Fan Fiction ❯ The Fallen Reach ❯ Children of the Young Moon ( Chapter 1 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

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//the fallen reach//

notes - caffeine depravation. Pretty. Shiny. But you'll hate me later. ^_^ Mwah ha! Alternately, I'm writing Shana. And Miranda. It's like, a white-silver hell-fest.

rating - PG-13. :P I am a moron.

summary - Shana never forgot what she was, or what she almost became. Soa didn't either. Miranda never forgot her promise, or why she made it. - Earthquakes and the rise of Virage gather the dragoons against Soa's will once more. Yay.

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<I>There was once a girl who was almost a goddess.</I>

Walking across the blasted and dusty remains of the Divine Tree, the sun high above and splashing warmly on her face and shoulders, Shana felt the cut of ancient power so suddenly that she fell against the pile of debris aside her with a thin cry of surprise.

Warm as the afternoon was, her breath came in quick gasps, and she felt as though she had been doused in ice water.

Her hand went to her forehead, fingers splayed there for a dreaded moment, heart hammering in her chest. Sweat slid down her spine in cold mockery of trailing fingers.

Quick as it had stabbed into her, the feeling slid away, leaving a name old and terrible in its passing. Shana reached out to steady herself with her free arm, fingers curling into the parched soil.

It was something old and ancient and evil, her mind rattled. Hazel eyes slipped close as the name came to her lips.

Virage.

Couldn't be…

“Hey- you alright?”

It wasn't until Miranda's roughened hands gripped her shoulder did the pain register. A dull, sickened throb somewhere at her hip. Shana swallowed hard, her throat suddenly feeling dry and gummy.

Not going to cry. Not going to cry-!

Light brown hair brushed her shoulders as she shook her head. “No. I…I'm fine, really.”

“Ha.” Came the response. “You dropped like a sack of bricks.” And Miranda pushed back a crinkled strand of pale gold that brushed into her eyes. Stood.

Shana blinked furiously, unconsciously reaching down to rub her hip and jerking away as something sharp seemed to cut into her skin. Her watery gaze fell on the haphazard pile of bramble and stone that she had fallen into. “Bruised, is all.” She insisted, her mind clearly not on that, but the momentary flash of energy that had caused it.

Miranda looked doubtful. “Let me see.”

The once dragoon clambered to her feet, dragging a dusty hand through her hair and pulled at the waist of her pants, the light material bending away to reveal a spreading splotch of dark blue and purple.

“Fine.” She relented. “But I AM okay.”

Miranda's fingertips were like sandpaper on her skin, regarding the bruise with a somewhat unreadable expression until Shana venture a suspicious:

“What?”

Miranda asked, “Hurts like a bitch?”

Shana scrunched up her face. “Yes.” Around them, wind whipped dirt and dead leaves into their eyes. Shana shifted on cracked ground, sandals sliding through dust, and squinted into the distance, where the Wingly encampment shimmered in the heat.

A low whistle, and then, “Let's head back. Get some ice on this.”

“Oh! But you wanted to look around-!” Her friend raised her eyebrows, two pale streaks of pollen, and gestured around her with a broad wave.

“Soa's shit pile. Unless you wanted to…?”

Thinking of that feeling, and wondering where it might have come from, wondering if there might be a Virage that had survived…they can't have, they all died with the moon, they all burned with the moon…Shana mustered a smile, looking all around her.

It was vast, and deserted. An obliterated plain of damaged roots and rock, heaven coming in the form of a small oasis pooled in the middle of wasteland. Nowhere could something as large as a Virage hide, not without someone sensing it, or seeing it.

Except me…

“There's plenty of time, if I want to come back.”

A `hum' in agreement, Miranda gracelessly turning towards the long hike back to camp, damp stands of gold plastered to her forehead and the nape of her neck.

Shana rattled after her, one hand pressed to her bruise.

It was warm, and she, soul to this living death, was swaddled and wrapped tightly inside. Pulsing heartbeats lulled her in and out of caring, something akin to molten steel pouring through her veins.

My world.

My heart.

My-

-----

Wind slipped inside gaps in the cloth and the tent rattled insistently. Shana peered out at the scene that the sliver of opening gave her, her features softening into a sort of child-like wonder.

“What are they trying to find?”

Miranda wrung her hair back into a ponytail, her mouth quirking into a smirk without forethought. “Hell if I know.” Knelt for a moment to pull a small, insulated chest from under the table Shana now sat at.

“You don't think, maybe, that they're looking for…”

Shana drifted into silence, her brow furrowed thoughtfully. Maybe the Wingly excavators simply hoped to find tangible remains within the wasted Tree. Maybe they simply wished to find two dragoon spirits nestled in the grave of a god.

The woman closed her eyes and felt the dry breeze sweep into the tent and leave the taste of dust with its passing.

Maybe, her mind supplied, they were searching for the remains of a Virage

(dust to dust, ashes to ashes)

or maybe…(and here, worry and memory tightened like steel bands around her chest) maybe they hoped to find one, a whole monster, and wake it with the presence of dragoons.

Something cold and slippery pawed at her hip. A brief, shrill cry - Shana recognized this as her own - pierced the muted air.

Miranda cocked a brow, looking mildly tolerant. Joggled the ice pack up and down in her raised palm. The brunette eyed it mournfully, and her hand dipped to her injury despite its sickening throb at contact.

“Problems? Shana…?”

`Weird,' Shana thought, `Is it possible for someone to catch fire from sheer embarrassment?'

Or heat?

“No. Yes.” She groaned, and heard herself blurt out, “Maybe.”

“Ah.” The blonde hooked her foot around the leg of a second chair and pulled it out but didn't sit. Instead, she leaned against the back slates and tugged at the front of her shirt.

Shana gritted her teeth and rubbed the bruised area with slow, circular motions. In her mind, she tried to recall what the Virage

(figments of your imagination, darling!)

had felt like. Her heart gave a pained beat, and she felt the absence of that power as though a wedge had been cut from her soul.

“Problems with Dart?” said the other bluntly. Miranda had pressed the ice pack to her forehead, eyes half-closed half-narrowed slits of blue. Shana watched a bead of water and sweat slip down Miranda's heated cheek, to her neck and slide slowly to that gentle hollow nestled between her collarbones.

Shana fought the sudden urge to reach over and wipe it away, before it dripped further.

“Hey?”

Heat pooled languidly in her thoughts, making it hard to concentrate. “No,” she breathed, assaulted by this quick disassociation of here and now.

(she smells like sweat and dust and roses)

She blinked, wondered why it was suddenly so slow and dark, wondered what Miranda tasted like, wondered why she felt as though she was tipping sideways…falling.

----

Here lay monsters; entombed and dreaming in gravesleep, dreaming behind doors of dirt and rock, dreaming into waking.

(arise)

Here lay a fallen grace, Soa's Will. Living death. Created to destroy to create anew.

(awaken)

Here, the fallen reach from dreaming to waking.

----

She fell in and out of here and now; sliding between is and was.

(arise o' child of the moon)

A patch of welcome cool lay over her forehead, pushing her bangs messily every which way. Gingerly, she reached upward and felt the damp cloth. Smiled gently for a moment- and opened her eyes.

Sense of self fluttered in a stirring of confusion as her eyes rested a moment on an unfamiliar room; a broad and airy square enclosed with blue fabric- `tent, infirmary,' her mind supplied.

Shana gathered her thoughts, smoothed them over and laid them to rest. Tilted her gaze downward, where a blanket of sorts covered her from the waist down, and her brown and white attire fit over her tired form.

“Well,” drawled a voice at her side. “It's alive.”

She turned her head to the side, the light just bright enough to make her squint. Parted her lips.

Miranda, poised for motion at the edge of her chair, clad in shades of white and red.

Shana wondered if she reached out and touched the red of her jacket, would her hand come back with the color of Miranda's lifeblood?

“Wh…what happened?”

“Mn.” The Sacred Sister looked thoughtful.

Or bored.

“Heat exhaustion.” Miranda said. Between her hands she passed a glassy orb absently. “Stupid rock here.” A narrow blue glare at the dragon spirit, and Shana was stricken with a twist of longing.

Miranda bit her lower lip, seemed at a total loss for words.

Shana was momentarily impressed with a situation in which that was capable.

“I thought it might work. For you, at least.” Came her rough voice a moment later. Dull in sheen, it was jammed into one of the deep pockets that Miranda's jacket seemed to encompass, but not without a final, “Fucking paperweight.”

The brunette girl pressed a hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle, and her friend simultaneously looked pleased and annoyed.

(all that sleeps…)

A smile, no, Miranda never really did smile, the old smirk reformed on her thin face with a twitch of motion. “Think it's funny, eh?”

“Maybe a little.”

Miranda snorted. Rose with a limber grace and arched her back, bones popping audibly in a stretch. “Heh yourself, I'm gonna run and find Dart-“

(awaken o `child of the moons young)

Shana sat up, shivering and pulled the thin blanket across the thin cot she lay upon. The infirmary stood empty, but for she and Miranda, now the tent tossed shadows where they shouldn't be

(its just the heat)

and Shana desperately didn't want to be alone. Not after

(was it a Virage-? Can you feel what you yourself are?)

that force of will and ability. Her very soul ached in memory of it.

“Miranda-!”

(can't save you from yourself)

Something tugged at the blonde woman, Shana's cry slicing her heart and letting something else steal it while the wound ran.

“What-?”

(it's time for all that sleeps to awaken)

And this time, the ground warped and bucked under them.

----

Dart had lingered at the curving entrance until he had been mortally certain that Albert had either fallen and broke his royal pain-in-the-ass neck, or he had been distracted by something very, very shiny.

The former red-eye dragoon would have put his worldly possessions on the shiny, and had no doubt that the Serdian king was huddled in the dirt with the intent to discover if it might be a precious artifact, or a rock.

Dart also bet rock.

Dart, at the moment, was feeling slightly pissy. Feeling his way through the rough-hewn tunnel, luminous fungi and lichens (and rocks, Dart noted jadedly) crept over and under him, shining faint white and green.

Underground, it was easily a different climate. A cold, pervading chill whisked about this earthen gullet. It smelled of musky earth and the air was thick with a copper taste that reminded him of blood.

His boots shuffled hard clumps of earth, his hand reaching up and raking damp bangs from his eyes. He looked back, squinting at the pinpoint of light that was the surface and the tumbling slope leading to it.

A sigh, his breath faint wisps.

“It'd better be one hell of a rock, Albert.” Dart said aloud. “Big one, diamond studded.”

He felt cold and clammy, and without thinking, walking onward, his fingers traced a grasping pattern across the thin fabric of his shirt, over his heart.

Once, the king of dragons had rested there.

Now, it slept under a fog of flat colors in the pouch tied to his belt. Dormant.

(it's time for all that sleeps to awaken)

Dart paused, a heartbeat stuttering between confusion and worry. His face pulled taunt in a frown.

“Claustrophobia.”

Or not.

Beneath his worn, dust scuffed boots; the ground seemed to shiver, tiny vibrations racing from somewhere so far and so deep that it might have been the center of the world.

Maybe it was.

(it's the heat, lovely)

Yeah.