Chapter 19

Chapter 19

 

Andria paused, her hand on the knob of one of two large double-doors.

“Fifteen minutes,” a voice grumbled behind her. Andria didn’t need to turn around to know whose voice it had been. Andria could practically feel Misaki’s malice-filled eyes shooting daggers into Andria’s ornately-robed back. Jealousy, Andria reminded herself. Andria had, after all, robbed Misaki of her inheritance. Now, it seemed, Misaki would try to rob her of as many precious minutes with Yuta as she possibly could.

Andria straightened up, drawing on her newfound sense of importance and replied, simply, “Thirty.”

Andria turned the knob and disappeared inside the heavily-guarded room.

The chamber was well-lit by a number of brightly-burning, identical light fixtures on the ceiling, quite different from the rest of Fuji’s rooms, which relied on torch-light. This, however, wasn’t the only difference.

“Plastic,” a familiar, masculine voice offered. It was then that Andria noticed Yuta sitting in a far corner. He was in his human Form, no shirt, just knee-length trousers.

“What?” Andria asked feebly.

“The walls,” he explained, motioning to them as well as the ceiling and floor. “They’re covered in plastic.”

Andria looked around at her surroundings. He was, indeed, correct. The walls were the same craggy brown, carved from the stone of the mountain, but covered in a thick layer of clear gloss.

“So I can’t get out,” he elaborated meekly. This wasn’t the Yuta that Andria had been expecting. She was expecting to walk in on a lumbering 50-ft Dragon, bristling with rage, clawing at the walls in an attempt to escape. This Yuta, however, was a man defeated, the embodiment of lost hopes and careless submission.

Andria took a few steps towards him, and then found herself running until she was caught up in Yuta’s arms, trying not to weep onto his bare chest. He clung to her tightly, smoothing her hair consolingly, affectionately with his hand, rocking her back and forth. Andria felt like an infant, cradled in his strong, familiar arms, swaying slowly as they both huddled together on the gloss-covered floor.

“They’re going to kill you,” Andria whispered through trembling lips.

Yuta continued to rock her and replied with a soft, steady voice, “I know.”

Andria wept quietly into the warm curve of his neck. “I don’t,” she sniffled, “know what to do.”

Neither did Yuta, but he didn’t want to admit this to Andria. What could he do? He had finally been captured, and the evidence was quite compelling. Even if it hadn’t been, Yuta knew that Kazi would stop at nothing to see Yuta dead at his feet, and this time, none of the Lords would intervene for him.

“Shhh,” Yuta crooned, still holding her tightly, allowing her to thoroughly moisten his collar with her tears. “It’s okay,” he whispered absently. “It’s okay.”

“No,” she sniveled, “it’s not okay.” Wiping a hand against her damp eyes, she pleaded, “Tell me what really happened. Tell me your side of the story, anything I can use to testify on your behalf. The boat, the ship. That couldn’t have been just you, right? You must have been provoked, or had help? And the Messenger? It’s all a misunderstanding, right?”

Her eyes were pleading, wild and red from spent tears. Looking at her with a pained, useless expression, Yuta shook his head. True, the ship was not his doing, but according to the law, he was responsible. Yuta was entirely to blame. And the Messenger; he regretted this, perhaps most of all, now that he knew what it was to fear for a Messenger’s life. He was guilty, and one way or another, he would have to pay for his actions.

Andria went limp in his arms, dissolving once more to tears. “I-,” she stammered, “I can’t lose you.”

Yuta didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t tell her not to worry, that everything was going to turn out alright. In all likelihood, it wasn’t. He didn’t have a plan, and as long as he was kept in this room, he was more or less powerless. What could be said?

The two sat in silence, Andria quietly weeping, Yuta holding her, rocking her like a child.

Then, the silence was broken.

“I love you,” Yuta heard Andria faintly whisper.

Shocked, he replied simply, “What?”

“Hm?” Andria inquired. “I didn’t say anything.”

“Time’s up,” a feminine voice shouted through the heavy doors. This proclamation was quickly proceeded by a heavy clamoring as one of the doors was thrust open.

Yuta stared at Andria, speechless, as he slowly began to realize what had just occurred. He had heard her thoughts, only faintly, only for a moment. “I love you,” they had said. I love you.

Andria wiped her eyes again, and gathered up her robes. As she stood, Yuta continued to stare in amazement. Before turning to leave, Andria looked upon him with a hard, determined gaze, and whispered forcefully, “I will see you again.” She stole one last look, as though committing his image to memory, then turned and quickly disappeared through the large set of doors.

 

Andria was running down a hallway, lights flickering overhead, doors whizzing past her on either side. Time was running out. She had to find him. She rounded a corner and found herself sprinting down another door-lined hall with grey walls. This wasn’t the right place. Doors flew by like a deck of cards unfurling all around her. She sprinted harder, her human legs burning, lungs aching for breath. Andria tried to transform, but her mind refused to clear, all thoughts set unwaveringly on her goal.

Andria rounded another corner. Her heart began beating furiously as she recognized where she was. More doors lined the hallway before her, but these were familiar. A voice inside her head told her this was where she needed to be. Hastily, Andria began trying doors, running to one, seizing the handle, jerking forcefully. Each time she was met with failure. Each time she moved quickly onto the next, never pausing.

What felt like a hundred doors later, one finally budged. Andria swung wide the door and winced as the bright light from within hit her face. When her eyes adjusted, she was standing on the hearing floor of the Grand Hall. Eight of the nine Lords sat against the back wall, peering down at her from their elevated positions of judgment. All wore their black robes of state and matching, blank expressions. She could see that the whites of their eyes were gone, replaced by eerily shining black orbs.

Then, she noticed them. On the floor, ten feet in front of her, two hooded figures kneeled shoulder-to-shoulder, while two more hooded figures flanked them on either side. The two standing each held a large, sharpened ax. Headsmen.

In unison, the headsmen reached down and pulled the hoods from the heads of the two kneeling figures.

Andria gasped. “Yuta,” she breathed, horrified. Yuta kneeled, shirtless, hands tied behind his back. His eyes, like the Lords’, were lifeless black orbs. He made no response.

Then, with a sickening, sinking feeling, Andria noticed Kazi next to him, kneeling and bound in the same manner as Yuta, eyes black and soulless.

“Choose,” eight voices whispered in unison.

Andria looked around at the Lords with a wild, frightened expression, then at Yuta and Kazi. “Andria,” they both whispered eerily.

“No,” she gasped, shaking her head and shrinking back in horror.

“Choose!” came the hushed command again.

“No!” Andria asserted, backing into the wall behind her.

“Andria,” Yuta and Kazi hissed again, as the headsmen both raised their axes, balancing them over Yuta and Kazi’s heads.

“CHOOSE!” came the bellowing order.

“Noo!” Andria wailed.

The axes fell.

 

Andria woke up screaming. Her blankets were drenched in sweat, pillow damp with tears. It had been a dream, a horrific, terrible dream. Andria touched her face with a shaking hand. Her skin was cold and wet. She imagined she must look quite pale, as she sat on her bed, panting and gasping for air.

Andria, a voice faintly whispered.

Andria jumped and looked around, blinded by the darkness of her room

“Who’s there?” she demanded, groping in the blackness for her nightstand. She kept a flashlight there for when she needed to navigate herself to the toilet at night. Her clumsy, shaking fingers found the flashlight and fumbled to switch it on. The weak beam of light wavered in her trembling hand as she shone it around her empty room.

Andria, the voice whispered again, more clearly.

It was then that she recognized the voice. “Y-Yuta?” she stammered. “Where are you? I can’t see you.” She stood up from her bed and began shining her flashlight on every surface of her room.

Andria, they’re coming.

“Who’s coming?” she demanded, her voice shaking nervously.

They’re coming, he repeated, and then there was silence.

“Yuta?” she called into the blackness. There was no response. What had just happened? Had she been hearing his thoughts? She remembered how invasively Yenko had forced communication upon her. She remembered how he had seized her mind, how his thoughts had invaded her own. This had been different. She had heard Yuta’s voice, but at the time had still been in control of her own thoughts. It had been much like hearing him through a telephone.

Andria forced herself to focus on what Yuta had said: They’re coming. Who was coming?

With a sickening lurch, her heart hit her shoes. Kazi and the Lords. They were coming to deliver his sentence.

With frightening haste, Andria threw her robe around her shoulders. She had to intervene. Somehow, she had to stop them. No, no, no, she thought. This couldn’t be happening, yet. It was too soon! And in the dead of night?

Andria turned for the door, but stopped. As a final thought, she rushed back to her nightstand and started fumbling hurriedly through the drawer. Shining the flashlight around inside, she found the Stone and quickly seized it, shoving it into a pocket as she turned and sped towards the door.

The hall outside was empty and dark. She knew these halls well enough by now to be able to navigate them without light, and judged that it would be best to leave her flashlight behind. The last thing she needed was to be spotted by a guard, or worse, a Lord, and ushered kicking and screaming back to her room while Yuta’s sentence was carried out. No, she would use the darkness to her advantage, lurking in the shadows undetected.

What the hell could she do, though? What could be done? There had been no opportunity for repeal, no chance to testify, no warning whatsoever outside of Kazi’s vague explanation two nights prior. Even then, he hadn’t said it would be this soon! In the U.S., it took over a decade for a death sentence to be carried out from the time it was ordered.

Andria sped through the halls, silent as a jungle cat closing in on its prey. She had an eerie sense of de-ja-vu as her feet carried her in much the same route as in her dream minutes prior. The only difference was the absence of doors. Andria knew exactly which door she was looking for, this time. There needn’t be any guesswork.

Her heart throbbed wildly, nervously. What was she going to do?

Within minutes, she stood panting and lightheaded outside the largest set of double doors in the whole fortress: the entrance to the Grand Hall. She could hear voices on the other side. Her guess had been correct. It was going to happen here. The voices had to mean that final rights were being read, or something along that line. Andria could imagine Yuta, hands bound, being lead in like a common criminal to face the merciless headsman. Would it even be a headsman? How did Dragons carry out executions?

Andria shook her head to clear her thoughts. She had to focus.

Taking a deep, empowering breath, Andria pushed the heavy doors open.

There were gasps and hushed murmurs as Andria burst into the Grand Hall, her expression hard and determined, a glimmer of wild outrage sparkling dangerously in her eyes.

“Andria!” The voice belonged to Kazi. He stood behind the pedestal, mouth gaping in surprise, moving uselessly like a fish floundering for water. She shot him a cold, threatening look, and did not fail to notice how he winced at the fury in her gaze.

Andria. It was the same voice that had disturbed her sleep, Yuta’s voice inside her head. She noticed him immediately, kneeled in the middle of the hearing floor below, hands shackled in front of him, eyes blindfolded. Next to him, on the floor, was Yenko, unmoving, a small piece of black cloth draped over his tiny head. A masked man with a red length of cloth draped across his shoulders stood close behind Yuta, a sharp katana gleaming menacingly in his hands.

“Get her out of here!” Kazi finally hissed, having regained his thoughts. “Andria,” he directed at here, “you shouldn’t be here to see this.” His voice contained every connotation of genuine concern, but she was not thinking of him. She was thinking only of the man she loved, bound helplessly in front of her, facing his death.

A forceful hand seized her, driving sharp nails into her skin. This brought Andria back to reality. With hands that flew like angry wasps, Andria swatted Misaki’s hand forcefully away from her arm, and within a matter of seconds, had her pinned to the ground, one foot on her throat, a knee on her back, arm twisted behind her. Angry yells erupted all around her at this open act of hostility. “Remove her!” Kazi ordered. “Get her out of here!”

A dozen hands all began reaching for her at once.

And then, everything went silent. As though someone had pressed the pause button, suddenly, everything was still. The Lords, huddled around her from every angle, were all frozen in place, their faces painted with snarls and scowls, arms half-way outstretched in an effort to seize her. She looked at them, frightened and confused, as though she’d suddenly found herself in a wax museum among life-like effigies of creatures from her nightmares. Hurriedly, Andria scrambled away from them on all fours, escaping from the center of their midst. She looked around. There was dead silence, only her own panting, gulps, and labored breathing to be heard from anywhere. It was eerie. Everyone, even Yuta, was frozen in whatever position they had been in at whichever moment the world had seemingly stopped spinning. Except for Andria.

Had she done this? Was this one of her powers, one of the special abilities she had inherited from her mother, like traveling back in time? Could she also freeze time? It wasn’t much of a long shot, compared to everything else she had discovered about herself in recent months.

Andria’s breathing calmed as she stared at Yuta. This was her chance. This was her chance to rescue him.

 

The task had not proved as easy, upon execution. Yuta, as it turned out, was rather heavy, and the position in which he was frozen made transferring him any long distance quite difficult. She pushed and dragged him over the course of a half hour, about 200 yds down the hallway through which visitors usually entered. The exit would be shortly up ahead, through one of the ryoukan owned by a local Dragon. She had deposited him in his frozen state within sight of the exit, then hurried back to retrieve Yenko. Without his help, though, there was no way she was going to have the strength to get either of them much farther.

Once Yuta and Yenko were reunited, both looking like wax statues, Andria summoned all of her concentration and tried to un-do the enchantment.

Un-pause, she tried feebly. Play. Un-freeze.

Nothing happened. She sighed in dismay. What had made it work, before? Andria remembered Yuta throwing her in the pool at Towada, how her anger had swelled before the two had appeared in Narita Airport. She remembered the surge of anger she had felt as Misaki’s nails dug into her arm, just before the room went still. She needed an emotional catalyst, something to get her angry. She thought angry thoughts. Misaki. Misaki’s taunting voice rang in her ears as she remembered combat training, Misaki delivering kick after kick before Andria could get her hands up.

Nothing.

She tried to be angry with Kazi. He was going to kill Yuta after all, right? Wasn’t he to blame? No, she thought, defeated. As much as she wished at the moment that such was the case, she could not blame Kazi for what had happened. As next-in-line to the throne, she was beginning to understand rather well the burden that came with the crown. One of those burdens, regrettably, was delivering justice to criminals. Like Yuta, she thought, disparaged.

Andria stared at Yuta, a hopeless look on her face. As she stared at him in his hunched, defeated position, an idea came to her. She crouched before him, her face level with his, and carefully removed the blindfold that covered his eyes. They were closed, his brow-line furrowed with thought, mouth drawn into a frown. Andria brushed his dark hair away from his forehead, relishing the warmth of his flesh, even as he remained frozen like a sculpture made of ice. Hesitantly, she closed her eyes, and found his warm, frowning lips with her own. She kissed him softly, and couldn’t help but smile as a wave of excitement and elation washed over her.

Delighted, she found that after a moment, he was kissing her back. His hand found the back of her head and he buried his fingers in her hair, pulling her into him.

Hating that she must, Andria carefully pushed him away. A bright, endearingly handsome smile was stretched across Yuta’s face. She smiled back, but then remembered where they were. “We have to go,” she whispered urgently, standing up and offering him her hand.

He took it and allowed her to hoist him into a standing position. “Where are we?” Yuta shouted as they began sprinting down the narrow hallway. “Which corridor?”

“We’re heading west,” Andria shouted back, panting with exhaustion. She carried Yenko tucked under one arm, hiking up her robe with her free hand to liberate her sprinting legs.

A deep, thundering roar echoed through the corridor. Andria glanced back to see the silhouette of a large, charcoal-black Dragon bounding towards them. Andria ran a little faster.

They could see the outline of a door up ahead, the light of day seeping in around the edges. One final hurdle, and they were through.

Yuta and Andria tumbled into the room, thick with smoke and the aroma of cooking fish. An old, hunched man started spewing angry words at them in Japanese as they quickly picked themselves up and continued running. The room was small, the only one in the whole building. A few wary hikers stretched out on cots began stirring as Andria and Yuta barreled through the ryoukan’s front doors and out into the brisk morning air.

Yuta slammed the paper door shut behind them and then reeled on Andria, grabbing her fiercely by the shoulders. “Andria,” he gasped, his eyes wild and desperate. “Andria, listen to me. We have to bring down the mountain.”

“What?” she gasped, horrified at what he was suggesting. “No! No, we can’t!” she argued. “We have to run!” Andria tried to tear away. Yuta, however, held her firmly in place.

“Look at me!” he shouted, and then explained as calmly as he could, “We have no choice. They’re going to catch us, Andria,” he shouted, shaking her lightly. Andria looked frightened, but could say nothing. Yuta swore and released her.

“I’ll do it myself,” he spat.

“No!” Andria shouted, grabbing his shoulder.

He shirked her off and turned to face the mountain’s peak. He held his hands out beside him, palms-up and stood for a long moment. They could hear the faint, angry bellows of Dragons coming from within the mountain, pursuing them still. Yuta’s hands slowly clenched into fists, as if he were pulling up on two imaginary reins attached to the mountain face.

The earth began to tremble beneath Andria’s feet, just barely at first, and then quite violently.

“Jishin! Jishin!” she could hear hikers shouting nearby. Earthquake! Earthquake!

Andria gazed up at the summit, horrified, as the ground continued to shake and smoke began billowing from the peak of the mountain. She shook her head in disbelief, mouth gaping. Rocks and rubble rolled down the mountain, small bits at first, then larger until they were small, dangerous boulders.

Yuta reeled on Andria once more. “You have to get us out of here!” he shouted above the screams of hikers as everyone who had been at the summit began scrambling desperately down the narrow trail, pushing each other and wailing in panic. “Andria! Now!” The earth began sliding under their feet. Andria latched onto Yuta’s arm to keep from falling, but he, too, was beginning to slip.

A geyser of fire erupted from the summit, shooting fifty yards into the air. Over the terrified screams and sounds of rocks clashing together violently, Yuta screamed at her, “ANDRIA!”

 

The noise didn’t fade, but when Andria next opened her eyes, both she and Yuta were standing in the lobby of Narita airport, in the exact spot where they had found themselves after traveling back from the past. Andria let escape a racking sob as she melted into Yuta’s arms. He was breathing hard, his veins still coursing with adrenaline, but he held her and let her sob into his bare chest, one of her arms still clenched around an unmoving Yenko.

Passersby laden with luggage and strollers stared at the two as they passed, but this was unimportant. After just a few minutes, the television monitors, which had until that point been silently displaying arrival and departure information, sprang to life. A somber-faced Japanese woman’s face projected across every screen, and her voice, resonating throughout the entire lobby, caught the attention of every soul in the building. There was a sudden halt in movement as all eyes stopped to stare at the nearest monitor. The woman’s voice was urgent, shaking slightly. Andria tried not to listen as she began relaying the terrible, unbelievable news. Sure enough, the more she spoke, the more gasps and horrified whispers began erupting over the on-looking crowd of travelers. Then, the broadcast cut to an image, some amateur video footage which showed, in horrifying detail, the mountain billowing with smoke, then the geyser of fire, and finally an avalanche as the mountain slowly crumbled into a fraction of its former height.

There was a small outburst of screams. “No,” Yuta breathed as the scene displayed took a more dramatic turn. From the smoke and debris, winged creatures could be seen taking flight, fleeing from the rubble that was once Mt. Fuji. Dragons.