Hello! Here is the chapter! :) I really enjoyed writing it- it was one of those that I've been waiting to write for several, several weeks! :D
~Music~
Wilderness of Danger and Beauty (Brother Bear)
~Edit~
Me (and just added one to the last chapter hastagfinally)
Chapter Twenty Two
~Nobody's POV~
It is a monstrous creature, at least ten feet tall, and all thick brown fur, beady black eyes, and huge, gaping fangs. Saliva drips from its maw as it roars, its claws seeming to scrape the air in front of it.
Thea leaps back, screaming, but the weight of the backpack sends her sprawling into the snow. Before she can move, the bear is upon her, leaning over her and roaring. She can feel the heat emanating from its giant body, and the savagery in its eyes. She rolls out from under the beast and tears the backpack off of her and stumbles backwards. She feels a prick of pain on her arm and looks down; a fallen tree branch as pierced it.
Smelling the blood, the bear roars, then charges. Moving at lightning speed, Thea grabs the tree branch, yanks it from her skin, and jumps up, thrusting the sharp branch in front of her. It meets its target; the bear growls as the branch pierces its side, and Thea jumps to the side as the bear twists in pain.
But then, it rears up on its hind legs and roars, a guttural roar of hunger and anger.
Thea screams.
*
Loki is still in his chambers, having just disintegrated Tatiana's body into nothingness, when he feels a burning on his wrist. Looking down, he sees the golden bracelet glowing fiercely, paining his skin and sending an even more painful, more terrifying feeling into his heart.
"Thea," he whispers, falling to his knees in utter panic and utter hopelessness.
*
Thea is fighting for her life. The snow is not supple, and she has a hard time standing in it, and also facing down the bear. She backs up slowly, watching the bear as it regards her through wild eyes. It bares its teeth at her and lunges. She avoids the claws, acting reflexively, feeling her muscles tightening and her eyes narrowing as she takes another tree branch and uses it as a launch, then grabbing the tree trunk, whirling around it, and kicking the bear in the face.
The bear growls and swats at her, but Thea's small build is for once an advantage. She ducks, rolling under the bear's furry paws, but getting snow all in her face and eyes. She wipes it away and, panting, turns around to face the bear as it charges again.
Thea looks around wildly. She doesn't have a weapon, and a tree branch will do nothing against a hungry, crazed bear. She screams and leaps up, trying to jump up over the bear's shoulder, but she misses and ends up sliding down, hard onto the snow. The bear whirls around and catches its claws on Thea's chest, sending her slamming into the base of a tree trunk and pinning her leg underneath a log. She cries out, panting through her teeth in pain as her blood stains the snow around her.
The bear grunts, turning around and begins to stalk towards her, its breath a cloud in the cold air, its huge shoulders an effortless rhythm of thick fur.
Thea can't move. She tries to yank herself from the log, but it is pinned under the weight of a bush. She whimpers, digging her nails into the snow and bracing herself against the tree trunk, her eyes wide and terrified, knowing that this could easily be the end.
The bear stands up on its legs again, roaring, and Thea screams, not able to tear her eyes from the giant claws, the edges of which are tipped in her blood.
And then a shadow leaps from out of nowhere and collides into the beast, sending it tumbling to the ground.
It's Videl.
He turns to look over his shoulder at her, and Thea sees that his eyes are a hard amber, almost as wild as the bear's, his hair tangled and mussed. He takes a dagger from his belt, one that she hasn't seen before, and yanks it up. Immediately, it elongates on both ends and sharpens- a spear.
Videl hardly has time to move before the bear is onto him, but he does, moving so quickly, Thea can hardly blink. He slams the bear's claws back with the blunt of the spear as the beast growls, its nostrils flaring at this new enemy.
Videl backs up, aiming the point of the sphere at the bear, baring his own fangs at it. Thea can hardly decide which looks fiercer; the Velah or the bear. But whereas the bear is huge and brutal and bulky, Videl is graceful, lean, and calculating.
The bear bats at Videl, but he counters it, sliding underneath the furry body and leaping up on its back, then flipping around the other side. The bear roars as Videl kicks in the branch that Thea had stuck in its shoulder, digging it deeper into the beast's chest.
Videl takes this opportunity to leap up again, up onto the bear's shoulders and arching back, looping his legs around the bear's beck and sending it over backwards. While Videl lets go and gracefully lands in the snow, his spear still poised, the bear hits the ground with a thud of fur and muscle.
The bear is fast though, and gets up on its feet quick enough. It charges at Videl, and Videl, similarly to Thea, spins around a tree trunk and slams the bear's face. He attempts to skewer the bear's shoulder, but the bear swats at him, and Videl is forced to jump down to avoid being hit.
Thea, in the meanwhile, grits her teeth, reaching forward and trying to yank the tree log off of her leg. After panting in pain for several minutes, Thea manages to instead pull her leg from underneath the log. She stands shakily, and looks back over to Videl.
The bear is on its rear legs again, and Videl has his spear ready, the sharp point glinting in the dying sunlight. Before Videl can move, the bear swipes down, its claws raking across the Velah's face.
Videl bares his teeth and hisses at the bear, five red lines on his pale, chiseled face, criss-crossing over the scars that Thea's fire had left. He looks positively demonic.
Videl jumps around the bear, but the bear catches him, sending him to the ground. Videl has no time to react before the bear is over him, its giant paws on either side of his neck, its teeth inches from the Velah's face.
"VIDEL!" Thea exclaims.
He doesn't look over at her; he doesn't have the chance. He uses his spear to drive up against the bear's jaws, and wrestles with the beast, so that Thea is watching a deadly game of vertical tug of of war.
Videl loses his grip on the spear, and it is cast aside several feet.
Thea seizes a large rock and throws it with all her strength. It strikes the bear's already-bloody shoulder, sending the beast roaring back in agony, its roars echoing through the clearing. Videl slides out from the bear and tumbles, leaping back on his feet.
The bear is faster now that it is angry and injured. Ignoring Videl, it runs towards Thea, its breath raspy and its growls primeval and manic. She ducks underneath its claws, but it would have caught her had Videl not leapt up on its neck again, sending Velah and beast down to the snow.
When Videl cries out, Thea's heart goes cold, and she looks over her shoulder. The fall that Videl had just taken to save Thea had put him at the mercy of the bear, and it had taken advantage of it, lacerating its claws through Videl's shirt, drawing both blood and Videl's cry of agony.
Thea reacts, leaping up on the bear and knocking its face away from Videl. The bear growls, confused, and gives Videl an opening of time. Before the bear can make towards Thea, Videl claws up at the bear, backing it up, growling just like the beast, both beings animalistic and savage. But Videl is limping and bleeding, his breathing raspy.
The bear begins to move forward, so that it is now backing Videl up, batting at him with its bloody claws. Videl looks up wildly, but his spear is several feet away, lying in the snow.
Thea notices this look, and lunges, running towards the spear as the bear rears up and roars at Videl, its huge shadow falling over the Velah like a curtain of death. Videl stumbles, his entire body wet from the snow and from his blood.
"VIDEL!" Thea yells again, and throws the spear across the clearing, just as the bear charges at Videl in a terrifying fit of fury.
The spear pierces through the beast's chest, sending blood everywhere. Videl grits his teeth and pushes deeper, and the bear roars a dreadful roar of death, falling backwards onto the snow, staining it with leaking crimson.
Videl looks at the beast. He is shaking, and finally, he collapses in the snow as well, his shoulders heaving dangerously.
Quick footsteps across the snow, and Thea slides on her knees next to Videl. He's a mess, all blood and golden hair and ripped fabric. Thea looks around and finds her backpack, and Videl's, close by, and she runs to it, dragging them both over to the fallen Velah, ignoring the splitting pain at her waist from the whip and chest from the claw.
"What do I do, what do I do?" she asks frantically, digging through the backpack, looking for something that will help.
Videl's eyes flutter, his breathing raspy. Blood leaks from his exposed chest, staining both the snow and Thea's hands. He manages to open his cracked lips and whisper, "Blood."
Thea wants to smack herself for her stupidity. Shehe swipes her finger against her leg, where the branch had pierced it, so that her blood is now dripping from it. Her hand trembling, she holds her finger up to Videl's lips.
Videl's nostrils flare, smelling the blood, but he turns away, so that Thea can see the raked claw marks on his cheek.
"No," he mumbles, clenching his fists, "Not yours."
"But-"
"Not yours."
She looks over at the bear and, cringing, puts her other hand to its damp side. Its blood is still warm, even though it is dead; its blood is alive while it is not.
She puts the blood to Videl's lips, and he laps it off of her fingers desperately. His jaw is trembling, and Thea feels a pit of hopelessness rising inside of her.
His eyes closed, Videl mutters, "Get the spear."
Thea stands up, and staggers to the bear's corpse. She leans down and yanks the spear from its chest, covering her hand in blood. She hurries back to Videl, and he seizes the spear from her, then wraps his lips around its crimson sides. Thea tries not to watch.
He moves the spear away from him, but still clenches it in his hand, "Hold...hold onto the backpacks...and onto me."
She obeys, and before she can say anything, she is thrown away in a mist of black.
*
Loki, for the past ten or fifteen minutes, has been pacing around his chambers robotically, closing his eyes tightly to try and calm his breathing. Every time the bracelet pulses, he cringes, as if feeling Thea's pain for his own.
He waits, waits, with a terrible sinking feeling, for his bracelet to break, for it to fall to the floor, for there to be a signal that Thea has been taken from him and-
The door opens at that precise moment, and Neidra walks inside. She is wearing a long green gown that causes her skin to be thrown into almost a glow. Her hair is piled up in an elaborate pile of twists, tendrils hanging down to her ears.
She sees Loki's look of absolute panic, and frowns, before saying in an exuberant voice, running up to him and throwing her arms around his shoulders (she has to reach up to do it), "My darling, what is happening?"
He glares at her, wanting to kill her on the spot, but knows that she will see almost any attack coming, and will have been expecting it from him. So instead, he says in a low voice, "Thea. She is in danger. I can feel it."
"Ah," says Neidra, twisting her face into sympathy- Loki can see right past it though, as she continues, "But what can you do for her? She has run off, after all-"
"She has run off because of the horrors I have put her through," growls Loki, "I can no longer blame her for this."
"But she disobeyed-"
"I struck her! I turned her immortal! I have brought her into this house and allowed her to face the horrors inside here!"
"Horrors?" asks Neidra, sounding slightly put-off, "What horrors are in this house?"
"I think you know full well what I mean," says Loki.
For a second, she and Loki meet eyes, and the fury in his is more than a thousand words.
"I see," says Neidra, in a clipped voice, "Well, while you are waiting for your rapscallion daughter to mysteriously reappear, I shall be in the foyer with my son."
"You do that," says Loki.
*
Neidra walks not into the foyer, but in her room of jars and herbs and dampness. Caomh is already waiting.
"Mother, you look quite peaked," he says, "What has happened?"
"He has found out how I treated poor little Thea," Neidra says the name in a disgusted snarl, "No doubt, he knows more than he has let on. There was blood in our room. I would not be surprised to discover that Tatiana is dead."
She seizes some vials from the counter and slams them open, sending bits of glass all over the counter. Her hands streak across them, but when the glass cut, Neidra doesn't seem to notice.
Caomh looks slightly worried, but he keeps himself composed. Someone has to, "Will you kill him?"
"I cannot yet. If I do, then the kingdom will be left in shambles, and no need for you on the throne." Neidra takes what appears to be a tangled collection of thrones and crushes them with a pestle, then throws it into the small bowl where the other ingredients are already heating, emanating a sharp, blistering smell into the dark room.
"Then what?"
"I have tried to tear Loki and Thea apart," snarls Neidra, "It has not worked. His love for his daugher will see through anything, and it is that love that is attempting to ruin my plans, the love that sees right through me. That love can be no longer. I will crush it out of Loki if it is the last thing I do."
The potion in the bowl bubbles. It is almost like it is laughing.
Oh dear.
Please VOTE and COMMENT! :D