Well, it turns out that the winning pairs in the voting are Raven/Lucius and Matthew/Guy, both tied with two votes, with Legault/Heath coming in second with a vote and a half, and Rath/Wil coming in third with one vote. So, every other couple here will pair off quickly and get it over with, and the couple favorites will take their time so you can either savor the sweetness or feel tormented by it. (evil grin)
In the beginning of this chapter, there is a lot of stuff about Rath's horse. Just a note, I know SQUAT about horses, and I have only ridden them like twice; at some fair when I was three years old, and during my trip through China, where I got to ride a Tibetan horse. So I'm sorry if the horse doesn't really work. I really need beta help for this. Riaki, are you still available?
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Chapter Twelve
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Rath walked quietly through the halls, his horse trotting silently behind him as if it too could sense the need for silence. For every little noise or creak he heard, he drew an arrow out of its quiver and fit it in his ready bow, paranoid to every last alert hair on his head, yet hesitant to shoot in case it was anyone he knew. His horse occasionally nudged him in the back, as if it were not used to not being ridden during battle, but a pat on the head from its master always eased it to calm back down.
At a certain hallway, Rath paused and stopped moving, and his hose stopped with him. The master and the beast stood, frozen, for what seemed like a long time, before an arrow was fitted into Rath's bow at the speed of sound. He pointed the arrow toward the general direction that he heard the breathing, and looked around. The light sound seemed to be coming from a suit of armor, and he loosened up. He was just being too paranoid, he told himself, and continued on his way. A suit of armor doesn't breathe.
Just a moment after he had assured himself of this, the suit of armor sneezed. Before his mind had time to figure out what had happened, Rath had redrawn the arrow, fitted it in the bow, and shot it. The arrow hit the space on the wall about a millimeter away from the head of the suit of armor, and he could hear a voice inside. "Oh, shoot," it swore. Then, as an afterthought, added, "Or don't shoot. Please don't shoot! I'll come back peacefully, just don't shoot!"
Rath's heart pumped two times faster. That voice was very, very familiar, and only one person in his recognition would be able to start a rant from two short, careless, almost meaningless words.
"Wil! What are you doing in there?"
The suit of armor twitched, then its hand moved up and lifted the visor up, revealing a face that indeed did belong to Wil. "R- Rath? It was you? Why did you shoot me? Oh, no, did I hide the wrong way? Ooh, I should have known that my allies wouldn't be able to know it was me, and I should have known that I would be in danger if I was unarmed, but what would be the point of being armed if it were someone like you mistaking me for an enemy? I wouldn't be able to attack my friends! Maybe that's why I didn't arm myself and all that, that would explain why- "
"Quiet, before you give me a headache," Rath grumbled, although his arms had grabbed the surprised and confused archer in a tight hug, betraying his mask of grumpiness.
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MintLaughing and smiling. I liked to laugh and smile because it made other people laugh and smile. I smiled even when I felt terrible, because it made other people feel better, and if other people feel better then I feel better. It is very complicated and repetitive, but that is the way my mind works most of the time.
Rade is different. He changes the rules. Hardly every expressing emotion- I guess it is the curse of bearing the burden of a Fell Contract. Rade used to have such shadowed eyes, so much uncaring aura being emitted. . . I felt bad for him, believe it or not. The poor thing.
How did I first meet him? It is odd, isn't it? That a bishop such as myself would know an assassin. Oddly, he had come to the temple to pray one day. He stood out like a sore thumb, being the darkness within the light, and everyone else in the temple drew away from him. He acted like he didn't care, just strode boldly yet quietly to the statue of St. Elimine. He drew out a pile of incense sticks from his cloak and lit three of them. Nobody had ever lit incense sticks before in our temple, so I didn't know what he was doing. Naturally, I panicked.
"Excuse me, sir. . . what are you burning in the face of Her Grace?"
He looked up at me from where he was kneeling, and for moments he did not say a word.
". . ."
Embarrassed, I rephrased my question. "Erm, I mean, I have never seen incense sticks burnt at our temple, I am not sure what you are trying to do. . ."
He thought for several more moments before reaching a hand up and pulling me down, but gently. . . so gently. . . "Come," he had said, handing me one of the sticks. "The spirits enjoy the smell of incense. I am burning them for respect." Then he leaned closer to me, so that he was crouching behind me, and put the other two sticks in my hands. Then he closed my hands for me, wrapping his hands around mine, and he taught me to pray with incense, to show the spirits that they were appreciated.
Later, I followed him out of the temple. I was a little afraid that he would be annoyed with me, because people like him were not known for tolerance, but when he heard my footsteps he stopped and waited patiently for me to catch up. I clutched my favorite staves- Heal and Physic. "Sir, I was wondering. . . what is an assassin like you praying for at our temple?"
". . . You are a curious one." He put a hand in my hair. ". . . you look like you're faithful, too."
I nodded. "Yes. . . I am faithful to those I care for."
"Do you care for me, the lowly assassin?" He looked toward the ground, seeming suddenly ashamed of his own uniform. "I. . . knew your kind respected everyone, but I heard that you looked down on killers like me. . ."
My smile faltered a little. "Many people at our temple despise assassins, that is true, but I do not think less of you at all." I bowed at him politely. "I treat all of St. Elimine's children with equal respect."
We stood there staring at each other for the longest time, and suddenly I blurted it out. "Um, sir. . . may I have your name?"
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"His name is Rade," smiled Cylt gently to a terrified-looking Wil and an angry and mistrust-looking Rath. "As for the me, my name is Cylt. I do happen to know that Wil here is already acquainted with me."
"Why are you telling us this?" asked Wil. Just after Rath had let him go, embarrassed and apologizing, the myrmidon had come in and explained to them the situation, and given them names to most of the people in the castle.
At the archer's question, Cylt's head drooped down to study his shoes. "Well, I. . . I want to be as much of a help to you as I can. I want to help you escape." Peeking up at the two bow-wielding warriors through dark strands of hair, the myrmidon continued. "It's. . . it's the least I can do. I apologize for my earlier behavior, I suppose I got carried away. . ."
Blinking, he suddenly seemed to realize that his voice was becoming softer, so he snapped his head back up. "So! As I was saying. . . there is also one more person here, but I don't know much about her. . . the only people who have seen her are Rade and Mint, if I remember correctly. We know her only as 'Mistress,' and anything that she needs to tell us she does so through Rade." Cylt sighed at his own uselessness. "As I do not know anything about her, down to whether she can actually fight or not, I will just pray that you will not meet her. Thankfully, chances of even seeing her are unlikely, as she never leaves her part of the Fort."
At this point, Cylt had taken out a piece of paper and had placed it on the floor between the two other men and himself. "Here is a map of our Fort." Flipping a quill out of his sleeve, he scratched on the paper, but nothing happened.
"Darn, must be out of ink again. . ."
Without hesitation, he stabbed the quill point into his own arm and proceeded to write on the map in blood, earning funny looks from both Wil and Rath.
"Okay, as of now this should be Mistress's location. . ." while Cylt was in the middle of drawing a bloody 'X' in a room in a part of the Fort that hadn't been explored yet, Wil sneezed.
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"Serra! Stop it! If it helps any, I'm sorry."
If Erk's apologies helped calm down the pink-haired healer any, it didn't show. She continued running hall after hall after hall, turning whenever she could to try to lose her pursuer. But Erk was determined, and continued running as fast as he could. Which, fortunately for the magic-user, was faster than Serra.
Eventually she had to sit down, exhausted and out of breath, and Erk grabbed onto her arm before she fell. "What has gotten into you?" he demanded, showing a tad more concern then he had meant. "You're not usually this evasive! Even when you were angry, you always came back ready to order people around as if nothing had bothered you at all!"
Serra weakly jerked her arm from his grasp with her remaining strength. "And how would you know, you jerk?"
Erk sighed. "Serra, of course I would know. I've been escorting all over Elibe for a year now. How wouldn't I know?"
Serra shot him a blank look, all the anger evaporating into confusion. "What are you talking about?"
Erk stopped moving, becoming confused as well. "What do you mean, what am I talking about?"
"You know, about the escorting me around thing. I don't know you."
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Mint was hidden inside another painting hole that Page had dug in, surveying the drama below from a near-ceiling position. Varin gave him a Look. "Why did you heal Lady Lyndis? Rade was only seconds- no, milliseconds away- from accomplishing our goal, and you stopped him! Why?"
Mint started sweating, though he tried hard to appear unfazed. "I think this was the Physic staff that someone tampered with earlier." He held up the said staff up to the light, staring intently at its discolored aura. "Earlier, while I was attempting to heal up that pink-haired healer, I believe it caused her a tiny slip of memory." He looked over at Varin with a sad look on his face. "Now she's forgotten the person she cares about the most."
Varin's shocked expression only stayed for an almost non-existent amount of time before he recovered himself. "What does that have to do with why you befouled our mission?"
"Plenty," Mint replied. "Later, as I was attempting to secretly assist Quill in regaining his memory, I believe this staff conjured up a giant spider instead, causing him to fight with his dark energy and lose even more of his already diminishing memory. Now he's lost somewhere, and even his twin sister Page, who tails him all the time, doesn't know where he is!" Mint tried not to move his arms around too much while he was holding the berserk-ed staff, in case it did something else terrible, but was failing. "A slight movement earlier? All of a sudden, Point's leg goes numb and he is too busy trying to return it to normal that he forgot to feed our guests! And now, it's even stopped our mission; don't you see what I'm trying to say here? I wasn't me, it was this staff!"
Varin still did not seem to believe what Mint was telling him. "Mint, right now you're telling me you've got an evil Physic staff. Do you know how insane that sounds?"
"It's not insane!" Mint fumed, and Varin reeled back; Mint was a very patient person, and it was rare to see him get mad. Ever. He was waving the staff furiously around now, forgetting its dangerous properties. "I just need to find a way to fix it before something else- "
He was interrupted by a huge eruption of almost blinding light from the staff; suddenly, Peti (Varin's black bird) squawked loudly and flew out of the painting they were hiding in. Flying in confused circles, it fluttered crazily around, dropping feathers and attracting a lot of attention to the guests below.
Mint sighed and glared at his wretched staff; Varin slapped himself in the face. "Peti. . ."
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The bird startled Rade, but he thought fast and changed tactics at the speed of light. "Yo'e a'i no'ah!" He hissed, using the code language that was prepared just in case this happened. So as the guests were too busy staring at him like he'd suddenly gone mad, the kidnapper team understood the message: In sudden risk do the siblings attack!
Suddenly, Page appeared seemingly out of nowhere, though the swinging kitchen doors gave away her previous location, and Point came out from another door. Both started attacking as many guests as they could in a short amount of time, but they were hideously outnumbered. Of course, Rade was helping, but he was now surrounded by the Hector, Lyn, and Eliwood and was not having an easy time.
"Stupid Quill! Where the heck are you when we need you!" Page yelled angrily, as she tried as hard as she could to stab a surprisingly evasive Canas. From behind her, Pent shot an Elfire spell and caused considerable damage. The pendant around her head fell off.
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At some other point in the castle, Matthew was running down one of many hallways, getting more annoyed then ever because he had yet to meet any sign of familiar life, when he spotted the same purple-haired boy that Guy had run into earlier. Groaning, he ran up to him. ". . . You there. Boy."
The boy turned around. He wore a huge smile on his face. "Can I help y-"
The smile faded, and he suddenly flinched. Matthew raised an eyebrow, and was about to ask the kid what his problem was when the boy's eyes glazed over. "My sister! They've hurt my sister! Where is her pendant?"
Matthew stared. What a crackpot. ". . . I'll ask someone else then. . ." He started to leave, but the boy stopped him.
"Wait, if you're looking for people, I saw this petite-sized man come by earlier. He looked sort of weird; green hair and a braid. . . Do you know him?"
Matthew froze. ". . . What did you say? Where did he go!"
Blinking, the boy took this to mean that this taller man was familiar with Green-Braid. "I directed him to the fountain room. I can't remember why he wanted to go there, though. . ." He pointed out the directions to Matthew.
". . . Thanks, you've been the only help I've had so far. . ." Matthew dashed off to the room, ignoring the boy's yell of "you're welcome!" and reached the door, panting.
He tried the doorknob, but it was locked. That's odd, why would it be locked? He took out one of this lockpicks and easily picked the lock. He slammed the door open, his heart pounding in his ears, and almost yelled. "Guy? Guy? Are you here?"
A large splashing sound came from the huge fountain in the middle of the room; then, a croak. When Matthew walked closer to the fountain, a familiar head poked out from behind the large statue in the middle of the fountain, bright red. "M-M-Matthew. . .!"
Matthew chose to ignore the shock and embarrassment that was layered in Guy's voice. "Guy! I looked everywhere for you, what are you doing in a locked room? I had to ask directions to find you and. . . Guy? GUY?"
The poor swordmaster had pitched over, blood spurting from his nose, and Matthew realized, with great embarrassment, why the doors were locked. Frantically, he searched the room for a large piece of cloth and picked up the large towel on the floor, trying as modestly as he could not to look near the fountain.
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As Scourge's sleepy mind came back to the living realm, he felt a hand on his throat. He was wondering why there was a hand on his throat when the hand started applying pressure, and he started coughing from where the pressure was, although not choking or hurting him, tickling his windpipe. The hand withdrew immediately, and a whispered apology came shortly afterwards.
Scourge opened his eyes, then shut them again from the sudden light. A negative of a picture was burned into his eyelids, and he translated it. ". . . Cylt. . .?" He croaked, his eyes still squinted shut.
"Sorry about that, I'll shut the windows." The assassin could see the red of his eyelids turn blacker, and he cautiously opened them again. It was much darker, and therefore much easier for his eyes to focus. Cylt was kneeling over him, a concerned look on his face. "Did the vulnerary help?"
Scourge smelled the herb, and a certain medical freshness was burning from his stomach and throat. "That's what you were doing? Applying vulnerary?"
"For your upset stomach," Cylt explained. "And to clean up the bile in your throat. I'm so used to suffocating people, I pressed on all the wrong parts. I'm sorry."
Scourge sat up from what turned out to be his bed, and looked around. "Did you bring me up here?"
His myrmidon friend twitched softly, but he noticed. "No? Then who could have brought me here?"
"Two of the prisoners that I set free, whom are now soiling my bed, from the sounds of it," Cylt grumbled moodily.
Scourge ignored the second half of the sentence. Unneeded information. "You. . . set them free. . .?"
A blush. "W-well, I figured th- that you would've done it sooner or l-later, so I just. . . saved you the bother."
"A sadistic torturer like YOU saved the prisoners?" Scourge repeated, a tint of disbelief and awe in his voice.
"D- Don't get all worked up over it! I only did it f- f- " The myrmidon suddenly seemed to have trouble talking. "F- for you."
Disbelief. Utter disbelief. "And here I thought you only went after me because my being found unconscious and bleeding on a beach turned you on." Cylt whined. "Well, are they okay? What are the prisoners doing right now?"
His friend sobered again. "I told you already, the two that brought you up here are- "
"I don't want you to repeat what those two are doing, I want to know what the other ones are doing," Scourge interrupted quickly.
Cylt shrugged. "I told them various places they could effectively hide. I didn't follow any of them, so I don't know where they are or what they're doing, but I heard that a group from our guests have set out to go find the prisoners, so I think they'll be okay. I met two earlier, in the West Wing. They have a labeled map now, so they know the places to go, and if they run across army-mates they can help out."
"Thank Elimine." Scourge sighed in relief. Then his face flashed with determination. "Come on, Cylt. We have to stop this."
Cylt blinked. "What? How?"
The pacifist assassin walked over to his desk and picked up a half-finished letter off of it. "Mistress has been ignoring my letters of complaint. I think it's about time I took it in my own hands to stop her." Walking over to the foot of his bed, Scourge opened a trunk and started taking out knife sets.
"Scourge, but- "
"I'll die trying if I have to," Scourge added, shooting Cylt a sad look. It was obvious that he thought his friend disagreed with him.
"No, I was going to say- "
"Don't try to stop me!" He raised a dagger. "I will be willing to hurt a masochist, Cylt."
Cylt stared at the blade for a second, considering its inviting edge, but shook his head to clear it. "No, you're misunderstanding me, Scourge! Of course I'll help you! It's just. . ." He cocked his head to one side. "Do you even know how to find Mistress? Do you even know how to get into her room?"
Scourge flushed. "Um. . . well, not really."
"My exact point. Let's go ask around first."
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Jaffar and Nino bumped into Raven and Lucius outside the dining room door. Lucius looked glad to see that Nino had been saved quickly, and Nino looked equally relieved. Jaffar got right down to business.
"Why are you just standing outside? Shouldn't we go back in?"
Raven shot Jaffar a short sideways glace before turning his eyes to the door. "We were afraid that a fight would break loose if we reentered the dining room. So we're keeping watch."
Nino pressed her ear against the door. "Sounds like there's already a huge fight in there if you ask me."
Raven looked down at the little girl, then looked to Lucius. The monk seemed to agree with the little girl. "I can hear metal on metal, and there are a lot of panicked yells. . . magic aura is heavy everywhere."
Enraged with himself for having been useless for so long, Raven growled and pushed the door open, sword drawn. Lucius trailed behind him, and although Raven shot a concerned and worried look over to his defense-less but resistance-laden angel, he made no move to stop him and ran to aid Eliwood, closely followed by Lucius.
Jaffar ran in as well, but kept Nino hidden in his cloak. "There are many of us and only three enemies," he explained to a confused Nino as he climbed up the wall. "You will be safer if we stay out of the fight." He ran across a shattered Mona Lisa painting and, remembering that Nino had been hiding behind a portrait, opened up the painting like a door to reveal a secret passageway. He crawled inside and shut the 'door', peering at the battle below through the tears in the painting.
The assassin noticed a black bird fly to a painting across the room and peck beside it several times. As he squinted, he could see a hand come out of the painting, and the bird jumped on it. He raised an eyebrow.
Interesting.
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I can't come up with anything more. I'm seriously starting to think that nothing's happening in this story, but I'm honored that people still think it's good enough for reading. I will have to blush and tell Baby Lupe to please don't beg, you've gotten your point across. And, well, to the readers who thought the characters were being OOC, thank you for telling me, and I will try to make them a lot more in character.
If. . . if, by some odd reason, Rianne is reading this, I want to give a heads-up beforehand: I'm going to use you near the end of the story. If you have any objections to this, email me and beat the living crap out of me so that I know you care, and I won't write you in. Okay? And to people who are more likely to read this. . . R Amythest, a.k.a. Riaki, I will probably use you too, and I'll probably use Miseri. So, same with you two, if you have objections (or recommendations; MODIIIIROOOO) please tell me.
For a cheap plug, (blush) I got a DeviantArt account over the 7 months that I haven't updated this story. I'll add the url to my bio eventually (after I've been reminded a million times maybe), but my screen name there is also Scarabsi so you shouldn't have trouble getting to it if you know how DeviantArt urls work.
With many thanks to Everyone. I'll too tired out from writing to write down all your names, sorry. . .
Page whacks me on the head. "Stupid idiot."
Ha, ha. . . review. I hope. Please forgive me.