THROUGH CRYSTAL

He is coming. I can feel him.

I don't know how he did it, but he is on his way. He is getting closer every day.

And I wonder why I feel no fear at all. There is only relief...

It means that it is finally ending. And I don't care how it ends anymore; I'm too tired to care.

I'm having trouble holding on. Sometimes I don't know where I am anymore, or who I am anymore. I'm only struggling against the pull and I know soon I will not care about that anymore, either. At some point, it will all slip away and I will give in. I know that day is coming.

Tonight heralded the fulfillment of the second week in a row that I woke up and I found blood on my pillow in the morning. It is a telltale sign that at night my defenses are weakening.

It's just a matter of time.

I don't care what will happen.

Let him come. Let him end it.

CHAPTER 1: CHANCE MEETING

To Joy Harting it seemed as if the sky was burning. At least, it felt that way; she had run out of water three hours ago and the sun was steadily climbing its way up the horizon to its peak. There were no clouds to speak of. Just the sky: bright and blue and burning and unrelenting. It signified trouble to a girl alone on a deserted highway, especially if she was not in a vehicle but actually hitch-hiking.

She could see miles in the distance. Miles of emptiness and no indication of anyone coming to pick her up and take her along. “I think I'm in trouble...” She sat down on the railing next to the road and held her head in her hands, feeling miserable and stupid all at once.

It was her own bloody fault, of course. That truck driver had been so nice to pick her up in Kilvich, even though she looked and smelled as if she'd been partying all night. She'd been swaying on her feet, cheerfully telling him hi and whether he wanted to take her along, she was trying to get out of town. He had done so. The truck-driver had taken a good look at her and grumbled at her: “As long as you don't puke in my truck, missy. You sound like you had a few pints too many.”

Through her alcohol-induced haze, Joy had smiled at him and reassured him that no, she wouldn't dream of it. She had fallen asleep at first. Her head had been spinning so she'd just leaned her head against the half-opened window and let the early morning air play with her hair. She'd been lucky that he had not tried anything, she realized now. Throughout her whole trip she had been /so/ careful that people could not take advantage of her or steal her bag pack, and now she had just passed out in some nameless truck driver's vehicle.

/Way to go, dddJoy,/ she berated herself dully. She massaged her temples, where a steady pressure was building itself up. It wasn't a full-blown migraine yet but it might as well become one. With the amount of liquid she'd lost in the spewing accident in that truck she was dehydrated like hell, and the beating sunlight wasn't helping matters much, either.

The truckdriver had not been very amused. Joy couldn't blame him. Since she had been drinking sour drinks, the stench of her vomit had enough to make her heave once again. He had hit the brakes and almost literally kicked her out of his car. “How dare you! I had the interior just refitted, and now you've ruined everything you stupid bitch!”

Joy had just sat on the gravel road, while he threw her bag pack and a bottle of water. She had not been able to say anything, consumed by guilt. “Thanks,” was all she could croak while he climbed back into his driver's seat. He shot her one last dirty look and gassed away from her, leaving the shimmerings of air energy behind.

At least he'd left her the water; she'd thought as she grabbed her communicator from her bag pack. She clicked it open and then discovered that there was no way she could arrange any taxi service out here; the batteries of her communicator were drained and the damn thing would not boot up anymore. That's right, she should have recharged them last night at this guy's place, what was his name, Paul or something? He'd had a communication station, it would have been the easiest thing in the world. But no... she'd been too busy hitting on him to actually do something about it.

And now here she was, on a deserted highway: no water, no means of communication, and with the sun beating down on her already so battered head. In the past four hours since the truck driver had dumped her here, she had walked a good four miles and then gave up, leaning against a roadsigns that said oh so optimistically that Mentorn was about 1200 millometers away. Zyx was only 230, but that seemed just as out of reach as anything else.

She had dug up the sign that said “Mentorn” from her backpack, but it was lying uselessly on the gravel next to her. It had been hours since she'd seen a vehicle... and those people had taken one look at her and then sped on. All they'd done for her was create a bit of wind for her to relish on this already bloody hot day. And then it wasn't even noon yet. Damn, she might /really/ be in trouble. What if the next person... /if/ there'd be a next person... would leave her behind as well? She might collapse of a heatstroke, and what if no one would brake for her? What if they wouldn't see her? She could die out here, on the Zyx road, all alone.

Joy barked out a bitter laugh and wiped her sweat-streaked hair out of her face. Now wouldn't that be something? Joy Harting, dead in a ditch on the deserted Zyx road. Her father would have a ball with that one, that was for sure!

What the hell was she doing on the way to Zyx anyway? She must have been unconscious for longer than she initially had thought; it was a long way from Kilvich to the Zyx road. How far along the road was she if there'd still be 230 millos to go? She tried to remember her geography lessons and failed. For a moment, she buried her fists in her hair in desperation, but then she regulated her breathing. /Right Joy, you're a smart girl. Stay calm. THINK./

There was nothing to be done to get out of the situation, so she'd just have to make as much as she could of her present situation... which wasn't much, but it might be the difference in the end. She relocated to as much shadow she could get (which was the shadow of the roadsigns) and took a t-shirt from her bags that she bound around her head. It would have been better if she'd still have some water to wet the cloth, but right now this was all she could do.

And then the long wait began. Joy focused on her breathing and seeing if she could still get her communicator to work, but while the former worked out nicely, the latter was sadly enough to no avail.

The sun reached its peak and Joy's skin was starting to pull and burn unpleasantly. She was also too hot for comfort and would like nothing more than just lay down and sleep, but the gravel was too hot and the rocky ground next to the highway did not look particularly inviting either. Still, she had troubles keeping her eyes open by the time another hour had passed. Her headache had passed from very unpleasant to downright blinding.

It was a good thing that at that time, she heard the sound of an approaching vehicle. A car, judging from the sound of its engine. Suddenly, Joy found that there was indeed some energy left in her body. She grabbed her hitch-hiking sign and jumped up, waving and bouncing to the car that was coming closer with every heartbeat. Sound carried far, so it took a good few more minutes before the car was actually close enough to make out that it was bright red and had an open roof.

Joy didn't take any chances this time. She positioned herself blatantly in the middle of the road; nobody would be able to miss her. This driver had to take her along or things would take a severe turn for the worse. She did not know all that much about air manipulations or energies, but if /she/ was left behind on this godforsaken road in the middle of nowhere, at least she wouldn't be alone. It wasn't /that/ hard to sabotage a vehicle, she'd seen it done before. All one needed to do was push into the air intake valve, and then...

The car slowed down, however. Perhaps the driver had felt Joy's desperate malicious intent, or this person was just warm-hearted, but the driver came to a relaxed halt before her. Joy laughed delightedly and walked towards the driver's side. “Hello,” she said politely to the young woman behind the wheel, “I'm going to Mentorn but I kind of don't care how long it takes. Could I hitch a ride?”

The woman in the car raked her shore reddish hair out of her tanned face and smirked. “Sure, I could use the company. I'm going to Zyx, is that okay with you?”

“Sure, whatever. It's the right direction, so I'm fine with everything.” Zyx wasn't the best place to be in the world and it would make you wonder what a young and healthy woman like this driver would have to do there. She didn't look like a criminal or a prostitute, despite her bright and tight clothes. Joy decided quickly that it wasn't her problem and got into the car before the woman might change her mind and speed off in the distance, leaving her in the dust. Hell no, that's not something that she wanted to think about. She got in and slung her backpack on the back seat. “Thank you so much for picking me up, miss,” Joy told the young woman breathless – who was, on a second glance, perhaps not so much of a woman after all. She was perhaps five years older than Joy herself. Six, perhaps? “My communicator was out of juice and if you wouldn't have passed me by I might have been in real trouble.”

The woman started the car and shot a quick smile at Joy. “You're welcome. There's a bottle of water in the dashboard if you want to. You look like you could use some hydration. How long have you been standing there?”

“Hours,” Joy answered. She rummaged into the dashboard drawer and found beside some route planners, a hand held device, an organizer and make-up indeed the indicated bottle of water. Gratefully, she screwed the bottle open and drank deeply. “You're my saviour. My name is Joy Harting by the way.”

The woman shot her a glance. She had sharp eyes; hazel green, long-lashed and pretty, but sharp. As if she could see right through you. “You're from Delgado, aren't you? I can hear it on your tongue. Are you related to the famous Harting or is it coincidence?”

“Coincidence,” Joy lied. “And you?”

“I'm not related to any bigshot politicians either,” she grinned, keeping her hazel gaze on the road. She chuckled for a moment and then took her right hand off the wheel to extend it in greeting. “Valeria de la Meray. From Costa, originally. Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise. I promise I won't throw up in your car,” Joy blurted out.

“That's good to hear,” Valeria said dryly, and then their hands met.

They shook hands in a speeding bright-red vehicle on an empty road under a burning blue sky. Who knows if it meant something? It was at least a meeting that would change Joy's life forever, and a start of something that the whole nation would come to remember later.

Joy was rather curious about Valeria's intents to go to Zyx, but since the other young woman wasn't asking her about her motives either Joy felt like it was intruding to ask about it. Instead, she just leaned back and watched the landscape glide by as the wind caressed her face and the sun shone down on her. Funny, all of a sudden it didn't feel like burning anymore, just like a gentle warming like it was supposed to do on a normal day in mid-spring. Naturally, near the border of Parsia things were different. The country out here had as much a land climate as Delgado, but without the rains that came from the ocean. Near the border, Parsia was just so much dryer. If there was vegetation, it was gnarled and weathered. It hardly gave off any shadow, let alone nourishment. No wonder that the place was so deserted. Joy had never been in this part of Parsia and quickly decided not to make a habit of visiting, either. They were driving for nearly twenty minutes when they spotted a refueling station.

“We're going to stop there, if you don't mind,” Valeria said.

Joy just nodded and watched as Valeria skillfully turned the car towards the station. It was a little building made of the same stones that were lying littered through the landscape. Rocks, essentially. They didn't seem very good for housebuilding but evidently there'd been someone with a lot of patience and some more than basic stone masonry skills.

“Good afternoon, ladies,” a man's voice sounded just as Joy had her back turned to the house because she was grabbing her bag out of the car. “It's been a while since I had visitors.”

Turning around to look at him, Joy could understand why. The was not quite the ugliest man she'd ever encountered, but he sure as hell came close. It was his teeth, mostly, who were so yellow that they were nearly brown, and so crooked; Joy could not stop watching them. Later she wouldn't even been able to recall the rest of what he looked like. “Dark hair,” Valeria would tell her later, with an amused smile.

“I'd like to purchase a new air unit,” Valeria said, stepping out of the car. The sunlight made her car keys glitter for a moment. Joy looked over at her saviour and found that for all intents and purposes Valeria was quite a beautiful girl. She had long legs that she was showing off with the ease of someone who's used to walk around in warm environments. Her legs were also beautifully tanned under her short red skirt, unlike Joys own. She was wearing a matching red-and-white top that kept her shoulders bare and showed a bit of flat stomach. There was a piercing in her bellybutton, Joy saw. It had caught the sunlight just as brightly as the car keys had. Valeria gestured in Joy's direction and smiled a bit. “And I believe my friend here would like to make use of your restroom, if that's okay?”

“Sure,” the man said, smiling that train wreck of a smile once again. “Have fun, miss,” he added.

Joy nearly fled to the bathroom. She quickly did what was necessary and then brushed her teeth and stuck her head under the water tap. She gasped against the cold water, but it cooled her off quite a bit and made her feel better. Vaguely, she wondered where the owner of the fuel station got his water from, for it tasted like normal drinking water – perhaps a bit less calcium than at home, but still, perfectly fine drinking water. For the moment she did not care, though. She washed her face, changed her shirt into something that light enough not to be warm, but still cover enough skin so she wouldn't get any more sunburnt than she was already.

When she came back to the car, she found Valeria bent over the opened lid of her car. She was slotting the air unit herself, Joy saw to her surprise. “Whoa, aren't you handy,” she said, standing next to the red-haired young woman as she knew exactly which buttons and clasps to click on. “You seem to know what you're doing,” she added. “Most people let the salesmen help them out.”

Valeria looked up and shrugged with a smile. “Army training. It wouldn't do to be able to dismantle compression bombs 30 meter under the water surface yet not being able to refuel your vehicle, right?”

Joy blinked. “You dismantle compression bombs?”

“Used to.” She turned away and fiddled more with the air unit, until it slipped in place with an audible click. “There, all better. We should be okay until far after Zyx now.” She walked off to pay the salesman and left Joy to stare after her in wonder.

She had heard of the naval army dismantling bombs before the coast of Parsia, of course. It was one of the reasons why her father had strictly forbidden her to ever swim in the ocean. “I don't want you to ever swim where it's deeper than your knees,” he'd warned her. She had been very young then, and could remember his angry and stern face as if it had been yesterday. “Not only are there sharks in the water, there are also leftover bombs from the last war that still have to explode.”

And Valeria used to dismantle those things?

“That must have earned you some crazy money,” Joy said when they both stepped into the car again.

Valeria waved at the ugly-teethed salesman and turned the ignition key over. The car muttered and then fell into it's steady rhythm that it would be able to maintain all the way to Zyx. “It did, mostly because it's bloody dangerous.”

“Why did you stop doing it?”

“Because it's not just potentially hazardous for your health to fiddle with bombs, it also fucks up your body to be underwater all the time. Has to do with nitrogen levels in the blood.” They turned back onto the road, back in the sunlight. When Joy looked back, the salesman was still looking at them. She could see his lonely figure next to the small house grow smaller and smaller in the distance.

“I didn't know that,” Joy said.

“Neither did I. But I guess that's my own fault for not reading the contracts well enough. I should have known that the hazard money was insanely high, it had to be a reason. Soldiers in the war didn't earn as much as I did. Which should have felt weird to me, because we blow up just as easily.” Valeria's voice turned somewhat bitter for a moment. She just kept her eyes on the road and said: “But hey, I was young. I felt better than the common soldiers... so I didn't think.”

“Much like I didn't,” Joy said, trying to divert Valeria's musings on the subject. She could tell that her traveling companion was not very comfortable with those thoughts. “We seem to have something in common, I guess.”

Valeria smiled. “And here we are, chance met on the road to Zyx.”

“Yes indeed we are. So, what do you want to do in Zyx anyway? It's no place for a girl to venture in alone.”

Valeria laughed. The wind caught the sound and carried it off. “I have some stuff to sell there. And I want some information on some parties I want to attend. You know, the underground sort?”

“Yup.” Joy definitely knew what Valeria was talking about. Such an underground party was the exact reason why she had ended up hitch-hiking in Kilvich while drunk out of her mind.

“Does that bother you?”

“Not in the slightest bit,” Joy said. She shot the young woman next to her an inquisitive look. “So after you quit the army, you just went out to party with the money you made?” That was what /she'd/ have done, at least.

Valeria laughed. “Pretty much. However, it turns out that one does not just quit the army. You have to go through a lot of bureaucracy and due to a few misunderstandings and some offices that need to get their heads out of their asses, the army is still convinced that I'm enlisted.”

“Are they giving you trouble?”

A shrug. “Sometimes. I don't let it bother me, though. It feels a bit like I have a stalking ex-boyfriend while I'm moving on to a new life. I don't quite know what the new life is, but hey, I got the rest of my life to figure out what the hell I want. I'm not in a hurry. And in the meantime, the ex-boyfriend can just go and kiss my cute butt.”

Joy stared at her for a moment and then decided that if Valeria was not outright lying, at least she was telling the socially acceptable part of her story. Joy was fine with that; they'd only met an hour or so ago, there was no reason why Valeria should bare her whole life to her. She was used to it, too. In Delgado most of the people she'd hung out with were going through their lives with alter ego's. Lifestyles of the rich and the famous were often complicated, she knew all about it. In Delgado it had been general pastime to figure out what the hell everyone was up to and how they were allied to certain cases.

Joy'd never made a secret of her standings and perhaps that was the reason she found herself here on a deserted highway to Zyx with a girl she did not know. Zyx! Of all places! If she was honest with herself, she'd have to admit that the idea of actually going there was seriously exciting her. She had read and seen so much of Zyx; books, movies, news items... half of them were false of course, with the hype-sensitive media nowadays, but she'd created an image in her head in the past years of what the border city would be like. She wondered how wrong she was.

“Have you ever been to Zyx?” she asked.

Valeria nodded. “Once, when I just got out. I had this checklist of things I wanted to do and see before I would die; seeing Zyx topped that list.”

“What is it like?”

“Dirty. It stinks, because the sewers in that place are fucked up. And the girls... I can't believe guys actually go there to see prostitutes. They look like they have all known diseases to man. How can you ever have sex with one of those?” She shook her head, smirked and continued: “Literally everything can be bought there. They have stashes of everything, and if they don't, they can get it to you in within 24 hours. I have no idea how they do it, I think they have their own Port station or something, but I can't believe that the Mage Guild would actually maintain one for them. Maybe they have an illegal one.”

“Sounds plausible,” Joy mused. “There are some rumours of the sort but hey, you know how it goes. Nobody wants to actually touch the border city because it's not their jurisdiction. And the can of worms it would open would probably ruin three nations.”

“I love status quo. Leaves more drugs and partying for us,” Valeria grinned. She stretched out her arms and touched the sky above the car for a moment, fingers trailing through the shimmers of air energy. Joy laughed with her, until Valeria suddenly said: “So what are /you/ going to do in Mentorn anyway? And how do you plan to hitch a ride in Zyx?”

Joy bit her lip and shrugged. “I don't know, I'll figure out how I get there. I got this far and I'm not planning to go home for a while. Delgado is... not a good place to be for me right now. And I know people in Mentorn, I'm sure I can stay for a while with them. After that... who can say?” When Valeria didn't say anything, she continued: “I'm not the type of person that worries about the future. I live in the here and the now. So if Zyx is coming next, I'm going to focus on that, and on the road to get there.” She smiled. “I'm so grateful you picked me up, you might have saved my life.”

Valeria laughed. “Don't be so negative. I passed quite some cars with the break-neck speed I've maintained so far. Someone else would have picked you up. Of course,” she added saucily, “they would not have been such good traveling company as I am, even /if/ they'd have taken you straight to Mentorn.”

“And we all love a bit of adventure,” Joy agreed. “I'm curious about Zyx... if all the stories and the movies are true.”

“Don't count on it. The movies are all shot in studio's with people who mostly have no idea what Zyx looks like. The only thing they got right is the dirtiness of the city. I've often wondered why the hell they don't give the city a paint job once in a while, or why they don't scrub their houses clean. Maybe they just want to be hardcore like that.”

“People are weird sometimes.”

They sat together in unison for a while and Joy mused on how easy their conversation meandered from one topic to another. Even though they were not completely honest with one another, she noted quickly how much she felt at ease with Valeria in the car. She had seen on the speed meters how fast they were driving and she had absolutely no qualms about it. She didn't feel in the least unsafe. It helped that the road was still deserted (they had passed all of two cars in the past hour or two) and thus speeding was not a thing of danger, yet still Joy felt like she could relax for the first time in forever. She made herself comfortable in the corner between the door and her seat and closed her eyes for a moment.

The next moment the sun was shining directly in her eyes, even in her slumped position. It was about three or four hours later, it had to be.

“Good morning sunshine,” Valeria told her. “We've arrived. If you look to your right, you can Zyx lying in the distance.”