Nusac

A/N The exterior of the building below was ehum borrowed from an old friend. His fiction can be found here:

http://original.adult-fanfiction.org/story.php?no=600091419

Chapter 16

Faiths POV

Just gotta tell ya. I’ve never been in a real relationship before this. Trust me you learn fast that sometimes they can really suck. Like right now for instance. If I hadn’t been in a relationship I would never have agreed to this in the first place.

In fact I disagreed right off the bat. I remember I said ‘this is a bad idea.’

But no Nam had to beg and plead for me to try. ‘It’s no big deal.’ She said. ‘Just this once.’ Then those big blue eyes ‘Please Faith.’ Growl, I’m such a sap.

I shuffle uncomfortable in my saddle. It’s a long ride okay. As I shuffle my shoulder rolls and I get a small twinge running through it. It’s been about two weeks since the whole vampire army thing. It’s healed. Well mostly. Apparently arrow wounds take a long time to heal properly. It’s frustrating I can tell you that.

What was that? The bad idea? Oh I remember, got a bit sidetracked there. Well I suppose you remember I’m a slayer right? Of course you do. Anyway the definition of a slayer is a killer. I would look it up but this world is seriously lacking in dictionaries. So I’m a slayer. A killer… I’m going to stick to the word slayer it makes me feel less guilty. Anyway back on track, so the really smart witch sent the slayer where? A peace conference. I’m not joking.

Well apparently, that vampire army that we took out the other week… that wasn’t the army, it was just part of it. So they have this general, who doesn’t want to fight with the people of Agrarius anymore. Probably because a bunch of farmers wiped the floor with the last lot that tried that.

So he’s called this conference or meeting or gathering whatever you want to call it, so that he doesn’t lose another few hundred men. Not men, vampires. So he wants peace, which I don’t believe for a moment and I don’t think the people of Agrarius do either. Which is probably why they sent Reg to get me to go to this meeting. He didn’t exactly say that they wanted me there in case there is a big fight but why else would you ask a slayer along?

Slayer at a peace meeting I ask you. On my own I might add. No Namine to stop me beating the crap out of this ‘general’ the moment I see him. Somehow I don’t think that is going to promote the whole peace idea.

I don’t even know where I’m going. What if I pass this place? I’m not as stupid as I look and I said this to Namine. She just smiled and said I would know when I got there. Well that was helpful. She pointed me in the right direction, which I might add was through a very dense forest, which I’m still navigating through and all I get is ‘you’ll know when you get there.’

I duck under a low branch as my horse passes slowly under it and out into the open field. When I look up I have to remember to breathe. “Wow.” I had no idea structures could be built like that. Even on earth we don’t have things so… amazing. Well I guess we got the pyramids but that so doesn’t count since the aliens built them…. What? Like people could have done that all those years back…

The stone building I’m riding towards is circular and must cover four hundred feet in diameter. Think the size of an Olympic Stadium it’s like that big but not oval, it is perfectly round. It’s taller than I dare imagine. Think of a skyscraper in New York but made of stone and has a round base not a square one. When I say made of stone I don’t mean like a dry stonewall kind of stone where all the little pieces make up the structure. Oh no each peace of stone has to be five time taller than me and stretches to at least a quarter way round the structure. In the side of the dark stone, symbols have been deeply carved into it and lined with gold, which glistens in the morning light.

I pull Aries up the side of the building I need to see these symbols all up close and personal. Even at the height I come to while on Aries’ back I only reach half way up the symbol, which starts at the floor. The picture it makes means nothing to me. It must mean something to someone. Wish I knew what it meant. It’s like a simple arrow which points straight down to the floor. Not a weapon type of arrow the normal one that points to things.

Anyway I crane my neck back to I can see the tip of the symbol. At the top it’s curved back round onto itself making a loop at the top and under the loop there is a sweeping arch.

The vertical line to the side of me is carved so deep and wide I think I could actually fit my hand into it. I have no idea why I have a very strong impulse to do just that.

My hand fits snug into the carved rock, the cold smooth gold that lines it touches my skin and something passes through me. My arm retracts on impulse and I flex my hand to make sure there is no lasting damage. What was that? It wasn’t like a bad sensation or a good one for that matter. It just went through me or into me or around me. I got a strange sensation okay lets just leave it at that.

Looking down at my hand I can see that I haven’t been burnt and my fingers still work properly. My gaze flicks back to the glistening gold. Don’t think I’ll be doing that again.

I shake my head trying to shake off the feeling, which has been left behind by my contact with the symbol. Right so where’s the door? I really hope I don’t have to perform any Hocus Pocus to get in here. Riding around the circular building trying to find the entrance I could swear that the walls hummed. Like the sound you get when you have a lot of electronic equipment in a small room it gives off like a buzz but when you try to listen to it you can’t hear it any more.

Thankfully the door isn’t far and the insistent and seemingly none existent buzz I keep hearing will hopefully disappear when I pass under the threshold.

I dismount and tether my horse not far from the entrance and leave her to graze. She’s got food, she’s happy. I’m rubbing off on my horse. I thought that only happened with dogs.

I walk over to the big doors. When I say big I mean big, just like everything else to do with this place. I think I could actually get a stack of elephants through this door. Now should I knock or could they have possibly invented doorbells in this place in the time it took me to ride here? Think that might be a little ambitious.

Knocking the door actually hurts my knuckles. Don’t look at me like that it’s really thick wood and when I was knocking lighter it wasn’t making any noise. As I’m trying to shake out the pain in my knuckles a small piece of wood at about eye height slides to the side and a pair of eyes through it confronts me. Here was me thinking they might actually open the huge doors. Somehow I don’t think I’m going to fit through that gap.

“State your business.” He wants me to what now? I’m really tempted to reach through that gap and break his neck. It is a fair point that he then wouldn’t be able to let me in but then I wouldn’t have to go to this stupid peace conference now would I? It’s a win, win situation. Well maybe not for this guy but he would be dead so he shouldn’t mind too much.

“I’m the slayer open up.”

I can see the eyebrows furrow through the peephole. “A slayer at a peace conference?”

I smile at this, he may be annoying me but we are on the same wavelength. “Yeah that’s what I said.”

The rectangular piece of wood slides back into place with a slam. Well that didn’t work and I don’t want to knock that door again. It hurt, evil door. I could try kicking it.

I hear a scuffle behind the door as locks begin to open. For fuck sake how many locks does this thing have? If I was a cartoon character I would so be looking at my watch and tapping my foot at how long they are keeping me waiting just unlocking the damned door.

Finally the wood begins to creak as the door opens. I look up to the tip of the high archway thinking the whole door is going to open. When suddenly the creaking stops and the door still isn’t open. I look back to the peephole thinking that he has something else to say and find an open door, which was set flush into the wood. Well that was unexpected. I’m starting to think that I have actually just walked into a cartoon.

I shake this off and have to duck down to get through the doorway. The interior isn’t exactly what I expected it to be. I mean don’t get me wrong it’s big, huge even and grand, I just expected more stonewalls and more of those freaky symbols. The walls are lined with what looks like red satin, which hangs down from the ceiling and curves as it meets and attaches to the floor. The ceiling itself is wicked high and at regular intervals tapestries hang down with bright emblems embroidered onto them.

On the opposite side of the room from where I’m standing there is a grand, wide staircase leading to the upper levels, again with a deep red carpet running through the middle. These people like red.

Looking to my left at the man who opened the door to me, I immediately decide that the door I walked through was designed for him. The rest of the world wasn’t taken into account. He is almost doubled over where he stands, with his large hump on his back. He’s wearing a black cape with his hood up so I can’t see his face from this angle. “Good evening slayer.” He says in a surprisingly coherent voice. I expected him to drag his leg when he walked and keep saying ‘yes master’ in a slurred sort of way. It doesn’t matter what his actual name is, I think his nickname will have to be Igor. What can I say I like to stereotype. Besides he’s not going to know what it means. Not like they have Frankenstein books around this place.

“Hey Igor.” I get a funny look from him but that’s about it. “Where’s the party?”

Igor refuses to speak to me. I may be wrong about those Frankenstein books. He moves around to the staircase without a word so I decide that following would be good right now, I stay a few steps behind him as we ascend. We reach the top and appear on a vast hallway we walk for a few seconds, the red carpet under my feet stops and is replaced by a dark reddish wood, the same is on the walls either side of me. The wood panels on the walls are so highly polished I can make out a blurred reflection of myself as I walk.

Igor knocks on one of the doors and enters without waiting for an answer. “Slayer.” I look around the room… again with the roundness but not so much with the red, this room is lined in the wood as was the hallway although the chairs around the large round table in the centre of the room are lined with what looks like velvet, deep purple velvet. The floor is carpeted in the same shade and the three people sitting at what looks like the head of the table (and don’t ask me how the table can have a head when its round!) are wearing the same shade whilst everyone else is wearing the red from downstairs.

“Sit.” The purple guy on the right says motioning to a chair. I obey; don’t know why I just do.

My eyes scan around the table taking in all the faces. “Now everyone is present the meeting will begin.” The purple guy to the left says. With that everyone around the table pulls their hoods of red down followed by the three purple guys.

I lay my hands on the table and notice for the first time the weird gavel things on the table in front of each person. They have a handle on them and have a sort of disk on the end, which is about an inch thick. They are laying on their side at the moment one side of the disk is white and the other is black engraved into it on both sides is a thin snake coiled tightly around a straight sword. Why does everyone always use that as a symbol?

Reg is sat next to me and there is an empty chair opposite me. These are the only chairs not occupied by someone in a cloak. I have to say I’m feeling just a little bit underdressed.

The guy in the middle of the three in purple holds out his hands palm up and begins to mumble something in yet another language that I don’t know. I’ve already learned one of these things for this place and I am not doing it again. No way, no how. He finishes by slowly drawing his hands together palm to palm and every man or woman or possibly thing in a red cloak dutifully leaves the room.

My slayer senses shoot into action as the door opposite me swings open. Everyone around me stands as a small figure enters the room. I never really conformed back on Earth I don’t know why they think I’m going to start now. I’m staying right here thank you very much.

I stay in my seat relaxing my shoulders and sinking behind my wall of self-confidence.

The man who enters makes the whole thing really anticlimactic. He’s about 5 foot 10 and the skinniest creature I think I have ever seen. He’s human which is relief. If he were to be a vampire my reputation would be in jeopardy. My senses are going off because of the two vampire guards, which flank him walking just a step behind.

He approaches the table and his knuckles touch the marble top as he leans over it. He glares down at me. In his head I just know he’s thinking something like ‘How dare you disrespect me.’ Or possibly ‘Damn your impertinence.’

I raise my eyebrow at him and cross my arms across my chest. He actually expects me to stand when I took out over a hundred of his men not so long ago. Oh I’m scared with his entourage of, count them… two vampires.

He breaks eye contact with me and bows to the three men at the head of the round table. He then pulls his seat out, the wood creaks against the floor and he takes his seat. “The slayer I presume.”

“You presume right.” I answer unsure of why Reg has sunk so low in his seat. Out of the corner of my eye I can see that he’s trying to make himself invisible to the man across from me.

“I am Abbas.” He reaches across the table to shake my hand.

I simply look at the offered hand. For just a split second I consider telling him my actual name. I mean back on Earth everyone knew it. A name’s a name right? Here like I’ve said before everything is different. Most things here are in a name. For instance Nam can tell what a person is like simply by how they say their name. I’m not sure how she does it but she can it’s a common party trick. So when you give someone your name in a sense you hand over a part of yourself a sort of trust. I in no way shape or form trust this guy who could quite easily have his full army of vampires outside.

I lean forward threading my fingers and placing the side of my hands on the table. For just a split second I see a smirk like getting a hand shake out of me would be some sort of victory so I abandoned that plan and thought I would give him a bit of disappointment instead. “Can we get this over with?”

His fist clenches in mid air as he slowly retracts his hand.

“Why so anxious slayer? Cannot bear to leave your little witch alone for too long?” Abbas asks me tilting his head as he does.

The hate burning in my eyes doesn’t seem to faze him, in fact he just stares back as if we’re both ten years old having a staring match. Well if that’s the way he wants to play it.

“Come, come this is a peace talk.” The middle purple guys says to us, well more to me actually which is a bit of a shit since it was him who started it! Okay again with the childish…

“We are gathered here today as you all know to bring some peace to the land.” He continues.

“And why are you all so suddenly bothered about peace?” I ask.

“We cannot continue as we have slayer, I believe you have put a stop to that.” Abbas comments.

“So is this a peace meeting or a keep the slayer out of your way meeting Abbas?” I shoot back.

“You think I have no desire for peace?”

“Hit the nail right on the head there Abby.” Okay I got a look for that, I don’t think he got the whole female name reference. “You expect me and everyone else here to believe you want peace when you organised the attack on Agrarius and just happen to be the leader of the slave traders too?”

Abbas’ voice raises as he speaks to me. “I would not expect an outsider to understand the workings of our world!”

“Your world? Okay so for one when did this become your world? And two I am not an outsider I have done more for my village and the surrounding villages than you have or will ever do.”

“You shall not speak so in my presence!”

“How about I remove your ears so you shall not have to endure me!” Woah, where the hell did that come from? I’m talking all ye olde like. At some point in that sentence I have managed to stand up and pounded the table with my fist and left a slight indent. Woops.

“I shall not endure this insolence.” And with that Abbas storms out of the room in a kind of melodramatic teenage girl way, with slamming doors and everything.

“Sit down slayer!” I turn to my left and notice everyone else in the room is staring at me, not a surprise I suppose. I sink back into my seat and cross my arms again. Told you this was a bad idea.