Where There Were Seven
by DevilChild
Fandom: Louise Cooper's Time Master/Chaos Gate
Rating: Teen
Pairing: Yandros/Tarod
Author's Note: A prequel to the Time Master Trilogy. Written for: psychomachia in the Yuletide 2005 Challenge.
(And I was very glad to find the other fan who had read and loved these books, too.)
Copyright and Disclaimer: The Time Master and Chaos Gate series and the characters there from are creations of Louise Cooper. I make no claims to ownership or creation. This bit of not for profit modern folklore (thank you Prof. Jenkins) is mine.
On a lone promontory overlooking an alpine valley, they met as two shimmering columns of light and music.
Yandros shifted first — tall, with a graceful athletic build, a gleaming cascade of impossibly golden hair rippled over his shoulders. But his eyes, normally flashing through all the colors of the spectrum, remained the color of ashes.
Tarod followed suit and shifted to his human form. Tall, slender, with bone white flesh, a tangle of black hair, and green eyes.
They had come together countless times over the aeons: as birds on the wing, the wind whistling through mountain passes, a harmony of otherwise discordant notes, the chaos of two colliding storms.
But, given the ... circumstances of this meeting, their human forms (as if impossible perfection such as theirs was remotely human) seemed appropriate.
Tarod gazed deep into his brother's eyes, which were no longer solely the color of ashes, but flickered from time to time into the colors of sorrow and rage.
Taking Yandros by the hand, Tarod drew him close. "There is no other way," he whispered. And then he kissed him.
~oo(0)oo~
Monstrous volcanoes shot geysers of ash and lava towards a baleful red sky. With an unearthly scream, the wind howled across the desolate, hellish wastes.
His brother was nothing if not dramatic in his rage.
With a sigh, Tarod chose a form, one he knew would get his brother's undivided attention. "Yandros," he called.
He waited.
When Yandros arrived, he came as an enormous dragon. His eyes flashed a dangerous shade of red-orange. "That form offends me," he hissed, and made as if to turn and leave.
But before Yandros could spring into flight, Tarod gave a heavy, gusty sigh, sufficient to extinguish the fires of the nearest cinder cone, leaving in its wake a gleaming dome of obsidian. "Do I have your attention, or would you rather pout?"
"Pout?!" Yandros snapped in a gust of flame, "We are driven from the material world! Those — those — humans —" Yandros spat the word with another blast of flame "have chosen Aeoris and his insipid brood over us, their rightful masters."
"I have spoken with our other brothers," Tarod replied calmly. "We have an idea."
Yandros's eyes flashed the color of molten steel. "An idea about what?"
"About how to remind the world of man of our presence and our power. Order was not as complete in driving us from the world as they would like to think. Our brothers of Air, Water, and Space have discovered a way for us to still reach out and touch the world, after a fashion."
"After a fashion," Yandros snarled in contempt.
The wind whipped to a keening wail, stirring up a cloud of ash and cinder that would have blinded and killed a mortal man. When it passed, Tarod returned his body and clothes to their pristine and gleaming nature with a gesture. "Yes." He said, "Come and see." A snap of his fingers produced a gateway into his realms where their brothers waited. Tarod paused in the doorway. Finally, with a reluctant pifft! of scorching air, Yandros lumbered after.
There, spinning slowly, a hitch in its rhythm, a six spoked wheel of storm darkened the sky. Each spoke of the storm's wheel glittered in an unearthly shade of menace: actinic white, sickly lead-blue, molten crimson, sulfurous ocher-brown, black infinity, and the moldering green of decay.
"What is it?" Yandros gasped.
"A scourge," whispered his Brother of Fire.
"A reminder," hissed his Brother of Air.
"It's a little bit of all of us," Tarod said. "Wind, Water, Fire, Earth, Space, Time —"
"But it needs you, brother," said the Lord of Space, "It needs the Chaos of Life and Death."
Yandros studied it for a moment, and with a flick of his finger, a seventh spoke, shifting through all the colors of the spectrum, joined the others in the monstrous wheel. "It is fitting."
~oo(0)oo~
For a moment Yandros gave no response to Tarod's kiss, then suddenly, fiercely, he sprang into action, clenching Tarod's shoulders, returning it with bruising intensity.
With a desperate cry, Tarod tore his lips from Yandros's, and stared his brother full in the face.
Reality shifted, warped, around them. They no longer stood on a promontory, but instead, in a vast field of delicate light blue flowers.
~oo(0)oo~
Tarod stared down at the gibbering human before him. With a shaking hand, the man made the sign of Order and whimpered for Aeoris to protect him.
With some reluctance Tarod assumed a human form and with a gesture banished the demon — a mass of claws and fur, one of the lower sort — advancing on the man.
"Oh, thank you, thank you, my lord!" The man wept with joy. He was, Tarod noted, wet, and smelled of salt and tar. Almost absentmindedly Tarod reached out and snagged a long, thin streamer of slimy green from the man's shoulder. Seaweed.
"Are you a sailor?" He asked.
Startled, the man's mouth flapped for a bit before he answered, "Y-yes. Oh, thank you, the W-warp, it — it —"
Warp? It took Tarod a moment to parse the name. "Oh. Is that how you got here?" Pause. "Tell me ..."
"Eorin."
"Tell me, Eorin, what do you remember?"
"I — I was out in my boat, trawling for cod. There's good cod banks off the east when — when I first heard the Warp come up. I began rowing, rowing as hard as I could for the ship, b-but the Warp, it come up so quick —" The man shuddered at the memory. "And, and then I was here, and you saved me, oh, thank you, thank you, my lord!" And Eorin again made the sign of Order and sank to his knees.
A thunderclap announced the arrival of Yandros, who chose the form of an enormous red-eyed wasp. Eorin shrieked in fear.
"Sleep." Tarod said, and Eorin dropped to the ground, snoring softly.
"This is the sixth human to suddenly appear in our realms." Yandros prodded the sleeping man with one of his antennae.
"He came via the Warp."
"What?"
"Warps. Our little ... reminders. They call them Warps," Tarod replied, crossing his arms as Yandros positioned himself and stung Eorin to death. "Was that really necessary?" he asked.
Yandros shifted his form to something more human like. "Neither their minds nor their bodies are well suited to dealing with our realms, Tarod. Better to just end it all swiftly ... unless you planned to raise it to be a denizen of our realms?" He raised his eyebrow and crossed his four arms.
Tarod rolled his eyes. "Hardly. But I have an idea, brother."
"Oh, do tell," Yandros replied, the joy of potential mischief glinting in his eyes.
"In due time. I need to think on it."
They each turned and left, neither noticing nor caring as the raw stuff of Chaos absorbed the mortal remains of Eorin the fisherman.
~oo(0)oo~
As the last echoes of pleasure shimmered out of their bodies and across the heavens, Tarod rolled and faced his favorite brother.
Yandros's eyes shifted from the colors of passion back to the color of ashes, and then to blue, but behind the sorrow and the rage and the resignation, Tarod perceived something else in their depths.
Hope.
~oo(0)oo~
"It is madness, Tarod, don't you see?" Yandros's voice carried a note of desperation Tarod had never heard before, not even in those darkest of days of betrayal when the servants of Order had driven them from the world.
"That's a pretty funny thing to say, given who we are, Yandros."
"I —" Yandros began, then paused, and actually smiled. "Yes. Yes it is, isn't it?"
"It's not what Aeoris and his lackeys will expect."
"Heh," Yandros chortled, "it's the last thing they will expect." Pause. "But does it have to be you, Tarod? It's quite ... quite a risk. And yes," Yandros said, giving a sad smile, "I know how silly that sounds, especially coming from me."
"Yandros, I've always had an affinity for humans, moreso than you. More than any of us. Plus, I welcome the adventure. It's one thing to look like a human, but quite another, I expect, to be a human. I think what I find will help us to be better gods when we restore the right way of things."
Reality shifted. They stood in a long, dimly lit, utterly solemn hall. "Would I could do this," Yandros said, his eyes slate colored. "But I can't. It would mean — never mind. Tarod, I can do what you ask. But it will cost you. I can put your essence, but not your full consciousness into a human form. In some ways, you will cease to be you, and that's what troubles me most."
"But?" Tarod crossed his arms.
"But, your essence will still be that of Chaos; there will always be paths back to us, ways for you to rediscover the fullness of your power."
"But?"
"Once we place you, you're on your own. My — our ability to interfere will be very limited. And if Order finds out about this ..."
Tarod nodded. "Where there were Seven there will be Six."
"Exactly."
"Let's do it."
~oo(0)oo~
Reality shifted yet again. Amidst the blue flowers, a few feet away, on a bier, lay the latest mortal body gleaned from a Warp. A boy of about eight. Soul fled, body yet clinging to life due to Yandros's interventions.
Tarod knew all he needed to do was touch the body. Yandros's preparations guaranteed that his essence would merge with the boy's flesh and then the Warp would pull him through.
Internally quivering with anticipation, he reached for the boy. Yandros's hand stayed his, and he held up a silver ring set with a large white gem.
Ah, yes, his soul stone. The key to this gambit. Without his soul, Tarod would be nothing more than a mindless husk.
But still Yandros stayed his hand. Puzzled, Tarod met his brother's eyes.
Silver.
Glimmering with unsuppressed emotion.
Yandros slid the ring onto his finger. "Remember me," he whispered. "Remember me."
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Last Updated: 3/6/08