Hope and Divine: Ch XXIX

Hope and Divine: Chapter 29

(This fiction focuses on a lesbian couple, complaints will be disregarded)


The librarian looked back over his shoulder, panting now with the effort of sprinting, and the great amount of energy used creating the barrier and the earth ciphers. His eyebrows knitted slightly as he saw that the little Eidolon boy was still coming.

"Why won't he stop?" the Princess snarled. The librarian raised an eyebrow at the venom in her voice, and it rose even higher when he noticed her skid to a stop. All of the mercenaries stopped too, and upon seeing her straining slightly to raise her arms, raised their weapons warningly. The librarian flung up an arm.

"Wait" he said calmly, and the mercenaries froze. The Princess stopped, glaring at the approaching Nento, then turned and gave the librarian a look. After a few moments of silence during which she and the librarian stared at each other, the librarian raised the arm holding the magical harness, and made a small gesture. The Princess lifted both of her arms, and made a number of complicated looking gestures, including an over-arm sweeping motion, which the librarian knew was used often in fairly powerful spells, while muttering words under her breath. Indeed, as she brought her thumbs together and bent her fingers as though she were grasping some invisible ball, he saw the sparse tufts of grass around her wave as though in a sudden wind, despite there being no wind. At first nothing happened, but then the two or three dead looking trees around them gave a weird movement, as though they had all exhaled.

"Bind them!" the Princess said, with an unexpected poisonous sort of pleasure, breaking the hand-sign and pointing at the approaching Nento. The trees that had moved all did so again, making ominous creaking noises and tilting from side to side as though trying to pull up their own roots. There was an ominous rumbling, and the librarian saw in places where there was no grass several cracks popping up in the dry earth. The blue figure was near now, two earth cyphers bowling after him and trying to gnash at his flying coat. The librarian had an idea he knew what the Princess was doing, so was not particularly surprised when with a sound like a building splitting in two a great flailing tentacle-like thing shot out of the ground, earth flying in every direction. It was followed by one, two, five, nine more, all of them flailing around and shaking off the earth still stuck to them, before in unison they whipped down right at Nento. The boy had noticed everything, and had stopped, the two cyphers flying straight through him. The librarian adjusted his glasses, hoping no one had noticed this. Meanwhile the kid had begun to run again, diving out of the way of the first magically extended tree root, which struck one of the cyphers and blew it to dust. The librarian wondered how the boy knew where and when the roots were coming at him, but then considered that it might have been luck. The second, third, and fourth roots all latched onto him, two grabbing an arm each and the third grabbing both legs. The kid struggled, seemingly unable to phase out of the magically imbued roots. The last cypher bounded around the roots, barking and twitching its nose angrily.
With a contemptuous jerk of the head, the Princess turned away and began marching off again, as though nothing had happened to interrupt her. The librarian thought this a little cold, though he wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth, nor to criticise its breed. He snapped his fingers, and the magical restraint reasserted itself. He couldn't see the look on the boy's face, as he was quite high up and the darkness of evening had phased into the darkness of night. As he turned wordlessly around to continue on, the Princess snatched one of the green tinted pairs of goggles from one of the mercenaries, and jammed them onto her head. She jerked, and gave a small grunt of pain; the librarian supposed she had hit her nose with them or something. The boy did not say anything, but kept on struggling. The librarian knew that the boy could not speak, though he could make himself heard by some spectral voice of some sort, and he found it odd that he was not saying anything. He looked sharply at the Princess as she muttered something under her breath and pressed a hand to her temple. He didn't hear what she said exactly, but thought he caught the words "stay down". He turned his attention forward to the mountains ahead, which made him feel a little more reassured. In the evening and night darkness it had been hard to make the edifices out, but now that they were a good half a mile closer, he could just make out the highlighted edges of their steep sides jutting down from the clouds. He registered that for some reason, the clouds did not extend much further than the mountains themselves. He shrugged internally.

"No doubt something to do with atmospheric... something or other" he thought to himself, dismissively, sighing slightly at the decline of magical explanation and the rise of Terran scientific principles. It was perhaps lucky that he was wholly taken up with this none too pleasant idea, or he might have seen the twisted grin creeping across the Princess' pale face as she too looked at the mountains.

-

Mikomi threw the dog-thing off of her with a huge effort, and leapt out of the way of the other two as they both lunged. The one with the damaged side hit the other with a crunch and one of its hind legs fell off and crumbled into soil. It whined pitiably, but the other simply shook off the impact and leapt at Mikomi again.

"I don't have time for this!" she spat, grabbing it by the head, heaving it over her in an arc, the creature howling in surprise, and then smashed it as hard as she could into the ground, completely shattering the back of its body. She threw away the head, which made several pathetic rabbit-like noises, then crumbled into dusty soil as well. The third and last animal leapt at her while she did this, and managed to bite into her upper left arm, tackling her to the floor. Mikomi cried out in surprise and pain. Out of fury and sheer agony, she began punching the thing relentlessly in the head while it continued to bite into her arm.
"Get off!" she screamed at it. Her fist burst with the same blue light as the spell she had cast earlier, and she struck the bizarre creature in the flank. The creature gave a pained yelp and flew off, a bright blue spot flashing where she had struck. The creature bounced around once or twice like a frightened rabbit, and then in a bright blue flash, exploded in ethereal flames.
Mikomi pushed herself up with her good arm, then as the blood surged around her upright body, her torn arm gave a particularly exquisite lance of pain, and she gripped it tightly. The injured dog-rabbit thing was rapidly deteriorating, giving several alarmed yelps as its body disintegrated.
Trying her best to ignore the stabbing pains in her arm, she saw that Lin'oh and Marcel were running towards them, and that Sammi had just delivered a missed uppercut to her final dog-thing. The creature growled at her, curving its back and raising its stone hackles. Sammi seemed about to go for round two, but quite abruptly, the creature sat down, like a placid house-dog, and looked over to where Lin'oh and Marcel were running. Now that Mikomi looked, she saw that the six creatures that had run at them were lolloping along beside them, barking happily and bounding around them like enthusiastic puppies. Mikomi stared at this, not noticing Sammi's dog-thing running off to join them.

"They're Earth Cyphers" Lin'oh said, coming to a stop. The cyphers all sat around her, wagging their tails and panting excitedly, though one or two were twitching their noses and perking up their ears in a distinctly rabbit-like way.
"Overrode their tethers. Guy who cast them must be desperate to get away since he didn't lock the spell effectively" Lin'oh said, smiling rather smugly. Her smile faded as she looked at Mikomi's arm.
"Come here, let me-"

"No, we don't have time" Mikomi overrode her, tersely. She let go of her arm, which dripped blood. She ignored it, and peered at the horizon to where Divina and her kidnappers had been going. She could see nothing through the now pitch darkness, and cursed aloud. A flash of green light flickered into life behind her, and she turned to see Lin'oh a string tied to a vial used for potions that was emitting the glow.

"I know you want to catch up to them" Lin'oh began "but it won't do any good to go after them while you're injured" the cyphers all began turning their heads on one side in varying ways, as though seeing the sense in this. Mikomi however was not swayed.

"Lin'oh, you said it yourself; they're desperate if they're leaving ineffective stuff like these behind" she gestured at the cyphers. One of them gave her a dark look. "Professional as they are, that probably means they're close to where they're taking her and just need to slow us down while they run the last lap. We might never find her if they get to where they're going!" Lin'oh hesitated, evidently trying to find some argument against this.

"Ah zink she is right" Marcel put in, unexpectedly. "We must 'urry if we are to save mah Princess" Lin'oh gave him a look sharp enough to cleave metal in two, which was amplified in its foreboding by the eerie half-shadowed effect the light in the vial was playing on her face. Marcel did not flinch, but did not speak again.

"Just leave it, okay?" Mikomi said, impatiently "It's just a bite, I'll heal. We need to..." her voice tailed off as she looked back towards the horizon where Divina and her captors had disappeared into the night. In the light now cutting through the darkness, she saw a silhouetted figure on the edge of the darkness, a kind of darkened crooked arch, its highest section hanging down limply.

"Oh, hey" said a serene, though subtly irritable voice from their shoulders. "First one to make a 'hanging around' joke get a kick in the shins when I get down from here"

-

He felt control of the cyphers broken from him, and guessed that they had been defeated. He wasn't surprised, but this did mean that they, the Princess' friends, were coming. It didn't matter though, for they were there, at the base of the first mountain, and so close to the drop off point.

"Around the left side" he said, swinging an arm in the said direction. The group turned, sprinting in the direction he indicated around the base of the mountain. The mountains were very tall, like spires, but their bases were sloping and smooth, meaning they could traverse over its side and down the slope to the centre of the mountain formation. Within minutes they had managed it, the mercenaries panting and wheezing, especially those carrying their injured. The centre of the formation was a roughly star shaped floor of grey rock, the mountains standing like large cone-shaped pillars around it. This was the drop off point, or so he had been told, though there was no one around that he could see. Then again, it was dark. He clapped his hands, and a green light filled the area, seemingly emitted not from a source, but from the surroundings themselves. The mercenaries all looked mildly impressed by this, but the librarian's eyes swept the terrain in search of someone, or something. The Princess, unexpectedly, walked calmly towards the centre of the flat stone area. The librarian saw, and walked quickly up behind her, his sharp eyes not leaving the back of her head.

"The entrance is there" she said, pointing towards the tallest mountain opposite them. The librarian frowned, and looked up. She was pointing at the smooth side of the largest mountain, glowing a dim grape-green colour from his spell. There was no "entrance" there that he could see, no sign of anything. The Princess seems to guess his thoughts, for she gave a small laugh, and spread the fingers of the hand she had been pointing with, as though she were about to shoot a bolt of lightning from her palm at the mountain. Instead, she muttered something he didn't catch, and the hand did something very odd. He had seen it out of the corner of his eye; the hand had seemed to change hue, as though a shadow had moved across it, or from it, it was hard to tell. No sooner had this happened, then the mountain she had indicated began to change too. The light from his own spell seemed to be being drawn somewhere indistinct, into nothingness, and with it, so did its natural colour. And the mountain side too.

"That's odd" the librarian thought to himself aloofly, as what had formally been the edge of the mountain disappeared, replaced instead by what seemed to be what had obviously once been an elaborate and decorative entranceway, now much crumbled and decayed, but in such a way that showed it had clearly never been touched by foreign hand, nor seen the worst ravages of weather and climate. The entrance was not so much built onto the mountain, clearly the architecture had been carved from the mountain itself, though it looked to the librarian as though it had been grown from the mountain. Two great pillar-like edifices were connected to the mountain face by a set of organic-shaped stone extensions, rather like a tendon or a muscle might be expected to look, though it was much decayed and worn. The floor in front of the entrance was perfectly flat, and led to a cave of sorts, though the cave mouth was square. Perfectly square.
The librarian looked back down at the Princess.

"How did you know that was there?" he asked her. She was smiling in a bland, slightly self-assured way, and did not answer, but continued walking forward towards the entrance. He looked back to the mercenaries, who were all hanging back, looking apprehensive.
"Stay here, and keep back anyone coming. I shall be out soon with our pay" he said, commandingly across the expanse of rock. The lead mercenary gave a single, unsure looking nod, and pulled his gun up closer to his chest, and began issuing orders. The librarian and the Princess both walked composedly into the dark mouth of the cave, the librarian wondering as he passed the two obelisk-like pillars, just how much this job was in fact worth.

-

"Just what the hell are these trees made of?"

"They've probably been magically-"

"Yes, thank you Lin, I guessed as much" Sammi interrupted, rolling her eyes. So she didn't have to see Lin'oh's annoyed look, Sammi continued trying to hack at the vine-like root holding up Nento's legs. She hacked at the roots a few more times with her sword, achieving nothing as the blade simply glanced off of it as though she were hitting stone.
"Can't you just phase out?"

"If I could, I would have done it already, wouldn't I?" Nento said, a little waspishly. Sammi grumbled something and made a sound of contempt, directed at the root. After a minute or so of this, there was an impatient tut from below.

"Can't you just punch through the vines, Sammi?" Lin'oh asked, shaking her head irritably. Sammi paused. If it hadn't been so dark, someone might have seen the dull flush creeping up her neck, but no one did. She lowered her face a little and muttered something rapidly under her breath. Her right hand came over by an oddness, as though the air around it had visibly shifted, then she raised it high, and with a forceful grunt, punched down through the vine. The wood shattered as though it were made of stone. The shards fell to the sandy floor, and crumbled into dust. Sammi leapt over to the other side, and with a single backhanded swipe smashed the other two, and landed almost gracefully on the floor below.

"Nothing to it" she said, confidently, putting one hand on her hip and the other shifting a hair from her face. Nento fell with a crunch to the ground next to her.

"I hate you. Just thought you ought to know that" his voice said, conversationally. Sammi pretended not to hear him, and stretched her back, unconcernedly as he stood up, untangling himself from his overlarge coat.

"Come on, we have to catch Mikomi up" Lin'oh said, already getting a head start, Marcel behind her. Sammi nodded and began after them, but almost as an afterthought, she stopped, hoisted Nento up by the back of his coat, and then sped off, Nento dangling indignantly at her side.

Ahead, Mikomi was already running full pelt, her poncho whipping behind her like a short cape, her sheathed sword swinging eagerly and her bow and arrows rattling on her back. Her eyes fixed unblinkingly on the mountains ahead of her, she felt a galvanised determination in her chest like armour over her heart, blocking or at least dulling the superfluous physical pains. The bite to her arm stung, but she ignored it, knowing that it was already beginning to heal. There was more to it than she had admitted to Lin'oh, why she didn't want her arm healed. It didn't hurt so much that it would impede her using it so much. Useless as it was for holding a weapon, she was letting go of all restraint to save Divina. With blood available, getting set on fire again would be the most merciful thing the librarian could look forward to if it was him. She reached the base of the mountain in absolutely no time, and contrary to admiring the sheer scale of the edifice she might have done if not in her current state of mind, took no notice of the cloud formation over it or the peculiarly smoothish sides. Here however she came at a loss: Which way to go? She looked up at the sheer steepness of the mountain, and in her pressured mind was damn sure they didn't climb it. Stress mounted at the inactivity, the lack of movement. She cursed violently under her breath and tried to cudgel her mind into thought. If they didn't scale it, they must have gone around. If she was right that they were close to wherever they were ultimately going to, then in all likeliness they were coming to these mountains. There was nowhere else around for miles except for the border town. She looked up again, and noticed for the first time the odd formation the mountains made. She imagined that from the air they would make a five sided pyramid, and given how far apart they were from each other, there must be some kind of space between them, a place that would be out of sight from though outside the mountain range. The centre was the key, that's where, if anywhere, any base or safe house they were headed to would be. As she darted forward around the right side of the mountain, her mind becoming clearer with the continuance of movement, she thought of all the types of places that might be there: a compound, an underground bunker, an abandoned government outpost, a criminal hideout. All of them made her feel rather ill, or maybe that was just her arm catching up to her. She cut across the mountain's base as much as she could without impeding her speed, using each and every leverage, every firm stone, every mildly flat area to get her there faster. Her mind flickered for a moment back to Lin'oh and the others, and wondered when they might catch up. She knew she might not stand alone against the librarian or someone of his skill, despite how much stronger she was than the last time, especially with those mercenaries and whatever opponents may be waiting at the final destination. As she suppressed this unpleasant thought, determining to worry about it when the occasion arose, the mountain centre came into view, and drew her mind completely from her previous train of thought. Some kind of ancient looking entrance led into the mountain itself on the base of the largest and furthest mountain, and no less than ten figures standing around the entrance, whom she could see from the lamps dotted around the mouth of the entrance. She stopped, and hit the dirt, watching the figures closely. They did not seem to have seen her, but she had seen that they were the mercenary group that had attacked them. Several of their wounded or tired members were lying down on blankets or sitting against the woebegone remnants of the entrance to the mountain. Mikomi doubted that she could take them in an open fight here. With no cover being in medium range, they'd gun her down on sight. No, she'd have to send them off in another direction, but how?
Deliberating the problem, all the while getting the nagging feeling that Divina was even now being led ever closer to her doom, she got an idea. It was a simple trick, and would of course be much easier and faster to do it in a place with lots of buildings or trees, but hopefully it'd work here too. She only hoped she had time. Standing up so that she was still mostly concealed by the mountain side, she moved off towards the next mountain, fishing in her pocket, and muttering a spell.

-

As with Mikomi, it did not take long for Lin'oh, Sammi, Marcel, and Nento to reach the mountain formation. Reaching the first mountain's base, they all halted and looked around. Lin'oh opened her mouth to wonder a thought aloud, when there was the sound of an explosion from the right side of the mountain. All of them jumped and looked in the direction for a moment, except Nento, who dangling from Sammi's arm turned his head curiously in the direction of the blast as though listening intently. Seemingly in unison, they all started around the right side, their feet making no mark on the rocky surface of the mountain base. It had occurred to them all exactly what that explosion was, not the least since the fiery plume and smoke was bright blue, but it was Nento who voiced it, so to speak.

"Well we aren't that far behind then" he said, languidly, his arms folded. Sammi hoisted him up under her arm a little more securely. The pillar of smoke swirled in the night, still occasionally sparking a few twinkles of blue light, and in minutes they came to the spot where the smoke was rising from. There was not so much a crater as a large burn mark, seared  across the rocky surface of the mountain side, then Lin'oh and Marcel's eyes were caught by the flickering quality of lamps in the distance, before voices rent the still air.

"Halt! Stop right there!" all of their heads snapped around, just in time to dive out of the way of a flurry of energy bolts.
"Put your hands in the air!" the voice said, ineffectually, as all of them had dived for cover. Sammi had actually dived for cover into the side of the mountain, with the result that she had landed heavily on Nento and squashed him against the rock floor. He gave a, for some reason muffled, exclamation, and phased out from under her.

"If you hadn't been carrying me, I would have been able to sense them ahead of time" he sneered at her.

-

To Mikomi's great surprise, as she came around the other side of the second, rather smaller mountain to just a little ways away from the ancient looking entrance, she stopped just in time to see not just a portion, or a small group, but every able-bodied guard running to where her explosion had been. Her mouth curved awkwardly into an involuntary smile at the brilliance of her own plan. The muscles were stiff and didn't respond very well to the unfamiliar command. Praising the darkness of the night and the sounds of invisible night time fauna, she leapt from her position, and landed on the stone with a sound reminiscent of feathers landing on a giant pile of even more feathers. The remaining, lacklustre remnants of guards did not hear. The trick however was going to be getting into the entrance without being spotted. Unfortunately two or three of them were seated, leaning against the two foremost pillars, and there was no chance of getting passed them and into the entrance itself. Mikomi looked up, and her mouth curled downwards slightly at the knowledge of what she must do. She had no particular problem with climbing, but this ancient-looking monument to forgotten times looked as though its last legs had long since outlived their warranty. She looked at the guards, their backs to her, watching the scene off in the distance. With a pang, Mikomi realised that her friends must have caught up and drawn the remaining guards that her diversion had not. There were only about three or four guards still at the entrance, all of them injured in some way, but if she alerted them to her presence, they might raise an alarm to someone inside. No, this was a job for stealth. Looking up again, she grabbed at an indent in the stone, and pulled experimentally. The stone did not move or make a sound. She found another and pulled at that too. Nothing. Feeling more confident, she hoisted herself up, and reached for another one. It gave a slight wobble and a trickle of debris cascaded onto her. She froze, looking over at the guards. They did not seem to hear. Shaking the dust and pebbles from her hair, proceeding a little more carefully, she climbed the odd, vaguely organic shaped side of the entrance to the top. There she stopped, looking down over the sprawled number of injured men and women. None of them looked back. Looking down now, she tried to decide whether or not she should leap down, or climb down. From her angle she couldn't see very well, so leaned over the edge a little further in order to get a better look.

Crack. Kkkkk... Kumfp!

"Crap in a hat!" she thought in panic, as she and a large chunk of the monument teetered alarmingly on the edge. Several smaller rocks cracked and slid off, landing quite loudly onto the stone surface below. Mikomi's eyes snapped to the guards, all of whom could move had looked around and were staring in alarm at the place where the debris had landed. Two of them looked up. They stared for several long moments, Mikomi's heart beating so fast she thought that they must be able to hear it.

"Bloody old buildings" one of them said, irritably, and edged away from the entrance.

"Scared me half to death, that did" grumbled another. A third one began to tease him. Mikomi let out a restrained sigh, and tried not to move her injured arm. This proved understandably difficult as she dangled from the outside of the entrance by one arm. She thought she might have reopened the wound when she tried to grab the edge as she dived backwards off of it. She waited a few moments just in case a guard was still looking, and then with more difficulty than before, hoisted herself back up again, managing to slump herself onto the top of the wall. She was right, none of the them were looking. Without preamble this time, she leapt deftly off of the top, and landed with almost no noise into the open maw of the cave. Looking back, she saw that all of the guards were still peering with interest at a furious battle off across the clearing where green, red, and grey light blazed in all directions. Mikomi knocked out the burgeoning sense of dread at leaving her friends to deal with that, and merely hoped that they would be alright as she turned, and sprinted lightly off into the darkness.

-

Ahead of Mikomi, not fifty feet, the librarian and the Princess stood waiting. They both faced a large, flat wall covered in ancient, slightly worn looking murals. The only spot of this wall that did not feature an image was an arrow-shaped section directly at its centre, looking rather like a double-sided church entrance, which was completely smooth and perfectly flat. The walls of this room, much like the entrance way, was covered in alien-organic looking features that gave a person inside them the idea that they were inside a ventricle of a giant, alienesque heart. The ceiling featured a crown point from where several striations spread outwards like several muscles meeting. The room was dotted with an assortment of oddly shaped objects that one would never expect to see in a modern building or home, respectable or otherwise. The room looked in the main like a setting for a palace hall on a foreign planet in a well funded alien film. The fact that the room emanated a spectral green light, thanks to the librarian's magic, only accentuated this impression.
They had been waiting there for some two or three minutes, when quite suddenly, the Princess' head twitched, as though she had just experienced a small lance of pain. She turned her head around and frowned down the square tunnel they had just walked down.

"Oh I don't believe it" she sighed, sounding quite put out. The librarian turned around to face the entrance to the vestibule too, and after a moment or two, raised an eyebrow.

"What is it?" he asked. The Princess let out another sigh.

"She's coming" she said, exasperatedly. The librarian frowned, not finding this an adequate response.

"Who's coming?"

"My girlfriend" she replied, speaking the word as though reproaching it for having the audacity to come out of her mouth.

"I see no one" he remarked after a moment or two.

"Trust me, she's coming. They know everything that goes on in here" the Princess said, mysteriously. The librarian looked around at her, slightly surprised. What did she mean by that?  Did she mean his employers perhaps? He could not see how they could be communicating if so, but who else would she be speaking of?

"For now, however" he thought, as the distant sound of footsteps could be heard from deep within the tunnel. He flexed his casting arm.
"One loose end to tie at a time"

The Princess smirked


- To be Continued