A/N: This story is the third part in the Their Silent Reverie series. In order, the two previous fics are: Their Sweet Madness, and Viva la Vida. This will make very little sense without having read at least TSM first. As the prologue to TGS, I have reiterated the final chapter of VLV. The first chapter is beneath it, after the break.

Setting: Canonical through SuperS. It ignores the Stars series entirely.

Warnings: Dark themes are touched upon, including mental disorder, emotional, physical and sexual abuse, death and murder.

PROLOGUE

Mamoru
August 2009. Tokyo, Japan

They were matched blow for blow, swipe for swipe, panting breath for panting breath. How many times had they done this in jest? How many boasts had they made of the enemies that they would kill, together?

"Don't make me do this," Kunzite growled as their blades locked once more.

Hatred roared in his veins, almost drowning out his own shout: "I make you do nothing!"

The broke apart and met again. Behind him, the queen worked her magic. Selene would make this all right, Endymion knew it. Her touch would heal their minds and free them from the clutches of that demon. If only he could hold his cousin at bay...

A flash of metal as he stumbled. A searing pain through his side.

Mamoru sat up with a gasp. The panic within him died gradually, and Mamoru pressed his hand to his wildly beating heart. Reminding himself to breathe, he swung his legs over the side of the couch and put his face in both hands. It had been almost two weeks since he'd gotten a good night's sleep, since Zoe and Jun had gone missing, and being regulated to the couch didn't help matters.

"My prince." Yelping, Mamoru jumped and looked up to find Helios standing on the other side of the coffee table. The priest winced, then bowed. "Forgive me I seem to be getting that reaction quite a bit these days."

"You could warn a man," Mamoru said and groaned. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes. "What's the matter, Helios?"

"I've come to deliver a message."

Looking up, Mamoru frowned and realized for the first time just how serious Helios seemed-how sorrowful. "A message?"

"From the generals."

"Zoe, Jun-you know where they are?" Elation spread through him like a wildfire and he got to his feet. "Let me get my shoes, we need to get them back home at once."

Helios raised his hands to ward him off. "Forgive me, but you don't understand."

"Understand what?" Mamoru grabbed his coat from the rack.

"They have reclaimed their powers, and their memories. It is their intention to follow through with your father's last command." At that, Mamoru stopped, turned, and stared at Helios. The priest did not look away, but he backed a step from Mamoru.

"My father's..."

"Endymion, Prince of the Earth and to the Golden Kingdom..." Helios raised his hand, fingers outstretched. A light shown at Endymion's chest, and then sped toward the priest. His knees went weak, and his chest burned. Mamoru fell to the floor, staring up at the man who had been his priest. Upstairs, a door slammed open. "In the name of the King Aethlius-the last true king-I remove your claim to the throne and your ties to Elysion."

Usagi gasped from the stairway. She blundered down them and fell to her knees beside her husband. "For your crimes against King and country you have been found traitor, and are hereby sentenced to death."

Helios looked away, eyes closed. "Forgive me," he whispered, and vanished.

Ch1 - After the Storm

KEANU

He opened his eyes to stone above him and a distinct lack of darkness in the tiny subterranean chamber. Keanu took a deep breath, and held it. Slowly, evenly, he let the air out of his lungs as he willed away the faint itch of magic beneath his skin. When it had faded, and the darkness returned to its proper inky depths, he pulled himself up and his feet found the threadbare rug which did nothing to mask the chill creeping through the granite.

Shivering faintly, he reached for his blanket. His boots he'd left beside the bed, and lately he'd taken to sleeping in his clothes. Still, it was only after he'd wrapped his blanket about him that he slipped out the door and up the stair to the surface.

A fine layer of frost crunched beneath his boots as he made his way to the shrine steps. It covered everything—the granite floor, the roses, the crystal at the middle of the shrine. He pulled the blanket more tightly about his shoulders for what little good it would do.

At the head of the stair he stopped.

Fog billowed through the field beyond, so thick that it seemed as though the shrine were adrift in a grey, tempestuous sea. Every so often wildflowers would peek from beneath the clouds, but in an instant they were gone again. The soft morning light filtered through a sky which looked much the same, and there was a promise of rain lingering upon the wind that kissed his cheeks. Soon enough it would turn to snow.

"The weather hasn't changed in many years."

Pythia stepped into his peripheral vision, her robes clutched tight about her frail body. One of the two shrine maidens who had survived in the Golden Crystal with Helios, Pythia had spent the last few months acting as mother and housekeeper to the tenants of the temple. Though she looked young, yet—Keanu would have guessed no more than twenty had he not known the truth—her demeanour and grace set her apart from her sister, Dodona, who was as rowdy as any of the rest of them. More so, in fact; Keanu could no more imagine Zoe or Jun or Nick playing as others their age did, than he could imagine himself throwing away duty and responsibility to play the fool. This thought was sad, and he turned it away before it consumed him.

"What do you mean?"

"We have been awake for a long while," Pythia said carefully, her dark eyes lingering upon the fog, "As Helios has surely told you, there has not been much change since. This includes the weather—it had not rained, not once, until your friends returned. And there was nothing natural about that occurrence."

"So this...?"

"Is good." The maiden offered him a smile. "We may yet see a proper winter. It means that Elysion has begun to heal."

Pythia went back in, toward the steps that lead into the subterranean temple. Keanu watched her go, and then looked back toward the distant line of trees. Three large mounds stood a barren island in the mist. "No," he said to the wind, "It means that we have to work faster."

The pit was roughly fifteen feet wide by seven feet deep. It had taken days of tireless effort for the four of them to dig it out, and Keanu worried that it still wasn't big enough. There was no time, though—with the frost on the ground the soil had already begun to go hard. They stood on the one side which had been left clear of dirt mounds, staring down into the void below.

"It starts rainin' an' that's gonna be a deathtrap," Nick announced.

"Good thing they're already dead, huh?"

Nick gave Jun a dirty look, then spat on the ground next to his shoe. "Y'know what I meant."

"Can we not?" Zoe stuffed her hands into her pockets, and rolled her eyes. "Lets just do what we have to and get this over with. If it starts raining, we'll take a break."

As always, the three looked to Keanu. He tried not to fidget as he rubbed the back of his neck. "We'll do what we can," he said after a moment. "But we need some way to...we're going to be in close proximity with them. We'll need to cover our noses and mouths, and find gloves."

"Ain't gonna help the smell," Nick laughed sourly.

"It's not for the smell." Keanu shook his head. "I don't know how long diseases can last down there, but I'd rather not find out the hard way."

They started with the outlying fields, where the bodies had been burned so terribly that they were hardly recognizable. Without the ghosts that milled restlessly about, they never would have been able to distinguish citizen from intruder. The bodies of the fallen enemies were left where they lay—for now. One by one, the children carried out the corpses of their brethren and set them side-by side in the fresh pit.

When a layer had been laid at the bottom, they packed dirt over it and built another. Layer by layer, the pit began to fill.

From the field, the four moved inward. First were the houses where peasants had been slaughtered where they stood, then the cellars where mothers had slit the throats of their own children to save them. It was there that Zoe began to weep; still she worked on as diligently as any of her brothers-in-arms.

Next was the second battle field, fought between the village and the Noble's quarters. With each body removed came a spirit in its wake. They lined the field next to the pit, their eyes tracking every move the living made.

It was late afternoon when the rain began. During the slow drizzle, the four struggled to complete their last layer. When the mud began to suck at their boots, they climbed back out of the pit and hoisted up their ladders.

"We'll finish this tomorrow," Keanu barely muttered, but their nods indicated that they heard him. His clothes were soaked through, and there were things he didn't want to think about coating his shirt and arms. He closed his eyes and raised his face to the water. The rain ran rivulets down his body and chilled him through the bone, but not even Neptune's oceans would wash away the filth that covered him.

At the shrine he would be free of the eyes upon him, but Keanu did not return to the shrine. The others had gone on before he'd moved, and thus there was none but the dead to see him as he returned to the city before the castle. Alone, he walked between the rows of shops and houses, of broken doors and windows, of food strewn to rot in the streets. In his minds eye he saw what it had been before, with women hanging laundry on lines over the street, and vendors harking their wares on the corners. In this vision, children would run by, laughing and playing, with their dogs chasing them.

The memory overlaid itself with screams of pain, a clash of swords. Keanu stopped, eyes closed and head reeling.

"You're holding up traffic, boy," a familiar voice barked.

Hematite slapped his back, pitching Kunzite a few steps forward. He caught himself before he fell, and jogged to catch up to his father's side. They wove through the crowded streets; no man nor woman paused so much to glance at either of them, or else clear the path as they might have another noble. Kunzite did not for a moment believe that there were truly none here who marked them, but those who did were careful not to make any noise of it. In their work-worn garb they went unmolested through the streets, as any other common huntsmen might be. The Kings of the South had never insisted upon what some might call their "proper" due, not unless they were in uniform, and the people of Elysion had long grown used that tradition.

Once through the market square, Hematite slipped through a back alley and Kunzite followed with hardly a sound on the pavement to mark their footsteps. That a giant such as the old Lord could walk so soundlessly was a miracle Kunzite wondered if he'd ever know the secret of. As though reading his thoughts, Hematite glanced at his son with a crooked smile.

"Do you remember where we are?"

The alley was long, and muddy, and enclosed on two sides by towering stone buildings. Dogs were fighting somewhere nearby, and someone slopped piss out a window just shy of bathing them with it. His nose wrinkled.

"That was intentional," he muttered.

Hematite nodded, fixing the window it had come from with a disapproving eye. There was a woman scowling down at them, drawn and frail. She lifted her chin and met their gaze with no remorse for her disrespect

With a shake of his head, the giant warrior lumbered on and, after a pause, Kunzite continued in his wake. "We're..." Kunzite hesitated, and lowered his voice, "We're in the Mud Pits."

"Boy," warned Hematite with a shake of his head at the slang. Yet he did not deny it. They rounded a corner and slipped through another, shorter, alley before coming out onto a small square. Directly across from them was a tiny, beaten down shrine whose roof looked ready to cave and front door swung on a single hinge. Across the lintel someone had blacked out the circle of Gaea and re-drawn in chalk a simple crescent.

A chill ran from Kunzite's forehead to his toes. "Who—" Turning to look at his father, Keanu realized that he was alone. The wind made a lonely, appropriate noise through the tunnels of empty streets. Slowly, Keanu returned his gaze to the chapel whose door flapped lightly in the wind. Behind it was naught but a blackness so deep it made his skin crawl. Though the lintel was wet from rain, the chalk crescent still stood strong upon on it as though it had been spelled to stick. In his heart, he knew that it had been.

Under the scrutiny of a thousand unseen eyes he turned and ran.

Jun was sitting on the outer steps when Keanu approached the shrine. The blond looked up, icy blue eyes watching Keanu from beneath a screen of curls. They were wild again, Keanu noted with some unease; it was a look Jun only got when—

"Kunzite," Bachiko giggled and trotted down the steps to wrap her gangly arms about his shoulders. He caught her with his hands at her sides. Past the wall of red frizz in his face, he saw Jun stand up. The boy cast them a disgusted look, but only drifted a few steps up the stair.

The girl cooed in his ear. "You were gone. We were all so worried."

"I took a walk," he said as he pried her carefully from his person. She was much stronger than she looked, but she didn't fight him. Her eyes, dark as pitch in this incarnation, roved over him and her nose wrinkled.

"You went to that place," she hissed. Her hand cracked against his cheek, and she fled toward the stair. Keanu let her go. Putting a hand to his stinging jaw, he drudged the last few steps to Jun's side, turned, and sat. After a moment, Jun sank down beside him.

They listened to the wind rustle through the windflowers, and there came a distant roll of thunder. There'd be more rain before the morn.

"Where did you go?"

Keanu shrugged. He considered not answering, but soon found himself going on anyway, "Headed for the castle. Thought I'd just see what was out there."

None of them had dared the fortress since the first night they'd been allowed back within Elysion. Neither Nick nor Jun would so much as look in the direction of the castle, their gazes skimming across it as though it were a surface too slippery to grasp. Zoe had been briefly fascinated with the idea of returning to it, rather than living at the temple; an idea which had been curtailed the moment she'd learned the identities of the dark shapes dangling from the parapet. Eventually they'd have to remove the bodies, but Keanu figured they would breach that topic when they came to it.

Several minutes ticked by and Jun hadn't said anything else. The sky rumbled again, closer now. Jun gave a soft huff and combed one hand through his curls to push them out of his face. "What if it floods?"

"Pythia said it hasn't rained in years, so it probably won't. If it does, we'll just have to wait. Let the water absorb."

"If it hasn't rained in years, why are there things still growing?"

Keanu frowned. It hadn't occurred to him to question that, but now that Jun pointed it out..."This place doesn't respond to sense, does it?"

Jun shrugged loosely. "You could ask Helios. I don't remember this being an issue before."

Nodding slowly, Keanu pursed his lips as he tried to match what he was seeing with his memories of the past. Since Beryl had returned their minds to them, he'd had little problem recognizing things or accessing what knowledge he'd had in previous lives. This was not a trifling amount of information, but there were yet many gaps in his teachings which had been iced over as things "intrinsic of the universe."

That was the problem when you relied on culture to explain itself—concepts you believed you understood perfectly would fall apart under close inspection, as they lacked the structural support of proper education. There were fixes for this. Were Elysion live and well, he could have found the answers he needed at the castle library.

He'd seen no evidence of looting the one time he'd gone to the castle, before his memory had been returned to him, and thus could assume the library may yet be intact. Unfortunately, Keanu could not force himself to re-approach the gates where he now knew his father's body hung decomposing. Kunzite's father.

A soft patter announced the beginnings of the storm. Together the boys rose and returned to the cold shelter of the temple.

Much like an ice-burg, the complex beneath the surface shrine was quite a bit larger than the top platform suggested. Built to be as much a bunker for the priesthood and royal families as a place of worship, the Temple of Gaea was comprised of an expansive nest of tunnels and caverns which riddled the Parnassus mountains, east of the castle Valeia. The caves, which had been in place long before any there was any thought to live in them, had been carefully reshaped into hallways and rooms, so that if a person discounted the lack of windows they might think themselves in any normal castle of the period.

Poverty was a vow all clerics took before entering their order, and one which they claimed to strictly adhere—it was not they who owned the expensive carpets, or robes, or furniture, but the temple, and thus their beleaguered status was assured. Looking at the dining hall now, Keanu could not help but wonder what might the Lords and Ladies say whose funds had paid for the tapestries and silverware and heavy oaken tables which filled it. Certainly their investments had held, for nothing here was in disrepair...but it was in disuse. No longer were there candles to light the high reaches of the cavern and show the woven masterpieces that lined it. Hardly any hands existed to use the plates and cups and forks that stood in place upon tables which had not seen diners in several centuries. Only the dais, reserved for the high priestess and immediate royalty, had any lighting or persons to attend it.

Helios, Pythia, and Dodona had moved to a lower table when the quartet first arrived, he remembered with a sad smile. The trio had felt their place to be as servants, as they once might have been. To Keanu's surprise, it had been Bachiko who had convinced them to stay. While the others tried to use persuasion, she merely ordered the three to remain exactly as they were. Then, she served them tea. It wasn't even poisoned.

For all that Bachiko had her moments of crazy, as his stinging cheek reminded him, Keanu had to admit that the girl had come far in the few weeks they'd spent in Elysion. Tonight she sat by Helios, and he didn't seem to mind that she treated him as though he were still a child under her care. Keanu jerked his gaze away before the priest noticed his staring.

Helios didn't speak much these days. He was still kind and polite, even friendly, to them all, but something had changed in him after he'd gone to Endymion.

"Pythia," said Jun, "What did you mean that it hasn't rained in years?"

All other conversation stopped. Pythia glanced between Jun and Keanu, for a moment seeming lost as to who she'd said that to, then her eyes settled on the King of the East. "Exactly as I said, my lord."

Keanu cleared his throat. If Jun noticed his annoyance—and Keanu doubted there was much emotion Jun wouldn't take note of—the boy didn't seem at all uneasy for it. "There just don't seem to be any signs of a drought," he said to all three of the clerics, "If this is the first time in years, shouldn't everything be dead?"

A high-pitched, goblin giggle arose from Bachiko's end of the table. She collapsed against Helios, who let her bury her head upon his shoulder. Dodona gave the girl a perplexed look.

"I'm afraid I can't offer much of an explanation," Helios said after a long moment. He sipped his drink, and wetted his lips. "I told you that there's much about what is going on which I don't understand. This event is, after all, unprecedented. We three have spent our time studying as much as we could, around tending to our own survival."

"Shit, man, we get it," Nick grumbled. "You don't fuckin' know for sure, but you got a guess so give it." Then he cursed, and Keanu suspected from her glare that Zoe had kicked his ankle.

Helios coughed slightly. "Well. From speaking with our...esteemed priestess—"

Bachiko giggled a little more loudly.

"—I believe what you suspected is true, that the Ginzushou is what blocked you from Elysion in your second, ah, lives."

Keanu nodded. "Beryl got us as close as she could before that attempt..."

As content as the others with talking around the elephants in the room, Helios merely nodded in kind. "That which was blocking you out is also blocking Elysion in, so to speak. Elysion has always had a shield, of course, to protect it from outside interference. But it was altered by a foreign contaminant, and used to completely seal Elysion from even the flow of time. Much like the way that we three were purposely put into stasis, in the Crystal itself."

"Wouldn't that kill it, though?" Zoe drug her feet up into her chair and wrapped her arms about her knobbly knees. She tipped her cheek upon them and gazed through her eyelashes at Helios. "The energy of the earth, it's balance, is what keeps Elysion alive. Isn't it?"

"That's the simple version, yes," Helios said slowly, "The governmental structure was founded on the very real need to keep to the innate mystical forces of the earth in check, in order to maintain the—" He cut himself off with a shake of his head. "I'm getting ahead of myself."

"Take your time." Keanu set his goblet of water down and leaned forward, fingers steepled. "I remember the songs in the shrines, and the lessons we were all given, but to be honest these were more things that I knew by rote, not...not understanding."

His fellows about the table nodded in kind and Helios sighed. "I was only nine when this—"

"I know how old you were," Keanu cut him off, perhaps a little too sharply, and he winced. "Helios, please. We need your help."

Pythia placed a hand over Helios', but it was Dodona who spoke, "Queen Beryl, why don't you explain it?"

Bachiko looked up, and the giggling stopped cold. Before any could object, she sat upright and straight, and all traces of herself slipped away.

"Explain?" Beryl's eyes flickered among the group of them. Jun, who until now had been sitting languid next to Nick, went taunt as a bowstring.

Keanu met Beryl's gaze evenly. "We were wondering if you could explain to us in detail the power structure of Elysion and it's importance."

The queen rolled her eyes and reached for Helios' drink. She set is aside again after swallowing a fair portion. "You children were never inclined to your studies, were you?"

Despite the exasperation in her voice, there was a tease in the smile she favoured him with. "If you truly cannot remember..."

"We can't," Jun spat.

Beryl's eyebrows shot toward her dark roots, below the puffy nest of frazzled hair. She stared at him only a moment before shaking her head. "Remember, if you will, that all life exists because of the flow and ebb of energy within our planet. It fuels us—animal, plant, mineral—and shuttles us through the cycle of life. My favorite of the metaphors for this was always water. Rivers, specifically. All rivers are composed of currents—the Earth has four, which correspond to the four cardinal points."

As a man of science, and Keanu did consider himself to be such, this made little sense. Yet his memory argued that it had once seemed perfectly reasonable. While the war of logic waged within him, Beryl continued.

"Naturally, the power structure of Elysion mimics that from whence it came. Four cardinal points," she paused for significance, and favoured them all with a smile, "and the fifth who represents the Earth itself to hold them, like the earth holds a river.

"Without this balance, the Earth heaves and sours...or floods. So, too, will Elysion."

"But this power structure only mimics," Zoe said, lifting her head. "It has nothing to do with the Earth."

"Ah." Beryl chuckled softly, and a shiver ran up Keanu's spine. The goblin giggles of Bachiko did nothing to move him, but the cold smile upon Beryl's lips... "But there is power in mimicking, is there not? We humans have so few natural abilities, or defenses. We make daggers and swords in place of claw or fang, shoes and clothing in stead of pad or fur, we wear jewels in place of feathers. And when it comes to magic, perhaps it is not so much that we were made to the ability, but that we were fastened to it. Somewhere, far down the line, the mimic—the apprentice—became both the master, and the slave."

She gave a soft sigh and leaned back in her chair, with Helios' cup still clutched in hand. "No, child, it has everything to do with the Earth. It is us, you see, and we are it. We have forced it to be so."

A hint of dread, not unlike the itch of magic, wormed beneath his skin. "Are you suggesting that the Earth is out of balance?"

The girl's eyes glinted red in the candlelight. "I am saying it is so," Beryl replied smoothly, "You have made it thus."

Zoe frowned. "We haven't done anything."

"Mam-Endymion," said Helios. His voice was but a whisper, but that name was like a lightning bolt to everyone at the table. The priest stared at his plate.

"Yes, Endymion," giggled Beryl, who sounded more like Bachiko for a moment. Then her grin faded and she looked again to Keanu. "The high king exists to hold the power, to anchor it in it's place. Without him...or her..."

"No." Beryl and Jun stared at one another again, the latter beginning to tremble ever so slightly.

Keanu frowned. What Beryl was saying struck a chord with the memories buried inside of him. Old lessons about Gaea and her gifts to man, about her tying their dreams and powers to kingdom of Elysion. He'd had it drilled into his head that the balance must always be maintained, no matter what. What would happen if wasn't?

"There must be another way to fix it," he muttered.

"Oh there is, princeling. Someone tried it before, did they not?" Beryl leaned forward again, her gaze fastened to his own. "Would you sever our ties to the Mother, as those demons would? Have us return to worshiping the false goddess, and kiss the toes of her whelp?"

Before he could answer, Pythia whispered, "Severing our magic would kill us."

"I'm not killing anyone," Keanu said.

"Anyone?" They all looked to Helios, who in turn was staring at Keanu. The priest's voice was so small, so...hopeful...

Keanu stood and marched from the room. Distantly, he heard Zoe say, "No. Let him go."

That night his sleep was tormented by dreams he didn't remember, and in the morning it was still raining. Though the hatch that lead to the shrine proper was sealed against weather, they could hear the howl of wind and rain beyond it. It sounded like wolves, or banshees.

"I guess we get to sleep in," he muttered to the others and turned from the door. It wasn't that he missed the looks they exchanged, it was that there was nothing he could do about it. He didn't dare ask them if, standing there, they felt the same stirring of power within their veins, the same sense of slipping upward, into the storm.

No matter how his eyes itched and bones ached, Keanu refused to return to bed. Instead, he walked past it, and the dining hall, and through the first door he didn't recognize. It took him to foreign hallway after foreign hallway, and fairly soon he was so turned about that he couldn't have retraced his steps if he'd wanted to.

Despite knowing how large the temple was—at least, having a rough idea of it—Keanu hadn't considered that it would have a library. That was an oversight. Of course a temple would have a library. Historically, religion and education tended to roll hand in hand; being a member of clergy, or a noble granted leave to study with them, was usually the only method of obtaining any sort of scholarship. Granted, whatever knowledge was available was often tainted by the religion's views upon morality, creation, and whatever else they felt was too "obvious" to need factual backing, but it was still knowledge. Usually there would be some form of useful information one could extrapolate, if you kept in mind the context of the author.

It was very dark this far within the temple. The three who'd lived here the past several years seemed to keep to within only a handful of the tunnels, and Keanu couldn't blame them. Not everyone was a veritable glow worm, and they were limited in supplies.

Everything here was covered in a fine layer of dust. Spiderwebs appeared frequently, and in a dorm off of one of the halls, Keanu found a section of floor which had begun to form small spires reaching up to similar ones hanging from the ceiling. A pool of water had formed around the base, and the steady drip, drip drip from above lent an eerie music to the old temple. Whatever magic was keeping the rest of Elysion from aging didn't seem to be quite so strong here. The mountain was reclaiming itself.

"It's dangerous down here."

Helios had stopped at the door, watching him. The horn on his forehead glowed a soft golden light. Unlike the kind Keanu emitted, this cast shadows down through Helios' bangs and threw his eyes into dark recesses. Keanu resisted a shiver. "I was trying to find the library...how did you know where I was?"

"I didn't, exactly." Shrugging, Helios took another step into the room and Keanu thought he might have been looking at the stalagmites. "This is my home. I know its passages much more intimately than you ever did. And you left a trail." He gestured loosely behind him to a collection of footprints left in the dust of the corridor.

"You said it's dangerous...?"

"Yes." There was a pause, and then Helios said, "Maybe. I admit, there are areas we've not explored since we woke, and these are a part of why."

Looking at the structures himself, Keanu nodded briefly. "The lower the caves go, the harder they are to air out, even in the best of times," Helios said faintly. "I dared not waste the energy to clear them when there was no need to go so far down."

Keanu chewed his bottom lip. He nodded again and stuffed his hands into his pockets. "Can you show me the library?"

After a moment, Helios nodded and turned to lead Keanu back through the tunnels. Some of the passages he was lead through had marks where Keanu had been there before, but the further they went the less derelict the temple became.

"How will you fix this?"

Startling, it took Keanu a moment to recover from the sudden question, and the accusing tone. Helios had not turned to look at them, but there was a defensive stiffness to the boy's shoulders and stance. The realization that he yet thought of Helios as a boy struck Keanu suddenly and he found himself smiling. He was glad for the dark.

"I told you I'm not going to...to sever us from the Earth's magic," Keanu repeated slowly. "I'm not killing any of us."

"I know." Helios stopped before a small, wooden, iron strapped door. He turned to face Keanu, and between them their magic was strong enough to see one another's faces.

They were of an age, now; physically, at least. This jarred with Keanu's memories of the chubby-cheeked baby he'd held, the toddler he'd been forced to hand over to the priests, the growing boy he'd visited every chance his duties allowed. And the sadness that was there, the accusations hidden behind those golden eyes in which he'd once seen naught but love and joy. He forced away a sudden urge to hold the boy, to plead with him for his trust.

"We have to restore balance, don't we?" Keanu searched those eyes, praying for some kind of redemption. "That's why it was so important that there be a proper successor, someone who can represent the Earth. If we keep it out of balance, Elysion will..."

"Dissolve to chaos, in theory," Helios supplied. "It hasn't yet, because of the stasis it was under. That's why it hadn't rained, why the bodies never fully decomposed, why more of the buildings have not gone to ruin."

"But that stasis was slipping."

"Yes."

Helios pushed the door open and snapped his fingers. Four candelabra lit themselves in the chamber beyond. Keanu stopped just over the threshold, unable to mask some amount of disappointment. A part of him, the modern part he supposed, had been expecting shelves upon shelves of books—at least a thousand. What he got was a small chamber with two walls worth of books and three long tables with benches in the middle of the room.

One table had a map strewn on one end, a short stack of pulled books at the other, and a collection of quills, paper, and ink jars in its middle. Other than that, it was quite obvious the room had seen little use in recent times.

If Helios noticed his disappointment, he said nothing.

Keanu pulled a book from the nearest shelf and opened it. The pages were covered in tiny, precision perfect handwriting. He skimmed through the first few passages before he realized it was a diary of some kind, apparently written by a priest.

"That would be journal of the first abbot of Delphi," Helios said. "It's concerned primarily with recipes for mead, and bad poetry."

Looking up to find those golden eyes on him again, Keanu nodded and shelved the book. He rubbed his sinuses with his thumb and index finger and sat upon a nearby bench. "Are there any regarding where our magic stems from? Or better yet, on the moon kingdom?"

"Yes, and not exactly." Helios went to another shelf, reached up and drew a fat tome from the second highest shelf. He brought it over and set it reverently on the table next to Keanu. "Though these are stories you...your past self should have known."

The priest flipped through the heavy linen sheets, each painted in ornate scenes not unlike the illuminated manuscripts of the middle ages. Keanu was fairly certain the Christian monks had stayed clear of subjects such as goddesses and nude water-women, though.

Finally, Helios laid the book open. On the left-hand page was a depiction of a woman with brown skin and green hair. She had flowers twined into her braids; they were so long that her hair spread to every edge of the page. Her hands were extended and cupped around a sphere, upon which was drawn what looked to be an ancient map of the earth. There was only one continent on it, whose shape roughly resembled the sketches of Pangaea he'd seen in science textbooks. This, Keanu's senses told him, was Old in the same way as the caves they lived in.

On the right-hand page began the legend in a careful, blocky script, "Gaea, the mother of us all..."

As Keanu read through the mythology, Helios went to his workstation on the other side of the room for the stack of books he'd left there. His notes soon followed, but the map stayed where it had been.

Keanu got through a sketchy story about Gaea's sister, Selene, attempting to subvert the Earth into her worship before he closed the book with a sigh. Such an event had occurred, but it was in his-Kunzite's-own lifetime, not eons before. Or perhaps the witch had tried it twice. He didn't want to know. "You said something about the Ginzushou?"

Helios nodded and page of careful notations he'd taken. "I said there wasn't 'exactly' anything on the Moon Kingdom. There are mentions of things, mostly scattered through journals of priests who have dealt with them. It was through these that I was able to deduce what was going on, and learn to recognize the...the taint within the shield."

That was sketchy at best. Keanu glanced over the notes, then frowned. "You've...she was here. They were here."

The priest fidgeted. "Yes. I told you about the witch, Nehelenia, who had escaped her prison and desecrated Elysion. Further."

As he flipped through the pages, Keanu hummed. "Right...wait. Nehelenia was..."

Keanu looked up to find Helios staring pointedly at the table. As he watched, the priest picked up a book and flipped hastily through its pages. "The priestess who tried to steal the Golden Crystal."

The firelight flickered along the horn which sprouted from Helios' forehead. Keanu was reminded how, only a few weeks prior, it had seemed so strange to see a boy with such a growth upon him. Now, it was probably the most normal thing about the boy. And a reminder of...

"But mother..."

Helios set his book down with a faint clatter and shook his head. "No. Mother tried to kill her. She didn't...didn't succeed. Nehelenia was merely sealed away into the sort of stasis—"

"—That apparently everyone ever gets put into," Keanu snapped. This was followed by a groan, and he rubbed his sinuses in an attempt to relieve a sudden pressure. "But she was defeated this time?"

"Yes. It was close, though, and there weren't many around to stop her...except the Princess."

Sighing, Keanu looked at the boy sitting across the table from him. It occurred to Keanu that Abida had left him well defended against all but the most skilled of guilt trips, and Helios had a long way to go, yet, if he thought to break Keanu's resolve. Abida. Mother. His mother.

"So they came here, defeated Nehelenia, and..." Looking down, Keanu skimmed the notes over once again, "That was when the break down began."

"Yes," Helios said. "It was Nehelenia that woke us from our slumber in the first place. Had she not interfered, we might have stayed within the crystal indefinitely. Her tampering drew us from it, and then she imprisoned us elsewhere. Thankfully, the temple's shields were still in place. She was unable to break through them."

The priest hesitated, his fingers toying with the cover of a journal. "She may have gotten me to unlock them, had my time in the crystal not strengthened my bond with it. Using meditation techniques, I was able to separate my consciousness from my body and retreated back into crystal itself. From there, I reached out to the minds of those connected to it."

Keanu frowned. "You mean you can—"

"Beryl taught me."

That was cause for no small amount of unease. The woman was still here, in the shrine, and if she could...Keanu refused to pursue that thought any further. "Alright. So you went, ah, mind hopping?"

"So to speak." Still toying with the journal, Helios' eyes did not raise from it as he continued on, "I was relieved to find the prince that way, but his mind is shielded against such intrusions. I also found four tenuous connections near to him, but they were so light I dared not to try them. There was another, though, and through it I was able to reach out for help."

A sick dread rolled through Keanu's stomach, this time having nothing to do with Beryl. Someone else, beyond the shitennou, who had been close to Endymion, and with a tie to the Earth's core? Helios would not look up, no matter how long Keanu stared at him, and he knew he'd get no answer even if he were to ask.

"And so you let them into Elysion."

"Let," Helios muttered. "The prince had his own doorway here, as did you. I merely showed him how to find it."

Now Helios looked at him, but it was only to glare. Biting back the reprimand he yearned to give, Keanu tore his gaze from the priest's, and stared at a candelabra on the far wall. "At what point did you realize it was the Ginzushou responsible for the lock upon Elysion?"

"Shortly after Nehelenia was sealed. After...After I had seen it in action, I was able to distinguish the power traces from the Earth's."

That was a lie. Keanu knew it as surely as he knew that Helios still aligned himself with Endymion, no matter that they had established the "prince's" guilt in the matter. Perhaps Helios thought Endymion changed. Perhaps the moon witch had already extended control over him. That would certainly jive with the pieces missing from Helios' story. Either way, it no longer mattered, save for the sick thought that his own brother might hate him. Kunzite's brother. Bah.

Despite the holes, the basics of the report were true. However the information had been gathered, Helios had good reason to suspect the Ginzushou to be responsible for the seal. Distantly, Keanu remembered again the conversations he'd had Beryl pertaining to the barrier between them and the center of their—-her—power. It was only after her careful examination of it that she'd turned her attentions upon the crystal and it's bearer.

Helios allowed him to take the book back to his cell, along with a handful of others. No matter their unease with one another, the priest did seem to sense Keanu's respect for books, at the very least. Keanu put the stack on one end of his straw-stuffed mattress, sat on the other, and turned on his inner glowworm.

He was partway into a diary—the first volume in a series by a young acolyte who would, according to Helios, become a high priestess of the realm—when there was a knock at the door. "Come in."

Zoe peeked inside, then slipped through the door and shut it behind herself. She was wrapped in a blanket, much as he had been that morning, and she paused to stand at the foot of his mattress. The girl blinked rapidly, and he thought her eyes might be adjusting. It always seemed to take a minute or two before the lack-of-darkness extended to anyone but him. Even now, he wasn't entirely clear on how it worked, only that it did.

"Books?" She looked down at the stack, and he nodded.

"I thought I'd do some research." Scoffing slightly, Zoe's lips twisted into a brief smile. She fidgeted in place, then shoved the books toward the wall so she could sit. Keanu shut the diary. "What's up?"

"I wanted...I wanted to know what you're thinking."

"About?"

Taking a deep breath, Zoe held it a moment. She had one of her wrists in hand, and was rubbing her thumb over the scars across her veins. Keanu didn't think she realized she was doing that, and decided it was best not to point it out. Eventually, she said, "What Bach—Beryl was saying at dinner last night. And other stuff. You were upset."

He rested the back of his head against the cool stone behind him. "I don't know. There's a lot of this I'm still not making sense of, to be honest. The memories are there but they're...parts of them are vague, distorted. Like trying to remember the details of your first day of kindergarten. It's too far in the past."

There was a hesitation to Zoe's nod, and he said before she could reply, "You don't agree."

"Well...'agree' isn't really the term," Zoe said slowly, "But it's not exactly, ah, like that. For me. Some of it is, but other times there's these...it's as if I'm..."

"Back there?" She met his eyes then, and for a moment they were green. Keanu sighed. "I have them too. The hallucinations, I guess you'd call them. They don't really help so much as..."

"Yeah."

Keanu pursed his lips. "From what I've been reading...do you remember the story of Gaea, and how she crowned the original Kings?"

"Yeah. She split her power between them, so that the people of Earth would rule themselves under their own free will."

"And from those kings came the five noble houses, from which the successors are chosen," Keanu said slowly, more for his own benefit than hers. There was something nagging at him about this, but he shoved the doubt away. Old legends like these always sounded a little incomplete, he thought, the truth would always be diluted and distorted through time.

"One from each house must sit in order to maintain the balance that keeps the Earth's powers in check," Zoe continued. "Oh. We have to replace..."

"Yeah." Keanu rubbed his face. "That's what Beryl was on about, and she thinks it should be her. She's done it before, after all."

The girl snorted distastefully. "No. That's—after all of this? No freaking way!"

Jun had had much the same reaction, Keanu thought. He put the diary he'd been reading aside and sat up straighter. "Who then? We need someone adequately blooded of the Central house, who can use magic. The priesthood doesn't exist to choose from anymore, and if there are still mages among the common folk, they're so scattered we'll spend ages looking for one."

Zoe frowned and bit her lip. He could see the anger in her shoulders, her hands clutching at her arms. "I don't like it."

"I know," he sighed. "I don't either. But..."

"We have time." Keanu met her eyes, and they pleaded with his. "It won't go wrong immediately, right?"

"I...don't know." He got up and paced in the small space available. "Helios mentioned the Ginzushou at the table, remember?"

"Something about that, yeah."

"Well, Beryl mentioned it before. Back at D-Point."

A glance at Zoe told him that she remembered. It would be hard to forget that blasted rock—Beryl had been driving them all insane looking for it. He resisted the dark humour that thought brought with it. "She wanted it because that's what was blocking us out of Elysion. It had tied its power to the natural barriers of Elysion, and sealed Elysion off from the rest of the planet—"

"And put it into the stasis mode thing, yeah, I know." Zoe rolled her eyes. "Helios told us that earlier, what about it?"

"The barrier is still there, sort of. It's weak now; it's let us through, and it's let the rains come again. Soon enough it'll fail altogether and this place will be completely open."

Zoe leaned back on her hands. "So? The Moon Kingdom is destroyed. They can't invade again."

He stopped and looked at her. "Yeah, but the modern world can. Besides, the barriers have a secondary function—a dam, against the currents of energy. It's a back up, to keep the high king and, well, us, from being overwhelmed in the event of sudden fluctuations."

"Like the death of a king, and no chosen heir," Zoe said softly.

Keanu sighed and nodded. "Yeah. Elysion is already sick from having been...dormant so long. If all this power spills everywhere, and the barriers fail completely...Even if we had a proper king to anchor it back to the Earth while the we get the barriers up again, it'd be like—like—"

He fumbled for an appropriate metaphor. Zoe found one first. "Over feeding someone who was starved. Too much too soon and their body rejects it."

Suddenly exhausted, Keanu nodded. "Yeah. Exactly. Which is why the Kings exist in the first place. To make sure this doesn't happen."

Flopping back down onto his end of the mattress, he stared up at the ceiling and for a moment they were left in darkness again. He felt, rather than saw, Zoe shift over next to him. Then her hair brushed his neck as she laid down beside him.

Finally, out of the darkness, she said, "You really ought to talk to Jun."

"Why?"

"Just...do it, okay?"

After a moment, Keanu nodded. Zoe stayed there with him awhile longer.

The pit was roughly fifteen feet wide by seven feet deep. It had taken days of tireless effort for the four of them to dig it out, and now it was a swimming pool. With corpses.

There was a prickling on the back of Keanu's neck which had everything to do with the legions of spirits staring at them. They were expressionless to the last, but he imagined hatred radiating from them like a fog.

"I think we made stew," said Nick. Zoe punched his arm.

In hopes to forestall any fighting, Keanu said, "We'll have to wait for it to dry up." The last thing he wanted was to have to fish either of them out of that mess. Shuddering, he turned from the sight and headed back for the shrine. The others followed.

Jun jogged to catch up to him. "We're just going to leave them like this?"

"You want to just throw the others in on top of that?"

"No, but—" Jun stopped, and so did Keanu. The boy chewed his bottom lip, blue eyes flickering over the spirits still visible beside their sodden grave. "We can't just leave them. Every day they get worse."

Keanu looked in turn to Zoe then Nick, neither of whom would meet his eyes. Carding one hand through his hair—it was getting shaggy, and he really wanted to cut it—Keanu sighed. "What do you propose we do? We can't dig in this mud, we can't throw them in that. All that's left are funeral pyres and you..."

The mere mention made Jun shudder and he closed his eyes. For a moment the boy's form overlaid with his former self—with the horror of scar tissue and pain Mars had left him. "I can deal. I should have in the first place. Lets just get this done, okay?"

"No." Zoe grasped Jun's shoulder and scowled at him. He flinched away from her, so she looked to Keanu instead. "They've waited centuries already. They can wait a few more days."

Nick scoffed, but Zoe glowered him into silence. "I'm sorry, and I want to help them, too, okay? But we have bigger problems to deal with."

"Like what?"

Zoe looked to Keanu, who nodded. He straightened his shoulders and took a deep breath. Before he could start, his eyes landed on the spirits not too far from them. He turned and looked at the shrine behind them, then to the west where laid the castle. "Not here."

The other boys looked confused, but they followed as Keanu led them to the forest.

A couple hours later the four were sitting at the end of an old pier, their feet dipped into the waters blow. Jun and Nick had listened in relative silence to Keanu's explanations of what was to come, and now sat in contemplation of it. Finally, Jun put his hands in his face, elbows on his knees, and let out a slow breath.

"You really wanna crown that loon?" Nick scratched his neck. "She already fucked it up twice."

"Technically, she didn't." Keanu leaned back on his hands and closed his eyes as he let the sunlight bathe his face. "The first time was my fault, and the second she didn't get much chance."

"It was not," Zoe said sharply.

"You weren't there," Jun muttered. Zoe scowled at the three of them, then jerked her gaze off to the end of the river. Before the awkward could settle, Jun continued in a normal volume, "It still wasn't your fault, though, Ken. There wasn't any good solution."

"Sure," said Keanu. He didn't want to argue about it. "The answer is 'no', I don't want to crown her. She's...forgive me, but she's fucking nuts. I don't know what we're going to do with her, but I'm not allowing her to rule."

"Great." Nick chewed a piece of long grass he'd picked up somewhere when they'd been walking. "What's plan B?"

"Nonexistent."

"Even better."

Keanu got up and began to pace the length of the pier. Nick turned his head to watch them, but otherwise the three didn't move. "We need someone of royal descent, who has the ability for magic, who is not insane, and, most importantly, is on our side. That doesn't leave a lot of options."

"Don't sound like it leaves any options," Nick snorted.

"Helios." They all looked to Jun, who lifted his head enough to meet their gazes. "Your mother was Princess Alcyone, wasn't she? He was Kunzite's brother. That makes him a Prince of the Central house, same as Kunzite was."

Keanu nodded, and hung his head. "Yes, but we can't use him. As I said, we need someone who is on our side."

"Helios dethroned En-Ma-the traitor," Zoe protested with hardly a hiccup. "He believes we're right. What more—"

"He believes that King Aethlius disowned Endymion," Keanu interjected, "But I don't think he believes in Endymion's guilt. Subtle difference though that may be, it still makes his alignment questionable. If it were just us that had to deal with it, I'd take the chance, but..."

They looked as one to the castle, as though it, too, were a participant in this conversation. Perhaps it was.

Zoe sighed. "You, then."

"Me?" For a moment, Keanu stood staring at her, speechless. Then he shook himself bodily, like a dog might shake water.

"Yeah," Nick seconded, "Why not? You were the heir. You shoulda taken it to begin with."

"Back then. There's no way to tell that I'm of the proper house now."

"You could try," said Jun, "By that reasoning there's no way to tell that Beryl is, either."

He was outnumbered, Keanu realized with a start. They weren't going to back down.

And they were right. Though the idea made his stomach churn, he found himself nodding. "Alright. I'll try."

Zoe and Jun left together, back to the shrine he supposed. What tension Jun had gained at the idea of re-crowning Beryl had faded as soon as Keanu had agreed to take it instead. The edict Zoe had levied against him the night before replayed in his mind. Yet another thing to worry about, he sighed.

Keanu had resumed his seat at the end of the pier, and Nick appeared to be taking a nap stretched width-wise across the middle of it. It was peaceful out here. Laying back, Keanu pillowed his head in his hands and closed his eyes to the brilliant blue sky overhead. Somewhere in the woods birds sang, and the river swayed the pier gently as it babbled by. He hardly noticed the footsteps traveling up the pier.

The board beneath his head creaked, and Keanu sat up with a yelp. Turning about, he looked up to find no one there, and no Nick on the pier. Slowly, his pulse resumed a normal rate. "Nick?"

There was no sign of the boy down either side of the bank, and Keanu frowned. A fish bumped his foot and he looked down into the hollow sockets of a young girl, grinning up at him from beneath the surface of the river.

He pulled his feet from the water and stood up to stare in horror at the thousands of bodies churning in the water. Ghostly giggles flew upon the wind, kissing his cheek and threatening to blow him from the pier.

As he backed his way toward the shore, bony fingers clutched at the edge of the pier. Water dripped from the child's corpse as she pulled herself from the water, a grin vivid on her face.

"You promised!" The wind screamed.

He turned to run, and promptly fell over Nick.

"Gah!" The other boy shoved him off and rolled over to get onto his feet. "The fuck, man?"

"I..." Keanu paused.

In the distance birds chirped, and the water lapped at the pier beneath him. There was no child, no corpses what so ever, and Nick crouched on the pier, staring at him. Thunder-heads bellowed to the south.

Shaking his head, Keanu climbed to his feet. "Fucking ghosts," he muttered, and Nick nodded.

There were two routes back to the temple: down the river, over a bridge, and back up through the naked forest, or go through the town and up the cliff-side path. It took less time to go through town, but they had mostly been avoiding that. With dark, rolling clouds encroaching from the south, however, Keanu and Nick silently agreed to chance the town, even if it meant dealing with more pissed off specters and hallucinations. At this point, that was even beginning to seem normal.

The path they were on wound its way past the destroyed gardens at the back of the castle, and into the nobles' quarter. They were spared the sight of the corpses hanging from the castle gate by a conveniently placed monolith of a house which had once belonged to the Kingdom of the North. Technically, it still did, though Zoe seemed to hold no interest in reclaiming it.

Keanu dimly remembered having spent a week's vacation at the house, and getting lost more than once in the network of hidden hallways built into it by a paranoid architect. Zoisite had teased him for a fortnight after.

It was also where they'd found a copy of the proclamation, signed by King Aethlius, which removed Endymion from the royal line. No one had wanted to brave the castle for the original, and the previous King of the North, Kalunite, had kept meticulous records in his personal library. Fortunately, Helios accepted their word once he saw the king's seal. Keanu swallowed hard at the memory of the boy's face gone ashen, and the way he'd winced away from the parchment as though it'd bite.

All the houses along this lane were lined by high, ivy laden walls. Above them stared open windows into the homes of the highborn, foreign officials, and certain merchants whose money had lofted them to title. From time to time, at the corner of his eye, Keanu would see faces staring out at them, alerting him to which homes held bodies they'd need to remove.

Rain had washed away much of the stink, though Keanu knew it would only be temporary. If winter did come, as Pythia seemed to think it would, then maybe they'd be relieved of the worst of it for awhile. Long enough to burn everything. If he could get Zoe to agree to that.

He'd just begun to register a faint itch underneath his skin, a sign he was beginning to recognize as a warning of magic in the area-either by his own doing or another's-when Nick muttered, "That's coming in fast." Keanu glanced at the other boy, who was watching the sky. A gust of wind slammed against them hard enough that both boys stumbled backward several steps. Nick cursed.

"Come on." After a quick tug on Nick's arm, Keanu took off at a run. He wasn't as fit as Kunzite had been. Keanu hadn't been trained in sprinting in armour, or sparring for hours, or anything more than a few hours of mulching; he was beginning to regret his lack of athleticism.

They made it over the bridge into the merchant sector before the first crack of lightning lit the sky and cause Nick to shy to a halt. Several steps ahead, Keanu turned when he noticed and found the other boy staring at the grey haze of rain in the distance. A haze which was speeding toward them.

There was a shop to Nick's left. Getting wet wasn't too worrisome, but the lightning and strange itch under Keanu's skin had him worried. He didn't want to be caught out in the storm. Hesitating only a moment longer, he strode back to his friend's side, grabbed Nick's arm, and drew him into the abandoned shop. The door shut just as a curtain of rain dropped outside of it.

Immediately, Nick shook his shaggy head and knotted his fingers into his hair. "Sorry, man, I..."

Keanu waved a hand at it, and moved further into the room. Immediately he'd begun to glowworm, and he lacked the will to be annoyed at it this time.

They found themselves in a jeweler's shop and, to his relief, there was a distinct lack of corpses in the main room. Broaches and necklaces hung from pegs on the walls, or on display on shelves. Each piece was unique, and there weren't many. At the back was a work bench, and a stool before it. Several wicked-looking tools were laid out over the dust-covered table, lined up neatly over top a worn piece of linen. Keanu could imagine the old shop keeper putting things in their place for a night, maybe an assistant tidying up after him, assuming they'd be back to work again in the morning as always.

Lightning cracked, casting Nick as a silhouette against the shop's single window. Itching at one arm, Keanu carefully perched himself on the stool. "I guess we have to wait."

Nick scrubbed at one arm as well, the move seemly unconscious as he stared at the shelves. Then, with a great huff, the boy put his back to the window and sat upon the floor. "Can ya knock off the glowy?"

Closing his eyes, Keanu bowed his head a moment and took a deep breath. Wind howled like a banshee through the streets and rattled the window over Nick's head. Keanu blanked the distraction from his mind and concentrated on exhaling as slowly as possible. This time the itch never lessened, but when he opened his eyes again the shop was dark save for intermittent flashes of lightning.

So much noise surrounded them that he was a little surprised when he heard Nick say, "With everything what's happened, ya wouldn't think all this is still a big fuckin' deal."

"Hm?"

"Kings and crowns and fuckin' politics." Nick tapped a heel loosely against the floor. Thunk, thunk, scrape, thunk. "Ain't nothin' left to rule. Ain't no people need us to rule. What the fuck should it matter what house we come from or don't?"

Sitting forward with his elbows on his knees, Keanu nodded his head lightly and braided his fingers under his chin. "Yeah. I wouldn't think it did either, man, but...Dammit, I don't know, ok?"

The next flash of lightning briefly revealed Nick staring at him. Thunk, thunk, thunk. In another instant it was dark again and Keanu was grateful for that. "Mm, a'ight. I just don't think we should get too caught up on that, y'know? No more nobles to feel slighted, no more rules about dress or speech or what you can fuckin' say to a guy. No offense, but you being king don't mean jack to me. You'd still be...you."

Chuckling softly, Keanu gave a brief nod.

"Kinda don't sit right," Nick continued slowly, "This whole 'king' business. King'a what? King of a ghost town. King o' gouls. King'a the slaughtered inn-" He heaved a sigh. "That ain't the point, I guess. S'more, y'know, why's it matter who does what? Y'put Beryl on a throne. Ain't a throne of anything."

"I see your point," Keanu said a minute later, "Maybe it shouldn't matter. Maybe we could just let her have her throne, placate her, and move on with the barriers in place." Sighing faintly, Keanu closed his eyes. "She does have experience, however limited. It's more than I do. But I thought you were against her. Why didn't you bring this up before?"

Thunk, thunk, tap, thunk. "Jun."

Thunder growled above them. "You know what's going on there?"

"Nah." A hesitation and lightning flash later, Nick continued, "He don't trust her. Not like any of us do, but, eh, it's more'n that. Edgy, kinda. Ain't my business, so I don't ask."

"Didn't mean to ask you to pry," Keanu said. "Zoe wants me to talk to him, but-"

"But you don't wanna pry." Nick's hoarse laugh echoed out of the darkness in a way that reminded Keanu uncomfortably of the ghosts that inhabited their old home. Thunk, tap, thunk, thunk.

"Yeah." Washing his hands over his face, Keanu groaned. "I don't like the idea the idea of her thinking she has any power over us, even if it isn't true. I'm not sure if it would be true power or false, at this point. She could refuse to maintain the barriers if we disobey her."

Nick grunted. "True 'nuff. Didn't think'a that." Scrape, thunk, thunk, tap. "Guess that's what makes you th'leader."

A shriek of wind rattled the door. Keanu stared at it a moment, until the movement stopped. He looked back to Nick. On the other side of the window, a little girl stood tapping her finger against the window. She met his eyes. "Nick."

Dark dots began to appear on the girl's neck. As his companion scrambled away from the window, Keanu watched her throat slit open. She grinned at him, her mouth a gaping blackness, and then ran off into the storm. Her giggles echoed over the noise of the raging storm.

Keanu climbed off the stool and sat down next to Nick, where the boy had pressed his back to the far wall of the shop. Shoulder to shoulder, back to solid wall, they stared at the door and window equally. Once again the door began to rattle.

The handle twisted and the door slammed open. Rain poured in, saturating the old floorboards and blowing into their faces. His skin crawled, burned like fire ants writhing inside of him, through his organs, his blood, and into his brain. Falling on top of one another, the boys crawled as far from the door and the water as they could get, but the puddle inched along the floor after them.

A skeletal hand slapped the threshold, then another after it. Too busy trying to brush the invisible ants from his hair and skin, and having no success, Keanu barely noticed the corpse pulling itself inch by inch across the floor. Its fingers latched around his ankle.

"You promised!"

click-clack-swoosh click-clack-swoosh

Someone was humming a faint, familiar tune, beneath the steady counterpoint of the spinning wheel. A chair creaked in time, and somewhere nearby a fire crackled.

click-clack-swoosh click-clack-swoosh

The world was a blur of darkness and flickering firelight. With his eyes cracked open, Kunzite could just make out the shape of a woman sitting next to the hearth. Her long, silver hair blazed an orange pool about her figure, and when she looked up the horn protruding from her head glittered gold. The humming ceased.

click-clack-swoosh click-clack-swoosh

"Good evening, my prince."

"Mom?"

Alcyone took her foot from the pedal and allowed the spinning wheel to slow to it's stop. She looped her place about the needle, then stood and went to the bedside. The mattress gave slightly beneath her weight. Placing a hand upon his brow, the princess hummed. "No fever. That's good. But Kunzite, you must be more careful than this. Taking so much at once...it is not wise."

He groaned faintly and shut his eyes.

"I know you didn't mean to," said Alcyone from the darkness, "Everyone makes mistakes. All there is to do is learn from them."

Fingers combed through his hair.

"Do you remember, my Kunzite? Do you remember where I died?"

There was a little shrine in the slums, he could see it in his mind's eye. It was half fallen in and deserted. Over the lintel was a crescent moon written in his mother's blood.

A light scorched the backs of his eyelids, annoying and insistent that he wake. As insistent as the shaking of his body and the nonsense words shouted near his ear. Keanu groaned again, forced his aching eyes to blink, then promptly flopped his arm over them.

"You asshole," muttered Zoe, and the hands left his shoulder, leaving him free to roll onto his back.

Someone moaned to his left. "Waa'th'fuk?"

"Dunno," Keanu managed, and winced. His throat scraped around the words, and his lips felt like they were cracking. A tangy, metallic taste in his mouth said they probably already had. If that weren't enough, every inch of him, every tiny molecule, seemed to be having a screaming fit.

"You were missing all night," Jun said from somewhere in the darkness.

"We've been worried sick." He could imagine the glares Zoe was giving him and the way she gesticulated as she yelled, all punctuated by a drum beat of stomping sneakers. "You didn't come back, and then the storm went screwy. There was all this lightning and banshee howling, and someone kept screaming something about promises. We even heard it at the shrine.

"And then we couldn't find you. Anywhere. We searched the whole god damn village."

"If y'don't stop yer screamin', you're gonna wish ya hadn't found us."

"Bring it on, buster, I can take your-"

"Guys." Keanu sat up, waving one hand in their general directions. It was a mistake to uncover his eyes, and he winced away from the open window. "Gah."

Immediately it was dark.

He could still feel the presence of the others, and that was all that kept Keanu from panicking. After a long pause, Zoe squeaked, "What did we do?"

"Didn't do anything," said Jun. There was a scuffle of shoes from where Keanu thought the window was. They traveled toward the door, and the knob rattled. A flash of the night before sent daggers of fear down Keanu's spine, but before he could call out to stop Jun, the door opened. There was...whiteness on the outside. Light, against which Jun's form was a silhouette. Somehow the light didn't spill into the room; it was as though someone had just cut a line in the air through which no light could cross. Like being on the privileged side of a two-way mirror.

"Maybe I'm dreaming," Zoe muttered.

Keanu shook his head. As soon as he did, the world snapped back into normalcy and something deep inside of him began to scream all the more loudly. He collapsed forward onto his bent knees and held himself.

Nick sat up; he'd been laying directly beside Keanu, but seemed a little better off, at least in the coping department. Watching their leader through slit eyes, Nick scratched his dark, locked up mane. "Over reaction, much?" His voice was as hoarse as Keanu's, but he followed the question with a dry, rattly laugh. "Ain't ya ever had a hangover?"

"I don't drink."

That got another short bark of laughter from Nick. The boy pulled himself to his feet and offered Keanu a hand. "Yer almost eighteen."

Eventually, Keanu took the help and tried not to wince as his joints protested with cracks and pops. "Even if that were legal, I still wouldn't. Intoxicant."

"Yeah, s'what it's for."

Keanu rolled his eyes. "You're a comedic genius, I'm sure." Arms around one another, the pair limped slowly for the door. Zoe frowned at them, but neither she nor Jun said anything, even when they stopped at the door to adjust to the light as best they could. Little by little, the quartet made their way through the muddy streets of Elysion as Nick and Keanu pieced together the events of the previous night.

The only comfortable position he could find was on his stomach, face in pillow. That worked so long as he could hold his breath, then he'd have to turn his neck and gulp like a goldfish. Still, Keanu tried, and was for once thankful of the inky blackness in the temple bedchambers. Blackness that was natural, unlike the void he'd created that morning.

Even now, hours after the fact, that little, indefinable part of him still blazed within him, swollen and feverish. Keanu knew that even if he wanted to light his little chamber he wouldn't be able to without a candle. Normal methods. Great.

As weird and annoying as the glowworm effect had been, it was a little strange to not be able to use it.

Someone knocked at the door and he groaned. It swung open, and shut again. When Keanu turned his head to breath, he found Pythia standing in the flickering light of an unshielded candle mounted on a tray with what smelled like lunch, or maybe dinner; Keanu wasn't certain how long he'd been laying down. She set the offering on the floor beside the mattress, then sat on her knees beside it. "I thought I would see how you were faring."

"Like roadkill, I imagine."

Though her brows furrowed, the maiden offered a small smile. "That is to be expected, I suppose. Prince Nicholas isn't doing much better."

Neither of the shrine maidens would call them by their first names alone, though they'd tried often enough to get them to. That the title used was 'Prince' and not 'King' had not escaped Keanu's notice, but he'd never cared to question it. He still didn't.

It was awkward to continue laying down while another watched him, so he forced himself to sit up. His head stopped spinning after a moment, and he glanced at the food she'd brought him. Somehow he was managing to be both nauseous and hungry. "Thanks."

"My pleasure."

They stared at one another. Keanu looked back to the tray, then sighed. He slid off the mattress and onto the floor before picking up bowl of hot, thick soup she'd brought him. Instead of using the spoon, he brought it to his mouth and took a testing sip. It wasn't so hot that it burned, and it seemed to steady him a little. Pythia smiled.

Keanu stared into his bowl, watching the potatoes bob around other vegetables and chunks of meat. "These storms...I thought you said they meant Elysion would heal? But they're..."

"Destructive?"

He nodded.

"Yes." A sad smile flickered upon Pythia's lips. "Nature is like that sometimes. Wild, unpredictable, counter intuitive. Like a forest fire. It cleanses the earth and allows things to start anew."

"Great." That was an analogy he didn't want mentioned to Jun. After another sip, as she seemed to expect it, he continued, "There was something weird, though. I've walked in rainstorms before, even rainstorms here. This one...When the water touched me, it felt like I was going to burst. Be consumed from the inside out."

Pythia was still. He watched her as she watched her hands in her lap. "I think," she said slowly, "You want me to tell you what this was." When he nodded, she shook her head. "I am sorry. If I could, I would, but it is not in any of the information to which I was privy."

"You think it has something to do with being a Shitennou?" She nodded and Keanu sighed. That was great. "Thank you, Pythia."

The maiden rose and gave a bow. "If you leave the tray outside the door, I will make certain it is taken care of."

Keanu thanked her again, and watched her leave. When he was alone, he set the unfinished bowl back upon its tray and climbed back into bed. He watched the candle burn itself to a nub long after he'd gone to sleep.