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 Posted: Thu Dec 22, 2011 8:16 pm
It had been less than a year.
Staring up at the endless blanket of the heavens overhead, dotted with thousands upon thousands of stars, Gehenna had to wonder how he had never known that they were the root to something so much more than he could have imagined. He couldn’t count the times that he had stretched out in a hammock, stared up at them through a patchy jungle canopy and wondered to himself if there was something more out there. He knew that answer now, he had known it for months.
It had been less than a year since his whole world changed.
Yet, for all that time seemed to have flown by so quickly, it had still been months since Cimmerian first told him about their ability to travel home. It had been months since she’d regaled him with stories of her beautiful world, tucked away into an immeasurable darkness. It had been months since Gehenna had chosen to ignore his birthright. For all that time seemed to have flown by on Earth, it crept slowly on Mars as Gehenna's past waited for him.
The Squire’s eyes fell away from the sky overhead and stared, instead, at the winding maze of streets below where the headlights of crowded cars shone like a dull mirror of the heavens. Kamboja Vaiphei had been so wrapped up in his concrete world, in his troubles and battered life, that he had held himself back from truly becoming Gehenna. How could he have accepted a second life when his first was so twisted and full of darkness that he could barely overcome it? He had lost so much and broken so much that the idea of accepting another part of himself seemed disastrous. Wouldn’t he just break that too?
And still, another part of himself resisted Gehenna all together for entirely different reasons. He didn’t want to know if there was more to his life, be it beautiful or tragic. He knew that every past was filled with pain. How could he be sure he wanted to take all of Gehenna’s burdens for his own? He wasn’t sure he could handle another lifetime.
As she had done time and time again since she stepped into his life, Vanessa was finally the one that convinced Kam that it was time for him to finally take a step. She didn’t even know that she had been his unintentional inspiration, but it wasn’t until she had told him her own personal tragedy that he had understood. It wasn’t the tragedy that defined someone, but the way they overcame it. Vanessa had risen from her mistakes and been reborn, even if the scar lingered on. If she could overcome that then he could overcome anything by comparison. Even if Gehenna’s life was nothing but a tragedy, he had been reborn as Kamboja Vaiphei to overcome it. He owed it to himself to at least know his past and he’d had enough of being a coward over a mystery.
With one long, heavy sigh, Gehenna pushed himself up to his feet with the metallic clinking of armor on armor. He stood on the ledge for a moment and let his gaze drift back up to the sky where it spread out in all directions, unhindered by the cityscape at such heights. It probably didn’t matter where he chose to leave from, but somehow it just seemed right to get as close as he could before he spoke the words that had been singing inside of his head for days. Maybe it was silly mortal superstition.
He curled his hands into fists, clenching the weapons that gave him his power, and spoke the words that felt so alien and so familiar all at once:
“ I pledge my life and loyalty to Mars, and to Gehenna. I humbly request your aid, so that in return I may give you mine.”
As the last syllable passed his lips, it was as if time and space themselves enveloped the Squire and he was simply gone.
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Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2012 4:59 pm
The first thing that Gehenna was aware of was heat. It rose like a swell against his skin, hotter than any summer day on Earth. As his vision cleared and the unnerving sensation from inter-galactic travel drained from his body, he began to become more and more aware of his surroundings.
He had been deposited in front of two tall, wrought iron gates. They stretched entirely across the hard-packed, red earth path beneath his feet. Upon closer inspection there were black stones embedded in it as some type of walk way but over the years they had broken or gone missing and what was once a regal entrance was now simply a broken, degraded path. On either side of the path itself, Gehenna found the source of overwhelming heat. A lake of lava burned brightly, bubbling and filling the air with the sound of its boiling. He realized that the path lead even deeper into the lake and that his goal, wherever it was, would probably cause him to walk even farther through it – and the path was the only way across. In the back of his mind he realized that he should never have been able to get so close to lava without dying of heat or suffocation. There had to be magic afoot, eh? He wasn’t even surprised.
His dark eyes swept up to the gates that marked the entrance, lingering on a sign overhead. It was covered in soot and unintelligible besides – it looked like a different language all together. Yet, as he stared at it, a word rose unbidden in his mind, putting meaning to symbols he couldn’t remember: Gehenna.
One of the dual gates had fallen half off of its hinges, leaning across the intact half of the pair. Gehenna, with the aid of his super human strength, reached forward and pulled. The gate swung open with the force, dragging its bottom corner against the stone and dirt path. It left a long, semi-circle drag in the hard clay but in the end he made enough room that he could slip through.
On the other side with no gate to obscure his view, Gehenna could then see what was being guarded. The degraded path stretched out before him, winding up in elevation until it reached the top of a plateau that rested in the dead center of the lake. On the far side of the lake itself, past the plateau, were mountains that added protection. There was one way in and one way out. Whatever Gehenna had been, it had been extremely well protected.
That suited him just fine.
The dark man fell into step along the path, cautiously staying in the center in case the already crumbling edge broke off and sent him to a fiery death. There wouldn’t even be anywhere to hear him scream in a place like this, let alone salvage his body parts and make him a master Sith lord. As the elevation continued up and up, he could better see what lie at the very top. It was a building, fashioned in what he could only assume was Roman or Greek architecture (not that he knew much of either), though parts of it had succumbed to whatever forces of corrosion were at work on the red planet. Columns and stone had toppled over the edge of the cliff side, forming a pile of rock in the lava pool. He could also see a dozen or more rivers of lava, pouring over the edge of the cliff itself as if the source of the lake was somewhere at the top of plateau.
Great, was it going to get even hotter?
With a grimace, Ghen continued his never ending descent up the path, beginning to regret his decision with every long, boring step he took. It felt endless, like he would be walking forever. He was so zoned out that when he first heard it.. he barely looked up.
Then it happened again.
His steps faltered and finally stopped as Gehenna glanced up and around him, so convinced that he heard laughter that he expected a child to be following him. Were there still people here? Hadn’t Nemesis said that was impossible? He stood there in the center of the path for a long while, confused and baffled with his brows drawn down and his lips pursed.
Maybe he had imagined it.
Still unsure, he took a step forward and swung his eyes back to the pathway where it was close to giving way to the top. Just as he took that first step though, a tiny blur brushed past him in a fit of giggles and raced ahead of his lazy pace. It was only as it stopped a few feet ahead of him that he realized what it was – the child he had been hearing.
She was small, no more than four or five, with waves of curly brown hair and eyes as gold as the sun. Her little face was split in half with a smile more joyful than anything Gehenna could imagine in this place, and she was waiting.. for him.
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Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2012 5:19 pm
Right away, Gehenna realized that the girl couldn’t possibly have been alive in the way he had first thought. Though she seemed to see him, seemed to be waiting for him, she wasn’t solid in a way that real people were. He could see the boiling lake behind her, giving an eerie fire to her bright eyes. Was this the kind of illusion that Nemesis had meant? Did she see people this way, relive memories as if they were happening now? He couldn’t stop and take the time to ask her either way, he knew that. If he left now he might not ever see the little girl again and whatever secrets she had to give him.
With a smile that he couldn’t help, infected by the pure joy that radiated off the little mirage, he picked up his pace and jogged after the girl just as she let out a peal of laughter and raced off towards the summit at a child’s gait. As he reached the top she continued to run, right towards the entrance, where she disappeared entirely into the shadows.
Kind of a let down, really.
The smile on Gehenna’s lips faded as he stood, for the first time in this lifetime, face-to-face with the place he had sworn himself to protect. The girl was momentarily forgotten as he walked forward through a courtyard, lined on either side by columns. Some were intact, others were broken or breaking, tumbled over or leaning precariously to one side. There were statues in the same state of being, though something about them was.. off.
He strayed from the path and walked to the center, where the remnants of a fountain was on display, clearly the centerpiece. The art certainly looked Roman, like something he would find in the heart of Italy. Yet the figure was.. not. He recognized the wings that sprouted from her hips, like those Nemesis bore, and the wand in her hand. As before, when he stared up at the foreign sign that bore his own name, knowledge came unbidden to the front of his mind:
This was Mars, the senshi to whom he had pledged his service.
For a long moment he stared up at the fact of the statue, numbed by his realization. What should he have felt as he stared up at her? Loyalty? Honor? He felt.. nothing. She was a face and a name, much like the moon princess that Nemesis so often cursed, and he knew that he would continue to feel nothing until she came back in this lifetime to prove herself to him. Then maybe they would talk about duty and honor.
With a small shrug that no one would see, Gehenna dismissed the woman and the fountain and continued through the courtyard towards the entrance of the main structure. Statues flagged him along the way, faces too old for him to remember and offering no insight as Mars had. It was just as well, they would have been just as meaningless.
(To be continued..)
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