Annabel is quite relieved to have found the entrance to the caverns after wasting much of the day trapsing about a hedge maze. She has rested long, and now, nearing dark, she is ready to brave the darkness of the caverns. She rises from where she had sat for a bit, relaxing among the grass and roses, and steps cautiously towards the cave.
Her footsteps echo almost immediately after crossing the threshhold from the soft grass to the hard, cold stone. A freezing breeze eminates from the inside of the labyrinth, and the hairs on the back of Annabel's neck stand on end. This place reeks of evil.
Summing up as much courage as she can, Annabel enters. The darkness almost at once overwhelms her, but she presses on, stepping cautiously inward. She extends her arms, brushing them outward until her eyes adjust to the perpetual darkness.
She steps further forwards, and her hands scrape the rough-cut stone that is the wall before her. She decides that, since she turned right throughout the whole of the hedge maze, she will turn left through this one. Thusly, she brushes her left hand along the wall and continues, her senses piqued with caution and suspicion, through the maze.
"Don't lie to me, Lucy! Where did you put them?" Charleton demands of his brother, popping here and there, in and out of view, searching all sorts of crevices.
Lucifer hangs his head in shame. "I swear! I put them right here!" He moves his hands to display that he means right in front of him. "Mel's too big to get in here, and Hend, well, I doubt he knows this little alcove even exists!"
Charleton stops popping in and out of view and pops in with the tell-tale traces of sulpher that announce the teleportation of all Gehenians to stand next to Lucifer. He delivers a quick clop upside his brother's head before pointing up. "You forget; there are holes all over the structure of our home. Many things live in the caverns besides simply us, Mel, and Hend."
Lucifer blinks. "Oh. You mean like the stone spiders, the meeznaks, and the purple rock-ingesters?"
"Precisely. A young one of them could easilly travel down here and make off with the belongings of our savior." Charleton sighs. "I still can't believe you lost her clothes," he admits.
"I didn't lose them, per se..."
Charleton rolls his eyes and smacks his brother upside the head again. "Stop being a smart-allek. I have no patience for your incessant, stupid ramblings."
Lucifer rubs the spot where his brother's hoof has hit twice. "OWWW!! Okay! I'm sorry! We'll find her clothes! You know that! Our network in here is second to none!"
Charleton narrows his eyes and points his hoof at his brother. "That's because, you loon, there's no other network to be had!"
"Hence the saying of 'second to none'! Do you really think I'm that much an idiot?"
Charleton decides not to answer that. Instead, he growls and throws up his hooves in a display of annoyance. A popping noise and a puff of smoke follow his departure, leaving Lucifer alone to search for any sign of the perpetrators.
The column before her is huge. It stretches to at least the ceiling of this section of the maze. On its surface are whisps of runes, symbols, and glyphs. Strangely, Annabel feels that she can understand them.
She stares at the column for a long time before walking up to it and tracing her fingertips over the glyphs. "Protected and nurtured by a saintly light," she reads aloud. "Peace be unto you."
An amazing flickering of power floods Annabel's soul, and she presses her whole palm upon the column. She closes her eyes, and the power courses through the ground, through her body, and into the column. "Are you the Second Gate?" she wonders aloud.
In reply, the column flashes a bright light before subsiding. The power contained in that flash is phenominal, and Annabel staggers back. The column pulses bright gold for a few moments before returning to its former, bleak stone color.
The mark on Annabel's back, the brand she received for passing her Parglassi match, suddenly burns with intense, flesh-searing pain. She had not felt such since her match, and she crumples to her knees. Suddenly, bright, glowing blue feathers trickle down in front of her. Curiosity wells up within her, but she is in too much pain to inspect the origins of the strange feathers.
Tirival Hend glares at the flashing light and punches the button. There is no way she could have found the Second Gate so soon! He averts his gaze to the main Pholiograph's monitor.
There. The Second Gate stands before her, throwing brilliant flashes of light around the cavern. Annabel is off in a corner, evidently in massive amounts of pain. Hend smiles. Perhaps her quest will be her undoing.
No. Of course not. Nothing can ever be easy for him, can it? From Annabel's back sprout two brilliant, glowing blue wings. Feathers explode from them, and they drift down all around her on serene, imagined air currents. Now is his chance, while she is still impeded and has not yet restored the Second Gate.
"Mel. Go," he says, never letting his gaze leave the image of his daughter, his usurper. He relishes in her pain. The smile spreads to a grin, and he waits and watches.
Annabel hears the clanking down the corridors long before she can look up to acknowledge it. Sweat in all its saltiness trickles down her face, and the feathers suddenly stop falling, the last one disintigrating in mid-air. Knowing this oddity can be examined later, Annabel looks up, just in time to see a metal-laced foot fly up and catch her in the chest.
She flies backwards, pain flooding her chest as well as her back. She curses and staggers to her feet. If whatever that was broke a rib, she vows, she will kill it, rending it limb from limb. To affirm her health, her fingertips search probingly all along her rib cage. Thankfully, she is simply bruised. That established, she stares into the darkness.
"Olly olly oxen free," she whispers. "Come where I can see you."
The clanking, limping noise of whatever it is suddenly resumes and the Second Gate flashes a brilliant light, just in time for Annabel to see that it is Carmelotto before her. However, she also sees that he has changed; cybornetic prosthetics encase his formerly perfect body. He draws back a fist, and Annabel jumps backwards, out of his range.
She feels the air whoosh as Mel's fist swings harmlessly passed her. She glares at where he had been, and she listens closely for the telltale squeaking of metallic joints. There are none, however. Not even faint, well-oiled squeakings.
Cursing silently, she leaps forwards, spinning a kick towards where Mel had been standing. She connects with something, but then her foot is caught, and she flails to the ground. "You currish lout!" she screams, catching herself with her arms before her head slams into the floor.
Mel simply laughs. It is a forced sound, one that once possessed so much beauty and joy for Annabel. Now, though, it simply infuriates her.
Annabel scrambles for purchase on the smooth ground of the maze. She braces her arms and uses them to propel her body into a backflip. Using her whole body as a lever, she flings her legs behind her arms, taking Mel with them.
Thankfully, Carmelotto releases as soon as he realizes he is airborn. A crashing sound notes that Mel has hit something, and it probably wasn't an all-together soft landing. No clanking or creaking occurs, and Annbel decides to return her attention to the Second Gate.
She will deal with Mel when or if he decides to fight her again. Right now, though, the curious blue feathers and the flashing light of the Second Gate is what draws her attention. She approaches the column again.
Suddenly, the clanking that is Mel's walking announces he is ready once more for a fight. The clanking stops, and Annabel turns, for surely he has jumped up after her. Suddenly, she feels an ovewhelming compulsion to speak to him. An odd phrase leaps to her lips, and her arms draw a circle in the air.
"Mark of purity, glittering hoop," she says, her voice strong and clear, "restrict, prohibit, disarm."
A golden circle appears above Mel's head as he leaps at her, and it disappears before reappearing around his chest, pulling him backwards and away from her. He coughs, for the countermomentum has thrown the wind from his chest, or so Annabel can imagine. She is awestricken that such a thing could be conjured from a simple phrase. Curious,she can not help but approach and stare at him, the glowing gold hoop around his chest and elbows casting an unnatural and eerie light upon his face.
"What do you want, Mel?" she asks demurely. "You've destroyed everything I've held dear. Now you want to finish me off? Is that how it is?"
Carmelotto spits on her, a good deal of saliva mixing with her sweat as it lands on her cheek. She lets it sit there for a momment before wiping it off and smacking him. He simply glares up at her, staring daggers through her very being.
Annabel crouches before him, glaring with equal intensity at him. "You who would ruin everything I held dear," she says slowly and softly. "Surely you must have something to say to me?"
Carmelotto turns his brown eyes away from her. "You will be the one who destroys all," he growls after a moment.
Annabel takes a startled step backwards. "What do you mean? I was sent here to repair our world's health!"
Mel laughs. "Always naive, eh, Nabel?" he asks rhetorically. "If you restore the world to the way it was before the smog, before the bleakness, then our current ways of life will be moot. Everything we have created will be pointless. No one will know what is happening, and unrest and anarchy will prevail."
Annabel shakes her head. "You're wrong. Humans, we are more resiliant than you think. We will survive, and we will be happy."
Mel shrugs. "To each his own, I suppose. You just keep in mind that your actions will cause the downfall of our society. We will meet again." Suddenly, he is gone, and the golden hoop that had been restricting his movement clatters to the ground.
Annabel picks up the ring and presses it together on an impulse. It shrinks, and when her hands come together, it is gone. She wonders about that, about the feathers, about the pulsing light of the Second Gate. She wonders far too much about everything, she realizes, and returns to the Gate, hoping to find the way to fully restoring it.
"How could you lose!?" Hend rages as Mel stands before him, his head hung in shame. "I made you stronger, faster, better in all ways than she!"
Carmelotto says nothing. He stands there, looking all the bit the sad, neglected puppy. He takes verbal blow after verbal blow, and then he takes the physical abuse, too, never raising a hand against his master.
Hend had quite enjoyed smacking Mel. So much so, that he does it again. He watches as his servant reels from the blow, and then he begins to inspect Mel's hardware, making certain that there is no damage to his parts.
"I make you better. I make you stronger. I make you faster, and still you lose. You lose because she throws a ring of binding around you, too, no less! Surely you're strong enough to break free from something so simple! What's the matter with you, Carmelotto! Are you no longer devoted to your master?" he demands as he fusses over the wiring and circuitry of Mel's body.
"Don't speak like that, milord. You know, as well as I, that I could never lose my devotion to you. I was created to serve you, and I live to serve you. I am yours, and I will do as you command, of course," Mel replies, his voice tinged with hurt.
Hend smirks. He knows what the hurt sound of the voice is from. He had taken extra care, when installing prosthetics onto Carmelotto's broken body, to install nerve-connections, too. That way, Mel could feel every move he made, as well as every painful moment of the tuneups Hend took so much pleasure in performing.
Opening hatches, tightening nuts, bolts, and wires, Hend takes immense pleasure in watching Mel suffer. He must pay for his failure. Perhaps, if Mel serves him well, he will kill him after Annbel dies. Probably not. He sort of enjoys the idea of having a proverbial 'whipping boy.'
Annabel finds the puzzle of the rune-covered column to be intriguing. She has read almost all of the phrases on the column, and it has lit up progressively as she did so. Now, but one phrase remains. It is a curious one.
"And beware the waltzing seraphims, for on their wings rides Death," she says, a bit amused.
The last phrase spoken, the Second Gate shines brilliantly, the stone casing breaking off, revealing a beautiful, golden pillar, covered with glyphs. Annabel smiles, but then the painful searing of flesh from her back causes her to collapse again. She braces herself on the pillar and turns her head over her shoulder.
The flurry of blue feathers surfaces, and Annabel discovers its source; she has wings. Large, blue, feathered wings protrude from her back, the feathers showering forth from them. Will she need them? Probably not down here in the dark recesses of World. Then again, she could be wrong.
Fighting back the pain running through her back, she turns to continue, but is met by the popping sulphuric harbinger of a Gehenian. Lucifer, the smallish minotaur stands before her on the ground, holding a bundle of something far too large for him.
"Lucifer?" Annabel asks quizzically.
"I found your clothes," Lucifer replies sheepishly. "I hope you didn't need them too badly."
Annabel laughs and strokes the coarse hair on Lucifer's head. "No, I managed quite well without them. Thank you, though."
"My pleasure, good Mistress Nabel," Lucifer replies with a bow. Suddenly, a brilliant blue feather lands on him and melts. His dark eyes go wide, and gasps. "You've awakened!" he exclaims.
"I'm sorry. I've what?"
"You've awakened! It is prophesized that the savior of all World will bear a mark of the Beings, and she will, from this mark, find the power to cast spells and summon forth beautiful wings. I never thought that it would happen so quickly! I must tell Corliss and Charleton of this good news!"
"Are you certain it's good, Lucifer?" she asks before he can pop out.
"Absolutely!" he declares before bowing, humbled by this recent turn of events. "Sleep now, good Mistress Nabel. We will feed you come morning, and then we can guide you to the Third Gate. There lies your truest destiny of all." He pops out of sight, leaving Annabel to ponder over the whisp of sulpher, the two Gates, and her newfound wings as she changes to her more comfortable Court costume. Then, finding herself utterly exhausted from the dealings with the pillar and Mel and Lucifer, she curls up next to the bright gold column and sleeps.
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