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Dreams
Word Count: 8,897
There was nothing but pain; pain growing, blooming, withering, dying. I writhed and twisted on the cold metal table to which I’d been strapped, bloody, naked and wailing; no more or less than I had been at birth. Nothing touched me, but the misery continued on unabated. I opened my eyes to complete darkness, my mouth twisted in agony. There seemed to be no end to this, only a pervading sense desperation and dread that clung to me like an oppressive shroud.
The pain continued. I could scream no longer. The spots of light now blooming in my vision were chasing each other in dizzying circles. I concentrated on those spots and let the pain overtake me. It seemed like it would go on forever.
And then there was a blinding flash of light, and the pain was gone. The abrupt absence of it left my whole body tingling. There was a loud noise, like a thunder clap…
…and I woke with a start in my bed, feeling like I’d just taken a severe beating. Every muscle was tensed, every nerve singing protest to the strain my body had put on itself. My throat felt raw; the air I gulped burned, and I knew I must have really been screaming. Outside, rain beat against the windows, the walls, the roof, and I began to relax. It was only a dream, I told myself. It didn’t really happen. That was the thing about nightmares, though; sometimes they felt like they were real.
Lightning flashed outside the window, illuminating my bedroom for one brief moment; the pictures on the walls, the curtains, my tall cedar dresser. A form slowly curled itself out of the shadows next to my open bedroom door, eyes shining like twin stars in a blackened sky. I tried to move, but found my body unwilling. Cold, hard panic gripped my aching chest, making it hard to breathe.
“I found you.” The voice was a smooth, rich baritone. A man, then. He came to stand by my bed, and for a moment I thought I saw his features soften, but there simply was not enough light in the room to be certain. I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t. No sound would escape my lips. But it didn’t seem to matter to him; he just kept talking. “You probably have questions about the events that took place in your dream just now. I will be glad to answer them, but I must take you to a safe place, because you are in great danger if you remain here. You need to trust me. May I take you there?”
Several thoughts ran through my mind at once. Who was he? How did he know about my dream? What was his purpose? Was this man trying to kidnap me? If so, why would he ask my permission to take me somewhere? I was extremely puzzled by this person, this stranger. But just as it had come, my panicked fear gave way to calm resignation for no explainable reason and I managed a weak nod before he bent and slid his arms beneath my rigid form. Sheets and all, he carried me from my bedroom and out of my back door, into a waiting stretch limousine.
As soon as the door was closed behind us, the car began moving. Was I really getting kidnapped? Was I still dreaming? I had a feeling it was the latter; my dreams had been getting stranger of late. When the man shifted to sit on the floor next to my head and began to stroke my hair gently, I looked up and saw in the reflection of the windows that I really was bloody. My hair, usually a silky black, was matted and crusty. My left eye was bruised, its blue iris standing out starkly against the dark purple mark. Even wrapped in my blankets, there were bright crimson stains. I looked over at the man. He had a beautiful face, with angular features and fair skin that seemed to glow even in the darkness, framed by careless golden curls. But nothing glowed quite like his eyes, a curious shade of lemon yellow that seemed to outshine the sun. There were so many questions I wanted to ask him, but I couldn’t make my vocal chords cooperate. So I closed my eyes again and went back to sleep, looking to recover some strength through rest.
And that was how I befriended Galadriel the White.
~*~
I woke up in a room filled with sunlight and the smell of flowers. At first the light felt exceedingly bright, probably due to its reflection off of the white walls, but as I squinted at the window with its gauzy white curtains and panoramic view of the country outside, I realized that it was overcast. Most of the light seemed to be coming from something else—something that stood from a chair next to the window and smiled a brilliant smile at me. His hair, I realized, was actually very long and caught back in a long plait at the nape of his neck. It reflected the light that shone around him like an aura of sunshine. He wore a simple white coat over a white shirt and a pair of white pants. His eyes were still the same lemon-yellow color they’d been last night.
I tried again to speak. “Um,” I managed to croak. His smile dimpled his cheek.
“Welcome home,” he said affectionately.
“Home?” I echoed, my voice breaking. I had been kidnapped? This definitely wasn’t my apartment. Alarm began to settle over me, but not for long—his calm smile brought peace to my roiling thoughts even though my brain was begging me to jump up and leave the room.
“Kyrie Kingston, did you think I would not remember you? One does not forget so easily the value of his loyal subjects, if he is wise.” He sounded like he was quoting a proverb, and I was confused.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“I am Galadriel the White. I am your lord and master. At least…for now.” He looked at me sadly then, and his eyes seemed to bore holes into mine.
“What does that mean? And where am I?”
“You are in Avaline, one of the three realms within Sanction. If the folk of the Median knew this place existed, they might call it the spirit world, or heaven. Many people from the Median come here when they die to be born again in Sanction.” Galadriel sat down on the edge of my bed, his hands in his lap. “I am sorry that you do not remember this place. I sealed you away in the Median with the hope that my brethren would not find you…but alas, here you are again, and with more questions than I have given answers.” I just blinked at him in confusion. Now he really looked upset. He seemed to contemplate something before heaving a heavy sigh. “I really must give your memories back. Stay still for a moment.” He touched a bare hand to my temple. For a moment it felt like my head was on fire. Then, just as it had started, the feeling vanished; and with it, the haze of cloudy confusion that had hung over me whenever I had tried to recall my past. I now knew what the Median was—the normal, everyday world to which I had been banished—and I knew Galadriel to be the ruler of my homeland, Avaline. I remembered my childhood, my parents and my friends. My life-long dream came flooding back to mind, rushing in where I had once felt purposeless and empty.
“Madre de Dios,” I murmured. I had wanted to be a part of something great, a cog in the grand machine that kept Avaline at peace and prosperous. Now, though, I felt tainted. Galadriel smiled at me, like he was reading my mind. Maybe he was; I’d never found out if he had that ability or not. That smile didn’t last for long, though; he stood and pursed his lips as if in deep thought.
“Saradriel has touched you,” he said simply. “She must have found you even though I made absolutely sure you were undetectable by any divine means.” His steps carried him back and forth across the room. For the first time since I’d come to this place, real dread began to make itself known in the pit of my stomach.
“What will happen to me?”
“You are changing,” Galadriel said sadly. “You are becoming an angel. Though you may have powers that rival my own very soon, you will still be powerless against the wishes of your creator for a time. And when she finds out about you, if she does not already know...” He shook his head. “This could be very bad for Sanction. Very bad, indeed.”
“Saradriel…” Saradriel the Gray. The angel of discord and quandary. I felt like I was going to be sick.
“Even now she amasses an army to threaten the borders of our land. We must fight back, but I hope you understand that I cannot put you in charge of my soldiers while there is the chance that you can be controlled. There is too much at stake here for you to turn on us at the last.”
“So your answer is to keep me prisoner?”
“No. Not necessarily. I want to monitor you, yes. But in order to preserve myself—which I must do to maintain the balance we struggle so hard to preserve—I must perform a ritual I have never looked highly upon. I must bind my soul.”
“Why are you telling me this if you are so sure that I will turn on you?” I asked. Soul binding, while powerful, was limited by the knowledge of the binding point. With that, anyone could break the bond and kill whoever created it.
“Because I am binding my soul to yours,” he responded simply. “It pains me to do so, because I trust you so completely, but you see…this way Saradriel cannot hope to kill me unless she kills you too, and you are a very valuable tool.”
“Why is that?” I asked. I had a feeling I knew, but I needed to hear it from him anyway.
“You are a Candidate. That’s why I sealed your memories away and banished you in the first place. At the time I had not laid down wards, and after they had been placed I had not had a chance to retrieve you from the Median before she struck. Not everyone becomes an angel when Saradriel touches them. Most die and rise again as demons or soulless husks. Some are rescued before that can happen, as you were. But you are a Candidate, and as such, any divine interaction you have with an angel may trigger the change.”
“How do you know that’s what I’m becoming?” I asked. Wordlessly, Galadriel plucked a hand mirror from the bedside table where it rested beside a vase full of lavender and handed it to me. I held it up, expecting to see the same young woman with matted hair and sleep-circles under her eyes that saw every morning. Instead, I found that my eyes, once a deep ocean blue, had become almost neon in color and seemed to exude the same kind of light that Galadriel’s did. My hair, once a dull, frizzy black, was straight and perfect and had a healthy bluish sheen to it. And my face was a doll-like oval, with perfect, un-bruised skin that looked like it was made of porcelain.
I dropped the mirror in my lap, my mouth hanging open.
“You’ll want to raise your bottom lip,” he commented softly. “You’re not going to grow a tail or anything.”
He was right, of course. I needed to stop gawking at myself and begin thinking critically. “After we bind our souls, how will we keep Saradriel from bringing a war to our gates?”
“We will have to begin a large-scale battle of patience.” Galadriel smiled and touched my hand. “You and I, we will operate as equals to thwart Saradriel‘s attempts at gathering an army, and hopefully we will displace her as the ruler of Nemkis.”
“But Nemkis needs a ruler as surely as Avaline or Elaria, does it not?” I was beginning to feel more at ease now, even if the matter at hand had me wishing Galadriel had not released my memories. When I looked up at my ruler, his brow furrowed.
“Nemkis may be a land of chaos, but it still needs a ruler to push new souls in the right direction. That, my dear, is where you come in.”
“What does that have to do with me?” Even as I said that last word, my voice trembled. I knew what he was planning, just as surely as I knew I was never going back to my Median life.
“Kyrie…you will do it if Saradriel is dealt with, will you not? You will rule Nemkis in her stead?” It wasn’t an order. It was a choice. But what was the alternative? I started to feel nauseated and leaned back onto my elbows.
“What will happen if I refuse?”
Galadriel closed his brilliant eyes, his jaw working. He wore an expression which suggested that maybe I didn’t want to know the alternative after all. “If you refuse to take a station…or if Saradriel is not properly executed for her transgressions against the code in the Blessed Book…then you will have to be killed. There can only be three angels.” When his eyes opened again, he must have seen the look of shock and horror on my face because he dropped down to sit on my bed, his hands gripping either side of my face. “You did not choose this, and yet here you are, with the possibility that you may pay the price for it in the end.” And with a start I realized that he would pay the price too, if we performed this ritual. To know that he had so much faith in me was unnerving, but he must have known I would do whatever it took to ensure his safety. He was making me into the ace tucked into his sleeve.
Even though my life was suddenly at stake, seeing Galadriel sink his head in despair made me want to comfort him, for there was nothing in that moment more beautiful than Galadriel in mourning. I found myself weeping, but it was not like my normal sobbing. Tears merely spilled from my eyes. There was no sniffling or nose-running, no body-wracking gasps. Instead I raised his chin and pressed my lips to his worry-creased brow, willing it smooth with my calm acceptance of the fate I had been assigned. When he raised his eyes to mine again he gazed at me for a long while, as if seeing me for the first time. Why was he looking at me like that? Had I done something wrong?
“I see,” he said, a reluctant smile surfacing among his features. “You have found your gift.”
“I have?”
“You have drained all sorrow from me and taken it upon yourself. You have the gift of true empathy.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” I said softly, feeling at my wet cheeks with my fingertips with a feeling of amazement. To my great surprise Galadriel began laughing, and the sound of it was like heaven to my ears.
“No, Kyrie. If you are lucky, you will not be damned after all.”
~*~
The soul-binding ritual happened that evening. He appeared to me wearing a robe and led me down a winding staircase to a room buried deep within the ground, where he had readied the floor with intricate markings. He had gotten my consent to bind our souls within an hour of my waking; I didn’t want to die, nor did he. We had a common goal.
“For this ritual, you must be only as you naturally are,” he said. Then he turned from me and began walking toward the center of the room, first untying the leather cord that bound his hair, then shedding the robe he’d donned and tossing it outside the charcoal circle he’d drawn onto the smooth stone floor. Then he bent to pick up a dagger he’d laid in the center of the circle and turned toward me, completely naked and waiting.
For some reason it didn’t bother me like I’d thought it would to see him without anything on whatsoever; rather it felt enlightening. But I was still shy, and after noticing this Galadriel smiled.
“Come, now. I am not ashamed, nor should you feel that way. Stand before me and I will do it, if you will not.” He raised his eyebrows at me when I did not move, then shook his head. “So be it,” were his quiet words as he came to stand before me outside the circle once more. After all I was sure he had seen—as I was confident he had changed me out of my bloody clothing—why was I embarrassed? As he began unbuttoning my shirt, I fed off of his calm reassurance, and by the time we had padded, naked, to the center of the circle again, I felt at ease with the world. Galadriel was my rock, the constant within these new and foreign experiences. He turned me around to face away from him, then laid the dagger down once more and grabbed my hands, his fingers lacing with mine. I realized then that we were standing back-to-back, and he had begun intoning what sounded like a prayer.
For a time we simply stood there, and I closed my eyes to bask in the feeling that was overwhelming me. I wasn’t sure what exactly that feeling was, but it made my heart feel lighter and lighter until I thought that it would dance right out of my ribcage and fly back up the stairs we had descended. But like all good things, this, too, ended. He pulled me around to face him then sank to his knees, his tug on my hand indicating that I should do the same. And then there was a different feeling welling within me, one of calm completion and rightness as I stared into the eyes of my sovereign and savior.
“Repeat after me,” he said quietly, when he had finished his incantation. “I hereby bind my soul to you…”
“I hereby bind my soul to you…”
“…and offer you my life, in equal trade for yours…”
“…and offer you my life, in equal trade for yours…”
“…for your heartbeat is my sustenance…”
“…for your heartbeat is my sustenance…” My heart fluttered in response to my words.
“…and loving you is as necessary as breathing.” His eyes never wavered.
“…and loving you is as necessary as breathing.” And I was finding it doubly hard to breathe now; the air seemed to be thickening around us. Galadriel went on, showing no sign of distress.
“My thoughts shall be your thoughts, my pain your pain…” he continued, his pupils growing a fraction. His voice was rising now to a fever pitch.
“My thoughts shall be your thoughts, my pain your pain…” I felt it too; the feeling that something was beginning to tear free of my body. Something inside me was fighting to get out.
“…my existence your existence, for as long as we remain.” When he finished his sentence, the wild expression he wore urged me to continue quickly.
“…my existence your existence, for as long as we remain.” When I had forced the last word from my mouth Galadriel picked up the dagger and, to my great surprise, grabbed my hand and scored my palm. I drew it back, balling my hand into a fist, but he only shook his head as he repeated the process on his own. Then he held his hand out to me, palm outward, the red-gold blood spilling from his cut dripping onto the floor.
“Press your hand to mine,” he commanded. Feeling sheepish, I complied. As my palm touched his he curled his fingers through mine to trap it there, and for minutes we sat on the cold stone floor, staring into each others’ eyes and feeling our blood coursing through our joined hands to mingle, mixed, within the rest of our bodies. When he finally dropped my hand, there was no more blood. The wounds had already healed themselves. I still felt his presence inside me to my very core, in my thoughts. I even shared with him the sense of awe that one feels when they find something that was meant for them. We were a matched pair now, and I knew what those words we both spoke truly meant. I felt his emotions: Fear for my safety and that of his subjects. Sorrow for the unfortunate situation we found ourselves in. Uncertainty in his predictions of future events. And love, to a degree that I had never before felt, for everyone and everything in Sanction—especially for me, who had now become a part of him.
Of course, I also learned of his plan. We were going to invade the dreams that Saradriel touched and rescue those she tried to recruit before she could kill them in their sleep. We were going to put ourselves at risk of detection, all so that her army could not grow. We were also going to petition Imuriel the Black—the ruler of Elaria, the realm of eternal souls—because Galadriel knew that Saradriel had foresworn the code laid down in the Blessed Book and brought the dead back to life without warrant. Saradriel was supposed to be a soul-shepherd. Her job was merely to ferry souls to their next destination; Avaline, Elaria, or the Median. No one stayed in Nemkis. I found myself shivering in the cold air as I thought about all the ways this could go horribly wrong.
I didn’t notice that Galadriel had pulled me upright until I was already standing. He draped a robe across my shoulders that looked identical to his own, and together we padded back up the stairs. “This will not be easy,” he said when we reached the top. His arm was looped around my waist, keeping me from teetering over.
“I know,” I replied. And I did; I knew all too well that this was practically suicide.
~*~
That night, we began. Saradriel did not wait to hunt for her soldiers, and so we did not wait either. The first one we saved. The dream was much like mine. Torture. Agony. Darkness. I learned that Saradriel was a lazy recruiter: She touched her victims and left for other dreams. According to Galadriel it was true that she used this tactic to generate a larger number of subordinates, but it also worked in our favor, because by the time we arrived she had already moved on, and there was nothing preventing us from reversing the effects of her touch.
I learned during those first nights that we could not save everyone. We also could not catch Saradriel red-handed. This realization disheartened me, but I never despaired. I had Galadriel, now my other self, rallying against my internal struggle with all he had in an effort to ease my mind.
And it worked for a while. We settled into a steady rhythm of dream-catching and sparring, equal parts learning to harness my growing power and aiding him to prevent Saradriel’s from growing. I learned that his gift was the gift of thought; he could hear what others were thinking as though they were speaking aloud into his ear. He could also plant thoughts into others’ minds, as if they were their own. At first I’d felt sheepish, because I had doubted him and he had surely been able to determine that. I knew better than that now, though; Galadriel’s faith in me was steadfast, and he and I both knew that I would never violate his trust.
Today was as normal as our days together got; we had woken from the last dream and tracked no others that Saradriel had corrupted, so Galadriel had suggested that we go out to the grassy fiend beside his—now our—home and spar.
It was hard to fight Galadriel because he could read my moves before I made them, and swiftly dodged out of the way. “Think with your instincts, not your brain,” he scolded, after I missed him a few times. “I can’t read those.”
“Easier said than done, Gale,” I retorted. Instead, I thought about how unfair he was being as I began my next series of attacks. He chuckled as he dodged, making me curse his good mental hearing.
“You can do it. You have done it before,” he encouraged.
“Excepting of course that I do not remember how I did it in the first place,” I huffed, rolling my eyes. In that moment he slipped past my guard and poked me with the tip of his sword. Pain bloomed in my chest.
“Keep your head in the fight, Kyrie!” His reprimand was doubled in my mind, lest I refuse to listen to his words.
“I heard you the first time,” I growled, batting his sword away with my own. He backed off to circle me while I tried to figure out how to beat him. The bad part was, although I was frustrated, I was also amused—because he was amused—and I found myself wanting to laugh and cry at the same time. I knew that this was his predicament as well, but at least he was adept at masking his feelings and after all of his years alive they probably didn’t bother him overmuch, either.
Touching a hand to my fresh wound, I focused my energy there and felt it healing beneath my fingertips. This too was a power that all angels possessed, along with the ability to kill with those self-same hands. It was necessary for their jobs, necessary to maintain the balance of Sanction. Without realizing it, I had raised the tip of my sword again.
“This time you might try winning,” Galadriel called with a chuckle, causing me to glare at him. He was taunting me! All I could think about as I rushed him was just how much I wanted to punch him in the face at that moment, a feat I was sure I could not accomplish even if I tried. Instead I drove him backward with a flurry of quick blows, all of which he parried or countered. When I ran out of steam, he began pressing me back the way I had come, and before I knew it he had me backed up against the wall of our dwelling. But before he could press me any further my instincts kicked in, and my free hand, already balled into a fist, swiftly crashed into his nose with enough force to send him sprawling on the ground before me. I leapt on top of him before he could right himself, pinning his hands to the ground. By the aching in my own nose I could tell that something had been displaced in his.
“I believe I won that match,” I commented, letting him go and touching my hands to his face. Immediately his nose corrected itself, and the pain subsided. Galadriel sat up partially to wipe the remnants of blood from his upper lip.
“Well done,” he said, his expression incredulous. “I knew you wanted to do it, but to actually pull it off is another thing entirely! Might I remind you however that this is a sword fight—not a fist fight—so your win does not count toward the total.”
“What? That’s not fair!”
“All is fair in love and war, my friend,” he responded, his lips curling into a devilish smile.
“Then might I suggest that if all is fair, then by rights my punch was fair and my win does count toward the total.” I smirked as he shoved me playfully off of his legs, then rose and dusted off my trousers.
“I cede my ground. You have two total wins, and I have thirteen. I think you are ready.”
I saw into his thoughts and smiled. Oh, yes. I was ready to hunt and kill this renegade angel.
“But first,” he said to me as we headed back inside, “Imuriel the Black must be petitioned, for our chances for success are greater with three than with two.”
“So we travel to Elaria?” I queried, beginning to feel my carefree days with Galadriel dwindling.
“Between dreams,” he answered. He fixed me with a sad look that would have told me everything even if I hadn’t been inside his head. He loved me, his other half, and he was afraid for my safety.
His feelings were not wholly unfounded. I felt like I was doomed for discovery. “How long do we have until I am completely transformed?”
“About a day, by my interpretation.” Galadriel frowned as he perched himself on the edge of the bed he’d given me.
“Gale, that’s not long enough. If we need to travel to Elaria, that could take several days!” Suddenly the matter of leaving seemed all the more urgent, but a calm thought from Galadriel had me sitting next to him.
“There is one more ability which an angel possesses, and you are of the proper stage in your development to learn it. It requires a tremendous amount of energy, so it can only be used once in several hours’ time.”
“What ability is that?” I asked, wondering why he hadn’t thought about it before.
“The ability to teleport,” he said simply.
What was this, some kind of magic trick?
~*~
As we stepped into the basement minutes later, Galadriel made for a door in the other side of the room. “This is where we jump,” he said cheerfully as we stepped into another chamber, gesturing to a door frame with no door set into the wall to our left. The wall itself filled the area inside the frame, as if it were simply marking where the door should be.
I adjusted my new sword-belt and fixed Galadriel with a look of confusion. “Are we walking through the wall?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes. But you will want to hang on to me while we jump, so we don’t get separated.” He held out his hand and grinned. “It won’t be long, I promise.”
“All right,” I said, grabbing his hand. Together, we stepped through the door that wasn’t a door.
The portal took us to a room similar to the one we had stepped out of, decorated in dark colors and draping cloth. Galadriel steadied me as I stepped out behind him; it had been an odd feeling, like trying to squeeze through a space that was too small for my body. Abruptly I was seized by nervous anticipation and a growing excitement, and when I looked inquiringly at Galadriel his lips curled into a sheepish smile.
“I am looking forward to seeing Imuriel again,” he said.
“How long has it been since you last saw each other?” I asked as we began to ascend the spiraling staircase past a room that looked strikingly similar to Galadriel’s basement workspace.
His expression turned thoughtful. “It has been about twenty years, by my guess.”
“That’s a long time. Though I suppose in the grand scheme of things…”
“Twenty years is nothing when you have lived two thousand,” he said calmly. My gaze went automatically to the Celestial Blade at his hip, and I wondered if it was as old as he was. “Yes,” he answered. I didn’t need to read his mind to know that he’d heard my thoughts. Surely then he knew how nervous I had become over the situation we found ourselves in.
“Are you sure we will be able to kill her?”
“Yes,” he said. “Your blade and mine both have the power to strike Saradriel down. She has her gift on her side, but it will not be enough to protect her.”
“Her gift?”
“Saradriel possesses the gift of tongues. She can persuade anyone to do just about anything. She can also understand every form of speech as if it were her native language.”
“That could be dangerous,” I said. “What about Imuriel’s gift?”
“Imuriel possesses the gift of the senses. He can make anyone feel physical sensations.”
“And that could be useful,” I said quietly. Certainly more useful than my abilities.
“Nonsense,” Galadriel said aloud, just as if I had been speaking instead of thinking. “I think you underestimate yourself.”
“I can figure out how other people feel,” I said flatly as we crested the stairs and began down a short hallway. Galadriel stepped in front of me, his posture and expression radiating calmness and encouragement.
“You can manipulate the emotions around you, Kyrie. You can pull them in and take them unto yourself, or you can push your own feelings onto others. That is very useful.”
I could only look at him for a moment before I felt the need to look away.
“My predecessor, Liliane the White, prevented a war and founded the three realms of Sanction using her gift. She was as you are.”
“Oh.”
We didn’t have the chance to pursue the matter of my abilities further, because at that moment a young man hurried to stand, bent and breathless, before us. “Lord Galadriel,” he huffed, glancing upward with an anxious expression on his face. Rather than anxiety, though, I felt a familiar feeling: Hope.
“You are Imuriel’s record-keeper,” Galadriel said matter-of-factly. The man didn’t need to do more than nod, though; Gale had read his mind, and I in turn heard his thoughts, full of surprise and seething with anger. Imuriel the Black has gone missing. “When was the last time you saw him?”
“Three days ago, My Lord. He left, saying that he was going to visit you, and never came back. Have you seen him?”
“No, we have not,” Gale replied. Then he looked at me, and our thoughts resonated with each other, one word hanging in the air like a curse.
Saradriel.
~*~
It wasn’t long before we were on our way to visit Saradriel herself. Galadriel had a sinking suspicion that she had captured and somehow found a way to imprison Imuriel. I was beginning to buy into it myself, but I wasn’t sure what we were going to do to set him free if he had been captured. There were a lot of possibilities, beginning with figuring out where she was keeping him.
“How will we go about this?” I asked as we stood in Galadriel’s portal-room once more. It had been nearly half a day since we had come back from Imuriel’s dwelling, and I was still tired; not to mention it was nearly time, by Gale’s estimation, for me to transform. We had to do this quickly.
He watched me with his wise yellow eyes and shook his head. “I do hate to say this, but we may have to wing it.”
“What if she discovers out intention?” I asked, fear beginning to make itself known to me once more.
“We will just have to practice great care,” he said. The mood was sobering.
“Let’s hope she does not see through this.”
“Indeed,” he said as he tugged me behind him through the door frame.
It was only a moment before we stepped out of the portal and into complete darkness. Galadriel squeezed my hand and began moving along the wall, his thoughts a jumble of confusion and alarm. Why was this place so dark? Didn’t Saradriel keep a light on somewhere? The situation around us was striking him as unusual, and my fear intensified. Something definitely didn’t feel right. I felt like there were voices in my head, warring with each other; telling me to turn back, to run, to venture further.
To kill Galadriel.
I shook my head vigorously, trying to dispel the thoughts. Galadriel must have felt them too, because he squeezed my hand tighter as he felt along the wall. Then he was lighting a torch, and suddenly the small room was drenched in a dull, dancing orange light.
And there was Saradriel, chained and unconscious, to the far wall. Her long brown hair hung like a faded old banner from her bowed head, masking her face.
Gale dropped my hand and was next to her in a flash, checking her over for any signs of foul play. “Nothing,” he said finally. “She’s merely asleep.”
“I thought angels didn’t need sleep,” I protested, the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. Something really wasn’t right here.
“She must be dream-hunting,” he said. He knew when he said it that he was only offering a scapegoat. If Saradriel really was dream-hunting, we would have felt it. I just shook my head at him, knowing that even if he wasn’t looking at me he would understand. I felt like this was a trap ready to spring at any moment.
“Imuriel…” The voice was coming from Saradriel, and it sounded pained.
The whole situation was getting stranger and stranger, and my feelings of confusion were being echoed by Galadriel’s own. We stared at each other for a long time, trying to make sense of it all. He was scanning Saradriel’s thoughts, but they were barely coherent and there was nothing that stood out or rang true. So he watched me, trying to find the answer in my eyes, though I was sure it wasn’t there. But then his eyes slid sideways and he blinked with surprise. I turned around to find the target of his gaze, even though I felt it coming. It was the thought that was compelling me to kill Galadriel, the one that made me shiver and my flesh break into goose bumps. I felt it more powerfully than before, so much so that I had to firmly plant my feet and cross my arms over my chest to keep myself from drawing my celestial blade. But Galadriel was not so lucky; he drew his sword and it blazed into life. Then he pointed it at himself.
“NO!” I shouted, shattering the silence that had hung for the past few moments like a heavy drape over the room. A shadow in the doorway stopped. Galadriel paused with his own blade poised perilously close to his heart. He seemed to realize that my temporary insanity had overtaken him, and his hands opened, dropping the blade to the ground with a loud clatter.
“Interesting,” said a deep voice from behind me. I looked up to see Galadriel staring in mute shock, and turned myself enough to address the speaker. “Is Galadriel your puppet now, little one?” As my eyes passed over the hulk of a man now standing in front of me, I realized three things: Firstly, based on Galadriel’s memories, he was Imuriel the Black, ruler of the Realm of the Dead. Secondly, my extra sense told me that he was very hostile. Lastly, it was highly possible that he was the one pulling the strings.
Suddenly it felt very cold in the room. “Why are you doing this?” I asked, my chattering teeth clipping off the ends of my words.
“Have you seen Avaline? Galadriel does not deserve it. He is too soft to deal with the important matters; matters you would not understand, fledgling.” Imuriel stepped to the side, ignoring me, walking a few paces toward Galadriel. “And here you are, Gale my boy, unprotected and vulnerable, with your pitiful excuse for a bodyguard.”
Rage coursed through me, burning up the warring thoughts in my mind. I saw Galadriel sober as well, and his eyes glinted like molten gold in the torch light. And then we were both moving, I drawing my blade and he scooping his from the ground and leveling it at Imuriel’s heart. “Unprotected, my a**,” I said through clenched teeth. And then I was charging at him with the full force and fury of a woman scorned. I was suddenly glad that Galadriel had re-trained my muscles, had let me work on my skills, because when Imuriel deftly turned my blade aside as if it were no more than a bothersome insect I was certain I was going to need them.
And then I was on the ground, writhing with pain. It was the same kind of pain I was certain I had felt in my dream, when Saradriel—no, Imuriel—had tried to kill me. It had always been Imuriel. Saradriel was his decoy. I forced myself to my feet, looking briefly in her direction. She was wide awake, wide-eyed and staring at the scene unfolding before her with dark eyes that mirrored the horror I was sure was in my own. Galadriel and Imuriel were weaving around each other like expert swordsmen, but it was clear that Imuriel’s death sentence was slowing my soul-bound companion.
I cannot properly read his mind while yours is screaming at me to kill myself, came his voice in my head. I tried very hard to resist Imuriel’s orders, but found that they just kept coming back.
I’m sorry, I thought as I tried to clear my head again. Kill him, my thoughts urged. I concentrated on Imuriel and his patterns of movement, holding myself back and out of the fray for fear of accidentally carrying out his wishes. I tried to make the subject of my thoughts change. Kill Imuriel, I urged. It wasn’t working. Panic settled over me, and try as I might I could not dispel it. Not to mention I was still curled on the ground, living in my own private hell.
“Stop it!” Saradriel was shouting. “Stop! There’s no need to fight!” Her voice was cracking, and when I glanced in her direction again I saw tears spilling onto her cheeks.
“Silence, you useless piece of garbage!” Imuriel shouted, flinging his blade at the other angel. It sunk into her chest and she strained against her chains for a moment before she went limp, red-gold blood soaking her pristine white shirt. His momentary distraction had lifted the pain from me, and Galadriel and I both rushed him at that moment, but when I got close Imuriel ordered me to stop. Alarmed by the change in his thought process, I obeyed. He plucked my blade out of my hand just in time to meet Galadriel’s once more, and they began dancing again, this time completely ignoring my presence. Which was just as well, because I darted behind him along the side of the room until I came to stand next to Saradriel’s limp form. She was still alive, but who knew how long she would remain that way?
“Take his sword,” she urged quietly. “I am not long for this…”
“I’m sorry,” I said, remaining as still as possible next to her. “What can I do? I’m afraid I’ll hurt Galadriel.”
“Use your gift,” she said plainly. “Whatever it is, use it to defeat him.” She was panting now.
I stared at the fight happening in front of me for a moment, remembering Galadriel’s words. “You can pull them in and take them unto yourself, or you can push your own feelings onto others. It’s a very useful skill.”
I didn’t know if pushing my feelings onto Imuriel would work, but I was certain I could take his away as I had done once before to Galadriel. So I stared at him and I concentrated on his feelings, his desires. I tried to resonate with them, to pull them toward me.
And I hate to say that it worked.
I yanked Imuriel’s sword free of Saradriel’s chest, and was pleased that she cried out in pain. It gave me a sadistic pleasure to know that my brethren were below me. Imuriel himself sank to his knees, still numbly gripping my blade. “What have I done?” he asked to no one in particular. I raised Imuriel’s sword, prepared to dispatch Galadriel. He caught my thought before I acted it out, and turned to face me with a sympathetic expression on his face.
“You have gone mad,” Galadriel said, his voice so sad that I wanted to cry.
I rushed him.
Imuriel sprang from the ground in a sudden heroic effort to drive me back, but before he had gotten close enough to parry I slid my sword home between Galadriel’s ribs. I felt his pain as surely as he did, felt my own heart falter. The madness dissipated and alarm took its place. What had I done?
“I’m sorry,” I gasped. Imuriel stared at us from above, and I didn’t realize until he sank to his knees that both Galadriel and I had fallen to the ground.
“It is through my own faulty reasoning that this happened. I have failed…” Galadriel winced. “I have failed…”
“Forgive me,” Imuriel chimed in, his eyes brimming with tears. “I promise you, Brother, I will rebuild Sanction. I will re-build it and it will be whole again! And thank you,” he added, looking to me. “Thank you for taking away my madness.”
But Galadriel was gone.
And I realized, as my eyes rolled back and the sound of Imuriel’s weeping fled from my ears, that I was too.
~*~
I awoke in my old bed, feeling like my heart had been ripped out of my chest. My mind was oddly absent, as if Galadriel’s passing had taken with it all of my thoughts. Suddenly my old life seemed lack-luster, and everything about this place was second-rate; boring. I wanted Avaline. I wanted adventure. I wanted Galadriel. But I was the one who had killed him, in the end. Fresh tears sprang to my eyes.
I didn’t want to wake up.
Something chirped next to my head. My alarm clock. I slapped it once and the wretched sound died. Was this a dream, or a memory of waking up in my old life before I really did pass on? If so, where were the others? Where were the golden-hued memories of my youth, those flashes of happiness? My hand twitched against the cotton sheets and I realized, with a pang of despair, that I was in control of my body. There were no dreams, no memories; just a numb sorrow, eating away at my chest.
For the better part of an hour I went through my morning routine. When I caught sight of myself in the bathroom mirror while brushing my teeth, my spirits sank further. I was back to my old self, not the pretty little thing with the perfect hair and eyes full of light. With a pang of regret, and feeling painfully empty, I resolved to face the days ahead. Work. Grocery shopping. Mundane things that required very little thought at all. I didn’t have any thought left to give to the world, after all.
And so the days passed, and continued to pass until something changed.
It was two weeks later. When my lunch break came on this particular day, I told my boss I wasn’t feeling well and she let me go home. It wasn’t far off from the truth, really, even though I suffered no physical ailment. The numbness of shock was giving way to raw, potent grieving. I walked out of my building, but as I navigated my way toward the bus stop I suddenly had an overwhelming craving for coffee. There was a café that I had frequented before this whole mess had ravaged my emotions, so I decided that I would stop there on my way home; after all, it wasn’t like I had to get there quickly. As I neared the place, I began to feel a nervous anticipation building inside my chest. Had it really been that long since I’d had a good cup of coffee? I couldn’t give a justifiable reason to the feeling. Surely it wasn’t the coffee that had me excited.
Not that I had a reason to be excited at all, really.
I heard the familiar bell jingle as I strolled through the door. A few people lingered at the high tables near the windows, sipping their beverages and reading their magazines or newspapers; just people taking breaks from their fast-paced, unfulfilling lives. I began to feel disgusted with this place, but it wasn’t anyone’s fault. Something inside me felt broken, shoddily mended like a crystal vase glued back together with plain white paste. The bell jingled once more as I stepped up to the counter.
“Hey, Kyrie!” the cashier said with a smile. He was a young and cheerful thing. “Haven’t seen you around lately. You want the usual?”
“Yes, if you will. Thanks, Kyle.” I wasn’t really in the mood to try anything different today, so I walked over to stand at the pick-up counter after I paid for my drink, staring at the list of available beverages on the wall.
“Do you come here often?” I heard a man’s voice say from beside me. It took me a moment to figure out that he was talking to me, and when I realized this I looked up involuntarily. And I stared.
Because I could have sworn I was looking at Galadriel. He looked enough like him to be his twin, with his careless gold curls crowning his head and mysterious amber eyes peering at me as if they could see into my soul from within the hard angles of his perfect face—a face I had last seen lined with pain—and I involuntarily winced at the pang of grief the sight of this man had induced. “I’m sorry,” I said as I grabbed my drink out of Kyle’s hand. “I’m kind of in a hurry. But yes, I do.” And without looking back I hurried toward the door.
“Wait!” he called from behind me. “Please, wait!”
I stopped in the process of opening the door. I had to get out of that place, but my feet wouldn’t move and I found myself turning in his direction once more. Now my head was buzzing and I nearly dropped my coffee when I saw that he had been right behind me.
“You forgot this,” he said with a boyish smile; the same crooked curve of the lips that Galadriel had employed when he was amused. I looked down reluctantly. In his hand was a folded up napkin, and I could just make out ink bleeding through its thin layers. Confused, I looked up at his face again. His lopsided smile was still there, and he raised his eyebrows as if to say, read it.
So I did.
My coffee slipped out of my hand and spilled all over our shoes. I raised a hand to cover my mouth, thinking that somehow that it would stop the tears from falling. It didn’t. The man reached up and wiped them from my face, then slid his hand onto my shoulder to steady me. I read the words on the napkin again.
“…my existence your existence, for as long as we remain.”
“Someone once said these exact words to me,” I said quietly.
“I know I did,” he replied, grinning like a fool. “Had I not said those words to you, I would never have found you here.”
I just stared at him. “Galadriel…”
“Call me Gale,” he said with surprising tenderness.
Something clicked into place, and I felt the same sense of rightness I’d felt in my dream.
“My sister,” he continued with his perfect smile, “is waiting for you back at my apartment. Her name is Sara. May I take you there to meet her?”
“You may take me anywhere you please,” I answered, echoing his smile with one of my own.
Chuckling, he led me out of the shop and across the sidewalk, into a waiting stretch limousine.
“Are we going back to Sanction?” I asked.
“No,” he replied. “I followed you here and here I remain, as mortal as the day I was born. I would, however, be honored to provide you with happiness here in Median.”
“You’re doing a damned good job already, just by existing,” I said, laying my head on his shoulder. Reflexively, possessively, he slid his arm around my shoulders and drew me tighter against his side. For the first time since I’d ended that dream, I was happy. Or had it been a dream? Did dreams come true?
“Mine did,” Gale murmured. “I didn’t know you were going to ruin my new shoes,” he said, the tone in his voice indicating that he didn’t really care over much, “but I knew you well enough to predict that you would ruin your coffee. I took the liberty of ordering the same one.” I hadn’t noticed that he had a coffee in his hand until he handed it to me and grinned. “Bon appétit!”
“You spoil me,” I scolded before taking a sip. It tasted fantastic.
“And I intend to continue, for as long as we remain,” he replied, the ghost of a smile still clinging to his lips.
Alanora Calaran · Wed Jan 20, 2010 @ 07:05pm · 0 Comments |
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