dimensions | original

Negotiations

 "Spirit." Mark bowed, her voice as shaky as his nerves. "I was hoping I wouldn't meet you here." Mark figured that the way that they were speaking wasn't really in lies, but in opposites. But he also realized that the opposites were fairly easy to understand lies, and from the way that Dia was talking, hopefully Spirit would know he was speaking the opposite of what he meant.

He did. His lips curled up he growled softly as though suspicious. Behind him, Mark saw that Sacrifice was watching with dark, emotionless eyes.

"I have been expecting you." Spirit agreed, voice cold and chilling to the bone. "Let us stay in the web."

Spirit only blinked, and then he was nothingness, disappeared as quickly and quietly as the dark at dawn. It only took another second for Sacrifice to do the same. Beside him, Dia shivered. It seemed even the supposedly fearless crow girl was afraid.

"May we have the very worst of luck." Luma whispered. Mark nodded in agreement, as he concentrated on not taking huge, unsettled breaths.

"And so we stay." Dia muttered under her breath. She squeezed Luma and Mark's hands, and they all twisted back in the same way they came.

But this time it was different. The shadows clawed at them, and the colors around them, which had been brightening, returned to the dark grays and blues in the lace web. They were stuck in the web.

But before Dia could try to transport them through yet again, they were jerked through from the strange sub-dimension back into the real one, as if a sort of giant hand had plucked them from their perch.

"Thank you, Spirit." Dia was bowing to a red-haired shadow man before either Mark or Luma knew what was happening. They were inside a ring of dark black stones, with nothing but shrub-like trees and wind around them. Dust lindered in the air, just enough so that they could hardly see what was beyond the ring of stones. From far away, a crow cawed.

"What is this?" The other one, who's hair was black and silver, with oddly bright black eyes spoke harshly. Mark assumed that that was Sacrifice.

"Who, not what." Dia corrected. Mark wondered where she found the courage to talk back to them like that. Then again, she had been working with the twins just as long as Mark had been working under Timorous. Perhaps she was used to it by now.

"Then who are they?" growled Sacrifice.

"Address them." answered Dia.

"You will answer me." Sacrifice spat, his dark eyes flashing. His fists, hanging by his shadow-and-clothe engulfed sides clenched into fists. A shiver of fear rushed up Mark's side.

"I was given under custody to both Sacrifice and Spirit." Dia jutted her chin out and crossed her arms across her chest like a small child trying to get their way. Her tone, however, was controlled and level, not at all child-like.

Sacrifice turned to Spirit with a cold expression. "What do you think, brother?"

"I think that she has a point." Spirit sounded more casual and laid back, although the closest word to describe that Luma could think of was hippie, like those peaceful anti-technology people back in her dimension. "Besides, brother, the child has the aura of a god. I feel as if it may not be wise to offend her."

Sacrifice growled menacingly, but spoke no complaint to Spirit nor Dia. Instead, he turned to face Mark.

"The wolf, I see." Spirit was the one to speak, although Sacrfice's eyes were the ones to cut through Mark's soul like a double-edged sword. "What have you done, and why are you here? Has Timorous sent you?"

"No. I am here because I am free. Timorous made the mistake of mistreatment, and even so I would have been gone. Phoenix's prophecy foretold it, and how true it has become is something that you would be astonished at." Mark's words were clear and level, but his hands were shaking like mad and his heart beat so loudly that he feared the entire Dimension could hear it.

"Explain." Now it was Sacrifice demanding the information.

"When Massourina, the witch, bound me under her spell to Timorous, she added those words on the end. You were there. You should recall how she was interrogated and killed for adding something to the end, something that saved me. I suspect it was her own loyalty to me, her friend and date, and to Keme, my best friend at the time. Minutes later, the skilled prophet Phoenix spoke the prophecy that declared someone would set me free from the Nevermore prison I had to endure."

Spirit narrowed his eyes. "This is true?"

"Yes." Luma said it quickly, before Mark could intervene. "I was the one that freed him by the prophecy."

"But who are you, and what is your significance?" Spirit was again the one to deliver the questions. Mark wondered if it was because he had always been less hot-headed than the moody Sacrifice.

Luma flinched a bit, putting her hand to her head. Mark wanted to reassure her that she was alright, that everything would be alright, but he didn't want to show weakness. In a pack, affection is weakness.

"My name is Lumara Wish, and I am human. I'm not significant. I just have enough bad luck that I was caught in a shard storm and cut by none other than Phoenix's shard. It is bad enough that Keme could not heal it... Please, I need your help."

Sacrifice's dark, inquiring eyes seemed fairly interested. "So he sent you here."

"Yes." admitted Luma.

Spirit was the next to speak. "But what have you to give?" Mark looked down at the ground in slight embarrassment, and even Dia looked slightly unsettled.

"Very little." Luma answered, a slight blush gracing her cheeks. "But I have a few connections I can reel in, and besides, if not, Phoenix will rise again, and he never was a very good guy."

"Neither are they." Dia reminded her.

"Who's side are you on?" spat Mark in frustration. Everything was falling apart. And they needed these negotiations to go perfectly to convince the twins.

"Not yours, Match." Dia frowned at him. "There is no two sides. We all want this to end in a different way. So, see, I'm on Dia's side. You're on Match's side. We're not on the same side."

"While that's nice and all, I have a propose that will benefit both of our sides." Spirit interrupted.

"Indeed, brother. I quite agree." Sacrifice's smile was one of the creepiest things Mark thought he'd ever see.

And then they spoke coldly and simultaneously, "We propose a sacrifice on Luma's behalf."

A/N I don't know what to put in the author's note, but I feel the need to have one.