Starlit Ruins

by Simon Woodington

Why are they here?! It's been three bloody years! Why don't they just give up?! the sensual being known as Sapphire Dawn, the host of all Ami's pain, stammered angrily.

  Usagi… she's like… like a sister. She loves us. I can't explain it. I know she hates not being able to help us, replied the core of her mind, one Ami Mizuno.

  Help? What for? What's she going to do, take us away from Natole and bring us back to our friends? Are they even our friends anymore? I mean, how wonderful is it that Luna were raped… an' everything else! Ugh! I say forget it! There's nothing but pain for us back there.

  Ami found it difficult to marshal an argument, thus encouraging the young independent section of her mind to continue: And what about us?

  What about us? Do… do you mean… buh-back at Luh-luh-lone Star?

  Lone Star? I… no… what's that?… The voice quelled itself.

  "Know you well the reason for your flight. Sapphire has brought herself about to save your sanity." Her comforting voice beckoned long denied tears forth as Ami wrapped her arms around an ideally endowed figure offering only motherly love.

  "Why does it have to be like this?" she sobbed, blue lengths of hair tangling in front of her face. The brunette smiled, and a faint glow of respite enshrouding them.

  "It is of the Great Weave child. Accept your past… you had no control. The blame," her eyes slowly drifted open as she leaned back, releasing Ami, "…is not yours. Hold it not! Natole loves you, and know that you need not abandon him to rejoin your friends! Let not your fear disguise the Holy Truth."

  The reasons became transparent. Usagi wanted her… the senshi… the Bishojo Sailor Senshi, were a family, a supportive group of intimate friends. Tsukino Usagi, the emotionally flickering light, yet somehow continually able to muster the strength - the courage - to win over consistently unusual and overwhelming odds. Hino Rei, the verbal powerhouse, the engine of fury, the sensitive soul, always dependably critical. Kino Makoto, the pillar of stamina in moral excellence as well as physical prowess, a concerned friend and supportive woman who shouldered much for her age.

  But then, didn't they all?

  Even Aino Minako, the less than chaste but never morally lacking woman, despite her attractive looks, charm, fiery determination, and more wit than her appearance implied. Luna and Artemis, like parents, worrisome and so full of love, offering unending guidance in their formidable ordeals. Surely, without them, the story would have ended before it had begun. The Sailor Senshi had failed, but in survival, had not abandoned her. How to return that love?

  "You have only to try," the enigmatic woman stated clearly. "These Silver Threads have not been cut. Follow them!"

  As the words fell Ami knew herself to be alone, and knew much pain had she yet to receive.

  "Heretic!"

  The door tumbled inwards upon itself like a handful of thrown matchsticks as a baker's half dozen Felynx rioters subdued and drew the fitful Ami forth among the rallying crowd outside of the Sapphire Night Inn. Holding the retaliatory force above their heads, they declared her association with the "witch" a trick to betray the town to the besieging demons. Yet no more than a scapegoat to belie the knowledge of loss in battle.

  "Her discussion with the witch is proof enough! She must be punished for this mortal sin!"

  The remaining skeptics soon forgot the truth of the matter: Three peaceful years of kindness amongst this woman of beauty, sagacity and integrity. It was shouted:

  "She must burn!"

  "… Natole…!"

  "Burn… burn…"

  "Natole!!" she shrieked, the volume rending her throat. Nigh impossibly she saw him bound by magic, standing, a being of protective rage, so dramatically infuriated…

  "Burn…! Burn!"

  …by his apparent inability to save his threatened beloved. Ami could feel the shuddering of earth as his crimson painted fists sought freedom through the unseen box that contained him.

  "Burn! Burn! Burn! The witch will burn!"

  The chant permeated her soul, sending her mind reeling, a merry-go-round of unimaginable nightmarish horror.

  "Burn! Burn! Burn!"

  "Usagi! Save me!!"

  "The witch will burn!"

  "Usa…"

  "See how…"

  "Burn! Burn! Burn!"

  "…gi! Usagi!"

  "…she calls upon the witch now! What do we say?"

  "LET HER!!" boomed the crowd. They were prepared! They… the ringleader knew to be ready for this!

  "Right! Why? So we can…"

  A female voice?

  "KILL HER!"

  Consumed by the weight of fear, rage, inner turmoil, and that of her recent life, she drew herself apart from the unquestionable feral mare of nights.

  Of course there was a ringleader! Ami thought, and was not surprised entirely by the fact that she knew the young woman. A KnightsMage. A woman of vacant mercy. A woman who, dressed in the correct dress could walk unscathed amongst a furious war and draw it to a sudden halt. An obsessive force against all evil, even the slightest trace of Scior's mark.

  You lied to me! You used me! You betrayed me! she railed in thought, knowing she was listening.

  You sacrilegious witch! I knew you were linked to evil somehow. I always knew it!

  The crowd had been proceeding slowly towards the town square, and a vast emptiness filled her soul… What have you done?…and stole her reason as they approached an already smoking pyre.

  The child wailed in agony and terror, her chained, naked and spread eagle figure a soul bending statement of child violence. Her agony distorted mortal mask gave vision and voice to the state of her shattered legs. The grey wings nigh torn from her shoulders all but shined as metal, crimson streaming in stark lines from several pockmarked holes where early attempts had failed to grip the muscle.

  "Let us destroy this demon servant!" she cried sharply.

  A question raised itself from among the energized crowd.

  "Is she not a demon, herself?"

  She glowered darkly at the crowd, and stepped towards the soul-scarred Ami. With a wicked frown, she pressed her hand to the bound woman's stomach. Shyanne's voice had stilled, but instantly came to life, echoing her mother's agonized screams as the literally white palm ate at her flesh, slowly revealing the dull gleam of metal. A great, shocked intake of breath momentarily took the throng of people as all doubts were quelled.

  "See the truth now? This creature comes to us in the attractive guise of a Canora golem to tip the war against us! As a demonic summoning, it must be banished!"

  "Burn burn burn…"

  "No! Not before the full cost has been extracted!" Sapphine declared against the cacophony of racing tones in seething, tangible hatred. "Kill the demon child!"

  "NO!!!" Ami screamed nigh hysterically, unsure of the source of strength, and concerned nary a wit.

  An abrupt shower of vaguely spherical grey missiles produced deafening thunking sounds as the first several missed. A rare event in the continuous muffled squishing, crunching, and shrieking as Shyanne was slowly reduced to stinking meat stapled to the crimsoning stone wall. By then, Ami had completely withdrawn, letting the distraught Sarah Night (Sapphire Dawn) face a reality so soul shriveling that she would have taken her beloved daughter's place, receiving every stone to spare her young one's life.

  Natole's defeated moaning could be heard for miles, causing a few to turn away in unuttered shame. Yet, somehow the massacre of the child was not enough to halt the proceedings, or even force them to leave. Perhaps they felt too deeply ingrained in the unspeakable carnage, knowing that even if they were wrong, what could they do to redeem themselves?

  In truth, more than half of the Felynx rioters - over eighty mothers, fathers and newlyweds (Mate-Joining season just having past) felt to turn away and beg their God forgiveness. But each one, fearing themselves alone to be taken as a sympathizer, and in admonition under the very same threat of execution, found it easier to inspire the matter through to the end, so that t
he guilt could be charred and forgotten as Ami.

  The fire had begun consuming Ami before Shyanne was quite dead, crying feebly to her mother for protection and loving sanctuary. Ami's anguished cry as the skull of her daughter (in heart and intent if not body) fell in upon itself was so complete that several mothers responded by weeping for their own, seeing the potential threat and hinting fatal connection. Sapphine attempted to remind them that the child was a demon, and not worth their tears. Despite her sway, few listened. Many bowed their heads, not watching as the flame continued to reduce the writhing, shrieking woman to ashes.

  "Ami! Oh mercy, AMI!!"

  Usagi howled these words at the top of her lungs, drawing every iota of attention as her scarlet wrapped form shoved through the knotted, resisting crowd.

  Know this, a voice stated in Ami's flickering consciousness. It is not over.

  "Senshi! Halt and face me!"

  Usagi paused, surrounded by a pool of growling and hissing Felynx, who parted, forming a sizable circle in which Sir Lording and she could commence combat. As she approached, Usagi's eyes slipped past her, and to the reeking corpse of what must have been Shyanne. Knowing she might have killed the child herself, and knowing how it had affected her friend (for she drew the experience from Ami's waned consciousness and could not stay the abundant tears), she faced combat all the more willingly, hoping to distract the rising tsunami of remorse.

  Usagi! Sapphine's a KnightsMage of the first rank! Ayana chirped fearfully, embroiled in the war against the demons, sensing the peril and attempting to extract herself from the battle to join her.

  I don’t care, Usagi growled.

  Sapphine's shapely form was armoured in no more than white leather, a headband, silver armlets and shin guards, and a long red binding sash. As she approached the newly inducted Demon Hunter KnightsMage, her aura became visible as a vivid white flare of self righteous power.

  "You self-righteous bitch," Usagi snarled.

  "What foolish talk is this, demon? I am here to annihilate you and your army! Surrender and I will end your existence very quickly," her opponent responded heatedly, watching the creature deemed her foe with a trained eye.

  "The KnightsMage General would have you dead already for your mistake," Usagi declared tersely, striding towards her target.

  "What…? How… what do you know of him?" Sapphine demanded, matching her pace precisely.

  Usagi flared her anger darkened aura, her paramount emotion influencing her strength as she clapped her hands together, a vibrant burst of light snapping into existence and holding firmly in her hands and forearms.

  "I was indoctrinated by him, Sapphine Lording."

  Sapphine frowned. "So why then, do you fight with my brother?"

  "Because he’s a young pup, like I was."

  She only sniped a harsh expression at Usagi. Then, not four feet between them, the world halted as they gauged each other. Sapphine, all spritely energy, shifting slightly between both balls of feet, her right hand clenched in a fist under her chin, her left matching at her waist. A dark, seductive beauty of generous figure, of gold highlighted brunette hair bound in a single tail and tucked neatly under her headband, intense green eyes reading copious vengeful murder, full lips tightening in a pleasured smile, so totally full of confidence it was all she could do to halt from lashing out and ending it all right then.

  Usagi, relying completely upon instincts, knew not what would come, only that it would. Her clothes felt relentlessly tight and constricting; grey vest and silver cotton turtle neck; form fitting stone washed jeans; long lightweight khaki overcoat billowing elegantly behind her. Her great blond flowing tresses accompanied the standard yet shortened odango-atama, nigh three quarters her own height in length as she stood in ultimate defiance.

  "I know of your past. I know of the Death's Hunger," Usagi snarled. "I know he took you as a child, violated you… killed your family. Had you until six years ago."

  Sapphine merely blinked, registering nothing. Her voice, however, confirmed the story in the stored emotions behind each calculated word: "You will suffer. For that, for interfering, for bewitching the KnightsMage General, and for living."

  Usagi's Blue Light Special shoes marked her feet at shoulder width apart, her sunspotting hands glowering with the same force that crept into her crystal blue eyes, shadowing them menacingly. "Ami was an innocent girl, and you have no right doing this! It's over!"

  Each woman wove a nigh silent spell, the words of which were audible to the supernatural senses.

  "Luna, Artemis, Sailor Senshi…"

  "Phate, let thy work strive…"

  "Give me strength to preserve…"

  "Through thy generosity let…"

  "My beloved friends! Please…"

  "This White Light of Retribution win…"

  "Nothing means more to me!"

  "Over these thy enemies!"

  The result was a gathering of manna so fierce that it killed the twenty nearest the epicenter. There was no blood, no outward violence, only the instant consumption of Felynx lives. The remaining sixty were picked up and carried aloft like sailboats in a stark raving hurricane. Of those, twenty eight died, the remainder suffering major wounds.

  The result?

  Mystic Ground Zero in a distinct radius of exactly one-hundred feet, six inches and two eighths. Sapphine lay as nude as her unconscious opponent, hair undone and thrown lightly about her delicate shoulders like so much fallen snow. The manna bomb had incinerated all non-organic materials, leaving four bodies lying upon the naked earth. Usagi and Sapphine both apparently unhurt - aside from the former's vaporized prosthetic left arm, the nearly unrecognizable earth pummelled mass that was the unfortunate Shyanne, and one half of Ami's scorched torso.

  Usagi's eyes beheld naught but a nightmare inducing scene as she gazed directly into the smoking torso of Ami, whose cybernetics had obliterated with the motion of the freak spell. She saw no more than half of a legless corpse, beaten, charred… vacant of an eternal soul. Fierce burning tears took her as she heard an awed gasp: "Forgive me!"

  Usagi sat up, feeling an unfamiliar weight upon her shoulder blades. She twitched, a brush of air wafting across her back, adjoining the soft caress of… feathers? Instantly her mind cleared. She did not smile, but rose gracefully, aware of her flawless nudity, but not ashamed. A sliver light wrapped itself about her, a delicate hug of glorious clarity, peace, and godly love. A pleasured croon emanated from her throat as her formerly missing arm was restored in a wash of pale blue heat and light. Gathering herself, Usagi set her eyes upon the ruined body of her friend, and while she looked on, her friend was made whole in the glow of a harmonious light.

  Her ocean blue eyes opened gently, and she smiled, love in her heart, gratitude in her soul.

  "Mama?"

  Ami had barely regained her feet before she was obliged to accept a reborn angel-winged girl into her arms. Sweet tears of joy cascaded down both mother and daughter's cheeks as they exchanged rapt long lived hugs.

  "Forgive me Usagi-ana!" Sapphine begged, bowing on both knees.

  "Anso tala sol goru alh solo!" I pledge my life to your service!

  "No, Sapphine…" Usagi negated, her faultless tones the epitome of motherly genteel and empathy. "You musn't."

  "But I…! I accused and destroyed an angel! How can I ever…" she turned, heartbroken, bitter tears quick to surface.

  "How? Serve the truth. Serve what is righteous." She took Sapphine's shoulders, turned her about, grasped her hands and held them, finding purchase through the glimmering windows to her wounded soul. "I was not kind either, Sapphine. May I ask for your forgiveness?"

  "But… Usagi-ana, why?" she nigh pleaded her inquiry.

  "Because I need to make amends too, for my mistakes. I'm so far from being perfect," she paused a moment, then continued on a new strain of thought. "I know the physical and mental molestation you suffer does not exclude you from His love. Trust the holy desire of your soul, Sapp
hine."

  The now golden haired woman read such unmitigated sincerity in her eyes, that she dared not doubt. "I still don't… how…?" she bit her lip, eyes unshifting, tears roiling slowly. "I've hurt so many… believing them cursed because… I… because I couldn't face my own pain. How can I be forgiven? How can I forgive anyone else… I am unworthy!"

  Usagi smiled ever so slightly and pressed Sapphine's hands just below the collar bone, between her breasts where her heart beat rapidly. "Have sincerity in your heart, and He will know. He knows us all by name, and knows our most intimate desires. You cannot disguise them. Have faith, a chaste, obedient heart, and humility. Be as a child."

  Sapphine finally bowed her head and sank slowly to her knees, hands clasped together as she sought fervent and honest prayer. Usagi turned to Ami, who, having been rejoined by Natole, slept contently in his warm, loving arms.

  "Usagi Tsukino," Natole began, voice hushed by the overjoyous ecstasy in his soul. "My life is yours. You have my unending gratitude."

  "Your life, Natole Shard, belongs to you. Though I would press you to dedicate it to my friend." She then nodded, as if she had performed the act as a matter of instinct.

  Perhaps now it was.

  @~%~~~

  His strike would not fail to hit its mark, it could not, for if it did, it would spell his doom. The heavy handed pole arm impaled the shadowling through its middle, causing it to burst angrily into dust.

  'Don't make this personal Thanus,' she warned, wielding an elaborately detailed trident, and hovering threateningly over his couch, which looked as though a large, wild boar had attacked it.

  'Why, isn't it?' he retorted, ducking and rolling to his wall of weaponry. Nimbly, he retrieved a crossbow and a handful of silver tipped bolts. He raised the bow and fired three shots in what seemed a single motion. With what appeared to be a mere twitch of the trident, she blocked each one, and the next four that followed, before replying a blast of fiery energy that threw the young man against the aforementioned wall.

  'No,' she replied soberly. 'I liked you.'

  Rising and retrieving a short bow and a handful of arrows, he commented: 'You're cute. I could have liked you too,' he offered, letting a triple notched shot loose, only to watch it repelled. 'Attempted murder really sours the possibility of a relationship. I mean, there's not even much chance of a first kiss.'

  'Attempted? You place too great a value on your power level. You don't even know how badly you're outmatched,' she stated, not moving to block his incoming half dozen shots, which she reflected with a force of energy. 'On the other hand, you could always quit the Knighthood. Then I could avoid killing you.'

  'Funny how you believe you're actually going to win,' he returned, gritting his teeth as he approached her with a glowing Bo staff. 'If you were the Xalia I knew, then you would know I'll never quit. There's no such thing. This is what I live for.'

  'I just had to ask, you know, be fair, and all that,' she explained as they fell into a blinding routine of strikes, blocks, parries that no human eye could perceive. Gradually, as the sweat appeared upon each brow, as each pair of eyes tightened in glares of concentration, Thanus noted something: The dark energy of her trident had become greater than the gentle radiance of his.

  'What you live for is what you die for!' she snarled, shoving him away with such inhuman force that he sailed into his wall of weapons, and sank right back against a fallen katana. Dumbly, he gazed down at the blade protruding from his chest, dropping the Bo, which crumbled to dust as its creator was fatally wounded. He glanced up at Xalia briefly, a crestfallen and heartbroken expression his final conclusion of just how life had treated him.

  Somewhat unfairly.

  His head then slumped down, his body toppling forward onto the floor, an empty shell.

  'Guess what cutie, life is unfair,' she remarked coldly, glancing indifferently upon the corpse. 'It's not your fault. It's just the way things are.'

  Chapter 34

  Outmatched