Cymoril (cymoril) wrote in harmony_fics, @ 2010-08-16 13:03:00 |
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Current music: | Savage Garden - Violet |
If there's a way to infiltrate you sway your mind and complicate you I'm gonna crash into your world
WHO: Albert Wesker, Cymoril Avalon
WHAT: The Doctor offers them the chance to travel to Cymoril's world to observe, hoping that it will cement the bond between them, or at least forge a stronger alliance. If Katy gives the ok, this is canon; otherwise, just a story, or perhaps a dream.
WHERE: Melniboné
NOTE: I'm well aware that I mixed around the timeline, but I really don't care. It's been over a decade since I've sat down and read these books in order, and the gist of everything is correct. It's a damn good glimpse into Cymoril's world.
NOTE: This is PART ONE of ?
“The throne room is through here,” she said, trying and failing to read any reaction in Wesker’s features. Did he find her homeland beautiful? Did he enjoy the delicate towers, the pastel colors, the almost dreamlike state her people existed in? Or did he sense the decadence eating its way through the populace, rotting out the interior and leaving the foundations shaky? If she recognized the festivities correctly, they were relatively close to the destruction of her city, and a muffled menace seemed to lurk in the shadows.
Unexpectedly, she shivered, trying to shake away a sudden chill. She had died before Imrryr had fallen, and she had no desire to remain here long enough to relive that death, let alone witness the fires and the screams and the looting…that couldn’t be why the Doctor had permitted them this visit, why would he torment her so? This was educational, a way for the two to grow closer, to understand one another more. The next trip would be following Wesker’s memories.
There was much to learn, the Doctor insisted, and so they had obeyed. And Cymoril had to admit, she’d been eager to see her home again. She only wished the timing had been different.
Cymoril’s eyes narrowed as she came to an abrupt halt, staring at the scene playing out in front of them. She remembered it clearly, yet it was still odd to watch such things from the outside looking in. She felt detached enough from the situation that it was almost as if she were watching two strangers engaged in a lover’s quarrel. And actually seeing Elric again, alive and well, those blood red eyes regarding the woman in front of him with genuine emotion not typically seen in their kind, nearly floored her. She had braced herself for such an encounter, but not adequately.
Even her own appearance seemed foreign to her now – the deep blue silks, the sapphires laced in her hair, bracelets adorning her upper arms, barely any makeup accentuating her naturally pretty features, beautiful amongst an equally beautiful race – cheekbones delicate, ears pointed, eyes tilted and unnaturally pale (in her case; unnaturally red in Elric’s), slender forms built for dancing and lounging; even Elric, accomplished sorcerer and swordsman, was thin. Watching herself, comparing what she observed to how she was now, the lengths she went to to cover up what she was and to somehow blend in with the modern world, it was like seeing the child version of herself before she’d grown up.
Technically, it was going back in time, but the concept was difficult to wrap her mind around.
Unnecessarily, she cautioned Wesker to silence; they were ghosts in this place, bare wisps invisible to all, and could not affect the world around them. They were there to observe, nothing more, but it was more habit than anything else.
~
Cymoril’s tone was borderline frantic as she pleaded with the albino on the throne. “You must have heard the whispers, Elric. He is gathering his allies, amassing his strength. It is only a matter of time.”
Elric, the 428th Emperor of Melbiboné, waved a hand languidly, looking unperturbed.
“He seeks your throne! He is growing more bold by the day while you do nothing. He believes himself more fit to sit the Ruby Throne than you.”
“Yyrkoon is no threat to me.”
“Please,” she said softly, laying a hand on his arm, “for the love you bear me, slay him.”
“You counsel the murder of your own kin.”
“You know as well as I what will happen should he succeed.”
“He will not. I have already bested him in battle, he knows I am his superior. I refuse to kill him when he may still be of some use.”
“I can guarantee you he would show you no such mercy.”
“We are fundamentally different, he and I.”
“More of this morality.” Cymoril drew away, eyes downcast. “It will bring doom to us all.” Melancholy, Cymoril swept out of the throne room, brushing past the two ghostly figures without the slightest awareness that they existed.
Sighing, Elric leaned forward on the Ruby Throne, brooding.
~
“That was your fiancé.” Wesker’s voice was flat.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I loved him.”
“You did not understand him, nor him you.”
Cymoril barely concealed her surprise; Wesker was more observant than she’d expected, even after spending so many years in his presence. How he could glean so much out of such a short encounter…
“He wasn’t like the rest of us,” she admitted, eyes flickering towards the figure on the throne. “He read a great deal as a child because he was too sickly to do much else.” An albino, an abomination; had he been human, he’d have been left for the wolves. But his father Sadric, the 427th Emperor of Melniboné, sought measures to keep his son alive, for he had no other direct issue. And, some whispered, Sadric shared Elric’s odd inclinations, except he knew well enough to smother it behind Melnibonéan traditions. “He read, and he thought, and he questioned, and he was too enamored by human ideas of mercy and compassion and morality that he eschewed what makes us Melnibonéans. He scorned our traditions and tried to convince us that we had much to learn from humans, that we should co-exist instead of conquering them. He made many enemies and few allies, but despite all that, I still loved him.”
“Why?”
Cymoril hesitated, unable to capture a response. Finally, she said, “I don’t know.” Her kind did not love, exactly; the word was just a poor human translation of a concept more complicated and self-serving than anything they had ever experienced. Affection for one’s family existed, the desire to perpetuate the line and protect property, but genuine love? Perhaps she had felt that for Elric; he certainly had for her, there was no doubt in her mind, but he had always been peculiar.
But why?
“I tried hard to understand him, but I could not.” Shaking her head, Cymoril brushed stray strands of hair from her face and turned, head held high. As much as she wanted to stand in place and stare, to imprint the image of Elric in her mind’s eye, to rush over and try to throw her arms around him despite knowing it would be useless, another part of her wanted to run away. She wasn’t the same woman anymore, and she couldn’t afford such lapses in judgment. Trying to ignore the way Wesker was watching her, not wanting to even consider what might be running through his mind – was he discovering and cataloguing new weaknesses he could capitalize on, or did he perhaps genuinely sympathize with her? – she left the throne room with as much dignity and self-possession as a princess should.
After a few moments, Wesker followed, but not until after he’d gotten a solid look at the murmuring sword on Elric’s hip.
~
They caught up to the younger Cymoril fairly quickly, as she had been detained by her loathsome brother.
Yyrkoon loomed over her, a snide smile on his dark face, hair oiled and gleaming. He was a handsome man, and well aware of the fact, though the arrogance twisting his features both lessened and heightened the effect. Yyrkoon was a high born Melnibonéan, through and through, and he carried himself as such, confident and dangerous and cunning.
“Where are you off to so urgently, sister?” His words were mocking and laughter danced in his eyes. “Or, pray tell, what are you fleeing from?”
Cymoril stood her ground, though she was trembling. She was alone with Yyrkoon, and knew the danger she was in. “It is no business of yours.” She made to pass him, but he effortlessly blocked her, movements smooth as silk and vaguely reminiscent of Wesker’s own. “Let me pass.”
“Why such a rush?” He reached out, brushing his fingers mock tenderly down her cheek and Cymoril flinched away, glaring. It was clear she did not love him, and there was nothing but hatred and disdain in her eyes. “Where are your guards?”
It was clear she’d made a mistake, assuming herself to be secure in the tower, but she had also been under the impression that Yyrkoon was out hunting. Still, she did a gallant job of keeping her expression fairly neutral, though if looks could kill, Yyrkoon would have been long buried. She hadn’t forgotten her abduction, nor the sorcerous sleep he had inflicted upon her. Her captivity had seemed interminable, and she’d only managed to fight off the spell long enough to warn Elric of what her brother was attempting – possession of the runeswords.
One more step along the path towards their ruin.
Luckily, Stormbringer’s brother blade had vanished when Yyrkoon had been defeated. Had the battle gone any differently…
“It is none of your concern,” she said insistently, stepping to the side. Yyrkoon moved as well, his smile growing wider. “Stand aside, brother.”
Yyrkoon’s gaze drifted past her, locking on the closed doors of the throne room, and an understanding lit up his eyes, along with the barest hint of the madness that would eventually consume him. “Aah, I see now, sister, what has kept you so busy.” His smile faded, and he grabbed her wrist, quick as a snake, twisting it and drawing her closer. “I would sooner kill you myself than let you bear his feeble progeny.”
Cymoril gritted her teeth, helpless and hating it. But defiance was flung in his face regardless. “Elric will kill you,” she said confidently, lifting her chin imperiously and managing to look down her nose at him despite her shorter stature.
“You really should concern yourself with your own safety, sister, though my heart sings that you worry about me so. Worry not, dear sister. Elric is too weak to strike.” Smiling again, he flung her away, watching dispassionately as she collided with the wall, a nearby painting rattling but keeping its perch. “You will be mine, Cymoril, or you will be dead.”
With that, he left.
~
Fists clenched, Cymoril was fairly quivering with resentment and loathing, looking for all the world as if she’d love nothing more than to descend upon him and open his throat. This wasn’t what she wanted Wesker to see, this wasn’t what she wanted to show him, this was all wrong, it was all going wrong, whatever respect she’d managed to pry out of him was vanishing before her eyes.
She had to do something, and fast.
There was a dance that evening, called to celebrate absolutely nothing at all, as that was the way of her kind. They had time to kill before that, the chance to show off the splendors of Imrryr rather than the strife, though the latter was as much a part of their daily lives as anything else. Political maneuvering and posturing among the upper class came as naturally as breathing, and trust was in dangerously short supply.
Taking deep, calming breaths, Cymoril forced herself to reach out and take Wesker’s hand, twining their fingers together and drawing strength from his seemingly endless well. “Come,” she said, finding a smile somewhere, “let’s go see the dragons.”
~
“That sword,” Wesker mentioned casually as they strolled through the fields towards the Dragon Caves, feet ghosting over flowers and herbs and the narcotic plants that gave the Dreaming City its nickname.
“Hmm?” Cymoril was distracted, having forgotten exactly how beautiful the island was during the warmer months. It made her long for a happier time, when she and Elric would go riding and leave their guards behind. She had been born and bred to be his consort, his wife, his Empress, and the knowledge of that loss still gripped her painfully.
“The one your fiancé wore.”
“What of it?”
“It’s not natural.”
Cymoril raised an eyebrow but otherwise did not react. This was a discussion she had been dreading ever since she first began toying with the idea of bringing him deeper into her life, more out of an acute sense of loneliness than attachment, though she did feel the latter for him borne from necessity. “No, it is not.”
Wesker waited, but Cymoril waited as well, refusing to take the bait.
“What is it?”
Cymoril shrugged, leading him down a well worn path littered with colorful flowers. “No one really knows. Some say they are demons trapped in the physical form of swords.”
“They?”
“There’s…oh, I don’t even know how many there are. Only two exist in this plane, but it is possible, I have heard, to summon the others, though the spell is immensely complex.” All spells were, requiring complicated physical and mental exercises and even then there was no guarantee it would work. Given her limited access to sorcerous texts – her brother did not wish her embarking on such a dangerous quest; really, he despised the thought that anyone might be more powerful than he, further fueling his hatred of Elric who was, undoubtedly, the superior Sorcerer – it was no surprise that Cymoril had only been able to summon the lesser elementals on infrequent occasions to ask for small favors.
Now that the Doctor had provided her with books aplenty, the whole world of magic opened up before her eyes…
“Aah,” he said, clearly bidding her to continue.
Cymoril hesitated, then decided she had nothing to lose. “You cannot wield them,” she said, preempting what she knew was on his mind. “Only those of our royal bloodline can, and I do not even know if they still exist here.” Most likely, they did; from what she’d read, there was really no way to destroy them completely. She also doubted Celeste would be able to even touch one of the blades; her blood was sullied by Wesker’s.
“What do they do?” he persisted.
How to explain? “They are sentient,” she said slowly, picking her words carefully. Her grasp of English still was not perfect, and she was finding it difficult to locate the right phrases to express things. “They feed off of the souls of those they kill, and transfer part of that energy to the wielder.” It was how Elric was able to maintain his own power without the use of herbs; Stormbringer offered him vitality, turning both into parasites, each requiring the other to survive.
“I know little more than that.” She certainly was not about to tell him that Stormbringer was what gifted her that splendid scar on her chest. “And though I know no human can wield one of the blades, I still pray they were destroyed when this world was and the new one – yours – was formed.” Because there was always the possibility that the texts were wrong, she was hardly a scholar or a sorceress, and Wesker wasn’t entirely human.
“That is what you sketched, is it not?”
That surprised her; he went through her sketchbook? “Yes,” she said softly, her tone indicating the conversation was over.
“Mmm.” Wesker was too disciplined to betray any outward emotion, so Cymoril couldn’t imagine what was running through his mind. She was almost certain, however, that he would seek out information on the swords to satisfy his own curiosity. After all, he didn’t trust her, nor should he.
She wasn’t going to worry about it. Unless the Doctor, for reasons of his own, aided him, he would learn very little. He could read none of the texts, and she refused to translate. Still, it nagged at the back of her mind, haunting her for the rest of their silent trek to the caves.
~
The caves were warm, almost uncomfortably so, though she felt right at home in them. She’d visited the Dragon Caves since she was a little girl, she had been taught the language of the dragons, and she’d even gotten the chance to ride on the back of one, something typically reserved for those utilizing the creatures in battle.
The large bodies were sprawled everywhere, curled up, sound asleep. A few were smaller than the others, set more towards the back of the caves, where the air was the warmest. They were the young ones, the last dragons to have been born in recent memory, something that had worried the Dragon Masters. No one knew exactly how long a dragon lived for – some claimed they were eternal – but the lack of reproduction was still alarming.
What would the Dragon Isle be without dragons?
It did make her wonder, however, if she might still find them somewhere, deep within a hidden cave system, snoozing.
“Their venom ignites everything, and not even fire can quench it.” There was pride in her voice and tenderness to her touch as she reached out to stroke a slumbering dragon. Her hand passed right through its body, but the gesture was unmistakable.
The dragon snorted softly in its sleep, small puffs of smoke emerging from its nostrils. Cymoril smiled fondly, wishing for all the world that the dragon would open its eyes and greet her.
“Dragons require much sleep, for battle wearies them. They were last roused not many months ago, against counsel, to fly against an invading human fleet. They will sleep for quite some time.” She knew that, in part, would be the downfall of her home. Only few had been able to awaken when Elric and his reaver fleet invaded, his knowledge leading them through the treacherous sea maze that was the only access to the island. Had more awakened…
Cymoril pressed a hand to her temple, frowning. This was more difficult than she’d expected, and was beginning to take its toll. The ball was sounding less and less like a good idea, and escape was tempting, but she had already displayed enough weakness in front of Wesker; any more would be suicidal. The precarious balance that had settled between them was damaged.