Raging Storm {book 2 in SOSfanfic series} [ON HOLD]

Opia

Listen to the song after Scene One, i.e., after -*-
Repeat till end, if possible. Enjoy.
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"What happened to your eye? It looks bad."

"What is it like, outside the desert?"

"Who are these people?"

"What are you doing here?"

"Did you kill Bal?"

Reyna spun around slowly, pointing to various peepholes as she rapid firingly answered their rapid fire questions.

"I got shot. Yes. It's diverse but not quite home. I'm leading them through the desert. We are here to replenish information and resources. No, he's not dead because the rules did not state that it was a match to the death."

The old voice shot back at her, enraged, "How dare you? You knew the rules! You knew it was a fight to the death! And knowing that, you did not kill him! I, hereby, pronounce that you lost the trials and are subjected to the-"

"Wait." Reyna yelled, grinning as he death sentence was being delivered.

"Ah, but you see, I didn't break the rules."

Everyone could feel the owner of the voice getting irritated through the silence. Reyna still didn't stop smiling as she continued.

"You see, when I came back, I did not know whether or not you would treat me as a foreigner or not. To avoid the death of my.... fellow travellers, I agreed to the Trial by the Bull. And you accepted."

Reyna spread her arms out wide in a helpless gesture, the centre of attention of every being, behaving as an actor on a stage.

"You accepted."

She echoed. As if that had been a dire mistake on their part.

"So that meant that you would treat me like an outsider. Which means that you had to announce the rules. Now I, as an outsider, have no knowledge about the rules. You could've changed them while I was gone. The lines you spoke were the only rules to me. And there was no death mentioned in those.

"I even tried to remind you. But still you failed to mention a trial to the last breath. In my eyes, I won fair. Ask anyone here, you have no reason to behead me."

Reyna shut her mouth and only silence greeted her. Shrugging, she pronounced herself victor silently.

"Now, aren't you going to throw a party?" Reyna roared. And a deafening crowd roared back.

-*-

Reyna left her weapons where they were and sauntered down the corridor. Not caring about the others, Mr. Ambrose followed her, adjusting his cufflinks, walking upright as he felt eyes on him through the peepholes.

The air grew colder and fresher as they went on. Finally, they reached the end of the corridor, where it was bent in a sharp right. Mr. Ambrose could hear something, it seemed to be a hushed roar, neverending. It wasn't silence. Side by side, they turned, only to face a dead end ten feet from them. But the walls glowed with pale red. It was a hairpin turn to the left. The final bend. The roar was louder here. 

The blinding light seared up a flash of pain in his temples. He raised an arm to block the flooding light as his sight adjusted to sunlight after the dark. He saw Reyna squinting with a small, proud smile on her face. The light hit her eyes, but instead of wincing or blinking she let the light chaff her eyes raw.

He saw that her eyes were not black right now, nor the darkest borwn. They were hazel, inlaid with gold. His breath caught in his throat as his arm dropped and he just stared and stared on.

She turned her head to confront him. And he swore that this was the most intimate moment between them. Hazel-gold to blue-green. Unlike the other women he met before in his life, Reyna neither threw herself at him, nor lived in the past. She lived in the moment, he could see her eyes glow as her smile widened. She faced the light again, letting it wash her features away till she was too bright to look at. 

Mr. Ambrose faced the light again and tried not to squint, forcing his eyes to adjust, no matter how much it hurt. What he saw made his heart lurch.

The mountain was hollow, its heart forming a chasm almost a mile in diameter, in which nestled an entire village growing in the light of the shadowed Sun which was peeking through many vines and creepers growing across the split roof of the peak. All across the 'roof' were giant plates of silver and gold, hung, to reflect light from any angle of the Sun and illuminate the entire settlement below. 

But that was not the biggest shock. It was the waterfall. The hundred foot drop of the cold roaring water from the west, creating the mist by which the inner walls of the mountain grew lush green was the cause behind the loud roar that was everpresent here, echoing on forever. It fed the spring, metres below the ledge they stood on, which gave rise to small irrigtaion canals at the bottom. Father on the left came the village, assorted huts made of mud, rock and stone; people, old and young moving in and out. On the extreme left, east, were training grounds, full of youth and an ocasional wisened white-haired teacher. 

But not any of that compared to the beauty and magnificance of the hanging gardens.

The green beard of the rock was so thick that it seemed to pour over the upper crevices between the rocks and form an overflowing green ring over the village, the vines hugging the walls as it climbed down the rock, rooting in the fertile ground below. All across the belts of green were splashed of color, and on closer inspection turned out to be fruits as gold as the sun and purple as the evening sky, flowers red as rubies with streaks of topaz between them. There were birds, darting in and out of the round canopy with exotic colors and beaks and songs. 

This was the paradise Reyna Mertya had trained, lived and gone through hell in.