Cassandra Pendragon
"Cassy," a tremor of fear raced through Ahri's velvety, hoarse voice while she smothered me in a hug that could as well have qualified as an assault.
"Still alive," I croaked, not minding the loving strangulation one bit. Her scent of pine trees and the smell of roses from our bath entered my nostrils, drowning out the lingering memory of ozone and acrid smoke. "Help me up, please, I need to see…" she ignored me entirely and instead busied her self touching and kissing every part of me she could reach. "How long was I gone," I added forlornly, almost as an afterthought. Her reaction was a bit too pronounced for me to have been whisked to the past for merely a second or two. Judging from the tears she was trying to hold back, I had truly been stuck and for much longer than I had thought. Come to think of it, that was actually a blessing in disguise. There was no telling what would have happened if my body had been here. Would I have annihilated Free Land and a good chunk of my world? Now I was the one feeling anxious, maybe even a little nauseated. Definitely nauseated but that could also have been a result of my spinning head and the taste of times long gone I still carried around with me.
"A few minutes," she snivelled, her tails becoming reddish white shackles around my limbs that wouldn't allow me to move an inch. "I sent Reia packing and you disappeared! Our connection broke! I didn't… I can't…" and those were her last coherent words for the next few minutes. She broke down completely, whispering unintelligibly into my ear, an unending torrent of half spoken promises but I still got the gist of it: don't ever leave me again, don't you dare. It struck me as rather odd how strong and detached she could be, for as long as there was work to be done, but once the moment had passed she often crashed. Sometimes even more so than I usually did.
I caressingly patted her head, my own tears stinging in my eyes. For the umpteenth time I wished that we could simply live a different life, a life filled with sowing and harvesting, building a house and squabbling with the neighbours, a life, in short, we wouldn't have. One day, maybe, when our world, all worlds, weren't on the brink of a transcendent war but for the foreseeable future we would be stuck with this insanity. On the plus side… at least we already had a few kids to call our own. They weren't well mannered and quite the handful, but they made everything worth it.
"Ahri, you know I'll always find my way back to you, I have to," I finally pressed out. "Promises and everything else aside, even if I have to cross the universe, even if I have to wait for aeons, I'll always find my way back home. You know me. I'm more stubborn than anything else and you, my love, have long since become as much a part of me as my own heart. In fact, I don't think there's much of a difference. I might get lost once in a while, but I'll always return. I need you. Always have, always will. And trust me, since I can find my way back from where I was within a few minutes, there isn't much that can keep us apart." Her arms tightened around my neck even more, choking off my last words, but I didn't mind. Instead I tried to put everything I hadn't said into a single kiss and judging from the way her tails quivered, her ears twitched and shudders raced up her spine I managed to get my message across perfectly.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I know how strong you are but when you were sucked into a tome, made by him, I just…" with a visible effort she forced a smile on her face and continued, much more cheerfully, "but you're back, that's all that matters. Also, before you ask, I do like it. It seems a bit… unfinished, though, as if an integral part is missing." Like it? Unfinished? Oh, hells!
"Let me up," I said while I already struggled to my feet, my wings whispering into existence. I whirled around, Ahri's tails still wrapped around my middle, and stared into the large, damp mirror. Jesus Christ, was my first reaction, followed instantaneously by: that shouldn't be possible and but it doesn't look too bad, does it? I shook my head to get rid of the intrusive thoughts.
Around my forehead a band of thorns or rather the picture of tiny horns had appeared, almost like a silvery blue, stylised tattoo of a crown, the edges vanishing underneath my hairline. With trembling fingers I lifted away my tresses, making sure the thing actually circled my whole head. Which it did. The next thing I realised, maybe because I was freaking out just the tiniest bit, was that it reacted to my core. The more power I channeled the more pronounced it became, vanishing entirely as soon as I cut off the stream of energy. In a way it behaved just like my wings… or a demon's crown. I bit my tongue, another jolt of anxiety racing up my spine.
Ahri had placed her head on my shoulder, which made my reactions easy enough to read. "I guess we both know what it looks like… what happened to you, in there," she asked, nudging the tome on the floor. I could only shrug, enthralled by the impossible, maybe even surreal, sight.
"See for yourself. I can feel you again, our connection is working. In a single sentence, I don't have the foggiest, but apparently I'm not just an angel," I lamented quietly.
"That's," she replied while I felt her presence rummage through the depths of my mind. "That's… how old are you?" Again I shrugged.
"I could ask you the same. Do you remember your birth?" She shook her head.
"No, no I don't. But… gods, Cassy, what does it mean? What are you?"
"Confused and slightly scared," I admitted, even though I was starting to relax, my perspective shifting, "but that's not the answer you're looking for, is it? Honestly. I don't know but I also don't see the point in guessing or fretting over it. I mean… adding two and two together that's exactly what Amazeroth wants me to figure out. He's left six more memories for me to explore. I don't think I'll be able to make heads or tails of the whole story until I've seen them all. We can speculate, we can even start guessing how the rest, the sigil he marked you with, my ring, all of it, fits into the picture, but… what's the upside and what do we stand to lose if we just let it be?"
"I wouldn't have to wonder if you might suddenly vanish, for starters. Everything else I don't really care about but as far as upsides go… I don't think I can ever let you out of my sight again if I don't know."
"That's not much of a problem from where I'm standing," I replied with just a hint of humour while I played around with my hair, trying to decide whether I wanted to hide the glowing crown or not. I felt her tense and with a sigh I brushed my bangs over my forehead and mumbled: "You're not going to let this go, are you?"
"Would you, if it were me," she immediately shot back.
"Probably not. Fine then, what do you propose? A bottle or two of wine and a few hours to try to make sense of all the shit we've been through, in this life and the last? That's the best I can offer for I really don't have the answers. You've seen it. I'm not hiding anything from you, I simply don't know. If you want to, I'd be down to running away for half a day, the world won't end without us around. But… I've always preferred to deal with the stuff I can actually change and this, my love, just seems like one of the instances where you just have to accept that we're not quite there, yet. Even together we haven't yet reached 30 years… there's still time."
"How can you be so detached? It's your life, for crying out loud."
"Not really. My life is you," I breathed and kissed her cheek. The cool, silky softness against my lips made me smile. "A few minutes ago I thought… it doesn't matter. At first, I was terrified, it's true, but the longer I think about it... I am who I am, apparently I always have been. And so are you. Whether I'm an angel, a demon or the devil, my origins, my abilities, my heritage… they don't define me. My mistakes, my desires… my love, that's what's important and I won't allow anyone, not even my past, to take them, to take you away from me. When I was in there I didn't care about what might happen to me or even the universe. I only cared about finding a way back to you… apparently I'm partly demon," I tapped my fingers against my temple, "which also explains why the Corruption doesn't bother me. It's a part of who I am. So what? You already said you liked it… as long as that doesn't change I honestly don't care anymore."
"Not even about what it might mean," she whispered subduedly.
"Ahri, I can't promise that I'm never going to die, but I can promise you that I'm not going to sacrifice myself. Yes, for a moment I was worried, but… maybe the Corruption was, once, tied to me but it's not, not anymore. I know it, I felt it. Sure, I'm curious and I'd love to figure out what's going on, as well as how Amazeroth fits into the picture or how he even got that memory if I, myself, didn't even have it. But that's it. I'm curious. I don't think it'll impact what we are or what we have to do. If anything… I'm even slightly relieved. Chances are that sigil on your core is somehow another piece of the puzzle, which means it won't suddenly explode or influence you." Her breath tickled my fur when she exhaled deeply, the fear in her eyes, the panic in her rigid limbs slowly giving way to anxiety and a lingering frustration.
"I still don't like it. The last transcendent surprise had you squirming on the floor and…" I delicately placed my fingers on her mouth, my smile becoming impish while I felt my ears twitch and a slight blush rise to my cheeks.
"Now that you mention it… ever since our connection deepened we didn't have a moment to ourselves. Not one. As unbelievable as it seems, we're alone and if I was only gone for a handful of minutes…" I didn't get any further. She pushed herself up against me, deepening our embrace while I felt the heat rise in her veins with every beat of her heart. The last coherent thought I had before much more important things banished it to back of my mind was a happy one. I hadn't lied to her, I hadn't even deceived her. It had simply taken a while before I had realised how little my past actually still mattered to me and even that much was diminishing by the day.
Which lead to another, probably unique, experience. Growing out a tail while much too busy to realise it had happened. Suffice it to say, the inadvertent control I suddenly gained over her body and mine was a pleasant surprise and… I was over an hour late when we finally left the bath.
While we slowly made our way down the flat, gleaming steps on the inside of the tree, which incidentally reminded me that we really had to come up with a proper name, I couldn't help but chuckle when I realised how circumstantial most of our emotions were. At first I had been scared, the colossal weight of my past turned into palpable shackles around my limbs, then I had been elated, for obvious reasons, and now, I was again anxious and even though the reason wasn't quite the same, having to worry about whether or not Greta had had the decency to not listen in and if I was still flushed felt just as important to me.
Lost in thought I brushed over the smooth, almost black core wood that made up the interior of the trunk. The gargantuan tree had grown exactly where Reia had jumped into the magical waters, its roots turning into a cage or a dome protecting the arcane well. By now, the garden we had created had become covered in a maze of dark, gleaming tubers, the smaller, almost tiny in comparison, cherry trees somehow turning into living, breathing extensions of the main plant.
A single entrance, a door, if you so will, where the thick, iron hard wood had formed an arch, like a supernatural gateway, surrounded by glowing, ever moving branches, was the only way to reach the well. Once through, a few steps led down into a shimmering cavern, the glow of the spring illuminating the natural alcove and the hollow trunk above.
The steps we were descending connected the crown and the cavern but they also led further down, towards the network of roots underneath the spring. A massive door, covered in ornaments and runes barred the way. I hadn't yet had the time to investigate but I already knew it reacted to my touch, the sigils and marks swirling chaotically whenever I came close. I didn't mean to get ahead of myself, but Erya's proclamation, that the tree would serve as a gateway between different places where one of its seedlings had sprouted, didn't seem very far fetched anymore.
The crown itself was massive and while the main branches weren't yet as wide or thick as Boseiju's had been, I didn't doubt that they'd soon become even larger. The stairs ended at the top of the trunk, opening onto a wide, open square surrounded by green leafs and dark wood. There were no blossoms, yet, though. Human sized doors led into adjacent rooms within the thicker branches, most of which were still just bare, undecorated chambers but some already contained beds and one had turned into a bath… obviously. There was also a pantry, filled with cherries and the herbs we had coaxed into growing the night before, but mostly it was just empty space, ready to be filled with life… which we had already provided amply.
For now, my family, save Arthur and his wife, our fey and elves, as well as Viyara, Aurelia, Alassara and her child had claimed a place to sleep. Of course, Archy and Estrella as well as my own personal entourage had decided to stay, too, and then there was also the variety of humans I had somehow invited, ranging from Liz, who was bunking with our elves, to Asra's former slaves, who had a room to themselves, and Pete and his kids, who had claimed one of the larger branches and the three rooms it had sprouted for themselves. Somehow, even the two barmaids had ended up here and since they were the sole reason why I was still wearing pants, I hadn't begrudged them the chance to spend the night when they had asked.
Since it was already well past noon, it was surprisingly quite despite the colourful menagerie which called, or was going to call, if I wasn't egregiously mistaken, this place home. On our way to the stairs I had glanced a few belongings, hazardously strewn across one alcove or the other, but the only persons we had actually come across had been Faelan and Anna, who had been fast asleep, snuggling into their new, soft beds like toddlers. The rest were probably out and about, maybe even in the cavern below, waiting for me to arrive. I had promised to try and return Auguros' and Morgan's magic after all… 90 minutes ago. Either that or Greta had assembled them to make sure they understood on whose grace they were actually depending on for as long as they stayed here.
"You look… happy," Ahri suddenly remarked while I could already discern the moving shadows below us, milling around the pond. There were quite a few of them, more than I had expected. I didn't bother enhancing my vision, though, I'd find out soon enough. Also, it wasn't overly difficult to guess, since my royal brother, the Brightblaze sisters as well as Nightshade and his deity had a profound interest in being here, to name just a few. Then there was also Madame Sinis and her girls who would surely try to either corner me or Alassara and demand that we'd make good on our promises. I wasn't yet sure if I was comfortable with someone as crafty as the Madame blessed with blood thirst, strength and something resembling immortality, but we'd have to see how it was going to go. Also, Alassara could probably keep her in line easily enough, especially if she became one of her own kin.
"Of course I am." I quickly stole a kiss and explained: "and it's not only because of us. Well, that's probably the main reason but this still feels… right. Like coming home, like we've finally managed to escape from the shadows and found a place where we can simply… live."