D E S C E N T

- Dim Aldebaran -

Chapter One

:i:

And when the wind draws strong

across the cypress trees,

the nightbirds cease their songs;

so gathers memories.

"Courtyard Lullaby"

Loreena McKennitt

:i:

Juliet hated her job.

It wasn't that she hated cleaning; far from it. There was something soothing about sweeping and wiping, dusting and polishing. It gave her time to collect her scattered thoughts and herd them back into the fold of her mind.

The reason was tied to how they became scattered to begin with: disappointments, those ravaging wolves, beautiful and terrible in the strange little way horrors have perfected. Angeline. Domovoi. Artemis. Wrestling.

Her dusting nearly broke the feathered contraption, sending up a cloud of dust that, instead of simply dispelling, migrated to a mahogany display case—which she had already finished. Sighing, she restarted.

She had moved to the United States last year, her citizenship supplied as a farewell gift from Arty—when he was Arty and not Artemis. 'Jade Princess,' young, beautiful, wealthy, was asked to try out for the Olympic team, not as Irish but American, the country of her heart.

Her tryout had hardly been a failure. 'Success' would have been like saying Amy Lee is a damn good singer. The team welcomed her as one of their own, taking her in with rippling arms and smiles as grand as their Chicago apartments.

It had been afterwards.

The accident was still a blur: the party afterwards, her first six-pack, the drunk wrestlers, the carpool, the lakeside, the wrong side of the road, the semi, the screams—

She had been the only one to survive. One killed, two critically injured. Including herself. A two-month stay in the hospital had leeched her muscle mass. The coach had come by to tell her she wouldn't be able to recover in time. She had protested; she had three months till the Olympics, she'd do physical therapy, she'd work hard—

Dom had brought the Fowl jet over the Atlantic wordlessly, the whole flight silent except for the muffed roar of the engine. He knew what she was going through, and she where his sympathies truly lay. He couldn't even understand that the Fowls were not for her.

Juliet found herself dusting a vase too hard; it rocked dangerously, and fell to the floor. She tried to catch it, and perhaps pre-hospital Juliet could have, but not the Juliet who had received a severe concussion and dozens of broken bones.

The shatter was muffled somewhat by the plush carpet, but the sound would still bring Angeline running with Dom—no, Dom would hobble feebly—and possibly Senior, if he wasn't busy volunteering for some damn charity or another. Junior wouldn't come. He wouldn't care.

She looked down on the broken vase. The delicate, blue-tinted porcelain lay all over the ground, the curves shadowing the crimson carpet.

Numb, she knelt down and fingered one of the pieces. The tiny head of a delicate, wispy dragon somehow remained in its entirety, fractures running like cobwebs through the moonlike porcelain. The fierce blue-black eyes accused her beneath bleu claire brows. You murdered me! Shame upon you and your family, shitake!

And now I'm the murderer of a talking porcelain vase, she mused, turning the piece over and over in her right hand. A three-thousand-year-old, million-dollar porcelain vase.

Juliet picked up the piece neighboring the dragon-head. It bore graceful wings painted with the shimmering sapphire dye, lacy blue against pearly white. The dragon had lost his wings. The irony was not lost to her.

There was a gasp as Angeline entered the study. Juliet did not need to turn around to see her; a gaudy mirror on the opposite wall revealed it all. The hand fluttering up to the cherubic mouth, brown eyes now Mediterranean-wide, elegantly curled and coifed chestnut hair Juliet had done only this morning, other hand, white-knuckled, clutching deep turquoise skirts…

"Juliet!" she finally managed. "How—how could you!"

Juliet looked down at the broken shards. "Oops."

The hand flickered down from Angeline's mouth, pointing shakily at the door. "Just get out! Go—go clean the piano or something. Just go!"

Juliet looked at Angeline, mind suddenly unable to work. "The piano doesn't need cleaning. Artemis did it himself a month ago—"

"Go!"

Juliet hadn't moved that fast since before the accident.

:i:

"What do you have to say for yourself?"

Artemis sighed ever-so-slightly, ever the dramatist. "I'm extremely sorry for inciting a revolt in a post-stamp country for my own betterment. I don't know what made me do it." His voice was tuned to that of a bored robot. He had, after all, said nearly the same thing a thousand times before. Father must like the sound.

Artemis Seniorlooked at him from beneath fine eyebrows. It took a blind person not to see the resemblance between them; both had pale, almost vampiric skin that burnt far too easily beneath the sun. Dull black hair was kept neatly in hand with identical haircuts; angular features brought to mind the agelessness of stereotypical Elves. Most striking were their eyes; four sapphires, the likes of which had never been seen before, worthy of any shah's bride, beyond the wildest dreams of the folks at Tiffany's. It was as if Angeline was not even in the bloodline. "I don't believe you, to be perfectly frank. I know the amount of planning it would take to do something like that."

Junior studied his perfectly manicured nails. No, his father did not know the amount of planning it took. He would never be able to pull off a thirty-minute, hundred-pound scheme that would reap more then a hundred-million pounds and keep them afloat in d'argent for quite a while, even when he had approved of that sort of thing. "Call it a moment of weakness then. However, the deed is done, and no amount of money shall make anyone sorry for the corporations involved. God knows how much of an annoyance Myishi's been on the stock market lately."

Senior glared at him; it was from his father that the younger took his infamous facial expressions. "Your actions are already affecting the global economy. Small, perhaps, but the flap of a butterfly's wings may cause a storm a world away."

"But a pebble can stem a flood. My 'actions' shall aid the global environment, as well as save several indigenous tribes from Americanization in the Amazon."

"Ah," Senior said, raising one finger into the air, "but two wrongs do not make a right, even if they involve such, ah, creative means."

"But what of crimes against both humanity and ecology?" Artemis countered. "They pay for their sins, and we are made greater. There was nothing illegal about my means. They were simply… distasteful."

"How noble of you," Senior murmured, settling deeper into his plush leather chair. "I suppose you think of yourself as some sort of contemporary Robin Hood?"

"You could say that, except I plan to be a rich Robin Hood."

They sat in silence for several long minutes, leaning back in their chairs, chins up arrogantly. Even their scowls were exactly alike. The blind idiot, distinctive lack of sight or no, would be too busy tallying up their likenesses to mark Juliet's entry.

"Er…" she started, then froze when two pairs of cold eyes swiveled towards her.

"Yes?" Artemis Junior demanded, causing Juliet to flinch. Timidness was the product of pain.

Senior shot a sharp glance across at Junior, which was returned with the boredom characteristic of any teenager. "What is it?"

Juliet blushed, twisting her scarred hands together. Junior had already seen the porcelain clutched in her fist, and guessed her words: "You broke the vase."

She looked at her feet to dodge the laser-like glares, but they never came. She heard the rustle of cloth, and then the muted padding of Armani loafers.

Perhaps a little history of why Capital Letters were unneeded to identify 'the vase' would help. Artemis Senior, shortly before his grandmother Selene Fowl passed away, received that very vase for his twelfth birthday. It had been a treasured heirloom ever since, valued more to them than all the paintings in the Louvre—sentimentality has its very own rules for inflation.

Fearing their reaction, Juliet decided to, indeed, clean the piano—despite the fact that it was in Artemis' room.

Artemis' room was something of a no-no to all those in Fowl Manor. The young savant liked his privacy, and his suite of rooms was more isolated than Alcatraz. That meant to no concerned parents breaking-and-entering, no holiday decorating, and absolutely no maids coming up the lonely flight of stairs to 'chat.'

It was a good thing Juliet never had too many qualms about breaking rules. Rules were only there so one thought before breaking them. Had Juliet not heard—and believed—that phrase, there would be some very unpleasant things going on in the world today. World War, to name one.

Not that the younger Butler knew any of this. As far as she was concerned, the stairs up to the third floor were far too long for her regenerating muscles.

Juliet scowled at each and every portrait once she gained the upper third-story corridor. It was a habit previous bad moods had cultured. For some odd reason or another, Fowls liked those awful, austere old paintings of overly powdered wigheads. She just figured that it was the sort of adoration the owner had for one of those damn rat-dogs.

Soon the door to Artemis' room was ahead. It seemed so… simple after the purposeful luxury of the rest of Fowl Manor. It wasn't even made of endangered trees or plated with an obscenely expensive metal. Oak, simple red oak.

Juliet took a deep breath, grasping the simple doorknob. Make that three. She had never been this far before. Artemis kept his room very, very much to himself since he was young, and the Senior Artemis approved of this—had approved of this. Angeline, after her husband's disappearance, certainly didn't have the mind to try and rid Artemis of his extremely secretive behavior.

She opened the door.

The first distinct thing that she saw was the glowing computer monitor, flickering slightly in a never-ending search. The rest of the room was cast in eerie florescent shadows, dull and gloomy as a clown in the gutter.

Juliet blinked, trying to let her eyes adjust to the perpetual gloom. What was he searching for? She distantly remembered the entire computer room searching for news of Artemis Senior's rescue, all in vain. What would he be searching for now?

She thought for a moment. The only thing he had left was that damn motto of his.

He must be doing something criminal.

Criminal meant interesting.

Intrigued, Juliet stepped forward with shaking legs. They weren't shaking from fear; far from it. It was from standing up for far too long.

SEARCH: fairies people gnommish dwarf lep haven atlantis tuatha dé denaan b'wa kell triad

Juliet blinked, one emerald-painted hand scratching her blonde stubble—she had lost her hair in the subsequent surgueries. Why was he searching for a bunch of stupid fairies on the net? All he'd ever get were fansites and cults.

Frowning, she turned from the pale glow of the monitor and let her adjusting night vision scan the rest of the room.

There were four walls, like any other chamber, and a door and a bedraped window. But, somehow, it was not a room, as if nothing had been truly living in it. Everything screamed this; the clean lines of the Spartan bed shoved into a corner, the lack of aesthetics, the cold, hard beige carpet, the off-white walls… The only thing that made it remotely human was the grand piano in front of the covered window. The scant light was dull on the ebony faces.

Clutching her cleaning rag tightly, she crossed the floor and looked closer at the piano. A thin film of dust had accumulated, making the already yellowed ivory keys the brown usually seen in the hair of dirty blondes.

The tips of her fingers touched the piano seat, and lifted them for inspection. No dust. Artemis must have sat there, staring at the piano but not playing.

The same fingers curled around the edge of the seat, lifting the lid to reveal battered pieces of music, from Chopin to Mozart, Grieg to Schumann.

They hesitated, then lifted out Chopsticks.

Angeline, long ago before her husband disappeared, had given her piano lessons. Nothing elaborate, nothing paid; just sitting down for an hour a day, teaching her the notes. After Angeline had become… bedridden, there had been no more lessons. Artemis had had the piano moved up to his room, and the rippling sounds of Mendelhossen had never been heard again.

Juliet sat down on the bench, and then placed the music on the stand. She didn't think she'd get caught—Artemis had had soundproof lining installed. All the same, she just wanted to play. God knows she had been doing enough harm to the Fowls lately.

She paused suddenly in mid down-stroke, letting the middle B snap up before a sound could be made. She hadn't opened the lid. Stupid, stupid…

Juliet picked herself up from the seat, noticing the distinct impressions her fingers had made in the dust on the keys, like little white ghosts in the dusty continuum. After fumbling with the catch she opened it. The dust mushroomed into a cloud as she propped the top open.

She looked across the bared strings, wondering briefly how such simple little things could make such magic. Arty would probably be able to give her an answer. He certainly had enough of them.

Curious, she leaned across the piano and pressed the nearest key, watching the corresponding string carefully.

CLANK

Juliet frowned and pressed the note—E?—again, watching the strong carefully. It seemed like something was tying it down, or something like that. But how would something get stuck in a piano?

Her frown deepened, and she ducked her head to look at the strings. The slight air movement caused dust to fly up in her face. As Juliet sneezed violently, the notes hummed slightly. There was a muffled clink, barely heard through her coughs.

When the dust had settled sufficiently, Juliet opened her eyes again. There was a glint beneath the strings, dulled somewhat by the new layer of dust. It looked like a chain, a gold chain…

Juliet slid a hand between two of the strings, reaching for the pale bullion. A fingertip brushed it, just barely, but not enough to pull it out.

She scowled at the far wall, straining her body against the side of the piano as she reached for the chain. She could almost get it—

Just as her fingers wrapped around it, her side brushed against the rod holding the lid up, sending it crashing down onto her back. There was a crack, a scream, and her limbs spasmed out before settling, limp and lifeless, against the sable wood.

In the corner, a fallen piece of porcelain glimmered, eyes brightening momentarily before fading back into a dull shine.

:i:

Holly liked the color blue. There wasn't anything special about its particular wavelength. Her wishy-washy, idealistic side thought that it might be because it was the color of the stereotypical sea and sky. Her normal, a-matter-of-fact part decided that this was because it was the least feminine of the colors.

At the moment, Holly had a scanty, Caribbean-blue blouse on with a little flare on the sleeves. She wouldn't normally wear this sort of thing—if Root or Foaly caught her wearing this, she would simply die of shame, which would not look good on her memorial plaque.

All the same, it was nice to indulge her feminine side every once in a while.

She leaned back against the bar counter, running a hand through her short auburn hair. On the dating scene. Again. She barely had had time for herself before, let alone for another of the preferably opposite gender.

Now, however, driven by the unexpected blessing of a week-long vacation, she had spontaneously decided to look for a date. Pathetic, she knew, but she had had the uncontrollable urge to say something to someone—anyone, really— who not involved in the LEP. Loneliness was not just for Mud Maids with obscenely long hair in big towers.

An elf sauntered through the flashing green lights, selecting a seat next to Holly. She hoped it wasn't coincidence.

"Wanna drink?" he asked, spinning on the barstool to face Holly.

She shrugged, pushing her existing drink onto the floor. Genuine crystal—it shattered. "Sure."

As the elf ordered up the special, Holly examined him. He had short green hair, probably white-blonde when not under the effect of night-club theatrics, and bright emerald eyes that could very well be natural. His skin was as verdant as his hair, giving the overall appearance of a giant Granny Smith apple inthe limelight.

"What's your name?" she asked casually, sipping the glittering peridot beverage. It tasted of Mud Men, but she didn't say anything. Mountain Dew, as they called it, was one of the more treasured creations from Up There.

The elf took a swig. Holly watched in mild fascination as the sparkling diamond facets—diamond was easy to make in commercial labs—refracted the drink into a mesmerizing light show. "What's yours?"

"Holly." She waited for him to say his, but he remained silent.

She decided to call him 'Lime'.

They sat in silence for several long moments, savoring their drink while the light was still green. Holly knew that the next color on the palette would be violet, and combined with the natural color of Lime, he would turn an unappetizing shade of pink-brown.

Lime inched closer to Holly. A smile touched her cherubic lips. This was game she hadn't played in twenty years. "New here?" he asked, turning absently in his chair. The lights turned his flashy, fighter-pilot-style jumpsuit into a violent shade of brown; most unappetizing.

"You could say that," she responded, raising an arm to brush back nonexistent hair from her brow (damn LEP regulations.)

He smiled, looking across the room at the dance floor. The People had recently discovered 'Disco.' "Busy job?"

She didn't need to answer that. Not because it went unsaid, but rather, the detached helmet earpiece spoke. Or rather, barked. "Short!"

Lime's magenta eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Holly Short?" he blurted out, glass jerking from his fuchsia lips. "The crazy girly captain?"

Holly grimaced at both voices. 'Crazy girly captain' had become her new media label, after the commonplace headline: "CRAZY GIRLY CAPTAIN DOES IT AGAIN".

"Yes?" she asked cautiously, ripping the rest of the headpiece from her pocket and jamming it into her ears. LEP regulations demanded that officers carry comm units at all times.

"Down here now," Root snapped over the comm. There was the sound of rushing footsteps.

Holly smiled apologetically at Lime, who was staring at her with mixed horror and fascination. "Gotta go," she told Lime, fluttering her eyelashes flirtaceously as she slid off the scintillated violet barstool.

Notice that Holly did not leave him her number.

:i:

Juliet awoke in a bed. A very hard bed.

She moaned, turning her head. She could hear the vertebrae in her neck grind together in protest as she did so, and she stopped. Extreme pain tends to do that.

Her eyes opened, blurred somewhat with sleep. A smooth, almost silky sheet was tucked around her chin, stretched almost taut to the edges of the narrow bed.

Artemis' bed.

Her first thought was something along the lines of, What the Hell happened?

The second was more similar to, What the Hell did Artemis do

It was not until the sixth until she thought, What the Hell did I do?

Juliet was, frankly, a stranger to strange beds. Dom made sure of that. She was equally a stranger to waking up in hard beds—Madame Ko was mercifully convinced that hard beds would cause back problems.

She took several deep breaths, forcing herself to relax. The last thing she remembered was grabbing on to that funny bit of gold. And then pain in her back. Put two and two together, and…

Juliet almost swore aloud, but stopped when she remembered that Artemis detested swearing. Since she was probably marked on his most updated version of the Hit List, it would not be good idea to annoy him any more. Besides, he was probably in the room right now—

She brought up her hands, rubbing her eyes clear and praying that there wasn't any mascara left on them.

Damn. Her hands came down again, more black than peach.

It's stupid I'm still doing this, she thought glumly, trying valiantly to get the black off with Artemis' blanket, The pain in her neck had stopped. After all the mess with wrestling I'm still doing it. Wearing all this.

She squinted, bringing the blanket up to rub her watering eyes. It probably only smeared the mascara further, but she didn't particularly care. She could see now, at least.

This can't be right…

Artemis was pacing.

She blinked twice, tearing a bit when more mascara made its way into her cornea. He was a bit blurry, granted, but definitely pacing. He had on a simple Oxford-style shirt, the collar flipped a bit on one side, and black dress pants that rustled as he walked. The ebony hair looked like he had been running his hands through it; slightly ruffled, almost cute.

It was eyes that Juliet found odd. She had never seen them like this before; they were glazed, as if with dryness or death. The ever-present lines on his forehead seemed all the more relevant when compared to the twilit depths, that empty, empty blue…

"Artemis?" she whispered, brushing aside the blankets. "You 'kay?"

He ignored her, or at the very least, did not notice. The fevered pacing continued, the room soundless except for the gentle rustle of his pants.

Juliet's hands clenched around the edge of the bed, and she slung her legs over. Her hot-pink toes wriggled on the hard carpet. "Artemis?" she asked again, a little louder.

His eyes were wide and unseeing, but his lips began to move. Soundless mutterings, whispered fears; Juliet fervently wished he had paid more attention to the lip-reading lessons Ko had given her. What words came from the lips of a savant, what marvels—

She got up out of the bed, limping slightly. He still didn't notice. The bloodless lips moved soundlessly.

Juliet cast her eyes around the room. The computer was still on, but the search was no longer running. There was only that repetitious screensaver that gave the feeling of light speed; small pixels of white soared infinitely beyond the center of the screen. On the far side of the room, beyond the shut piano, there was a long dark line on the wall.

Eyeing Artemis warily, she crossed the room. Her feet tingled from the floors rough texture. She ran her fingers along the line in the wall, wiggling them experimentally. It was a seam for a panel. No wonder the room seemed so uncluttered; this little boy kept his toys hidden.

The seam suddenly widened, and the panel fell forward onto Juliet. She nearly fell beneath the sudden weight, but she gritted her teeth and braced her legs, letting the panel fall in a more controlled fashion. She squealed as it almost decapitated ten pink piggies from her foot.

Juliet put the panel aside, careful of her aching feet, and peered into the blackness. Vague shapes began to appear in the gloom; a minute silver rifle, knots of colored wire, CD cases—

—a glint of gold. A gold medallion with a hole through the center.

:i:

This is version II of this chapter. More chapters will be edited as Holiday Break progresses. Older readers will note that I pulled, first the Colferesque introduction, then Argon's spiffy philosophical abstraction. Mesa didn't likey, and readers seemed put off by anything resembling Kant. So.

Thanks for reading! Constructive criticism is the best thing in the world to me – after a beta reader (Please? Pretty please?) This fandom has a distressing lack of editors...