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 Posted: Fri May 08, 2015 9:35 pm
Rhys knew that pacing back and forth, getting angry over his parents’ pushing and bitching and threats, wasn’t going to fix anything. Neither was curling up into a ball and crying. In fact, so far, it seemed that nothing he was doing was helpful at all. His phone kept ringing and ringing and ringing – undoubtedly his parents trying to get in contact with him – and it was crawling up his back and just fueling his rage.
He wanted to go out – not just out, he wanted to go to Saturn, to take in the quiet of his Wonder and think things over. Ordinarily he would have headed out through the front door, but now that he knew he was being watched, that seemed like a terrible idea. His parents hadn’t mentioned his odd comings and goings, but that didn’t mean they weren’t aware of them – maybe they’d intended to challenge him on that if he’d resisted further, but he’d left before they could.
So instead of going down and out, he went up. Up to the roof access of his complex, where he reached inside himself and called upon the power of Ploutonion. His fingers curled around his pomegranate, and he let out a relieved sigh. At least this was the same. At least they couldn’t take this away from him. They could force him to move back home, could take away his independence and lock him down, but he would never stop being Ploutonion.
Even if he couldn’t slip out and patrol, he would be able to go to Saturn.
“I pledge my life and loyalty to Ploutonion, and to Saturn,” he said, resting his closed fist over his heart, “grant me your proection, so that I may grant you mine.”
He disappeared off the roof, and appeared in the center of his cathedral.
Just like last time, it was dead silent, and he found peace in that. There was no one here to yell, his phone was still sitting in his apartment back on Earth, and there was no reason to leave until he decided to leave.
He walked over to one of the pews, and sank into it gratefully. As Rhys, he had never been religious, even if he occasionally attended services at the Anglican Church with his parents.
Once, he had gone to Westminster Abbey, and that was the closest he could think of to explain how he felt on his Wonder. The sense of amazement and incredible scale – just like at Westminster, here the vaulted ceilings stretched high above him. Light filtered through glorious stained glass windows, but most of it came from strange light-globe lanterns on the wall, and it left the whole place awash in a soft purple light.
He stretched out on the pew, and let out a soft, contented sigh.
Here, he could be, for just a few moments, free.
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Posted: Fri May 08, 2015 10:05 pm
Ploutonion didn’t realize he had fallen asleep on the pew until a whisper that was half in his mind and half in his ear startled him awake.
“People are scared, Vincenzo,” a voice said, and it was…it was strangely familiar, and it made him sit up and look around.
(Now he had a name, he realized, for his past self. Vincenzo.)
“I know,” and this vice was…well, it was what he supposed he would sound like if his accent had faint hints of Italian in with the British. It wasn’t quite the same, but that was the closest thing he could think of. “People think Saturn herself is going to rise and end the world. Unnecessary panic, if you ask me; we would know if she were coming. Any time things get a bit out of hand, certain sections of the Saturnian people start thinking the end is nigh and we’re all going to die. Doomsayers, the lot of them, causing unneeded trouble when we have bigger things to worry about.”
The other voice laughed, and once again, it felt familiar, and Ploutonion struggled to place it. “Well, I suppose she is your princess. You Saturn Knights must have this all completely under control.”
“Your faith is inspiring, Callisto.” The voices went silent, and Ploutonion found himself spinning around, and then – there it was, just for the briefest moment, Vincenzo and someone else with long, dark hair and dark skin and green eyes that sparkled in a way that was painfully, achingly familiar.
He shoved it off, and stood up off the pew, stretching. That was another bit of information to add to his knowledge of the past – that Saturn, apparently, was at least believed to be capable of ending the world.
“If Saturn ever rises, she will not stay risen for long.”
It was Vincenzo’s voice, and somehow, Ploutonion knew that he had bene speaking to no one but himself; perhaps after the man he had called Callisto had left.
Every bit and piece he got of the past was a treasure, but they also created more questions than they answered. Why was Vincenzo so sure that he would not let Saturn rise?
Could she really end the world? Was that what had happened, a thousand years ago? Was that why there was no life on any planet but Earth?
He had no answers for those questions, and he likely never would. No one seemed to know much about the end, likely because none of them had been there. Or perhaps because those memories simply would not come. Perhaps they were not meant to know what the end was.
He didn’t like that, but he could accept it. Camlann had told him that he needed to build a relationship with his Wonder.
The only way to do that would be to keep pulling and tugging at its secrets.
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Posted: Fri May 08, 2015 10:44 pm
Ploutonion walked from the pew to the wall, running his fingers over the bricks. He knew one of the entrances to the catacombs was here, that if he pressed and prodded he would be able to get down there. Finally, one of the bricks pressed in, and nearby, a section of the wall simply vanished, leaving a dark doorway.
Plouton’s heart began to race. Yes, this was it, this was what his future self had nearly killed himself exploring. As soon as he stepped through it, one of the light globes flared, and the further he walked down the stairway that curled away from him and into the darkness, the more flickered on. The lighting was eerie, but this place already felt comfortable, like he had been here for…well, for nearly five years.
At the bottom of the stairs he found a circular room, with halls leading off in all directions. He chose at, quite frankly, random, and started wandering down the halls, watching lights flicker on around him. These were, he realized quickly, truly catacombs in the style of the ones under Paris – a graveyard, with intact skeletons in the niches all around him. It would have bene terrifying, perhaps, under other circumstances, but he had handled far worse than some bodies given peaceful rest.
He wondered who these people were. Perhaps simply local, ordinary Saturnians, who wished to be interred under a Wonder. That didn’t seem so strange, he supposed.
There were inscriptions over each niche – and while he couldn’t read them, because they were written in the same language as the words on the gates, he knew what they were. Names, dates, in a few cases a line of tribute. They were just like headstones on Earth, and even though Rhys wasn’t one to hang out in graveyards and crypts, they had never held any fear for him. And this was his graveyard, his place.
There was no reason for him to fear.
A turn down a leftward hallway brought him into another wide-open room, and this ne had coffins on either side. They looked familiar, like the burial places of knights from the middle ages. Stone effigies laying on top of coffins.
The one nearest to him looked alarmingly familiar.
He realized, to his shock, that it looked like him.
Well, not him, Vincenzo – his past self. He had found, it seemed, his own tomb.
“The Gates are going to open,” Vincenzo’s vice said firmly. Ploutonion whirled, and there he was, the longest look he’d gotten at his past self’s lingering memory. He stood over one of the tombs, hands resting on the effigy. “I know it. They must. How can this be anything but the darkest hour they were made for?”
The vision vanished, and he felt a cold chill crawl up his spine.
No. It was impossible, his Wonder couldn’t have served its purpose – the doors couldn’t be empty. There was no way.
He couldn’t be risking his life to protect a cathedral that was nothing more than a charnel house.
Ploutonion whispered the oath that would carry him back to Earth, and tried not to think about what he had seen. Because if he thought about it, that might mean accepting it.
It might mean accepting that everything he had suffered was for naught, because the Ploutonion on Saturn was empty gates and skeletons, and nothing more.
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