Whee!
Waters Under Earth
A Ranma 1/2 Fanfic by Alan Harnum
-harnums@thekeep.org
-harnums@hotmail.com (old/backup)
All Ranma characters are the property of Rumiko Takahashi, first
published by Shogakukan in Japan and brought over to North
America by Viz Communications.
Waters Under Earth at Transpacific Fanfiction:
http://www.thekeep.org/~mike/transp.html
Here it is at last - after nearly two years, the final chapter.
The epilogue and author's notes will be out very soon, hopefully
by the weekend; I considered delaying the release of this
chapter until they were finished, but then decided that you've
all waited long enough already.
As always, commentary is welcomed and appreciated.
Incoming! :)
Chapter 40 : The Night-Sea Journey
Now hollow fires burn out to black,
And lights are guttering low:
Square your shoulders, lift your pack,
And leave your friends and go.
Oh never fear, man, nought's to dread,
Look not left nor right:
In all the endless road you tread
There's nothing but the night.
-A.E. Housman
{Oh, great. Optimism. Now I'm REALLY worried. :) }
It was hours till sunrise, and there would be so much still
to do when morning came. She should have gone back to sleep.
Instead, she drew a robe about herself, and went out out into the
herself and
halls of the mountain. No one but her walked those stone floors,
and she made her way down to the lower levels with only the
company of her footsteps. She did not fly, and could not say why
she did not.
{Ah. Kiima.}
He was just leaving as she found him, closing the door
behind him. Beyond it, she knew, Akane would lie asleep amidst
the tangle of covers. He had touched her cheek, gentle, before
he went; she felt the sympathetic tingle of it upon her own face.
{glack. I just realized why. Akaneniichuan. Eeeee...}
"It would have been easier that way," he answered, and she
heard her pain mirrored back. Distance or closeness, she would
{suggest} closeness; she
never be able to say which could hurt more.
He stepped lightly towards her. "I can only bear so many
goodbyes, you know. Even that one..." He gestured to the closed
door. "...even that was nearly too much." In his eyes, she saw a
flash of the boy he had been.
{caps? tricky, but suggest} Even that one," he gestured to the
closed door, "even that was nearly too much."
"Sympathy and contagion, Kima." And he touched his hands to
hers. "I freed her, and in freeing her, I freed something else
as well. He has returned, and I must go to fight him."
"Alone?"
"Oh yes." And there were many languages, many stories, in
his speech. "At the end, I always have to go alone."
{Very, um, mythological. No time for the dissertation... :) }
"What about her?" She pointed to the door. Then she took
the last step. "What about me?"
{ O_o Boy, now would be a bad time for Tarou to walk in... }
"I saw things when I went up in those flames," he said,
voice coming distant. "So many things that I have not the voices
or the words to speak them all. I saw paths, and ends. One
path, things went differently on Chenmo Shan."
Oh, gods, she thought. Oh, my dead kings, I do not wish to
hear this.
"And it wasn't her and I, it was you and me."
{Is that the path where Akane DID drown to make the spring? Shudder...}
His fingers traced the line of her wing, the wing that had
been dead. The wing that he had healed. And she had loved him
since then, and never voiced it. Could not voice it now.
{Aiyaa. Poor Kiima. Poor Akane.}
In the end, all she said was: "I am not the last one you
should say goodbye too."
goodbye to."
"No," he admitted, "you are not. There are two more to whom
I should make my farewells, but one is not yet come. To the one
who is come, and was here before me, I shall try to make what
peace I can with her."
{gramatically, should be "I can." but I like the sound, so how about}
before me.... I shall try to make what peace I can with her."
He laughed, and there was real joy in it now. "In other
places, you have been all other things to me; mother, daughter,
me: mother,
lover, bride. Most like a sister, here."
"Go, then," she quietly said, "and your sister bids you
farewell."
They embraced. It was the embrace of siblings, and the hurt
was not so much now as it had been. He left, walked away down
one empty stone corridor, and left her to stay alone, until the
sun rose.
{Well, that's better than it might have been... but I think they'd
both rather fight bloody battles.}
Her son bent over her, and there was nothing in his eyes but
him. Her beautiful son, returned to her. And it could be only a
dream.
{Not sure of emphasis; perhaps} it could only be a
The bed sank beneath his weight as he sat down beside her.
"Yeah, Mom. I came back for you."
{And here he's using the speech of the Ranma she knows. Very
considerate.}
"No." He corrected her. "Had I fought, I would have lost.
"No," he corrected her.
I chose not to fight, and by not fighting, won - so that now I
{or maybe} fight and, by not fighting, win - so
can go to fight the real battle."
"Must you? Must you?" She asked the question, even though
she knew the answer. Had always known it, in her heart.
"Of course I have to," he answered, even though she could
see no way he could not know she knew the answer before he spoke
it.
{Aiyaa, that's tangled, but there's no way around that, is there? :) }
"Why do you always leave me?"
He held her tighter, for a moment, and she remembered when
he was the small one. "It's what a son does."
{Ouch. "A son's a son 'til he takes a wife..."}
"I am sorry, my son." She stroked his hair. "Go. Do what
you must. My love shall not lessen if you leave me now, nor ever
after this."
"Thanks, Mom," he said, and the relief in his voice made her
smile. A part of him was still only a boy, wanting and needing
his mother's approval. I shall be strong for him, she vowed,
that he may be strong for what he must do. Whatever it may be.
{Well, and it's a fine thing she did there, too.}
In his silver hand, he holds Worldcleaver, longer than he is
tall, night-black and agony-sharp. His hair is argent moonlight;
one eye is crimson flame, and the other is of gold rich with
jewels. The black armour - black shell, now, for after so long a
time it is a part of him, and cannot be removed - is crenated and
glistening, as of the carapace of some terrible and alien insect.
as might be the {?}
He passes beneath the archway at the top of the stairs, and
steps into the cold crimson light of early dawn. He, Baazel -
named Ravager, World-Hater, Scourge of Life - at the battlements
stands. His hand of flesh strokes bone-white blue-veined
parapets sharp as razors. Their edges slice his flesh to ribbons;
the wounds heal almost as fast as they are made. Bloodied, the
parapets glisten almost hungrily, as though in anticipation.
{Yuck.}
Throwing back his awful, beautiful head, he laughs at the
coming dawn. Fool, he thinks, as his laughter courses across the
waves and makes sleepers wake screaming. Sweet pawn, all has
come to fruition by your ignorant hand. Still laughing, he
raises Wordcleaver, and with it stirs the air.
{Famous last words. :) }
The clouds answer, and darkness begins to spread over the
sky. The seas answer, and slowly begin to turn around the axis
he has created.
There is a third answer coming. And so Baazel waits.
{Of course it would be three. :) }
**********
It would have been a lie to say that there were no others he
wished to say farewell to. Truth was, he would have liked to bid
them all goodbye; all those who had come this far with him,
whether they had been there from the beginning, or only from
close to the end.
{suggest} near the end.
But some partings were easier made if unacknowledged, and
each farewell would have been another weight upon him to hold him
here. It was hard enough to leave already, but he had left;
walked out of one of the passages of Phoenix Mountain into the
open air. And there he had grasped his power, and loosed
gravity's bondage upon his body.
{To ride secure the cruel sky? :) }
This, then, was the first thing he had to do. He dropped
from the sky, slowed himself a few feet before he hit, and landed
lightly in the epicentre of the stone circle. A deep breath drew
he, and then he placed one end of the staff Tianzhu against the
stone.
{Epicentre's a damn good word here, meaning as it does the point on the
surface above the point of interest. Nice.}
He raised his hand and caught the staff, as it was flung
staff as
towards him by the churnings of the whirlpool.
Walking upon the surface of the now-glowing lake, Ranma
made his way to their edge, the division of earth and waters. He
to its edge {? or do you mean to emphasize that this is two edges, the
edge of earth and the edge of water? There's the edge of air, too... all
we're missing is fire... er... maybe not. :) }
turned back to face the shimmering expanse, and clapped his hands
thrice.
In shining glory, the Lady of Change raised her great
serpentine head from the depths of the new lake, and regarded him
with sad, ancient eyes like dark blue seas. Her gold was no
longer tarnished; it shone as if new-forged. She dipped her neck
in a respectul curve to him, and smiled. Wings with red-gold
respectful
scales rose, spread, and caught the sun within their depths, so
that they burned too bright to look upon.
"This deed is pleasing to my eye, servant," she said kindly.
"So Tang Jin shall live again, and be a light against the Dark.
I am well pleased with you."
{! Whoa. Praise indeed.}
The voice of the dragon rose again, a beautiful music. "Do
you usually bathe with your clothes on, Lord of Waters?" she
asked with austere humour.
"Umm... but..."
Her laughter chimed. "So, you are not so far gone from what
you once were."
{heh!}
Clear as golden glass they were, and yet he could not see
any bottom; nor sides, nor sky above his head. Only a limitless
expanse of gold in all directions, as though beneath the waters
was another place than above them. It probably was, he thought;
in the same way that the lake at Ryugenzawa led into the Dragon
Palace, which he knew now was no more.
knew was now no more. {?}
I am gathering back the souls that died within the pools,
that they might at last find rest in dissolution. Some I have
brought to me already, even as I lay wounded; now, I must take
the rest. And there is no more for you to learn from her now.
{! I wonder if he'll miss her... I wonder if he'll have time.}
Learn?
Through her, we tried to teach you to another way of seeing.
you another {?}
He pulled himself through the water with pushes of his arms
and legs. Beside him, the Lady swam, and sometimes she was a
dragon, and sometimes she was a woman fairer than the rising sun.
{Amaterasu Oomikami?}
With each swimming stroke, he felt as though something were
sloughing away from him, as if he were shedding some invisible
skin.
At last, the feeling ended, and he ceased swimming to float
last the
peacefully in the golden waters. Within her jaws, or hands, the
{suggest} jaws or hands,
Lady held a golden sphere of light like a magnificent pearl.
As Ranma descended towards the top of one hill of sand, his
wind-aura scattered tiny dust devils about his feet. They died
and collapsed as he let the power shrink again. His bare feet,
still damp from his bathing, left muddy tracks upon the sand as
he descended the dune. The wind sobbed in his ears.
{Now that's eerie. Usually wet-footed walkers take sand with them rather
than leaving water behind, but it's clearly different for the Lord of
Waters...}
And still, the weeping taunted Ranma. Lord of Waters, they
had called him, and yet he could not find what he was looking
{suggest} seeking for.
for. Had he even the comprehension of what he sought? Already
it seemed some faded dream of grief.
He struck the sand with his staff. A thunderous rumble
smote the earth; the ground shook, dunes collapsed, valleys
filled in. Though the sky was cloudless, a bolt of lightning -
without answering thunder - shot down like the finger of a god
and struck the staff. Ranma breathed in; ozone, and the tang of
rain. Beneath his feet, long-pinioned water ran with elemental
glee through dust-choked channels. Electricity sang through his
body and made his hairs stand on end. He threw back his head,
and howled with ecstatic glee.
A geyser of water exploded through the sand, towered thrice
his height into the air, and then began to splash down. Sand
turned to mud, and began to wash away; the land around him began
to level out from dunes and valleys into level plains.
{The ones that were left from the previous dunes collapsing and valleys
filling in... did you mean to do this twice? Had it been thrice, I would
not have wondered. :) }
The song of creation filled him; lightning moved upon the
face of the waters. And Survivor laughed, joy in it, and
changed; or perhaps not changed so much as threw on another skin.
Her hair turned green, her body grew; a crown of ivy crept thrice
in circles around her brow, and the thyrsus appeared in her
hand. Longer grew her hair, and more tangled, until it was like
ropey vines in some primeval forest.
ropy
"This shall be Tu Mu again, the centre of things. And
this..." She swept her hands outward, in a gesture of infinite
giving, and from the sands green grass began to sprout. It died
immediately. But more grass grew, and died. Grew again, and
this time did not die, but took root in the bodies of its
predecessors. Flowers began to stretch forth and unfurl their
petals; springs of water bubbled from the now-fertile earth. As
far as his eye could see, it happened.
{Ever seen life moving onto a new lava flow? It happens too slowly, of
course, but there are places -- Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, one of
my favorite places in the world, is one -- where you can see lava flows
of all ages in one place, and imagine it. It goes very much like that.}
His own god is on the move. With glee, Baazel witnesses his
power. What hope have they?, he thinks. What hope have any?
they? he
There is another power on the move, one he knows nearly as
he knows himself. Perhaps it is great enough to challenge him.
Not the master, though; never the master.
{"never" is a long time... :> }
All this shall be so, if only he does what he requires.
{pronoun trouble? suggest perhaps} if only the one does what he
He came to the place of the Lady of Death by way of a small
tunnel in the side of Chenmo Shan, and passed between narrow
walls rimed with the detritus of long ages exposed to water. It
was as though even ancient stone could not contrain the strength
constrain {?}
A second later, he landed on his feet in the small chamber
of dark rock veined with moon-coloured crystal. The Lady's lake
- really no more than large pond - glistened in the centre.
than a large
He did not need to call for her attention. This was her
domain, and she had never been bound or broken. Silent, stately,
she rose up from the lake and stood upon the water, white-garbed
and black-tressed. Footprints formed and died upon the water as
she walked to greet him at its edge. He knelt before her, and
she touched his brow, and bade him rise.
{...and in my mind, she looks like Kodachi... as Kodachi wishes to look.
Must... have... fanart...}
"Since I came to this place," she said, turning again to
face him, "I have laboured each day upon these garments. With
each turning of the world, I drew my needle once; my threads were
the beams of the moon and sun, and my needle was the tip of the
mountain. Last night, my long labour came to an end. Receive
your garb, Lord of Waters."
{ !!! }
Once the Lord of Waters was gone, a pale-faced shadow
stepped from the concealment of a formation of craggy
stalagmites, and knelt.
"My lady, may I follow? I shall hide myself from his sight;
I shall aid him not. I want only to witness, for he was my
friend once. Is my friend still."
{ Mousse? Or, rather, he who once was Mousse? }
Before anything else, Ranma saw the smoke, hanging in the
air in a dank pall for miles around. It wasn't the smoke of
live flames, but rather the smouldering of fresh ashes. The main
burning had obviously taken place hours ago; scattered fires
still ran mostly unchecked the streets, halfheartedly fought by
unchecked in the {?} unchecked through the {?}
those who still lived.
He had flown long and hard over China, to the east, towards
the sea; nearly a hundred miles from the coast, he saw the first
traces of the smoke. He flew faster, pushing himself to his
limits.
And so, he came upon the remains of Shanghai.
{whoops. For some reason, I'd imagined the cataclysm confined to
Jusenkyo and the people who lived around it. Silly me.}
He thought, in a single moment of weakness, of turning back.
Let someone else fight Baazel; let others leave all they love
behind. Take this burden from me. Send another champion, so
that I can go back, spend my life with Akane, with my friends,
with my mother; send another, so that I don't have to do this.
{I've seen that sentiment before, of course...}
Again, it was the smoke he saw first. It didn't hang heavy
in the air, though, but moved in a circle dance through the sky.
circle-dance {or} circular dance
gems. They parted at the touch of his hand; beyond them,
alternating pillars of gold and silver ran the length of a great
hall. Between them hungs banners of precious silks, and ruby
hung
lamps flamed upon the walls with hot red light.
This had gone many times before, and would go many times
after. Final battle? It would be the final battle for one of
them, of course. Not the final battle, though; merely a final
battle.
{Nontrivial distinction.}
Why do I serve you, master, she wondered - and not for the
master? she
first time, though for the first time in many years. But she
could not hear him or even sense his presence here. For once,
she was truly alone.
Unhindered by her aged, crippled body, her mind and far-
seeing sight roamed free, and watched the present become the
past, as it sped relentlessly towards one of two futures dark to
her.
{A weasel down the trousers of time... sorry. :) }
**********
Combat meant to end in the death of one combatant is a hard
thing to describe, even for the one who experiences it. To give
adequate voice to the sensation - the sense of walking a line as
thin as a razor, with death on either side - makes it seem
almost balletic in nature. It is not; there is nothing so formal
about it, it is mere mad hell of pain and fear, and death avoided
is a mere {?}
by the breadth of hairs.
Ranma was airborne before the maw could devour him, though,
and his body burned with starlike radiance. He howled, stretched
out his fingers; sizzling lines of white-hot power leapt forth
and raked the air. The Ravager moved away from them as though
avoiding the blows of a child, and all around the two champions,
the gold and silver pillars fell, cleaved into sections by the
champions the
annihilating heat of Ranma's attack.
How fierce the battle went! They taunted one another;
The Ravager's laughter wounded the air, and was answered by the
the Ravager's {caps}
proud defiance of the Lord of Waters. But defiance grew
The Ravager stood, took a few staggering steps, and then
sank down his knees. His silver hand futilely grabbed at
{suggest} groped {or} grasped
Tianzhu, whose light had now dimmed to the point where the eye
did not avert from it.
He ceased his words, and lay panting upon the unpitying
{"panting"? Um, that's a bit too much life for me to be complacent about
just yet...}
stones. Ranma got wearily to his feet, and began the slow walk
over to his vanquished foe.
A harsh, percussive voice - his own refutation, or the
master's, he could not tell - seemed to answer in response.
Healing is not mine; you insult me by the very asking, weak fool.
Have you no knowledge of what I am, even after so long within my
service? I am that which brings all healing to futility, King of
Ashes and Unmaker - ask not for healing from me.
{heh. Nice philosophical point.}
Would you switch allegiance even from me, backstabber,
traitor? Perhaps you shall call upon those who oppose me - such
futile and foolish acts as healing as well-suited to them.
Xande opened his mouth, closed it. He had some pride, in
the end; he did not love the mere fact of his life so much that
he would turn against the very foundations of it. In the end,
he would at least be a true servant of something.
{Integrity. Doesn't that violate his allegiance too? What a paradox he's
caught in...}
"City. You know nothing. You know nothing at all, you
stupid, foolish child."
Dread came down like a shower of icy rain, suffusing Ranma's
bones. "What?"
{Me too. Ohshit.}
Could Baazel, he wondered, have escaped becoming Ravager and
World-Hater, any more than he could have escaped becoming Lord of
Waters?
{What a fine question.}
He thought he had known dread before, when Baazel's words of
derision had wakened it within him. Now he knew than tenfold -
knew it tenfold {?}
no, hundredfold. There was a terrible malignity in the island,
one that only grew the more it became exposed.
At the narrow end of the long face of the island, two almost
identical rounded caves became visible. From their black depths
almost-identical
issued clouds of smoke, and their rocky rims glowed cherry-red
with heat. Some volcanic reaction within the island that caused
its great heat?
The creeping dread had grown so great that he had to seize
his tongue between his teeth to keep from crying out in terror.
His arms and legs quavered, and it was all he could do to keep
hold of his power and remain airborne. Why such excess of fear?
Unnatural though it might be, it was only an island.
{uh... famous last words? :S }
Now he saw that dozens of rocky stalagmites hung down from
stalactites {stalagmites rise up}
all edges of the long face, in a pattern that appeared too
regular to be natural; and, at beholding that sight, he could not
{suggest} and, beholding
keep himself from whimpering. Fear had seized him like a fist,
and he could not explain it. Never had he been so afraid before;
not even the cloudy half-memories of his days in the pit, with
the tearing claws and glowing eyes, not even that memory brought
him fear now compared to this. Why?
Then, in answer to all questions, the two hills blinked,
exposing the black-slitted red fires lurking below their crust,
and the island reared back to roar its hatred to the sky.
{Ohshit.}
He did know that he'd failed, though. He'd gone away, left
her without a protector. It didn't matter that he had no idea
he'd had
then - still didn't, really - of the scope of the forces arrayed
against them. He should have seen - irrational, perhaps, but he
couldn't deny the guilt - should have done something. That he
couldn't think of what didn't excuse the failure.
what, didn't {?}
"They stand before each other, one cloaked in shadow and one
cloaked in sun, but they bear the same face. Beneath their feet,
a pit of fire; above their heads, the arcing rainbrow. These
{or maybe} arching
two, they are the axle."
I go to see my daughters, it said, and laughed.
Daughers? No; oh, no, it could not be so, it could not be.
Daughters?
Nearly, he died. Nothing so big should have moved so fast,
but the Oldest One did, and his snatching talons nearly crushed
Ranma like an ant. But he darted between their grasp, and thus
saved himself. He fired off a blast as he did, a sizzling lance
of fire and lightning and raw force meant to pop one massive eye
as a needle might pop a balloon. The armoured lid flicked close,
closed,
and the blast dissipated without accomplishing anything.
"I call thee to heal, Oldest One," he intoned. "You shall
to heel,
not brush me aside."
Now, if only it seemed that he had been destroyed in...
{Trying the same trick twice? How Ranma...}
But it held, quivering like a tuning fork as it separated
upper jaw from lower, and saved Ranma from death. The hot wind
of the Oldest One's breath clawed at his throat, and he felt
suction from deep within the craw; the Oldest One was going to
{"craw" is a crop or stomach; "maw", perhaps? Usage implies some synonym
of throat or mouth...}
breathe out the killing flames again, and Ranma did not think he
had enough strength left for another shield. He had to act now,
but...
And, as the flames washed over Ranma and everything
threatened to disappear into white-hot destruction, they broke
around the great tree that Tianzhu had become, a tree so wide
and thick and old and gnarled that no flame could ever kill it
completely. Oh, the bark would scorch, the branches burn away,
but it could not die, the roots were too thick and deep by now,
burrowing down, clutching into the rocky floor of the maw, as the
branches rose higher and higher above Ranma's head, forcing the
jaws further and further apart, nearly to the breaking point...
{!}
The Oldest One began to exert his strength; the tree
shuddered. And Ranma knew it would soon fall, riven in half
despite its age and strength. The dragon held the great tree
within his jaws, and sought to devour it. It was all wrong; how
had he come to hold the tree like that?
{OK, now we're back to Norse mythology... sort of. :) }
Squirrels chattered on the branches of the tree. He heard a
sound like a loom, or a spinning wheels, or the bubbling of
water, or hands moulding clay. Ravens flew around his head in
wise flocks, and told him all the secrets of the world.
His skin went first, as the shield tightened; it burned
away, becoming not ash, but light. Then flesh and muscle too;
then bone, blood, organs. Then all of him, until he was nothing
but a rushing spear of light, so that time slowed down and the
tree crept by him so sluggishly that he could note every knot and
wrinkle in the bark. It did not seem as though this existence
would ever end; at last, though, he passed the apex of the tree,
and there an eagle whispered into his ear.
{Yup, Norse. If Greek, the eagle would have been snacking on his
giblets. :) }
After a time he could not name or measure, though, he came
to the dark shores and the dark waters, and there he found again
his friend, Ranma Saotome.
{! You-- you-- AARGH!}
END OF CHAPTER 40
Epilogue and author's notes coming very soon.
Well, I should hope so. Jeez, every time I think I'm due for a
denouement, you spring another climax on me... I'm too old for this. :)
I'm a bit low on superlatives at the moment, so all I'll say is that
this is a fitting conclusion to what has gone before. Everything works,
mythologically and, er, prosaically. :)
Damn fine job, Alan.
Thanks for writing and sharing!
Vince Seifert Fanfic Analyst FFIRC Frog
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