Chapter 6

A Light in the Dark

Not far from the edge of the mountain range which held the secret lab facility in Hokkaido hidden from the rest of the world, two pairs of shining, yellow eyes peered over a cliff to the frozen land below. One of the figures was small, like a child, and the other was tall, masculine and strong. They both hid among the shadows as much as they could in the early morning light, the sunlight hitting the white snow, blinding them. The child-like figure wrestled uneasily for a moment and looked at the other.

“I don’t like it here,” the little girl said, shaking her pink pig-tail hair from side to side. She squinted her eyes tightly closed as though she couldn’t bear to keep them open any longer, as if the sight pained her somehow.

“I know, I feel it too,” the man said. He was nothing more than a dark shadow, completely hidden except for his glowing, yellow eyes. “He’s in there, but…”

The girl looked at her companion, her eyes big with concern. “You can’t go in there! You know you can’t!”

“I know,” he said. “But we can’t let that fool do whatever the hell he wants.”

“There’s nothing you can do about it, not the way you are now. We’ll have to wait until…”

“What? Next week? It’s taken us this long to find him. He’s been in there, suffering, being tortured for over three months! He can’t li—!” he couldn’t bring himself to say what he was about to, what he knew to be true. Time was running out.

The girl tried to smile as she put a hand on her companion. “Just wait a little longer. We’ll get him out soon, okay? Just… when you’re more…”

“In control?” said the man with a twinge of anger on his voice. “We may not have any other choice—they could kill him by the time I’m back to normal.” Then stepping out into the light, the man’s face completely exposed, he stared down with his dark, black eyes with tiny yellow slits down the middle at the building hidden amongst the snow-covered trees below. His sensitive and watery eyes shed uncontrollable red tears of blood from time to time—part of the curse. When he tried to rub the wetness away, it left a streak of red on his cheek and hand. His hair, ones a beautiful, light color of red was now a dull, dark brown. And sprouting out of his rugged, black shirt were stubs of once beautiful wings, three of them. They were torn, ripped completely from his back by his own mother. And he let her. He didn’t fight the curse she placed on him and over the years, he learned to live with it, to accept it. But there was one thing he was not willing to allow without a fight, and that meant protecting him— He shook his head, his big cat ears peeking out of his musky hair tilted angrily backward. “I won’t let him toy with my brother’s life any longer.”

The man stood and tried to take a step down the steep slop toward the laboratory building far below, but the girl stood in his way, her arms held out toward him, stopping his passage. “Marix! No! Don’t go! Not yet, please! Just, wait for a couple more days, alright? He’ll be fine, really! He’s a lot stronger than you think.”

He shook his head, “How can you look at me and say that? He is my brother. My brother! If I don’t do something, she’ll do the same thing to him. He’ll be no different from me, he’ll go through the same drop through Hell as I did. I won’t let that to happen, not to him. I can’t!”

“He’s not your brother!” she said, tugging at his bandaged-wrapped arms not covering wounds but rather the marks of a demon; tattoo looking squiggles and swirls the length of his arms. “He doesn’t even know you!”

Marix looked at her with sad eyes, tears of blood constantly streaming down his face whether he was actually crying or not. “He may not know me,” he agreed, “but that kid in there,” he looked down at the laboratory, “he’s part of my brother. What would you have me do? Leave him there? After everything I’ve done to find him?”

The girl’s face was sad, almost as though she was about to cry, but she continued to stand in Marix’s way. “I know what you’re going through,” she said. “I might not have been there when Momma did that to you or when Ryuu-chan lost the Arena battles—”

“—He didn’t lose!” Marix said loudly, grabbing onto the girl’s arms on him.

“Well, whatever happened, I’m sorry I couldn’t have been there for you,” she said, her eyes growing more and more watery as the cold, snowy wind brushed through her pig-tails.

Marix’s face softened. He sighed, knelt down to the girl’s height and tried to smile. “I’m sorry, Chibiru. I know you mean well, but you can’t stop me, okay? You’re a big girl, you know I have to do what I have to do. Just trust me, okay? Everything will be all right.” He raised a black clawed hand and patted her on the head. “Alright?”

Chibiru sniffled several times and grinned. “I know. I trust you. I just…”

“I won’t leave you,” Marix said as several red tears escaped from his eyes. “Now that we know where they’re holding him, we can come back for him at any time.”

The sound of his voice never sounded so sweet. They were going to leave this horrible place! Chibiru smiled and jumped up and down. “Yay! C’mon, let’s go!” she said, again tugging at Marix’s arms.

Deep down he knew there wasn’t much he could do for the boy held captive in the laboratory, not in his current demon state, anyway. He would have to wait another week before he had the strength and power to break him out of there. In the meantime, Marix and the lost demi-god Chibiru would have to go back to their little hiding place, a secret in-between world that no other god, demi-god or demon knew about. It was their secret, their safe haven. Marix took one last look down the cliff at the tiny building below and whispered to himself, “Wait for me, Hisoka. I’ll be back for you.”

He turned around and stepped back into the shadow of the cliff, raised a bandaged arm in a circular motion and voiced several words in an ancient, magical tongue. Instantly a shining purple star formed on the side of the rocky cliff. He placed both hands in the center of the star, and moving them outward, increased the size of the shape. The whole inside of the star filled with shimmering purple and black colors and some twinkling lights that looked like stars. Marix held out his hand for Chibiru and said, “Let’s go home.”

He opened his eyes. He didn’t know where he was but the ache in his back stirred him from his sleep. Sleep. Was he actually sleeping? He didn’t feel groggy as if just awakening from a nap or a good night’s sleep but rather… He felt empty, like he had never even existed before this moment. He was a new being finally awakening to life and yet he knew that wasn’t right. He felt old, tired, as though he had been walking and walking to get somewhere he forgot how to get to and he couldn’t remember his way back either. He was stuck with no forward or back.

Hisoka found himself standing in the middle of a dark meadow filled with tall, green grass and chirping grasshoppers and glowing fireflies. The scent of the wild flowers tickled his nose and he almost sneezed. He looked around to try and figure out where he was, but he had never seen this place before and he couldn’t see anything recognizable near by. He was in the middle of nowhere. There were no houses, no trees, no roads, no people; nothing. He was smack in the middle of nowhere.

He stood in the tall grass with nowhere to go. Where was he? And where was he going? He couldn’t remember anything. How had he gotten here? He shook his head in frustration. The sun must have just gone down because the light in the sky had begun to grow a soft shade of pink then darker purple, making it even more difficult to see. But it was warm here and he was thankful for that. He scratched his head curiously and looked up at the empty sky. Not a single star shone in the heavens above. It was like they had forgotten how to ignite their own fires of light. Hisoka would have no idea which direction he was going with no stars to navigate by. So he picked one way—any direction was good enough, he thought—and started walking.

The train pulled up at the Sapporo station right on schedule: 8:10am. Both Kaori and Xein had fallen asleep on the long ride up north and were jostled awake by one of the train workers. Xein grumbled something unintelligible at the worker as he stumbled to his feet and awkwardly stepped out of the private room with Kaori pushing him along. Once out of the train, they walked through the relatively empty train station until Kaori stopped at one of the benches beside a large sign with the train schedule posted on it. She opened a small bag she brought along with her and took out a map. After she stared blankly at the map for five minutes, Xein said, “You have absolutely no idea where we’re going, do you?”

She looked up and giggled, “Ah, but that’s what maps are for!”

Xein sighed as he plopped down beside Kaori. He fiddled with a long string on his jacket sleeve—Kaori told him to bring a warmer coat but he wouldn’t listen—for something to do. Then in the corner of his eye, he caught the figure of the angry man that he had accidentally bumped into on the train. Xein watched as the man, who also appeared to be lost, walked up to a map of the surrounding area and studied it for some time. Xein, with a scowl crinkling across his face, he nudged Kaori in the side.

“Look, it’s that idiot you pushed me into on the train,” he said.

“Oh really?” Kaori answered, seemingly uninterested as she didn’t bother to look up.

“Yeah, looks like he’s lost, too.”

At that remark, Kaori took her eyes off of the map and frowned at Xein. “We’re not lost, I’m just making sure we don’t go out of our way, that’s all.”

Xein smiled as he continued to watch the angry man study the map down the hallway. “Wouldn’t it be funny if we ended up going to the same place?” he said.

“We’re not going the same way,” Kaori said matter-of-factly.

“And how do you know that, O Wise One?”

“Because.”

Xein laughed. “I think your skills need a little honing, my dear.” Without another word, Xein stood up and began to walk down the hallway toward the man, who was now writing directions down on a small piece of paper. Xein walked over to the other side of the sign so the man couldn’t see him and turned around, resting his back against the sign as though he was eavesdropping. In fact, that was exactly what he was doing. He was reading the man’s mind.

The laboratory is on the west side of the island, but there isn’t another train or bus route going all the way, Xein heard the man think. I’ll have to go up north to Yoichi and down to Niseko… There has to be some road going to Lake Touya. I’ll worry about getting to the island once I get there.

Once the man finished writing a few notes down, he folded the piece of paper in his hand and walked on down the hallway toward the exit. Satisfied with his findings, Xein hopped back toward Kaori, who still appeared clueless.

“He’s going to Lake Touya.”

“Lake Touya, that’s another half hour from here. Did you hear him say that or something?”

Honestly, you should remember about your innate skills. They do come in handy from time to time, said a voice in Kaori’s mind. Shocked, she blinked as though she had just been struck by lightning.

“I completely forgot! That’s never happened before!”

“Heh, too busy with my good-looks, eh? I know, I know,” he said aloud, patting a soft hand on Kaori’s arm. “I’m beautiful.”

Kaori scoffed. “Yeah. That’s it.” Turning her attention back to the map in her hands, she pointed at a rather large lake to the southwest of Sapporo. “This is Lake Touya. We’ll have to catch a taxi or something to get there. Did he say anything else?”

“No, not really. He mentioned that he was going to some island in the center of the lake, though.”

“Hmm,” Kaori said, studying the map. “It looks like there are three or four islands in the lake, though. We’ll have to guess which one he’s going to.”

Xein nodded as he looked at the map with Kaori. “Nakajima is the largest, and that other little speck—what’s it say? Manjuu Island. Looks like it’s the smallest of the bunch. I wonder if it’s big enough to hide a secret laboratory in the forest there.”

“Maybe. It’s a start right?”

“Wait a minute,” Xein said, drawing away from Kaori. “I thought you knew where we were going.”

“Well, I knew we’d figure out where to go once we got here… It’s a good thing you ran into that guy on the train! We’d really be up a creek if you hadn’t.”

“Yeah, lucky us.”

“So, did he say anything else?”

“Besides the fact that he’s totally going the wrong way. He’s going up north to Yoichi and down trough Niseko to get there. We might be able to beat him if we go south and over to the lake instead. Uh,” Xein swallowed, not entirely wanting to ask the next question for fear of being smacked or worse: given the evil eye! “Um, what are we here for again?”

“We’re going to rescue Hisoka.”

Hisoka walked and walked until his feet throbbed so painfully that he had to sit down and rub some feeling back into them. The sky had lost all of its light and looked nothing more than a single paint stroke of black. With no stars lit in the sky or any other source of light besides the constant flashing of fireflies, Hisoka would have felt swallowed by the darkness if he wasn’t able to light the area with his own presence. At first he didn’t know where the odd glow was coming from; it was far too bright to be generated by the fireflies, but when he raised a hand out in front of him, he realized that the light was coming from himself. He was glowing! The light was so bright that he could see a good ten-fifteen feet in any direction around him. Sure, it wasn’t that great given the huge expanse in which he was wondering, but it comforted him knowing that he wouldn’t trip over an unseen object before him.

As he sat in the soft grass of the endless meadow, he looked up at the darkness ahead. What was just beyond that black veil out there? More meadows of tall, soothing grass that called out to him to rest within their gentle embrace? More unending nothingness of this unknown land he found himself thrown into? He felt tired all of a sudden and the ache in his back returned, a pain that seemed to pulsate in time with the blinking light of the fireflies. If I could lie back for a while, it will go away, he thought. Before he even decided, he felt himself slowly sit back and let his head rest in the soft blades of grass, the wind hissing in his ears. At first he thought he heard a voice, but in the next moment he had forgotten.

Then, just outside of his circle of light, something flashed brilliantly yellow—like a hot star—in the distance. Hisoka didn’t see the light but he felt it, like someone was out there, calling him. He tried to sit up but he couldn’t move. He was too tired. He blinked his eyes and tried to raise a hand to wipe the darkness from them, but he couldn’t even do that. The wind started to blow harder and colder. With every second that passed another firefly dropped from the black sky and faded away. His skin prickled and he could almost feel the hairs on his arms rise from the cold breeze. The tall grass dancing against his body felt like shards of ice biting into his skin. And then he heard the wind hiss again.

“….ssssoooo…..kkkaa… Sssss….oppppppp… ennnn….yooo… eeeyesss…. …S...eeee m…eeeeeeee….”

Were those words in the wind? The cold air kept blowing and Hisoka thought he could hear the hiss over and over again, but once he heard the sound, he forgot he heard it in the first place. For hours he sat in the frozen meadow with the wind blowing strange sounds at him and for hours he would forget where he was, what ache he thought he felt, what sound he thought he heard. Was the wind blowing? Was he standing or sitting, or maybe the world was upside-down? The thoughts floated like lost balloons in his mind, rising into the sky until they disappeared from sight. He stared up into the dark abyss of the sky with unseeing eyes and faded away.