Chapter 11: Queen
Elinaria glared through the foliage of the wood. It was very dark and very difficult to find something as obvious as a mage-dual between two spell-happy sisters with a grudge between them. She sighed and looked at her own magic ring. "Okadokey, activate ring for slow searching charm," she muttered grumpily.
She never had been able to completely master the delicate workings of the wandrings as well as her sisters. A pale blue light reluctantly formed in the confines of the beautiful aquamarine stone and squeesed itself out the top to hang listlessly in the dark.
"Well, go find them, at a good pace to follow, please."
The light seemed to stretch itself as if awakening from a long nap and took off at a jogging speed of a good horse.
Elinaria's experience in tracking was a lot easier and more gentle than others of the kind, but it also took much longer to find what she was looking for. Almost a halfhour had passed before she heard the sweet voice of Sidia.
"Oh, Rinowa! Come out and play! I can't believe that you've tired already of our little game. Weren't you aying just a minute or two ago how I shouldn't tire myself out without effect? Well, I hope all your hard work won't be in vain for absolutely nothing. Just a little useless, is that alright with you?" Sidia cooed sweetly.
"Search complete, spell end," Elinaria ordered the light. She unmounted. "Go find some grass to eat, not around here," she told her horse as she quietly slapped its hindquarters.
The horse wandered off according to its orders and Elinaria crept towards Sidia's voice.
"Oh, come on Rinowa, it's just a nice little sisterly get together. Reall, almost all I wanted to do is have a nice discussion with you," Sidia called out in a terrible sweet voice.
"I'm listening, talk," came Rinowa's voice from somewhere up above.
A great flash of red light meeting white illuminated the forest for a second. Then from the sky came Rinowa's voice, "Now, let's have none of that."
"Just seeing if you were paying attention. Now let's get down to business. You know that I am the true Queen. So, why do you support that little upstart, Elinaria?" Sidia said in an authoritative voice.
"Your claim to the throne is a weak one. As an acknowledged criminal with no rank, title, or family connections I must say that I do not know what you are thinking. I am amazed that you managed to bully so many into the ranks of your oversized revolutionary army."
"Why, you little!" a series of red bolts of power accented this speach and made it impossible to hear the string of insults thrown at Rinowa.
The red bolts seemed to hit an invisable forcesheild and disolve into floating power.
Sidia took a deep breath and calmed down. "I am the uncrowned Queen of Nioka, Duchess of both Alba and Baranbali, and Lady Sidia Miriyan Adoni of Nioka, second daughter of King Cyril Adoni and Queen Motuwesa deGilmar Adoni. I have a higher rank, more significant titles, and more powerful family connections than any other human in the world! This is my kingdom! You, my sister, should know that."
"You have no rank, for a criminal has none; you have no titles that you can truly call your own, for they were stripped from you; and you have no family, for you were disowned. I do not accept you as my sister. You can no longer claim the name Adoni," Rinowa said calmy.
"Your queen, Queen Elinaria Adoni, does not accept you as her sister either. It is time for you to return to prison, Sidia," Elinaria said as she stepped out into the open.
"My, my, my this is a proper little family reunion, isn't it? I see that you are just as cocky and full of youself as I expected you would be. You really shouldn't have let pretending to be Queen go to your head like that. You are still that dorky little pipsqueak that you always were. And now, you are goiong to die," Sidia spat out.
"No, I am not going to die," declared Elinaria.
Sidia rolled her eyes and aimed her wand at Elinaria then started to send great bolts of red power at Elinaria. Elinaria ducked and her ring reluctantly formed into a copper wand. She brushed away the bolts with great effort and it soon seemed as though Sidia would have her wish.
But then a blast of bright light knocked both Sidia and Elinaria off their feet. Sidia jumped to up and resumed her battle with Rinowa, but the darkness made it difficult to see where over head Rinowa was, and there was the added difficulty of Elinaria at Sidia's feet.
For several minutes Sidia kept up a kind of dance, trying to avoid blasts from several different directions, but she at last realized that she couldn't keep it up. With one final explosion of power, she vanished.
Kajiel was awakened by the click of a lock. He sat up. There seemed to him to be a slight change in one of the doors that lined his room. He slipped off the bed and hesitatingly walked towards the door. A troubled look stole across his face as he stared at the handle of the door, as if it would shock him if he touched it. He shook his head and turned away. "I must have been dreaming," he muttered.
His attention was again brought back to the door by the soft sound of a door swinging open. He turned, and found himself looking into the queerest room imaginable to find in Sidia's house. There were piles of boxes scattered all over so that he could barely see a few feet into the room. There were strange things scattered about on top of the piles of boxes, in piles of there own, and on the ground.
After a moment of staring into the chaos he noticed what looked like a path through the junk. He cautiously advances into the room, looking around and trying to imagine functions for the objects littering the room.
The door swung shut and the lock clicked. He wheeled around at the sound, but seeing as how there was nothing to be done, he continued his tour of the junkpiles. It was a very large room and the path wound about considerably so as to have access to everything stored on its sides.
Suddenly as Kajiel rounded a particularly sharp corner he noticed to things. One was that he was in the middle of a large empty space with very different things around, and the other was that he was face to face with Sidia.
Instinctively his right arm flew to his left hip where his sword should be, but upon finding no sword and reminding himself that Sidia was a woman and retained the rights and privileges of womanhood he bowed slightly instead of throttling her as he would like to have.
Sidia smiled delightedly and gestured for him to rise, though he had already finished. "Kajiel! I am so glad to see you. How are you?"
"I am fine. How do you do?" he inquired, noticing with surprise how dirty she was.
"I am a little out of spirits, but I'm sure a nice little talk with you will cheer me right up," she said smiling.
"I'm glad you have such confidence in me," Kajiel replied raising his eyebrows at her announcement.
"Oh, won't you sit down?" Sidia asked, gesturing at an extremely uncomfortable looking chair wich seemed to have straps to tie people up with who had to sit in it.
"If you insist," Kajiel said and promptly walked past Sidia to a raised thronelike chair at the far end of the clearing. He sat down with a pleased look on his face.
Sidia frowned, then a look came over her face that Kajiel did not like. She looked intently at the ground where a moment later there was another raised thronelike chair that matched Kajiels and a table that went from her chair to his.
"This feels like we're settling down to a nice family dinner with you at the head of the table and me at the foot like we were husband and wife," Sidia remarked.
"In that case I do believe that I'll take the other chair."
Sidia laughed as he slid out of his chair and took the uncomfortable one. When he was properly settled Sidia got out of her chair and walked to the one Kajiel had vacated. As she sat down the table and other chair evaporated.
"So how do you like your new quarters?" Sidia asked curiously.
"They are sufficiently boring, if that's what you mean. Otherwise they are quite nice," Kajiel replied.
"So how have you enjoyed your little time away from your room?"
"I don't see what you mean," Kajiel replied confusedly.
"Are you in your room then?"
"I am not."
"So, how do you like being out of your room?"
"It is an interesting change of scenery, made beautiful by your presence," Kajiel said gallantly.
"That's a nice bit of flattery for you. But I suppose your'd be even happier if it was my fool sister's presence instead of mine. Well, you can't have everything, and I can't either."
"That's a good point. Unfortunatly you have closer to everything than I and deserve it less," Kajiel said, nettled.
"My, my. I am glad to see that you're becoming easier to unsettle. I love it. Anyways, you were very rude just now. I would like to know what I have done to deserve such shocking rudeness," Sidia laughed.
"Nothing out of the ordinary. You simply were who you have been since you murdered your parents and the most beautiful, sweetest, and best girl that ever lived. Other than that, well you tried to rub the fact that you killed her in my face as usual, nothing else."
"You really shouldn't say things like that, my dear. You see, I never meant, nor wanted, to kill Tinivera. I was always extremely fond of her, since we were twins and all. I might have been a little angry with her, that's only natural with you being engaged to her and not to me, but the one I really wanted to kill was my mother. You see, Mother separated Tini and I when we were four years old, for reasons I never understood, and I never forgave her. So it's really all my Mother's and your fault that she died anyway."
"My fault? How can you possibly say that your killing her was my fault? I suppose if the sun rose green every third day it would be my fault. If some thief stole some valuable painting off the walls in a museum, according to you it would all be my fault," Kajiel spat out.
"No, no, no. Of course, now that you said that it will, but that isn't the point," Sidia said hurriedly.
"The point! Now, what is the point of anything!? What is the point of keeping me here? What is the point!?!" Kajiel cried out.
Sidia laughed. "I'm really getting to you, aren't I?"
Kajiel just glared at her.
"Oh, yes the point. Or perhaps I should say points for you seemed curious about a good many of them. Well, let me see. First, the point of what I was saying was that I would have killed any girl, other than Tinivera of maybe Taria, without hesitating if you had proposed to her. I didn't want to kill Tini, it was an accident. But the years of separation and your engagement made it possible for me to hate her enough to kill without meaning to," Sidia explained.
Kajiel glared at her. "You're despicable," he breathed out.
"Oh, I suppose I am. Anyways, I still have two more points to make. First, the point of anything is to live, and overcome. Second, the main point of you being here is so that you can amuse me. The other point of you being here is that I can't stand the thought of you enjoying life and forgetting about me." Sidia finished.
They sat there for a little while, maybe a quarter of an hour or more. Then Kajiel got up and went backto the door to his room which had unlocked again, and walked in with one final glance to the piles of junk.
So, Moony, how do you like this chapter? I rather like it. What do you think about the discriptions I use to describe my background? How do you like the wandrings? It wasn't too much Sidia or too long, was it?
By the way, how on Earth did you find my story? Should I start on a new one?