Lina was sulking. Normally, this would be a bit of a problem, but right now, they had bigger troubles. Or more accurately, bigger possible troubles. Firia was busily using a butcher knife to chop some raw meat into small pieces for a broth she was making while Matsudaira watched, sometimes lending a hand in the chopping, and asked questions about baby dragon development. Kusanagi and Zelgadis were locked in a minor staring match from opposite corners of the room. Amelia and Gourry had been drafted into chopping wood in the backyard, with Takeuchi and Yagashi helping Jiras mind the store in front. Common opinion had Xeros sitting on the roof or off somewhere. Koume, Elkin, and Momiji were watching the possible source of trouble, an egg the size of a large watermelon sitting in a basket nearby the fire. Occaisonally it would twitch slightly.
"Hey, Firia, it twitched again." Koume called over her shoulder as she watched the egg.
"Oh, good. Let's see, the last twitch was about a minute ago, so when the twitches are starting to come at half-minute intervals, he'll be ready to hatch. Matsudaira, did you finish chopping the rest of that meat?" Firia turned slightly, pulling a rather pungent herb from a basket. "Hai." Matsudaira added the rest of the meat to the pot as Firia added a dried brown powder of some sort that had a faintly ginger smell.
"Firia, the egg twitched again ... and again!" Momiji watched the egg nervously as it began to twitch harder, and more often.
"Aiyaaa! Matsudaira, can you get that blue clay pitcher over there and add what's in it to the pot?" Firia hurried over to the egg, lifted it from the basket and, sitting down in the chair by the fire, set the egg in her lap. Zelgadis watched these events impassively, ignoring Kusinagi, who seemed peeved. He smoothly stood up, walked over to where Matsudaira was trying to reach down the clay pitcher from a high shelf, reached up, and handed it to her. She blinked in surprise. "Thank you, Greywers-san." Moving quickly, yet carefully to avoid spilling the white fluid, Matsudaira soon poured out the pitcher's contents into the pot. She frowned slightly, sniffing at the smell coming from the pot. "Firia, what was that?"
Firia looked up from the egg, which she was having to pay the most of her attention to avoid having it fall off her lap. "Goat's milk, plus some herbs to help it imitate a dragon mother's milk."
"Hmmm, sort of like a platypus then, having traits of both reptile and mammal."
"What?!" Firia's eyes narrowed, set of her shoulders broadcasting her indignation.
"Ano! Gomen ... I have a habit of analyzing all that I come across." Matsudaira bowed to Firia in graceful apology.
"You do at that." Kusinagi's voice was rather sarcastic, and very disdainful, as he crossed his arms. "What did I do?" He blinked in surprise, eyeing the glare he was getting from Momiji. A loud crack from Firia's direction caught everyone's attention. A tail was sticking out of a large crack in the egg. In a flurry of cracks, the egg's occupant ... no occupants, broke free from the egg. Two pairs of bleary blue eyes peered around the room as the owners of said eyes began crying hungrily for food. A brief moment of pure shock were all the adults allowed before they were all scrambling to get the hungry hatchlings food. Baby dragons, gold or ancient race, are loud.
The dreams had returned.
He acknowledged that fact, as he sat on the roof, listening to the ruckus of hungry dragon hatchlings, watching the stars wheel silently above him. Sometimes those stars made him feel every one of his ten thousand years, and sometimes made him feel positively young in comparison. And yet those emotions, like almost every one of the few he felt, were hollow, empty things. Only recently had there been emotions that were not hollow, empty, and not of the ones caused by the dreams. Annoyance, irritation, anger, contentment, concern ... even jealousy, desire, pleasure, and longing, although he did not like to admit it. But Firia, no matter how nice to think of, was not the one he should be thinking about now, nor the duty imposed that he had found to be a pleasure in watching over Lina.
The dreams had returned, as they always did.
He only remembered the barest fragments, a glance, an object, a shade of color, but rarely, oh so rarely, did these fragments evoke anything other than the memory of the emotions they had once envoked. Some were explainable, like the lust and desire whenever he saw a bed of pillows, as that also invoked a faint memory of a woman's scent ... But the fear he felt upon seeing black-hilted dagger, and only a black-hilted dagger made no sense to him. He fed upon the emotions of humans, especially the darkest ones of hate and terror . . . and yet the fear of a child, regardless of race, caused him to do anything to free that child of that fear. Lina was young enough in appearance to evoke, slightly, some of that emotion, making him genuinely concerned with her well-being. And yet, he knew the protectivness, however twisted, that he felt for her was unusual for him. But it was only an echo when compared to what he felt for ... he dare not think of that fair face now, not when he felt the dreams reaching out for him, pulling him under, pulling him to sleep, and to dream . . . . .
The dreams had returned, as they always did, and he knew that he was dreaming.
He dreamed, and he knew that he would not remember it upon waking. This dream, one of the few that repeated with only minor changes, was among the ones he dreaded the most, despite the fact he would not recall it when awake. It always began the same way ...
He stood upon a hill, overlooking a city of vast size, half-hidden within the jungle reaches. The noontime sun glinted brightly off the white stone, the gold of the decorations of the temple, the brightly colored feathers of the many birds. A breeze blows gently, cool against the bare skin of his chest, arms and legs, causing the ends of the loincloth he is wearing to flutter briefly. He knows that the loincloth is grey, the color allowed only to slaves of a certain caste.
Even though he does not look down to see, he can feel the weight, familiar and comforting somehow, of the slave bracers around his wrists, the collar around his neck, the gold-embossed silver the mark of the highest, the ruler, his queen. And she was his, his in a way that knew no boundaries, and even though he was her slave, her pleasure toy, she was his in ways that ran even deeper.
He is now walking in the city, although he does not know how he came here. The buildings, built from a strange, white, stone common to the region, almost seem to gleam as they stretch far above him, walls built thick with few windows down near the ground, with wide windows and thin walls above. Birds, bright-feathered and strange, now silent except for the whisper of their wings, fly from window to window. They sometimes carrying something in their claws, sometimes disappearing into the buildings only to emerge from a different building altogether.
But what chills him to the bone is that there are no people, none where he knew hundreds, nearly thousands, should live. Signs of them were everywhere, and yet he heard or saw none, and that sense, deep within him that told him where something alive was, that sense of life, could find nothing, nowhere within the city ... except a faint trace, so faint that he almost missed it, coming from somewhere deep within the main palace. Knowing that it is far beneath the dignity from one associated with the royal family, he begins to run ....
They come from nowhere, everywhere. Moving in tasks that they once performed, utter silence except the clink of metal being forged, the scrape of the woodcrafter's adze, all the normal sounds of a city . . . but without the voices, the singing ... the sound of breath other than his own. Small ones at mock play, working alongside the others in creating a semblance of normality, the rattle of bones their only true sound.
They are in his way.
Because he was the one who killed them.
All of them.
A scream choking his throat, he jerked awake, drenched in cold sweat, shivering as if his bones would shatter. Terror is not an emotion he is comfortable with, as he is comfortable with annoyance, even his own fear. But it is terror he feels now, gripping his heart with icey claws, chittering deep within his mind, sending it's children to rip up and down his spine, curdling his gut with an unholy mix of another emotion. Guilt.
Guilt for some massive crime he commited, something to do with a city of white stone in a jungle ... but even as he grasps frantically for that image ... it is gone. Gone as if it had never existed. But he remembers remembering it, and in that convoluted manner it is not forgotten. Purple eyes gaze unseeing at the moon above him, sweat matting his purple hair as he leans back slightly, mind whirling and utterly unaware of his surroundings.
"Xenochia ..." His voices shakes as he whispers to the night air. This time, the delve into nightmare has rewarded him.
A name.
Part 7 | Fanfiction