Eternally Bound: Part 22
----- Decision -----
As it was, Ember let loose a sting of obscenities that still seemed to fall short. She roared in rage and anguish.
The manor, the estate, the vineyards and the wineries… everything was gone. Paige's heart sank at the sight of the wreckage. Her bottom lip trembled as a single tear ran down her mocha cheek. It was followed by another… and another… and another. Her knees were weak and she fell upon them sobbing into her hands.
A chuckle came from the monitor, but it wasn't Lennk. Instead, two black buns followed by narrow green eyes overlapped Lennk. Keivaa grunted as she bumped her way into the picture. "Oh good! I thought I'd missed it! You haven't made a decision yet? Well, better get a move on it, indeed, fire-bookah; if you don’t, both will succumb to my machination."
"Oh, we can make this much more interesting," Lennk laughed as he pressed a button off-screen. A beep came from inside the lab as an asuran time indicator sparked to life on the center console. "Now you all have an additional incentive to complete the task at hand. Nothing like working under a time-clock!"
Kievaa laughed. "Micromanagement, indeed!" The asura's laughter echoed over the burning husk of the Dejarin mansion, as the main section of the house crumbled to the ground from the inferno.
Ember immediately scrabbled to pick up the pieces of the ice sword, ignoring the cuts sustained when doing so. She frantically glanced up at the fluctuating visage of Demitra and Valandra. "H-hold on, love! I'm… I'm going to fix this! I… Just hold on!"
Sylas mirrored Ember's statements to Harid. "Just hold on, sir. I'll… I'll get you out of here." She picked the man up as best she could, hoisting his good arm over her neck as they slowly began moving toward the exit. Harid was barely conscious, stone eyes fixated on the burning pyre that was once the estate he'd poured so much of himself into. The pain from this horrifying image was more so than his own burned shoulder and arm.
"Oh, yes, Harid; you may want to go get that checked. Looks pretty painful!" Lennk sneered. "Or you can just stay here and let the explosion finish the job!"
"Shut your mouth!" Paige growled through her gritting teeth. "You will pay dearly for all you've done." She clenched her fists, slammed them into the dirt for leverage to stand, then looked at her frantic captain and father. "Lucia, get father to the healers! Ember: there's no use; we won't be able to get the artifact assembled in time! We must find another way to-"
"Indeed! Please, come up with another plan. There's so much time for you to-" Kievaa was cut short as Ember threw her sword into the main monitor console. All others filled with static, then promptly blinked off.
"Gods damned asura!" Ember cursed. She quickly dumped the collected shards into her side-pouch, promptly came to stand beside Paige at the pedistal and the guantlets suspended upon it. The second of the third tendrils disconnected as the cylinder below beeped. Only one tube remained. "What the fu-" Ember bent down and retrieved what the asura had referred to as a battery. The contents within swirled with intermixing purple and blue smoke. "Looks important," she said, eyeing it a moment before handing it to Paige, who was admittedly more versed in asuran tech.
Paige raised an eyebrow at the cylinder before her voice cracked. "It's draining them. I… I think it's killing them. I… I don't know if we can disconnect the hoses without…"
"Kievaa said it would kill one of them. Maybe both if we just take the gauntlets and run. Without her artifact intact, we can't bind Valandra to it…"
"And if we can't bind her to it…" Paige's analytical mind struggled to remain in control against her breaking heart.
Both suspended Djinn's voices bounced and echoed from one to the other. "Cannot… both… exist… outside… bound to… one object…"
Paige and Ember both gasped in unison at the realization; the noble finally uttering the words, "If we don't separate them, we lose them both."
A ghostly echo, like a distant voice in an infinite cave whispered to Paige. Her eyes lit up at Demitra's voice. "You, Lady Paige Dejarin, daughter of the Dejarin line, are strong, confident, and you are inquisitive beyond compare. These qualities are those which beckon those to follow you. You have shown me trust, understanding, and compassion... Being strong is not the easy path, but I believe-" Demitra's voice went lower, turned into the icy hiss of Valandra, "since I had the Djiin's essence inside me, I was also bound to the gauntlets in the exchange of power. If we are to find my artifact-"Ember was coming to her own conclusions. "We gotta find something to bind her to! I… I messed up. I destroyed her vessel… I…"
Paige exhaled softly. For the first time since the shock her homestead's destruction, she was calm. She silently thanked Demitra for it; then also had to do the same to Valandra, who sparked an idea. "Exchange of power… Inside her…"
"What?" Ember shook her head in confused frustration.
Paige gestured to the momentary visage of Valandra within the blue mist and snow. "Her! Valandra bound a Djinn inside her. It's the reason she was forced into Demitra's vessel when she tried to release her, remember?"
Ember grunted. "Yeah. I was there. I remember. But still, how does that help-"
"I… I think we can separate Valandra from Demi's bracers if we bind her to a person!"
"Cannot… hold on… much… longer…" The Djinns echoed.
"Bind her then… to me," Ember said with resolute confidence.
"I… I don't know what it'll do to you, Ember. It may be all for nothing. But, I hope - no, I believe - that it will work. I have my scepter to aide me with the spells I've researched; it's very similar to the spell used when I first called Demitra, and I've been practicing. And, since you've had a connection already with Valandra, I think it will act as a focus-"
"Paige, shush! I trust you; always have. I… I just can't lose them. Just tell me what to do." Ember said, her voice weary.
"Stand next to her, in her cloud and I'll start," Paige said, already going through the ritual, fighting to remember it precisely through the aches in her heart for both Demitra and Ember, and the overwhelming hurt for the estate, as well as for her father's health.
Ember pulled herself onto the platform, stared directly at the shifting image that was her wife and Valandra, both frozen in an agony unimaginable. "Ice queen, I don't know if you can hear me, but I'm going to try to save you; probably not in the way either of us expected, and… I'm sorry about this." She turned and gave a nod to Paige, who'd already begun the spell.
Shadows formed around the woman's feet writing an intricate pattern which erupted in sand billowing around her, clothes flapping from the force. Through the dust storm, she called out to Ember. "For this to work, you'll need to make contact with her. When you see Valandra as a Djinn, reach out and touch her!"
Ember did as instructed, placing her hand on the four armed being that was Valandra's Djinn form. Instantly, her hand froze and ice began to creep up her arm faster than her heated core could melt it. She looked back a bit worriedly to Paige. "Better make this fast!"
Paige began to chant, intoning the ancient words of the Djinn's native language. "By the sands of Tyria, the soil of Elona; the heart of a Sunspear's descendant calls upon you. Ancient elemental beings; I beseech you: Bind this Djinn to her new vessel. Bind her so that two lives may be saved. Bind Valandra Okht Thaljia to Ember Naja Drakenfist and welcome Ember as one of your own!"
Valandra screamed in torment and anguish as shards of ice pierced her skin, from the inside out. Winds spiraled around the couple, swirling the clouds of mist, frost and snow into a frenzied blizzard. Lightning sparked within the spiral, as if riding the waves of wind and ice. Ember felt as though her very fiery lifeforce was being stretched apart and deconstructed. She fought the pain for as long as she could before finally screaming.
The spellcaster tried her best to ignore the cries, continuing with the binding.
A look of desperation came from the ice queen as she moved, slowly and painfully, tilting her head down to look at Ember's red eyes. "I have… never… stopped… loving… you…" Valandra managed to get out, a single icy tear rolling down her cheek.
Ember mirrored the ice queen's movement. "And… I… never stopped… loving you…" She said, an inherited tear of ice sliding down her own cheek.
Suddenly Valandra wailed, her entire body exploding as ice, electricity, and wind, a torrential wintery storm mix when engulfed Ember's small body, lifting her high off the platform. She levitated a moment before slamming into the ground with a loud boom. The storm seemed to freeze a moment, suspended above the woman's body, until it plunged into her, imploding.While she wanted to check on her captain, Paige was already at Demitra's side. "My love, I think we did it. I think it worked…"
Demitra was still suspended within her cloud of purple and white smoke. She forced herself to stare with emerald eyes at the puffy-haired mocha woman and smiled thick full lips as tears of glitter streamed down her face. "I shall love you forever," her voice reverberated like the vibration of her touch, a whisper to Paige's ear just as she had heard the woman's words through the conflict.
"It's okay… We just have to get out of-"
Paige's expression was sorrowed confusion as Demitra faded into the smoke, which promptly went back into the bracers, her vessel. The gloves fell from the apparatus, landed unceremoniously and haphazardly in the dirt of the floor. "No!" she screamed, sliding over to the gloves, cradling them. "We had you! It was supposed to free you! What… What can I do now? How will I…"
Valandra's voice called out, but to Paige's shock Ember was the source. She was at the exit, barely able to stand. Her hands were smoking with mist and fog as she beckoned. "It's going to blow! We'll figure it out, but we gotta get out of here!"
Paige glanced up at the countdown, saw there were only seconds left and rushed to the doorway… But it was too late. The lab detonated, an explosion rupturing the walls, collapsing the roof and shattering everything contained within.
Ember was blown from the eruption. She landed hard, sliding on the ground as if it were a frozen lake. She managed to stop herself, looked back at the collapsing building. "Paige!" she cried. Then the realization hit that Paige had been holding her wife's bracers. "Demi! No! Not like this!"
Haird echoed the woman's grief, screaming and yelling at Sylas to release him - even if the man couldn't do much of anything, given the severity of his injuries. "Daughter!" He cried out in a wail only available to those grieving parents who'd lost their children. A few minutes of struggling with Sylas dropped the man to his knees, on the verge of breaking down at the loss of his daughter. Lucia held him, taking care not to agitate his wound.
A soft stirring of the stand behind them gave way to a ring within the topsoil, the sand in the middle of the circle like a pool of quicksand. With a thud, Paige was spit out from it. She landed on her shoulder, then rolled over, both arms grasped tightly onto Demitra's gauntlets. "I… I made it," she said, barely able to get the words out before Harid was on top of her, in an embrace the hadn't had in quite some time.
Ember raised an eyebrow at her hands, seeing the gloves smoke and sizzle. The effect became louder, until all of her armor was burning her skin. "The armor… It… It burns! Get… Get it off me! Help!" She flailed about, attempting to strip off the increasingly hot armor. Paige assisted Lucia Sylas as they helped the captain out of the armor, quickly undoing the straps, buckles, and bindings. Harid moved his gaze from the woman, stared at the smoldering wreckage.
"We… We worked so hard. The legal battles, tilling the land, learning how to be a fucking noble… and… it's just gone. All gone," Harid mumbled.
Paige pulled away from the woman's grasp after she was stable, then stood beside her father and fixed her gaze upon the burning pyre. "The manor… the people. I don't know how many are dead… and…" She choked up, looked down at the gauntlets she hadn't once sat down. "Demitra's gone… She's gone again! My heart…" She took in a breath in an attempt to calm herself, but it failed. Paige let out a loud anguishing, woeful scream - a scream borne of heartbreak, grief, and agony.
Harid put his good arm around his daughter's shoulder. "I can't cry for the lost. Haven't cried since I lost your mother, but I thought I lost you back there. But you're here… We're here! And, we will rebuild Paige."
Tears rolled down the woman's face, but she didn't sob. "We… I… have lost a lot, but no, I won't give up. If I do, then they would win. If… If I have to personally write letters to each family we have lost, I will (until my fingers bleed, if I must)."
"And we'll be with you till the end, Lady Paige," Lucia Sylas offered with a weary smile.
Paige's eyebrows wrinkled with a seriousness to the woman. "Thank you… Thank you for saving him, Lucia."
Ember had made her way to a nearby tree, leaning on it heavily. Without warning, she upturned her stomach, spewing vile blackness from her gut. From where her hand touched the bark, a frost formed, slowly encasing the base of the tree.
They all glanced back to Ember with concern, and Paige actually smiled, in spite of the horrendous circumstance as her friend gave her a weak thumbs up. "Well… We'll need to find some place to stay. Most of the house funds were secured in a bank. Not all… but enough, I think; both here and in Elona. The… The survivors will be taken care of, and those lost… I'll see to it each and every family gets a share, even if it bankrupts us. Tomorrow I'll tour the manner; I need to see what's been lost."
Ember stood upright, having finished emptying her stomach. Her skin was still as pale as it had been, and her hair now contained a blue streak which glistened with an icy sheen in the sunlight. She raised an eyebrow as she wiped her mouth with a frigid hand. "What?" she asked at the group's stare, blinking back eyes of sapphire.
[The End...???]
Aftermaths:
Note: Read these in any order, then the Epilogue
