Dream of Reality
Chapter One
by Makura Koneko
"Congratulations, once more, Chiba-san," My Uncle Taito shook hands
with Mamo-chan, and I, on his arm, beamed. He turned to me, and embraced me; I
was reluctant to let go of Mamo-chan, even for a moment, even to hug a beloved
relative. I was back in his arms quick enough, though, and my friends all
around me grinned at the eagerness with which we held each other.
"Thank you, Tsukino-san," Mamo-chan said- he was still such a prince!-
to my father's brother. "But it is I who must congratulate you on being
related to so lovely a creature as my Usako." He looked down and winked at
me. I grinned. I knew he meant every word, but the tone -lavished with
sappiness- was for the sake of my cousins, all vivid green with jealously. I
only cuddled closer to him.
The party, our engagement party, ended soon after that. I even managed to offer
to help clean up. Minako had only laughed, shooing us away and telling us to go
home and get some rest.
According to everyone except my parents, Luna, Artimus, and the Senshi,
Mamo-chan and my wedding wasn't until next week.
But we hadn't been able to wait...
We had been officially married no more than an hour after he had first
proposed, so, naturally, we were already living together...and sharing a bed.
Sleep came easily that night, after several long lasting goodnight kisses over
mugs of hot chocolate before a fire and warm cuddles. I snuggled up next to
him, wrapped snuggly in his warm embrace. He kissed me on top of my head,
through my mane of golden locks...I glanced up at his face...he kissed me...and
I, Usagi Chiba, went to sleep.
She would never wake up.
And yet...in a way...she never went to sleep in the first place.
~*~
"Dreams...they're a funny thing." So Luna had said one night, when I
had awoken from the oddest dream; in the dream, I had just awoken from a long,
deep sleep to see a face above mine, concerned, calling me 'lady.' I hadn't
been able to shake the feeling that the dream was more than just a
dream...never did I imagine the extent of the meaning of the dream.
Yes, dreams are a funny thing, mainly because they are so hard to understand,
to control. Even harder than reality. Maybe that is because what we perceive as
reality, is actually just a dream...a dream within a dream. Maybe as you read
this, you are actually asleep, and you won't realize it till you wake up.
Perhaps you will never realize it. You know how some dreams are; you know you
dreamed, but you don't remember what. I'm sure there are times when you dreamed
vividly, and, in the morning, don't even remember dreaming at all.
Or maybe, when we sleep, our spirit goes to another place, where you are an
entirely different person. And when you awaken, your spirit returns to slumber
once more, like a reversed reality. A mirror dimension. Maybe some people you
know are actually the spirits of a 'real' person in another realm. Eerie
thought, ne? But with that theory, at least people you know as your dream self
are real, somewhere. But what if...what if you suddenly woke up, and realized
that your family, your friends, your hair color, your memories were all created
simply by randomly released neurons in your brain? What if your reality, is no
more than a dream?
When that happens, that is when the true nightmare begins.
My friend, the face I had seen when I had awoken within a dream, the concerned
one with the voice calling me 'lady,' he had asked me to record my 'dream
life.' I find with my new reality, that my handwriting is perfect, my spelling
nearly flawless, as if I have had a whole other life of training, one I don't
remember.
This account, the one you are reading now, is the end to my story, following
right after the engagement party of my beloved and I, which you read above.
That day was the end of my life as Usagi Tsukino. I went to sleep that
night...and for all accounts, never woke up. At least, not to what I had
previously perceived as reality. But in going to sleep that night, I came into
another reality...or is this simply all the dream? I don't know. You read, and
you decide.
~*~
They had split up. It was the safest; a group of two or less attracted much
less attention than a group of nine. Each would look for the entrance to the
opening over the fires of Mount Doom, as well as anything else useful, and they would meet back
up outside.
They each carried a replica of the Ring, forged by the wizard Gandalf hastily a
few days before...maybe if one of them were captured, if they had a fake, maybe
some would believe they were the only person come to destroy the evil object.
It was a hopeless ploy, they all knew, but the only one they had.
It was the white elf of the Fellowship that discovered what would be their
entire world's salvation, though he, Legolas Greenleaf, knew it not.
The shadows were thick with evil and malice. Even simple darkness was cleaner
than the blackness that surrounded everything he passed while slinking down the
hall. He was only glad for the dark cloak the Lady Galadriel had given each of
them, that hid his lighter colored clothing and hair from giving him away.
He came to another door; another dungeon, from the looks of it...but no need to
take chances. He crept to the door. His hand, pale compared to the blackness
that surrounded him, and lifted the door handle, but not before peering inside
through the slits in the door. He slipped inside, the silence and stealth of
his kind aiding him in this endeavor.
The room inside was just as dark as the hall; only his Elven eyesight allowed
him vision. Still, he was careful of tripping over anything. It was this
caution that kept him from falling prey to a series of steps leading downwards,
the floor having fallen away long ago to reveal these steps just before him. He
spotted the steps just in time, and skirted back, frowning at the slight noise
he made.
Did this lead to the fiery pits which they all sought?
One way to find out...
Down and down he went into the darkness, keeping one hand on the wall, lightly,
not even letting his fingertips disturb the dust that lined the walls.
His senses began tugging at him, and just as he had sensed the uruk-hai coming
their way on the banks of the river, so now he sensed he was nearing something
also of great evil....great, great evil. He narrowed his eyes in the darkness
as he perceived a sort of light ahead...like a black glow. And yet...through
that black glow, a trickling of purity sang to him. A pinprick of light, true
light, sheathed in all that black vileness.
It was then that Legolas finally emerged into the cavern; high vaulted ceilings
supported by inwardly arching creatures that looked like a cross between demons
and angels. Between each pillar was a skeleton strapped to the wall; the
remains of lavish satin and silk gowns adorning the once beautiful female
bodies, now no more than bones.
A huge chandelier hung high above, covered in age old cobwebs, the candles
chewed away by various vermin.
Legolas but glimpsed all this before his gaze was pulled directly to the alter,
atop a three foot high dais, in the very center of the room. His eyes widened
ever so slightly at the sight. That was the only thing that betrayed how his
heart had stopped. Whether in fear or awe, he did not know.
A woman lay atop the alter among satin and silk and gauze pillows of black and
gold. A large square of sheer black gauze, lined with black diamonds, was on
top of her, pulled tightly over her curves by the weight of the diamonds that
hung over the sides and end of the alter. Only her shoulders, neck, and face
were exposed, along with the mass of hair that reached a shade of darkness not
even the evil around him could achieve. The locks pooled around her, overflowing
onto the floor all around her and her alter. Black diamonds, black opals, and
black pearls, netted by strings spun of dark silver were woven throughout the
entire mass of tresses.
Her skin was alabaster white, as if she'd never seen pure light at all, let
alone the sun. Her arms, visibly laying at her sides underneath the black
gauze, were slender, as if they'd never moved, the muscles ever unused. Her
face, Legolas could see as he brought himself to take a step closer, was set in
an expression of peaceful slumber, a slight smile on her dark red lips. Long,
thick lashes naturally curled brushed the top of her high, elegant cheek bones,
her eyes closed. Somehow Legolas thought with confidence that they, her eyes,
were as black as her hair, and -probably- her heart.
But what was that pinprick of goodness he had sensed? It was gone, now...or was
it? He walked closer, his gaze intent on her face.
"Lady?" He whispered, his voice barely audible. The darkness around
him seemed to eat up the sound. He stood over her now, looking down at her
sweetly beautiful face.
What was something so lovely doing in so evil a place? What foul plan did
Sauron have for this maid?
Legolas touched her cheek; her skin was as cold as death, yet he could
oh-so-faintly feel the barest heartbeat of life in her. "Lady?" He
repeated. Was this a mistake, trying to awaken her? That was when he spotted
them; underneath the gauze, shackles, chains, holding her down to the alter;
she was a prisoner, much as the other women strapped to the wall had been,
those who were now skeletons. He glanced at them again; was this woman to share
their fate? Had she known them? Now that he looked closer, he saw, on the brow
of each skull, an odd mark, it's color still vivid, as if it was almost
glowing. He frowned. They meant something, those simples. Foul or good, he did
not know.
Legolas turned his attentions back to the black lady before him. He touched her
cheek again, letting his fingertips run up her face, across her brow-
The result was instantaneous; light flared! Real light! It burst forth like a
fountain from her brow, from a mark that was shining so brightly Legolas
couldn't block it out as he was forced to stumble back. The light lanced at the
darkness surrounding the girl, but was shattered. The beams of light were
smashed by the darkness, and as Legolas watched, the light fell back down as
rain; it was raining tiny stars all around the girl...they, the tiny stars,
hovered all around her, and she was surrounded by a cloud of light....silver in
color, he now noticed, when it had been golden a moment ago.
He could see the mark, now. Two, actually. An upturned, golden crescent moon,
and a dark silver upside down one, overlapping it. They flickered in such a way
that it looked as if they were fighting for dominance...as Legolas watched with
fascination, the golden one flickered...and died. The dark silver one glowed
warmly for a moment, then it, too, faded till it was only a simple outline on
her brow.
Legolas looked around, sure that the light show must have attracted someone,
but no one was around. Silence reigned supreme, as if there wasn't even air to
carry sound at all. Yet Legolas breathed.
He stepped up to the girl on the alter once more.
"Lady?" He asked once more, touching her other cheek with the back of
his hand; did she still live? Yes, beneath her cold flesh, blood flowed.
He was caught off his guard when the woman's eyes abruptly, and without warning
flitted open. His presumsion of her eye color was shattered when he saw that they
were the most vivid, vitalizing blue! Her eyes were large, full of innocence
and sincerity...it took Legolas's breath away. Even as her eyelids began to
flutter closed, Legolas saw, as the eyes began to flicker as a solid
silver-black eating away at the blue, he saw...
He saw the universe.
In a tenth of a second, the Elven prince was taken through nebula clouds, to
the birth place of a new star, a new solar system, to see the death of another,
the creation of another species, the song of the starlight weaving around the
moonbeams that danced around every moon.
In a moment, he had seen, and been everything...simply by glimpsing the eyes of
a girl who lay as though in death in the heart of the most evil place on
earth...
A need to get her out of that place, a desire to let her see sunshine, to let
her feel the wind in those glorious tresses of hers, to let her experience for
herself the glory of seeing spring, become summer, of summer becoming fall, and
then diving into winter. He wanted to teach her how to climb trees, how to pick
the ripest fruits...he wanted to see those eyes again, as they finally fell
closed with the sweetest, softest sigh.
Footsteps!
At once all of his senses were alert to the sounds of a mini-army stomping by
above. His grip on his bow was as if he had never let go of it, as he whipped
it out from underneath his cloak, accompanied by an arrow as he flung his hood
back. He slipped around the other side of the alter. The vibrations in the
floor gave away the arrival of two, no, three Orcs in the huge cavern.
"She's still there..." One of them grumbled. "Whutz the mahster
want with 'er, anyway?" It grumbled nasily.
"He wants her to die, o'course," The other wheezed. "He seemed
'appy enough when the others went 'poof' and their flesh turned to dust."
"Me thinks it's a sort o 'if I can't 'ave her, no one will' type
thing." A third said. Hisses and cries of pain were heard moments later as
the other two clobbered him. After a few more grumblings, the three of them
left, hobbering up the steps, leaving a hidden elf prince with some thoughts to
chew on as he followed suit, giving the slumbering maiden one last look over
his shoulder, with a mental promise to return once he had finished his
scouting. He slipped up the stairs, silent as ever, forcing himself to think of
the task at hand.
He didn't notice when her eyes fluttered open once more behind him...
~*~
The woman yawned and arched her back in a bit of a stretch, expecting to feel
her Mamo-chan beside her. She smiled through her daze at the memory of
yesterday's party, and the thought of the other parties to come...
Then she realized her husband wasn't beside her. She frowned...He usually
stayed with her either until she woke up, or he woke her up himself...maybe he
had waken her, and she'd just forgotten, she tried to reason... It wasn't
unlike her...
Then the scent and sensations hit her...
She opened her eyes...
...And immediately wished she hadn't. Fear gripped her; she lay on a bed that
was made on top of what appeared to be some sort of alter. She lay among red
and gold and black satin and silk sheets and pillows. A sheer black gauze lay
over her, pulled taught by the diamonds that lined the edge of it and hung over
the sides of the alter.
The room she was in was most decidedly some sort of tomb or dungeon; skeletons
lined the walls...skeletons wearing familiar gowns...bearing familiar symbols
on the brow of their skulls...
Usagi screamed...
And the sound was eaten up.
Usagi began to panic. Where was she? Where was Mamo-chan? Why did the skeletons
around the room have her Senshi's symbols on their foreheads? Was this some
sort of freaky icky warning?
A million ideas and reasons flew through her mind; was Demando back? Had he
come for her? Had Chaos come back and decided to keep her for its own
amusement? Had some new enemy found a way to capture and confine her while
he/she/it wrecked havoc?
That last thought made Usagi's eyes flash with determination. She'd show them!
No evil was gonna keep her a prisoner! How dare they think they could chain her
while they do as they please with her planet! With her home! And did they
honestly think these phony skeletons would make her think her friends were
dead? Ha!
Usagi gripped the gauze and tossed it aside, the black diamonds tinkling
against each other as she did so. Her movements weak and stiff with
sleep...perhaps from a sleeping drug, as well. She swung her feet over the side
of the bed...
And yelped as, simultaneously, cold metal yanked her ankles back, and she felt
her legs collapse back down to the cushions, trembling. She reached down to rub
her sore limbs-
And realized her wrists were shackled as well, and her arm, her hand, her
fingers were trembling. She groaned and plopped back down onto the feather soft
mattress and pillows. A headache pounded between her temples. She looked at the
chains; they were long enough so that she could reach her hand to massage her
forehead, at least. She tried to reach up to rub her brow...and whacked herself
on the cheek! Her hand...her hand was shaking so badly...she looked at it...and
it took all her concentration to close and open her fist...it was as if she'd
never used her own arm before...she couldn't coordinate... It was then, as she
let her arm fall back down beside her, that she noticed someone's black, black
hair all around her. She forced herself to sit up, though now even her backbone
and stomach and back muscles were trembling...she looked behind her, all around...but
there was no one... With trembling, barely-able-to-move-hands, she touched a
strand of her hair...she tried to grab it, but her fingers wouldn't obey her
commands. She set her elbow down on the tresses, and pulled her head up...
...And yelped with the pain it brought her scalp.
This was her hair!
But...but her hair...her hair was gold....not black....
From that realization, everything, every sense, every bit of reality came
crashing down...
Her skin was too white...
She couldn't move her own body right...
She couldn't sense her Senshi...
She couldn't feel the Silver Crystal...
She couldn't feel Mamo-chan...
She was surrounded by sickly thick evil...surrounded by darkness so solid you
could cut it...
Then everything blanked out. Usagi was still conscious, but her mind, her heart
seemed to simply...shut down. She lay back down among the pillows and cushions,
gripping a corner of one of the pillows, her eyes, now a solid silver-black,
wide, staring, unblinking, her breathing shallow and too quick.
~*~
"What do you mean, you cannot return with me?" Boromir hissed; he had
met up with Legolas, both had reported to each other that they'd finished their
scouting routes, and neither had found anything. Now the elf prince was saying
he couldn't leave quite yet,
"I have a promise to keep," Legolas told him, his voice barely
audible. He turned, sticking to the shadows so that Boromir could barely see
him; it was as if the elf had merged with the shadows themselves!
"I'm following," Boromir told him stoutly. His tone left no room for
argument, so Legolas said nothing other than to throw the human warrior a
glance over his shoulder that clearly stated, 'you get us caught, I'll kill you
myself.'
This promise was of some importance, then, Boromir thought as they eventually
made their way to a particular door. Legolas glanced in, then, throwing a brief
look to Boromir, the first he had since that first one, he slipped inside,
leaving it open a crack to allow the other Fellowship companion to follow.
When Boromir entered, he found that the Elven prince was gone. He looked
around, and barely caught the slight shift of a shadow below; a fall-away stair
case! So hidden in the shadows he would have fallen in, had he not caught the
barest flicker of Legolas's cloak behind him. Boromir made silent haste to
follow, so as not to get separated. All the while he was thinking, "What
sort of devil-trap is he leading us into?"
~*~
The sight that met Legolas's eyes upon entering the magnanimous cavern was a
different one than last time; the woman was away, laying on her side, gripping
one of the pillows as she stared with glassy, unblinking eyes at the far wall.
Shock, he realized. The poor girl must have awoken, panicked, and slipped into
shock...it was more imperative than ever to get her out there.
Paying barely any mind at all to Boromir behind him, Legolas strode across the
cavern. He touched the chains that bound her, upon reaching the alter; he
expected the sparks that flew. He wished for his warded tools, but knew he had
no time to even improvise making any.
"If I fall, but she is free, take her, leave me, and go." Legolas said.
Boromir nodded, but Legolas didn't even look at him. Taking a deep breath, he
grabbed the chain around her wrist, and *shoved* with all his might everything
he had *into* the very spells around the chain and shackle...
The metal sparked, fizzed, and burst into a fine powder.
It took every ounce of Legolas's Elven resolve to keep from stumbling from the
exhaustion that washed over him. But it was that same Elven resolve that
replenished him quickly enough. He gripped the chain around her right ankle, and
repeated the process. This time it took a little longer for the fizzing and
sparking to give way to the poofing of dust, but it came to pass nonetheless.
This time Legolas blinked with weariness several times, taking several deep
breaths before moving to the left ankle shackle. This time it took a grunt and
a physical shove for it to even begin to spark. It took a gasp and a reminder
of what he had seen in the girl's eyes before he managed to pull what he needed
out of himself and into the spell, shattering it and the shackle; the powder
that resulted wasn't as fine as the first 'poofing' had been, but the shackle
and chain was no more, and thus good enough.
'One more,' he thought to himself, too exhausted to even notice how drained he
was...or the concerned looks Boromir was giving as he gripped the hilt of his
drawn sword tighter.
Legolas grasped the last shackle, putting his hands over the metal and around
her right wrist, the one resting beside her beautiful face. He used his fingers
to close her eyes so that no dust would get in them before renewing his grip
once more. He took a deep breath...
And shoved.
Pushed...
Crammed...
Jammed....
He pulled every last ounce of strength from his soul, but still it was not
enough....
'No! Not when I'm so close!' his mind and heart reached out to the girl, who
was so close to being free...
Only Boromir saw the spectacle that arose next; with a breathtaking display
each skeleton lining the round room, seventeen in all, burst into it's own
starburst of flaring light and magic. Silver-violet, pink, gold, navy blue,
blood red, forest green, burnt orange-gold, sea aqua-blue, bright yellow, deep
purple, dark burgundy, ice blue, pale red, pastel green, faded orange,
blue-black, blue-white....
As he watched, the skeletons -and the clothing- began to crumble to dust that
dissipated before it even reached the ground...and in the center of the
light-illuminated clouds of dust, was the origins of the lights. Where a
skeleton had been, there was now, the same color as the light, a
spike-star-shaped crystal.
They began pulsing...
Boromir whirled around...how can one fight light and crystal stars with a
sword???!!!
The pulsing continued... A cry was released... Boromir whirled, and his eyes
widened; Legolas and the girl both were engulfed in a dark silver-black glow,
that was pulsing in sync with the seventeen crystal stars...
Without warning, and with a silent blast that shook the entire palace, the
crystal stars rushed to the center of the room, forming a ring around the girl
and elf at the alter. Boromir barely had time to throw himself to the ground to
avoid having one of the crystal stars pierce right through him. The stars
flashed once, brighter than the sun. A starburst flared out from the center of
the sphere of light, engulfing the entire cavern. The cavern began to shake!
Chunks of stone fell from the ceiling!
And still there was no sound...only silence and violent vibration. An explosion
unlike any other lifted Boromir right of the ground and slammed him into a pillar.
He fell to the ground, groaning, holding his side as blood seeped out of his
mouth. He forced his eyes open against the bright light, where he barely made
out a tall figure thrust away from the alter the same as he had been...the same
time the last chain shattered...
The explosion that followed...it was so beyond human comprehension, time seemed
to stop for Boromir as it took place. All he knew was that something had
happened, something so beyond him it had caused him to see and hear and feel
nothing but the whiteness that surrounded him. Something was happening...but he
didn't know what...he could only cling to the whiteness until it released him
back into a reality, once that reality had calmed to a level his human physic
could handle....
~*~
Legolas, too, floated in that same whiteness, though he could ever sense the
girl near him... she was in the center of it all, the center of the power, both
good and evil, the center of the light and the darkness. The center of the
universe she held in her eyes and heart and soul. The center of the love that
had once been showered down upon her by the beings that lived, pulsing within
the star crystals that spun around her... Just as he could sense *her* he also
sensed that she had absolutely no grasp of just who or what she was... She
couldn't know. She was too pure, to simply innocent. She wasn't even human...
Another presence...one of the crystal stars....it appeared just before him, glowing
a soft silver-violet.
"*Thank you...*" The voice wasn't even a voice, but a gentle sense of
gratitude, radiating from the silver spike-star-crystal. The gratitude stemmed
from every single star, to the silver one, to be conveyed to him...
"For what?" Legolas found he was thinking the words, rather than
speaking them, but it seemed it was good enough, for the emotions projected to
him by the silver star were ones that directed his attention towards the girl;
that was what they were thanking him for. For freeing her. A gentle knowledge
entered his mind, tentively, as if the silver star crystal were asking his
permission to tell him something...he gave his consent. Like a gentle trickle
of water, he knew, suddenly, who she was. What she was. Who - and what- the
crystal stars were...
"You were her mother." Legolas addressed the silver-violet star. The
star hummed gently, agreeing. He looked to the gold one. "You were her
lover, her husband." The gold one, too, hummed. To the pink, he said
"You were to be her daughter...yet you were never even born." The
pink one seemed to sigh sadly in agreement. "And you..." He gave his
attention to the blue-white and the blue-black ones. "You were her
teachers. You taught her, loved her, as if she were your own." Legolas
looked at the rest of them. "And the rest of you...you were her guardians,
her friends." He nodded to the four whose colors were copies of the first
four, but muted, paler. "You were to be the guardians and friends of her
daughter. You all...you all protected her, this girl, this woman, even in
death...you were her companions even in the dream-prison Sauron constructed for
her... When you died, Sauron stole your souls, gave you bodies, but let you
die..." He looked to the pale silhouette that faded into existence before
him; he put his arms under and around it, and it settled into his arms, slowly
beginning to solidify.
"I see...." he said. "Sauron placed this girl, your beloved
princess, in a sleep, while her soul and spirit weaved for itself its own world...an
alternate earth where she was a heroine, just like she'd always wanted to be.
When you all died, your souls joined her in her dream world, protected her soul
from the evil that was saturating her body... So everything she ever knew,
Beryl, The Dark Moon Family, Nehelania, Chaos...they were all demons her own subconscious
conjured up...they were enemies she brought on herself to force herself to
raise her power...she somehow knew the day would come for her to be released,
to take revenge on the one that trapped you all here...while in her dream
world, she trained herself without even meaning to...she doesn't even realize
what has happened, does she?"
All at once, the spirit star crystals pulsed, confirming what he had put
together from the knowledge that had been slipped into his mind by the star
that had once been Queen Selenity.
"I will take care of her, I promise," Legolas vowed. "Until she
can resurrect you all, I promise I will be her guardian in your stead."
More gratitude washed over him, and at last the silhouette in his arms became
solid; Princess Serenity lay in his arms, peaceful as could be. In this white
spirit-plane, her hair was it's proper star-gold, her skin peachy-rose. But as
the white began to give way, as it began to release him and the princess back
into the real world, both her skin and her hair began to take on the colors
caused by being saturated in evil for thousands of years. As he watched, the
stars came together in a small cluster over Serenity's heart. They pulsed
together, once, twice, before gently glowing and fading...fading...fading down
together until there was nothing left but a small, pure crystal star, that
gleamed every color of the rainbow when the light glanced off it just right...
The Crystal, at the very last moment before the last of the whiteness around
them faded, settled between her breasts, over her heart, sank into her flesh,
and disappeared, safe until she called it out and summoned her friends and
guardians to awaken so she could give them form once more...
~*~
'C'mon, let's go!" Legolas came back into himself and back into the real
world to find Boromir at his side, and the cavern crumbling around them. Sound
existed once more, and the noise was deafening. Shaking himself and renewing
his grip on the girl in his arms -thankful that somehow her hair had been
shortened and he didn't have to worry about tripping over it- he and Boromir
both dashed for the stairs, dodging falling debris and desperately trying to
keep their balance all the while.
The flight up the stairs was perilous; missing stairs gave way to bubbling
magma below. When they reached the hallway, they didn't have time to be
dismayed before they were set upon by orcs; only the luck of the orcs being
more disoriented than they were allowed them a fighting chance. Legolas
brandished a sword he pulled from somewhere, since he didn't have both arms
available for archery. Cradling the small woman in one arm, he slashed his way,
Boromir before him, to the open corridor that lead to the outside of the
fortress.
An orc grabbed Serenity's hair, but it slipped from his hands like water. While
he stared at his hands in surprise, Legolas beheaded him, unconsciously
shielding Serenity from the spray of inky blood that followed. A cry went up
beside him, and he turned to find an orc, its top half lying atop its severed
legs, and Boromir standing over it. Legolas nodded his thanks before leaping
forward at another monster that raised it's ax above Boromir's head from
behind, running it clean through, then yanking his sword out to swing it at yet
another creature. The orc skipped out of the way, right onto Boromir's blade.
Boromir shoved it off, and leaped forward again...
The battle raged on, but at last they stumbled through the doors, running ahead
of the mass of orcs. Ahead of them, a gray, cloaked figure raged towards them
on a stampeding black horse, another gray horse behind him.
"Hurry!" Gandalf cried. Legolas, without pausing leaped atop the gray
steed, Serenity held tightly to him, her eyes open wide with horror; she had
awoken during the fight! Legolas had no time to even be annoyed at this, as he
whirled the horse around and sped towards the huge gates. Orcs were desperately
trying to shove the massively huge and heavy things closed, but they were too
late; Gandalf, Boromir behind him, and Legolas, Serenity in his arms, flew
through them with nary a hair's width to spare.
~*~
It was well into the next day before the girl in Legolas's arms, before a camp
fire that was surrounded by now ten travelers (Sam, Frodo, and Gimli asleep on
their cots), that Serenity showed any sign of acknowledging the real world. She
was well awake, but the shock of awakening to find herself in the arms of a strange,
most decidedly not human male, in the middle of a bloody battle she did *not*
want to think about...that tends to have negative affects, as the Fellowship
was discovering...
At last, after several failed attempts, Legolas was forced to simply lay her
down on a mat and tuck a blanket around her, and return to the circle of the
Fellowship to retell what had happened...
"But why would Sauron care about stopping a simple girl from being
reborn?" Pippin asked.
"Because she is a threat to him," Aragorn said, playing with a bit of
dried venison. "Because her power is opposite of his, as well as exceeding
his, if Legolas's story is any indication." He glanced to the girl
sleeping beside the aforementioned Elven prince. "He fears her."
"Does he?" Boromir asked. "It seemed a bit too easy to get her
out of there, if you ask me. I'm not saying it was easy, mind you all, but if
she is what you all say she is... If I were Sauron, I'd put a bit more security
around her than a few spelled shackles."
"There are other forces at work here." Legolas said. "Forces
beyond our comprehension." He threw a small stick into the fire, watching
the sparks that flew up. Legolas looked down at her, slumbering with that same
peaceful look on her face...
"Hey, you said that even though their bodies were dead, her
guardian...people, their spirits were still there?" Merry asked after a
moment. Legolas nodded. "Well then, it wouldn't surprise me if, during all
that time they were they, they worked on eating away at what defenses were
there, maybe obliterating some of them completely."
"You did mention a...black glow that surrounded her," Gandalf
reminded Legolas. "Perhaps it had been a sort of shield at one point.
Merryadock has a grand point." Merry beamed.
"Perhaps..." Legolas tossed another twig into the fire before looking
down at the girl again. "It makes me wonder what is to come for her, this
girl who is so much more than she appears..."
"That, I think, is not yet for us to know," Gandalf said. "We
have played our part in the game of some grander scheme. Now it is up to this
girl, and those 'forces' you spoke of, to make the next move. Whether or not we
will be involved is yet to be seen." With these words, the wise old wizard
lay down on his mat, and slipped into slumber. The others followed suit,
leaving Legolas up to simply gaze at the girl. He wondered if the damage done
to her body, her evil-infested body, would be undone by simply being away from all
that darkness; the silver-black mark on her forehead *was* fading...
Legolas sighed. As much as he meant to do his best to keep his promise, he
couldn't deny the truth in Gandalf's words; something grander than even he, an
elf, could perceive, something that -as much as he hated the thought- didn't
include him... A 'game' Gandalf had called it. Was that all it was?
He didn't know...but he did know that, whatever it was, be it a game, scheme,
ultimate plan, random events of the cosmos, or destiny guided by the hand of
some greater being, Legolas knew this; the girl, this woman, this princess,
just as she had been the center of the good and the evil, the light and the
darkness, so was she the center of the tapestry of fate and destiny that was
being woven throughout time...
As Legolas shook away his deep -too deep for any mortal, or even an elf to
decently contemplate- and lay down in his cot beside her, he never noticed the
silver-black crescent flicker, and fade... Only to be replaced, as the girl whom
was the star peace in the ultimate game of the universe smiled gently in her
sleep, not with the previous golden, upturned crescent moon, but with a white,
eight-pointed star...
To Be Continued…
Well, this story won the poll! It shall be continued.
This story follows events as I
perceive one of the many ways -were Lord of the Rings to be incorporated with
Sailor Moon- things would go, if the Fellowship never broke up. Below I list
the things different from the two actual series and this story.
1) The Fellowship never broke up
2) Boromir never died.
3) Merry and Pippin were never kidnapped, and Gandalf met up
with them before they got to Mordor, so all nine are now at Bara-dur.
4) Mamoru isn't a jerk.
5) Usagi is at least eighteen.
6) Chibi-Usa never existed.
7) Usagi has all her memories from the Silver Millennium.
Thank you all for reading!
Hope Make the Universe Shine,
Makura Koneko
*ALL STANDARD DISCLAIMERS APPLY*