Title: Ruins of the Horseshoe Seamounts
Author: A. Karswyll
Fandom:
The Vision of Escaflowne
Rated: T
Words: 5,000
Summary: A pendant was given too late to the girl who was destined to save Gaea. But that doesn’t mean Destiny wouldn’t have the last say.
Warnings: Torture
Fanelian Embassy Challenge No. 2: The anime series didn't happen as
we know it, but the pre-series stuff definitely did (i.e. Folken, Goau,
Varie died). Therefore Van and Hitomi never met via pillar of light,
etc. Write 5,000 words or less where Van and Hitomi do meet, detailing
how they would meet and what would happen accordingly. So how does this
change in canon affect Van/Hitomi and the others?
5,000 words.
Gaean Destiny War
Four Years after Zaibach Invasion of Fanelia
Five Months after the Capture of King Van de Fanel
The pair of soldiers moved steadily about their job emptying the
cages of the sorcerers’ examination subjects that had expired or were
slated for termination. Entering the last cage of the day, the two
easily lifted the brutalized and malnourished subject up and shuffled
out with their burden. Dumping the subject into the back of the
motorized cart with the other subjects slated for disposal they the
climbed abroad the vehicle and began the trip out of the city.
It took them some hours to reach their destination in the hills
behind the capital where all the disposal pits were dug. As the two
soldiers started tossing the cart load into a recently open pit, a
bulldozer worked to plough earth back over another nearby pit.
Task complete the two soldiers joined their companions in the nearby
mess tent for their afternoon meal when the lunch bell rang. No watch
was posted around the perimeter as the soldiers ate. None were needed.
After all, the valley was a massive grave.
As the soldier ate and chattered in the newest pit there was
movement. Red eyes were barely able to open blood caked eyelids before
closing in exhaustion from the effort it had taken. Within the mind a
thought burned pure.
And the will of a king bent the fabric of the world.
In the pit there was a flash of white and a pillar of light vanished into the sky.
. . .
Hitomi rolled from her bed, her sleepy mood fleeing fast when she
saw the amount of sunlight streaming into her rented room in Cascais,
Portugal. A quick check revealed the other single bed in the room was
already vacant and she knew that her mother was up. Swiftly changing
from her sleeping wear into summer clothing, she dragged a brush though
her short honeyed hair, and exited the room.
Bounding down the steps and through the halls of the bed and
breakfast, Solar Dom Carlos, Hitomi joined the archaeological
expedition members that were already in the breakfast room. Exchanging
greetings with her parents as she joined them at their table, Hitomi
had her father translate the Portuguese breakfast menu for her in order
to give her selection to the server.
“Excited to be here?” Natsumi Kanzaki questioned her daughter as she finished up her breakfast tea.
Hitomi nodded enthusiastically once her order was placed. She was
happy to be out of school for the moment and thrilled about joining her
parents on their expedition.
Natsumi laughed softly, brown eyes twinkling as she looked fondly at her archaeologist husband. “You aren’t the only one.”
“Who wouldn’t be?” Hajime Kanzaki scoffed. “With your new remote
sensing equipment—which is revolutionizing underwater archaeology as
you well know—we’re ready to really begin excavating at the site.”
An issue for all archaeologists was knowing what was beneath the
surface to locate artefacts. But the issue was even harder for their
site which wasn’t just underwater—but underwater, metres of sediment,
and feet of hardened molten rock.
Hitomi was nearly done eating when her brother stumbled into the
breakfast room and Natsumi helped Mamoru with the menu. As mother and
son talked, Hajime leaned across the table as he reached for something
in his pocket.
“I’ve got something for you Hitomi,” Hajime pulled out an oval shaped pendant of red stone.
“Grandmother’s pendant!” Hitomi’s eyes widened as she recognised the necklace.
“It’s yours now Hitomi,” Hajime held it out to her.
“Oh, Dad—I couldn’t! You’ve always said it was your good luck charm!” Hitomi refused.
Hajime smiled as he placed the pendant in his daughter’s palm,
wrapped her fingers around the stone. “I don’t need it anymore. I’ve
already had my wish come true. It’s yours now.”
Flustered Hitomi accepted the gift. Opening her hand she looked at
the stone that rested so lightly and warming in her hand. “Thank you
Dad.”
Hajime squeezed her arm affectionately. “And I want to you
remember this—it’s what Grandmother Yuri told me—if you wish hard
enough, your wishes will come true.”
Hitomi raised her green eyes from the stone and looked into her
father’s green eyes, her face an expression of amazement and
thankfulness. Hajime squeezed her arm again and then turned his
attention back to his wife and son. Leaving Hitomi to think of her
grandmother and the gift she had just been given.
. . .
Fifteen days later the expedition—with the exception of those manning the equipment and Hajime monitoring things—representatives from the federal Portugal archaeological department, film crew, and the Kanzaki siblings were all leaning against the railing of
Poseidon’s Gift. Hitomi breathed deep, appreciating the distinctive scent of the open sea as they floated about eight hundred kilometres off the coast of Portugal over the underwater sea formations known as the Horseshoe Seamounts.
All eyes were straining for the first glimpse of the colossal treasure coming up from the depths that had been found within a building that had been identified as Poseidon’s temple. Hitomi’s fingers worried the pendant around her neck as she hoped nothing went wrong.
The archaeologists had worked fast once they had cut through the roof and discovered that the temple had been buried by the meteor fallout and that the interior—until they had cut that hole—had been air tight. All the artefacts they could locate using the underwater camera had been brought up and rushed to facilities in Portugal to reverse the salt-water damage and preserve the items. Items that were a fantastic profusions of religious and secular artefacts and even decomposed human bodies. Bodies of people they knew had sought shelter and had been entombed alive when they had thought themselves safe, just like the people of that ancient Roman city Pompeii.
The last item was a statue slightly over eight metres high that was of a strange armour-like motif that no one had ever seen before.
Hitomi drew her thoughts from the strangeness of the statue and the other treasures discovered as the top of the statue broke the surface of ocean. The sight aroused an appreciative murmur from witnesses as the crane lifted the giant figure from the water.
Water slipped smoothly off the statue’s polished metal and dripped from the red and blue cloak as it hung in the air. The triangular green glass set into the shoulders caught and refracted the bright sunlight. As they operated the crane and swung the statue around to stretch it out on the deck, something went wrong. The edge of the statue’s feet did not clear the side of the boat and the forward momentum pushed the statue to its knees.
Shouts of horror arose as they witnessed an action that would most certainly break the statue. To everyone’s amazing, the knees bent easily and the top of the statue tilted forward. Revealing that while archaeologists had found the statue standing rigidly upright in the temple, parts of it were
mobile.
“Talos,” a Japanese expedition member exclaimed wide-eyed.
“Talos?” Hitomi looked curiously at the speaker.
“Talos! In myth he is said to be a giant bronze statue forged by the god Hephaestus that became the guardian of Crete!” the man was hardly able to speak in his excitement. “That’s it! That’s why the Greek’s had the legend! It’s Atlantean!”
Hitomi could not argue with that interpretation as the man hurried off to share his deduction with her father. As the team conveyed about how to get the statue into the position they want it in—lying on the deck—Hitomi turned back to appreciating the statue while her fingers continued to worry her pendant.
The crane started up again and Hitomi swore that the red glass in the statue’s upper left chest pulsed. But when she stared hard at the glass and nothing happened again, she dismissed it as an illusion of the sun playing through the glass.
As the crane began lifting the giant figure upright there was an ominous metallic sound. Hajime shouted and the crane operator stopped the crane. Hitomi fisted the pendant her fingers had been worrying.
Clunk.
The chest piece and head of the statue snapped open. Liquid splashed out as a body was spilled onto the deck. First there were shrieks from those present then stunned silence as they stared in horrified fascination at the sprawled body.
Hitomi stared at the figure; one hand rising to cover her rapidly beating heart while the other tightened more around her grandmother’s pendant.
“My God,” one of the archaeologists finally whispered.
“This is… phenomenal.” Hajime’s voice was equally hushed. They had recovered the other bodies in the temple, but this… this was truly phenomenal. This body had been inside the statue and from what they could now see in the statue’s interior, the statue was designed to have a person inside.
Hitomi stared at the sprawled body in the red coloured puddle it rested in. The pendant in her hand seeming to burn her skin. Hitomi moved in for a closer look as she realised that some of the ‘red water’ that dripped from the body’s mutilated back was… blood.
Dead men didn’t bleed.
Hitomi’s breathe catch in her throat. Her breathlessness nearly strangling her when the body opened its eyes. Those eyes were a striking red colour that were clouded with unimaginable pain in that cut up face and
looking straight at her.
“Dad! He’s alive!” Hitomi bellowed as she covered the distance between herself and the body like the professional sprinter she was.
“Hitomi—what? That’s ridiculous—” Hajime’s dismissing reaction to Hitomi’s words weren’t the only ones cut off when they saw the body—
the body—start to curl up onto its side even before Hitomi reached it.
“Oh my God,” Natsumi gasped in horror, hands flying to her mouth as she saw her daughter kneel beside the body. Witnessed the white grip of the body’s hand as it fisted around Hitomi’s hand.
Pandemonium ensued as more people, especially those with first aid and other medial training, rushed towards the two. The man that had explained the Talos legend to Hitomi already on the phone to Portugal calling for a rescue helicopter.
. . .
Hitomi sat in the chair beside the hospital bed as she read aloud from Plato’s
Critias for the young man that lay so still under the sheets. It had been nearly a month since he, and the statue he had been in, had been pulled from the ocean. He had been moved from intensive care about a week ago but he had yet to rouse from his coma.
The brutality he’d endured had included suffering from anaemia, extreme malnourishment, a rupture spleen, a compounded fracture of the thigh bone, a snapped radius in his left arm, dislocated left shoulder, electrical burns, numerous knife wounds, and serious bruises with one of his kidneys not functioning because of that bruising.
Even now public inquiry and scrutiny hadn’t died down regarding the tortured young man—especially with the furore that had been roused when his blood work had been leaked by an unscrupulous technician. His blood type was like no one else’s on Earth. Geneticists were going nuts over his DNA too. Even those that declared the entire thing a staged hoax couldn’t refute the young man’s medical records.
“But when the divine portion within them began to fade, as a result of constantly being diluted by large measure of mortality, and their mortal nature began to predominate, they became incapable of bearing their prosperity and grew corrupt.” Hitomi recited from
Critias.
“Divine portion?” a deep voice rasped derisively. “They got arrogant and that made them corrupt—divinity and morality had nothing to do with it.”
Hitomi’s head jerked up from the book in shock. Green and red eyes stared at each other.
“You—you’re awake!” Hitomi stuttered in astonishment.
The young man on the bed continued to study her calculatingly from his scared face. “And you are?”
“Oh!” Hitomi straightened in her seat, “I’m Hitomi Kanzaki. I don’t know if you remember me but you looked at me when you tumbled from your, er—statue.”
He looked faintly puzzled at her words as he gave his own name, “Van de Fanel. Where am I?”
“Cascais’s Central Hospital,” Hitomi answered. At his blank look she elaborated. “Portugal. Next to Spain. Southwest Europe.”
He shook his head.
Puzzled herself and worried about memory loss Hitomi finally remembered to reach for the call button and asked, “Where do you remember being last?”
“In Zaibach,” Van said flatly as his expression turned hard.
Hitomi shook her head again just as Dr Silva entered the room, “I don’t know that place. Maybe Dr Silva does, we’ll ask him.”
. . .
A lot of question had been asked in moments following Van’s awakening and in the months that followed as his body healed. The first question had been about how Van was able to understand Hitomi, and vice versa, when it was audible to anyone listening that they were speaking two different languages. Hitomi spoke Japanese and Van some strange language with a smattering of ancient words from dead languages.
Surprisingly Van did know some of the more archaic Portuguese words and had been able to communicate to a degree with the police and other authorities that had questioned him. His answers had been hard for most people to accept and still were for a majority—even when backed up by his medical records and the equipment monitoring and video recordings taken onboard
Poseidon’s Gift.
Reluctantly most of the world had come to accept the scientifically impossible—Van de Fanel was an Atlantean from 12,000 years ago. What authorities and people could not fit into their worldview, they dismissed as ignorance and superstition from living thousands of years ago. Such as a remark about two moons and his reference to Earth as the Mystic Moon, they simply assuming that as Gaea was the Greek word for ‘earth’ that he was speaking of nations that had vanished in the meteorite strike that had destroyed the Atlantean homeland. Ignoring also, that he didn’t speak of a meteorite strike but of a war that had destroyed his country and lead to him being taken prisoner after a four year hunt.
Van felt to his despair that not even the young woman that could speak with him truly believed what he said. Picking up the shirt that had been provided for him upon his discharge from the hospital his hand froze in mid motion as the young woman in question bustled into the room.
“Oh!” Hitomi coloured faintly at catching him half undressed. “Sorry, Van, the nurses told me you were ready to go.”
Van scowled and Hitomi belatedly took the hint as she spun around on her heel to give him privacy to finish dressing.
“I hope everything fits okay,” Hitomi chattered nervously with her back to him.
Van shrugged the shirt over his heavily scared shoulders and began buttoning it up. It hung loosely on him but that was more from his current state of health than being the wrong size.
“It’s fine,” Van assured. “You can turn around now.”
Hitomi did so and took in the sight of him fully clothed and relatively healthy since his arrival in the hospital. Dressed in black slacks, his white shirt contrasted sharply with his bronzed skin colour that had not faded during his hospital stay, which showed it was his natural tone. His formerly shaved head was now toped by thick black hair and his striking red eyes looking with authority from a hansom face.
Authority that had a decisively dangerous edge as equally striking was the old scar that neatly bisected the left side of his face, running through his eyebrow and down his cheek bone. Much deeper and it would have taken his eye.
“Sorry about walking in like that,” Hitomi apologized, knowing that he was uncomfortable with people seeing the wing pattern that had been carved into his back and down his legs. “Van, I know you don’t like it being asked… but… why don’t you mind people seeing the one on your face?” she waved vaguely.
“Because I earned this one,” Van’s fingers briefly touched the lowest point of scar on his cheek remembering the shard end of the dragon’s tail, “during my succession rite.” His face twisted, the others had been brutally inflicted by the sorceress in retaliation for not find his wings.
Hitomi knew from his expression to drop it and hurriedly changed the subject. “Well? You ready to go?”
Van lifted his shoulders in a shrug. There wasn’t anywhere he could go so he didn’t know what to do, nor did he feel up to facing the differences of this world as witnessed from his hospital window and seen on the picture box.
“Well, come on then. We’ll get you settled in at Solar Dom Carlos where we’re staying and then we’ll go see you statue,” Hitomi said happily as she bounced out of the room.
Van frowned as he followed. His statue?
. . .
Van’s breath caught in his throat as Hitomi showed him the warehouse where the archaeological team was preserving ‘his statue.’ Dominated the space was the silver form of the ancient Ispano guymelef. He had not seen Escaflowne since the first battle with Zaibach when the invisible guymelefs had attack during his coronation ceremony and he had been transported away mid-fight and awakened in the forest frontier between Fanelia and Asturia alone and without Escaflowne.
Hitomi beamed happily as Van slowly and almost reverently approached the statue. She wasn’t the only one present in the room to witness the event. Her other family members and expedition crew were also present.
One of the archaeologists started to protest when Van nimbly scaled the scaffolding holding the statue upright but Hajime cut him off. While they considered the statue a priceless artefact the Atlantean would most definitely have a different view towards it.
Hajime was also eager to see if Van could open the statue so they could examine its interior. During the boat ride back to the harbour the chest and head of the statue had closed up again and they’d been unable these past four months to find an opening mechanism.
Van reached the chest and braced himself on the scaffolding in front of the engergist gem. Reaching out his hand he flattened his bare palm against the red stone and closing his eyes, breathed deep. He has spent four years fighting and running from Zaibach but he’d learned much about his mother’s people during those four years as his flight had taken him to the dark Asgard continent where in the end, Zaibach had captured him.
He had learned much indeed.
Breathing steadily he listened with his heart for the heartbeat of Fanelia’s protector. After a time he heard it, but strangely it was loud. Very loud. No, it wasn’t just Escaflowne he was hearing but another heart that beat in time with the guymelef’s.
Allowing his senses to expand he located the source of the twin heartbeat. Hitomi.
For some reason, learning that was not a surprise. Opening his eyes he took a nerve steadying breath and pushed his hand into the stone.
He heard sounds of amazement behind him as his hand stunk into the crystal and then withdrew with the drag-energist clutched in his fist. Taking a step back his knees bent to absorb the near six-metre drop to the ground.
Rising to his feet, he kept his eyes locked with Hitomi’s green ones as he approached her.
“How did you do that?” Hajime questioned breathlessly.
Only because the man was Hitomi’s father did Van take the time to answer. “The pilot of Escaflowne binds by blood pact.” Stopping a foot
away from Hitomi Van held out his hand with the drag-energist offered up.
Hitomi looked at Van, than at her mother and father before looking back at Van and the red coloured stone he held. Even as one hand reached out to touch the drag-energist her other hand rose to clutch at the pendant beneath her shirt.
“Will you believe Hitomi?” Van asked softly.
Hitomi hesitated; just touching and feeling the warmth of the stone beneath her finger tips. During Van’s four months of recovery they had talked much, the bond first forming when it was discovered that she was the only one he could talk to until his Portuguese improved. Then, the stories that he had told as he shared with words his world with her and she had told her own.
Each day they spent together drawing them emotionally closer.
She knew what he was asking. Would he not just believe in his words, but in him? Would she believe in him and follow?
Slowly her fingers moved over the drag-energist to cup the stone above just as Van cupped it below. Hitomi gave a trembling smile as within her heart she
believed.
Streams of red light erupted from the pendant beneath her shirt and the stone clasped between their hands. As their hands tightened the light began to flare brighter just as the energist stone in the chest of Escaflowne began to glow.
Witnesses threw up their arms to shield their vision as two pillars of light slammed into the ground through the ceiling. Enveloping Escaflowne and the two lovers to be as their hearts beat as one.
With a rush of energy the pillars disappeared from Earth and reappeared on Gaea.
Hitomi blinked to clear her vision, her mind dazed as her heart hummed with pleasure. She was no longer in the room that had housed the statue although the statue itself knelt off to the side on broken cobblestones with grass pushing though. They were surrounded by overgrown ruins but even the growth of vegetation could not hide that the damage had come from fire as bore by fire scorched and cracked stones.
“Where are we?” Hitomi looked around, wide-eyed as she looked up and saw not just the moon in the sky, but Earth behind the ivory orb.
Van’s lips thinned as he looked around. “Fanelia Castle.”
Hitomi remembered what he had said of his country and how it had been destroyed on the king’s coronation day and could not think of anything to say.
“What do we do now?” Hitomi released her hold on the drag-energist they both still when Van tugged on it.
Approaching the kneeling Escaflowne, Van hopped onto the bent knee and placed the drag-energist back into the guymelef. As he withdrew his hand and the energist pulsed with a unified heart beat he answered. “Now, we go to Zaibach and end this.”
. . .
Between Fanelia and Zaibach was the empire’s allied country of Asturia so Van took the long route to enemy territory. Flying Escaflowne in dragon mode along the northern coastline of Fanelia, which turned into the coastline of Daedalus, they avoided a majority of Zaibach scouts and patrols, but even in the remote terrain they traveled within they witnessed the brutal effects from a four year war on the land and people.
Along their travels they met resistance fighters, bandits, and people just trying to survive in the war torn world. Hitomi discovered that not only did her pendant belong to the people of Van’s mother, but on this world she saw the future and was able to see though the Zaibach stealth technology. She learned also, as her love for Van grew, that he was a king who fought to restore peace so that his people could have their home back. And his presence, learning who he was, seemed to breathe such life into those they met. To learn that the White Dragon still lived, and was free of Zaibach, gave the people something they desperately needed—hope.
“How could anyone think war is glorious?” Hitomi mustered as she leaned her cheek against Van’s back as Escaflowne soared through Zaibach airspace.
“Boys, fools, hypocrites, and the merchants that profit,” Van sneered in response remembering the cowardly actions of the mercantile Asturia. It alone, of all the nations impacted by Zaibach’s insane war as it ravaged Gaea searching for something, was one he felt no sorrow for. They had thought they had been protected by their treaties with Zaibach but they had not thought about what it meant to have a madman rule an empire.
Van caught a dragon wind and moved Escaflowne higher as they were coming in on Zaibach’s northern flank which was less guarded and patrolled then the south and east, but that did not mean much. Not with the empire’s ability to mass produce guymelefs and make floating fortresses invisible.
“Do you hear that Van?” Hitomi murmured.
“Hear what?” Van twisted his head back to look at his companion.
Her expression was distant as she heard something far away. “I can hear them Van. It’s time to fly.”
Before he could ask her what she meant he felt the change in Escaflowne. The wings drew into the body as the guymelef streamlined itself and he felt the rush of energy as they accelerated; turning into a blue-white streak in the sky.
As they raced through the sky and straight through the first defence line for the capital, Van could hear them to. The voices of the dragon people as they gathered themselves to speak and ensure their sacred duty to make sure their powers to make wishes a reality was never used again.
When Escaflowne slowed Van and Hitomi found they were hovering over the heart of the Zaibach capital. But even as the empire’s soldiers rallied Van piloted the guymelef downward to the great green dome. As Escaflowne touched the dome a pillar of green light shot up and enveloped them as the power spot beneath the capital heard and answered the white dragon’s call.
Flying through green light they emerged to find themselves in a gigantic room with an enormous telescope and an ancient man bound to life by the machines that surrounded him.
“Ah, so the Dragon and the Girl have come after all,” Dornkirk murmured as Escaflowne settled onto the floor.
Van was surprised that most of the anger he had felt for the emperor during the past four years was not there as he looked at the decrepit man that had roughed so much destruction. This would not be a fight of anger, but one of rightfulness.
“So, you have come to kill me?” Dornkirk inquired.
“No,” Van answered as he accepted the pendant that Hitomi handed to him. “I have come to make your wishes come true.”
“What?!” Dornkirk exclaimed in shock.
“But you should know Issac Newton,” Van called the emperor by this true name learned from the journal of Leon Schezar, “Not everyone really understands their wishes.”
Holding the pendant out before him he manifested his wings and let the power of his blood burn though him. Energy spilled out from the energist and all the power of the Atlanteans swept from the room to envelop the word.
The future guided by the mind of Hitomi as she set the Gaea on the path it was destined for.
. . .
Three months after the disappearance of Emperor Dornkirk—and the end of Zaibach’s war—wearing the traditional kimono-like garments of a Fanelian lady, Hitomi stood back from Van as he offered his prayers to the monuments of his father and mother.
Rising from his knee he turned back to her and reaching her side, their fingers wove together as hand-in-hand they made their way from the royal burial grounds back to the outskirts of the capital that was a beehive of activity as it was rebuilt. While Fanelia had almost no capita to rebuild, it had been a very self-sufficient nation before the war and had most of the resources it need within its borders.
Slowly and steadily the people of Fanelia were returning, and like the king, picking up a hammer and getting down to the business of rebuilding the capital city after it had stood empty for almost five years. First, the Zaibach soldiers stationed there had kept the people away, but when the dragons had moved in, that had chased both soldiers and Fanelians away. Only with Van’s return had the dragons begun returning to the forest.
“The messenger from Arzas has brought news from Daedalus and reports that they are willing to negotiate a trade on cod for redwood timber.” Hitomi reminded Van as they wound their way through the forest.
“We’ll have the foresters take a look and see if some harvesting can be done,” Van mustered knowing that the barrels of salted fish would be the cheapest and easiest way to feed the country with the coming winter. Fanelia’s fishing fleet had been targeted by Zaibach and needed to be rebuilt which is why they had to import. “Any news from Irini?”
Hitomi responded, “Yes, Merle says they’re rebuilding quickly and expected to be able to send the work force here to help within the next two weeks.”
Van nodded as they reached the outskirts of the city and began winding their way through the streets. Hand waves and calls of greeting were given to the pair, and given back by the two, as they progressed to the building that use to be an inn that was hosting the royal entourage.
People were slowly accepting that peace had come back even though many still walked about with weapons at hand. They had lost their peace to poor vigilance before and none would make the mistake of being caught unaware again. Vigilance would be something they would have to teach to the generations that would grow up not knowing war but with the world sharing the memory of the Destiny War it would not be a war that would be forgotten.
-FINISHED
