Thomas Reid - The Crystal Mountain

Kaanyr's sigh echoed through the room. "This is ridiculous! We're getting nowhere!"

When Aliisza didn't answer him, he returned to pacing. Aliisza glanced over at Zasian. He was watching Kaanyr with a mixture of fear and curiosity, his eyes wide. The strange childlike innocence that the priest exhibited continued to intrigue Aliisza. Beyond her distrust of the man, the youthful attitude belied the maturity of his face. If it was a hoax, he was carrying it off perfectly.

"I just wish I could remember," Zasian said as he returned to monitoring Kael. "I must have done something very bad to make him so angry at me."

Aliisza just watched the man next to her. Finally, when he looked up, she said, "Be glad that you can't."

She turned her attention back to Kaanyr. He returned her stare, but his mind seemed far away. Aliisza rose to her feet and crossed the floor.

"Hey," she said, taking Kaanyr's hand in her own. The preternatural warmth of his skin felt good. She had forgotten how much she used to seek out his touch. "What is it?"

Kaanyr shook his head, "It seems like we've been out here for days. Who knows? Maybe we have."

"And?" she prompted, pulling the cambion around to face her squarely. "What of it? We already agreed that waiting for Tauran to wake up was the best choice. Perhaps Tyr will have seen fit to grant his blessings to Tauran once more. But even if he hasn't, we won't be any worse off. Just be patient."

"I'm just so tired of feeling… helpless."

Welcome to my world, Aliisza thought, but she resisted the urge to snort in derision. Standing close to him, sharing that moment, felt familiar and comfortable, and she didn't want to lose it. Instead, she just watched him. Her mind flashed through a series of memories, of a happier time for the two of them, back in Amarindar, when they were master and mistress of their world. A lifetime ago, Aliisza mused. Several lifetimes, perhaps.

When she turned her attention back to Kaanyr, she was surprised to find him smiling at her. She could tell by the twinkle in his eye that he was thinking lascivious thoughts.

Aliisza returned the grin, though she felt slightly embarrassed. Must have been thinking the same things I was, she thought. "What?" she asked him.

"I was just remembering when you used to come find me in the throne room," Kaanyr said. "How you used to sit on my lap and squirm, trying to distract me, and I'd pretend not to notice just to aggravate you."

Aliisza chuckled and punched Kaanyr gently in the arm. "Infuriate me, is more like it," she said. "I should have known." She rolled her eyes playfully, then stepped into his embrace and snuggled there. "Mmm," she purred.

"Let's go," Kaanyr said abruptly, that old mischievous tone in his voice. "Just you and me, right now. Let's just take off into that silver void and find our old lives again. What do you say?"

Aliisza felt her smile turn sad as she pulled back to look him in the eye again. "You know I can't do that," she said, "and neither can you."

Kaanyr nodded and said, "I know, but would you if we could? Is there still enough of the old you in there somewhere that you could see yourself slipping away with me, starting over again, without… without all this?" He gestured around the two of them. "We didn't have such a bad life together, did we?"

You're just figuring this out now? Aliisza fumed. Only now, after using me as your personal skeleton key? She looked away and fought her frustrations at her lover's misguided ambitions. Instead of answering his question, she asked, "Where would we go? How would we escape this?"

Kaanyr shrugged, and a look of consternation crossed his own face. "I don't know," he said. "Does it matter? I just thought-"

"I'm sorry," Aliisza said, realizing she was spoiling the moment. "Yes, of course I would go with you. If none of this was happening, if there weren't other lives dependent on us for survival, and we could just slip away, steal back our place in the world, I would go with you." Maybe.

Kaanyr's smile returned. "I miss us," he said. "I really do."

That time, Aliisza couldn't help herself. "Then why in the Nine Hells would you do what you did to me?" she asked, her voice plaintive. "Why would you put me through all this? I never crossed you. I deserved better." She looked down, biting her lip.

Kaanyr laughed, then, a deep, long chuckle that made him shake. Aliisza glared at him, but she knew why he was laughing. That didn't make her any less angry about it.

When he finally caught his breath, he said, "You may never have crossed me, but you were hardly loyal, wench. You plotted your own course all the time, my instructions be damned." He saw her fury and softened his tone. "But that's exactly why I loved you so much," he said, taking her face in his hands. "That's what always drew me back to you, time and again. You may have kept your own counsel more than I would have liked, but you always had spirit."

Aliisza tried to cling to her anger, but his praise made her blush, and she couldn't help but smile. "You always knew how to flatter a girl," she said. "You know, maybe, after all this"-she gestured around the ruined chamber-"is over and we get away from everything, we can-"

A thump in the floor interrupted Aliisza. Kaanyr felt it too.

"What was that?" he asked, spinning in place.

"Let's find out," Aliisza said and walked to the opening in the wall.

As she strode to the hole and peered out, another thud, stronger than before, reverberated through the rotunda. It came from overhead, and it dislodged a chunk of stone from the fractured ceiling that landed very near Tauran's head before bouncing away.

"What is that?" Kaanyr demanded, moving beside her.

The other bubbles that had been drifting along beside their refuge had gathered together. They all jostled one another as they bobbed and flowed in the wake of the massive bubble with the mysterious figure inside. To Aliisza, it felt as though the current they followed had picked up speed, and the wash streaming behind the massive form had grown more turbulent. She had nothing by which to judge it, of course. No landmarks drifted by to give her any sense of speed or scale. It was just a gut instinct.

"I think we're getting close to something," Aliisza murmured, trying to stare in the direction she thought they were traveling. The effort was made more tricky due to their constant rotation in the void-it hurt her head too much to try to imagine the rotunda doing the spinning. "It feels like we're about to go down a drain or something."

"Wonderful," Kaanyr grumbled.

He turned and cast a withering glance at Zasian. "Is the bubble going to hold?"

Zasian shrugged. "He's dying. I can't stop it, only slow it down."

"How much time do we have?"

The priest shrugged again. "I don't know."

Aliisza could sense that he was afraid of saying the wrong thing. "Leave him be," she admonished when Kaanyr started to stomp toward Zasian. "We've got enough to worry about without you putting him in a panic again."

Kaanyr stopped, but he continued to glare at the priest. "He's lying. I know it. I just can't figure out what he's up to."

Aliisza sighed. She had long since given up trying to figure out the veracity of Zasian's behavior. If it was a trick, nothing they had said or done yet had caused him to slip up.

She turned back to the view beyond their little shelter. They had stopped spinning, and everything beyond her jagged little window remained in view. When she spotted something dark on what might have been a horizon, she blinked in a double take.

Could it be?

She waited and watched, not trusting her own vision enough to call Kaanyr over. After a few more moments, though, she was certain.

"Kaanyr," she said. When he joined her, she pointed. "What is that?"