Welcome to Gaia! ::

Naeva sighed as she laid her pen aside at last, and rubbed her eyes. The light coming in through the window was dim; the elf guessed it would be storming soon. This bookkeeping was killing her slowly, Naeva was sure of it. There had to be some way to reduce this paperwork so she could get out and interact with her charges more.

The redhead privately regarded all the unicorns on the property as her personal responsibility, regardless of their caretakers. She looked to the corner that Zhi had claimed. The little purple-brindled mare was sound asleep on the pile of cushions Naeva had placed there for her. Zhi was the only uni at the Agency, currently, who was solely under Naeva's guardianship.

A deep rumble of thunder rolled across the Agency grounds, and a heavy rain began to bounce off the windows. It started slowly, a drop or two here and there, but quickly built into a torrential downpour. Naeva pulled her overstuffed armchair up to the picture window and watched the rain sluice over her little domain. Her little besieged domain... Well, it beat staying on at that insufferably stuffy "Collyge of Mysteryes and Magickal Secretes" as an associate professor. At least this way she got her own lab, and she felt she could make a real difference here.

Zhi, wakened by the storm, sat beside her friend and slid her velvety muzzle under Naeva's idle hand, and the elf stroked the uni's soft face and ears gently. A soft smile grew on Naeva's lips. Yes, this was her home. The unicorns and their caretakers had become as family to her. She'd defend her place and her people to the death now that she'd claimed them. That is, assuming she was able this time.

As Zhi dozed in her lap, Naeva watched the rain fall and remembered. It had been five years and more since Nitesh had gone. It was still so hard to think that he was dead, but she had to assume the worst.

Naeva sighed, and allowed the memories to flood her once again. She couldn't keep hiding from them. It had been a dreary grey day, the wind promising rain by eventide. Nitesh shone in the shadowy light with his iridescent blue and white coat, the browns disappearing into the dark earth on which he stood, making him seem ephemeral. He had smiled at her, spoken encouragement. Nitesh, she had discovered, was far friendlier than most of his element-kin.

She had not been in this world long, at that point in time. She'd yet to claim the Agency grounds, and yet to raise the Wards. They had gotten word the previous evening about darklings in the area, and were about to leave to gather in what unicorns they could. Naeva wished with all her heart she'd insisted that Nitesh stay, but she'd had no idea darklings could be so powerful... She couldn't have known what would happen.

They had walked the forest together that day, as they had every day for the weeks since they'd met. That day, the need to see the herds to safety hastened their strides. Naeva had imagined the smell of death on every fitful breeze, hateful eyes in every shadow. Nitesh's cool confidence had kept her calm, kept her grounded. He had always been good at that.

They had found several herds and were coordinating them, trying to work out how best to get them to safety. One of the herd leaders, a solidly built Earth-element mare, had told them of a stray group, new to the area, that had taken refuge in the broken stones of the Gaunt Rocks to the East. Of course, they had to go. Nitesh wouldn't have had it any other way, and at the time neither would Naeva.

It seemed to her mind's eye that Nitesh glowed the brighter as the daylight waned in the face of the gathering storm.

When they'd arrived at the ragged, razor-sharp rock outcroppings, they had found the refugee group almost immediately; they were scattered over the stones, horribly broken, fresh blood spattered across the blades of rock. Naeva had caught the motion before Nitesh. A shift in the shadows where no movement should have been. A shift, that became a spring, and the elf had been rent by sharp claws. Trying to twist out of the way had only made it worse.

Curled in her overstuffed chair, Naeva paused her stroking of Zhi's mane to run her fingers along the scar that ran from her upper arm down to her wrist; the wound had nearly killed her.

She had screamed, loud and shrill. Nitesh whirled and came at the cat-thing that had her, horn lowered. He'd skewered it thoroughly, forcing it back, allowing Naeva to rise.

He had ordered her to flee, in that tone he had that brooked no dispute. Too terrified by the magnitude of evil she now faced, too shocked by the pain and blood loss, she did not argue.

She owed her life to the herds of the area, who had posted a watch patrol against her orders, awaiting her return. They had found her, nearly dead of her wounds. She'd never seen Nitesh again.

Zhi stirred from her sleep and looked up sharply at the sound of quiet sobbing. She stretched up to nuzzle her friend's face, and Naeva drew the little mare up into her lap and wept into her silky mane for awhile. Naeva was grateful to her new companion for her patience; Zhi did not ask what troubled her friend, and would not. Eventually, the tears ceased, and the elf dried her face and Zhi's damp mane.

"Thanks, dearheart."

The wise little mare nodded and smiled. She had a change of subject ready and waiting. "Can we go splash in the puddles, now? The rain's stopped!"

Naeva laughed and nodded, and the companions walked out the door together.

((As promised: Naeva's escapades which produced the gates.))

Naeva stumbled up the stairs with the korye cub in her arms. Reaching the top landing was mostly an effort of will, as her body was rapidly giving out on her. Nitesh and Zhi were shepherding an unresisting Mauli along behind the elfmage.

After opening the door, which was far more difficult than it ought to have been, Naeva staggered to the pile of cushions that served Nitesh and Zhi for a bed. She knelt beside it, nestling the sleeping cub into the pillows.

Zhi and Nitesh shared a look, not really caring to have the thing unrestrained in their home and especially not in their bed! But Mauli, with a whimper, shouldered past the larger unicorns and curled up next to the cub. Naeva sat next to them stroking Mauli's mane absently and eventually, Zhi and Nitesh found their own places on the crowded heap. After awhile, Naeva dozed off with her head on Nitesh's back, his head in her lap, Zhi draped across Nitesh's neck, and Mauli's head and neck sprawled across Naeva's legs with the cub in the curve of her body.

Naeva slept through the next two days, and when she woke, discovered that the cub had been bathed (she suspected the intervention of Nitesh's Summon and Kinesis abilities in this endeavor) and was happily playing with Mauli. Mauli, for her part, seemed in much better spirits, and Zhi and Nitesh were much more at ease in the presence of the infant darkling.

The elf decided that sorting this out could bloody well wait 'til after breakfast, as she was starving. After she'd eaten, she sat down with Nitesh and watched Zhi and Mauli play chase with the cub.

"So that strange wall is still up on the grounds, I see." The magical structure was visible out the large window. Nitesh just nodded as he watched the trio pelt by. Mauli was holding her own against the cub, but Zhi was having to use her wings to keep pace. The elf sighed. "I'm going to have to do something about that. We'll have to be able to enter and leave sooner or later. But I'm afraid that anything I do will also allow things, like our cub there, to come in.

Mauli, hearing mention of her charge, looked up from her play. "His name is Shyam," the petite blood element declared proudly. "Nitesh and I bathed him, and he's been very good. He hasn't broken anything!" Naeva bit back a laugh and merely smiled and nodded as the group resumed their tussling.

"There's another thing to consider, Lady," Nitesh spoke at last. "Shyam has indeed been remarkably well behaved for what he is. He has not offered to harm anyone unless he was frightened, and has not even damaged any of the furniture. After he was bathed, even his odor faded away." The pale stallion met Naeva's eyes. "Darklings are the very soul of corruption and destruction, as you know. He should not be capable of such restraint, and his very presence should be abhorrent to those of us so touched by Nature herself, smell notwithstanding. But this is not so. It is a mystery that bears much more thought."

Naeva shook her head. "I don't begin to understand it. It may be because he is so young, or it may be because he was pulled through the Wards by Mauli- did you notice that the Wards burned her too? That shouldn't have happened. It may be that the spell... scraped off, for lack of a better term, the corruptive energy that made Shyam a darkling. Maybe he isn't one anymore."

After a moment's pause, the old friends stared at one another in shock, having reached the same conclusion at the same moment. If Shyam was no longer a darkling, could others be similarly changed? Their minds went spinning off on tangents of implications. "If the energy has been removed from him, what has he become," Nitesh asked. "And if the energy is not an intrisic part of him- and if he survived it's removal it must not be- how does it become attached?"

"And when? And how?" A chill went through the slender elf mage. "Or by whom?"

The unicorn and the elfmaid stared at one another for a moment in horror before she continued. "But that's nothing but speculation. There's no reason to assume that just because something awful is happening that someone is doing it deliberately."

Nitesh merely nodded in response. There had been rumors that he had heard in his wanderings... but then, there were always rumors. He would not repeat idle gossip until he had something more concrete to back it up.

The elf stood from her table and grabbed up her satchel. "Well, I'd best get to work figuring out how to break a hole in that blasted wall. You coming?"