*giggle* That's because y'all were supposed to post them HERE! <3
And the Story Posting begins!
Clear and Present Danger
By: Deoridhe
As is well known among the light population, individuals who naturally attune to the dark aspects of crystals are inherently weaker and more easily turned to evil than individuals who naturally attune to the ligh aspects of crystals. Most dangerous of all, however, are the so-called "clears," who can attune to both aspects of stones. Deceptive and underhanded, Clears often work as spies for the Darks or undermine both societies for their own pernicious ends.Deoridhe scowled at her homework. The breeze from an open window brought the inviting scent of spring, and the last thing she wanted to do was construct a paper about why Clears were genetically inferior to both Darks and Lights and should be, at the very least, locked away from the population. Not only was it bigoted bullshit, she had to be convincing enough that no one suspected -- her head shot up. Like the twang of a bow string across her skin, she felt then entrance of someone unknown past the wards and into the house.
Slipping out of her chair, Deoridhe crept toward the window. Reaching up to the large Amethyst crystal which nestled against her throat, feeling the power kindle within it as she did, she tried to taste what sort of crystal the intruder had. Something cool and dark as night shadows slithered against her skin. Slinking out of the open window, she crouched under the bushes, feeling the stillness come closer, like a minnow sighting a shark in the deeps. One of the advantages to being a Clear, and probably the reason why people stuck with either Light or Dark alone feared them, was the ability to use Crystals as either a Light or a Dark, depending on the circumstances. Making use of that ability now, Deoridhe used the dark aspect of Amethyst to place a film of stillness and shadow over her skin, rendering her more difficult to see and sense both. The use of the Light aspects of Crystals tended to alert Dark users to their presence; with hope, the use of the Dark Aspect of a weaker stone would fly under the intruder's radar.
Above her head, she heard footsteps in the room she'd just left - slow and measured. A single intruder, seemingly, and secure in his ability to face off against a family of dim Lights - as those who used the Light Aspect of Darker Crystals were called - or he knew she was one of the only ones here. Ruevian, Fiddler, and Gendou, the three breadwinners for the family, weren't due back until later in the evening. Icy was still at school, but both Kyraa and Romuel should be around and Tea was due any minute. The footsteps paused in the middle of the room, likely by the abandoned dinning room table. She knew the warmth of her body would still be on the chair; whoever it was would know she was near.
And more importantly, Kyraa and Romy might not know the intruder was there. The wards placed by Ruevian were tripwire light in order to not alert intruders to their presence, and masked as weak in order to maintain the appearance that they were weak crystal users and thus of no interest to anyone, so it was easy to miss the feedback from them when they were tripped by someone as powerful as this person seemed to be.
If he's a Dark Onyx, even Gendou might not be able to stop him. Onyx was the weakest Light Crystal and the strongest Dark Crystal; Gendou was a Clear who used Onyx, which made him easy to underestimate, but against a stronger Dark Onyx the outcome would be questionable.
Footsteps sounded again, moving around toward the window, and Deoridhe pressed herself against the underside of the window, praying he wouldn't look directly down.
We have to get out of here. Now. We can catch Icy on her way home and go to the safehouse until the others get home to check the house. As dim Lights, the Gaia family lived on the outskirts of Light Territory, which placed them closer to and at more risk from Darks from across the border. Deoridhe had heard that raiding parties were starting in the area; if this was one of those, a retreat was the best plan.
The fact it was a single individual bothered her, though. Even dim Lights should require more than a single attacker, unless it was an incredibly powerful one. Above her, Deoridhe could hear the footsteps moving away from the window, but refused to let out a breath quite yet; he could hear and return. She wanted him well away before she moved.
A minute of silence, and Deoridhe risked a peek over the window frame to see if the room above her was empty. Around the corner of the window she caught a glimpse of a red eye swirled in black looking back at her.
The need for cover was gone in that instant. Springing from her hiding place, Deoridhe sent *Intruder!!!* to the other two in the house before using that same momentum of panic to propel herself over the tall wall of shrubbery and to the open yard beyond, one hand closed tightly around her Amethyst. A small corpse of trees was behind the house and to the left; a fence she knew she could leap beyond it. Refusing to think about the dark presence bearing down on her, and the singular lack of help around her, she sprinted for that brief safety and anonymity. If she could get out of standard Light Territory into the Unclaimed they lived so close to, she could turn the tables on him using the Dark Aspect of Amethyst, and at least slow him down and keep him away from the others.
Halfway to the trees, a weight struck her in the middle of the back. She tucked and rolled with the impact, trying to use her attacker's momentum to sent him off of her, but she could already feel the dark tendrils gripping the surface of her skin like vices. Like a cat, her assailant flipped in midair, sidestepping her kicks and pinning her face down on the ground with a mix of hands, knees, and octopus-like dark tendrils. Her last chance was a single, concerted attack, psychic - not physical. She gathered the darkest aspects of amethyst to her, imaging it as a needle stronger than steel, when Gendou said, "Do you
really think I wouldn't duck?"
Deoridhe froze. For a single heartbeat, she was utterly flummoxed. "Why didn't you let me know it was YOU?" Squirming around, she wriggled free he loosened his shadow tendrils and stepped back.
He was smirking. His grey suit was barely rumpled. "Why didn't you figure it out?" he countered, dimming back down to a Light Onyx, the weakest of the weak.
"I panicked." Flushing, Deoridhe pushed herself off the ground. In the distance she could see Romuel peering out the kitchen door. Kyraa pushed past her and came running.
"What happened?" she yelled as she got closer.
"Nothing." Deoridhe stared at the ground. She felt a hand come to rest on her shoulder.
"Intruder drill."
Kyraa gave them both a confused look.
"I'm going to finish my homework," Deoridhe said, refusing to look at any of them. She sulked her way back toward the house. She could feel Kyraa and Gendou staring at her as she went, but refused to look back, shrugging off Romuel's worried inquiry and gentle look.
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"Look who came home with me!" Icy bounded in the front door an hour and a half later, dragging a flushed brunette. Through the archway from the dining room into the entry, Deoridhe could see Kyraa's blushing profile and she said hello. With an utter lack of subtlety, Icy pushed Kevin Alliance toward Kyraa and said with an air of innocence, "I'm going to go talk to Missy Deo. Keep Kevin entertained, okay Kyraa?"
Deoridhe pushed the dining room chair next to her out with her foot as Icy dropped her backpack on the table. "I'm almost done." She didn't look up from her paper on why Clears such as her entire family were even more evil than the evil Darks who lived across the mile high wall to the East of Town.
"You want to talk to me anyway," Icy declared, abandoning her books and the offered chair to drape herself over her adopted sister. "I'm cuter than any old essay."
"Gettoff," Deoridhe said, rancorless, as she wrote in the last of the essay with a properly patriotic tangent on how pure and wonderful Lights were.
"Is that what I have to write in a few years?" Icy asked, reading over Deoridhe's shoulder.
Deoridhe grinned. "Not if you fail out of Junior High because you keep
bugging me." She wriggled her shoulders, shaking Icy off. "C'mon, get it done and we can play games after dinner instead of you having to be exiled to the homework corner."
"I hate the homework corner." Icy turned her favorite cute look in Deoridhe. "But I hate working on homework
even MORE."
"Sucks to be you." Deoridhe replied as she packed her supplies up. "Hurry up, there's only a couple of hours until dinner." She had to grin again more at the shocked and appalled look on Icy's face. "Stop being a brat. Sooner done, sooner over," the elder continued, loftily, ignoring her own lack of adherence to that idea a few hours previous. She shouldered her backpack, ignored the now pouting Icy who was opening her backpack, and headed out into the entry and past the trying-to-look-casual couple. "Hi Kevin. Hi Kyraa."
"We were going to watch some TV in the family room, Deo; wanna come?"
"Nah, three's a crowd." Deoridhe struggled to keep her voice casual when all she wanted was to escape to the second floor and some peace.
"Okay." Kyraa gave her another uncertain and confused look.
"I'm
fine, Kyraa. Honestly." Flashing her a brittle smile, Deoridhe fled upstairs.
The library door on the second floor partially open; through the gap, Deoridhe could see Gendou bent over his computer - doing overtime, no doubt. The country was highly segregated according to level of skill with Crystals, so Gendou ended up getting the short end of the stick a lot in business due to his being attuned to an Onyx. They lived comfortably enough, especially for dim Lights, but the house was in the lowest and cheapest area closest to the dangerous Dark Country. In a world determined by Crystal Attunement, it was hard to make it if you were on the wrong end of the spectrum in the wrong place.
Lights attuned to dim Crystals had no recourse, but Clears did - if they could get across the border without being detected. It was a dangerous sort of thing, since neither Lights nor Darks particularly liked chameleons that could use the skills of both. Last year Meghan had made a run for the border to see how easy it would be to establish the Gaia family across the border... but they'd never heard from her again. She was a Clear Onyx, like Gendou, and had been profoundly unhappy on the lowest rungs of business and unable to move higher, not that Gendou was much happier with his imposed status in life.
Sighing softly, Deoridhe moved passed to the staircase up to the third floor, where her bedroom was. She'd like to move where they could be Dark instead of Light. Actually, she'd like to move to where Light and Dark didn't matter anymore.
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Notes: The crystal strengths are, from lightest to darkest, as follows: Quartz, Selenite, Tourmaline, Garnet, Citrine, Peridot, Fluorite, Aquamarine, Topaz, Amethyst, Moonstone, Jasper, Onyx. For lights, the strongest crystal is Quartz; for Darks the strongest crystal is Onyx. Clears have the standard single crystal attunement, but can use either the light or dark aspect of it, meaning that an Onyx masquerading as a Light would seem very weak until tapping the Dark aspect of the stone and overwhelming an enemy.
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