the_lioness | (no subject)

Walking through fire is an unsettling sensation. She feels the heat of long fingered flames tugging on her cloak and dancing across her skin, but she remains unharmed.

Why doesn’t it burn?

Blinking, she examines the pink skin of her hands in astonishment and lifts her head to look back through the flames; the desert sands on the other side glow eerily red and orange like the sun just before it slips below the horizon. Persopolis is a faint smudge in the distance. She already knows what she will find when she turns around.

(Black City, cursed city, city of death and lost souls)

Why have I returned?

She steels her nerves and moves one foot over the other, turning in a slow circle. It hasn’t changed in the years since she and Jon battled the Ysandir within its walls. Digging her nails into her palms, she walks carefully along the black streets, eyes drawn up and over the shining ebony stone of tower after tower. Biting her lip, she presses her palm to a smooth, apparently cool door, only to yelp in pain and leap back. Her entire body feels singed from the contact, shuddering as she glances at her now scalded hand.

(No mortal being returns, especially the young.)

But the Ysandir are gone.

It does not matter. Evil lives here still, clinging to the ancient stone. Swallowing, she realizes she is not at all surprised to find herself standing once more in the central square, that hideously empty space that makes her feel as if someone is trying to pull her soul beneath the ground.

Black doors lined artfully with carved golden images are open and waiting, calling to her as they had before. She grits her teeth and stands her ground, convinced this is a fight she must win – a fight on which all other fights depend. A sudden wind strikes her from the side, the air churning around her. She wonders why it doesn’t lash her hair across her face. The wind dies with a low howl, and she realizes why; her long hair is gone. She is fourteen once more, standing before the black altar with Lightning humming by her side. Shocked, she concentrates on breathing as the altar seems to suck all the available light out of the room.

“It has been too long, lad,” says a sickeningly charming voice from the shadows.

She feels her muscles seize in reaction. “Yes, it is far past time for me to kill you again, Roger.” Insolent, reckless and cocky: she doesn’t care.

“Whatever do you mean, my dear boy?” Roger steps forward, surprise evident in his gaze. He laughs lightly and condescendingly, the sound bouncing about the chamber and making the hair on the back of her neck rise. “Kill me? Care to share why, precisely, you feel the need?”

Eyebrow quirked, she grips Lightning with small, scar free hands. “How long have you been here?” She asks suspiciously.

Roger extends his hands in an affected gesture of generosity. “Perhaps I am naught but a memory, Alan of Trebond.”

A memory? She tilts her head, watching him as she takes a cautious step closer. The Duke flickers as if edged by orange fire.

Oblivious to her confusion or perhaps reveling in it, Roger continues. “You two were supposed to die here. Why didn’t you die? Who protects you? These are questions I’ve asked myself time and time again, lad. Yes, even I do not have all the answers.” He smiles blandly, but it slips into a frown when he notices she is smirking in return.

Oh, you lack more answers than you know, Duke.

“However, I suspect it will make no difference in the end. I’ve made plans, you see.” His eyes flash with pride. Moving behind the altar, he pulls something from beneath his cloak and sets it carefully on the black stone. Ebony fades into ebony, and he taps his fingers on the item with a steady cadence.

(Black City, black stone, black box)

Eyes wide, she stares at the box with growing horror. “You... you came back here, didn’t you? The ebony box is from the Black City.”

Roger looks smug. “I had hoped you would die, but it was not a complete loss. As I recently told you, I know when a sword is too heavy for me to lift.” In a flash of orange light, he is no longer alone at the altar. “Do you?”

Ingress sits on the black stone, feet swinging with abandon. “’Lanna! You didn’t come to tea. You said you would ‘cause I was sad. You didn’t. I practiced the princess dance too, but you didn’t come.”

Rigid with anger, the fourteen year old body with twenty-one years worth of memories draws Lightning and races forward. The sword feels like the heaviest iron in her hands. “Stay away from her Roger, or by Mithros I will hand deliver you to the Black God myself.”

He ducks aside, amused. “Come now, it is simply a game, is it not?”

Ingress cries out, “Don’t let them take me again!” Another flash of light and she is gone, a single doll-sized tea cup on the altar the only sign that she had ever been there at all.

Breathing heavily, Alanna glares at Roger. “You will not win.”

“How do you know I haven’t already won, Lioness?” Bright blue Conte eyes laugh at her as he throws his cape over her head, and then she is drowning in black emptiness and hate.