Row, row, row, your boat, gently down the
Row, row
Stream
Row your boat
Merrily, merrily
Gently down the
Merrily, merrily
Stream
Life is but
Merrily, merrily
A dream
Merrily, merrily, Life is but a dream...
Even with magic to guide them in a straight line, Finley is afraid they are off course. This far out in the ocean, everything looks the same, water to every side. "How did you talk me into this?"
"I didn't," Junpei answers. "You followed me."
"Come back here!" Finley thrashed in the water, discovering it was hard to point angrily and swim at the same time. Her hair clung to her face like a wreath of seaweed. "Have you lost your mind?!"
Calculations ran through Junpei's head. How to get this poor excuse for a patched up boat safely away from his sister? He almost couldn't believe she caught up to him. "Finley... you'll only try to stop me."
"I didn't chase you this far to let you go get yourself killed! Do you even know the way?"
"I heard enough..."
"Dammit, Junpei!"
"I should have magic'd you to sleep and dragged you home," Finley grumps, after an eternity of silence. But she promised not to do that, ever again.
What must their mother be thinking? Junpei left without a word in the middle of the night. Finley awoke from a restless sleep not long after, a restless sleep because she knew what day it was going to be, it was one of the days Hemlock had specified, and Finley had a feeling about what was going to happen. As soon as she found Junpei was missing, she went after him, without even stopping to tell their mother they'd be gone.
Junpei pokes her shoulder, calling her attention back to their surroundings. "Look."
"What?" she snaps. Then she sees it. There are rocks, miles high, sitting in the ocean.
After a long approach, their little boat glides between two of these rocks. Finley feels tiny.
Junpei sneezes. "Do you think this formation is natural?"
"I don't know and I don't care. But we must be close to shore, right?"
Junpei looks down at the multitab 6000 he brought with him. He can't use the GPS; doing so would immediately alert the system to his presence in a restricted zone. The computer is still advanced enough to know how far they've come, though. "Maybe."
The waves grow larger and begin to break. The boat creaks in protest as it's tossed. Finley spots the rock circle Hemlock spoke of, but only by the markings on the tallest one. Most of the others are submerged.
The fog lifts.
"Oh, sweet mountains," Finley laughs, in spite of herself. "I thought I'd never see you again."
Write these symbols in the sand, and the guardian will be forced by magic to appear.
Junpei squats down and prepares to draw the symbols with his index finger.
Finley doesn't bother asking if he's sure about this. They've come too far to turn back without sating their curiosity. "If our minds are erased... I just want you to know... this is your fault."
Moments after the last symbol is written, a cold wind picks up and the sand begins to shift. "Your fault," Finley repeats.
There's a flash of light from no discernible source, and then the whirlwind dies, leaving someone standing there.
Zoke glares at the Archers. "And you are?"
"We're here to talk to you about your car's extended warranty!" Finley announces.
Junpei stares at his sister.
Finley frowns back at him. "What? You're the only one who can have a sense of humor?"
"Identify yourselves or be presumed hostile and all that jazz."
Junpei holds up his hands defensively. "We're here looking for Chet."
"That was the wrong thing to say." Unlike Serril, Zoke doesn't want to look when he inflicts suffering. With only a hand gesture, he's frozen some of Junpei's internal organs.
This is a fight Finley cannot win. She knows that already. And yet she finds the wand in her hand. She can feel Junpei choking on the fluid that's gone solid in his throat, and her fear is turning to rage. "What are you doing, you psycho?! We're not looking to HURT Chet! That's what you're afraid of, isn't it?!" Of course, Finley would like very much to punish Chet, and she hopes he cannot sense that.
I can heal myself, Junpei reminds her, don't worry about me.
"If you have any brains behind your spots, sister, you will leave."
"Before you erase my mind?!"
"You knew the price, but you came here anyway?"
"Stay back!"
He'd like to, but at the core of this confrontation, they both have something to protect.
Sparring with Accalia and Junpei has not prepared Finley to match and counter the guardian's moves, but for a precious short time, her furious offensive attacks prevent him from taking her down for the count. At the same time, she has the nagging feeling that he is intentionally delaying her defeat, observing her behavior.
Zoke notices the male has fallen into some kind of trance. Is the female trying to distract him, so her companion can do... something? There are no healing spells going on. And the psychic stuff won't do him any good, not here, where the sands are cursed. Telepathy cannot escape these grounds.
Zoke also notices the unnatural way Finley is reacting to the spell meant to anchor her soul to her body. It's just a precaution; should he be forced to damage her enough to kill her, it wouldn't have to be a permanent death...
She manages to repel enough of the curse before it can take hold. It's not the failure that's particularly weird, it's her aura—it's flashy and reactionary. Some tiny exposure to dark magic, and she's lit up like a firework.
Light mage, dark mage.
"Well," he growls. "I've never fought an elf, before."
Chet has been tossing, turning, sick with anxiety. The haze breaks when Junpei calls out to her, reaching her soul through the realm traditional magic has no control over. She stumbles outside. The fog is dense, but the sun is rising, and it feels like forks digging into her skin. "Zoke," she whispers. "Stop..."
But though Chet is a powerful psychic, psychic senses alone will not puncture the protective wards around the city, and she lacks Junpei's tenuous ability to just wander through the etherium that binds all of their spirits together in one life web.
She can see what's going on, thanks to Junpei, but from here she can't stop it.
So she'll have to go to them.
"Listen!" Finley pleads. "I don't know what this lady is to you but my brother thinks she needs us to find her! She did something to his mind!"
Zoke manages to 'paralyze' Finley in place before he can process what she's trying to say.
There's no swirl of sand when Chet arrives on the beach. She wasn't pulled here by the same sort of curse. She's not connected to the place. She simply used some magic talisman Zoke gave her, so she'd always be able to find him, no matter which way through the maze he's gone.
Her life would be a lot simpler if people had never figured out how to imbue objects with spells and powers, but but for once it's helpful.
Anyway, the rip in spacetime is positioned a bit too high off the ground, and Chet falls out of it, flailing wildly to regain balance and avoid landing on her face.
"You can't be out here in the sun!" Zoke gasps.
"Why are you fighting them?" Chet whines. "It's... it's them. From my visions."
"That's unlikely," Zoke says gently. "The girl isn't very powerful."
Finley can't feel anything below her neck. She isn't sure how she's being held up. She's still registering the pain her brother is in, and that alone causes her to finally break down into sobs. "I tried to keep him from coming here but whatever you did to him made him obsessed with you! Please don't kill us..."
At this moment, Zoke realizes he's made a nasty error. "Oh... shit.."
Chet takes a moment to put the weaker psychics out of their misery, overloading their brains with one sharp jolt, so they both fall unconscious. When she met them in Bridgeport, she had no idea they were so comparatively defenseless.
Chet turns back to Zoke. "You ruptured his kidneys, didn't you?"
"Just one! ....Among other things! They said they were after you! I'm sorry!?"
Forgiveness will happen easily enough. Chet made a similar mistake when she first saw the Archers snooping around vampire business.
Chet's knees buckle and she collapses and he catches her like she knew he would. The cold touch of his skin does nothing to ease the harm sunlight is doing to her. "We've grown more and more paranoid over the years, haven't we..."
"Let's get you inside..."
After healing the mage brought to her, Kyra Drang pats her small apprentice on the head. "Easy, no?"
"No," the girl giggles.
"My fault," Junpei mumbles, waking up to a headache.
"Where are we?" Finley moans.
"Moonlight Falls," Kyra tells them. "Home of fugitives... monsters... that sort of thing."
And what variety of monsters are the Archers? It remains to be seen.
"Who are you?" Junpei wants to know.
"Doctor Drang. You may call me Kyra. This is my assistant, Wilson."
"I'm Colleen," young Wilson gives her own introduction.
"Drang," Junpei repeats.
"Mm, they neglected to mention your names," Kyra informs him.
"Do you feel better now, sir?" Wilson asks, eager to hear a 'yes'.
Junpei blinks a few times. "Y-yeah... thank you."
Finley rubs her temples. "Are we prisoners again?"
"No." Kyra smiles thinly, and shoos Wilson from the room. Once the girl is gone, she announces, "And we're not going to make you forget you were ever here. Although Zoke feels uncomfortable about the whole mess, he trusts his precog girlfriend."
"What happened?" Junpei asks.
"To you? Primarily, one of your kidneys exploded like a soda can in the freezer. You were a mess. Luckily, that's an easy organ for me to regrow. Well, usually. Zoke requested I shouldn't remove your soul for the process, and that made things more of a challenge. It's actually way easier for me to work on an unreaped dead body than on a living one."
Finley grits her teeth. "Is my brother going to be okay?"
"Yes. Were you listening to a word I said?"
"As in... Johann Drang?" Junpei brings up.
Kyra's orange eyes narrow suspiciously. It's been a long time since her cousin's dramatic departure from sanity and life, but the details still sting. Johann was so close in age to her, and yet vastly less powerful. He always felt he had something to prove. "How do you know of him?"
Junpei looks away. "Uh... a guy named Faraday... mentioned him."
"Shut up!" Finley hisses. "The last time you talked, someone tried to kill us!"
Kyra rolls her eyes at the mention of Faraday's name. For once, Junpei picked the right thing to say. "Oh, we'd rather assimilate you than kill you. Probably no chance of that, since you hit Zoke's freak-out button and he showed you just how horrible we can be... but then again, I don't know who you are or if you have something worse than us to hide from! Perhaps you will join us. So. How did you find this place?"
Finley sighs, apologizes for her rudeness, and does her best to explain the situation in a calm and charming manner. What Finley would like to do is scream that this is all the craziest shit ever and SHE must be crazy for having anything to do with it, but somehow she refrains, because what she and Junpei need right now is someone on their side.
"Interesting," Kyra remarks blandly. "Given my position, I'm one of the few who know the nature of our Chet's... non-madness. You two have been her project for quite some time."
"Project," Finley mutters contemptuously.
"You surely are not the only person who can stop Riko Chelar from using the Setran device... but you are the only one her visions have found."
"You think he's a serious threat? Then why aren't a bunch of you going after him? Or tipping off the government to his whereabouts?"
"Those are the obvious solutions. Chet meditated on them, and found that they failed."
Junpei said as much. It's still difficult for Finley to accept as truth. "So. I get the feeling someone on the outside is still after Chet... and that's why we were attacked when my brother mentioned her."
"Of course. She's an incredible precog, and a master thief. Speaking of, how is Wogan?" Kyra's inquiry is innocent; Finley revealed the source of her information about how to reach Moonlight Falls, but left out the exact circumstances she obtained it in.
"He's... probably dead," Junpei finally speaks.
"You can do this, alright?" Zoke feels like he's lied more than Riko, by now. All the sweet smiles and the telling her it's going to be fine, while her visions drive her crazier and crazier and sick and she won't let him do anything about it. "You brought them here, somehow. You have to talk to them."
Chet smiles back, crookedly, and shakes her head. "All the myriad ways... I could mess up..."
"You didn't mess up. They found you." He misses the version of Chet he fell in love with; sometime after leaving her awkward teen stage she found her confidence again and she was sure she could use her power for the greater good. She burned herself out, trying.
Chet clicks two nails together. Over and over. The left thumb and right ring finger. "She couldn't put a scratch on you, Zoke... how is she supposed to stand a chance against Riko?"
You tell me. He mouths the words, but doesn't dare say them.
"They're awake!" Wilson scampers in to report.
Zoke nods. "Thanks, kid."
Finley blinks when the doctor suddenly stands. "What's up?"
"Closing the blinds," Kyra answers. "So the vampire will be less antsy."
Junpei looks up. "She's on her way?"
Stories are swapped. Notes are compared.
Chet looks less threatening than Finley remembers. "Seriously? You put my brother through all that, and you don't even know our names?"
"Not for lack of trying," Chet says quietly.
"Ugggh! I can't believe you. I'm Finley Archer. This is Junpei."
"Archer?" Chet questions.
Junpei folds his fingers together. "That's your name, too, isn't it? And Riko's, before he changed it."
Chet nods slowly. "So that's how you were able to reach out to me, even through the protections on this place. You have some better understanding of how to use our elven magic."
Zoke opens his mouth as if to say something, then closes it. The siblings' distant kinship with Riko only confirms his suspicions about Finley's reaction to his own magic.
"I'm sorry for your trouble finding me," Chet is saying. "Supernatural Control would
destroy this community. We must make sure they can't find it."
"And only one person guards it?" Junpei frowns.
"Zoke's tribe guards a massive portal nexus. His great-grandfather absorbed Moonlight Falls into the protective wards meant to guard the portals."
"Portals? To where?" Finley questions.
"Places too dangerous to go," Chet answers, more dismissive than cryptic.
"You mentioned someone named Loki more than once," Zoke interjects. "Who is Loki?"
"It's Riko's birth name," Chet mumbles. "These two are descendants of his sister." She skimmed this information from the top of Junpei's mind. She hugs herself, and begins to rock back and forth. "But this isn't good. If you try to hurt him, you could end up like him. Corrupted."
"Elves are especially susceptible to the sickness," Kyra remarks. "Chet hoped you'd have some peculiar protection from that, but it seems you don't."
"We won't be hurt if he doesn't attack us," Junpei suggests.
"Oh no no no no no." Finley laughs. "We came here to find Chet. For closure. We are. NOT. Going. To find Loki."
"Where's your sense of adventure?" Junpei asks.
Finley can tell it's sarcasm, but it still strikes a nerve. Did he just say he's braver than she is? Because he's so not. "Exploded kidney is not enough for you in one day?"
"I got better..."
Chet glares at them. "I don't know why he wouldn't attack you. He's going to attack everyone. At once. Everyone."
"Why did Riko slash Loki start this stupid war?" Finley interrupts. "Why stage a revolution for a people he'd just as soon wipe out along with everyone else?"
Chet turns her gaze to Junpei. "You didn't figure that out?"
"Didn't have the chance," Junpei says. He leaves it at that, not bothering to explain Meela's interference.
"You could have just TOLD US this stuff instead of screwing up Junpei's brain," Finley points out.
"When I saw you in Bridgeport, I thought you were a lot more powerful," Chet protests. "I couldn't stick around since I'd pissed you off, I didn't want to fight you, and you wouldn't have believed me. As for the terrorism, MorcuCorp has possession of the Relic of Life. That's one of the artifacts Riko needs. He and I couldn't steal it on our own, without being captured by agents that would come to MorcuCorp's defense. The 'revolution' was a ploy to scatter the agents that would be a threat to Riko stealing the Relic of Life. I didn't realize it until much later, but he used me to... to see all the different paths, the ways it could successfully be stolen. And this was the way he chose."
Finley stares. "Couldn't a million things go wrong before that plan could possibly go right?"
"I'd say so." Kyra holds up two fingers, and watches a thin ribbon of electricity dance between them. Her skin doesn't burn. "But according to chatter, the relic went missing yesterday."
"No plan is insane when it's designed around a precog's visions," Zoke says seriously. "Riko found a way to use Chet's abilities without her consent. He guided her visions so he'd know how to create a scenario in which most paths lead to him succeeding."
"But you should still have one of the artifacts," Junpei says to Chet. "Loki gave it to you so you'd be safe, and later you used it to keep Sarala from using her powers against you."
The vampire shakes her head. "It doesn't matter what protective hex we put on it or what abyss we throw it into. He has its sister artifact. He can summon it to him at any time."
"He can't do that for the Relic of Life?" Finley asks.
"It only works between two specific pieces. Not all of them. The artifacts are not all the same."
"Did you try throwing it into a volcano?"
"Yes."
Finley is taken aback by the immediate response. "Oh?"
"She spent some years trying to destroy it, to prevent Riko from using it," Zoke says.
"She even went looking for the river Lethe, hoping to drop it in and erase it from existence and memory forever," Kyra adds.
"That's a thing that exists?" Junpei seems spooked by the very idea.
"Probably not," Zoke says.
"We cooked up some temperatures much hotter than a volcano," Chet clarifies. "So we know the artifacts, or at least this one, is impervious to extreme heat, extreme cold, and extreme pressure. Its match may be the key to destroying it, we don't know. We can't make heads or fails of the damn thing."
"Do you know the spell to bring the two artifacts together?" Junpei asks. "Could we use yours to summon the one he has, before the opposite happens?"
"He's the only one who seems to know how they work," Chet sighs. "It's those psychometric powers of his. He can SEE what its makers knew. Believe me, I've searched for a way to stop Riko for a long time, and the version of the future where you two confront him is the only way I've seen..."
"I only saw Finley confronting him," Junpei says.
"No, you're definitely there. I've seen glimpses of you. Still see.
Hasn't changed." Chet curls up in a ball and shivers. Her expression
doesn't change but her body language conveys some deep distress.
"She's having a seizure," Kyra announces suddenly, moving to restrain Chet. "You three should clear out for a minute."
"Do you believe her?" Zoke asks the Archers, once they've relocated. "Do you at least believe she sees possible futures?"
Why they stopped in this boring hallway, Junpei doesn't know. Zoke leaned against the wall with one arm and didn't look at them for a while, his face tight with grim exasperation. When he finally decided to speak to them, he turned his head to look them in the eyes. Dead serious.
"I can't make up my mind," Finley says. "I sensed she believed everything she said..."
Zoke doesn't blame her for her doubts. "For the record, I apologize for attacking you."
Finley glares at him. "It'll take a bit more than that to earn my forgiveness."
"I wasn't trying to kill you. I only couldn't allow you to leave until we knew you'd be able to keep our secret. Hence the memory erases we've been known to have to perform."
"You aren't making me feel any better."
Zoke shrugs. "Chet did show me what you looked like, but it was a long time ago..."
"I believe her," Junpei answers the earlier question. "I think we should try to find Loki. And fast."
"Good. She thinks he's going to be in Setra, when he tries to carry out his plan. She's always seen you fight in some windowed building, but she can't figure out which one."
"But she was there before. It's the museum." Junpei blinks, surprised. "I guess she doesn't remember. It was in one of her kid-memories."
Zoke wants to feel relieved or impressed, or something, but this isn't the sort of situation where those feelings are possible. "So you already know where to go."
"I'm only in this because I want my brother back to normal," Finley gripes. There's no way anyone's convincing her it's up to her to save the world.
The whole thing feels like a bad joke. Finley always wanted to be special. She was eager to be a mage, daring enough to become a war correspondent... and now someone tells her she could be the key to preventing an apocalypse, fear has taken over her brain, telling her no, no, no, no, no, no.
"I want Chet to come with us," Junpei says.
Zoke snorts. "That'd be useless. In case you hadn't noticed, she's ill. Ever since the Relic of Life was stolen, she's been trying to induce more visions. And if she goes to Setra, she ends up confronting Riko's niece, and she dies."
"We're going to change that," Junpei insists.
"I just said she can't help you."
"Look, if we're going to trust her, she's got to trust us," Finley snaps.
"She's not in any kind of condition for this!" Zoke protests.
"I'll go," Chet says. She crept up on them silently, both literally and metaphorically, intentionally dimming her psychic presence.
Zoke frowns at her for a long moment, then says, "I wish you wouldn't."
"If they won't go without me, I don't have a choice. I must go."
"It's only fair for you to go with us," Finley points out.
______________________________________________
Etc.: Colleen is a clone of Kairi Wilson. Little Colleen tries to get the long-lived people around her to call her by her first name, but they insist on calling each new Wilson "Wilson".
