Fragments of Time

[Lion]

He nodded in agreement and soon cast the glow of his hand aside in a flicker when she created her all-purpose orb.  Her light was brighter than his, and in his weakened state it was virtually useless.  The cave provided shelter from the elements and the background rumble of the sky outside sent a shiver down Ghanon's back.  He remembered now that he was soaking wet.  And his body was far too tangible for him to just dematerialize the moisture away as he might have on any other occasion.

Ghanon pulled the sleeves of his coat out from underneath his runic bracers and unbuttoned the clasps that held the front of his jacket.  He took it off and spread it out on the floor, before taking a seat beside it.  His sleeveless shirt exposed where blood soaked along on his right and he looked at his shoulder where he'd been bitten.  The blood had stopped but the throbbing failed to cease.  Soon the deep slashes on his thighs were throbbing as well and he was forced to take a seat.  Droplets of blood seeped onto the floor where he disturbed the wound.   Despite his own wounds, however, he looked over to Lana and motioned for her to come to him.  "Come here," he said.  "Are you hurt?"

[Anonymous]

Lana watched him tentatively, unused to seeing him, or any celestial being for that matter, in such a state.  Something was truly not right, something was effecting him, but she couldn't begin to imagine what it might be.  However, with Ghanon she knew that the eye was often deceiving.  

She stepped toward him and knelt to inspect his wounds.  She ignored his question and proceeded to run her soft hands along the blood-soaked fabric.  What energy she had was more than he possessed now, and though her energy had been drained considerably, she had escaped with much less damage than he.  At her back the bruising that had occurred as a result from the blow of the beast's bulbous tail was already beginning to become flesh colored again as her body naturally rejuvenated itself.  The process slowed, however, as she transferred as much of that power as she could to his wounds.  It would take a while, and perhaps wouldn't be perfect, but she could heal him at least to the point of comfort now.  The blood continued to drip from his thighs, and then slowly, beneath the fabric, the flesh began to reform itself.  She took her time, unwilling to rush it, as any overabundance of attention spent on this wound would sacrifice the rejuvenation of the other, and she needed to distribute what she had as it was necessary.  

"I'm fine." She raised her eyes to him, remembering his question, and then moved to the hideous jaw mark in his shoulder and smiled, "I suppose scars become you."

[Lion]

Ghanon winced when she gave attention to the wounds on his legs.  He didn't know what was wrong.  Normal circumstances would have it so that such wounds were trivial things and would heal nearly on impact, if Ghanon allowed them to impact at all.  Magic had always been a stronger in dealing damage to him than physical attacks.  But they hurt all the same.  And he was finding that the slashes on his legs hurt worst of all.  He was used to pain; one might even say he sort of thrived on it for if one did not learn from their own pain, how could they better adapt to survive from it?  Ghanon shifted uncomfortably until the healing was starting to commence.

He visibly relaxed and shifted his head up to look at her, offering her a wry grin.  He watched her work and gave her his arm to get a better look at the task at hand.  "Do they?" he remarked.  "I've never bled so much in my whole life, to be honest.  This is rather unusual, and if I scar, I'm even certain the blemish might be permanent.  But they were necessary I suppose.  And better that I get hurt than you do..."  He looked at her with candle eyes and thunder rolled again.

[Anonymous]

His words were significant to her, especially in light of his immortal body reacting in such a mortal way.  

"Perhaps it would have been better if I had been hurt." She said lowly, inspecting the wound with suspicion.

After she had done what she could with his shoulder, her grip on his arm tightened, "Is something ... not right, Ghanon?"

Ever since meeting him she had imagined that he had more power than her, an amount that he somehow kept secretively within.  Maybe it was just the illusion he made for himself, he was very talented with that, but it was certain that he was more than just weakened.  He was flawed.  And what had made him this way was the mystery to be found out.  He had come to her infected with a magic that she herself would have been poisoned by if she had taken the blow.  And now, he was acting more like a mortal than a god.

[Lion]

"No, I don't think it would be very good if you did," Ghanon said firmly.  His jaw was set and it was apparent that he meant what he said.  He may have been a being without a timeline, without a destiny of his own, but that did not mean he would sacrifice the state of his body to be consumed by the magic and will of another.  He knew his weakness was Arcan's doing.  That son-of-a-bitch and his godless sword.  He seemed capable of far more than he realized.

And Ghanon, for the first time in his timeless years, felt fear stab into his heart.  It was a cold feeling and he didn't like it one bit.  Ghanon looked at her work and was satisfied with it, but he did not let his face betray his fear.  He knew he could not act like everything was all right.  Everything may as well have been all wrong.  It was the wound at his side, that one that had began to eat away at him before being healed over that he realized may have been the cause of all this in the first place.

Ghanon looked at her gravely and sat up higher now that his legs were better.  "There is more I feel I have to tell you," he said slowly, even a little uncertain himself.  "Remember the gaping hole at my side?  Ordinary weapons cannot wound me, wound me in a fashion as that sword did.  My form...is not of this world or of any world.  I may change shape as I please, into what I please.  But I fear that may no longer be.  I feel heavier, more tangible than ever.  And the blade that caused that wound, I fear, may be the reason why I feel weakened.  And my further weaken me still, if I cannot find a way to reverse it.

"By the look of the sword, I could tell it was a demon sword, right away.  And the name of that sword is Azaghal."  He was looking at his hand now, staring at it as if it held the secrets to the universe, but his eyes were hard and he found truth in the very things he said.

[Anonymous]

Lana was very much concerned with the source of his wound.  The name, Azaghal, did not reverberate familiarly in her mind.  It was completely foreign to her, but it seemed that Ghanon knew it well.  However, the sword was of little importance in comparison to who might have wielded it.  Normally it wouldn't be her place to interfere in his personal trials, and it wasn't her interest.  She was not his keeper, and though she felt cold for admitting it, when he was not near her concern for him was very little.  It wasn't that she didn't care, it was that she didn't feel she had to.  Her confidence in his ability to handle his own problems, sometimes being the repercussion of his own choices, was so much that she was never plagued with worry for him.  Whatever he dealt with, he dealt with.  Until now, that was.

Now was the time to be concerned.  Now, when his foe was perhaps greater than he.  If luck were on his side at all he would tell her that it was just a lucky blow, and hopefully this would be the worst of the tribulation to come.

"Azaghal..." the name rolled off of her tongue like a temptation, "And does the wielder have as foreboding a name?"

[Lion]

The name was barely something he might define himself.  All he knew of it was what he'd seen, what he felt by the ice of the metal as it cut through his vulnerable flesh like he'd never felt before, heard the voice of the blade hiss it's words to Arcan.  And he remembered the way an emerging smile flickered eerily on the face of the Fallen Prince.  Ghanon was never one so easily intimidated or thwarted.  He'd endured the wrath of gods for ages, why should he be afraid of a lone man and his sentient sword?  Now...now he was starting to understand why.

Ghanon just wanted to rest, to sit for the moment and bask in the warmth of the fire.  But his mind was far from rest.  It worked endlessly; infinite clockwork in the clockwork of eternity.  And the gears of his mind grinded restlessly, endlessly until he thought he might get a headache just by looking into the light.  And gradually it was coming together and he knew that Arcan was not going to let him get the shard if he didn't deliver Lana too him.  There was no other option and suddenly he felt as if a hand had come up to his throat and was ever persistent in squeezing the life out of him.  He knew what it was to die once...he didn't think he would have its tendrils so close once again.

Ghanon turned his head to her and found his eyes couldn't meet hers.  They drifted over her face, looking for something he'd be unable to name.  "Arcan.  He called himself by that simple term.  Arcan Rizer," he said slowly, but not without bitterness.  "Though, I don't know if you would call that foreboding," he remarked and grinned a little.  "But these are just flesh wounds.  They might heal a little slower, but they will heal in time."

[Anonymous]

Lana was a little less than convinced of his confidence in the ability of his body to heal so well.  But, he knew it better than she.  Certainly with her help the wounds would heal better than they might've, though the pain might persist.  The body, fleshly or only mimicking the flesh, was an interesting organ in that it could mend itself and yet, sometimes even after an injury had fully subsided, the flesh would continue to be sensitive or painful, a permanent reminder of past traumas.  Perhaps this would be the case with Ghanon, and maybe this was something that he had never known before.  Permanent pain, other than the psychological.  

Lana knew this sort of pain, though it ran more deeply than a scar, into her nerves, connecting with the pathways running through her entire body.  She had first known this kind of pain when the implanted star at the bottom of her spine had been damaged many years ago.  The purpose of this jewel had been a sort of sick gift, though entirely desired by her.  Her lover, Slater, being also a great friend, had known her to possess a sometimes unbearable longing to know more of what it was to possess the 'yin' of existence.  She possessed only the 'yang', the bright, positive, strong, upward essence, and yet she longed to know balance.  It had been so inwardly trying for her to feel isolated, shut out to the broad knowledge that a balanced life would bring her.  Having loved her and only her, so profoundly, Slater felt her depression as his own.  He knew it would be invasive to give her the only gift that might bring her to be more at peace with herself, and he knew it would be excruciating.  However, being wise, it was obvious to him that her ongoing confusion would eventually eat away at her from the inside, and the loss of soul was graver than gaining a periodic physical pain.  Presenting the option to her, she agreed in haste.

Lana's eyes glazed over for a moment as she remembered how awkward and miserable it was to receive this gift.  Miserable not only for herself, but for Slater.  They had been intimate at his silent palace, laying side by side in the same silence, both heavy in thought about what they knew was to be done.  Slater had shown her the diamond he had fashioned for her from his own blood and volcanic ash that was rich with the furious power of his world.  As minerals could be found in such materials on earth, in the same way energies were a key component to the material of the lands they occupied.  It was a bloody installation as she lay naked, prostrate on their bed, her dark life force seeping into the sheets.  She cried quietly as her flesh clung to the foreign body in an attempt to heal itself around it.  Little could have been more foreign than the very materials that partly defined the blackened magic of his world.  If he had forced a rusted metal spike into her body it couldn't have been more inappropriate.  Unlike the white, nearly translucent gems that already occupied the path down her back and were in harmony with the microscopic structure of her flesh, this new addition had to grow into her and make permanent, unnatural connections to her.  In time, it was a deeply embedded part of her that she cherished.  Mortals wore tattoos for similar reasons and with similar, though greatly lessened, painful repercussions.  It was a segment of the new identity she was to soon establish, and an integral part to gaining a personal peace.  Eventually, even the toxicity of the dark jewel's magic became tolerable to her and existed in harmony with her own, though it taxed her to make use of it.  It was the greatest gift she had ever been given.

She returned to the present momentarily.  So Arcan, was it?  Arcan....  The name even sounded like a slithering snake.  

She passed her hand over the ethereal flames as a child does over the flame of a match to see if they would be burned, "And who is he to you that he would hurt you so?"

Her eyes were inquisitive, her hand still absently passing through the dancing flames.

[Lion]

Ghanon spurned the feelings of vulnerability that suddenly seeped over him with the realization of his fear.  He spurned them as he spurned his emotions that had no place in an existence like his.  Perhaps he seemed cold at times, or withdrawn.  But he could not trust the feelings that surged in him, for they both had great potential to help or hinder.  Ghanon felt the fear like coldness in his gut that slowly spread to every appendage of his body, numbing him to the very sensation of the warm of the all-purpose orb Lana had constructed.

He'd forgotten her for a moment, and receded into his thoughts, his considerations as what to do about this man that walked the line between humanity and beast.  Ghanon's own being could not so easily be considered, but this Arcan...he couldn't even put into words what he might have been.  A demon in possession of a prince...a prince in possession of a demon.  Worlds collided in many places, and what one was in one world, may be entirely another in a different world.  He saw Arcan through arrogant eyes.  He knew now that his arrogance had been folly.  He was a large man, so much larger than Ghanon, like he carried a shroud that made him broader of shoulder.  And Arcan's face.  It was a face he had a feeling he wouldn't be forgetting soon enough.  That driven way he looked when he spoke, like there was nothing that could meander the path he'd taken.  Arcan's eyes said it all of his desire for power and he'd get that power one way or another.

Then there was a sword.  Ghanon had seen demon swords before, and many took on a standard appearance that marked them as such.  But Azaghal.  It almost hurt him, it seemed, to carry that blade, but at the same time it was visible that Arcan thrived on the energy that Azaghal surged in return.  When he'd first seen it, the blade was soaked from hilt to point in the blood of three men.  Ghanon saw their corpses himself, saw the way it tore through flesh like a predator devouring prey.  Whether or not there was just cause to take the lives of those men, Ghanon would not be the judge of that.  He only knew that gravity did not take the blood to the ground like it should have, but it gradually seeped upward toward that glowing eye at the center of the blade.  The sword relished in its destruction, burgeoned from it.  He knew that despite the power it afforded to its wielder, Azaghal was not unlimited.  Always would it be hungry, starved and leaving behind a trail of bodies in Arcan's wake in a futile attempt to satisfy its thirst.

The sword was the key, he knew then.  Azaghal needed Arcan as much as Arcan needed Azaghal...  And Ghanon saw that if he stripped him of that sword, he might be able to reverse what had been done to his body.  If not, Ghanon did not know how much time he had left before all his own powers might be taken away.  Or he too might end up another body lying in the snow of these northern wastes.

Ghanon looked up at Lana when she spoke and appeared lost in his features.  When her question registered, he blinked thoughtfully.  "He is a broken man, thirsty and relentless.  He hurts me because I hold the key to something he wants.  My powers.  I think you know now that I'm not a god's son, not truly.  I am something else entirely.  

"Remember when we first met...back in the cabin, you dared not surrender your name to me?  And when you spurned me time and again and I threatened to tear it from your mind....  I could have, if I really wanted to, you know...  But I think something inside of me didn't want to.  I wanted you to reveal yourself because it was your choice, just as I had revealed myself to you.  It hurt.  I'm not going to say it didn't. But at least I was not alone in my anguish.  We might not have known each other for long and perhaps even in the best of circumstances, but I feel connected to you, in a deeper way than I might have anticipated."

[Anonymous]

Lana didn't visibly recoil, but inwardly she felt herself squeeze tightly that part of her that might have felt warmth at his words.  It was strange for someone to seem so attached to her, it was almost... reminiscent.  In the months that had passed between her arrival and this moment, she had taken great pains to put from her mind all that reminded her of what she'd lost.  Who she had lost....  It was as if Slater were an echo from a dream within a dream, that at moments she would swear that he was a daily part of her existence silently at her side, and at other times he was so faded that he might have fit well between the pages of an old book as nothing more than a few imaginative sentences.  Sometimes she would tentatively pore through the pages of her diary and as her eyes would drink in his name over and over again scrawled on the tattered pages, she would feel teased by the memory of such tangibility.  Sometimes, Ghanon reminded her of him.  Slater had been a calmer, much more centered spirit.  However, they had shared the same kind of inner conflict that made them unique.  It was embarrassing to her to look up at Ghanon and see in his eyes the same capturing gaze she had once been overwhelmed by.  However, Ghanon held his own magical spell over her, and at this moment it wasn't Slater she saw, but the beautifully pained expression of a being uncertain of his own meaning.  

"And I, you." she whispered, feeling a dry mass rise in her throat, "More than you can understand."

Had he asked, she might have bared her soul to him then, lay prostrate before him the tenderness he inspired in her.  But again, she stifled it with sensibility.

"You are like my own, my kin...  It is so very rare to meet another celestial entity, even with so many light years of space and time full of so much life."

For a moment, her gaze was void, and then after a short breath, as if she had stopped herself from producing words, she captured the flame in her palm and allowed it to consume her hand to her very fingertips where long, flickering talons reached from them.

"I had only known my brother, and one other, to be ethereal beings."

[Lion]

Ghanon knew there was trouble in saying what he had said for he knew that any kind of attachment would ultimately fail and be destroyed.  It had no place.  Perhaps it was something in him that wanted to spare her of something that couldn't possibly last forever.  Could it?  Nothing lasted forever, and surely whatever feelings he knew he couldn't possibly be having for her would fade with time.  But even as he thought about that, there was something in him that didn't even believe such a well-crafted lie.  They were kindred spirits, and he knew that.  But he feared there may have been something deeper and when he looked at her, he felt his stomach grow cold with a kind of trepidation that he didn't want to understand.  But he knew it was there, and he couldn't be able to deny it's presence for very long.  There was something about her, that he couldn't put his finger on, that he found himself being drawn to her.  It was a feeling that both compelled and repelled him, and he did not want to name it for fear of it being true.

Ghanon smiled softly at her when she whispered back to him, words that might have unfurled that feeling he wanted to bury deep inside him and never have flourish again.  He was silent and found no words to even want to interrupt her because the element of her voice soothed him and he let her go on as she pleased.  He reached out to her hand that held the flame, knowing....rather, hoping that the flame wouldn't hurt him.  He moved slowly tentatively until his hand touched hers and would have recoiled the instant the flame scorched him, but when he found it didn't—yet anyway—he wrapped his hand over hers and clutched it gently.  He kept his eyes on her hand, seeing the fire wrap around both of them and longed for that fire to burn him, to make that compelling feeling go away, but he scooted closer to her and reached to hold her other hand in his, to entwine his fingers into hers so that he might stay connected to her.

"You are like my own, my kin... It is so very rare to meet another celestial entity, even with so many light years of space and time full of so much life."  He mulled over her words and looked at her hands.  Then he turned his silver eyed gaze to her eyes, the green that encircled them fluctuating and spinning like water.  "The universe is a big place.  And life persists throughout...in so many wonderful shapes and forms and the way it functions is a fascinating thing," he muttered softly.  He turned his eyes back to her hands.  "I wasn't always this way...I was a mortal once, born on a plane very very far away from here a very very long time ago.  So long it's hard to even place the date.  My mother was beautiful, gentle, sensitive, but on that world, women were second to men.  My father was stern, cold, and his word was law.  I was the second of two sons, born to serve my brother for he would inherit what I would not.  And then I did something, something that changed everything.  I didn't know why I was spared, why I was given the power that I have.

"But I've come to understand that life throughout this universe is ofttimes a hard thing to be borne, even for beings like us...  Perhaps especially for beings like us.  The universe is such a lonely place, and when it's rare for us to come across others like ourselves, perhaps we were drawn together for a reason.  A reason even I do not understand," he said honestly.  He did not know what he meant by his words, just that he meant them and his tone was soft and uncertain.

[Anonymous]

The way he touched her hands was... indescribable.  There was such a pull of erotic gravity, not only physical, but very deeply emotional.  He was dangerous, she knew, but this only served to further her want of him.  And what it was she wanted of him was in constant fluctuation.  Sometimes, she desired him to hold her tightly and to forget the life around them, or their purpose.  Other times, she longed for the intrigue of his story, like now, as he spoke she listened absorbing every word from his mouth as if it were to become a memory of her own.  She also knew that she may not have very many opportunities to hear him speak so freely, and he again mentioned this ... thing, this change he had committed.

Their hands remained tightly intertwined in a braid of greenish fire that encircled them and tapered off at the length of their arms.  It tingled and soothed like a slithering snake tickling their flesh.

Lana's downcast eyes rose to meet his under a heavy curtain of thick black lashes.

"I never knew my mother." The words flowed from her mouth without will like a dam broken, "I wasn't even supposed to be born.  As a spiritual being, I was only to arrive as she passed from life and I came to it.  But..." Lana gave out a sigh without realization, "She fell in love with a mortal, and opened herself to a new type of birth, the kind that would allow her a meeting, though very short, with her own tiny creation.  It was taxing on her to accomplish something entirely foreign and destructive to her body, and she died, as was appropriate, leaving myself never to know that the circumstances surrounding my birth were abnormal.  I grew swiftly under the care and guidance of those who had looked after many of my lineage.  I was entirely unaware that I was different, except..." she found that her hands had been nervously clutching his perhaps too tightly, "Though I tried to be a good Queen, I innately desired true unbound knowledge.  I craved, no, lusted after all things prohibited.  This, I was taught to be afraid of.  I was taught to silently inhibit my curiosity.  It was not that I hoped to murder or to be a savage.  I wanted only to –know-.  What was it to make a choice based on one's own feelings?  Sometimes the best thing can be wrapped in the worst disguise."

She felt she had gone on too long, on a tangent.  She visibly shut her mouth and gave him a tight, slightly embarrassed smile.

After a moment, she concluded tentatively, "And it seems you know what I struggle with?  Perhaps not exactly...  But... You've mentioned this thing that changed your world, brought you to this point.  Though, you haven't even eluded to what it was."

[Lion]

Strands of electricity coursed from his fingertips throughout the rest of his fire.  The fire soothed him, and scorched him all at once.  He turned his eyes to the flame and longed for it so to burn him, and wake him up from the dream he was living in.  For he was a living dream, an entity that longed for an existence that no longer had a place for him.  If only he looked at her eyes and saw the kindred spirit that resided there, but he was afraid to, afraid what he would find, afraid that everything he'd worked for up to now would swirl into the Abyss and be lost forever because he was drawn to the communal call that she exuded and he was summoned to.  Ghanon, though, chastised himself for being so foolish, for being so weak and found strength to meet her eyes.  And the silver and green-ringed storm that swirled in his own, betrayed the tumult that raged on inside of him.

He listened to her words and nodded in understanding.  His fingers brushed the skin slightly, where it could as he knew that feeling exactly.  The desire to know the unknown.  It was as foreboding as it was beckoning and Ghanon's eyes drifted to Lana's form for a moment before trailing languidly back up to her face.  He had craved knowledge once and his mind drifted to the memories of candlelight study, of opening the forbidden tomes that contained the secrets to Corrothim Sorcery...  It was forbidden, it was said, for only the Three Magi were wise enough to use the magic to its fullest potential....  It was forbidden because it ate away at it's use, consumed them until there was nothing left to consume.  For does not power the consume those that crave it most.  But Ghanon had wanted something then, something made him stronger than his brother...something that had made him worthy in his father's eyes.  He had thought the sorcery would give him that.  If only he'd known what it would take away.

Ghanon surreptitiously reached out with his free hand and caressed her face, without speaking and waited for her to finish.  When she finally did, he suddenly frowned.  But not because she had spoken so much at once.  No, that he could handle...but because she had brought up that which he swore to never speak of to anyone.  Ghanon wanted to withdraw away from her, to shove her and make her take back her question, to hurt her for even bringing it up.  But she could not know that it was something he would refuse to answer.  He could not bring himself to know where to begin.  Why would she want to know this of him!?  What underneath the damnable power of the gods made her worthy to hear it!?  And shame bent his shoulders as he cut his eyes away from her.  There was nothing he could do to keep her from hear it, and whether she would run from him or spurn him, he didn't know.   He would have to let the dice fall where they may.

"Sometimes, yes.  Or sometimes, it was worse than you could imagine," he began slowly.  How could he tell her?  Were there even words to describe it?  She knew of loss, she would have to understand.  But it hurt Ghanon to even admit that it was there, and that it festered so long, a rotten wound that made him squirm and scream.  But if there was no easy way out, there was only the choice to say that which had to be said.  "I am a murderer," Ghanon said.  "I've done many things in my life.  Many...bad things, you might say.  But this...was different.  I was stupid then, I thought I could make a difference, prove something.  I was wrong.  My father saw that I was wrong and punished me for it.  And how could he not...  But I would do anything if I could take it back, if I could...but I just can't.  What's done is done...and what's said is said."

[Bet you can't guess where that last phrase comes from! :B]

[Anonymous]

Maybe Ghanon had not meant for her to see it, but the rage that filled him boiled over into his features and the tumult of it filled his eyes.  She knew that she had done wrong in asking, though why she couldn't fathom.  It was he who had hinted at it all along as if dangling a toy in front of a curious kitten.  Hadn't she told him how she craved knowledge of the world?  Her need to learn about life in all of its forms had not disappeared at the end of her Kingdom, no, indeed it increased with the freedom, however ashamed she felt in feeling so free, of having no one to rule.  And now that Ghanon opened to her, he still stayed enclosed enough not to reveal the details of his story.  Perhaps, then, if he knew of her sordid past, he would soften to her warmth.

"A murderer." She said this with no feeling as if it were a commonplace fact like gravity.

She paused for a moment, intentionally trying to make him feel uncomfortable with the silence surrounding that single descriptive word.  Because, Ghanon needed to feel what it was to have that most secret part of him divulged to someone else, the vulnerability.  Lana knew it was necessary for him to hurt over his shame to move past it.  

It wasn't that it didn't affect her.  The feeling that he was capable of taking a life made her instantly all the more wary.  There was much he had to hide, and primarily it triggered all of her instincts of distrust, however...  This was only the initial shock.  It was... a very human reaction, and over the many years of her long life she had learned to occasionally decipher between her mortal and immortal natures.  In truth, she had fallen in love with a murderer.  Not only a killer, but a callous one, one who existed as the harbinger of death and chaos, and it had thrilled her.  Perhaps it was wrong of her, but who was she now to deny even her darkest yearnings.

She pulled her hands from his and shaped the fire into the image of what appeared to be a man, though much larger in actual comparison with a great deal of emanating strength that seemed to gush from his pores.  His face was hard to see in the greenish tint of the fire, but as it flickered it was apparent his features were chiseled, Kingly.  Pain touched her as she enlarged the figure to stand at least a foot tall between them.  Lost for a moment, one of her fingertips caressed the right cheek of this man, and in turn the image seemed to respond with a small caress of its own.

"Ghanon." She spoke quietly, "We have more in common than you may be willing to believe."

She let the words soak into the air.

"May I introduce you to Slater." She turned the visage around to face Ghanon, "The one I killed, and the one I loved more than I have loved anyone or anything.  It is he, ever imprinted into my thoughts, the shadow of my shadow, who keeps me loving despair.  I don't know who you murdered, or why, or what other evil you've done since then, but I know he was an addict to bloodshed.  I also cannot know what specific pain gripped you from the moment that you altered your universe, but you must hear me when I say that darkness lurks behind every bright eye."

Her eyes were silver now, shimmering, and she noticed the storm brewing in his own swirling gaze.  Maybe he would see her differently now, after appearing so innocent and childish.  It would hurt her if he lost the intrigue of becoming close to a being so seemingly the opposite of him.  But, it was the truth, and at her core, though she sparkled and delighted in all that was good, a great part of her was enraptured by all that beckoned her from the shadows.  He was tainted, but so was she.

She passed her hand through the fire and it dissipated into the air like a dust.

[Lion]

"Darkness lurks behind every bright eye."  Yes, that much was true.  Ghanon stared at the flaming figure that she had created and felt his own emotions roil up inside of him, but the foremost of it was anger.  Anger at everything that had compounded, layer upon layer, until there was nothing left.  How could he let himself be so weak, expose himself to her in that way.  It wasn't as if telling her would purge himself of the guilt and the rage that boiled inside him for so long, it only roiled over.  Nothing could fix what he had done.

He trembled, quivered even, and only stared at the creation formed from fire.  He said nothing while she spoke and recognized the name as it passed through her lips.  He recalled it faintly, vaguely and remembered the feelings of a battle-plan parchment that he'd 'destroyed'.  But that was a far away memory and the more he tried to focus on it, the more intangible it became.  She knew this man though, knew him and loved him, for all the evil he represented.  Evil had many faces, and many names and nothing was as it seemed.  Ghanon turned his eyes toward hers and stopped trembling for a long moment, his breathe coming out in short bursts through teeth that slid along the other's edge.

His body had recovered from its aches and he shifted in a half crouch, kneeling on one bent leg and resting his arm on the other.  "We have so much in common, you say,"  Ghanon finally said and his tone was low, dangerous.  "Perhaps more than I think.... Tch."  Ghanon seethed inside and he clenched his fist until his nails dug into the flesh of his palm and made it bleed; small droplets seeped through the cracks and onto the cave floor.  His breath was caught and he suddenly bolted from his position and reached his arms out to grab her by the upper arms, his hands like neutronium vices.  He gripped her hard and held her close, his lips curled into a snarl and his eyes fluctuating madly.  

"I killed my brother!  I killed him because I was jealous, because he was worth the universe to my father, and I was worth nothing!  I killed him to prove that I was the stronger one!  I deserved to inherit the throne!  Not him!  For why should only one son receive everything and I, worthless simply because I am second born, receive nothing?  No....that was not the way it was going to be.  So I found the power, the power no one else was brave enough to wield and I took his life.  I hated him, he was a fool and he deserved to die.  He would have driven the throne into the ground....

"But....I loved him too.  He was my brother...my blood.  How could I not?  We shared the same mother....  He was my brother..."  Ghanon's eyes burned, but he refrained from crying.  He quaked, but held onto her still.  "There!  Now you know what rots away inside of me like a festering wound.  Does that satisfy you?!"  Every part of him wanted to tear her apart, and stick her head on a pike, anything to make her deaf to what he'd just said, or to forget it completely.  He wanted to hurt her physically, even as he doubted his own ability since being drained, but he still retained much of his power, and he would not hesitate to kill her.  Was the shard worth unearthing these torturous holes inside him?  He was starting to doubt it.

[Anonymous]

He was an animal then.  Pure instinct.  A wolf infected with rabies.

It was this, this she had foreseen and been so afraid of.  This was the danger in him that threatened to pour forth, so far and so different from the tender, vulnerable child before her in the cabin months ago.  He held her so tightly that her muscles gave way to his manipulation after tensing in response to the pain.  She could do nothing but let him treat her as a rag doll, a dog's chewed and abused toy.  She fought against the wild thoughts of resentment and terror that comprised the shock she felt.  She couldn't let herself believe he acted this way out of coldness. She knew, she knew that this rage was the subsequent consequence of the poison he carried inside him, and she had to feel for him, had to connect to what was still tender inside of him.  

"It doesn't make me happy!" she cried out against his own cries, hoping that her volume would make him see her as an equal in that moment, "Who would be happy to know that you've slain your own brother?!"  Her words came out bitter, though curiously there was another intention behind them. "You've committed a brutality, an act of sheer evil so repulsive and selfish and treacherous!  Yes!  You destroyed your family!  Yes!  You dishonored your father!  This is what you want to hear, is it not?!"  Tears glinted in her eyes, and though the emotion did not overcome her, her body still shook in his grasp, "And you can do it again!  Look, I am helpless to your rage, let chaos reign.  Destroy me as you destroy yourself daily, you would do me a favor.  And maybe, just maybe you'll finally be satisfied!  But then, as life has proven to you time and time again, you'll only be alone with your thoughts, destined to continue to relive the torture you subject yourself to."

She strained to lift her hand to his face knowing that she took a chance touching him as he was, this wild creature, but pressed ever more against his iron grip and managed to briefly touch her fingers to his skin, "I know what you did.  It isn't I who is persecuting you!  I don't judge you, I see through you!  I see you, Ghanon.  You are the man who killed your brother and loved him, loved him!  You are the man who hangs himself every day of his existence for his crimes.  It is you!  You had a choice in telling me!  If this is how painful it is for you then why trust me with it?  Do you even trust me?"

She wanted him to answer these questions, to own the responsibility that was rightfully his.  Part of her wished he would abuse her, throw her to the ground, beat her.  What did it matter if in the end he was relieved of this burden.  It was a toxic energy that filled him with such self loathing, and it had to be expelled.  But she was still afraid, still understandably tentative, and it seemed that they only existed in moments now.

[Lion]

If he'd been more conscious he would have realized then that he'd been sweating this whole time, once drenched from relentless pelting rain and now coated with a layer perspiration, his forehead beaded and glistening.  He held her still and could have done all the things he wanted to do to her  now that he had her at his mercy.  He could have plucked one of the jewels from her spine right now if he wanted and have been done with this whole charade.  Arcan would get what he wanted, and he would get the shard, what he worked so hard to find.  He would not let all his work be for naught.  But he refrained from doing so now...not when he felt so cornered.

Ghanon was consumed and he shook her against him.  "You think I don't know that!?" he exclaimed.  "I've tried!  Believe me I 've tried!  But I can't.  No matter what I do, it will always happen.  Because I no longer have a timeline, I therefore cannot alter the fate that befell me.  Killing you would prove nothing, Lana.  Nothing.  But you now know, and that is what you wanted.  Isn't it?  ISN'T it?!"  Ghanon sighed and loosened his fingers, only slightly.  "I know I can't take back what I've done.  I've already accepted that.

"Believe me...I wouldn't have told you if I didn't trust you.  And if it was knowledge that you wanted, it was knowledge that you got.  We all have a choice to make or break whatever destiny the gods set before us...  That was my destiny, and now I make my own fate."  Ghanon let her arms go of his grip, but moved his hands underneath her arms and wrapped them around her, embracing her to him.  "I know I'm a monster...and the things I must do because it's my purpose to do so, makes me one.  It does not matter, we all deserve to make our fate."

[Anonymous]

He was many men in one, or many facets of a single, complicated person.  Whichever it was, she knew he harbored the woes of a celestial creation destined to exist beyond those he loved, beyond the past, perhaps in a way beyond the future.  He was right.  He was a monster, a deliciously tempting monster.  And she found his monstrosity to be pleasantly abusive.  At the same time in her torn reality, she knew she was feeling the pull of a toxic relationship that may or may not prove to be just what they both needed, in the end.  Lana sighed against him the breath that had been held the entire time that their eyes had remained locked as he vented his fury at her.  

She could only muster a few words, "I'm glad that you trust me.  At least there's that."

And she found herself pushing him away, fighting a grimace of disgust as she parted and turned from him.  Her diamond spine glistened in the limited light as she ran her hands over her arms, composing herself.  He had given her quite a shake, and though she had known, had even in a sick way craved seeing his inner rage pour forth, the reality of it had effected her deeply.  She ran her hand over her slightly tangled, pale golden hair and traced the outline of some carvings that remained from eons before, when indigenous peoples made use of the cave as a home.  If ever she missed her brother, it was now.  At one time he had been her rock, and though she had grown a healthy independence over the years, there were times, breaking points, when he had been the only thing between her and her own self destruction.  It was hard for her to imagine him now, as he had been gone for so long, and she had learned to endure long centuries without him.  Wherever he was, if ever he was, she could not feel his presence within even light years of where she was.

"Of course we all make our own fates.  Be glad you still serve a purpose, even one that you sometimes loathe.  Even one that brings you such pain.  We are all the architects of our lives," she continued to trace the small figures of children, "Some of us are handed a blue print and a framework, others are given boulders and mortar, and strong hands."

Her figure drooped a little now, and she was overcome by a deep sadness.  She felt that something dreadful was soon to occur, but she was so surrounded by darkness that she couldn't find the direction of its source.  

"I want to be dark, Ghanon." Her voice was almost sing-song, thinking, "I was once very bright and safe, a presence of comfort and stability for my people, but I have no one to serve now.  No need to be anything, for anyone.  I've lost all of my companions, all semblance of anything I can relate to, and now I must fashion a new path.  I want to let in the darkness, but I know so little of it that I don't even know when it touches me.  I mean, truly touches me.  I have been sad, I have been hated, I have been murderous...  But sometimes, I feel there's more."

She glanced over her shoulder dreamily, and smiled, "In you.  There's a kind of darkness that tantalizes rather than invades, the kind that is not evil, not the kind you hear of in fairy tales.  Real darkness is as natural and necessary and purposeful as light and gravity and rain.  Real darkness is actually... sweet."

She blinked, and then cast a downward glance and returned to the tracings, reading the archaic stories.

[Lion]

Ghanon let her go, if a little wearily, when she pushed him away.  He sat back against the wall and he stared at the stone work.  Now she knew what she'd so direly, desperately wanted to know.  But why she wanted to know, he couldn't answer that.  He'd committed many crimes, had been the cause of many an atrocity against mortals and mortals worlds that he knew no matter what he tried to do, in the end he was damned.  But this...this had been the one sin he regretted, had wanted to take back.  Imagine, a being given the power that he had, through some unknown worth, he could do whatever he wanted, anything he wanted.  Except the one thing he wanted most.  The futility of it all tore at him, drove him mad and he knew that even that in the end, would all prove for naught.

"And some of us are thrown into the void without so much as a droplet of oxygen.  And even when death seems to be your only absolution, you're trapped in an existence that is no existence at all," Ghanon added bitterly.  He kept his eye on the stonework, the silver fluctuated like stormy water coming to rest.  Wind still gusted outside and while the rain continued to pelt the mountainside, all Ghanon could feel inside was loathing.  The architects of our lives....  That was not the way he saw it, it was not the way it was in his experience.

He could not respect the gods, those Architects of the Universe that sought to paint everything in their own image.  Mortals were merely playthings in their palms, puppets on strings of fate and destiny and performing a stageplay that only would end in doom, if only they knew.  But there was some relief in the knowledge that was released from that crippling coil that was his mortality.  His life may have been stolen from him, torn by the unseen hand that embodied godly things.  And yet, he knew that it'd been by his jealous selfish actions that it had all happened.  But everything happened for a reason, and when those reasons fell together in line, in the end, it didn't matter what happened in the past, only what one chose to do with their future.

Ghanon was thrown out of his introverted thoughts when Lana at last spoke to him.  What was this?  Seeking to forge a new path, huh?  He was momentarily confused by this statement...but her words, the way she spoke them sent a chill down his spine.  He did not smile, did not harden his expression and leaned to the side, across from her.  "And what would you with this darkness if given to you?"  There was a challenging expression in his eyes, not a smug one, but he wanted to know how far she was willing to go to test her newfound desire.  His right hand reached up and grabbed her by the head, hand gripping her hair, hard enough to jerk her close.  "You have to have to guts enough to do what needs to be done, Lana.  And I know you're strong in your own right, and there's enough pain in both of us to make us resist whatever opposition comes our way.  But real darkness lurks in the heart.  Would you really be willing to sacrifice all you once were in order to unleash that darkness?"  It was then that he grinned darkly at her, almost frighteningly should she be capable of fear.

[Anonymous]

Did he really see her as so plain, so innocent?  There was no innocence in her, only constant new discovery of the black, white and grey areas of life.  She was only a sponge soaking in anything that would threaten to consume her.  She had not been that gleaming representation of purity for a very long time now.  She felt as if that girl had never been.  

As he handled her she did not grimace in pain, but set her jaw in anger, her brow furrowing and her nose crinkling in disgust.  She gripped his arm with her hand and silvery talons grew from her fingertips to draw blood from his flesh.  The other hand held hard to his shirt and pulled him close to her, so close that they breathed each others air.

"What you so obviously failed to hear when you forced the tale of my past from my lips, was that I have already sacrificed all that I was, all that you apparently think I am, and there is nothing but a void at the center of me.  You may have known the unfortunate fate of having your future set before you, a change of destiny that forced you to become what you are, and forego what you were.  But me, I made my choice, albeit unknowingly, and I could not suppress who I am anymore!  I had to break free, I had to destroy those around me, all that I loved and held fast to, all of the lives that I had influenced, protected, nurtured, I demolished them, because it was all a lie.  I am not pure, Ghanon.  I have more than tasted darkness, I have bedded it.  I am stained by the selfishness and perverseness of a mortal, and yet deified by the blood of a goddess.  Like you, I have no place, no agenda, only I embrace it.   Accept it.  Immerse myself in it.  I cannot go back from my pain, I can only drink it in and let myself drown.  There is nothing left, Ghanon.  I am no enforcer of good, I merely played the part.  There is nothing left for me but discovery."

With this she thrust him from her and turned to make her way outside to the rain.  He enraged her so.  At times it was as if he didn't have anything in common with her, and she felt it heavily now.  If he knew her at all, he wouldn't have lashed out at her for pressing him to bare his soul.  Up until now, she had thought that was how they were so connected.

"Find your own way." She raised her hand to the air and clasped a moth in her hand, then blew it from her palms and into the air.

It fumbled in the air momentarily and spun wildly until it became a horse-sized creature, much like her previous creations.

She mounted, drenched now in the rain, the fine lines of her body emphasized by her wet clothing, "You've insulted me enough."