Raegan Mallory ♚ Jonathan IV of Conté (northernking) wrote in thereincarnates, @ 2017-06-27 19:44:00 |
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Entry tags: | alexandra turner, raegan mallory |
Who: Raegan Mallory and Alexandra Turner
What: A king and her lioness have some old demons to fight.
Where: The Black City, a day's trip outside of Cairo, Egypt.
When: Tuesday, June 27; evening.
Warnings: Definitely violence. Anything else TBD.
Riding into the desert on a rented camel with nothing but a sword on her hip and her best friend by her side was definitely the bravest (and probably stupidest) thing that Rae had ever done. There was part of her that still didn't believe that she was actually there and actually doing it at all. Rae didn't do things like that. She didn't take a week off of her job whether her boss liked it or not. She didn't run off without leaving word with anybody about where she'd be. She especially didn't go throwing herself into danger. Except... what kind of choice did she have? Maybe someone else could have taken care of the Black City, if that was actually what she and Alex were riding toward. Maybe they couldn't have. Maybe the only way the Ysandir weren't going to claim any more victims was if Jonathan and Alanna rode out to destroy them one more time. There wasn't any way of knowing that without at least trying.
It was what they had to do. No matter how hard it was. No matter how hard it was for Rae to believe that she was actually sitting on a camel's back as they plodded through the desert toward a city of black stone that gleamed in the sunlight.
There was a part of her that already felt less like Rae and more like Jon. Rae wasn't sure where she'd shed herself. When she'd woken up that morning in the tent that she and Alex had set up so they could get a few hours of sleep before riding on to the Black City? When they'd haggled for two camels to ride and another to carry their supplies through the desert with the man at the Giza Plateau who'd thought that two American girls all alone would be easy to take advantage of? Maybe even the second they'd stepped out of the MTN in Cairo, before they'd even gathered the last of their supplies and paid their fare for the bus that would take them on the first leg of their trip out into the desert?
It didn't matter. What mattered was that Rae felt strangely calm headed to what might be her death. The Black City had started out just a speck on the horizon at the Giza Plateau, something that could have been a mirage. It could have been anything. Rae had known though. She'd known from the second she saw the interview with the reincarnate who'd stumbled on it by accident and only barely managed to get out alive. If there was any place that Jon and Alanna would drag into the world with them it was the Black City. They'd been friends before it but that was the place where they'd really become them. The first place where Alanna had been Jon's champion, where the secret that he'd helped her keep long enough for her to become a knight had come to light. Without the Black City, they'd never have become everything that they ended up, for better and for worse.
The city was almost in front of them at last, close enough that they could see the circle of fire surrounding it. Rae guessed they were lucky that it had come with that in tow, at least. Otherwise... she didn't know if the Ysandir would have been able to cross into the real world to hunt down innocent people. She imagined that they would have if there'd been any chance of it though. There was a reason that the Bazhir had surrounded the city with magical fire to hold them inside. It still hadn't been enough to keep the world safe from them. It never would be enough. Not while they still existed inside it and the Black City stood occupied. Maybe, someday, all it would be was another ruin in the desert, one that reincarnates would puzzle over if they happened to come across it but nothing that could ever be a danger to anyone again. That was... if she and Alex didn't die trying. Jon and Alanna had needed the help of the gods the first time.
"This is it," she told Alex, drawing her camel to a stop. "Last chance to back out." Not that Rae was going to back out. Not that she could. She'd never force Alex to go with her but she couldn't walk away from the city now that she knew it was there. She could feel the pull of it, as close as they were. They were in there. They were hungry. Rae was going to do this one good thing for the world; it wasn't like she'd been making a difference before.