Dreamers' Prayer: Prologue-Chapter 3 (Incomplete, NC-17)

[Tomorrow]

AN: The language of this part is meant to be somewhat poetic and have a rhythm to it? almost as if enchanted. The rest of the story probably won?t be written in this same style, and when you reach the end of this prologue you?ll understand why I wrote it in this way.

Now that that?s out of the way, on with the fic!

Disclaimer: I don?t own Gundam Wing? darn it!


Introduction: Genesis


?From the mind of man, a most forsaken human tool, there originates many thoughts and realms of understanding, a labyrinth of abandoned lusts and withered hopes that stalks the mortal world as dim. For upon the tangible planes of reality no dream can dare remain, if not put to shame by the logic of the day. It is revised, changed? and then forgotten ever still, for fantasy cannot thrive where rationale once stood.

?Yet even still a world of dreams does live, a fantasia where once only emptiness resided: both Father Darkness and Mother Vast held each other there. And in this space where only dusk begat shadows did these two entities once mate, siring only more abyss as in their love they did abate such lonely times.

?But this Mother Vast would not be pleased with only Darkness as her lover, and so out of surrender she cried a single tear in that darkened stead: the first star amidst that dismal place her tear had then borne.

?So with this fondling daughter the Darkness mated, and from this pentangle?s womb was born a family as scintillant as she, a litter of twin stars soon christened ?Gemini?--the primary constellation in that former eve. And in this way so was bred many such stars, each heir to Vast and Darkness?s throne.

?But soon these lucent mantles yearned for children of their own loins; thus in their light they cast a world of dreams and beauty to behold, a realm of creatures as brilliant as their parents? light as old: the race of the Pegasus?a slave from the starlight bred. Beings so pale with hair as fair, a warrior kin meant only to protect their mother stars. A people as distant as these parent luminaries, breed that only allied with themselves for that common mission. For otherwise they waged war upon which they met or remained detached from all other life they sought. Cold as the heavens and remote as their bearer stars.

?But still these pentangles did love their hostile children, and to show such favor they crowned each Pegasus babe with a pinion of their very flames? Horns so fashioned, bathed in the glow of starlight and golden as the fire kissing those stars themselves. A special blessing for their infants rare, heirs to the throne of light itself.

?Mother Vast was lonely then, for her children had indeed forgotten her and sired progeny of their own. And from this sorrow she birthed the petulant moon?the very essence of her wounded heart. A daughter not only swathed in warm?d light, but who also cast shadows on her face to mar it so: a dark and lucid side it both possessed. The beautiful white moon was the mirror of abysmal love, yet blackened cheek a manifest of the Mother?s hatred for her first brood that left her long ago.

?And still the lunar candle could not be faithful kith, for this sister of the stars too bore her own race: a gentle children more fair than luminaries? youth, beauty their lover as the silver circle kissed their softened skin. Upon their foreheads this mild sect did bear their mother?s mark, the reflection of her own temperament as fleeting: a glowing circle that tracked the phases of the moon herself, whether in gibbous, crescent, full? waxing or waning. This radiant symbol thus did shear darkness. A voice they possessed, a song that when on their lips could seduce even the coldest creatures, sweet aria of the Sirens to lure their prey in love. Vibrato pure, never used to corrupt the enchanted. For they were warm and benign, this pacifistic race, so disparate from their distant, star-bred cousins.

?This people, as well, had both male and female kind upon the illumined plane; sexual relations could they have and conceive labored babes-- Where luminary kin held only masculine creatures in their line. For each night a new star was born in the midnight hour it sired an infant Pegasus besides. So procreation these mythical men could not attempt, such beings that could alter into wing?d stallions when the time so called and they desired, for because they were once remote to fellow tribes these beings were denied the very means of flesh?s intimacy. They were castrated men from conception, yet male appearance and heart did they still possess? so they were men, reconciled as accepted truth of that world. As even these maternal pentangles did say that baby boys they?d borne?but left sterile as a reminder of their dependence on their mother blazes.

?To have an heir only by their light.

?But Father Darkness and his wife so Vast were haunted by the betrayal of their radiant children, and so from this bitter resentment there arose a new breed of pettiness and guile. Wicked offspring of man?s dreams, ?nightmares? more aptly called, harboring the fear and malice of humanity, the very darkness in man?s soul that first sired the parental abyss in his mind. Their ears were pointed and overly grand, those of these tainted creatures, sensitive to the screams of younger humans as their spells fed on infants? fears. Even beyond the expanse of this realm of fantasy and into mortal reality could these demons hear such wailing. Their eyes were dark, skin so gray, horrid, ugly creatures ruled by a desperate king: the true enmity and embodiment of Father Darkness.

?He sought vengeance against the two illuminant bodies and their progeny for their traitorous desertion of the primary ancestors. And so he tormented the once beautiful world of light, only staved by the strength of the Pegasus and seduction of the Selenians,* as the moon race soon was deemed.

?So for millennia the terrain of light and dark in this capricious universe did battle, a war sufficed until the prophecy was bared:

?Young Pegasus and dear Selenian will shine as one, limiting darkness as this princess of a world in whim and the soldier that protects her engage evil with the kiss of unity?brush of lips that shall forever scar them. Fates entwined and bodies too, eternal love a blinded sheath? and another race beheld in grief.?




It is this that I read from the sacred book as it has been recorded, sheaves recounting quite vividly this world's mystical history and fables. I, Doctor Jay, keeper of the library of this realm and teller of this tale?






*Selenian originates from Selene, one of the faces/names of the goddess of the moon in mythology (Greek and/or Roman).

[Tomorrow]

AN: This is deidcated to all of you who read and reviewed the first part.


Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing.



Preface: Genealogy of the Fated Warrior

?A Pegasus child by name of Odin did walk the lustrous plane of this summer?s woods, scavenger for sustenance to feed his weary warriors who starved. But nothing to ease a legion's stomachs could he so find, merely light and other lucid creatures, reacting with silence and stares from kindled eyes.

?Yet on his journey he did sight a virgin daughter there beside, sweet Katrina of Lord Vividaire, proprietor of these woodlands and most prestigious lineage he claimed amongst his fellow race. A crown of flowers she wove between her fingers pale, hues of white and golden glisten kissing her fingertips so gently.

?But High Commander of the Pegasi was he, most revered and so distant a man that watched the maiden Selenian beneath the brilliant leaves. To himself he pondered the irony of her there, that although the Pegasi and Selenian peoples had allied under the common fate to ebb Darkness?s reside, his fellow Horsemen were known to abduct their now befriended rivals when such fortune did arise. These Moon Children were much wiser than to let their maids wander, abandoned of male escort of any kind. Yet still this noble virgin did abide within the glen, pure and with a voice as mystic?s wondrous rime, for as she twined the stems within her hands so fine, she sang a saddened tale of ages ago in time.

?His men were wounded and tired, and her enraptured pleas could grant them the rest they deserved from battle?s blood. So in his ploy he decided to kill the maiden there, to arraign the essence of her faithful hymn to carry to his men. And so from his forehead he did reach and pull the golden antler from his scalp, to then rest in his hand as a scintillant rapier to strike the maiden down.

?But as he meant to swing the saber to slit Katrina?s throat, a Nightmare assaulted him with jagged teeth and bloodied marks around his own. Dear Odin so did struggle to free himself from such a bind, but to the ground he remained pinned as the creature held him snide. A stance too brutal for the young man?s power, and thus a victim to the demon would he be.

?But just before the Nightmare could rip through Odin?s neck, the sweet Selenian rose between the creature and its prey to place her hand on the demon?s feral limb. And sing she did for the sake of her once murderous Pegasus, luring the monster from Odin with her sultry staves. Yet so frightened was this Lunar Child of the vicious one that her vibrato wavered with her sudden fear, only partially seducing the creature to but stalk her then in drear? To devour her rather than the forgotten Horseman that lay dormant just as near.

"Back against the stalwart ridge it cornered her, serpent tongue reaching out to lick her cheek as it towered over her with a shadow?s deafened graze? When Odin so replaced his horn and charged the beast, embedding the golden pinnacle in its spinal flesh, forcing the Nightmare to its knees as black blood marred the illumined earth beneath. The fire of this star-blessed horn and the magic it invoked then melted the innards of this evil servant, so to drip along the Star Child?s arms. The heathen to collapse unto the ground in the rigid death it earned.

?Odin slid his antler from the wicked sinew and lifted his eyes to the maid so gallant, stoic as she watched his eyes as blue, her shallow breath ragged as she remained in his sight's entrance. Together they resided in this blissful silence, moments later broken by his words, cold and nearly deft.

??Thou spared mine life and so now I shall spare thine own. We are now even and all debt forgone.?

?But as he turned to leave her there, alone amidst that lucent stead, her hand reached out to embrace his then, bringing him back to her side so in heated kiss they could abide. Lips touched in passion and fatal dire, flesh to skin so unbeknownst to him. For never before has Pegasus in all ever felt the caress of lover?s kiss upon his mouth, whether it be in lust or mother?s fire as renown. Warm and new was this tender friction, a drifting empyrean of flesh cradling flesh he felt in immediate attraction to her woman?s frame, being always denied the yearning.

"Never had a Pegasus been held in another?s arms, whether it be brother Horseman or cousins bred, ignorant to the vehemence of physical affection and its lure. For even on the battlefields, if taken down the Pegasi would not be nurtured by their fellow men? but left to die a lonely death, discarded if in combat they could not perform to par.

?Still, the survivors of the massacres would see their cousin Selenians carry their brethren across the blood and tear bathed fields as the sorcery did rage on between darkness and light as old, see the women as they softly sang to these victims to bring them peace and slumber in their suffering.

?And in this memory he returned her kiss as fully, ardor his foreign brother as Odin trailed his lips along her cheek, to glide down her milk-white neck as passionately she moaned? But he felt her hands push him away as in his throat he groaned, eyes still closed from initial touch they shared as with her fingers she did tease his swollen lips.

?He was to meet her in this very place the day that followed? alone and with the promise of further touch so hallowed.

?And so ?twas done as they had planned, for in that secret glen would they caress and kiss as lovers often do before their intimacy began. A faded whisper of her melodies on the wind did she provide, forever leaving him in the sweet citadel between sleep and waking hour as divine. In heavy-lidded peace they reclined together in the reeds for the many days that passed, wrapped in warm embrace and strangers to surrounding fury of the war that echoed far away. Dreamer?s beloved reside.

?But this haven was not enough for the Pegasus, for he wished only to show the depth of his love, how ardently his soul?s cry did resonate in the hollow of his frame to meet her own. To be one flesh, one true marriage with this Moon Child to merge two souls the same? Incomplete, destitute without the other near or touching in the least of levity.

?He wanted for her to conceive and bear his heir.

?Though he knew such a feat was impossible to dream or obtain, for their mating rites were too disparate to attempt? and could not be combined.

?So in desperate shame he sought the mercy of his bearer star? the light that had so long ago given him life and bequeathed to him the promise of a child when she chose.

?And so he entered the sacred fountain where heaven?s stars found refuge in its lucent streams that showered them in light, the very sanctuary where he was born. This Odin knelt before his mother, empress of all her sister luminaries as she was indeed crowned the holy North Star in this realm of dreams, her brilliance blinding and purely lucid above her kin. And at her flaming feet he did so supplicate, head bowed and eyes downcast for her mediation in this strait:

??Oh dearest Mother Star, thy kin hath served mine race so well? birthing us from thine own enemy Darkness to battle it as drear.

??Now I, your very son do plea, the babe within your crescent womb you grew, that you renounce your eternal vow that thine dazzling daughter and mine sister own be not the bearer of my child. But rather a woman do I so desire, a maiden kin to your sibling Moon and therefore mine? to be the mother of my heir as by.

?To forfeit mine life and into your light I?ll not refuse if such a request you so shalt honor for thine begging son.?

?He promised his surrender to the matriarch if she would but grant him his heart-felt wish, but in that terrain of liquid light she would not reply, ever silent to his plea in this. So for months he abandoned his love to kneel before this starry queen, forever praying for her blessed pity on this emotion newly found.

?And in due time her heart was moved at the devotion to this moon woman, and so she did, after five months of wretched silence to his cries, grant him his grim request, enveloping him in her lucent shade and modifying his physical self for the endeavor he wished to undertake. Masculinity truly his as in her mercy she would make.

?One night with this Selenian would he have, and then his life he must surrender to his mother empress; for although she was moved by his love she could not make exceptions for her son. So once given the chance he would be erased before other Pegasi could know of such forbidden providence as his.

?In that fateful field he once again met his lovely maid, and upon the bed of grass such sweet love they made beneath moon and starlight?s gaze. And as she lay there in dreamless sleep beside her lover, he began to lose himself to the vow of his mother star, although he did relent. He softly caressed Katrina's fair tresses and with his final breath pleaded that the empress allow his son?s children and those born of her majesty?s line to be made as he, that they may have the chance to experience love in its fullest existence and inherent purity. A tear he shed as well that night, bowing his head with this lament so to rest in the crook of his Katrina?s neck. And so in this way? on that night the Pegasus died, left this fantasia and her side.

?Once more the queen was moved to sadness by the love he?d shown, that with his last breath he supplicated for his progeny to know the sentiment he found. And with a despondent sigh as she welcomed his soul into her warm womb as before, she did use this whisper to fulfill his dying plea: that any Pegasus borne by her light or descendent of his future son would be given means to procreate by their own desire. Castrated no more, but men as their cousin Selenians did breed. Former logic lost to her in such a void of grief.

?But it seemed that this final prayer was wasted in this era, for the sons borne by the empress pentangle never mated of their own accord as so was offered. But still the promise she kept in memory of her departed babe, granting her children the ability to unite with a creature in their bed.

?Indeed the heir borne by Katrina was a Pegasus infant, but her lover was lost to her in that dismal age; and so her father forced her to abandon the babe in their glen of copulation, once more taken in by his father?s parent luminary to reside forever there. Thus her past was forgotten and lost virginity denied and married to a wealthy man who became her beloved king-- By whom she had many Selenian children to spread her legs.

?But here the tale has just begun, for before Odin had returned to his dear Katrina on the night he was granted his masculinity, he left a letter for his second in command, explaining that once the seal was broken the Commander-in-Chief of their great army would be dead. Upon these crumpled sheaves he did profess that this final command he gives in death should be honored in his memory and devotion to their clan:

??The exulted race of the Pegasus, as we are in pride, shall from this day glorify our kin Selenians above ourselves, for they are a people of morals and tender affection of which we cannot even begin to comprehend as cold as we?ve become. I understand this now, and I make this proclamation because you cannot and will never comprehend--such a selfish race we are. I do it for our legacy, for our salvation from ourselves.

'A queen over all the world of light shalt be made of the Selenian woman, Katrina Vividaire, for she was before in my marraige bed--housing the loins of your leader. Her descendants shall rule above Pegasus and Selenian both with her gentle hand and love as rare. We shalt submit and ally with our brethren absent of restraint, learning from their example as through their ways can only peace be found. We know blood--they know compassion.

'These are your master?s final edicts, and so I trust that with soldier?s vow you?ll honor.

???Commander Odin Lowe of the Pegasus Legions?

?The Pegasi lived for honor and its obligation, soldiers as they were, and so with insulted disposition did they swear allegiance to Katrina and her husband king, pledge to never harm her family would they keep for eternity as was Odin?s lost command-- But not entirely. For instead of submission to their luminous cousins they withdrew from the land of light, to dwell within the shadows away from moonshine kin to be masters in their rite.

?But the shadows that traipsed across the lucent terrain were dangerous realms, for in these crevices of dusk hid nests of rogue and guerilla Nightmares to torment this brilliant world, one by one slaughtering the Pegasi until their memory became legend to the mind. A distant tale to the future generations of Selenians. A forgotten breed, thought extinct race damned by their own pride?willing to forfeit life rather than reputed honor.

?The stars were devastated by their losses, and out of this sorrow they vowed to breed such children no more, only to be massacred and left for dead. But the empress pentangle would not be defeated by her fiercest grief and still infant Pegasi she bore as the centuries after Odin?s death did pass. Sons born and then hunted by the Nightmares if their instincts did not serve them well.

?But hope still remained in that distant prophecy, a dream the stars could never forget as they heard their children scream across the ages??



This is what the book reads of the Soldier?s descent and it must be known, but I feel I shall no longer consult the sacred book on such a matter. Rather, I?m much more inclined to rely on my own recollection of the tale. The record is objective and overly simplified for prying minds, attributes not usually valued in the telling of a story as significant as this.

But I must confess: I too am a child of Father Darkness and his Vast wife, but I was sired to be the guardian of the worlds they spawned, both evil and the one as brilliant. To fulfill my destiny they granted me the gift of telepathy and the Empath?s burden, and thus I can read minds and understand what my kin feel?the perfect candidate to archive the history of the Dreamer?s Realm as our world is called.

So in order to continue with this tale, I shall consult my oracle, which knows the past, present, and future of all the creatures that have lived and died on this fantastic plane. Within it is captured the essence of the legend in its truest form? but perhaps at a later time I will find it suitable to return to the pages of the book for clarification?s sake.

And with my magic as the guide I shall force the oracle to reveal its version of the tale, for mortal man must someday be told the reality of our world, that he may understand the war always waged in his dreams?

[Tomorrow]

Disclaimer: I don?t own Gundam Wing, even though I wish I did.





A terrain of beauty and inherent light to don this realm of warring tribes, of radiant trees and lustrous streams that illuminated the darkness and bayed its children in their stead. Vacant, retaliatory, and vindictive whispers from such hostile, retributive lips and lethal guise.

Timber molded into lucid ivory, where within its shimmering, ridged seams was the matron moon mirrored from above this plane; trunks knotted themselves in crystal and twisted glass, brithing their leaves with golden veins and platinum stems that easily tarnished in the dawn. Yet scintillant ivy branded the rocks and ridges as kindled cobwebs of moss, still sparkling across the lucent land of sheer and sheeted mythril. Of grass blades pale and burnt in tallow sheen by the celestial stars and moonlight fair, scorching their earth to white and brightness in their stares. So were yielded rivers, lakes, and springs so clear, as with their currents they made lazy gurgles in passing?if but to cool the heat of distant and domestic light.

But these brilliant trees faded in their luster as the seasons came to pass, warping to dulled, faint copper as the cold months haunted these glimmering, starlit woods. And the glistening wreaths and luminous sepals wilted from their parent arbors thus when winter would arrive. A cold time? a desolate hour? a darker age-- For the streams and fountains that once illumined the realm were frozen and light captured within such guilded, frosted lamps?now cages of trapped kerosene and abysmal torches just barely flickering. They cast the forest into silence and sated glow, damning the illuminant gallows to death and woe, disrobed of vivid leafage to be but mere, tawny stakes of more withered ivory than before.

The gentle snowfall, white as beloved, ancestral candlelight and sent from those pentangles and sister moon to keep dormant these creations for a time, beneath a flurried blanket of chilled yet jewel?d light? Such was the only splendor they would provide their forsaken brood, for these months would pass and life could start anew, caressing this world once more in dearest, warm?d gleam. With torch-lit trees and lantern streams?a new season to unfold.

And this changing land was shared not only by the Pegasi and cousin moon race, but also with the countless creatures of direct descent of the human mind. For the two primal peoples were but the circuitous children of men?s dreams, created first by Darkness and sired Light?the two forces that now do sway human imagination and sibling thought, rear his intellect for opposing artistry. They are then, perhaps, the embodiment of the Tempter and his Seductive Daughter, or the desire that dwells within man?s forgotten heart as dim. But the other tribes that soon arose to populate the realm were bred only from caprice itself: faeries and cousin elves, with griffins and mischievous mermaids as their playmates; centaurs, enchantresses, and dragons too; along with many other creatures?as many as men can dream or dare behold. All such races innately good but not always righteous?the heritable flaw of these chimeras.

Yet those ethereal kith were commonly ruled by the imperial Selenian clan, whose castle, constructed by the Pegasi centuries before?in the youth of the Medieval Age?rested in the heart of these whimsical woods. A palace surrounded by ancient, sculpted fonts now strung with ag?d vines and twinkling bough aflame; the fortress rimmed in a moat of diluted mire for its barrier?conciliatory offering of those extinct Horsemen to their sovereignty. Wherein this slough slept the mighty water lizard, a lazy dragon born from that parent fluid at an hour unknown by any that ever lived within the Dreamer?s Realm. His origin much a mystery? progeny of water and light itself, all assumed as so.

It was a beast with translucent scales, nearly spectral beneath the surface of that dank, shale crypt, along with graceful fins--wings to shear currents and churning waves around him. He was guardian of the royal family from thievery and foreign contempt, or even assault from the Nightmares that stalked the castle gates with drool and bloodied talons?final defender from darkness and reptilian warrior of moonshine kin.

But in all truth, no one ever really knew whether he was fact or mere fable crafted, lizard that swam so reserved in a watery grave where the children of light could never witness? But for the long braid that would sometimes skim the surface of his bed as he sailed below that towered edifice. And because of his dual ?tails,? the one at his rear and the other on his brow so haphazard, the people of luminescence-bred and their Selenian monarchs called him simply, affectionately: Duo.

It was an infant princess that summoned the mammoth from his depths and slumber lonesome, the Selenian Lady who wandered from her elfish maid to the edge of that moat and was swallowed in its impartial tides. Tiny babe? sweetest victim? a head of golden ringlets soaked in the dying?s sweat to survive? A glow cast upon her fading form as the lunar circlet moaned for the death of a daughter in the wind?s trill. A call that brushed the baby?s cheeks and chilled them whilst the water?s darkness took her further down. The moat swadled the girl in shifting, dazzled mists and silver sheets: the Princess Relena Peacecraft, Selenian heiress of the Dreamer?s Throne.

Descendent of Katrina Vividaire.

But the braided beast heard the little girl?s pleas. Watched her as she sank to the bottom of his morbid pit, as fallen star feigns into the sea with ashen breaths. And out of instinct he took the infant maid so delicately within his jowls?carrying the limp child between his teeth until the light touched her even waning face, lips white and beauty drowned.

He saved her that day, this noble dragon, for once her lips kissed the evening?s tide her breath was hers again to have. Still suckling maiden sprawled upon the shore. The lunar mark upon her brow still glowing?pallid flesh still moved with every breath. And so companions they became from that moment forward: Moon child and her dragon savior?princess with her brutish beau.

Yet years came and so then passed, the victim princess aging with the time. Her long blonde tresses shimmered as golden, moonlit ribbons upon her scalp, with halo as their captive, christened crown; she claimed smooth and pale skin of softer glow. She was a small woman but well endowed, thighs shaped and form as intimately seductive?child bred into a lady and further beautified by age? virgin candle of a chastened, pristine maid. Warmer lips. Tempestuous, azure gaze. Her sweet soul behind it.

Temptress of Selenians.

And upon reaching her eighteenth year, on a day of fair and cloudless skies, Relena sauntered along that musty moat and traced her fingers across its darkened depths, hesitant as she glanced at the fading ripples her touch had roused--smirking slightly as her reflection was swept away by an artificial current. After accounting for the sentry and a few cautionary glimpses, she dove into those murky waters of chill and bitter cold. All sight left her and breath withheld, her hair of glistening flaxen strangling her limbs and tying her in chain?d amber.

But from that blackness emerged her faithful dragon, nebulous reptile as he sought her in his realm to take her further down. His scaled snout met with her hands then bound, her slender legs brushing past his coarser cheek as he allowed her face to touch his own?mutual embrace of disparate, patient mates. The bubbles from the force of his tail surrounded them, nearly pushing her away; their tendrils mating in that muddy blue.

She grasped his facial fins, and he took her down? Through those wretched waters and dim recesses of nautical dusk?s reside, a trench of liquid emptiness and drear. Abandoned of hydrophilic nymphs and other oceanic creatures. Nothing? save for the cove that revealed itself amidst the shadows and the wail, shrill and of seismic might, the lizard released as they surfaced in the hollow.

Lowering his head, he set her gently on the shore, the breath from his nostrils so pungent as to throw her to her knees and toss her dampened strands around her body?innocently sensual, coy water dripping from her chin and off her thighs, with droplets glittering along her skin like newborn stars upon a milk-white, heavenly height.

And so he settled there? and she looked away from him. Silence their communal ally.

?They?re getting closer, you know,? Relena nearly whispered. Her eyes were in absence yet somber still, refusing to turn to her reptilian confidant.

Duo merely remained quiet and cocked his head at her voice: inquisitive violet stance to urge her on, scaly lips curled into as much of a smile as he could muster.

?The Nightmares keep advancing on our borders. I overheard my brother telling Lucy this morning that ten of them were killed near the Northern Border yesterday-- At the expense of seven of our own men.?

Even then he said nothing, the lazy swishing of his tail through the shallow cove causing the water?s current to arbitrarily shift with his strength.

?It just seems so futile, Duo. Their numbers keep growing, but we?re losing more men everyday. It's getting worse, bad enough that I think my brother's starting to withhold things from me, to try and protect me from the severity of it all-- I have to go behind his back and steal the casuality list if I want to stay in any way informed.

"And I know it's grim when Milliardo can't even be up-front with me.?

She sighed.

?So that's it. This is how it ends." She shook her head.

"Forgive me for sounding cliche about this, but it's almost as if we're heading into battle defeated, gradually degenerating into a dying breed. Headed towards extinction, one might even say.?

The princess gave a cynical, desperate chuckle in that place, turning herself to finally face her dragon friend.

?It?s nothing but a vicious cycle of birth, war, pain, and consequental death?by then, I hate to say it, no matter how true it may be, an almost perverted godsend from our losses. To think that men are born to fight and damned to obligatory death, conceived for killing in a meaningless war. That women are made to witness to that massacre: mothers meant to lull their sons into oblivion; that sisters must cradle their siblings in their arms; and lovers fated to kiss the cold lips of mutilated, unrecognizable corpses...?

?Aren?t you being a little melodramatic there, Princess?? Duo interrupted her playfully with brow raised in amusement. Relena in turn snapped her head at him, her eyes wet with unshed tears and voice now low and heated with her passion at his apathy.

?They?re my people, Duo? and they?re dying."

His deep breath of solace and immediate repentence for his forgotten sympathy, perhaps even for his former bluntness, ruffled her dress?s hem and fluttered through her long blonde hair. Decrepit smile now lost to him as he watched her shoulders fall.

?And it pains me? keeps me up at night, knowing that someday my son will be born for the sole purpose of surrendering his life in battle. He?ll be part of that circle? my own child??

?But you?re gonna be the one to stop all this, M?lady. I just know it.? He hooked his claw beneath her chin. ?You?ve got the words?you just proved that with your pretty little speech back there. And I know you?ve got good intentions. You?ve just gotta have the conviction to back up those nice sentences you?re comin? up with.

?You master that, and I guarantee we?ll have that peace, Missy. But you?ve gotta find that something to believe in, first.?

Once more she looked away from him, tearing her face from his talon as she replied to him with silence?only to shift the subject slightly in her sorrow. Waiting what seemed to her endless moments for his breath to catch at her retraction.

?They?ve asked for me again, Duo.?

Reptilian muscles tensed at her whispered words. Twitiching eyes narrowed as vengeful thoughts consumed him. An image of her? Vulnerable in the enemy?s bed.

?Lord Obscurisa keeps asking Milliardo for my hand? He insists that with our marriage an alliance or at least some sort of truce could be reached.?

A swallow from fang?d orifice.

?It would stop both sides from dying.?

?You can?t tell me that your brother?s even considering giving you to that bastard.?

Relena pulled her knees beneath her chin at his fierceness. Closing her eyes; gathering her words. ?The decision isn?t final yet, and I know he?s trying to negotiate around it? but he really doesn?t have much of a choice right now. I don?t really have a choice in the matter, Duo.

?Our union would bring on atleast a temporary hiatus in the fighting, which could open the doors for better communication and a peace that could be reached through diplomacy rather than combat? even if just a dim glow in their darkness.

?To save even one life would make the betrothal worthwhile.?

The waters crashed in violent waves around the beast as he trembled with his anger, pitching the cave into fervent chaos and near fury at her surrender?and he seething with a muted growl that rumbled in his throat as he vowed with claws clenched, ?They?ll have to kill me first! I?ll fight clawless before I let them abuse you like that!

?I?ll kill them all! For you? I swear it!?

?And stir up even more trouble for us?? she scolded him into logic somewhat mockingly, a smirk pulling at her lips and shaking her head at his irrational display.

?Whatever it takes? my Beautiful Princess,? the dragon sighed as the violet fire in his eyes came low, slowly bringing his jagged, glacial nail to her shoulder and caressing such scintillant skin--as lovers often do.

But she shied away from his affection with a quiver, eyes downcast and almost tragic as she wrapped her arms about her chest. Cowering maid. Voice pained and dulcet. ?Duo please? don?t say those things to me.?

?But I?m only saying something that?s true, M?lady.? A soft smile through rejection he granted her, yet still a saddened gaze. ?You once told me when you were nothin? but a little thing,? he said as he measured the implied height with the distance of his talons from the water, ?that it?s better to hide like a coward and lose your pride and even honor than to say somethin? the isn?t true.

?Well Princess? I may run and hide, but to this day I?ve never told a lie; and I don?t plan to start now.?

With an even more rueful countenance she stood to leave him, her shoulders trembling with her leavened sorrow as she drifted languidly to the edge of the cove, dragging her feet across the dampened sand and rubbing the grains between her toes, scraping smooth, white skin.

?Where?re you off to now, Little Missy?? Rejected once again.

She still didn?t look back. Stiff. Her dress clung to her thighs and breasts and knees like the anomalous, translucent flesh of an apparition, tenuous yet surreal and hauntingly beautiful. She just gave him an answer.

?To a place where I can finally be alone? maybe even think things through a little bit if I?m fortunate enough.?

The scaled head of that beast bowed at her coldness to his affection, his eyes obstructed by unruly bangs as the dripping strands hid his pain in jest.

?Well just watch out for some Pegasi that might be roamin? around the woods. I?ve heard that they love to abduct gorgeous maidens that wander around without escorts.?

A splash and she resurfaced. Glimmering blonde tendrils surrounded the broken moon maid in a stranded canopy while her voice carried through the cavern with mock sternness, as alleviation to their awkwardness. ?First of all, I thought I just asked you to stop hitting on me. And second, you know as well as I do that Pegasi aren?t real.?

?Hey, how long have you been alive??

?Eighteen years now, Old Friend. You know that.?

?Well then I?ve been around here a lot longer than you. Centuries actually. And so I?ve seen a few more things than you have, and believe me: they?re real, Princess.?

She rolled her eyes at his indignance and huffed, letting her shoulders fall.

?C?mon, Duo.?

?Were you here 300 years ago??

?No.?

?Then who are you to tell me I?m wrong??

The Selenian woman shook her head at her seemingly obstinate companion and gave a resigned laugh at her own expense, with that giggle resonating through the cove and wrapping them in rhythmic peals of jubilation.

?The Pegasi are an ancient legend created so that young girls do what their fathers and older brothers tell them to.

?I?m not buying into it.?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Wings on the wind as nigh
White on a starry sky, he sighs
In shadow does a horse abide
Soft feathers and a crown on high

The maiden sang as through the gleaming briar she walked, her feet gliding over stipule bronze and gown dragged through resplendent brush and leaflets. The forest was somber and trees its solemn patrons?abandoning the woman to herself. Lone. Forsaken woods.

He leads me
He knows me

The rustle of a leaf.

Child of the stars and mine

Foreign breath.

Sweet dreamer?s prayer
On my lips you stay
In sleep I know your lover?s face

Intense, darker gaze.

Wing?d wild, come down to me

Confused gaze, nearly.

Grant me your embrace

Relena turned the direction of those savage eyes, to the stirring of the leaves that beckoned her. Searching for those fierce pools that burned her back in such attentive heat, igniting passion through her veins with mere glance. But there was nothing? only light.

Oh stallion sweet, so may you glide
Against the moon may you rest your wings

A soft wind.

In vagrant stride you leave me here
Far away yet heart as near

Those hypnotic eyes were on her shoulder, scalding her skin with their inherent fire.

He shares me

She stiffened.

He loves me

Her eyes prowled.

Son of the stars and lover mine

The princess suddenly twirled around to confront the one who stalked her with his rarest eyes, mouth agape and fit to subdue her predator with a sultry stave? but again there was nothing. Just trees and deadened shoots beneath her feet and so littering the distance with their barren sheen. Moon and starlight on her lovely face. Alone.

But he was there. She knew.

Sweet dreamer?s prayer
On my lips you stay

She sauntered towards the refuge of the bushes, winding through their brilliant umbrage as a lucent citadel from the other?s gaze.

And threw her voice.

In sleep I know your lover?s face
Wing?d wild, come down to me

In the corner of her eye-- A flash of white; and so she followed that pallid shadow passed the bushes and through the trees. Her eyes were set on his pale form, separated from her only by a few, stray branches at his back.

Grant me your embrace

Blue. Deep, endless blue.

[Tomorrow]

Disclaimer: I don?t own Gundam Wing.




Her hands clutched the folds of her fiery gown, infernal eyes clenched as sparse, fleeting images of her young Pegasus flickered through her mind, impelling the flames of her somatic hearth to swell and so rest her head against the fountain?s edge in that premonitory weariness. Molten tresses spilled along her shoulders and down her neck as she bit her bottom lip, forcing herself to be strong against the hellion visions she espied: The clop of his hooves on the blanched earth. The desperate flap of his wings as he took to flight, finding advantage in the battleground of the sky. His blood as the Nightmare tore through the Horseman?s feathers, hurling the wounded stallion to the ground below the combat?s height.

The demon?s shriek resounded with the throw, the pounding of its scraggily wings reversing the current of the wind to hasten the victim?s plummet. The monster drooling as the stench of blood and sweat wafted across its nostrils, swabbing its muzzle with a carnal tongue before floating down to feast upon its kill.

With a quivering breath, she pulled herself from her throne at the inner-sanctum, staggering as her burnished steps dragged her toward the sanctuary?s brim, where that font?s lucent waters fell to the world beneath it and so lent the land a dispers?d, fragile gleam? Hands trembling. Stomach churning at the gore she witnessed.

The body of her recent son? impaled. Limbs swept by a stale, sepulchral breeze, body dangling over one of the radiant woodland?s gallows?it?s sterling leaves tangled in his mane and woven into his severed tail. His eyes concealed by the charred, broken bough that leaned upon his neck? it too most likely disjointed from the sheer force of the skewering. Red? deep and warm as it dribbled from his mouth and wrapped his body in a crimson rope.

Death sadistically lynched him. For it mangled the last few coughs of blood from the Horseman?s throat, before that vital cord dripped steadily to the ground and wound itself in a slain puddle.

Another Pegasus murdered in the shadows. Another one of her sons dead.

The starry queen sank to her knees as she turned her face away from the carnage, hand grasping at her abdomen as the sobs wracked her body in that dismal revelation. White-hot tears singed her cheeks, leaving black streaks along her face as she let her grief consume her. Let the losses of her many children haunt her with their distorted, mutilated faces and flesh. Suffocate her already dying inferno to the mere glint of candlelight. Her body was fading, dim against the shimmering streams that flowed beside her, casting their sheen upon her face to grant her substance from the fingertips of encroaching nullity. Weak? but still light? Still baying the darkness.

And she realized that this new Pegasus she bore? Would be her last.

Crawling back to her throne for one more birthing, groaning as she felt the child kick within her womb and stab her cervix with his sacred horn, she spread her legs to pacify the foal and ready her body for the pain, arching her back as she hissed into the chamber?s reticence: ?This world hath damned me to misery, to split mine loins for kith that thank me not for my pain or wretched love. Offering me but a single stallion that did beg for motherly compassion and entreat mine love for him? Oh Dearest Odin. Thee I still remember, and it is thy essence which I carry deep within myself. For now I resurrect thine dormant remains and open my legs for a child made practically from thee, and thusly thy true son. Let him, mine last babe, benefit from thy learned wisdom and know the love thee hath once craved.?

In wrenching pain she screamed, her body hot and inundated by exerted fire as her skin melted between her thighs, in patches of runny wax that lathered the baby?s head and stifled his wailing with the tallow that dripped into his mouth, choking him with her pained, labored convulsions. She shuddered as she felt him leave her canal, watched him writhe in an instinctive attempt the cut the umbilical cord with his antler?still smeared in his mother?s sodden skin, making the blade slick and dull.

Her breath was shallow, body motionless as she listened to the crying of her son? Felt her glow begin to fade as he slowly opened his eyes to the fatigued calling of his name: ?Heero?? Which in ancient tongue meant hope? Her last hope for this forsaken, bitter world that came to be. The sobriety of mankind plagued the Realm with corrupted warlords and incarnate, reprobate fears; distorted aspirations to avarice and beauty to chaotic decadence. It was turning an expanse of dreams? into objective reality.

With his birth? A day? a time of redemption when light may once more reign over darkness, as it had in epochs past and was destined by the prophecy? When she was born: first offspring of the Dual Creators, raped later by that father and impregnated with her incestuously lurid kin.

She had populated this land with light at one time, in the coital shadow of absence and perverted precedents, and had continued to breed for millennia. But even she would become the darkness she loathed, succumb to the chill of obscurity that now extinguished her fire. Darkness is by definition the absence of light, and therefore whenever a child conceived in radiance finds death, the opposite advances in its vacancy.

Darkness consumes. Light satiates its appetite.

Beautiful blue eyes her boy had, deep as the celestial skies where these stars resided, she noted sleepily. Expressive like her lovely Odin?s and listless with his love for her warmth and parental touch, sparkling with an innocence his earlier brothers could never realize. And as she felt her limbs turn to ash and smoldering cinders in that irrevocable moment, felt herself sink into the void that now beckoned for her return to genesis?s anonymity, she saw Heero reach out his hand to hers. A smile on his little face. The queen sighing as her body crumbled to maternal dust with the brushing of his fingers against her brazen skin.

The wind blew her remains away. And she was gone? Heero left to himself on the floor of the barren sanctum, wriggling his toes and clapping his hands together in a futile attempt to turn himself onto his stomach, so that he could crawl over to the place in which his mother for his delivery had lain. Revel in her lingering warmth and ashen soul. But he started to cry when he only succeeded in rubbing his skin raw against the stone tiles.

One of the Star?s siblings heard the baby?s wails from her illuminant spring, rising from her bath to investigate the din. And upon entering that forsaken chamber, she saw the Pegasus lying in a mess of regal wax and cinder. His tiny fist was full of the former queen?s ashes, which he stuck into his mouth for a slobbery, surrogate kiss. Sneezing as a few of the particles landed on his nose.

?The empress?? she whimpered while staring at the remains on Heero?s lips. ?She?s dead??

The blazing woman swayed with shock, her hand on her luminous breast as she stood over the child and narrowed her eyes at his inadvertent culpability. Her other hand grasped her dress as she shook from incinerate hatred. From the sight of this feigned, treasonous baby that claimed her sovereign?s light.

?She died because of thee,? the star spat at the infant Pegasus violently, falling to her knees and slapping him with enough force that he flipped onto his stomach and bashed his chin against the marble floor?her scorch?d hand branded on his face. ?Thee took all her strength, having to purge thine begging body from he?self. She couldn?t maintain her light.?

She grabbed the shrieking Heero by his ankle, his small hands grabbing at her wrist as she walked to the edge of the sanctuary and held his battered form over the railing, breaking the bone she grabbed with a flip of her wrist.

?Traitor.?

And she released him.

Watched him plummet to the bowels of the dark landscape. Sneered as she saw a burst of light and feathers surround his newborn flesh in a resplendent, occult spell of survival?shrouding himself in scintillant rings and crackling, evanescent glimmers that burned the sky. His white mane was tossed in the air that whisked passed him in his descent, unable to manage his transformed wings or utilize the current as his navigator? His frightened whinny the last sound she heard as he spiraled to the ground.

But then came a tug on the colt?s tail and a nudge under his rear; the bracing of his wings as an aged stallion galloped across that midnight plane beside him. The elder's hooves thrashed along the transient air, scorching prints and friction sparks across the blue? Steadying the infant?s flight with a sturdy body and acquired skill. The stallion's translucent feathers embraced the foal as he carried them both to the earth. Odin?s equestrian ghost nuzzling the child, gazing upon his son nostalgically as he surveyed the toppled colt with silence? Before turning away and dissipating into that twilight with but a saddened whisper.

?I?m always here.?

And Heero was alone. Left crying in his refurbished human state.

He became the target of the Nightmare that stalked the shadow, still hungry after gnawing on the bones of its own spawn and craving fairer flesh.

It circled the abandoned Pegasus, claws bared as it monitored the area for a guardian pentangle to claim the babe. Fangs glistening as it ran its salivary tongue along their cusps, coating them in dangling bridles of spit that momentarily restrained the demon?s appetite for discretion? And launched itself.

Getting a venomous barb heaved through its neck. Instantly killing it. Spattering Heero in black blood.

The unnoticed serpent-woman emerged from her hovel in the passing shadow to look upon the infant she?d saved, from the husband that had only moments ago devoured their own offspring and left an empty, grieving void in her maternal breast. The need for a baby?s dependence was mirrored in her hardened face, those etched lines beneath her gravelly eyes and glazed vision blinding her to adversity. Her feminine urge to coddle and protect the newly born surpassed her innate, relentless nature. Blurring the enmity of light and darkness in her searching stare.

She raised her brow slightly when she heard the pale child?s laugh, when he touched her scaled skin with negligent warmth. And as he cooed against her muted growls, tickling her belly with his breath, she couldn?t help but let her eyes soften and take the baby in her arms, holding his willing mouth up to her breast to nurse.

The Nightmare turned from her mate?s repulsive corpse, hissing at his twitching body as she slapped him with her scabby tail and severed the male?s head, slithering deeper in that darkness?clutching this replacement child against her as she sought the refuge of her nest. To continue his rearing.

She raised him as her own. Taught him to hunt and skulk and fight with cruelty and stealth? Until the time she died, gutted by her husband?s brother. For she used herself as a diversion so that Heero could escape the wrath. And he watched the paradigm of Vengeance as he flew away? Saw her eyes roll back and blood coat the ground in demented sable. Just a massacre of splashed black and leveling gray.

And his prevailing light.

Damned from heaven. Regurgitated by hell.

[Tomorrow]

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing.




A long white face speared with a flaring crystalline horn, whose effulgent crackles seared spirals and glowing furrows along the antler as the jeweled surface reflected her countenance in molten, wavering streaks of white and golden flames. Dark blue eyes regarded her intently, as deep, cavernous wells full of murky water that clouded the gazer's image in its precipitate mists and swallowed the wisher's plea with garbled resonance. Above that cistern hung a bucket to sample the blurry water, although secured by a rusted, knotted chain that screeched when the crank was turned and created friction sparks as the metal links clanked with each revolution, protesting against the invasion on that veiled tarn. The pail sounded anxious to break and splash into the darkness, to leave the drinker and wisher stranded with thirsty hopes and parched dreams. Mysterious but pragmatic. Inscrutable. His body was wrapped in a pelt of pearlshine that shimmered in the ghoulish moonlight and sprayed along the tips of his tattered feathers, blanching his savage mane and skimming the hard, lean muscles of the horse's rear and calves.

The beast startled her with his regality and rigid poise. His eyes held her captive in those cistern irons.

Strong arms wrapped around her back and slid along her scintillant, heated skin, with his callused hands caressing her shoulders as he pressed her against him and rubbed his hips through her sheer gown. He blew against the sensitive flesh beneath her ear while nipping and nuzzling at her collarbone, seducing her to stillness.

Relena's body stiffened and locked her limbs in place, prisoner to his stare as the optic shackles grew tighter. Trembling.

His lips claimed her stunned mouth and possessed her with gentle groans and salivary ministrations and soft sucking on her lower lip, massaging her tongue and fondling her mouth with carnal, sensual covetousness. Thieving her breath and craving her soul and sexuality.

Her eyes bolted wide when the ocular fetters coiled subtly and deliberately around her neck and her breath hitched in her throat, inducing her breasts to quiver and body tighten in anticipatory release, lips tingling and swelling and her mouth lubricated with foreign panting and sensations. Overwhelming her.

Convulsions ravaged her in starlit spires and cyclical lunar phases of full and waning shudders as his rhythm hastened. He wracked her soul with his aroused grunts and sexual moans that mated with her stifled, intimate whimpers and scream of coital and ethereal marriage. He thrust into her warmth and whispered her name in strained groans, burying his head into her neck and tangling in her damp, glistening strands that kissed his shoulders. Filling her. Owning her.

She felt her legs collapse and consciousness withdraw from her senses, cold and empty and throbbing in a libidinous daze of satiation as she reached out her hand in trying to grab a fist full of the stallion's mane to keep herself from falling. But she watched-- Heady and groggy as her fingers slid through the pale gossamer and grazed the scar on the animal's cheek, remnant of a faded handprint. Dark and gray, seeming jagged against his brilliant coat and the sharpness of those piercing eyes. Out of place and tacitly reminiscent. With a gasp, she looked into those orbs of mesmeric, abysmal Prussian one last time before encroached on by oblivion. Abandoned to lonesomeness.

Bewildered and lost.

The Pegasus was stoic, looking straight ahead and devoid and unaffected by her sudden fall, just staring where she once stood-- And was steady. Undisturbed by the breeze that tousled his unkempt mane and licked at the simmering, smoldering horn. Mindless of the moonbeams that showered his shins and cooled his heated body--

And then he shook his head once, trimming his face and cloaking his fiery pinnacle in threaded tufts of white, blinking his eyes for a few moments-- And shook it again, stomping his hooves upon the illuminant earth and scraping them across the grass, lighting the air with sparkling puffs of dust and silver pollen.

He immediately came to his senses, escaping from the lull of her sultry verses and the lilting waver in her voice, bringing his mind back to consciousness as he surveyed the dormant maid.

She'd seen him. He knew. Why else would she have collapsed, if not at the sight of a legendary, assumedly extinct creature fabled for abducting women? There could be no other reason. She saw him, would tell her family about him, could get him hunted and caged and exposed. Endanger the procreation of his race.

And so she'd have to die. To preserve his secret? she would be sacrificed.

That was the best option.

He lowered his forehead and craned his sturdy white neck that gleamed with glossy, sinewy brawn in the twilight, a few disheveled locks hovering above his muzzle and concealing his eyes as they narrowed, focusing on her smooth, pale throat. He was resolute about making the slit clean and precise and painless for the unfortunate Selenian. This Horseman may have been ruthless, but in no way merciless or sadistic. For she was innocent of all but blindness, and he refused to defile her because of inherited physical perfection.

Her nervous shivering made him struggle with his own uncertainty, but the suppleness of her skin and her erratic breathing twisted his stomach and burned it in a roaring forge that melted his innards and recast the tissue into a sweltering residue of passion. Muted purrs escaped her lips when his hands steadied her hips, his fingers tentatively grazing her inner thighs.

He stopped mid-swing. Frozen by the vividness of his vision. His limbs shook from the sudden onslaught of lust and glimpses of promiscuity.

When he dipped his head so he could lavish her breasts and intoxicate himself on her draught of warmth, corporeality, and sensuousness, his ears pounded with her halting moans and lewd, enticing gasps and strains. They made him shudder, groan, enthralled by her body's reaction to his touch. Wanting more from her.

This Pegasus had to back away from the hypnotism of maiden's nearness, distance himself in order to regain his senses and clear his mind of licentiousness. To keep himself focused on a task he quickly realized, because of whatever curse upon herself she must have earlier canted, was impossible to complete. Her song must have been one of provocation and imminent wantonness, because when determined to kill her for his own advantage a graphic image of carnality prevailed.

But he couldn't just leave her; the risk of her divulging his existence was too inevitable. It would be totally foolish to rely on her silence. But he couldn't approach her in hostility either, so it seemed.

He had to know, had to understand why her mere presence seduced him. Why the transient, feathery expiration of her breathing caused his body to twitch with arousal, why the delicate rise and fall of her chest made his throat clench shut and his heart constrict and defiantly contort, even if only briefly. And he had to break her spell over him, needed to isolate her and force her to revoke the lascivious anathema. Take her to a place where he could break her.

His lair.

Resolved in this, he knelt beside her body and wedged his head beneath her back, twisting his neck to cause her form to shift and drape over his shoulder blades, letting the hem of her twinkling, ivory gown spill in a frothy waterfall onto the grass and splash along his legs in the mildness of the zephyr. After a few moments of writhing for the sake of adjustment, the stallion broke into a grating stride through the incandescent and glimmering foliage while spreading his wings, reliant that the winds knew the way to his citadel and would carry him there with little coaxing.

As if prophesying.

* * * *

Dre-e-e-e-e-e-e-a-a-a-a-a-mmm?
Dre-e-e-e-e-e-e-a-a-a-a-a-mmm?
Bri-i-on-g-l?id?

Rev-e-la-tory-y-y? in a realm of fantasy?

Tai-bre-e-e-amhhhh? r?ocht fantais?ocht?

A pray-er from humanity? for its realm of fantasy?
Bring to me?
Let me see?
Let me know?
Help me be?

Paidir?
an cine daonna?

Dre-e-e-e-e-e-e-a-a-a-a-a-mmm?
Dre-e-e-e-e-e-e-a-a-a-a-a-mmm?
Bri-i-on-g-l?id?

The transcendent wisps of an elfin fire popped and hissed as their shrouded, smoky ringlets lifted to the stars and smudged the night with filmy shreds, clouding the calico of soft silver-blue in gauzy, gray lace. A winged horse morphed from the ashen fog and glittered within the cracking, luminous sparks, airily flapping its wings to dispel and shear the surrounding smoke, brandishing its horn with the use of astral flickers that emanated from beyond the fumes. It's eyes were dark and obscure, black as chilled coals in the twilight. And the drab creature lasted but only a few moments before the winds cut through its midsection and sliced the smoggy vapor in two, dissipating as the severed remains rose further into the heavens.

The mystic's eyes flashed open when the smoke disseminated, breathing heavily and with sweat dripping down his face in premonitory trickles. Exhausted and startled by the graveness of his trance and sacrosanct ecstasy that left him shaking and his heart burning with every beat, his left hand reached over and clutched his prayer breads, intuitively looping the holy bracelet around his hand another time before being able to properly focus on the natural world again. His light blond hair fluttered in the breeze, brushing against his pointed ears and drifting across his gentle sea-green eyes, a gaze that held sacred compassion and wisdom of the supernatural in their depths. Empathy for those of this world and hope for souls of the next.

A young elf, descendant of those who are the mystics for the Dreamers' Realm, the priestly caste that mediates with humanity and divines revelation from its thoughts, epiphanies, and pure imagination. Lost in the tribute of their raptures and unitive stupors. They guide these fabricated figments to salvation, to the eternal gate outside of man's legend and reminiscence where they await the day when they may be committed to memory and find refuge in that timeless chamber of the human mind. Forever remembered, and therefore immortal. Simply, he was a member of the venerated nobility.

He had it again, that horrid vision. One in which the Pegasus flies lofty and free, but with damnation at its heals. Where the supposedly extinct Horseman circles the moon and is engulfed by the satellite's brightness and lustrous beauty, from which it turns dark and wretched and ugly. Nothing but a shadowy crater in the sky and repulsed by the stars.

He still didn't understand its meaning, couldn't decipher the rapture's implication, and yet it'd been recurring for over a month, plaguing him with each meditation and every trance he encouraged. No matter how he concentrated and took to prayer and fasting and penance, his mysticism lead him to that single vision. Disconcerting him with its vividness and drowning him in confusion.

Which drenched his body in sweat. Gave him apocalyptic spasms. Made him grieve for the condemned spawn of Nightmares and their ways, for the astray sinners of light that couldn't find their way back to the expanse of stars and moonbeams. Abandoned to a world of oblivion and nullity that promised forgetfulness? total erasure from man's remembrances. And thus death.

But he couldn't worry about their transgressions then; he had to concentrate on interpreting his revelation.

So the righteous elf leaned over to stoke the fire-- A slight moan.

His ears perked at the sound, limbs stiff and eyes wide, and he turned his head to try and discern its whereabouts and voice-- Near the thicket. He rose, grabbing his flagellant whip and walking towards the quiet whimpers, pushing aside the glinting boughs and trudging through the brilliant, lucent bushes in search of the maiden--it was a female cry, he quickly surmised, since its pitch was high and with the knell of innocence. Though he approached the grove with deliberate steps and his garments gathered in his hands, keeping them from scraping across the ground and catching in the shrubbery.

Upon reaching the briar, he was shocked. Rigid. Utterly confounded to see a Pegasus, the stallion from his former, baleful ecstasies, galloping beneath the bronze shade from the trees and darting through the thick radiance of the underbrush. Its lumbered sprint was purposeful and intimidating, powerful as its pinion glimmered in the moonlight and leveled the foliage in its path, pummeling the stipuled light beneath his hooves.

As though driven by something greater than himself.

But what really caught the mystic's eye was the Selenian hanging over the Pegasus's back, with her long, gold hair in disarray and her weak calls for help filtering through the umbrage, the pleas somewhat muddled and almost involuntary. As if her remonstration was meant for another besides the assailing Horseman. More like for the prying interloper.

"I ask that you stop," the yellow-haired elf beseeched as the stallion barreled forth in a thunderous ferocity, although undaunted by the saint's request as the animal refused to even take his eyes from yonder. The mystic was forced to lunge aside into the glistening, bulbous reeds when the animal disobeyed, seeming insensitive and bold enough to spear him if the clergyman remained obstinate and in his path.

The priest looked up from the ground at the retreating form of the stallion and narrowed his eyes, untangling the string of beads from around his wrist and tossing it like a makeshift lariat, catching on the horse's hind leg.

"I warned you to stop!"

The Pegasus stumbled on the lasso as the round pearls slid beneath his hoof, bringing him to his knees before the usually kind mystic and leaving him face to face with dirty, naked feet. The animal's stillness was determined and assessing.

Teleportation?

"I don?t know your exact reasoning for abducting her, but you must let her go. You have no right to take her against her will." The Horseman rose to his feet with a brutish confidence as he towered over the elf, tail tossing back and forth and wings flinching as his eyes skewered through the holy seer and to the road. A necessity to move forward churned in those blank depths, a singular focus as though Quatre were a nagging ghost that he could ride over. He snorted in admonition. "Please don't be stubborn. I'm well-versed in scripture, and so I have an idea about what you might want from her. And I won't let you kill her for a few notes of seduction."

Swinging his antler, the stalwart beast attempted to threaten the clergyman into submission, scoring the grass with his hooves. But the priest only shook his head and sighed, pained that he should have to combatively confront this endangered creature.

"Please, Horeseman, think of your soul. Spare her, if nothing else, for your own sake."

Then the lunar heiress shifted her halo-crowned head, turning her face towards the young mystic and giving him a clear view of her pink lips and pretty countenance, embroidered with honey-blond twine and think, sooty lashes. Her breasts swelled with her syncopated breathing, white and shining in the starlight's resplendence.

"Princess?"

With a begrudging, insulted grimace at this discovery, the elf ripped the beads from his bracelet and threw them at the Pegasus, screaming, "Briongl?id!" as he pitched the pearls into the numinous solemnity of the night. A striking juxtaposition of spheres of glowing white and ringed luminescence against the blackness engrossed the Horseman. And in a burst of feathers and wild, reverential glinting they transformed into a flock of lantern doves that beat their wings against the darkness, gargling an ancient, sepulchral nocturne through the stagnancy and pecking at his pale flesh. Drawing blood. Bone-colored talons scratching at his neck and ankles. Deafening him with their dismal cry. He sliced at the menacing birds with his spiral, cutting and tearing and murdering them in numbers, with the clergyman throwing twice as many more in retaliation. Barraging him with fire-winged aerials, plunging him into a pit of sanctity and song and light.

And as the storm of doves overcame the beast, the mystic took his whip and began beating his own breast, shrieking with a fevered passion to the heavens as the leather straps scarred him, "I call upon the power of human revelation! Aid your child! Free your daughter! Hear me!" Over and over, flogging himself and causing walls of fire to spurt from the ground and trap the Horseman in an incinerate cage, charring his tail and scalding his flailing limbs. But still he charged the downy battalion and burned himself on the hallowed, subliminal flames, with tears running down his face from the thick smoke that irritated his eyes and dried his throat. But he wouldn't surrender. Wouldn't give up. Fought on.

He kissed her.

The mystic's hand froze in that momentary glimpse.

She moaned and writhed beneath his body, panting his name in labored repetition.

He felt himself grow warm and his loins ache.

They joined as one flesh in a dance of sonorous cries; perspiration; spasms; and tears, wound around each other in a somatic, slick rope as they convulsed and completed one another.

The elf instantly dropped his whip as the vision overwhelmed him in orgasmic waves, forcing him to his knees while he clutched his heart in empathic sensuality. Blushing and spent. Sweat dripped down between his eyes, his breathing heavy and erotic. Sexual.

"Heero?" And then gurgles sputtered from his mouth as the stallion's blade slit the priest's throat in his moment of distraction, with the Horseman not even stopping to watch as the blood ran down that pallid neck and soiled the mystic's clean gray robes in a grueling, gory web of crimson. His eyes glazed over and he tumbled clumsily to the illumined earth. Choking. Gasping. Surrounded by a rank circle of dismembered bird carcasses. Left for dead as the Pegasus galloped off into the bracken, stained with blood. Not looking back.

"Hee-ro?" His body twitched and he felt sleep clutch at his consciousness, blurring his vision and bringing tears to his dim turquoise eyes. "You? I?"

"Hush now, dear Quatre," a figure whispered huskily as she knelt over his dying body in the darkness, regarding the elf with a sultry, nightmarish smile and accursed eyes that gleamed with flares of waning blue. She ran her long thin fingers along his cheek and allowed the chain from her illumined, golden manacles to linger at his neck, causing his skin to prickle. "You once spoke with such conviction about saving my soul? but now it looks like you need me to save your life."





AN: I will reveal the pairings that I'm sure of in the story: HYxRP, DMxHS, QWxDC, ZM(MP)xLN? and there will be some love triangles going on, as suggested by the first chapter and this one. I'm not exactly sure what I'm doing with Trowa yet, and I'm not resolved as to whether or not I want Wufei paired with anyone at all. Thanks everyone, and please tell me what you think. ~_^