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----Holy water cannot help you now // fin
IP: 68.7.7.249
Posted on June 17, 2013 at 06:43:17 AM by Nepenthe//Croe

This post may contain some language, and situations inappropriate for children under the age of 13.



Croe's body was slight, and the chimera was strong. When they dove from the ledge down into the misty twilight, the first rays of morning just beginning to lance out from over the mountains, the wind bore them weightlessly up, up. Like the condor, the chimera's wingspan was wide, for soaring. They watched the world dwindle to washes of color and shade as they climbed, until the mountains themselves were mere nubs on a brown and green field, until the horizon bent dizzyingly away.

They flew for a day and a night, speaking little. The chimera was tireless; if anything, it seemed to grow stronger in the rarified air, in the sharp light. Its pulse was a steady drum-beat beneath Croe's face, where she had pressed it between its shoulder blades. She slept fitfully, distrusting her ability to balance, but unable to stay awake with so little oxygen. The scenes she woke up to were dramatic in their scope – the blue expanse of the Atlantic, endless; castles of cumulus clouds far below them; the undulating colors of an aurora. They began their descent over England, spiraled down into Europe with the last rays of a setting sun.

"There." The Palace and its grounds appeared beneath them, absurdly geometric after the miles of Amazon and mountains. They circled down, alighted with a rustle of fur and feathers on the roof. Croe slid from the chimera's back. Her fingers and toes were numb from holding on. "Thank you," she said. Her voice was husky.

"I will give you one more thing, if you wish it, for my freedom is worth far more to me than a flight that cost me nothing."

Croe stared at her, clenching and unclenching her fists. Then, finally: "There is nothing more I want."

"Then go with the grace of the gods, shadow-walker."

The chimera leapt up into the air, and with a powerful beat of its wings, was born aloft and away. Croe watched it disappear into the clouds. Then she limped to the roof access door nearby, and hoped it wasn't alarmed.

There were voices, and steps, and the arrhythmic thumping of construction somewhere in the palace. Her own steps were light as she crept through the service hallway and down a creaky wooden staircase, but with the feeling still returning to her extremities, her movements lacked their usual grace. She was all ears and nerves. It was much harder to avoid the endless patrols of guards and workers here than it had been in Peru, but she was as the chimera had said: a walker of shadows. It was almost magical, the way she vanished behind doors and furniture, soundless.

With an assassin's skill, she made her way to the Hall of Mirrors, then hid in the shadows, barely breathing. A guard walked down the hall every few minutes, so she spent fifteen watching them, and trying to determine which mirror was not a mirror. When she had her hypothesis, she stepped out behind a guard as he walked, and followed him step for step until he spotted her reflection. Before he could cry out, she jabbed her fingertips into the base of his skull, where it met his spine. He collapsed in a heap. Croe stepped over his unconscious body, and jogged lightly to a mirror whose surface flickered with stars.

She held Mallos' sun before her, as she stepped back into Shaman.




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