Kuwabara twitched in
his sleep, eyebrows drawn into a frown, one fist clenching convulsively. In his
dreams he was locked in darkness, a prison with no exit, no walls to climb, bars
to break...had he been able to move a muscle to attempt escape. But try as he
might he could not move, could not speak. A tear trickled down his face. It was
freezing cold, and he was alone, terrified, strengthless. He had lost track of
time. It seemed an eternity had passed, leaving him forgotten in this cell where
hope was nothing but a memory.
His thoughts beat desperately, fluttering like moths in a glass jar, shattering
their delicate wings against the crystal that imprisoned them. The light beyond
the pale confines of this shadowy grave throbbed, vital with life, but so
heartbreakingly out of reach. He loved light, and life. He began to cry, blind
with fear and loss, each gasping breath rending him, but no sound came forth
from the distorted lips that bled as he
struggled.
Yukina.
"Kuwabara!
Kuwabara, wake up!"
He jerked
awake, eyelids fluttering, almost blinded by the sudden, blessed daylight.
Blessed light!
Yuusuke was
bent over him, his face grim stone. "Kurama's gone, dammit." The youth swore an
endless stream of invective, cursing the mountain and the Ice-princess. He
cursed the snow, Koenma, and Hiei, and the goddamn wind that sang at them with
insane voices. He cursed at a rock and it crumbled under his venom. Finally,
running out of steam, he turned, and drew a breath to calm himself. Then he saw
Kuwabara still in his sleeping bag, and his eyes
narrowed.
Kuwabara blinked at
his friend, forgetting the sunlight. He had lain there a moment, blissfully
soaking up a ray or two. In the full light of day his nightmare had dissipated
wraithlike, but a cold knot of anxiety remained in the pit of his stomach. At
Yuusuke's expression he nearly leaped out of the bag, but of course, clumsy as
he was it entangled itself in his long gangling legs, and he tripped and fell
flat on the iron-hard
ground.
"Owww..owww..."
"You fool,
Kurama," Yuusuke muttered softly under his
breath.
*****
Kurama struggled,
shrieking, trapped in a howling whirlwind that knifed through him, scourging him
with a million icy shards. The pain itself was nothing, mere pinpricks compared
to the agony of terror that froze him to the very marrow of his soul. There was
nothing around him for miles but the serrated teeth of the rocky passes, a
barren, snowy wasteland that robbed the mind of sense, sanity and
direction.
That morning had
dawned, cloudless and still, and he had not felt anything of Hiei's flickering
black presence in the stunted grove of firs that sheltered the campsite. He
hadn't been able to keep himself from striking out impulsively on is own,
ignoring Yuusuke's previous warning that they had to take on the Mountain
together, or that she might endeavor to trap them one by one. This was the
Oyuki-hime's domain; the snow, soft, white and treacherously pure, was hers to
command and shape as she
wished.
Now she had him caught
in her spell, a snowstorm that spoke with the whispering voice of evil. For fear
was the greatest weapon against any enemy; it could break the most steadfast
spirit, cow the most dauntless heart, where might could not conquer. Kurama,
shivering, knew this, but the hissing babble of the wind broke through the
fingers he had clamped on his ears, and shattered his
resolve.
Know my thought,
Kurama. I know thy name. Come and let me share my sorrows with thee.
Come.
Laughter.
What was this
keening, tortuous lament that ripped through his brain, seemingly sprung from
the fathomless depths of hell? He could see nothing but brilliant white, hear
nothing but countless screeching mad voices, a wailing chorus of malevolent
mockery that drowned him in a tidal wave of sound. It was the symphony of the
damned, the cries of the mad and the dying, a thousand deaths, a thousand
fragments of death. He cried out, suffering, but he knew nothing of the
utterance that left his lips.
Canst thou feel my pain, youko? All the agony in the world, yes, is my
own.
But he kept on
screaming, screaming till his throat was raw, screaming till the foam ran red
and froze at the corners of his mouth, and tears turned to ice on his cheeks.
Still the wind hammered at him, stifling him, and he
choked.
This
is I. I
alone.
"Kurama!"
Fear clutched at his heart, fear that that single, clipped exclamation was only
one of the countless imaginary voices that continued their insane song. Clawing
madly at his sightless eyes in a frenzy of horror, he flung himself at the
endless wall of whipping snow with his last remaining strength, desperation
turning his muscles to water.
Escape.
He stumbled, falling,
into a darkness, blacker, it seemed, than death
itself.
A strong hand, quick
and sure, darted through the murk and fastened itself to the front of his
jacket. With painful strength it dragged at him relentlessly until he staggered,
swaying drunkenly, to his
feet.
He felt, more than
heard, an ominous, rippling thrill of laughter. Then with a intake of breath,
almost a hiss, the voices - and the wind - ceased with a fading
sigh.
Through his blood-filmed
eyes he made out the slender cloaked figure of the little fire-demon, glowing
faintly in the dark. Never had he felt such a blessed relief, a release so great
that it left him drained. He managed to contort his frostbitten face into a
smiling grimace at his errant
friend.
He had found Hiei. Or
more truthfully, the youkai had found
him.
"You nearly got yourself
killed, you stupid kitsune."
Kurama realized, as he gasped for breath in soft whimpers, that he had slumped
exhaustedly against the smooth stone face of a wall, a torn and spineless figure
under Hiei's contemptuous scarlet gaze. So much for his little rescue mission,
he thought, wry, despite his pain. The storm had turned the tables, rendering
him the victim, and Hiei the
rescuer.
He straightened,
slowly, cautiously, and could not bite back the cry as the dozens of cuts on his
body bled, weeping blots of red on the shreds of white cloth that hung from him
in tattered folds. All that remained of his clothes, shredded by an storm of
living ice, such as he had never seen before. The freezing cold still clung to
him, permeating him with frost, and ice crackled in his
hair.
"Hiei, she...she's
more..dangerous than I thought
she..."
Abruptly Hiei made a
brutally dismissive gesture, cutting him off mid-sentence. He smirked at
Kurama.
"Have a look,
fox."
Incredulous, he stared,
pain and cold forgotten.
No crude cave, this, as he had first thought the temple would be. In the
receding dimness the faint purple outlines of a ring of monolithic granite
pillars loomed before them, ancient and forbidding, a delicate web of wards and
symbols on their stone flanks etched in bas-relief, nearly eaten away by snow
and the unceasing grind of time. It was a vast vaulted hall as befitting the
resting place of a Queen, walls and roof hung with icicles and glittering
stalactites, an enormous circular chamber carved into the very heart of the
Mountain.
He and Hiei were
mere specks of dust in the gigantic circumference of this temple, insignificant
intruders, so it seemed, to the creature that slept here. With chilling shock he
realized they were perched precariously on the lip of an abyss in the very
center of the ring, a seamless, uniformly circular shaft or bore that yawned
into nothingness.
Jagged
fragments of ice floated, adrift in an invisible current like leaves in an eddy,
spiraling slowly on the updraft, or circling gently down the shaft in whirling
circles, sparkling crystalline. Suspended high above the chasm was a single
multifaceted crystal, man-high, breathtaking in its cold beauty. Within it,
Kurama's keen eyes made out a tiny shadow, an embryo encased in an egg of
glass.
This was a tomb. Here
she had been imprisoned, alive, alone in the echoing emptiness, century after
century of human time. What dreams, what visions had she had, that she could
have retained enough will to live? He could imagine no being with the strength
to endure the passage of so many ages, deprived of light,
freedom...love.
Awestruck,
Kurama opened his mouth to speak, his voice a dry, husking
whisper.
"Hiei?"
At his tentative,
questing plea the youkai's eyes flickered, meeting Kurama's gaze, fiery red
meeting green.
"Hiei..I..We..we should go back. She......she knows..we're here." he managed
hoarsely, faltering. Inwardly he wanted to scream, to smash the aged stone
walls, to destroy the crystal and bury themselves along with it. For this was a
tomb, a place of imprisonment and death.
Madness.
A crunching, as of
glass shattering beneath his feet, made Kurama glance down. Crystal had been
inlaid in a ring encircling the gaping mouth of the well, an intricate tracery
of runes as tall as he was high. Some of the flooring had cracked and fallen
into the chasm, and the crystal now lay, gleaming like scattered diamonds in the
frost. But he could still make out some of the letters that had been wrought
so long ago.
E..ERN..Y
The depths of Hiei's steel gaze glittered as he too, saw the runes. A rising
dread filled the fox as he saw how Hiei was struggling with himself, in the
droop of defeat in his thin shoulders, the cruel, set slash of his mouth. The
ferocity of his expression was the despairing, hungering cry of a soul in
torment. Something seemed to tear at Kurama's heart from within, as with a
sudden, terrible clarity of inner vision he knew what pulled at the fire-demon's
soul would ultimately destroy
him.
Hiei turned away from him
with finality and stood, gazing down into the abyss, the black spikes of his
hair blowing gently in the updraft of icy
air.
"Leave, Kurama. She'll
let you go."
The youko
growled. "No, damn you!" Disregarding the wrenching pain, he staggered forward
to haul Hiei back from the brink. But his fingers closed on nothing. As always
the quicksilver demon had eluded
him.
Lightning-swift,
flickering, blurring alternate red and black, Hiei reappeared in afterimage,
poised on one of the myriad floating islands of ice. Leaping from shard to
shard, he bounded nimbly across the gaps without so much as a backward glance,
despite the treacherous footing on the slippery ice.Giving vent to his
frustration with a railing curse, Kurama prepared to hurl himself over the
abyss, but hesitated, each nerve taut and jangling. Sensing danger, he drew back
from the chasm, and sent out a fine filament of hair that snaked out over the
pit in a thorny tangle of green
tendrils.
A roaring blast of
wind and light exploded up through the tunnel. Caught in the sudden freezing
breath of the pit, the vine was petrified in the very act of uncurling, frozen
immobile; the tip of the slender whip cracked with a gunshot sound, and broke
off. Cracks appeared, and crept up the walls, running spiderlike up the surface
of the crystal.
Stone erupted
under Kurama's feet, flinging him backward against one of the pillars so
savagely he broke right through it. Stunned, he shook away the heavy rubble, to
spring swiftly aside as a hail of razor-sharp icicles whistled through the air,
thwakking viciously into the space he had so recently vacated. Only his
quickness and agility saved him as dozens more streaked after him, exploding
against roof, wall and pillar in a shower of sparks, or embedded themselves into
the granite with the sheer force of the power that hurled them.
Occasionally
one would graze him, leaving a red trail in its wake. Still he sped throughout
the chamber, panting as he evaded them. Brought to bay by the unceasing attack,
he tried to stem the tide with the Rose Whip, snapping it, slashing at each
flurry with his rapidly diminishing strength. Lightning crackled from the
crystal, darting tongues of electricity at Kurama. Where they touched, the
granite smoked, frozen hard. One fork of lightning sizzled and clashed with the
Whip; ice sped up the green stem, cracking and popping, nearly reaching the
kitsune's nerveless hand before he flung it away with a
gasp.
Yuusuke's strident voice
cut through the din.
"What the
hell..?? Hiei....Kurama!"
The
kitsune slumped against a rock face in an effort to catch his breath.
Out of the corner of one eye,
he saw Yuusuke, astonished, taking in temple, the crystal formation, and the
destruction in one sweeping glance. They had been fruitlessly scouring the
mountainsides for hours, the wards and spells of entrapment making the going
difficult, before they hit the trail Kurama had left purposely for them to
follow. Beside the leader of the Tantei Kuwabara gaped at the scene, so
encrusted with snow he was nearly unrecognizable. Another wild fork of lightning
stabbed at them, and with a yelp, the clumsy youth dove for
cover.
Yuusuke growled.
"Bakayarou, Hiei!" He smashed away one of the flying stalactites with a powerful
fist. It whined off, nearly impaling Kuwabara before exploding into the far wall
in a shower of hail. He snarled and gathered himself to spring to the attack.
Kurama screamed a warning, but his voice went
unheard.
Heartbeats.
Time slowed for Kurama; it seemed to him the instant was flowing out, stretching
fluidly into eternity. He saw dimly, through the dancing lightning, Hiei's
diminutive, lithe figure, the set rigidity of his expression as he slipped the
hiruiseki off his neck.
"No," he
whispered.
The
necklace dangled from the youkai's fist a moment, then his eyes closed.
Seemingly of their own volition, his fingers relaxed their clutch on the pearl,
and let go.
The teargem
disappeared into the chasm.
Pillars of light erupted from the gap with an exploding roar. Yuusuke was caught
in midair, outlined for a ghastly moment in ice and lightning before he was
hurled back. Hiei crashed to the floor on the other side of the rim,
unconscious.
Heartbeats.
A resounding crack
reverbrated throughout the mountain cavern. The crystal split in half. Shaken,
Kurama could only watch as the ice fell away, revealing a strange shrunken
thing, misshapen and skeletal, altogether a horrible sight to behold.
The
Queen! But what was this? A monster revived from thousands of years in an icy
prison, and yet he expected something terrible, true, and beautiful, as the
legend foretold. But not this.
It moved; amid the floating fragments of crystal and stone it raised its head,
slowly, painfully. With growing horror Kurama saw the thing was looking at him,
nothing but a gruesome framework of ivory skin stretched tightly over every
bone, tufts of white hair clinging to its skull. Mercifully the remains of a
white robe and bandaged wrappings still clung to that emaciated, grotesque form,
hiding what must have been a hideous face to countenance. But its half-lidded
eyes, exposed, blazed ferociously alive, their purple depths kindling into blue
fire.
Horror
turned to compassion, and pity. Their eyes met; and the youko saw, in a flash of
lucidity, the crazed bitterness in that blind gaze, the anguish, that had
blotted out memory and a living heart. Paralyzed, he could only watch in
fascination as she tore away at the ice-eaten remains of her robe. Manacles, and
lengths of translucent chain, still bound her bony wrists and ankles; she broke
them with surprising strength, and dropped them into the pit. A stifled moan
rose from her hollow throat, and she descended slowly through the air to stand
on the brink of the chasm, swaying, as though still uncertain of her freedom.
Kuwabara broke the tableau.
The tall, clumsy youth let out a shrill scream, part-terror, part-outrage, and
scrabbled wildly at the rubble that trapped him. "Yuuuuusuuuke!!!" he bellowed.
Yuusuke lay where he had been
flung, wide-eyed, staring at the ghastly form of the Queen. He, like Kurama,
seemed numb with horror and an overwhelming revulsion. At Kuwabara's entreaty he
jerked as though shot, and tottered slowly to his
feet.
Those bulging eyes fixed
themselves on the youth. A low bubbling snarl escaped her drawn lips. The
sickened expression on Yuusuke's face dazed her; she had felt their horrified
reaction to the nightmarish figure she made, seen the subtle recoiling. A
gulping whimper broke from her; she raised a clawlike, bony hand and stared at
it. Piteously, she began to weep in great rasping sobs, the sound of a dying
animal.
"So long...what has
been done?" she whispered, inaudibly. "What has become of me? I hunger..for.."
She
roared and spun.
Hiei's
blade burst from between the gap of her ragged ribcage. He glared back at her
implacably as she faced him, the sword still sticking out from between her
shoulderblades, buried to the hilt. With blinding swiftness she slapped him
aside as though he were a mere gnat, smashing him through a slab of upturned
granite and deep into the mountain wall. The impact left a smoking, enormous
hole.
The rubble shifted with
a deep rumble. None of them had seen her move; but they were all aware of her
imperious strength, and it shook them to the
core.
Silence.
Calmly, she took the
sword, gripping the hilt that thrust out of her back like the pin on a mounted
butterfly. She pulled it out without a flinch, and tossed it carelessly aside.
Yuusuke and the others forgotten, she stepped delicately over the shards and
piles of frozen rock.
The runes
around the rim of the well began to glow; drawn by some unseen hand, ice began
to reform into the grooves inscribed into the floor, shaping themselves into the
missing letters.
Kurama
could now see the word, engraved in an ancient language of Makai, such as the
demon-lords of old used millenia ago. It seemed to breathe from the
stone.
ETERNITY
Hissing, the Queen raised one skeletal arm, flinging out some command; the
ice-slicked walls burst inward all around her, the granite columns groaning they
crashed thunderously to the ground. A cyclone roared about the ruins of the
temple. Kurama shut his eyes; but he could still see, in the tiny sketches of
her mind's eye: the cavern crumbling, falling to ruin about them with a
deafening rumble of rock; faint screams from the others, Hiei's muffled curse.
The vaulted dome above vanished, replaced with the cloudless sweep of endless
azure sky. With a cry of mingled gladness and despair, the Queen made for the
heights in an explosion of freezing wind, a lone mote disappearing into the cold
winter
daylight.
She was gone. Gone into the world where surely, nothing but death awaited those
unwary enough to add to her age-old torment.
An old
story; a children's tale, a fairy tale. In a rush of memory Kurama saw Shiori,
rocking him to sleep, Shiori crooning under her breath, reading him a bedtime
story. What had it been? Ah, yes. The beautiful ice queen, the mirror, the
shards of the mirror..in the Western lands, it was the same old legend, told and
retold, embellished and become a thing of myth and
folklore.
Spell eternity for me. All characters copyright Togashi Yoshihiro. Heart of Fire and
story copyright to Hiei calen@softhome.net 1998. Standard disclaimers
apply.