|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 12:59 am
"'Sup," said the girl. "Look, I'm not actually even meant to be in this body at the moment; Irelia just did some crazy magic s**t -- and I know enough to see around her edges, what she can do -- and, you know, in comes the cavalry, the cavalry being me."
She peered over at Irelia with the curious eyes of somebody who had never seen her before. "The kid I'm in, she's her best friend," she said, and with some amused awe -- "like, seriously her best friend. God, what a retard! She just went up against that guy down there like she was Rambo or something, just for her." Experimentally, the redhead reached around in her mouth and spat out a tooth. "s**t. Hope that was a baby one, or else Mini-Me won't be impressed. -- Look, it's already wearing off, the geas sheep-girl put on me wasn't long-term. Just take care of these crazy kids, okay? And get, like, an aspirin, that guy down there beat up this body like a pinata."
The redhead walked a few steps to loom over Irelia, as though memorising her face: she grinned a little. "Nice kid, though," she said. "Guess I have good taste."
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 2:24 am
Clavis nodded as if a spiritual possession was as commonplace as a toothache wherever they were.
"Well, when you're around her, pretty much anything can happen. Does she have the book?" Clavis rummaged around in Irelia's bag, and grasped it between two fingers, as if holding up something unclean. Clavis shoved the book in to the bookcase, but it simply vanished, and appeared under Irelia's arm.
"I take it she's grown attached to it. Damn. Merlin better hurry up, I don't know how to deal with you two. This man, you-she-attacked, did he have a name?"
Clavis had a worried expression on his face as he sat down on one of the lurid chintz overstuffed chairs. Because if She's inexplicably popped up again, he's probably close behind. Damn that man, Irelia was supposed to have a normal life."
Clavis poured himself some tea, and handed Not-Jace a cup as well.
"Cheers. I'm sure you realize just how ridiculously overpowered she is, and she needs to be taught restraint. Just think, if i touched that lock, all hell would break loose," Clavis offered conversationally.
There was a dry cough from the corner, and two people walked in. One was an old, eccentric looking man in a jumpsuit and goggles, the other the most ridiculously gorgeous woman who's scowling face made her even prettier, if that could be possible.
"All hell would break loose. No fury like a woman scorned and all that jazz. What's She doing here?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 2:37 am
The redhead looked at the teacup as though it were made out of buggers; at Clavis, at the teacup again. "Why am I always surrounded by ********' British people," she says, "you're like bad ******** pennies. Liberty! Freedom! Born in the USA! Bruce Springsteen! <********> tea."
She set the teacup down on the low table, in case she wanted it later. She went back to looking at Irelia; she did not look at the incredibly beautiful woman, and she did not look at the old man.
"Sorry," she said to Irelia's prone form, "sorry, sorry. Look, kid, I treat my best friends like s**t. I'm sorry in advance. I hope you go better than previous victims."
She leant down and she whispered something in Irelia's ear that none of the rest of them could hear, and whether it made any sense or not, none of them knew; the girl shifted herself over to another chair, laid herself back in it, and winked at Clavis.
"Thanks for the tea, sissypants," she said. "Peace out."
She closed her eyes. Her posture immediately changed; the girl on the chair was an actual girl now, not something else in a girl's body, clutching herself and biting off a howl of sudden pain as her eyes flew open. This time, they were bright tangerine, and she looked on Clavis and the others in deep suspicion; she staggered over to where Irelia lay, one arm clutched in front of her and gingerly held, eyes flicking from Clavis to the incredibly lovely woman to the old man and back again in paranoia.
"I don't care how strong A-Asher is," she slurred, sounding as though she was more than a little concussed. Her eyes were a little off-center. "I'll beat you.... up..... yeaah."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 3:03 am
Clavis watched the girl, amused by her tirade. Clavis itched to open the pathways, to unlock her hidden potential but he knew that whatever was inhabiting the girl would have a fit. At least the possession seemed to be mutual, or at least whatever was possessing her was preparing to leave.
Clavis stood up to meet Ebony with outstretched arms but she rushed past him, her scowl deepening in to a frown as the red haired girl really woke up.
"You idiot, these two are badly hurt. The least you could have done is called us here sooner. Idiot," Ebony muttered again quietly, and pushed Jace lightly on to the chair that Clavis had dragged over beside Irelia. She ignored the mutter about Asher, but Clavis and Merlin exchanged a look. One that didn't bode well.
Ebony's green eyes were on the same level as Jace's tangerine, her eyebrows (perfect) knit in to a frown. She softly brushed Jace's bang's out of her eyes and felt her head gently, seeing if there were any bumps at all. There was nothing she could do about the arm, except tie a spare sheet around it, which was brought to her when she called for it by Clavis.
"You're in rough shape. You'll have to go back to get your arm set. And aspirin. Things don't change in the Library, so you have the unfortunate pleasure of staying here with constant pain and an arm that never heals."
Ebony pointedly ignored Irelia, letting Merlin administer to her, though Irelia was just scraped and bruised.
Irelia groaned and rolled over, blinking feebly in to the face of Merlin, who smiled at her with his cracked and rotting teeth. Whimpering, Irelia raised her head to look at the rest of the people in the room, only settling down when her eyes met Jace's.
They were ok, and Asher was gone.
"Where are we?" Irelia asked weakly, her voice echoing oddly.
Clavis cracked a smile. Things really never changed.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 3:08 am
"I don't knoooow," said Jace, who had been privy for a couple of moments to double-images of Ebony examining her forehead; because Ebony was so beautiful and because she was fairly concussed she blushed a little, cheeks red. "I just remember getting beaten up a lot are you okay Rel."
She squinted at the surrounding people and sat down on the couch abruptly, next to Irelia's feet. She had had her arm bandaged and her forehead examine as though it was all a dream. And that boy was smiling at Irelia in an affectionate, familiar way, a little heartbreakingly so. What the hell.
"We are not in Kansas," she said, "Dorothy. Library? We're in a library? Bitchin'. Uh, who are you all and how come you know Relia."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 3:25 am
The adults eyed one another. Ebony sighed, and stood up, flicking her ridiculously perfect inky black hair over her shoulder. Dragging a chair over to the two girls, Ebony sat down. The two men followed suit, Merlin dragging the table with a pile of sandwiches on top over to them.
"I'm fine, but he hardly touched me," Irelia whispered quietly, her eyes round and scared, "he almost killed you Jace! I almost killed you twice, three times if you count the time he made me heal you." Tears leaked out of Irelia's eyes, a constant stream of horror and sadness. Clavis gently patted herself on the shoulder, and Irelia moved away from him, twitching.
"Don't touch me."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 3:38 am
"Shut up," Jace said fiercely. "He made you do it, you dumbass, it wasn't really you. He tried to kill me, okay? And he was doing it to, like, mess with your head or something."
She was as suspicious of Clavis -- even with Clavis' kind face and gentle hands -- as Irelia was; she determinedly put her hand out and held on tight to Irelia's hand, not letting her jerk her fingers away, mouth hard. "Anyway," she added, "we're here now. We're not dead. Uh, I think." This last statement was left open just in case Merlin or one of the others wanted to confirm that yes, it was a messed-up afterlife. Jace carelessly reached up and dabbed at Irelia's cheeks with her sleeve, which was not the nicest of hankies.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 4:35 am
Knitting her fingers in to Jace's, Irelia scooted closer to her, resting shoulder to shoulder. She didn't know these people, but she wasn't scared of them. She wasn't even scared of Clavis though she had quickly moved away from him. It was only that when he touched her her heart jumped and it hurt and Irelia felt an incredible sadness welling up in her.
Merlin was the first to reply to Jace's question.
"Ah, no you're not dead. Far from it my dear, you are in the place where life itself takes place! This is the Library, the place where every life is recorded in books. Of course, it exists in all dimensions and is not even called the Library everywhere, and is always a bit different and sometimes a lot different," Merlin rambled on for a few minutes, unaware that the others had lost interest in the circles he was speaking.
Clavis scooted forward in his chair, arms resting on his legs and wrung his hands.
"Um well, I had best explain it, as I'm the one tied to you as it were. And with you, the more information you know the better," Clavis sighed, and Ebony nodded to him when he looked at her.
"We called you the Chronicler; in this Library, you controlled everything and everyone, and as such everything and everyone living, though there are always those you can't touch. I'm sure you've fiddled with your power, though you shouldn't be able to use it in your world without Blood Magic, and Merlin can attest that blood magic is very, very bad." Clavis explained this in a low, soft tenor voice, one that usually would have put Irelia to sleep if he wasn't telling her she used to be an omnipotent goddess.
"We know of Asher too, but we called him the Tyrant of Type. He used you to gain his own means, and we were on a quest to save you but it was too late. You were already corrupted by the Library," Clavis' eyes were sad as he peered at Irelia, "It seems as if its taint is still on you. It just won't let you forget your past will it."
"What Clavis isn't telling you is that you nobly gave up your life to save us all but you wouldn't have had to if it wasn't for me, and I wanted to say this before but i was too young and jealous and-" Ebony trailed off, her eyes welling with water so shimmering it looked like pieces of diamonds, "I'm sorry things ended up so horribly, and I wish that things would have been different. But you have a second chance now for things to be right, right?"
Ebony looked to Clavis, who shook his head sadly.
"Damn it," Ebony's eyes flicked to the lock and then away. It was too sad to even fathom the girl growing up without a soulmate. Well, without her soulmate.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 5:17 pm
It was Jace who was the first to parse this all out into something that she and Irelia could both understand better. Well. That she could understand better.
"So what you're saying," she said slowly, fingers still tightly around Irelia's own because Ebony and Clavis were giving Irelia Sad Looks of one who had just been diagnosed with leukaemia, "is that Rel here is the reincarnation of some kind of friggin' Book Jesus who martyred herself away and was reborn as... well, as what you see before you, right, and Asher is... Asher is some kind of Unholy Evil. Like the Book Satan."
Well.
"You're messed up," Jace told her best friend.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 5:43 pm
The jumble of information spewed at them was far too confusing until Jace gave her shorter spin on it. Eyes wide, Irelia looked between the three adults and finally at Jace.
"...what?" Irelia's voice wobbled a bit, as if she was about to cry again. This was not what she was expecting.
"What are we going to do? We can't stay here forever and I can't go back. Asher will just kill us." It was the first time that Irelia called him by name rather than daddy or even father. She needed therapy, they probably both did, but therapy wasn't going to help when a maniac was lying in wait to kill them.
Clavis sat back in his chair and sighed.
"I don't know what to do with you two. We can send you out of the library wherever there are books, but Asher is Irelia's legal guardian, right? We couldn't kill him last time, how can we destroy him now? I guess the one saving grace is that he hasn't been able to come back here yet."
"Do you have anyone back where you come from that is a magic user, hmm? Or someone that could protect you? If not, I might be able to pull some favors but it will cost ya." Merlin finally spoke up, his speech punctuated by sprays of spittle.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 5:51 pm
"Uncle Jack," said Jace unsteadily, "and his parents, my grandparents, but, uh -- oh my god my mother's going to kill me." (This was just said as a comfortable realisation.) "But, uh. Won't Book Satan just try to mow down everybody to get to Rel? If he wants her that friggin' much?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 2:14 am
Clavis knitted his fingers together, expression grave. This was not the optimum result of course, as it left Irelia far too vulnerable to her father again, but there was nothing else to do. Merlin had mumbled about a favor and left the room, and Ebony was quietly staring in to her tea, trying not to look at Irelia.
Neither of them had really explained just how acutely they knew her, and Clavis would rather not bring it up. She would find out soon enough, and didn't want to see that heartbreak in her eyes again, even though he felt he deserved to see that look every day. While they were safe at the moment, as well as everything else in the library universe, it could all tumble in an instant, especially with Irelia alive and well again. And Asher had found her so fast! It was inconceivable, yet here they were.
"Jace, Irelia, you two are both children and unfortunately ill-equipped with dealing with the horror that you have faced. What I am going to do is not erase your memories, per se, but to pick and choose certain ones to lock. For this to happen easily, I need your help Irelia."
Irelia turned to Jace, silently asking Jace if she was ok with this. Irelia felt more like the sheep that was in her than she had ever before, happy to let the adults decide for them and be a kid again.
Merlin was sitting in his office, a small figure talking to him from a silver mirror.
"I don't understand WHY you must bother me. I don't owe you any favors yet, in the current timeline I'm 3. Maybe four." The woman speaking to Merlin had a large bush of hair and a crooked witch hat placed haphazardly on her crown. Her expression was one of disdain, and she rolled her eyes as Merlin replied quietly that she would owe him a favour in a few years time.
"But not yet, and you know magic doesn't work backwards. But you are right, I do owe you a favour and arguing about it won't help much. I'm going to have a splitting headache after doing this and I wish you were there so I could gnaw angrily on you." The woman waved her arm and vanished in a puff of smoke, more out of necessity than flourish.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 2:28 am
Jace looked at Irelia tightly. Then she nodded, quick and sharp.
"Fine," she said. "Whatever. Whatever protects Rel. But what about Asher?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 3:07 am
In a quiet corner of the daycare, Tamaura (otherwise known as Tammy) was happily smushing play-doh in to the carpet, temporarily unmagical in every way. Over the past couple of weeks, odd things had started to happen around her, but because she was such a bright and happy child, many of the other children were blamed for the tiny fires and the disappearance of objects. Tammy took little heed of the magics that seemed to happen all of the time, more interested in what type of juice they were having or when her next nap was.
So when the simple child walked out of the daycare with a dreamy smile on her face, the daycare workers were shocked to find that she was missing. None of them had seen her leave, and they began a frenzied search for her everywhere on the grounds. But Tammy was nowhere to be found as she had inexplicably tele-ported in to Fakir's, the force of the tele-portation causing her to fall on her rump and giggle. Asher had been standing in front of the bookshelf with his arms crossed, willing to wait forever for his daughter to return. At Tammy's giggle he started, but settled when he noticed it was but a child.
He should have been more careful.
With the practiced air of someone just learning locomotion, Tammy stood and ambled across the room, on a beeline towards Asher. She was singing some nonsense song, and Asher ignored her until she was almost upon him, and the song took on an eerie quality.
Away away on a pleasant day,
A mighty wind doth blow.
A tiny ship upon the sea,
Wherever will you go?
To the east, to the west,
To the frozen north;
A southern path lay blazing,
How will you make your course?
Hold fast, dear sir,
For it is now your time.
For the safety of your child,
I denounce you to the Wildz.
Tammy grasped his knee before he could move away from the tiny sorceress, and in an instant he was gone. Suddenly left without support, Tammy fell and giggled again, her prior chant long forgotten. Astraea found her easily after the daycare had called her, using a simple incantation to find her daughter. Tammy had taken a nap on a particularly large book, not remembering the day she faced one of the greatest evils with no fear at all.
Merlin smiled at the two girls, re-entering the room.
"Asher has been taken care of. Are you willing to help us Irelia? He won't be out of our hair for very long, it might be only a very small reprieve depending on how he fares where my friend sent him. It might be a very long while, i do not know. Clavis, make sure that whatever you do will break if they see Asher again, please? You can't be sure you'll unlock what you set before he comes back. I'd rather the girls live for a while longer, hmm?"
Merlin sat on the biggest, loudest chintz chair, and produced a large sandwich out of thin air, which he scarfed down quickly, his gaunt appearance lessening slightly as he ate.
Irelia had laid her book on her lap, and was staring at Clavis expectantly. He showed her how to use her old powers, handing her a quill made of a phoenix feather and showing her how to direct her power without having to use her blood. He made quick use of her powers, asking her to cross out certain memories, but heightening others. Irelia felt a warm fuzzy feeling cover her as she worked, blushing deeply at Clavis' proximity. It was an odd feeling, one that didn't feel entirely new to her. Finally, Clavis decided they were done, and ripped the page out of her book.
Irelia cried out, feeling that he had torn out part of her soul, and in a way, he had.
"I'm sorry Irelia, but we'll have to keep this here. Jace is easily dealt with." Clavis laid his palm on her forehead and pressed gently. The sound of a lock clicked in to place, and there was a shining keyhole on her forehead.
"It will pass before she leaves the library, I promise," Clavis stated, seeing Irelia's worried look.
"As for you, my dear, I have a few things to say to you, before you forget. First, pleas understand when you read your story that what happened was not your fault and wholly on Asher's shoulders, and partially mine. It shouldn't have turned out the way it did, but I do not know if there would have been another way. Second, and this is the important one," Clavis moved closer to Irelia and took her in to his arms, pulling her close. Ebony looked away, "Please, please, don't be so stubborn to think that one soul can only have one mate. You know that is not true and I hope that you will find another. Because I am Ebony's." Clavis kissed her on the forehead, and suddenly, Irelia knew no more.
And they were dumped unceremoniously in Jace's Uncle Jack's library.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 3:37 am
Both girls had the distinct feeling of sudden dizziness; then it left just as quickly as it had begun, just deja-vu, nothing more, nothing less. Normalcy. Brain freeze. Jace looked up as though she'd been spacing out and that it was perfectly normal that they were in Jack's little library study and flopped around doing whatever; they were them. They were legends at doing nothing at all.
Her brow furrowed.
"Were we here trying to find Uncle Jack's porn?"
-- and then what had happened crashed down before, tricklethrough. Asher. Jace still looked slightly like hamburger. Her mouth was grave and tight.
"I fell off my bike," she said immediately, and Irelia knew what that meant: this is our cover story. "So did you. And -- "
She smiled, lopsided.
"Hey, you're coming home with me."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reply
