This is the sequel to my earlier work, "Mars Fire Ignite". If you
haven't read that one, you probably should. Some parts of this come
from my first work.
Also, if you are wondering where this fits in in the Sailor Moon
timeline, don't. It doesn't fit anywhere in that universe. The Inner
Scouts are around 17 years old right now, some two to three years
after "Mars Fire Ignite".
Disclaimer-wise, Sailor Moon and her friends are the property of Naoko
Takeuchi, and they're copyrighted by her, and to a lesser extent, DiC
(those manglers!). Also, there is a good bit of Forgotten Realms
flavor in here, and they belong to TSR (or Wizards of the Coast,
depending on how you look at it). Most of the other things spawned
from my own imagination, so I'd like credit for such. Enjoy!
Comments, criticisms, compliments to schoudh@eos.ncsu.edu
-------------------------------------
Quest for the Silver Imperium Crystal
by Soumitra Choudhury
Chapter 1: Falling Stars
-------------------------------------
Chaszmyr woke to a shrieking sound that got louder as it
neared. Outside the quaint inn that his friends and him had stayed the
night in, something streaked from the sky, akin to a falling silver
star. As he witnessed in wonder, the object fell with a crash in the
hills several miles away, north of the small village.
'Hmm,' he thought, 'that looks interesting. Maybe we should
take a look.' Before he had completed the muse, he had wrapped his
cloak about his slender form, strapped on his weapon belt, and focused
his keen dark elven instincts to the task ahead. With all the noise of
a faint whisper, Chaszmyr padded over to the room's wooden door and
silently exited.
It was with little surprise that he found his lovely partner,
Xune, already waiting for him in the hallway, bedecked in her gleaming
chain mail, a dark cloak, and a magnificent bastard sword strapped to
her back, the counterweight gemstone on its hilt glowing a faint
silver. She threw an endearing smile his way and whispered, "Shall we
be off?"
Wondering to himself how he had managed to fall in love with
this perfect female, Chaszmyr took the lead down the stairs, through
the taproom, and out into the cool, crisp night, turning north in the
direction of the fallen star.
With complete silence, the duo skirted past the guard patrol
that scouted the woods for danger, and traversed their way through the
forest, fully sure of each step. Their elven vision picking away the
heat patterns of their surroundings, it was a simple matter to travel
in a darkened forest at night without the worry of tripping over one's
toes.
An hour later, they crested a hill, and found the large crater
that marked the fallen item's destination. At the bottom of the
crater, a large gemstone illuminated the earth with a pearl white
light.
"How very interesting?" Xune whispered in wonder.
"Is it dangerous?" inquired her partner.
She didn't answer, but closed her eyes instead, murmuring what
sounded like a request. Upon her brow, the silver and diamond circlet
she wore glittered unnaturally. "It's something magical, but I don't
think it's evil." Before Chaszmyr could stop her, Xune leaped down the
crater slope and stood before the gem.
"Do you think it's wise to touch it?" he asked a moment later
when he had caught up to her.
She flashed him an impish grin. "There's pretty much one way
to find out," and she reached down to place a finger on it.
The gem pulsed once, and Xune stiffened, as a barrage of
images bombarded her mind...
... a delicately beautiful kingdom of crystal, with a
blue-green planet hovering in the night sky like a moon...
... a young human woman with silken blonde hair put up in the
most interesting hairstyle Xune had ever seen: ponytails reaching to
her calves, sprouting from two balls of hair on her head...
... a group of human teenage girls wearing daring outfits, all
similar but for color, each flinging magical powers: fire, ice,
lightning, earth, water, light, and time...
... an army of monstrous creatures descending upon the crystal
kingdom, flames of destruction arcing into the sky...
... and then, Xune took her finger away, a mixture of dread
and peace mingling in her mind.
"Are you alright? You look a bit shaken," Chaszmyr said,
placing a comforting hand on her shoulder.
Shaking her head a bit to clear out the confusion, Xune picked
up the cool multi-faceted gem. It was clearly bigger than most, almost
the size of her fist. This time, there was no barrage of images. "No,
it's not dangerous. It sent me a bunch of pictures, though, of places
and people I've never seen before." She held it up for him to try.
Implicitly trusting her, Chaszmyr touched the crystal, and
reeled slightly at the multitude of things he saw. When it was over,
he blinked, and touched it again, albeit hesitantly. Nothing
happened. He raised an eyebrow. "Well, what do we do with it?"
Xune shrugged. "Take it with us? It won't do any good lying
out here, and maybe Eilistraee will grant me insight on its workings."
"And perhaps Szaravel can help too."
Xune frowned at the mention of their adopted
daughter-turn-sorceress. "Szaravel's too young to know much about
researching items of power," she muttered in a neutral tone.
Feeling that he had accidentally trod upon troubled grounds,
Chaszmyr let the matter go. He knew Xune still wasn't comfortable of
Szaravel's chosen profession, especially since Xune didn't trust
Szaravel's mentor, the witch Zildra. Mentally sighing, he replied
instead, "We should be heading back. It's a long way back to
Shadowdale, and I haven't slept much."
Pocketing the gemstone in a belt pouch, Xune decided to take
the lead this time.
*****
As it stood, the couple could not discover the secret to the
magical stone, nor would Xune agree to take it to Szaravel to be
investigated magically. Xune vowed not to take a step near the witch's
cavernous home deep in the Elven Woods.
And so, they kept it stashed away in the treasure vault of
their home, an extra-dimensional room created for Xune by a wizard
decades ago. And their it lay, forgotten, for several months.
*****
Chaszmyr was pleasantly tired. The daily patrol he forced
himself to make had been invigorating, and curiously interesting. In
the mysterious woods that had once flourished with the surface elves
he was so unfamiliar with, he had witnessed a number of odd
occurrences.
At one point, a flock of birds took flight, several of them
blinking in and out of visibility. A tree had carried on a merry
conversation with him about the social conditions of the Spiderhaunt
Woods, a forest some thirty to forty miles northeast of the Elven
Woods. One of his scimitars, the diamond-bladed Lyonesse, had
flickered between bursts of light, occasionally blinding him
momentarily. Normally, Lyonesse didn't glow until the onset of night,
and then it would fade away as dawn arose. It was as if Nature had
gone awry.
It wasn't until he entered Xune's Grove that he became truly
worried. Breaking into a run, Chaszmyr sprinted for his stone home, a
dwarven-crafted structure that had been enspelled to be protected from
all types of flame.
It was shifting to random colors, something it had never done
before.
Not only that, a faint humming sound was emanating from it,
along with a piercing shaft of white light that shot up the chimney to
the heavens, something else that had never happened before.
Nearby, he sensed more than saw the weeping figure in the
beautifully tended grove. Turning, he caught Xune crying softly on the
edge of the fountain, a fountain that usually spouted a small geyser
of crystal clear water, but now lay dry as dead bone.
Rushing over, fearing the worst, he cried, "What is it?"
What's wrong?"
Xune raised her tear stained face to her lover, and through
repeated sobs, she mumbled, "She's gone. I can't feel her anymore."
Then she renewed her crying with greater strength.
"Who? Szaravel? She's here?"
She shook her head. "I... I don't feel Eilistraee."
A moment of stunned silence ran through the grove. Chaszmyr
gently took Xune in his arms and hugged her close, stroking her
shining hair soothingly. 'The Goddess? Gone? What's going on?' he
thought to himself, the tingle of fear crawling through him.
Hundreds of feet away, his home continued to shift in a myriad
of colors, humming and emitting that white light.
*****
Three months, and still nothing.
On the good side, no attacks had hampered them in that time.
On the bad side, they still couldn't find the Silver Imperium
Crystal.
Ami woke up bleary-eyed. It had been a long night again,
reprogramming her data computer to search for other parameters on the
Crystal. Every other set she had used had been for naught, and she was
starting to run out of ideas.
She had no doubt that the Crystal had survived destruction,
for when she had first scanned for it, she had found the residual
trail it had left in its wake. Horrifyingly, though, the trail had led
out beyond the solar system, and past that, the computer couldn't
track it anymore. It boggled her mind that it had been able to search
even that far.
Finding ways to boost the already considerable power of the
computer had come up blank, but she tried nonetheless. Without the
Crystal, many things would go wrong in the future.
Quite possibly, there would be no future.
Scrapping away the quilt, Ami slipped on her slippers and
stumbled into the shower, hoping a good bathe would rejuvenate her
depleting mood.
She came out, a good fifteen minutes later, a towel wrapped
around her body, one about her head, and a toothbrush jutting from her
mouth. When she returned to her room to decide what to wear, Ami
noticed her alarm clock had gone off. 'Funny, I thought I had turned
it off.' She hit the alarm reset, but it wouldn't stop. 'Wait a
minute! That's not the alarm clock!'
Ami twirled around, her towel loosening slightly, the one on
her head slipping off. Upon her tidy study desk, amidst clean stacks
of calculations, her small Mercurian computer beeped jovially, its
display screen flashing to an unknown beat.
A jolt of movement brought her to the computer (and left her
towel behind her), and what she saw widened her eyes to saucers,
dropped her mouth to her knees, and vaporized her imminent depression
in a ray of hope and wonder.
*****
"IT'S HOW FAR AWAY?!?" Mina exclaimed, astonished at Ami's
proclamation.
The blue-haired girl sighed, and pulled out a piece of
paper. She had foreseen this confusion, the same that was written on
Serena's, Lita's, Haruka's, Reenie's, Diana's and Hotaru's faces. The
rest seemed to understand the magnitude of distances.
"Well, it's like this," Ami began in a tone reminiscent of a
patient teacher, "Here's Earth." She drew a minute circle in the
bottom left hand corner of the paper. "Here is the origin of the
Silver Imperium Crystal's signal." She drew another circle in the
opposite corner of the paper. "And the distance between the two is-"
She connected the two circles with a straight line and wrote above it,
in great bold letters and numbers: 70,000 LIGHT YEARS. Smirking in a
rare display of dry wit, she added, "Any questions?"
"How are we going to get it?" asked Michiru, waving away a
curly lock of turquoise hair. "That's quite a distance, even for a
Sailor Teleport."
Ami nodded. "It is a great distance, and I'm not too sure we
could make it without aid. The energy we would need is fantastically
huge." She shrugged noncommittally. "Other than that, though, there is
no reason it shouldn't work. I have the coordinates of the signal, and
we already know that the computer can help direct our Teleport."
"But we don't have a power source that big. The Crystal was
it," argued Haruka. "Even then, we don't know anything about the place
it landed on."
"Oh, um, that's not entirely true," Ami replied. "The signal
has been sending complete data of the planet's conditions. Apparently,
the planet is not too different from Earth. The only really difference
I could discover it that there is a higher concentration of magic in
existence."
Rei's, Luna's and Artemis' ears perked up. "The world has
magic?" asked the shrine maiden, a hint of interest creeping into her
tone.
Ami nodded.
"Well then, we need to summon up a power source that can get
us over their," Serena said.
Rei stood up with something akin to weary resignation. "I can
give us the power we need, but for a distance that great, I won't be
able to support more than... say, five of us."
Ami gave her a ghost of a smile,already having guessed Rei
would be the power they sought. Serena seemed mildly distraught at the
number of people who could come with her. Haruka looked positively
furious. The rest just looked at her, some blankly, some blandly, one
mysteriously.
"Well then, I guess that means the Inner Scouts will be
going," Mina said cheerfully.
Haruka whirled on the blonde. "What do you mean, the Inner
Scouts? What are we going to do while you're gone? And what if you
don't come back? The Outer Scouts should be the ones to go." She
leveled Rei with a cold glare. "It's mighty convenient that you can
only take five people. How do you know for sure?" The sarcasm dripped
like venom.
Rei's temper flared to match that of the older scout. "I'm not
required to justify myself to you, Haruka, but if you think I can do
more, I hope you'll give me the courtesy of dredging up my atoms from
across the universe when I burnout from exhaustion, not to mention the
princess' and anyone else who is with me!"
The two stared many daggers into each other before Serena
could step forward and separate them. "Stop this, both of you! I
won't have you fighting over who gets to go with us." She turned to
Rei. "Which of us will HAVE to go?"
"Well, you because of the Crystal, Ami because she has the
computer, and me because I'll be providing the power." As she sat back
down, she threw out, "I can only power five because that's the number
I'm most used to. I already know the nuances of the Inner Scouts, so
it would be most helpful if Mina and Lita were the last two."
Haruka growled softly, but Serena held up one hand. "No
Haruka, she's right. There's no point in splitting up the Inner
Scouts. We work well together, better than the two groups combined."
She didn't mean it to be accusatory, but Michiru and Hotaru flinched
nonetheless. "As to what you're going to do, you're going to protect
Earth, and my daughter."
Reenie opened her mouth to argue, but, in a rare moment of
maturity, she closed it and resigned herself to the
predicament. Hotaru gripped her hand in her own.
"She is correct, Haruka," came the voice of Setsuna, strangely
misplaced in the discussion. The Guardian of Time wasn't prone to very
many words. "We'll need to keep a watch out for anyone or anything
that might decide to take advantage of the princess' absence, or, for
that matter, Rei's." She pointedly fixed an unreadable stare upon the
sorceress.
Serena thanked Setsuna for her input, but the older woman
waved it aside. "Make no mistake, Serena. I am not pleased at this
turn of events. I would be much happier if you stayed here and let
others retrieve the Crystal, but I know you well enough to realize the
futility of that."
Haruka backed down with much disgust; she knew when to quit.
"So, when do we leave?" Lita asked, somewhat eagerly. The tall
brunette was a little tired of the boredom since Nym's attack, and
this sounded like just the kind of excitement she needed. 'Maybe I can
find a new recipe on this world.'
Ami coughed slightly. "Um, what are we going to tell out
parents?"
This got a few worried glances, mainly from the Inner
Scouts. Haruka looked a bit too smug.
After a moment of thinking, Rei replied, "Well, I could, um,
suggest to them that we're, uh, going on vacation." She avoided many
gazes with extreme embarrassment.
"Will it hurt?" Mina inquired.
"Of course not! What kind of stupid question is that!?!" the
sorceress yelled indignantly. The girls smirked at her.
Serena nodded. "Then Rei will 'suggest' to our parents that
we're on vacation. I will expect the Outer Scouts to cover us while
we're gone.
Michiru smiled reassuringly, playfully nudging Haruka, who
grumbled in irritation.
The princess grew grim. "Then we leave in two days."
*****
Two weeks had passed by since the so-called Time of Troubles
had ended, and Chaszmyr still gave praise for it. It had been a
turbulent time for him. He patted his diamond scimitar, Lyonesse,
fondly, in remembrance.
His fine white brows furrowed slightly. He didn't like that he
had lost the glowing gemstone, though Xune assured him it wasn't his
fault. Who knew the crystal would fire that shaft of light into the
sky, leading every brigand and horror to their doorstep?
They had spent weeks battling thieves and creatures who
mysteriously stumbled upon their secluded home in the woods. Ghosts
moaned that the humming disturbed their rest. Several bands of orcs
and goblins screeched and hissed that 'Drow no need pretty bright
rock!' They even engaged a raiding band from the Cult of the Dragon,
hoping to retrieve the treasure for their prized dracoliches. By the
Abyss, even a dracolich had joined in the fray!
In the end, a crude gang of drunken thieves had caught them
just after the devastating battle with the dead dragon. Holding Xune
prisoner, they had demanded safe passage and the crystal gem for her
return. When he had granted them, the one holding her prisoner had
stabbed her in the throat and ran, the whole group scattering.
Luckily, Chaszmyr had used the last of the healing potions in
their home upon his beloved, saving her life. Then, it had been a
simple matter of tracking each and every one of the dogs down and
showing them the true meaning of Pain.
Every dog, except for the one with the crystal.
Chaszmyr shook himself out of his reverie. Xune had been
saved, and that is all that mattered, he kept telling himself, but the
simmering anger continued to rankle in him.
In the kitchen, Xune sang a melodic hymn to her returned
goddess.
Sighing to himself, he returned his attention to cleaning his
other scimitar, Azariel. With a soft oil cloth, Chaszmyr smoothly ran
it along the blade, a task that calmed him deeply. He felt the tension
leave his body, like a receding tide.
Yes, they had survived the Time of Troubles, a time when magic
had gone awry all over the land, a time when the gods had walked the
land.
A time when Gods had died.
"You're brooding again, Uncle Chaz," came a voice from his
left, surprising him into leaping out of his chair and holding the
elven blade to the throat of the intruder.
Returning his glare with eyes twinkling in mirth was a pretty,
young drow girl, to all appearances no older than 15, though her real
age closed upon the late thirties. An impish grin, a magnificent
velvet grey robe chased with gold runes around the hem, and a wondrous
dragon-head staff - Chaszmyr dropped the scimitar back into its sheath
and grabbed her in a fond embrace. "One of these days you're going to
get it, Szaravel," he murmured into her ear.
The young drow looked up at him. "And one of these days, I'm
going to turn you into a goblin to teach you humility, Uncle Chaz."
Before he could come up with a witty retort, Xune ran over
from the kitchen and smothered Szaravel in a hug of her
own. "Szaravel! When did you get here?" the warrior priestess cried
joyfully, not wanting to relinquish her hold on her adopted daughter.
Chaszmyr once again marveled at the age difference between the
two. Xune, nearing her seventieth year of life, had all the vibrancy
and appearance of a stunning twenty year old women. With the two of
them together, the drow females looked more like sisters than anything
else.
"I just got here, Auntie Xune," Szaravel replied, finally
escaping the older woman's grasp. "I thought I'd spend some time with
you guys."
Xune squealed in delight, but Chaszmyr grew concerned. "What
happened to Zildra and your studies?"
She shrugged. "Zildra's gone. I think she went away to
die. She was getting quite old, you know." It chilled him to hear her
say this with the same emotion one would give to sweeping the floor.
"As to my studies, I'm old enough to learn on my own now. Besides,
Zildra gave me her dwelling, and everything she has collected to
date. I have enough to keep me occupied for centuries to come."
Chaszmyr was about to ask more questions, but Xune elbowed him
in his ribs, voicing her displeasure at the subject. "I TOLD you I
don't want to hear about that witch!" she hissed, though she never
moved her mouth. The small black pearl earring tingled slightly on his
left ear, as the magic within it carried her telepathic message to his
mind.
With another magnanimous sigh, he let the matter go. It
wouldn't do to anger his beloved, especially someone with the backing
of a goddess. He may have be a fantastic warrior, but throw enough
magic at him, and he'd be just another spirit wailing in the City of
the Dead.
Xune woke to the chiming of a mental bell, the same alarm that
told her someone had just entered her grove. Slipping out of the
canopied bed, she wrapped herself in a silken robe and tiptoed to the
window.
Darkness flowed about most of the woods surrounding her home,
including the large clearing the stone mansion and the grove resided
upon. Still, the water trilling from the fountain had a soft lunar
sheen to it, vaguely illuminating the center of the well-tended grove.
Xune narrowed her eyes. Even from this distance of several
hundred feet, she could make out the heated forms of five individuals;
females, she thought. She glanced up to the stars to judge the
time. 'Hmm, just past Shar's zenith. That doesn't bode well.'
She slipped out of her robe, donned a simple tunic and a pair
of knee high leather boots, and prodded Chaszmyr awake. He opened his
eyes, looking as if he hadn't been asleep at all. "Trouble?" he
mouthed silently. She shrugged, but strapped her bastard sword, Orthae
Abban, to her back. The counterweight of the sword glowed faintly
silver.
Chaszmyr threw on his own black tunic, a similarly hued cloak,
and belted on his pair of scimitars. From its sheath, Lyonesse gave
off a soothing moonlit glow of its own.
With some surprise, the couple found Szaravel downstairs
before the front door, patiently waiting for them, her staff in hand.
"I felt the stirrings of magic," she replied to their raised eyebrows.
Ever so quietly, she opened the oaken door, and the three
sidled through, making no more than a whisper of sound on the springy
grass. With the aid of their heat-sensing vision, the three dark elves
had no problem approaching their quarry without being seen.
The five figures seemed disoriented, confused. They were
milling about, taking in their surroundings, though they couldn't see
very much. Chaszmyr quickly realized they were humans, ones he had
never seen in this vicinity before. Their outfits, he noticed with a
carefully hidden grin, were a tad short for them to be wearing around,
outfits very outlandish and foreign. Short skirts, skin-tight body
suits, and cute bows of ribbon made up their clothing.
With an intuitive shock, he realized that they looked
familiar.
Out of the corner of his eye, Chaszmyr saw Xune raise an arm,
and several lit globes of moonlight drifted from her and illuminated
the grove, bathing it with an ethereal light. The priestess then stood
tall, ignored the scrambling of the human girls into defensive
postures, and called out, "Who are you, and what are you doing in the
Grove of Eilistraee?"
Chaszmyr groaned inwardly, and he caught Szaravel's glare of
irritation. 'So much for stealth,' he chided himself and stood out
from the shadows himself.
The five girls, for indeed, they couldn't have been more than
16 or 17, faced them defiantly. Very beautiful they are, mused the
dark elf, taking in their stances and nodding in respect. It seemed
they had been in fights before, judging from their combative postures.
Suddenly, the one with hair darker than death collapsed,
clutching at her head.
"Something is wrong," Szaravel stated coolly to no one in
particular as they watched the girls try to rouse their friend, though
the one with... blue?... hair continued to fiddle with some small
object in her hand.
"I don't think they mean any harm," Xune whispered. "I don't
sense evil from them."
"Shall we aid them then?" Chaszmyr inquired, still eyeing the
group expressionlessly.
Before they could decide, the tallest girl, the one with dark
auburn hair, twirled around, and Chaszmyr sighed exasperatingly at her
words.
"Now I remember! Dark elves! They're evil!" she cried, leaping
to her feet. She crossed her arms, and lightning erupted from her
tiara.
Chaszmyr drew his weapons as a bolt of electricity screamed
for his death.
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