EL-HAZARD : MORTAL ENGINES

                        by Alan Harnum

      Chapter Twelve - Verklaerte Nacht : Molto Rallentando
           
El-Hazard is a copyright of AIC/Pioneer LDC.  This story, 
however, belongs to me, and I request that you don't publicly
post or archive it without my permission.

This copy of the story is from my centralized fanfiction archive
at http://www.thekeep.org/~harnums/fanfic.  I can be reached by
e-mail at harnums@thekeep.org

* * *

          Like the crucible of Dis
          In which those sinners offensive to God
          Are burned eternally with righteous fires
          That is how fierce burns brothers' hatred!
          
     I knew those lines before my consciousness was born in the
forges of the Sanguis Mekhos.  Even before I could think, learn,
feel pain, all the great works of Dasim were burned indelibly
into my brain.  Now I recall them, three thousand years after
Dasim has become dust.  

     I have had no time to learn about this place that I am in
beyond what I can see of it in the memories of him that I love--
my liberator, my Makoto.  I do not know how I came to be where I
was after the grievous wound Ifurita dealt me and before Makoto
woke me.  Basic observation shows me that their technology does
not match that of the age I was born in: the great sky-movers do
not ply the cloud-oceans any longer, nor do the sea-cities ride
the waves with the ponderous grace of whales.  Amphitrite, 
Galatee, Glauce... all gone below, all gone into the abyss, 
carrying with them their art, their culture, their fine robes of
gold and silver silk...

     In me is the memoriam of Dasim.  Whatever may have been
preserved, far more has undoubtedly been lost.  I hold the songs
and poems and stories of Dasim, the images of their painting and
sculpture and architecture, the secrets of their technology... 
not of the creation of hierodules such as I, though, for my 
mothers and fathers did not see fit to put such knowledge into
the hands of what they made.

     The lines are from "The Ballad of Semumm and Samm", by 
Eck-Hrathi of the Radiant Words.  The legend of the warring
brothers was old before the Holy Empire was torn apart by civil
war into the five Holy Kingdoms, told by innumerable poets both
bad and good.  Eck-Hrathi was one of the better ones.  He was
dead a century before I was born.

          How like two young gods they are
          These brothers, who shine like the morning star
          Semumm cries out, his tall horse rears
          And Samm's sword weeps with bloody tears
          
     I wrote that.  I do not think it is very good.  I have never
shown it to anyone.  When this is over, I will share it with my
Makoto.  

     I am reminded of the warring brothers, and of the songs that
sing their tragedy, because I am trying at this moment to kill my
own brother.  If I may call him my brother any longer, this mad,
faceless thing that drips darkness that burns in the sun.  

     What rides my brother as its steed I cannot say; my sensors
cannot penetrate the molecular structure of whatever it is that
seethes and smokes within the exposed cavities of his body.  The
light burns it, but does not seem to diminish it.

     Both of us are in our elements in this battle; he in water,
I in air.  My lightning is absorbed by shields of water; I cannot
reach him.  Yet I am more maneuverable, and he cannot reach me
either.  He makes few attacks; what ones he does would fly wide
of me even if I did not dodge.

     Does some remnant of my brother remain, trying to keep me 
from harm?  Or is there some other purpose to these tactics?  We
are both damaged, but I far less than he; all that keeps him
moving, I believe, is whatever rides him.  I must conclude that
the strategy is not a conflict between my brother and his captor;
it is a concerted effort to change hosts.

     In Makoto's mind--our bond cannot be broken so long as we
both exist--I can see that he has never thought of my brother as
a him.  Only as a faceless it.  I will not become an "it" to him.    
I will not let that happen.
          
     To the left and the right, I hurl my searing bolts; my
brother raises his shields.  But it is a feint; down the centre,
directly towards him, my net comes hurtling.  Lightning bound
momentarily into the shape of a net by the same manipulations of
air and electricity that allow me to fly.

     The prey is caught; he stands upon the waves, helpless, as
the lightning writhes around his body in a burning web.  A flat
keening fills the air--he is trying to scream, but no longer has
the ability to express pain.  Smoke dark as tar bleeds from him;
so, the lightning burns the black rider as well.

     I do not have my spear any longer; where it is now, I cannot
say, if it even remains at all.  So I form a spear of cogent 
lightning from the blade on my remaining arm; it lashes like a
serpent, fighting against the hateful bonds that hold it in a
defined shape.  I soothe it with a silent whisper: soon you will
be free.

     And I dive.
     
     Oh, Leth, oh my brother, youngest, fairest, most beautiful
of us all, you have always been a slave will always be a slave,
have never known what freedom is, have never known what it is to
truly _choose_, oh, brother, I am so sorry.

          The blade sings my brother's 
            death-song in my hands
          What will the sage's say,
          Samm?  How will they explain
            how brothers, once so close,
          Could come to such a state?
          
     The poet Othya, whose name is unrecorded, who is called by 
the name of the city in which his great saga was composed; Saam
and Semumm have but a small part in it.  Othya left it up to 
other, lesser poets to tell the story in richer detail.

     The lightning hums death's harmony upon my arm; bound below,
my brother's blank face can express nothing.  

     But it is a feint by him, just as I feinted earlier; as I
come within a few feet of him, the net vanishes, sucked down into
the abyss within the black rider.  I hear my brother--no, not my
brother, there cannot be anything of my brother left--laugh,
pitiless, toneless and joyless.

     My spear wavers, and the darkness leaps out of my brother
for me.  Too close; no chance to avoid it.  And when it touches 
me, I am gone.

     I hurl the bolt heavenward.  Inwardly, my mind moves faster
than my body ever could; I make the order, confirm, override, 
before the bolt has even moved fractionally.  Not much time; his
mind could not hold it all anyway.

     What do you need the most, my love?  What do you desire?  
Not the songs of Dasim; no, not them.  Take this, my last gift to
you.  My love.  The lightning spears towards the dark clouds
above.  My love and his friends are far away, they have reached
the shallows now--they are in no danger.

     The blackness touches me.  It licks against the stump of my
arm and find entrance.  I can feel it invading every part of me.
It is fast.  Not fast enough.

     SELF-DESTRUCT MECHANISM ENGAGED
     
     I imagine the voice of God sounds much like that voice.
     
     Above me, I hear the clouds scream.  Black, smoking chains
bind me to my brother; the lightning falls from above in a 
single, annihilating bolt.  It will do for my brother; the 
self-destruct mechanism--ironic that it, designed as a last
resort if I became uncontrollable, should be chosen freely for
use by me--will do for me.

     My lo--
     
* * *

     Makoto watched, heartsick, from the stern of the boat.  The
battle was an unknowable maelstrom, full of bodies moving too
quickly to be seen, flares of lightning, soaring arcs of water.

     Suddenly, there was silence.  He saw Lethiaphan bound, saw
Mardruk dive for the kill.  Then everything went wrong, he saw
darkness moving through the air; a bolt of lightning, impossibly
huge, fell from the clouds, and everything went white.

     He felt the surging pain of Mardruk's dying, and, the last
thoughts of love rushed into his brain; riding on them were
numbers and equations and diagrams, facts and figures and 
theories... he couldn't hold them all, his skull was going to 
burn out and explode into fragments that would litter the 
all-pervading whiteness of the lightning strike... 

     Thunder clapped, and the whiteness began to fade, the new
knowledge began to bury itself, but he _knew_, he knew how to
build anti-gravity engines far more efficient than the ones
Roshtaria had now, he knew how to make armour that was stronger
than steel and lighter than wood, he knew a hundred thousand
shining things, lost fragments of ancient knowledge hurled into
his brain by Mardruk that they not be lost forever, ready to be
called up again from the abyss into which they were--to preserve
his mind, his very identity--already vanishing.  

     Joy overcame him for a moment.  The things he could do with
such knowledge; the good works he might do for El-Hazard.  There
was dimensional theory in there, he knew it, and with it he might
rescue Ifurita...

     Then the agony of Mardruk's death overcame him, and he sank
weeping to his knees.  What Mardruk had given him was only a 
fraction of what was there, his frail, weak human mind couldn't
hold nearly enough of it...

     "All gone... all gone."
     
     "Makoto?  Makoto, it's over.  There's a body on the beach.
We need to--"

     He shoved Shayla's arm away as he stood up.  
     
     "I can still feel you," he snarled to the flat ocean before
him.  "No hiding this time.  Come!"

     "Makoto..."
     
     "Just leave me alone, Shayla."  The words came out callous 
and cold; he would care later, but not now.  "Come!"

     Lethiaphan bobbed to the surface.  What little flesh 
remained upon it was blackened by lightning; muck and fish skins
and seaweed still draped it in places.  Most of its surface 
seemed taken up by the burning, oily substance.  Makoto knew that
it was... alive.  That it had been Lethiaphan's rider and 
Mardruk's killer.  It was the cold darkness he had felt earlier;
the great devourer.

     "Bleed," it recited tonelessly.  A finger pointed; darkness
lay thick upon the gleaming metal.  "Bleed... bleed... bleed 
for..."

     "Oh, just _die_ already!" Makoto shouted, and his power 
leapt out like a lash.

     Lethiaphan staggered where it stood upon the water as though
struck a heavy blow; mud and seaweed and inky blackness pattered
upon the sea.  The bladed arm rose up and punched through the
chest like a stick through paper.  An ozonic taint filled the
air.  

     (SELF-DESTRUCT MECHANISM ENGAGED)
     
     (I imagine the voice of God would sound much like that 
voice.)
     
     The Demon-God exploded.
     
     A wave of heat caressed Makoto's face and stirred his hair;
he gripped Ifurita's staff so hard his palms bled.  Within the
tiny inferno of Lethiaphan's immolation, he saw darkness visible:
a blackness that absorbed all light, a living shadow in the vague
shape of a man.  It bled oily smoke; sunlight, heat, both hurt it
terribly.

     A psychic scream of agony and hate battered at his mind; 
then, in a flash, the dark shape had concentrated itself into a
downward-pointing arrow, and fled into the cool, dark, oceanic 
depths.

     Slowly, moving as though crippled, Makoto turned around and
looked at the others; they were awed, almost fearful as they
stared at him.  Shayla's face betrayed the fresh wound his words
had given.

     "Geez, kid."  Fujisawa-sensei moistened his lips with a
hesitant tongue.  "You know, if you could've done that right from
the start, things woulda been a whole lot easier."

     Ura, seated at Alielle's feet, wrinkled her nose.  "Bad 
smell.  Monster gone?"

     "Yes," Makoto murmured.  "Gone."
     
     "Makoto, your hands..."  Alielle stepped forward.  "Let me
bandage them."

     "It's not serious."  He wiped the blood off against his
tunic.  "They're not deep.  Let's get to shore.  Let's see 
what... who that body is."

     He was _not_ going to break down again.  Was he a child, to
fall into sobbing whenever things didn't go his way?  Mardruk was
dead, and how many others, faceless to his memory as Lethiaphan, 
had died in the city Ifurita burned in Jinnai's name?  How many 
soldiers, whose names he would never know, had fallen in defense 
of their homes?  How many more would suffer for Jinnai's mad
ambitions?

     "No more."  He looked from face to face.  "Not one more, if
we can prevent it.  Katsuhiko was my friend once, but he isn't 
any more.  He has to be stopped, whatever it takes."

     He expected Shayla to express some enthusiasm; instead, she
turned an agonized gaze upon him.  "Makoto..."

     "Take the boat to shore, Alielle," he said, almost a 
whisper.  He could not seem to keep his eyes open.  "Miz... you
saw that thing, that... darkness?"

     She nodded.  "It went down into the sea."
     
     "Can you follow its path?"
     
     The water priestess closed her eyes in concentration.  
"Yes... it... corrupts by its very passage through the water.  
Not a presence so much as a lack of a presence, but, yes, I can
follow it."

     "Good.  Do that."
     
     "Hey!  Hold on!"  Fujisawa frowned.  "That's dangerous,
following that thing on your own."

     "This whole expedition hasn't exactly been safe so far," Miz
said soothingly.  "Besides, you'll come with me to protect me."

     The teacher blinked.  "I will?"
     
     "Yes."
     
     Once they had stepped overboard and sunk down into the 
ocean, Makoto turned to the silent faces of Shayla, Afura and
Alielle; by now, he felt so weary that he had to lean upon the
Power-Key Staff to keep from falling over.

     "Alielle, take the boat to shore," he said.  "Let's make
sure that body isn't someone we know."

     Alielle moved to the helm without a word.  Afura and Shayla
glanced at each other, and then at him.

     "You need to rest, Makoto," said Afura.  "You're almost dead
on your feet, from the looks of you."

     Makoto shook his head.  "I didn't take nearly the battering
you two did, and you're still standing."

     "We," Shayla said, "are Muldoon Priestesses.  You are not."
     
     "I'm fine."  He took two steps forward; a sudden wave of
grief bowed him as he thought of Mardruk lost to the sea.  
Ifurita's staff slipped from his limp fingers; he staggered, and
fell forward into Shayla's arms as the darkness came upon him.

* * *

     Jinnai hated forests; always had, always would.  They were
full of random, unclean things like dirt and rocks and wild
animals.  And insects; he didn't mind the insects that much, as
there was, after all, a pleasing orderliness to them: the
industrious ant, the hard-working bee.  Forests were useful for 
providing building materials and, in small, carefully-controlled 
plots, decoration.  He also had some vague idea that they also 
did something to keep the air breathable, but that was really 
only a flaw in Nature's imperfect design that needed to be 
corrected.

     Because he hated forests, Perra was, of course, currently
leading them through one.  A short albeit precarious journey up
the beachside cliffs in single file had led to a trip through 
ragged, scrubby grass pocked by wildflowers.  The grasslands had
gradually merged into sparse forest, and, finally, into dense
forest--through which they were currently walking.

     A heady mix of pine and spruce irritated Jinnai's nostrils,
and he let out a resounding sneeze every few minutes.  The trees
themselves had the same familiar-but-alien quality common to most
of the flora in El-Hazard (the fauna, too, for that matter); it
all seemed a little too colourful, too exotic.  Little blue and
white puffball flowers grew amongst the roots of the tall trees;
Jinnai had irritably kicked at one soon after entering the woods,
and it had left an ugly stain on the cuffs of his trousers which
made his mood even worse.

     It didn't help that no one else seemed to be as miserable as
he was.  Deva and her bugrom had an almost childlike fascination
with the unfamiliar sights: the pale-barked trees with their 
jagged, spiky leaves, the long-bodied three-tailed squirrelish
rodents that leapt from branch to branch high above their heads,
the tiny, flitting birds with pitch-black tails three times the
length of their bodies...  To him, it was all more of the rather
tedious exoticism of El-Hazard.  Everything was so wondrous and
unique that approached being kitschy.  He had begun to long for
the sight of a boring, form-follows-function office buildings, or
a tree that was totally uninteresting in any way.

     Even the catatonic Nahato, firmly ensconced beneath the arm
of the largest Bugrom, didn't seem to be having too bad a time.
Didn't seem to be having too much of any kind of time at all,
admittedly, but, still... lucky little fool, Jinnai thought with
a scowl.  None of the grave responsibilities that I have.  

     At least the mountains were the same; he could see them in
the distance, occasionally, when the canopy of leaves above his
head grew sparser.  He tried to guess which one was Talongrey;
the highest peak, no doubt, the one that seemed from this angle
to have a distinct, clawlike curve to it.  There were ancient
ruins there, or so Perra said; who knew what power might lie
within them?  More Demon-Gods?  Or something else, some other
weapon to help him bring recalcitrant Roshtaria and her allies to
heel?  Once the continent was his, he could move on to the lands
his dreams had shown him lay across the sea.

     "Thank you, God," he murmured, "for this, the opportunity
that you have seen fit to give your humble servant.  I am worthy
of it."  He looked up from his brief prayer.  "Hey!  Wait up!"
Shoving low-hanging branches out of the way with the Phantom
Tribe staff, he hurried to catch up with his entourage.  "I'm in
charge here, so stop getting ahead of me!"

     Nanami rolled her eyes at him.  "It's not our fault you walk
so slow."

     "Shut up, Nanami," he said casually, and strode up to Perra.
"You, guide.  Are you certain this is the fastest way?"

     "Fastest way?  Of course not."
     
     "What!  Traitor!"
     
     "I assumed you wanted to avoid inhabited areas.  Was I wrong
in that?"

     "...no, no.  Fine work.  Walk next to me; the rest of you,
behind us."

     The others fell into step, Nanami albeit grudgingly.  
     
     "So... Perra.  What were you and my sister talking about?"
     
     "The matters at hand," Perra replied.  Her voice was softer
than Nanami's, with less of an edge to it.  "She's very worried
about her friends."  Her voice dropped lower, almost to a 
whisper.  "And about you, although she doesn't want to show it."

     "Of course she's worried about me," he growled quietly.  
"She's enamoured of my foe Makoto Mizuhara, and believes I'm mad;
I mean, you tell me who's mad, the destined conqueror, or the man
who opposes the destined conqueror?  Mere logic tells you that if
anyone in this situation is mad, it's Mizuhara, not me."

     He wondered if thirty-two minutes and fifteen seconds had
passed yet.  He was fairly certain they had.  By now, Lethiaphan
would have met and destroyed Makoto and his friends.  No reason 
to explicitly tell anyone of that, though; it might filter back
to Nanami, and she wasn't yet ready to see the situation in its
entirety.  
     
     "She's worried about you because you're her brother.  She
cares for you."

     "Then why does she oppose me?  Why does she side with my
enemies?"

     The certainty that his eternal foe was no longer in any
position to be his eternal foe left him feeling... nothing.  It
was something he'd long ago prepared himself for, as soon as he
realized Makoto was his adversary--every adversary must
inevitably be vanquished.

     "She believes that what you do is wrong."
     
     "Only because her feelings for Makoto cloud her mind.  Do
you believe I am wrong?  To try and unite El-Hazard beneath one
ruler."  He glanced around; Deva and the Bugrom were lagging
behind, fascinated no doubt by some natural oddity.  "A good,
wise ruler like myself?"

     "Don't you serve the Bugrom Queen?"
     
     "For now," he replied, casting more furtive glances at the
distant Deva.  Nanami, closer but still not within earshot of 
their quiet talking, stuck her tongue out at him; he scowled
fiercely back at her, and returned his attention to Perra.  "I
need her right now; her strength, and the strength of her Bugrom.
But she's merely a machine, a tool; you're human, like me.  You
can understand, can't you?  Machines are meant to serve human
interests."

     With his old adversary gone, a new adversary would no doubt
emerge.  No man, after all, was great without a great foe, and 
he, Katsuhiko Jinnai, was undoubtedly a great man.  Could it be
Deva?  Perhaps; he would have to watch her closely...

     "Yet she thinks," said Perra.  "She feels.  On the beach,
when you were... badly affected by my reading, she showed great
concern for your well-being."  She laughed, a little nervously.
"Down to threatening my life if I had harmed you."

     "A dog, too, may show loyalty to its master," Jinnai 
murmured thoughtfully.  "Yet, if we starve otherwise, we do not
hesitate to eat its flesh."

     "We do."
     
     "Hmm?"
     
     "Lilaians.  We do not eat the flesh of anything that walks
on the earth or under it, or swims upon the seas, or soars 
through the air."

     "How tritely romantic and humanitarian.  Watch that 
branch."  He carefully lifted it out of her way and then let it 
snap back, nearly hitting Nanami.

     "Hey!" she half-yelled, ducking to avoid it.  "Watch it!"

     "Sorry, Nanami," he said, not sorry.  "Now, Perra, what do
you think is in these ancient ruins?  Weapons?  Another Demon-
God?  I hope it isn't something stupid like old books..."

     "Only God knows."
     
     "Yes, but aren't you, like, some sort of mouthpiece for Him?
No hints at all?"
     
     "This sucks," Nanami muttered as she trudged behind them.  
"Sixteen years of sibling rivalry, and my double already has a
better relationship with my brother than I ever did."

     Further back, Deva paused in her examination of the flora.
"The sun, the earth, the scents of the air... why are they so
unfamiliar?  Something about... I don't like this place."  She 
turned her head to stare with narrowed eyes at where Jinnai 
walked with Perra.  "And I like _that_ even less."

* * *

     The membrane of the diving bubble was so thin that the
filtered sunlight turned into rainbow swirls within its walls; 
Fujisawa had to suppress a perverse desire to reach out and poke
a hole in it.  It would remain watertight, of course; a scant day
earlier, he'd pushed his entire body through one, when Miz had
come to retrieve him after Lethiaphan had nearly killed him.

     Should have killed him, by all rights: but for the changes
made in the passage from Earth to El-Hazard, he'd be fish food
right now.  

     "Bad memory, isn't it?" Miz asked softly.
     
     "Hmm?  Yeah.  Guess you're thinking the same thing I am."
     
     "Hard to avoid."  She took both his hands in both of hers.
"I really did think I'd lost you."

     "Can't say I blame you."  He softly squeezed her hands.
"If it hadn't been for my super powers, you probably would have
lost me."

     "Don't talk like that," she whispered.  "If you were just a
normal man, I don't know what I'd do."

     Inside, he wilted a little.  "Miz..."
     
     "Shh."  Her lips brushed his, gently--then, quite firmly.
     
     Well, this is nice, he thought.  You've done pretty well for
yourself, Fujisawa, much better than you ever did back on Earth.
A nubile young girlfriend (fiancee?  They had to have a talk
about that whole marriage thing), super powers, no more pangs 
when you can't get a drink, no more desperate cravings for 
cigarettes...  So why don't you feel happier?  Why aren't you
enjoying this more?

     Oh, God, she was slipping him the tongue.
     
     With a gasp, he pulled away.  Miz stared at him, confused 
and hurt.  "Masamichi, what's wrong?  Don't you like it?  I--"

     "No!  It was..."  He searched for the right words.  "It was
very nice.  It's just that we're on a mission right now, and we
shouldn't be, umm... distracted."

     "I have this thing on autopilot," Miz said with a smile.
"Now, you want to kiss me again, or what?"

     "Looks like we're about to drop off the shelf."
     
     The abrupt cut-off was startling; a jagged slash extending
across the sea floor as far as could be seen, and, beyond it,
darkness.  Turanga lay at the edge of a volcanic island chain;
the abyss loomed just off its western coast, below the still
waters.  

     "It went down there."  Miz licked her lips nervously.  
"Can't tell how far yet... it's so deep.  I'm going to have to
increase the tensile strength of the diving bubble, or the
pressure will burst it."

     "That would be bad, right?"
     
     "Have you ever had the bends?"
     
     "No."
     
     "Lucky.  Yes, it would be very, very bad."
     
     "What happens?"
     
     "Well, your eyeballs might explode, but that's only after
all the blood in your body turns from liquid into gas."
     
     "...are you sure this is safe?"
     
     "Of course.  I _am_ the Great Priestess of Water, after
all."

     They descended into the black.  As sunlight from above
became more and more diffuse, the glow of the diving bubble
began to seem a thin candle in an impossible expanse of night.
Down they went, and further down, in total silence now.  The
weight of the water seemed to press against the bubble's
impossibly thin sides with hungry, devouring desire.  They no
longer saw the small, colourful fish of earlier, but there was 
the occasional impression of very large, dark things moving just
beyond the light.

     "What's out there?" Fujisawa asked, breaking a quiet that
had listed long minutes of their slow descent.

     "Sea dragons, probably," Miz murmured.  "Perhaps a kraken or
two at these depths."

     "Oh.  Are they dangerous?"
     
     "Not at the moment."
     
     "Oh."
     
     They continued downwards; the black was all around them, and
the chill of the waters seemed to be seeping through the bubble's
sides.  Miz shivered.

     "It stopped descending here," she murmured.  "It went... 
this way."  She turned the bubble back towards the divide between
the sea-shelfs and began to propel it horizontally through the
water.  

     He touched her shoulder.  "Be careful, Miz."
     
     She smiled back at him.  "I will."
     
     Suddenly, the monolithic jut of a huge, weed-strewn undersea
cliff-face loomed ahead of them out of the darkness.  Miz pulled 
the bubble to a halt, and frowned.  "The trail ends right here,
but..."

     "A blank wall?  Can you make that light any brighter?"
     
     She nodded, and kissed her ring.  The glow doubled, then 
trebled, swelled into tenfold, grew until it threw back the 
darkness for hundreds of feet all around them.

     Metal glinted, cold and ancient and untarnished, from
beneath a seaweed mask.     
     
     Miz stared, then whispered softly: "My God."
     
     Not, after all, a cliff-face.  A door.
     
END OF CHAPTER 12