In the stygian cling Luna's eyes gleamed catlike, golden lamps to light the way outside. On the small hill side they looked down on the temple, remains mostly, and suffering ones at that. The wind had teeth as it chewed through them, no noise, just a blast of the persona of cold. It was a suffering wind and gnawed at Luna's cape, sending deep green to flare and blossom as the foliage around the lilac of her hair. One white arm extended in a point to the temple, her face exposed and determined in the elements.
Gourry watched intently, feeling alert but only on the edges, everything inside of him drugged and sleepy still. A movement in his chest stopped him breathless in the cold air as Lina moved strongly inside of him. Death lived here. No. Death didn't, he decided, because in Death was mercy, and this was a hard, cold place.
Screaming pain rang off of the silent columns, falling and crumbling now, and it had echoed with out a breath for far too long.
"Why do I have to go in there?"
"Because. It was always about blood, Gourry. And this place drinks blood. Blood spilled in anger, blood spilled in agony, and blood spilled in pain. C'mon." And she started down the hillside, the only thing that showed any color at all here. Every slow step led her foreword and he followed, not seeming to move at all, having no memory of lifting his legs and using his muscles to pull him foreword, just knowing that suddenly he was there. A black mouth cawed and yawned before him, and he was afraid, but distantly, like his life was distant, and he followed Luna to be swallowed whole.
There was no wind inside, but still something sobbed and sobbed and laughed and laughed inside his head, insanity and pain ringing over and over in a headache cocktail that brought the taste of blood to his lips. Women had died here; women and small children, screaming as they watched mothers and sisters and friends struck down one after the other as the things that had been human but become something else in the wash of blood hacked and cleaved at defenseless bodies. Screaming and screaming and screaming, and the dying hero inside of Gourry wept at the ancient carnage that had been so carelessly done. Things moved here where no people worshipped; things moved and suffered into death.
Luna did not stop but strode foreword to the foreword end of the room the stood in. It was huge and the black seeped into it to fill the open air with it's nightmare color until that was all you could see and hear and taste, and things moved past, in terror and the escape that never made it.
Heaven had been denied to these innocents, and they were tormented over and over again as their stale blood was stolen endlessly by things that thirsted for new. Laughter was heard, sped up and unnatural as whatever it had been gibbered insanely to it's self. A small child glided through Gourry, trying to cling to his legs and the freeze of baby fists locked his knees for a moment. The child reached up for him, looking up, opening and closing his fists in the language of all too young to speak, Pick me up and hold me close to your heart, I'm afraid, I'm afraid, I'm afraid... Horror leaked from his eyes as he bent to scoop the little boy up and save him, only to scream suddenly in chorus with the boy as unseen blades ripped his life from him. A broken heart began it's steady bleed, faster and faster, and all the blood reminded him of a life before that had contained a happy girl who gave the color of blood a twist that made him happy, and it had been a time when a tightness in his chest had denoted love, not agony. For her this was worth it. It was all worth it, and he cried along side a dead child.
"Gourry." Luna had that tone in her voice again, something that made her voice.. bigger.. though it grew no louder and no softer. He was torn from his agony and looked her. "You wear your suffering on your sleeve, and your compassion still shines through, despite what the victimizers did to you. Come here, please." He walked foreword trying to focus on Lina, on the small ghost riding at his shoulders in red sobriety. Go, She said to him.
It was an alter, or it was where one should have been. Three gleaming razors stood on either side, six in all, with shining faces pointing towards the unseen roof. The intention behind this instrument was painfully clear, as they smiled and winked at him in the gloom, tiled and cupped divots running into a bowl and then to the floor to guide the crimson prize spilt here.
"This is it, kiddo. The last race is about to begin, and I sure as hell hope you're fast enough. What I'm setting you on is.. gonna be.. hard, Gourry. As a human being, I'm wondering if I can put you through this. But.. as a big sister who can't follow, I HAVE to ask you to do this. I have to ask you to go get my baby sister back, because I can't."
In the moment of silence that followed, Luna looked intently at Gourry as he tried to pull his thoughts together.
"Why can't you do it?" She smiled for a moment, the first one on this terrible place in forever.
"Because." She reached foreword and brushed his bangs out of his eyes. "That's what heroes are for, see." She stepped back and stood once more by the happy blades that flirted so cheerily with him.
"Gourry Gabriev."
He inclined his head curtly.
"Do you love her?"
"Yes." Not even a moment of hesitation, and Luna smiled her crooked smile.
"Will you die for her?"
"I have." And here her voice deepened even more.
"Will you bleed and suffer and die for her if she asked it? If she needed it?"
"Her life instead of mine." His voice was quiet where hers was deep and ringing. Both of his arms raised now, and he slammed his wrists down upon the smiling razors, seeing for a moment the arc of his shattered sword as he had destroyed it. Deeply and eagerly the kissed and nibbled, opening him up for all the world to see. But.. he had always been that way, for all the world to see, no secrets, no darkness, until loss had cast a deep smudge on his heart and had refracted all of the brightness in him so that it had no where to go and dimmed and blew out. He did not feel his own blood soaking the blades and trickling itchy little rivers along his arms; he did not feel them let go as he slid heavily to the floor, and he did not feel the floor rush up to cradle his cheek in granite love. He did not feel his eyes slip shut, or see the red circlets race along in delicate swirls like curls in the wind.
Inside he felt himself go, shrinking and falling and falling and falling until it was blue, everywhere, and he was standing again on that flat plain where he had so patiently waited for Lina. The wind tugged at him and there was a voice in his head that said, to the time of a slowed heartbeat, deep and rumbling like the inside of a clock, and the voice told him of three mystical days inside three mystical moments; life or death, either way, he had to reach her in time of the temple claimed another victim. Forever was a long time to be dead, the voice told him, and heaven had a better view.
Find her, the voice said. This is no dream but the future's cross roads.
A thousand lives away someone small sat straight up with a gasp lodged in her throat, choking the scream from her lips as her large blue eyes reflected a still body curled on it's side, the fallen angel once more, and lazy life ran away and away and away. One blue arm carefully brought her back down to him, and he rubbed her back until her breathing started again.
"An eternity is a very long time, especially from the back."
-- ?
"I am one, my liege, whom the vile blows and buffets of the world have so incensed, that I am reckless in what I do to spite it."
-- One of the murderers, MacBeth