I found my lungs whole and clear, pain-free and in perfect working order. I didn't even have a crick in my back from sleeping on the ground.
And Rustiven was dead....
That was a shocker to recollect; distressing, but still more good than bad ... if I could just remember why....
Behind me, someone smacked her lips in her sleep, and I peered down over the brink of the ridge. In the shallow shelter of the stone outcrop, three magic users and a mercenary slept, tumbled together like kindling on the ground. They were still here? I got up and stepped down the left side of the ridge as silently as possible. Careful not to cast a shadow, a stray breath, or even a minute change in temperature, I bent stealthily over the hollow where Zelgadis slept rolled in his cloak (I'm afraid his appearance was still quite novel to me). How incredibly blue he was.... In his sleep, he didn't frown or glower ... he looked nearly human....
He twitched in a dream and immediately I was behind the rocks again.
Waitaminit! Why am I hiding? These people know me!
Now fully awake, I strode past the travelers and across the clearing to retrieve my lance. Beasts had scuffed some leaves over it, but it still lay where I'd dropped it. I picked it up; the blade was still undamaged. Four paces away, in the tree litter on the forest floor, began the drag marks which were all that was left of Rustiven. In the distance where the tangle of trees conspired with the dense morning mist, I could sense deer foraging....
I could have eaten two of them raw, while waiting for the rest to cook, I was that hungry.
"Oh, Miss Ana, you're awake," Amelia noted, sitting up between Lina and Zelgadis for a stretch. Well, I couldn't eat her now. "How are you feeling?"
"Absolutely famished," I answered firmly, starting back across the clearing.
"Well, that's two of us," Lina assessed, climbing to her feet, and Zelgadis seemed to awaken. "Good morning!"
"Indeed," I replied with a very small smile.
"Are you feeling better? Breathing and everything?" she had to ask.
"Yes - "
"We almost thought you wouldn't, for a minute there last night," Amelia continued, "but Miss Lina helped me out with the healing spell - "
"In this case, I doubt an ordinary healing spell alone would have done the job." Zelgadis stood up to join the conversation.
"Eh?" we all said.
"So, what's your explanation, Zel?" Lina invited.
"Granted, the healing spell would have helped with the small damages, but lungs full of fluid are nearly impossible to repair in that state.... At first I thought it was backlash from whatever you channeled through the mountain, but - "
"Spit it out already!" Lina interrupted.
"I believe Ana was healed by a spontaneous geothaumatic anomaly," Zelgadis finished crisply. I sat down and groaned.
"A whaat?" the other two chimed.
"A momentary, highly localized occurrence of white earth magic," he clarified, still in Professor mode.
"White earth magic?"
"But - how could shamanist earth magic function like a high-level healing spell?" Lina frowned.
"Unless...." Amelia's eyes got reeeally big, and I braced myself for a cringe. "Oh, Miss Ana, it was a miracle!!" she declared, wringing her hands with gooey rapture.
CRINGE!! It was like biting right through a lemon - the hardest cringe I'd had since before the Automatic Rustiven Filter.
"Well, I wouldn't call it that," I grumbled.
"Why didn't I sense it?" Lina wondered.
"You were too busy with your own spell," Amelia told her.
"What I want to know," Lina continued, "is how you managed to break that memory spell Rustiven used on you last night."
Oh. That. I let my head fall into my hand.
"Well, see ... I didn't actually break it, so much as I ... kind of reset it," I admitted.
Zelgadis made a small, pained noise.
Amelia lectured: "You mean you just shut up everything he made you remember?? Miss Ana, do you know how unhealthy it is to do that to your own mind??"
"I was a little more concerned with my physical health at the time," I answered hotly. "And anyway, it'll filter through over time, without Rustiven around."
All three of them looked across the clearing to where the drag marks began, and there was an uncomfy silence.
Lina's stomach rumbled.
"Aheh.... Well, that means it's time for breakfast," she grinned, and Gourry was instantly awake.
"Breakfast?"