It had been years since she had left him out of trepidation, in a moment of desperation against something she didn't understand. The earth had warned her of something, something treacherous within the cave he was leading her to, and her heart was torn in two. Stay, and know that she would face an enemy that even Ghanon couldn't protect her from, or leave, and perhaps never see Ghanon again. One could say she abandoned him to a possible death, but she knew the threat wasn't for him, but for her. She knew that whatever lurked deeply behind the shadows was for her, and her alone, and she didn't have time to make Ghanon fully aware of what she felt.
"Ghanon." she stopped him before they entered the cave, and squeezed his hand gently within her own, "I.... I can't."
Tearful eyes made their way back to his, an icy blue occupying their normal azure centers, and she brought her hand up to his arm, almost pleadingly, as if to ask him to silently to make this choice easier for her.
"I don't know why, I just can't. I have to get far away from here," she paused, her eyes riddled with confusion, "Without you."
She felt the foreboding fluctuation of energy emanating from the cave and stepped back slightly behind Ghanon. A gasp escaped her and a tear rolled down her cheek, freeing itself at the end of her chin and she turned back to Ghanon fiercely, confidently.
"I will find you." she promised, raising both of her hands to his gentle face, and leaned into his ear, smelling the fine scent of his blonde hair, and whispered, "I will because I love you."
The words came easily now, as if the moment, swollen with anxiety and apprehension, had helped her overcome her more insignificant fears. She knew she loved him, wholly, and had for a long time, only her apprehension to speak it into existence had kept her from admitting the truth. At one time, she might have been too afraid of rejection to confess her wild feelings for him, but now, whether he knew he loved her or not didn't matter. What mattered was that she promised she would find him, and find him she would, because he was now bound to her soul forever in a way he may never understand.
She let go of his face and squeezed one of his hands, placing a kiss to the back of it. Her lips were soft and moist with tears, and she took a deep breath and released him from her grasp. In milliseconds, she was gone to the trees, camouflaging into her natural habitat as a deer does once spooked. She ran endlessly, it seemed, until her legs gave out and she stumbled to her knees, wracking sobs escaping her breast. Lana had known pain like this before; loss. Her only comfort was the knowledge that they would find each other again, that they were infinite and timeless and there was no natural force in the universe that could keep them apart. She would find him, whether he would want to see her again or not.
But months continued on in the unforgiving way time can. Months turned to years and though it meant nothing to a being like herself, to her heart it meant far more. She had awaited his return confidently for almost a year, thinking he would respond to her calls from the necklace he had given her, as he always did, but soon she began to realize he was possibly never going to come. Her confidence waned and she started to contemplate having lost him. The pain she felt knowing this fact wasn't the kind she had expected. She wasn't crushed by the weight of it, nor was she indifferent. She was someplace in between where silent acceptance lived. She had endured loss before, and whatever kind this loss was, be it rejection or death, they were all the same at the core. The stages of grief were simple for her; first, realization, and secondly, acceptance. The third phase was to move on from it and learn from it. Yet, for some reason, as the years collided into one another and formed one lengthy span of time, during her travels and her discoveries, he was always in the back of her mind, as if he were a part of her now. What had happened to him? Had he simply decided not to come back to her? That didn't seem like him. Whatever it was that drew him to her, there was something else entirely that bound them together, but what it was, only he knew, and it was doubtful he would have ever told her.
She had done her part in trying to find him, but the necklace he had given her proved to have no use, as it never shined even the slightest to indicate where he was, and he never heard his voice calling out to her. Whether that was because he was no where to be found or he didn't want to be found, she didn't know.
These thoughts plagued her mind, as an old wound occasionally smarts to remind you that it's there. However, her mind was to soon be consumed by something else entirely.
It had been a nightmarish sleep for her. As if to compliment her feverish dreams a devilish storm had brewed outside. She was in her makeshift shelter in the middle of a freezing mountain underneath a couple of sparse trees that managed to grow from the side. The temperature hardly made her uncomfortable. She was used to the cold, but another factor played its part in distracting her from her frozen surroundings. A dream played upon her mind like an unwelcome invader. It was happening all over again. The dark chill of the palace. The echo of an uprising in the city below, mirroring that which was happening in her own Kingdom. She searched everywhere for him. He was nowhere to be found. That was, until she approached his chambers. She stepped cautiously to the door which stood ajar, allowing only a brief glimpse into the room. As her gaze took in her surroundings and moved to the floor, a thick, ghoulishly red substance began to creep its way across the stone flooring and toward her feet. Blood. She threw open the door only to be greeted by Slater's lifeless body propped up against his bed, his sword piercing through him to the hilt. His eyes were open, but she couldn't tell if they were frozen in fear of an enemy or in acceptance of a deadly choice he had made himself. Had he done this to himself? She swallowed hard and deep azure eyes took in his form as she approached him and knelt. Tears began to well in her eyes, dripping away from her thick lashes and onto his cheek as she stroked his temple. Sobs began to bubble up from her chest and she suddenly felt as if she couldn't breathe. She closed her eyes tightly and leaned her forehead onto his, clutching at his shirt with an iron grip. She cried out in agony as the realization came over her. The moments passed like decades before she could compose herself, but compose herself she did. A Queen never dwells for long on her own suffering. Ultimately, it is her people that must matter most, and even though her people no longer trusted her, she was their born servant. Gritting her teeth, eyes still pressed together in determination, she reached for the hilt of his sword to take it as her own. She squeezed her fingers around it and began to pull, until something resisted her. A cool hand began to slither up the side of the sheath and met her own. A breath was heard in the silence, but it was not her own. She opened her eyes to meet his, a dead stare with a new sparkle of life returning her gaze.
"Slater..." she whispered.
The clammy hand gripped her hand gently, caressing the back of it with his fingertips.
"Do you want to know what I remember, Lana?" he choked out, blood spattering out of his mouth and onto her lips.
Suddenly, his grip became painful as her delicate bones were crushed together within his grasp. His face grimaced in pain as he started to pull himself into an upright position, and he, with her hand in his, pulled the blade from his belly with a sickening fleshy sound. Slater threw the sword aside and took her by the throat, rising to his feet and taking her with him.
"I remember your cowardice. Your lack of emotion. Your loyalty to your people who turned against you! You left me to die, Lana, and took my sword with you! And look what became of you. A lonely, lost wanderer with no purpose to speak of. Your people rejected you!"
He squeezed harder against her trachea and silenced her.
"I thought what we had was enough to satisfy you, but in the end, all that mattered to you was your people who ended up betraying you. In turn, you betrayed me. So here I am, Lana, waiting for you... Your people are mine now, your lands, mine. I have your sword as you have mine! Be the beacon of your people again, Queen! Save them from my rule and prove to me that you are a worthy adversary as you once were! If you do not," he smiled sickeningly, "They will die at my hand. Take up their cause, however undeserving they may be, and fight me."
He let her go and she fell to the ground gasping for air, reaching out toward his feet as if to implore him, and darkness took her.
Her eyes fluttered open, a raindrop falling from between the trees above onto her cheek to join the pond of tears that had collected beneath her eyes.
"He's alive." she breathed, and for the first time, the cold around her gave her a chill.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
There were elements in the world that had many purposes, one of which was the dream shard. She had once thought she was born with it, but the tales of her people described her being a child when it happened. She had been bitten by a creature of the darkness which had scurried over from the Evil One's world. It had been an assassination attempt, a poorly exacted one, but nevertheless very dangerous to the young Queen. There had been tales of shards that made up a mirror, for what purpose none of her people knew. However, they did know that they had haphazardly come into possession of one piece. Many of the people knew nothing of what it did, but knew its name. The Dreamshard. There was a healer among them who knew the properties of the dreamshard and knew that it had many capabilities, one of which was an incidental effect it had on dark poison. The young girl, at the time, was unconscious and raspily breathing. There was nothing that had been able to impede the flow of the poison in her veins, until the Master Healer was called. It was a terrifying choice to make. The dream shard was a foreign body to the little Queen, and no one could say if it would have the occasional and rare effect of drawing out the poison. It didn't happen for everyone, in fact hardly anyone at all, and it wasn't a constant property of the shard. Perhaps there was a residue on the shard that gave it this healing property, and perhaps the residue was gone by now, but there was little choice left for them. The Master Healer performed her incantations and installed the shard below the rest of the girl's jewels which graced the incline of her back. Instantaneously Lana's eyes shot open and she took in a choking breath in tremendous pain. The Master Healer was dragged away by nearby guards and put into a cell for the time being, and Lana was left with yet another foreign force for her little body to contend with.
The girl nearly died, but against the expectations of her people, she miraculously came around. Unknown to her or anyone else, this shard had somehow given her a healing ability unnatural to her line. The shard had embedded itself in her back, the flesh around it healing as the tip of it remained protruding out of the skin just as the rest of her jewels did, a glimmering reminder of what she had endured at such a young age. It was this healing gift that made her strong and resilient, creating a particularly new kind of enemy for Slater to defeat.
As she would eventually discover, it would hold yet, another purpose for her. For unknown reasons the shard began to glow interchangeably. Her necklace began to shimmer for the first time in ten long years. She knew that he was near when the flesh around the shard began to ache and the necklace's shimmer began to become blinding. As she continued to flutter her eyes against the raindrops above a nauseating pain filled her stomach and she cried out lightly, pressing her hand against the protruding shard. A flurry of emotions filled her as she was just recuperating from her night terror, and now, felt the excitement of something entirely different. The shard began to heat, a sensation she hadn't felt with it before, and she hoisted herself up after grasping at a damp tree branch. After ten years, could he really be so nearby? She had given up thinking of him. Had he finally found her? Questions filled her mind but she pushed them aside, knowing that whatever questions she had would either be answered or not within the next few minutes. He had to be extremely close if the shard was acting this way.
She had become an expert climber over the years, preferring nature to brick and mortar cities. She even preferred solitude rather than the company of the denizens of cities. At one time, when Ghanon knew her before, she had wanted nothing more than to be with people and to feel their camaraderie. It filled a void in her before that had once existed because of her infinite loneliness. It was also what drew her to Ghanon so deeply. Now, having been alone for some time and making her bed with her loneliness she found the solitude was healing. Perhaps, this time that had passed between them was necessary for her to emotionally heal. Yet, as it always seemed, the moment her heart began to rejuvenate itself something or someone would tear it to pieces again. She didn't feel pity for herself, only understood it to be the way of life. Life was pain, as Ghanon had once told her, and she took his words seriously. It was the only constant truth in life.
She descended down the rocky mountainside, endeavoring to follow the searing pain of the shard to her destination. It was difficult to climb with her jewel burning with such fiery heat, and she had to stop a ways down to help her body to stop trembling. She glanced down at the rocks covered in snow below and noticed a mound of it by a slender tree that seemed... peculiar. It was as if it had fashioned over something throughout the years. She curiously slid down to the ledge and landed dexterously on her feet. Lana leaned on one knee and peered more closely at this patch of snow. She reached her hand out and felt the welcoming cold of the ice. Some layers of it had hardened with time. She took out a dagger to begin digging. The snow parted to reveal a thick, heavy layer of ice which she ran her hand over. The warmth of her hand clarified the ice and revealed a darkness within, as if it were enveloping something in its frozen embrace. She realized the mound of snow resembled the shape and size of a human being, and her heart skipped a beat.
"No." she whispered to herself.
She began hacking at the ice with her dagger, using all of her strength to carefully break through. She successfully chipped away at the ice and began to see a thick black jacket, ice crystals attaching themselves to the fibers. Lana was able to remove most of the obscuring snow and ice and recognized the blueish white face of Ghanon. She moaned gently in horror and placed her hand at his cheek. Her otherworldly warmth began to soften his skin to her touch, and she held her other hand over the shard which was now so hot that it glowed beneath her skin. His pain was hers now, they would get through this together. She simply needed to thaw his body and wake him up. She was desperate at this moment and took the snake-like pendant from her neck, crushing its glass against the dense rock beside her. She pinched at the slivers of glass and sprinkled them into Ghanon's mouth. As they touched his lips and tongue, a shadowy liquid formed and soaked into his flesh. She had never wanted to have to destroy her pendant but she needed everything she had in her power to revive him, and Slater's pendant had magics in it she could only ever hope to possess herself. It was a necessary sacrifice in this particular moment, but that wasn't to be worried about now.
"Ghanon." she gently slapped his cheek as his body began to warm, "Ghanon, breathe."
Her golden hair fell over her shoulder onto his chest and her frozen tears cascaded from her lips and chin onto his cheek and neck. Her eyes were a heavenly blue now, mimicking the icy blue sky.
"Just breathe. I'll do the rest."
A few moments passed, and nothing. She felt her heart plummet into the pit of her stomach and she leaned her forehead against his, pressing back tears. Her eyes fluttered open again as her resolve came back to her and she reached a hand out to the atmosphere. A blueish butterfly landed in her palm, and reminiscent of a little trick she had used ages ago when she had first left him, the butterfly transformed into a flying beast. Lana pulled him up onto the creature with her and directed it toward the cave up above.
With the assistance of her magnificent creation, Ghanon was rolled onto his back on the cool cave floor. Lana reached down and pressed her hand against the floor of the cave, its natural freezing temperature now warming up to a comfortable heat. She rubbed her hands together in her insecurity and took a deep breath, hardly believing what she was about to do.
She found the freezing skin of his chest beneath his clothing and pressed her palms to him. The storm outside was wildly worsening, and she hoped that with the assistance of that energy she could awaken him.
Lana spoke earthly words to the atmosphere, pressing her palms firmly down onto his chest, willing him to breathe. A small snap could be heard coming from beneath her hands, and then another, and another, the space between each sound narrowing, hastening. With a cry she leaned into him and an electric pulse of energy swam throughout his body into the ends of his limbs. As the lightning effect took place a thunderous clap was audible as if the earth were echoing the surge. She reached her hand out to his face and stroked his cheek gently.
"Oh, Ghanon.... Be here, for me."