Waters Under Earth
A Ranma 1/2 Fanfic by Alan Harnum
-harnums@thekeep.org
-harnums@hotmail.com (old/backup)
All Ranma characters are the property of Rumiko Takahashi, first
published by Shogakukan in Japan and brought over to North
America by Viz Communications.
Waters Under Earth at Transpacific Fanfiction:
http://www.thekeep.org/~mike/transp.html
http://users.ev1.net/~adina/shrines2/fanfics.html
Chapter 40 : The Night-Sea Journey
Now hollow fires burn out to black,
And lights are guttering low:
Square your shoulders, lift your pack,
And leave your friends and go.
Oh never fear, man, nought's to dread,
Look not left nor right:
In all the endless road you tread
There's nothing but the night.
-A.E. Housman
The dreams should have been of battle and death; she had
seen more of that in recent times than anything else. But they
were not; there was only an infinite sweetness in them, the
gentle touch of another's hands upon her body. Her body, and yet
not, and the aching loss on waking alone in her own bed was so
strong that she wept.
It was hours till sunrise, and there would be so much still
to do when morning came. She should have gone back to sleep.
Instead, she drew a robe about herself and went out into the
halls of the mountain. No one but her walked those stone floors,
and she made her way down to the lower levels with only the
company of her footsteps. She did not fly, and could not say why
she did not.
He was just leaving as she found him, closing the door
behind him. Beyond it, she knew, Akane would lie asleep amidst
the tangle of covers. He had touched her cheek, gentle, before
he went; she felt the sympathetic tingle of it upon her own face.
"Would you have just left?" she whispered, and oh, how that
soft voice echoed through these empty halls. "Left, without
saying goodbye to me?"
"It would have been easier that way," he answered, and she
heard her pain mirrored back. Distance or closeness; she would
never be able to say which could hurt more.
"Easier," she said bitterly. "Ease does not make
rightness."
He stepped lightly towards her. "I can only bear so many
goodbyes, you know. Even that one..." He gestured to the closed
door. "...even that was nearly too much." In his eyes, she saw a
flash of the boy he had been.
"Ranma," she said, speech almost unbearable. "Oh Ranma,
what have you become, what have they made you?"
The dim light of the torches made his face seem almost
skeletal; when he spoke, his jaw might have been that of a skull.
"They have made me what I must be, for what I must do."
"What?" she asked. "What? I still do not understand."
"Sympathy and contagion, Kima." And he touched his hands to
hers. "I freed her, and in freeing her, I freed something else
as well. He has returned, and I must go to fight him."
"Alone?"
"Oh yes." And there were many languages, many stories, in
his speech. "At the end, I always have to go alone."
"What about her?" She pointed to the door. Then she took
the last step. "What about me?"
He laughed, but there was no intent to hurt her in it.
There was no joy in it, but neither was there sadness; weary
acceptance, perhaps. "What about either of you? Does it really
matter, in the end?"
"If it doesn't matter, than what does?"
"I saw things when I went up in those flames," he said,
voice coming distant. "So many things that I have not the voices
or the words to speak them all. I saw paths, and ends. One
path, things went differently on Chenmo Shan."
Oh, gods, she thought. Oh, my dead kings, I do not wish to
hear this.
"And it wasn't her and I, it was you and me."
How could he hurt her so, to speak like that? Didn't he
know, didn't he see?
"But you know what?"
Of course he saw; it was in his eyes. To speak the words
hurt him as much as it hurt her to hear them. "What?" Let her
speak as well, then; let them wound one another.
"It didn't matter, in the end," he replied. "It all
happened in almost the same way. And I still left like this,
before the dawn."
"How could it not matter?"
He put a hand on her shoulder, moved it so that his fingers
gently touched the upper edge of one wing. The caress made her
draw a deep breath. "Some small changes lead to big changes,"
he said. "And some small changes are only that."
His fingers traced the line of her wing, the wing that had
been dead. The wing that he had healed. And she had loved him
since then, and never voiced it. Could not voice it now.
"I think," she said, almost a gasp, "that some are bound
more tightly to their fate so that others might be more free to
choose theirs."
He smiled, and took his hand away. "I'd like to think that
too."
Tell him, she told herself. And then she told herself, he
knows. There is no need for words, not with so much wisdom, and
the pain that wisdom brought, within his eyes.
If I could salve your pain, she thought, I would. If it
were an ocean, I should drink of it until it were dry.
In the end, all she said was: "I am not the last one you
should say goodbye to."
"No," he admitted, "you are not. There are two more to whom
I should make my farewells, but one is not yet come. To the one
who is come, and was here before me... I shall try to make what
peace I can with her."
"Not all of us get even that much chance."
He nodded. She took his face between both her hands and
kissed him on the brow. Like a brother.
"You have been like a sister to me," he said, as she drew
away.
"A sister?" And she smiled, and studied his body - bare to
the waist - in a most unsisterly way. "Is that all?"
He laughed, and there was real joy in it now. "In other
places, you have been all other things to me: mother, daughter,
lover, bride. Most like a sister, here."
"Go, then," she quietly said, "and your sister bids you
farewell."
They embraced. It was the embrace of siblings, and the hurt
was not so much now as it had been. He left, walked away down
one empty stone corridor, and left her to stay alone, until the
sun rose.
**********
"Mom?"
A hand shook her gently from her slumber in the small bed in
the small room they'd given her. Someone had lit the torches,
and they filled the air with their pale blue light.
Her son bent over her, and there was nothing in his eyes but
him. Her beautiful son, returned to her. And it could only be a
dream.
"No. It is no dream. Touch me, Mother, I am solid."
And he was. If it was a dream, then fine, she would be
happy in her dream for a moment. She held him to her, and tried
to find it in herself to weep; but the well of grief was dry, and
she could shed no tears, only sob words dryly against his
shoulder.
"My son, oh my son, you came back, you came back to me."
The bed sank beneath his weight as he sat down beside her.
"Yeah, Mom. I came back for you."
"Where did you go? What happened to you?"
He told her, confessed it all like a penitent, in a small
voice, as though he expected to be punished for what he had done.
"Oh, my brave boy." The pride was almost too much to bear.
"You fought, and won."
"No," he corrected her. "Had I fought, I would have lost.
I chose not to fight, and by not fighting, won - so that now I
can go to fight the real battle."
"Must you? Must you?" She asked the question, even though
she knew the answer. Had always known it, in her heart.
"Of course I have to," he answered, even though she could
see no way he could not know she knew the answer before he spoke
it.
"Why do you always leave me?"
He held her tighter, for a moment, and she remembered when
he was the small one. "It's what a son does."
"And a mother can only grieve?"
"In the end, yes."
"If I asked you to stay, would you?" She looked into his
eyes. Too old for her son, she thought. A short time ago, he
had been carefree; there had been so much more laughter in those
eyes.
"I would like nothing better than to stay," he replied in a
choked voice. "But what I choose does not determine only my
fate. I cannot do anything any longer just because it is merely
what I want."
Pain crept into her voice and sharpened it. "Very well,
then. As I am without a husband, I might as well be without a
son."
"Please, Mother." And the plea dulled the pain, because he
was her son, and he hurt as badly as she did. "This is so hard
for me already... there is so much to do..."
"I am sorry, my son." She stroked his hair. "Go. Do what
you must. My love shall not lessen if you leave me now, nor ever
after this."
"Thanks, Mom," he said, and the relief in his voice made her
smile. A part of him was still only a boy, wanting and needing
his mother's approval. I shall be strong for him, she vowed,
that he may be strong for what he must do. Whatever it may be.
Thus, she kept back the tears that had begun to well up
again - oh, fool she had been, to think that the well of grief
could ever empty - until he had gone, and left her alone.
**********
One by one, he ascends the spiral stairs of the highest
tower. His iron-shod boots ring upon the veined marble like
hammers upon anvils. Each swing of arms or bend of knees makes
the joints of his armour creak groaningly.
In his silver hand, he holds Worldcleaver, longer than he is
tall, night-black and agony-sharp. His hair is argent moonlight;
one eye is crimson flame, and the other is of gold rich with
jewels. The black armour - black shell, now, for after so long a
time it is a part of him, and cannot be removed - is crenated and
glistening, as might be the carapace of some terrible and alien
insect.
He passes beneath the archway at the top of the stairs, and
steps into the cold crimson light of early dawn. He, Baazel -
named Ravager, World-Hater, Scourge of Life - at the battlements
stands. His hand of flesh strokes bone-white blue-veined
parapets sharp as razors. Their edges slice his flesh to ribbons;
the wounds heal almost as fast as they are made. Bloodied, the
parapets glisten almost hungrily, as though in anticipation.
Throwing back his awful, beautiful head, he laughs at the
coming dawn. Fool, he thinks, as his laughter courses across the
waves and makes sleepers wake screaming. Sweet pawn, all has
come to fruition by your ignorant hand. Still laughing, he
raises Wordcleaver, and with it stirs the air.
The clouds answer, and darkness begins to spread over the
sky. The seas answer, and slowly begin to turn around the axis
he has created.
There is a third answer coming. And so Baazel waits.
**********
It would have been a lie to say that there were no others he
wished to say farewell to. Truth was, he would have liked to bid
them all goodbye; all those who had come this far with him,
whether they had been there from the beginning, or only from
near the end.
But some partings were easier made if unacknowledged, and
each farewell would have been another weight upon him to hold him
here. It was hard enough to leave already, but he had left;
walked out of one of the passages of Phoenix Mountain into the
open air. And there he had grasped his power, and loosed
gravity's bondage upon his body.
The Valley of the Waters passed below him, too fast for him
to really register any individual feature of the landscape. It
all seemed one harmonious whole from this height, and at this
speed; mountain blurring into valley, river into forest, colours
more distinct than shapes.
Above the place that had once held Jusenkyou, he paused.
In a circular radius of nearly a mile around the spot, the land
was devastated. The few scraps of plant life remaining were
twisted and dead, and even the earth was cracked as though by
great heat. A circular patch of grey stone, flat as glass,
filled the valley where Jusenkyou had been to the very top.
This, then, was the first thing he had to do. He dropped
from the sky, slowed himself a few feet before he hit, and landed
lightly in the epicentre of the stone circle. A deep breath drew
he, and then he placed one end of the staff Tianzhu against the
stone.
He closed his eyes, and willed the stone beneath the tip to
change, to flow like water; slowly, the staff sank down, until it
was half-embedded within. Another deep breath, and then he
rubbed dusty sweat from his palms off against his pants.
After taking a tight two-handed grip upon the still-visible
section of the staff, he began to churn the stone. At first, it
felt like trying to shift a mountain; his arms strained, and yet
the staff did not move. Then, with an infinitesimal giving, it
began to slip sideways. As he built momentum, it became easier
and easier, until he spun the stone before him in a blurring
circle, wider and wider, faster and faster...
He released the staff, and stepped back as it continued to
spin; whether with stored energy or of its own volition, he could
not say. He pictured the rippling blur spreading out, like rings
spreading across a pond, transforming, changing... until there
would be not stone, stone no longer, no, water...
Water.
He raised his hand and caught the staff as it was flung
towards him by the churnings of the whirlpool. Stone which had
flowed like water had now become water, and was spinning around
him as though some drain had been opened below its surface, so
fast that it rose up towards him in surging walls as he floated
above it.
His hand came up, and he stroked the air, spoke calming
words. Slowly, the water came to a halt, and at last lay flat
and placid.
A third deep breath.
The picture of what had once been here filled him like the
deepest longing of his heart. It flowed through him, driven by
the movement of his blood, and, when his body could no longer
contain it, burst forth through his hands to the staff to the
water. Light flared gold from the staff's tip; it struck the
lake in a lucent spray of power, and spread like oil over the
surface.
Walking upon the surface of the now-glowing lake, Ranma
made his way to its edge, the division of earth and waters. He
turned back to face the shimmering expanse, and clapped his hands
thrice.
In shining glory, the Lady of Change raised her great
serpentine head from the depths of the new lake, and regarded him
with sad, ancient eyes like dark blue seas. Her gold was no
longer tarnished; it shone as if new-forged. She dipped her neck
in a respectful curve to him, and smiled. Wings with red-gold
scales rose, spread, and caught the sun within their depths, so
that they burned too bright to look upon.
"This deed is pleasing to my eye, servant," she said kindly.
"So Tang Jin shall live again, and be a light against the Dark.
I am well pleased with you."
His words forced themselves past the joyous lump in his
throat. "Lady, your pleasure pleases me more than you can
imagine. I am ever yours."
"And we are ever yours." She dipped her head again. "You
are finished here, Lord of Waters. Tang Jin is born again, and
so shall this land be born again. But your task is not yet
done."
"I did not think it was, Lady." Already, he could feel the
pull, drawing him in another direction; desire-strong,
irresistible.
"Hold." He paused, and let the gathered power he had been
preparing to use for flight sink back into the earth. "Before
you go, bathe within my waters."
"Lady, there is little time."
"There is time enough."
Heart suddenly strangely heavy, he put down his staff upon
the shores of the lake, and began to step forward.
The voice of the dragon rose again, a beautiful music. "Do
you usually bathe with your clothes on, Lord of Waters?" she
asked with austere humour.
"Umm... but..."
Her laughter chimed. "So, you are not so far gone from what
you once were."
"Far enough." And he shed his clothes, so that he might
slip naked into the golden waters. They were soothing and warm,
and he slipped into their cradling caress with a sigh of
relaxation. Like a veil, the waters rolled over his head, and he
sank down within.
Clear as golden glass they were, and yet he could not see
any bottom; nor sides, nor sky above his head. Only a limitless
expanse of gold in all directions, as though beneath the waters
was another place than above them. It probably was, he thought;
in the same way that the lake at Ryugenzawa led into the Dragon
Palace, which he knew was now no more.
A rippling shape, wings tucked against the body, moved
lightly by him. The dragon moved through the water, seeming less
a separate thing than a natural part; a movement of tides or
waves.
Do you know why you must bathe here again? the Lady of
Change asked him, in a voice that sounded silent within his head.
He answered, silent in return, that he did not.
I am gathering back the souls that died within the pools,
that they might at last find rest in dissolution. Some I have
brought to me already, even as I lay wounded; now, I must take
the rest. And there is no more for you to learn from her now.
Learn?
Through her, we tried to teach you another way of seeing.
You learned it well enough; not as well as we might have hoped,
but it let you make the right choice when the time came; to reach
out with the hand of compassion, rather than the hand of
destruction.
Your hand?
One of my hands.
He pulled himself through the water with pushes of his arms
and legs. Beside him, the Lady swam, and sometimes she was a
dragon, and sometimes she was a woman fairer than the rising sun.
With each swimming stroke, he felt as though something were
sloughing away from him, as if he were shedding some invisible
skin.
At last the feeling ended, and he ceased swimming to float
peacefully in the golden waters. Within her jaws or hands, the
Lady held a golden sphere of light like a magnificent pearl.
Is it finished, then? A deep hollowness lay inside him.
It is finished. The voice was sad; he swam upwards, and his
head broke the water. After making his way to the shores, he put
his clothing on again, and took up his staff.
Turning again to face the waters, he waited for a while to
see if the Lady of Change would rise to bid him farewell. But
she did not, and, at last, he left for the north. Behind him,
the lake stirred once in the winds of his departure, and then
lay still again.
**********
As the first rotting bowsprit breaks the circling waters,
Baazel smiles. It is a Dutch merchantman, centuries beneath the
sea; and there, to the left, is a cruiser of the United States;
and there, a fishing boat overturned in a storm only days ago.
Dead ships, crewed by dead men. Vague patterns of dust in
human shape for the oldest, and skeletons in rotting scraps of
military uniforms; the newest are bloated, blue with death, and
their eyes have been eaten by the fishes.
As she was bound, so too was I bound, Baazel thinks. And,
as she is free, so too am I free. Oh, foolish boy, you knew
nothing at all. You reached out to me, and in reaching out,
killed that last vestige of me that was human.
Thank you.
The boats that will carry his new army to conquest circle
within the spinning flow, and their dead crews bow down in homage
to him, their master. And, in his head, his own master stirs.
Soon, he whispers placatingly. Be patient, master. You
have been patient for so long, and now the time is at hand.
The dead bow down to him. Soon, the living will bow as
well. Bow, or join the dead, and in their agonies give worship
unto him.
**********
Past the mountain range called the Dragon's Ribcage, the
Desert of the Claw lay like an exceeding blight upon the land.
Desolate and dry, the dunes might not have seen water in a
thousand years.
Ranma, who had seen dream-visions of when this place had
been Wurdsenlin, knew that it had been longer than that.
Baazel's hate had not vanished with his banishing, but rather
endured, as the memory of a man may endure his death. His
annihilating rage had lasted not for a single moment in time, but
had extended forward, twisting weather patterns and the flows of
underground waters to leave the resting place of the once-proud
Dragon Tribe an eternal wasteland.
Neither plants nor trees dwelt here, nor any living thing;
no oases lay hidden in the belly of the sands to give vital
sanctuary amidst the burning dunes. Only the wind roamed the
desolation, slowly remapping the face of the sands, and wailing
over the dunes in lament for beauty lost.
As Ranma descended towards the top of one hill of sand, his
wind-aura scattered tiny dust devils about his feet. They died
and collapsed as he let the power shrink again. His bare feet,
still damp from his bathing, left muddy tracks upon the sand as
he descended the dune. The wind sobbed in his ears.
Over sandy dune and dip of sand he went searching for the
weeping's source. This finding was a harder one than that of
earlier; Tang Jin had lived on in twisted form, but Wurdsenlin
had seen the dying of forty centuries while it lay dead. And
there was no water to guide him here, as there would have been
anywhere else.
For nearly an hour, he wandered alone through the
wastelands. No, no water here, no water and hardly even any
rock; the fine pestle of the ages had ground here for so long a
time. Admittedly, he had been to Chenmo Shan, and seen the
artifacts; he knew that beneath the sands, fragmented glories of
Wurdsenlin still lay. But there was no open declaration that a
great civilization had once thrived here - had seen beauty,
peace, and then annihilation.
He crouched, and dug a shallow place in the sand, and
therein found a broken figurine of jade. Reverently, carefully,
he brushed the sand away from it, and lifted it up so that the
glare of light upon its polished surface hid the wounding cracks
the years had inflicted. The head was gone, and the arms; much
of the robed torso had been worn away. Thus, he could say
neither that it was of a man or a woman. His hands stroked the
smooth veneer once, and then he crouched and buried it again,
shallowly.
The sands whispered, and seemed to say: Look upon our
works, you mighty, and despair. The all-oblivious enmity of
Baazel's hate was what made it so terrible; had he his way,
nothing would be spared. He had destroyed the very life of this
land.
And still, the weeping taunted Ranma. Lord of Waters, they
had called him, and yet he could not find what he was seeking
for. Had he even the comprehension of what he sought? Already
it seemed some faded dream of grief.
He sank down to the sands, laid Tianzhu across his knees,
and tried to think. Were there water here, it could lead him to
what he sought; and yet there was no more water. Yet once, there
had been, for he had seen this place when it had been in bloom.
Then the answer came to him, so simple and obvious that he
smiled, and wondered why it had not occured to him from the
start. No thing passes without trace. He closed his eyes, and
with his mind cupped the earth below him like a lover; traced her
body as he had traced Akane's. Following the shiftings of the
sands and the crevices, he went down deeper, until he found the
underground channels through which water had once flowed.
His mind mapped them; in minutes, he knew them as intimately
as he knew himself. At first, they were chaos; but from chaos,
his mind created order. He found their centre, rose - eyes still
shut - and walked towards it.
From every side, the wind buffeted him, carrying weeping
from all directions. How deep your hate goes, Baazel, he
thought; how deep, and how enduring your spite. Were there
anything to admire in the longevity of such a thing, I would
admire your endurance. But I see deeper than with my eyes, and
hear deeper than with my ears; your hate shall not turn me aside
from this task.
At the centre, where the weeping was most distant and most
poignant, he stopped. Empty sands no more distinguishable from
any other place within the desert greeted him when he opened his
eyes. Had he been wrong?
"Lady, I implore thee."
Wind stirred sand.
"Lady, I call thee."
All was still, not even weeping endured.
"Lady, I summon thee."
There was no coalescing or arriving clap of thunder. One
moment, the child was not there; the next, she was. Smaller than
he remembered her; more fragile. Barely more than a toddler, but
the eyes... the eyes were without youth.
"Let me grieve," she demanded petulantly. "Why have you
called from my mourning?"
"Do you not know me, Lady?"
"I know you not."
"Can you name yourself?"
Her laughter was wind over a broken column. "I am gone long
past where a name could have meaning."
"Then I shall name myself. I am Ranma Saotome, Lord of
Waters. Do you know me now?"
"Still, I know you not."
"Let me name you, then. I name you Survivor; and that you
have survived means that you need not grieve eternally."
Survivor shrugged. Her hair, the brown of dead dropped
leaves, fell lank down her back. "We shall always grieve
eternally."
Ranma gave no answer. He concentrated, found the empty
channels again, and sent the call. It came so easily that it
surprised him, and he realized then that Baazel's hate had
endured merely because there had been no one to oppose him here.
He struck the sand with his staff. A thunderous rumble
smote the earth; the ground shook, dunes collapsed, valleys
filled in. Though the sky was cloudless, a bolt of lightning -
without answering thunder - shot down like the finger of a god
and struck the staff. Ranma breathed in; ozone, and the tang of
rain. Beneath his feet, long-pinioned water ran with elemental
glee through dust-choked channels. Electricity sang through his
body and made his hairs stand on end. He threw back his head,
and howled with ecstatic glee.
A geyser of water exploded through the sand, towered thrice
his height into the air, and then began to splash down. Sand
turned to mud, and began to wash away.
The song of creation filled him; lightning moved upon the
face of the waters. And Survivor laughed, joy in it, and
changed; or perhaps not changed so much as threw on another skin.
Her hair turned green, her body grew; a crown of ivy crept thrice
in circles around her brow, and the thyrsus appeared in her
hand. Longer grew her hair, and more tangled, until it was like
ropy vines in some primeval forest.
"Thank you, Lord of Waters. I am well pleased with this.
I am whole again."
"Not whole, Lady," he murmured. "For Ryugenzawa still lies
laid to waste."
She touched his cheek with pine-scented fingers. "I am as
whole as you need make me."
"Lady..."
"Peace. Your part for me is now done. But your task is not
yet done."
"I did not think it was, Lady." As before, there was
another tug, to pull him further north, away from here.
"Hold. Witness this before you go."
She planted her thyrsus in the earth. At once it began
to send its roots into the sand, and curving buds that would
become branches began to grow.
"This shall be Tu Mu again, the centre of things. And
this..." She swept her hands outward, in a gesture of infinite
giving, and from the sands green grass began to sprout. It died
immediately. But more grass grew, and died. Grew again, and
this time did not die, but took root in the bodies of its
predecessors. Flowers began to stretch forth and unfurl their
petals; springs of water bubbled from the now-fertile earth. As
far as his eye could see, it happened.
"...this shall not be Wurdsenlin again, but it shall be
beautiful," the Lady of Life concluded.
A fire might have burned in the centre of his heart, so
painful was the joy he felt. Only then did he discover that he
still did have some tears hidden inside him, and he wept. His
tears fell upon the earth, and flowers came forth.
"Lady, Mother, I am glad," he whispered, over and over
again. She did not hold him, though, and he did not wish her
too. Eventually, the weeping passed from him, and he gathered
himself to go. He opened his mouth to bid farewell, and then the
Lady spoke:
"One last thing."
She took from unresisting hands his staff, and turned
towards her planted thyrsus, which was already become a tree
taller than both of them. With a motion so swift as to almost be
callous, she snapped a budding branch off at the base, and winced
as though in sympathy with it. The wound upon the trunk sealed
over instantly, but Ranma knew that no branch would grow from
that spot again. The Lady took sap from the bleeding, broken
branch upon her fingers, and daubed it upon each end of Tianzhu;
then, upon his forehead and cheeks, she drew three signs whose
shapes he could not know.
Hastily, for the sun was nearing midday, and he felt that
time was growing short, he said his farewells. And so he left
this place as well.
**********
Upon his brazen throne, he waits, and no longer upon the
tower. His eyes, be they of hammered gold or molten fire, do not
see as the eyes of mortal beings do; at once, he is within this
chamber, and upon the tower as well. Born one, or become one, he
is a god; much power he holds within his hands.
His own god is on the move. With glee, Baazel witnesses his
power. What hope have they? he thinks. What hope have any?
There is another power on the move, one he knows nearly as
he knows himself. Perhaps it is great enough to challenge him.
Not the master, though; never the master.
This one shall come here, as he is drawn, and Baazel will
slay him. Then the master will forgive the failures of before;
upon his head he shall heap riches. He shall replace his golden
eye and silver hand with more fitting devices. His black armour
shall be peeled away, and he shall then be clothed only in sweet
garments of the Dark.
All this shall be so, if only he does what he requires.
**********
There were many ways to reach the third and youngest, and
Ranma had learned many during his ascent into the heavens upon
the back of the phoenix-dragon. Most of what he'd seen up there
had been forgotten; he had only the memory of his mind opening
up, and changing into a state where it could understand the
things he was shown. Once had been sent back down, he had lost
the ability to understand, and thus to remember. Occasionally,
as he flew over the desert that was rapidly becoming lush woods,
some upthrust tree or curling petal would bring back a flash of
recollection that died an instant later. He felt the loss of all
that knowledge like the dying of a beloved friend. Perhaps
someday he would reach the point where he could remember all he
had forgotten.
He came to the place of the Lady of Death by way of a small
tunnel in the side of Chenmo Shan, and passed between narrow
walls rimed with the detritus of long ages exposed to water. It
was as though even ancient stone could not constrain the strength
of the flow, and the drops that beaded upon the walls and rolled
slowly down were a matter of survival. At first, it sloped
gently; but then, it cut abruptly almost straight down, into a
long vertical shaft. Ranma breathed in, and tasted ancient night
upon the air from below. Holding Tianzhu tight against his
chest, he dropped down the shaft. Slick walls rushed by him in a
blur, but he didn't think to slow his descent; there was no
danger of injury here.
A second later, he landed on his feet in the small chamber
of dark rock veined with moon-coloured crystal. The Lady's
lake - really no more than a large pond - glistened in the
centre.
He did not need to call for her attention. This was her
domain, and she had never been bound or broken. Silent, stately,
she rose up from the lake and stood upon the water, white-garbed
and black-tressed. Footprints formed and died upon the water as
she walked to greet him at its edge. He knelt before her, and
she touched his brow, and bade him rise.
"Lady?" he asked, questioning.
"Lord of Waters?" she questioned back.
"I am unsure why I have come here. For your sisters, I knew
what I had to do for them before I went, but for you... for you,
I am unsure. What is it you require from me, Lady? Ask, and if
it is with my power, I shall do it; if it is not, I shall seek
new power, that it may be done."
She laughed, and her laughter was tiny bells ringing. Had
he displeased her? But no; she smiled at him, and her face was
lovely beyond compare, even to her sisters. Youngest and
fairest and most terrible. One thing he did remember was what
Mousse had become; the Lady had her mercies, but her mercy could
be crueler than cruelty.
"You need not fear that fate," she said, as though reading
his thoughts. "I saw his heart's desire and gave him new office,
and with it a great role to play that is not yet played out. The
power was always in his blood; I merely wakened him to my
service." Here she paused for a moment, and regarded him with
dark-starred eyes. "Your part goes beyond service to any one of
us."
"I know," he murmured. "But I have done a service each for
your two sisters, and I would know the service I might do for
you. As each of you played a role in making whole my divisions,
and bringing me from boy to man, can I not play a role in putting
whole what is divided in you?"
Again she laughed, and this time it was a beautiful knife,
so sharp that its most delicate touch could wound. "I have never
been broken, nor bound, Lord of Waters. I do not need healing
from you; you shall pay any debt to me in the end."
"But, Lady..."
"Hush." And she spoke as though to a child. "Speak not to
me of debts, Lord of Waters, but instead let me do you one final
service, before you go to face him."
"Service? I ask nothing more of you, Lady; I came only to
do service for you."
"You ask not, but you shall receive all the same. These
rags you wear do not befit you well." She turned from him, and
stepped to the boundary of the pool. From the waters, she drew
up garments as if drawing them from a chest of drawers; they
emerged from beneath the shimmering blackness dry of all
moisture and neatly folded.
"Since I came to this place," she said, turning again to
face him, "I have laboured each day upon these garments. With
each turning of the world, I drew my needle once; my threads were
the beams of the moon and sun, and my needle was the tip of the
mountain. Last night, my long labour came to an end. Receive
your garb, Lord of Waters."
From hand to hand, arm to arm, the rainment was passed. The
Lady stepped back, and Ranma stepped back. It was in two pieces,
pants and tunic, and the threads glistened like molten silver.
Fiery dragons twined upon the sleeves and legs, and a blazing
phoenix spread her wings upon the chest.
The Lord of Waters shed his tattered garb, and put on new
vestments. He bowed low to the Lady of Death, once, and she
bowed as low to him. Then he left the third and final.
Once the Lord of Waters was gone, a pale-faced shadow
stepped from the concealment of a formation of craggy
stalagmites, and knelt.
"My lady, may I follow? I shall hide myself from his sight;
I shall aid him not. I want only to witness, for he was my
friend once. Is my friend still."
"From his sight you could not hide yourself, love," the Lady
whispered. She raised him to his feet, and brushed his lips with
hers. "But stay." A gesture, and the dark pool became as a
mirror, but one reflecting other places. "Stay, and watch, for
you still have a part to play."
**********
Joy! Rapture! His eye of fire burns more bright; his eye
of gold gleams more lustrously. The screaming echoes in his
ears. Fire, fire everywhere, and the waves crashing down, the
air howling like a dozen wolfpacks, the very earth sundering and
cracking and falling apart...
He shakes himself back to the long loneliness of his throne
room. His foe is coming; his destined foe. The one he must
slay, the one whom he hates with all his heart.
His hand of metal flexes; strong before, strong enough that
he was cast out, but he had aid then. Now, he shall have no aid,
and he shall die; Baazel will return to the Valley of the Waters,
for he has seen the work his foe has done.
That work shall be undone. Wurdsenlin will burn again; Tang
Jin shall dry up again. And this time, this time, he shall lay
waste to Chenmo Shan himself; it shall be shattered to its
foundations.
Let it be easy for you to find me, little one - this is what
he thinks. And so he clenches his hand of flesh, and the boats
that circle the castle burst into flames. It shall be his
signal; he shall draw the Lord of Waters as a flame draws a moth.
And then, like the flame burns the moth, he shall burn him; but
the burning shall not end so quick as that. No; he shall burn
him forever, in the black flames that destroy without consuming.
Burn him forever.
"Burn," he says, out loud, relishing the sound of it.
Burn everything forever.
"Burn."
Laugh.
Wait.
**********
Before anything else, Ranma saw the smoke, hanging in the
air in a dank pall for miles around. It wasn't the smoke of
live flames, but rather the smouldering of fresh ashes. The main
burning had obviously taken place hours ago; scattered fires
still ran mostly unchecked through the streets, halfheartedly
fought by those who still lived.
He had flown long and hard over China, to the east, towards
the sea; nearly a hundred miles from the coast, he saw the first
traces of the smoke. He flew faster, pushing himself to his
limits.
And so, he came upon the remains of Shanghai.
How many had lived here, again? A figure, from a class that
he might have attended a century ago, floated through his head;
more than ten million? He could not be sure; nor could he be
sure how many still lived.
He calmly reached out and reconstructed a vague picture of
events, even as a terrible rage burned in his breast.
(Water a wall of water taller than the buildings surging
sweeping shattering)
A tidal wave, descending hammerlike upon the city.
(Earth ripping apart like paper and the people tumbling down
through the cracks the molten magma bubbling impossibly from
below the coastline breaking _away_ carrying the harbour and a
third of the city on a slow slide into the sea)
An earthquake, impossibly huge.
(Fire burning blazing blistering devouring sweeping through
the streets over everything driven by winds so strong you can't
run against them and you fall and the fire catches you)
Fire, from a source he could not determine, and wind driving
it to unnatural heights.
There was nothing he could do here; he had not tears enough
to grieve for all the dead, and he had not known any of them in a
way that would have truly let him do so. The most he could do
was draw the clouds over the smouldering ruins of Shanghai, seed
them with rain, and raise them high, so that the clean, cleansing
libation of the waters could fall upon it. Let that be his
grieving, for he could have no room for grief in him. Hate drove
it out, and thirst for vengeance.
No; not vengeance. The dead did not need vengeance. He
would destroy Baazel - for who else could it be, who else had the
power, and he had known already that the Ravager had returned -
not in the name of the dead, but the name of the living. This
would not happen again, not while he had breath in his body to
prevent it.
This is what comes of taking time, he thought. Had I not
stayed so long, Shanghai need not have died. He had failed, and
he could not undo that failure.
As he soared over the ocean, he suddenly paused, and
screamed at the sky. "Why? Why didn't you tell me? Some hint,
anything? All this prophecy, all this talk about destiny, and
you couldn't tell me this? A city! An entire damn city!"
The sky didn't answer. And he realized that what he'd said
to Kima had been absolutely true. At the end, he would always
have to go alone.
He thought, in a single moment of weakness, of turning back.
Let someone else fight Baazel; let others leave all they love
behind. Take this burden from me. Send another champion, so
that I can go back, spend my life with Akane, with my friends,
with my mother; send another, so that I don't have to do this.
Still no answer. And, because he had come this far, and
because he knew Baazel as he knew himself - knew that he would do
to all things what he had done to Shanghai if he had the chance -
he went on, over the ocean.
Again, it was the smoke he saw first. It didn't hang heavy
in the air, though, but moved in a circle-dance through the sky.
When he came closer, he saw why. Ships, hundreds of them,
circled in the grip of a whirlpool in the centre of the East
China Sea that had to be a dozen miles across. From rusting
military cruisers to tiny fishing boats, all were ablaze, filling
the air with waves of heat and boiling tendrils of smoke.
Ablaze, and yet not consumed. They were crewed by shapes that
seemed human, but could not be; no human crew could live amidst
those flames. And more were coming up from the sea, and being
pulled aboard the vessels by their comrades. Baazel was calling
them up, all the dead of the sea, the millions of the mouthless
dead.
Very soon, he would have a new army.
A whirlpool needed a centre. Ranma flew over it, averting
his eyes from the burning hell of ghost ships below him. Gale
force winds buffetted him back and forth like solid blows; it was
hard to stay on course, but he did.
He found the centre soon enough. In the eye of the
whirlpool, a craggy island of hardened magma rose like the axle
of a wheel. Upon its uneven volcanic surface, girded by
monolithic walls of unforgiving stone, a castle of jade and ivory
pointed its tall towers in cruel curvature towards the black
clouds circling in the sky. At the centre of this hell of water
and fire, Baazel had raised a place of terrible beauty.
As Ranma descended into the courtyard, great double doors of
brass and copper swung wide to admit him into the entrance hall.
He wondered if this place had existed before Baazel's coming and
had merely been raised from the sea by him, or if the Ravager
had forged it from nothingness in the short time he'd been free.
Either way, Baazel held such great power; how could he, strong as
he become, hope to challenge it?
Yet challenge it he would, for there was none other to do
so. And so he walked down long hallways, upon whose walls silken
tapestries of a strange and macabre depiction hung limp. He
descended and ascended spiral stairs of a hundred different kinds
of marble, and cold-burning torches in iron sconces threw
monstrous shadows all around him. Beneath silver archways
adorned with skittering runes he walked, across floors of
glistening gold. The castle was a beautiful nightmare; a
childish fancy twisted into something mostrous. No sense of
scale pervaded it; some rooms could have been ballrooms for
giants, and others prisons for dwarves. Marble and jade and
ivory and gold predominated; there were diamond statues of
incalculable worth, and furniture of slimy black stone. As he
went deeper into the bowels of the palace, the layout grew even
stranger; he found a room where fire moved like water through the
channels in the floor, and another room where water leapt up and
danced in flamelike tongues. The ceiling dipped and rose
drunkenly above his head; there were stalagmites of sapphire, and
stalactites of bone. He began to feel that unseen things watched
him from within the walls; the temptation was strong in him to
lash out and destroy. Yet he knew that to do so was to be lost.
Each time he turned a sharply-angled corner or opened a
misshapen door, he feared that he would find himself back in some
place he had already been - that this whole place was merely a
trap, to hold him here forever, while Baazel killed and destroyed
with impunity. But that never happened, and, at last, he found
himself standing before two tall doors of black iron studded with
gems. They parted at the touch of his hand; beyond them,
alternating pillars of gold and silver ran the length of a great
hall. Between them hung banners of precious silks, and ruby
lamps flamed upon the walls with hot red light.
At the very end, upon a raised dais of black marble twice
the height of a man, Baazel, the Ravager, sat on a throne of
brass and copper. The great black-hafted glaive, named
Worldcleaver for the dream of its wielder, rested against one
glowing brazen arm of the throne.
"Lord of Waters." And, oh, the power in that voice, and the
awful beauty.
"Baazel."
The Ravager raised his black-armoured body from the throne,
and picked up Worldcleaver in his silver hand. With slow and
terrible purpose, he began to descend the steps of the dais; the
joints of his armour almost screamed as they moved.
Ranma tried to think of something, anything, to say. But
then he remembered Shanghai, and they robbed him of any words.
Yes, he had seen what Baazel had been; yes, he had once been a
lost and frightened child. But that was past; it was what he was
now that had to be slain.
He raised Tianzhu, and pointed it straight at Baazel's
heart. Baazel matched his motion with Worldcleaver.
Each took one step towards the other.
The battle began.
**********
There's an old woman locked in a cell of stone.
Youth's mask had begun to fade hours ago, short-following on
the heels of her lost power. Now that all had come to fruition,
she had still failed herself - for she had not died. They had
spared her, as if they were merciful. More merciful to have
killed her quick, and spared her the slow death old age would
bring.
Yoko lay on the thin mattress in her prison beneath the
Musk fortress, and hated. Had she the strength, she would have
dashed her brains out against the floor. But the coming of fifty
years in a short span of hours, and all that came with them -
stiff joints, brittle bones, the dulling of the remaining senses
- had enfeebled her so that she could not eeven move from where
she lay.
Her mind had not faded, though, and neither had her sight;
the sight probably never would. The alien eyes, grafted in
place of her own ruined orbs - they did not see light so well,
but they saw other things. In the palace raised from the sea,
the battle raged between Ranma and Baazel. Both came alone, in
the end, backed only by the immaterial powers they served; no
physical manifestations to help either one now. Champion of
Light and champion of Dark, locked in eternal struggle. To her
eyes, their physical forms seemed to fade. Their faces fell
away, so that each bore not one face, but many.
This had gone many times before, and would go many times
after. Final battle? It would be the final battle for one of
them, of course. Not the final battle, though; merely a final
battle.
She had chosen her lot, played her part. What was left to
do but watch? Only two paths spread out from here, and there was
a death at the beginning of each one. But after that, there was
only a darkness she could not penetrate. Once the battle ended,
she would be blind as any other to the weavings of fate.
It gave her a certain comfort. She was weary of life, but
the master could not even grant her the gift of death yet; this
place lay within the sphere of his foe's power, and he could not
penetrate it. Yet.
Perhaps within the darkness lay her own death. She would
welcome it, then, for death would bring release from the pain
within her heart that had lain and festered since the killing
light had consumed Nagasaki and her children.
Why do I serve you, master? she wondered - and not for the
first time, though for the first time in many years. But she
could not hear him or even sense his presence here. For once,
she was truly alone.
Unhindered by her aged, crippled body, her mind and far-
seeing sight roamed free, and watched the present become the
past, as it sped relentlessly towards one of two futures dark to
her.
**********
Combat meant to end in the death of one combatant is a hard
thing to describe, even for the one who experiences it. To give
adequate voice to the sensation - the sense of walking a line as
thin as a razor, with death on either side - makes it seem
almost balletic in nature. It is not; there is nothing so formal
about it, it is a mere mad hell of pain and fear, and death
avoided by the breadth of hairs.
In the end, the resort is to simile and metaphor - and yet
there is a point where those too break down. "They came together
like two bulls" - but analogies fall apart in the end, and there
can only be the cold and clinical summation.
Such was the battle of Ranma, Lord of Waters, and Baazel,
Ravager and World-Hater. It was a battle fought with power
fully unleashed, with no holding back on either side - the time
for careful probing and testing of strengths was long ago ended.
Each knew, in heart and in mind, that for one of them, this was
the end.
It began in Baazel's throne room, amidst the pillars of gold
and silver. The Ravager thrust out his hand of flesh as he leapt
down from the dais; the red fire of one eye glowed in the
polished gold of the other, and black flames screamed through the
air towards Ranma.
The Lord of Waters stood unafraid, calm within his power as
a still pool is calm, and swung Tianzhu in an arc before him.
Sparks flew; the black flames rebounded from the now-glowing
staff with a scream that rasped the ears, and darkness consumed
one of the hanging silk banners.
Even as his first attack was deflected, Baazel came on with
his second; Worldcleaver bent back in his hands like a scythe,
and whipped downwards. In a straight line aimed straight at
Ranma, the marble floor shuddered and sprang up in jagged fangs.
Ranma was airborne before the maw could devour him, though,
and his body burned with starlike radiance. He howled, stretched
out his fingers; sizzling lines of white-hot power leapt forth
and raked the air. The Ravager moved away from them as though
avoiding the blows of a child, and all around the two champions
the gold and silver pillars fell, cleaved into sections by the
annihilating heat of Ranma's attack.
On it went, out of the throne room and through the tumorous
body of the castle, passing from one place of horrible beauty to
the next. They fought with fire, ice, light, darkness - with the
lightning stroke, with the thunderclap, with the teeth of the
rock and the hand of the waters. Power made raw sprang from
their outstretched hands - and was barely turned aside, or
avoided at the last minute. The castle shivered and fell all
around them: archways graven with shifting runes cracked and
collapsed, spiral stairways that wound into forever broke apart
and rained rubble upon collapsing marble floors. On they went
through the destruction, uncaring, moving through the fall of the
castle as though through gentle fields.
Sometimes they hid among the rubble, and launched surprise
attacks upon the unsuspecting other. Sometime they hurled their
power against each other in displays of pure force that made the
fabric of reality quiver in response to such excess of might.
And sometimes they came together in close and hard-fought battle;
Worldcleaver hurling black sparks as it reverberated from
Tianzhu, and Tianzhu glowing white as it thrust at Baazel's heart
only to scrape aside upon the black plates.
How fierce the battle went! They taunted one another;
the Ravager's laughter wounded the air, and was answered by the
proud defiance of the Lord of Waters. But defiance grew
wearier; there was no sudden shift, no point of turning where an
even match became a fighting retreat for Ranma. He was strong,
and his heart - full of love for friends and hatred of the Dark -
was true.
But true heart, love, strength, hatred of the Dark - even
those were not enough in the end against a vengeance in waiting
four thousand years, and an equal love of destruction and hatred
of the Light. Baazel wore him down steadily; slowly, he began to
defend more and more, attack less and less; minor wounds began to
plague him. Blood ran down into his eyes, and each breath came a
little less easy than the last. His body gave tiny twinges of
hesitation; even the flow of his power began to ebb. And Baazel
came on, laughing, always laughing, red eye burning, gold eye
gleaming, Worldcleaver singing its song of death as it cut
through the air...
In fury at himself and his weakness, the Lord of Waters
ignored what the weakening of his body and the ebbing of his
power told him, and pressed his attack with redoubled rage.
They were in the long entrance hall near the front of the castle
now. On the walls, great carven panels of wood showed scenes of
desecration and destruction; Ranma did not recognize specifics,
but saw patterns repeating: a tree burning, a city falling,
mountains erupting in fire, islands swallowed into the sea. All
the hating history of the Dark might well have been there, but he
had not the time to observe them.
For a few short moments, Baazel became the harried one,
seemingly surprised by the renewed vehemence of his foe. But it
did not last; Ranma had become too weak, and he was still too
strong. He pressed back; he screamed his hate. The Lord of
Waters nearly wept to hear it, for in it was the promised death
of all he loved.
In furious hate Baazel came; Ranma dodged and parried. Then
he slipped, stumbled; a backhanded blow from the silver hand
caught him under the jaw with hammerlike force, and smashed him
back through the double doors of brass and copper. There was a
fractional moment of unconsciousness, after which he found
himself laid out on his back upon the slimy cobblestones of the
courtyard. The stone walls ringing the castle rose mockingly
above him, blotting out the horizon with their grey vastness.
Everything seemed red; it blurred his vision, clouded his
hearing, clogged his breathing. The stench of blood and fire
filled the air.
Coming as though from a distant place place, he heard the
almost gentle ringing of Baazel's iron-shod heels upon the stones
as the Ravager walked slowly in. Tianzhu was no longer in his
hands; out of the corner of his eye, he could see it lying,
unglowing, upon the stones a few feet away.
Still unconscious, he thought, and wild hope sang in his
heart - he thinks I'm still unconscious. He knew well Baazel's
love of pain; the Ravager could not resist the temptation to make
the death lingering.
And so he saw his chance. But was it in him? His wounds
ached, and his power was at low tide; did he have the strength?
Then he realized, with something almost like humour, that it
didn't matter; if he did not have the strength, he would die.
And if he did, and did not attempt it, he would die.
It was not his death that he feared, though, but the
consequences of it. More cities destroyed, more lives lost, and
the world brought to sway beneath Baazel's cruel heel. Most of
all, he feared for those whom he loved. Not for himself, this
power; he saw that with perfect clarity now. For Akane, Ryoga,
his mother, Kima, Shampoo, Cologne. Hell, even for Tarou; no,
especially for Tarou, for the seed born in darkness that still
strives towards the light. For Samofere, Rouge, Mousse, Nabiki,
his father. For all the living and all the dead, and all those
who will be dead, and all those yet to live. For Tang Jin and
Wurdsenlin, born again.
Baazel's footsteps grew closer. Now or never.
Ranma rolled, grasped, and threw, all in one motion, flowing
like water. Tianzhu flew through the air like a god-shot arrow,
singing with a light of furious hope.
Only to be derided by Baazel's cruel smile as he raised the
wide blade of Worldcleaver to block it, in a swift, smooth and
seemingly automatic motion, as if Tianzhu moved tar-slow through
thickened air.
The staff hit the blade, and a bright explosion momentarily
robbed Ranma of sight. When the whiteness cleared, he saw that
Tianzhu had punched through the blade as though it were paper,
and carried on to pass through the body beyond. The Ravager
spasmed; Worldcleaver fell from his hands and grated on the
stones. Transfixing him like a spit, Tianzhu glowed too bright
to look upon, and around it, black armour bubbled and melted.
Ranma watched on his hands and knees. Baazel's face was
ashen; blood was trickling from his mouth. And yet his one
remaining eye of fire still burned bright with hate. He fell to
one knee, silver hand clutching spasmodically at the spear
embedded in his body, flesh hand scrabbling at the cobblestones
as though he would drag himself closer.
"I can still... kill you..."
And, Ranma realized with an odd pity, that was what Baazel
was trying to do.
"Still kill you..."
The Ravager stood, took a few staggering steps, and then
sank down his knees. His silver hand futilely groped at
Tianzhu, whose light had now dimmed to the point where the eye
did not avert from it.
"Can still... kill you..."
His body dipped, until one end of Tianzhu nearly touched the
stones, as though he would drive the killing staff deeper within
himself. Then, he fell onto his side, both hands now clutching
Tianzhu.
"...kill you all..."
He ceased his words, and lay panting upon the unpitying
stones. Ranma got wearily to his feet, and began the slow walk
over to his vanquished foe.
**********
In the soft cool darkness, Xande lay and bled. One wing was
gone; one arm hung by a few scrappy threads of meat. The last of
his strength had gone into carrying himself away from the battle,
to this familiar hiding place - here he had hidden himself from
searchers after the failed coup, and here he had returned now,
after losing his flight and nearly his life in the battle in the
pass.
Soon enough, his hold on life would slip away as well. Each
drawn breath was more laboured than the last, and each beat of
heart pumped more blood from the terrible wound of his missing
wing and mangled arm.
Half-consciously his mind replayed the terrible sharpness of
the Kinjakan, over and over again. Pain and terror in that, yes,
but less than in what awaited him - he had failed again. There
would be no tolerance for failure.
As he drifted in and out of coherence, he wept and pleaded
and prayed for another chance; not a chance to live much longer,
but a chance to redeem himself in service. Heal me, he begged,
not even entirely realizing his begging - heal me, and I shall do
an act of such destruction that it shall glory your infinite
names of darkness until the end of time.
The Phoenix were weary and decimated from the battle. They
would be resting now, unaware of any lurking threat. Healed, he
could go among them - healed, he could bring thousands of crows
down upon them. Through the halls, level by level; plucking
eyes, killing by sheer force of numbers. Eventually, he would
die; but before he did, oh, such havoc would he wreak...
A harsh, percussive voice - his own refutation, or the
master's, he could not tell - seemed to answer in response.
Healing is not mine; you insult me by the very asking, weak fool.
Have you no knowledge of what I am, even after so long within my
service? I am that which brings all healing to futility, King of
Ashes and Unmaker - ask not for healing from me.
Would you switch allegiance even from me, backstabber,
traitor? Perhaps you shall call upon those who oppose me - such
futile and foolish acts as healing as well-suited to them.
Xande opened his mouth, closed it. He had some pride, in
the end; he did not love the mere fact of his life so much that
he would turn against the very foundations of it. In the end,
he would at least be a true servant of something.
When he felt the burning feathery touch upon his ankle, and
smelt the rank carrion odour that now filled the small cave, he
even smiled.
"So you lived as well," he whispered. "Came all this way,
looking for me. Loyal servant to the end, as well." And he
laughed, with something terrible in it.
"Mistress..." Kuronuma sibilantly pronounced, somehow
forming the words out of the part of its wreckage that had been a
human child. Grief lay within it - twisted grief, but grief all
the same.
Like dark water, Kuronuma flowed over Xande, covering him
from head to toe. The toxic acidity of the amorphous body
carried surprisingly little pain in it, for it numbed the nerves
even as it melted through skin and flesh and muscle. Xande died
long before even the last of his meat was consumed, long before
his bones began to turn gelatinous, and then dissolve altogether.
After some time, Kuronuma lay alone in the darkness, oddly
uncontent. Mistress's slayer was dead, and yet there was still
an emptiness unfulfilled. But there was no one left to command
it now, and so, as water seeks the lowest level, so too did it
seek the lowest place, going down into the cracks within the
mountains, down into the very roots of the earth, with Xande
still digesting in its dark and formless body.
**********
Baazel's eye of fire was already growing dim as Ranma knelt
down beside him, and his eye of gold had lost its sinister
lustre. He seemed smaller than he had before, his elaborate
armour diminishing his own size rather than enchancing it.
Wounded and dying though he was, his eyes - both golden and fiery
- moved to focus upon his slayer.
"You could have been so much more than this," Ranma said
sadly.
The Ravager drew panting and desperate breaths, as though he
were trying to laugh but had not the strength. "Yes," he hissed.
"I could have destroyed much more than I did."
Ranma's eyes narrowed. "An entire city isn't enough?"
"City?" Baazel tried to laugh again, but then began to cough
and choke. It took him a long time to recover, and Ranma stood
quietly by while he did. He could hear the waves lapping against
the boundary walls. In the sky above, the dark cloud-mass Baazel
had gathered was breaking apart.
"City. You know nothing. You know nothing at all, you
stupid, foolish child."
Dread came down like a shower of icy rain, suffusing Ranma's
bones. "What?"
"Look out to sea," Baazel said, between gasps. "I come,
lord; I return to that darkness from which I was born."
"What do you mean? What's out to sea?"
Baazel somehow summoned up enough breath and life to scream.
"NO! No, lord, master, no, no, not like this, not like this
I don't want--"
He stiffened, screamed again. Ranma reached out and touched
his pale cheek - and drew his hand back, burned by the absolute
cold of Baazel's flesh.
"--don't make me go, don't make me lose myself--"
Then he began to turn into dust. It happened so quickly
that Ranma never really registered the decomposition of
individual elements; one moment, Baazel was there - the next, he
was dust blowing away on the salt-sea breeze, scattering across
the courtyard. The empty black armour remained a moment longer,
but a patina of rust was already spread virulent across it, and
it too had soon crumbled away. Tianzhu was left by itself on the
cobblestones. Out of the corner of his eye, Ranma could see
Worldcleaver had disappeared as well.
"Look out to sea," he murmured, and felt a strange ache in
his heart for Baazel; not Baazel the Ravager, but Baazel the
abandoned child. All that is mortal has its childhood. And some
children grow up to be monsters.
Could Baazel, he wondered, have escaped becoming Ravager and
World-Hater, any more than Ranma Saotome could have escaped
becoming Lord of Waters?
"Look out to sea."
Waves slapped the walls, with more seeming gentleness than
before. Weary and aching, Ranma flew up to the top of one
slabbish wall, and stared out over the waves. The burning ships
that would have carried Baazel's army had sunk again below the
waves, and their dead crews were again at peace; the residual
force of the dead whirlpool spent itself in high waves that fell
and broke upon the stoney walls. What was he supposed to see?
Out in the distance, mist, an expanding cloud of it. Then
he heard the bubbling - and no, not mist - steam? In thick
clouds it rose, obscuring whatever lay within it. He felt a
sympathetic throb in his body as the water boiled screamingly
into fog - the very ocean was crying out in pain at the heat
within it.
But the steam, the steam did not let him see the cause.
Not for long; he tightened his weary grip on Tianzhu, and sprang
from his perch atop the walls. As he flew towards the steaming
cloud hanging over a great swathe of the sea, he gathered the
wind before him; at the proper distance, he cast it forth like a
sweeping hand, and sent the cloaking steam swirling away in a
hundred directions.
An island was rising from the ocean, making the waters
bubble like a cauldron as it came from the untellable depths.
Small, as islands went, not nearly so big as the volcanic
upthrust that had held Baazel's castle. The mottled grey-black
stone was draped in nets of seaweed and littered with sundered
corals; a few bright fish flopped and died atop it, as if it had
come so swiftly from below that it had caught them in the
process.
Queerly shaped, too, in a teardrop wedge as ancient-seeming
as a drumlin. Near the apex of its height, where the long and
short faces met, two rounded hills of the same grey-black rock
humped tumourously, and behind them, a matching pair of twisted
stone spires narrowing after hundreds of feet of ascent to
needle-sharp tips.
He thought he had known dread before, when Baazel's words of
derision had wakened it within him. Now he knew that tenfold -
no, hundredfold. There was a terrible malignity in the island,
one that only grew the more it became exposed.
The steam was starting to gather again; he thrust it away
again with the winds, and muttered an oath under his breath.
What was the meaning of this island? He reached for the waters,
seeking an answer from their old and flowing strength.
For the first time since he had taken on his new mantle,
they shied back from him as though in terror. He could not grasp
them; the island hulked like a cancer amidst the seas,
untouchable, unknowable.
At the narrow end of the long face of the island, two
almost-identical rounded caves became visible. From their black
depths issued clouds of smoke, and their rocky rims glowed
cherry-red with heat. Some volcanic reaction within the island
that caused its great heat?
Ranma felt for the nature of that grey-black stone, as he
had reached for the water before. Not so easy, for him, but
doable all the same.
His senses could not touch the island; it was as though it
were not there. No, not entirely like that - he could "see" it
in the same way he might see a hole torn in a cloth, by the very
absence of what should have been there.
The creeping dread had grown so great that he had to seize
his tongue between his teeth to keep from crying out in terror.
His arms and legs quavered, and it was all he could do to keep
hold of his power and remain airborne. Why such excess of fear?
Unnatural though it might be, it was only an island.
Now he saw that dozens of rocky stalactites hung down from
all edges of the long face, in a pattern that appeared too
regular to be natural; and, beholding that sight, he could not
keep himself from whimpering. Fear had seized him like a fist,
and he could not explain it. Never had he been so afraid before;
not even the cloudy half-memories of his days in the pit, with
the tearing claws and glowing eyes, not even that memory brought
him fear now compared to this. Why?
Then, in answer to all questions, the two hills blinked,
exposing the black-slitted red fires lurking below their crust,
and the island reared back to roar its hatred to the sky.
**********
If Ryoga had any dreams, he didn't remember them after
waking. Falling asleep in a hard wooden chair probably wasn't
too conducive to dreaming anyway, or at least not to pleasant
dreams - particularly given the place and circumstances he'd
fallen asleep in.
His back had cricked painfully from the awkward sleeping
posture, and his spine twinged in protest as he rose from the
chair to look down at Akari.
The wounded who needed lengthy care had been brought back to
Phoenix Mountain. That had included Akari, who hadn't woken up
yet - hadn't given any sign that she ever would. He remembered
what he'd learned in his training about the seriousness of head
injuries; go to sleep with one, and you might never wake up. But
Akari had no wound upon her head - there was something far worse
at work, from what he'd been able to piece together. He still
didn't know enough facts, from anyone.
He did know that he'd failed, though. He'd gone away, left
her without a protector. It didn't matter that he'd had no idea
then - still didn't, really - of the scope of the forces arrayed
against them. He should have seen - irrational, perhaps, but he
couldn't deny the guilt - should have done something. That he
couldn't think of what didn't excuse the failure.
He'd failed, and who had paid the price? Not him, of
course; it had been paid by the one he'd least wanted harmed in
all the world.
Heavy-hearted, he knelt down beside her bedside, took her
hand in his. Her skin looked pale, far too pale, and where his
body cast a shadow over her, the shadow seemed much too dark.
They'd been kind, the Phoenix; they'd given her a room by
herself, somewhere he could wait with her without having to
listen to the sounds of those wounded in the body. But kindness
wouldn't wake Akari.
Cologne hadn't been able to, either. She'd examined Akari,
and said that she could find nothing wrong with her, beyond her
inability to wake up. She'd hinted that there might be items
from the village of the Joketsuzoku that could help, but they
would have to be sent. And, he thought glumly, it might well be
too late by then.
Her hand was small and soft in his; he could easily have
enfolded both her hands in one of his. It was warm, too; that
was a good sign, wasn't it? She had neither a fever nor a chill.
But so pale, and he could almost see the shadow of his body
growing darker where it was upon her skin, elongating in
unnatural ways, shifting... but that had to be the flickering of
the lamps.
He took her other hand in his free one, clasped both her
hands together within the cradle of his two hands. Bowed his
head, forehead touching fingers, and prayed.
"Revered ancestors," he began, feeling even more thick-
tongued than usual, "and, well, anyone else who might be
listening, and is inclined to help. I'm not really picky right
now. I'll take whatever I can get, if it helps her wake up.
Akari, that is. So, please? I promise to... to..." He
stumbled; what did one promise the gods, anyway? "To do
something pleasing to you, if I can."
Akari spoke:
"They stand before each other, one cloaked in shadow and one
cloaked in sun, but they bear the same face. Beneath their feet,
a pit of fire; above their heads, the arching rainbow. These
two, they are the axle."
Ryoga was so surprised, he nearly let go, backed away;
instead, he tightened his grip. His eyes threatened to fill up
with tears. She went on, voice drifting as though she spoke from
within a dream:
"Axle, but their hands do not do the turning." Her voice
rose in pitch and volume, and a note of fear entered it. "Ahh!
Gods! The hands lift, they are unbound now; high they raise,
above the rainbow's arc... they come down, the axle is broken..."
And, calmly again: "At the beginning and the end of the
river stands darkness."
"Akari, are you awake?"
Fear now:
"He is awake. His face is more terrible than terror, and
the touch of his hand is a violation. Wide his mouth; the upper
jaw scrapes the sky, and the lower jaw scrapes the earth. Wide
his eyes; they burn like suns, so bright that he sees all. His
hate is all-consuming; in the end, it shall feed upon itself,
when there is nothing more left to consume."
Ryoga was torn. He needed to stay here; he'd heard about
her fit, how she'd try to throw herself over the edge. Nabiki -
Nabiki, who had died so soon after, protecting her sister - had
stopped her.
He wanted to go and get help, though; surely the Phoenix had
doctors? Cologne might still be here. Akari needed help he
couldn't give...
And yet he couldn't leave her. So he only held her hands as
tight as he could, and, as she spoke in alternating calmness and
terror of wrath long in waiting and the stars going out (among so
many other things he lost count), he said, over and over:
"Don't be afraid. I'm here. I love you. I'll protect
you."
Though it didn't seem to calm her, it made him feel that he
was at least doing something.
**********
Nothing could be so big. Ranma's mind reeled at the
thought; it wasn't possible. The strain of battle had driven him
crazy. He was seeing something that wasn't there.
The roar caught him like a wind, so loud it was a physical
force, and he tumbled backwards in a series of awkward aerial
somersaults. His own screams of fear were drowned out beneath
the echoing of the bellow off the waves.
An island; he'd thought it was an island. And that was only
the head. How much more lay hidden beneath the waves, what
impossible length of body remained to rise vast and terrible from
the sea?
Now he knew why Baazel had laughed, and knew what had
destroyed Shanghai. Should have known, from the very beginning.
*Bright the duty*
*Dark the call*
*Towards the oldest one of all*
Sympathy and contagion. The prisoner who is also the
jailor. It all fell into place; all along, from the very
beginning, he had done the service of the Dark.
How long had the dragon lain wounded beneath Jusendo, by her
own choice? How long had she held... this... imprisoned? Ranma
whimpered, nearly wept; he had done everything wrong. Better
that he should never have been born.
Oh god, it was _looking_ at him, those hill-big eyes with
their slit pupils were rolling slowly into focus upon him. And,
like the eyes of the three sister-dragons, they were alight with
intelligence beyond human - and with a malign hate that he could
feel in the marrow of his bones.
Then, as though dismissing him utterly, the eyes turned
away, and the Oldest One of All began to move towards the west,
towards China and the Valley of the Waters. Steam and spray rose
up in high arcs to either side of the huge head - still the only
part of the body visible - as the Oldest One's fiery passage
churned the seas.
Of course, Ranma thought, and nearly laughed. I'm nothing
to him, no more than an insect. Hell, I practically served him.
I set him free. Oh gods, I set him free, I did everything wrong,
and now everything is going to die.
What was I supposed to do? Why didn't they show me the way?
If they're so wise, if I'm their champion, why didn't they tell
me what I should have done?
He screamed in rage and desperation, and darted ahead of the
slow-moving Oldest One. The Oldest One probably moved like a big
ship, slow acceleration, but massive speed once it built up
enough momentum. He had to delay it, somehow - stop it if he
could.
Drawing on what felt like the last dregs of power he had
left, he dropped down into of the Oldest One's path of movement,
a few hundred from the surging head. Even from this distance,
the beast looked impossibly huge.
"Hey! Hey, where do you think you're going?"
The Oldest One kept on moving, seemingly oblivious.
Ranma pointed Tianzhu, focused, and fired off a beam of eye-
aching brightness. It scored off the Oldest One's rocky hide
with all the effectiveness of an insect attacking armour plate.
"I said," Ranma snarled, "where do you think you are going?
I am Ranma Saotome, Lord of Waters, and I CALL YOU TO HEEL,
OLDEST ONE OF ALL!"
He pointed, and fired again, drawing on power that he had
not realize he had. This time, the beam vanished into the
darkness of one cavernous and smoke-filled nostril - and did the
monster pause, even for a fraction of a second? He wasn't sure.
"Through me lies the Valley of the Waters, the focus of your
hate." He did not know where the words were coming from, they
seemed to be rising up from deep within the lowest sediments of
his mind - from the memories he shared of the lives of other men
and women, from the other names. "Through me it lies, but you
shall not touch it without going through me. Such is the way;
so, I ask again, Oldest One of All, where do you go?"
Tidal waves hundreds of feet tall rose as the Oldest One
hulked the upper section of his body out the water, and pointed,
with the talon of a titanic hand big enough to smash a city,
towards the west.
The voice, so big and loud it seemed to come from all
directions, hit Ranma like a physical blow. He didn't hear it so
much as feel it, in a collective shuddering of flesh and bone.
I go to see my daughters, it said, and laughed.
Daughters? No; oh, no, it could not be so, it could not be.
But now it made sense; the draconic form - for dragon it was, the
Oldest One was raising the massive serpentine coils of his body
from the water in utter defiance of gravity - was not chosen in
mockery. Rather, the form of the three sister-dragons had been
forged into beauty from the hideousness of the raw materials.
For a moment, Ranma hung helpless in the air, sickness
twisting in his stomach. That was why the Dragon of Change could
bind him with her own sacrifice; once a part, always a part. Had
he suffered in silence? No; he would have suffered all that
untold time in hateful rage, unwilling rather than willing
prisoner. And over time, his hate would have fed upon itself,
used itself for fuel, until hate became his entire being... but
why turn upon their father in the first place? He didn't--
Nearly, he died. Nothing so big should have moved so fast,
but the Oldest One did, and his snatching talons nearly crushed
Ranma like an ant. But he darted between their grasp, and thus
saved himself. He fired off a blast as he did, a sizzling lance
of fire and lightning and raw force meant to pop one massive eye
as a needle might pop a balloon. The armoured lid flicked
closed, and the blast dissipated without accomplishing anything.
Fool, the Oldest One said, and his laughter smashed at Ranma
like a fist, to break him down. You are not even worth my time.
And, derisively, he began to move by Ranma, half-wading,
half-flying, talons clutching reflexively as if already in
anticipation of how he would grasp and tear at the Valley of the
Waters.
There is no chance, Ranma thought. No hope, either; how
could he hope to fight a monster of this size? Comparisons to an
insect fighting a man would have done injustice to the chances of
the insect. No part of the Oldest One's body was weak or
unprotected; there were no gaps in the armour. No
vulnerabilities.
Except, perhaps... yes, there was a chance.
He flew ahead, again. At the very least, he had the edge in
speed and manoeuvrability.
"I call thee to heel, Oldest One," he intoned. "You shall
not brush me aside."
You are so eager to die, the Oldest One said, and opened his
jaws wide. There was a sound that approached the cyclonic; wind
tore by Ranma, sucked into the vacuum of the Oldest One's maw.
And Ranma rode the wind, straight into the mouth of the
dragon. He held Tianzhu tight to his body, focused all his
power.
Thought about standing hand in hand with Wiyeed and Herb, in
the dark. It had been only days ago, but seemed like centuries.
Thought about a shield, a shield of light; not in a dome like
Wiyeed had made, to protect them all, but in a cloak around his
body. Skin tight.
Sight vanished into a blank expanse of white, as the Oldest
One exhaled sun-hot flames that would no doubt be visible from
thousands of miles away. Ranma felt their heat seeking to get in
through the tiniest crack in his shield to burn him to a cinder;
but there were no cracks. The fire sought to slay him with a
dumb and all-consuming hate, but he turned it aside, shot through
the streaming flames as though swimming in cool waters.
It seemed to go on forever; he had been far from the Oldest
One when the flames had belched forth, and there seemed no way to
measure time within the raging fires. But, at last, he felt the
heat lessen; the white blindness faded away. And he was in the
mouth of the dragon, hovering mere feet above the Oldest One's
slablike tongue, which pulsed a volcanic red raw as a wound.
Now, if only it seemed that he had been destroyed in...
Fool, the voice mocked, and the upper and lower jaw came
down together in an effort of concerted destruction. By instinct
more than anything else, Ranma thrust Tianzhu upwards to meet the
descent of the rocky ceiling of the maw. The force of the blow
drove it down into the rocky tongue hard enough to embed it a few
inches; the wood shivered, bent nearly double as though in
preparation to splintering.
But it held, quivering like a tuning fork as it separated
upper jaw from lower, and saved Ranma from death. The hot wind
of the Oldest One's breath clawed at his throat, and he felt
suction from deep within the maw; the Oldest One was going to
breathe out the killing flames again, and Ranma did not think he
had enough strength left for another shield. He had to act now,
but...
Too late. The flames came roaring up from the cavish
gullet; Ranma seized Tianzhu where it stood like a pillar between
upper and lower jaw, and screamed out in desperation. Upon his
face, the three unknowable signs drawn in the sap of the Lady of
Life's thyrsus throbbed hot and painful; Tianzhu, anointed with
the same sap at either end, glowed viridian in response.
And, as the flames washed over Ranma and everything
threatened to disappear into white-hot destruction, they broke
around the great tree that Tianzhu had become, a tree so wide
and thick and old and gnarled that no flame could ever kill it
completely. Oh, the bark would scorch, the branches burn away,
but it could not die, the roots were too thick and deep by now,
burrowing down, clutching into the rocky floor of the maw, as the
branches rose higher and higher above Ranma's head, forcing the
jaws further and further apart, nearly to the breaking point...
The Oldest One began to exert his strength; the tree
shuddered. And Ranma knew it would soon fall, riven in half
despite its age and strength. The dragon held the great tree
within his jaws, and sought to devour it. It was all wrong; how
had he come to hold the tree like that?
As the tree had grown, Ranma felt himself grow within, a
power filling him up to the brim, singing through blood and bone.
It tasted of ice and fire, of new-growing things, of spring wind,
and summer wind - but also autumn wind, and winter wind, and he
could taste ashes in it now, dust; he smelled lilies.
Now, he saw what he had to do, while the tree held.
He brought his arms down in a swimmer's stroke, and shot
upwards, guiding himself by the tree, branches whipping by his
face, brushing him lovingly, but never impeding his passage. As
he went up, he felt himself becoming one with the tree, one with
everything, his body was turning into light...
Pictured a shield, skin tight, bone tight, spirit tight,
until there was no division between shield and shielded, between
tree and man...
Squirrels chattered on the branches of the tree. He heard a
sound like a loom, or a spinning wheels, or the bubbling of
water, or hands moulding clay. Ravens flew around his head in
wise flocks, and told him all the secrets of the world.
His skin went first, as the shield tightened; it burned
away, becoming not ash, but light. Then flesh and muscle too;
then bone, blood, organs. Then all of him, until he was nothing
but a rushing spear of light, so that time slowed down and the
tree crept by him so sluggishly that he could note every knot and
wrinkle in the bark. It did not seem as though this existence
would ever end; at last, though, he passed the apex of the tree,
and there an eagle whispered into his ear.
Oh, he thought, and smiled, right at the end, finally
understanding it all. So that was why she...
The spear of light that had been Ranma narrowed itself,
until all of its being was as fine as the tip of a splinter of
glass, and burned through the upper jaw of the Oldest One of
All. Shot through, into the dark and pulsing brain, and there he
flared like a tiny nova, burning the centre of that ancient
hatred into nothing; narrowed again, and shot through the top of
the Oldest One's head in an explosion of light.
So did the Lord of Waters slay the Oldest One of All, just
as night fell upon the seas.
On the other side, flying free into the air, he tried in
that frozen time to bring himself back; he clung to Akane's name
and face like the edge of a precipice, as his body threatened to
complete the process, and dissipate completely into the purity of
the Light. But it paused; it slowed. And so, Ranma found
himself floating in mid air, above the thrashing, dying form of
the Oldest One of all, who was so very massive that his entire
body hadn't yet realized he was dead.
"That was why she..." he began again. Smiled. Understood;
felt no fear or hatred towards anyone or anything.
Then, in a motion that might have been made either in final
vengeance or in a random death-throe, the mile-long tail of the
Oldest One of All smashed into him with bone-shattering force,
and drove him down beneath its weight so that, together, they
crashed into the ruined remains of Baazel's castle, which began,
very slowly and almost calmly, to sink down into the sea.
**********
"Don't be afraid. I'm here. I love you. I'll protect
you."
"With his claws, he rends the mountain, and his tail empties
out the sea. His..."
"Don't be afraid. I'm here. I love you. I'll protect
you."
"I know."
"What?"
Ryoga stared down at Akari. She had opened her eyes. Still
pale, but not so pale as she had been. And the shadows did not
seem so dark any more.
"I know, Ryoga, but there isn't much time. You have to go
now, right now."
"Akari, it's okay, you're safe here."
"Ryoga!" Her voice was so sharp, it cut him off
immediately. "I've seen things, but I can't explain it now.
Go!"
"Go where? I don't..."
"Down! You have to hurry!"
"Akari..."
"Please!"
Still he hesitated. "But..."
"I'm okay. Go now. Ranma needs you."
Ryoga looked at her, open-mouthed. "What? Ranma..."
"Go!"
He went, not knowing why. Akari might very well be
delirious, ranting about nothing, but he didn't think she was, he
really didn't. So he went down, finding stairwells and small
drop shafts within Phoenix Mountain - which, he noted, really
hadn't been designed for anyone without wings to get around in
easily. No one stopped him, or impeded his progress; he didn't
even see any one the whole way down, until his passage ended in
the maze of tunnels beneath the mountain.
"Now what?" he murmured.
Nobody answered. His voice bounced off the stone walls.
But Akari had told him to go down, and something in her voice had
told him that request was not to be denied. So he decided to go
down; he sought those tunnels that seemed to lead lower and
lower, and just kept on going down them. Afterwards, he wasn't
able to say, or even guess at, how long he'd gone walking.
After a time he could not name or measure, though, he came
to the dark shores and the dark waters, and there he found again
his friend, Ranma Saotome. (
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