Title: Cintamani
Author: Loki
Rating: R. Violence/Language/Adult Situations.
Genre: Romance/Drama.
Pairing: H/?
Status: WIP.
Summary: AU. Hitomi-centric. An epic tale, an alternate take and retelling of the Destiny Wars, full of intrigue and magic, and a fate that perseveres. One cannot always choose whom they love, but they CAN choose what they do about that love.
Feedback: Would be very much appreciated, thanks! ^_^ Let me know if you think I should continue. No flames please!
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Nada.
AN: I've changed a few things about the layout and workings of Fanelia, and Gaea in general. This story is AU, so some things have been intentionally altered. A few of these things are major to the original anime storyline, but it'd be boring if it was all the same, now wouldn't it? ^_~
This first part may seem a little slow, but it is all necessary to set the stage. It will pick up soon, I promise.
Just a question before we get started, what pairings does everybody prefer? I already have two couples I'm leaning towards, but I also like to know what my readers think. However, the main pairing is set and will not change. But I plan to do them justice, so nobody run away just yet! :-D
One final note: I've combined elements from both the anime and the movie, but only a small part of the storyline actually follows the original. I've read neither the Shounen manga, nor the Shoujo, so I can't speak for those. But I heard the anime draws from both, or is it the other way around? *shakes head* I have no clue, the only thing I know for certain is that Hitomi's hair was long, and Dilandau really was female in the girl's comics. And neither of those things are true in this story. ^_^
Without further ado...
Cintamani
It always starts as just another day. And then something comes that we're not prepared for. I thought it was the news that Amano-sempai was leaving, but...
Part One: Fanelia
Chapter One: The Sleeping Dragon
That was a dragon.
White scales, fierce crimson eyes, definitely a dragon.
And it had just suddenly appeared in a flash of blinding blue light, right in the middle of the track.
Hitomi did what any sensible soul in her situation would do---
She screamed.
Which was about all the response she could give in that split-second before her body collided with the dragon's much bigger, and harder one.
¤ ¤ ¤
Hitomi groaned as she slowly came to, her hands rising to rub pitifully at her throbbing temples. She felt like she had run head-first into a brick wall, like she had taken a swan-dive into an empty swimming pool, like...
Her green eyes snapped open as a fragment of a dream flitted across her muddled thoughts. Of course, that's what her rational mind told her it was. She had collapsed at the track, or was asleep in her bed at home. Or, her eyes finally adjusted to what little light there was---pinned to the ground by a large reptilian claw!
She froze, the air in her lungs coming out almost as if some large weight had just been dropped on her stomach. Which really wasn't all that far from the truth. The sudden stillness of her body, more than its previous movement, caused the sharp black talons to scrape against the dirt and close tighter around her. A building scream clawed up her throat, but she quickly choked it back down. She knew that if she let it go the black terror would swallow her whole, and then the dragon would do the same.
Okay, don't freak, she silently instructed herself, though the words rang empty in her mind. How could she possibly be calm at a time like this?
Because you have to! Being hysterical isn't gonna help you, came her rational voice, the one that had been so certain this wasn't happening only seconds ago. In her own head it sounded so cool and nonchalant, which only seemed to spin her into deeper levels of panic.
What the HELL Will?!
First, assess the situation.
I'm trapped under the claws of a freakin' dragon! That's the situation!
But it isn't ripping you apart. Why?
Do I wanna know why?
Do you wanna get out of this?
Good point. Um...maybe because it's asleep?
She blinked. It's asleep? Finally seeing a paltry ray of hope, though she was thinking that 'ray' may be too strong a word, she slowly began to calm down. One, two, she counted her breaths, pushing them in as deep as they would go, then pushing them out just as evenly. It was a short form of meditation, and she was surprised to discover that only moments later she actually began to feel somewhat composed and more in control. She was fully aware that it was all illusion, but if it helped her keep a level-head, literally, she'd be happy with it. Settling more into her position, she let her eyes follow any path that might lead to escape.
Unconsciously sensing the body in its grip relaxing, the dragon relaxed as well, loosening up its hold on its captive. With a twitch of one long, pointed ear, it drifted into an even deeper sleep.
The black claws had spaced out just enough, she realized, and if she were very, very careful she might be able to wriggle free and keep all of her limbs intact at the same time. Which sounded a helluva lot better than lying around and screaming endlessly in her own head. However, it was that 'might' that gave her pause.
I can take a chance, possibly get free and away, or possibly get eaten. Or I can sit here and wait for the creature to wake up and definitely eat me. I so do not like my choices.
Not that she even had one, she mused bitterly.
Very slowly she began to wriggle backwards, grinding her heels into the ground to push herself along. Various sticks and rocks pressed into her back, but she was too intent on the dragon above her to notice such things. Having carefully inched herself free nearly to her waist, Hitomi dug her fingers into the dry dirt and stray grass clumps, pulling with her hands as she pushed with her feet. It was sort of a dragging, backwards crabwalk, and had it been anybody else in any other situation, she might have laughed until she cried. Now she felt about like skipping the first step and moving on to the scared-little-girl tears.
She had almost cleared her knees when the creature's long tail lifted and fell against the ground with a 'thump', reminding her of an aggravated cat. The suddenness of the movement pinned her to her spot almost as surely as its claws had only moments before. She felt a familiar panic starting to settle in her stomach once again, like a lead weight to dull her senses.
She waited several dragging seconds, feeling her life literally teeter on a knife's-edge, and boy was it a sharp one. Was the beast waking up? Should she make a run for it before it realized what she was doing? The lashing tail struck the ground once more, then lay still. The lazy night-wind shifted the tree branches above her, casting and breaking apart shadows. An owl called in the distance.
Hitomi had more sense then to sigh in relief. She could sigh all she wanted as soon as she was far, far away from here. Preferably whole planets away maybe. With one more deep breath, she climbed to her feet, backing cautiously away from the giant. At any second she expected it to pounce, or pull some Jedi-mind-trick, but its chest rose and fell peacefully. The broken moonlight filtering down through the canopy glinted off its white scales, dancing it back in a way that almost seemed to glow.
Beauty had a command of its own, and it WAS beautiful. Stream-lined and powerful, like a predator should be, built for speed, built for the kill. Had she any guarantees on her life, or if she was irrevocably crazy, she might have stuck around to fully admire it. Instead, she quietly turned on her heel and began to pick her way through the dense underbrush.
She turned her back on it only out of necessity, but kept her ears open to any tell-tale scrape, like scales against leaves or *gulp* claws on dirt. After all, she had to see where she was going to keep from alerting the dragon to her exit.
'See' was such a misleading word. There wasn't nearly enough light for anything like that, though the moonlight did seem unusually bright. No, she picked out darker shapes in her path and tried to avoid them as best she could, all along silently praying that she didn't step on a stick, or worse yet, a snake.
The woods were thicker than she had expected, thicker than any woods she had ever seen to tell the truth. And there was a wildness to it that made her city-girl heart think that it might have been years since any man had walked through it, if at all. She recognized that she was following a game-path, but the idea didn't set her any more at ease. After all, game-paths were where most predators preferred to hunt. But the idea of trying to thrash through the dense underbrush, with the branches grabbing at her like thorns, didn't sound much more appealing. With the light small and inconstant as it was, it would be like the proverbial bull trying to tiptoe through the china shoppe. The noise alone would alert any and all predators to her passing.
Rubbing her hands against her exposed arms, Hitomi realized she was still in her red track shorts and t-shirt. And the darkness beneath the trees was very cold. Great, she thought, if I don't get eaten by the dragon, or ambushed by some hungry animal, I'll be sure to freeze to death. What else can go wrong?
Almost as if to mock her, her sneaker suddenly caught on an exposed root and sent her sprawling to the ground. Instead of pulling herself up, she lay where she was and seriously considered giving in to the hot, frustrated tears that threatened to over-take her. The sense of calm she had managed to strangle from her situation earlier was small and easily damaged, and she was exhausted from the struggle to merely keep a fraction of it intact.
Hitomi sighed. With more patience then she actually possessed, she untangled her foot and gingerly touched a finger to the fresh scrapes on her knee. A spot of blood appeared trembling on her fingertip, as small as a tear and nearly black. Frowning, she wiped it away with her thumb.
Me and my stupid questions. Oh well, it's just a scrape. It'll take a lot more than that to stop me.
With renewed determination she pushed herself up and once again began her journey. Although she had no idea where she was going. Somewhere. Wherever that dragon wasn't, is what she fervently thought. In fact, now that she could actually think somewhat clearly, she had no clue where she was! How does one go from the school track course to being stuck in the middle of a forest with a dragon? Hitomi didn't even know where to begin with that question, let alone coming up with an answer, so she forced it away and focused on the little that she did know.
If I keep walking I'm bound to break the tree-line at some point, right? That is, if this forest does have an end!
Oh calm down, of course it has an end. It just might be...miles away.
An hour later she couldn't even be sure of the direction she was going anymore. 'Forward' about covered it. All the trees and plants were starting to look the same, making her more paranoid than she already was. And that was quite a bit to begin with. On the bright side, her knee had stopped bleeding some time ago! On the down side, the continuous walking was really making it throb in stinging complaint. She so needed to find some water to wash the wound out before it got infected. With the turn her luck had taken lately, she definitely didn't want to take any chances.
She stopped suddenly as pain cut through her stomach like a hot knife, squeezing it down tight and making bile burn a path up her throat.
What's wrong with me?! Why do I feel so sick all of a sudden?
Something flashed in the not-so-distant dark, jerking her to attention and away from such internal matters. Squinting, her first thought was that someone was out there, that she was seeing a bright lantern through the trees. But then the first glow shifted and was joined by a second, making it look like two...
That's what it was, two eyes. Two shining eyes floating in a sea of black, reminding her of a cat's, the way they bounced the light back in radiant gold.
Oh gods, oh gods! What is that?! No, she closed her eyes tightly, I don't wanna know! Just make it go away!
A low growl trickled through the trees, thrumming down her spine and sounding oddly like a dying horse. She couldn't seem to move as various twigs snapped and something dry rustled smoothly over the half-rotted bed of leaves.
The shadows were so dense that the creature stepped forward from them just as if it were rising to the surface of some pitch black water. Thick, powerful legs appeared first, and claws that sent her heart beating against her breastbone like it was a bird trying to escape a cage. Then the light shifted enough to show a broad, but strangely shaped chest, and a body that clung low to the earth but in no ways seemed clumsy. It had two fiercely yellow eyes set spaced apart on its head, one on either side like a bird's. There was something definitely bird-like in the structure of its face, but that similarity was dwarfed by the over-all reptilian build.
Since she had seen nothing truly like it before, she found herself recognizing it in parts, instead of as a whole. Unhinged jaws like a rattle snake, armored crown, much like a horned lizard, a tail in length that reminded her of an otter, but it curled up and over, sporting something diamond-like that looked frightfully akin to the stinger of a scorpion. It was scaled and green in colour, the hue of a dead, stagnant pond.
Opening its muzzle it revealed endless rows of hooked teeth, specifically designed for catching and tearing and snapping through bone. A forked tongue flicked out, tasting the scent of her terror on the air.
It...it must have scented the blood. I am so stupid, came a distant voice that in her state she couldn't really recognize. She had heard the phrase 'numb with fear', of the body reaching such a level of overwhelming excitement that it started to shut-down. She had heard of it, but could never have imagined what it was really like. Silence rushed in her ears in a deafening wave, and her vision dimmed down to only what she could see before her. The air pushing in and out of her lungs seemed to fill her entire frame. The most disconcerting thing was how she felt as if she weren't quite in her body, but her feet seemed to be welded heavily to the ground.
This dragon was much more massive than the first. Where the other had looked graceful and lithe, reminding her of a crane, this one had an appearance more like a crocodile, with scales more ridged than smooth.
The most important difference was the fact that it was Fully Awake, and very much aware of her. She was too scared to turn and run, too scared to do more than stare and shake.
The green dragon returned her stare, though no understanding flew between them. They may as well have been in two separate dimensions, for she was certain that whatever it was thinking or feeling, she had nothing within her to compare to it. Its back claws were braced in the dirt, muscles coiled to maximum; it was ready to spring if she so much as twitched in any direction.
Seconds passed.
There was something infinitely sadistic about the way it crouched there and waited for her to run. She wondered if it was like a dog in that sense, only attacking when its prey showed fear. She wondered if she looked that resolute, standing there shaking like a leaf. Why wasn't it attacking?!
The beast's head rose up into the air, and for one hysterical heartbeat she thought that it was moving into a striking stance, but instead its breast seemed to swell up and glow.
The sick feeling stabbed into her gut again, and Hitomi had a sudden vision of fire, great streams of it coursing over her body and eating the flesh from her bones. Some piece inside her abruptly snapped into place, and with startling clarity she knew what was coming. She could see it. Diving to the ground, she tossed her arms protectively over her face and screamed as heat licked at her through her thin clothes.
But the searing pain of her vision never came.
Cautiously she lowered her arms to find the white dragon standing, braced over her on four legs, like a mare protecting its newborn foal. Leathery gliding-wings ending in sharp pointed tips were snapped out as a sort of shield, and the fire rolled harmlessly off them and its smooth scales like water off the oiled feathers of a duck.
Hitomi, in her shock, got a trailing glimpse of large, gem-bright red eyes, before the white dragon turned and launched forward. It tackled the green one, digging its claws into flesh and rolling with its downward momentum so that the wingless dragon went crashing back-first into a tree. There was a splintering crack of more than wood, then with a snake-like strike, the white dragon's teeth sank into the other's oddly soft underbelly. It proceeded to tear into it until the green one lay dead and faintly twitching at its feet.
It...it saved me? But why? Should I try to run?
As if hearing her thoughts, the dragon moved in a way that was undeniably serpentine, one of its bloodied claws snapping out and knocking her to the uneven ground. She yelped as she felt one of the talons tickle against her shoulder. Then the light but restraining weight on her shifted as the beast began to rise over her.
And rise it did. Its mass enough to dominantly fill the small clearing of trees, and even then it was coiled in on itself like a resting snake, curled forward to peer down at her. Moonlight gleamed off of scales so small and pale that its form glowed like high sunlight through lace curtains. Its claws, in contrast, were hard as obsidian and just as black, one spanning more than the length of her arm, wrist to elbow. It had five strong fingers caging her in, and had she not been immobile with terror, she would have feared slicing herself open on their already blood-stained edges.
What she could see of its body was long and smoothed for speed. And its eyes...they burned lightening-bright, like two pools of fresh blood poured upon blinding snow. But instead of flatness, there was a depth to them, a heat, as if the blood spilt had been boiling hot.
It stared down into her wide green eyes with calm crimson orbs, then took one step back, soon followed by another. It drew its claws away from her carefully, sitting back on its haunches as if to emphasize the point that it was no longer holding her prisoner. It was such a peculiar act that Hitomi found herself curiously not afraid of it anymore. After all, she rationally tried to explain her new feelings away, it's had plenty of chances to kill me, but it protected me instead.
"You're not going to hurt me, are you," she asked hesitantly. How stupid is this? It's not as if it's going to answer me.
The dragon tilted its head at her voice, and she genuinely began to wonder if it could understand her, for it slowly lowered its head to the ground, rolling its eyes up to present her with a look that was completely non-threatening.
"I guess not," she whispered, then tentatively reached out a hand to its inclined muzzle. Laying her palm against scales that were strangely warm, she felt a sense of calm settle over her over-exhausted thoughts. But whether it was because she sensed no danger in the dragon before her, or because she was desperate to trust something, still remained to be seen.
"I'm petting a dragon." Nope, the idea continued to seem ridiculous and unbelievable, even though she had made it concrete by saying it out-loud. Tracing lightly the line of its jaw, she sighed. "I guess it's true what they say about books and covers. But why did you bring me here, and...where is here?"
TBC...
So what does everybody think about this first chapter? Please review and let me know if I should continue! Thanks! ^_^