Fullmetal Alchemist Fan Fiction ❯ Disaster or Destiny? ❯ Bonded By Blood ( Chapter 9 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

The two of us slumped down against the wall, happy to be in the light again even though that meant there were others down there with us. I glanced over at Ed, watched the light from the flickering torches play on his face. I closed my eyes and considered laying my head on his shoulder…

His whispers brought me back to reality. I opened my eyes and he pointed down the hallway. A figure was crouching a good distance away from us. I nearly screamed again when I saw the yellow eyes staring at me.

Ed slowly stood up, and I did the same. “I think it wants us to follow,” he said quietly, so as not to startle it.

I looked at him incredulously. “Are you crazy? We have no idea where that thing could take us!”

“We don’t have any other choice. We could wander around this place for days, but I bet it knows the way out.” He took my hand. “Don’t be scared. If it tries anything, it loses its head.”

We started towards it, and the creature turned and sauntered down the hall. It maintained a consistent distance from us; close enough to see it, but not so we could get a really good look at it.

We followed it for nearly half an hour, and kept silent for fear of scaring it away or provoking it. Finally it turned to us and stopped, obviously wanting us to do the same. It pushed something open in the wall, I guessed it was door but couldn’t tell from where I was. It indicated the other side of the door, and then was gone, scampering off in the other direction.

We approached the door, and the light from the torches revealed a long staircase that went beyond the reach of the glow. We would have never found the door on our own; it was made to look exactly like the surrounding wall.

Ed looked up the stairs, and then to me. “Well, here goes nothing. Get on.”

He crouched down to let me onto his back. I went over to him, pulled him back up by the arm and started up the stairs. “You’re not going to carry me up all those stairs after lugging me around for two hours. Get up and let’s get out of this hell hole.”

He stood there for a moment until I heard the sound of his steps join mine. “Suit yourself, but don’t complain to me when your leg starts to hurt.”

I quickened my pace as much as I could. “I’m just trying to make it easier on you,” I argued.

He caught up to me and held his hands up defensively. “Hey, I’m just saying I offered so don’t go crying to Al that I made you walk the whole time.”

The light from the torches was fading, and probably hid the glare I gave him. “First of all, I’ve never ‘gone crying to Al’ about anything, and second of all, can’t you just say ‘thanks, I appreciate it?’”

He was silent for a moment. “You argue too much.”

“Only when I’m around you.”

The staircase twisted and turned, almost becoming a straight path at times before it began to ascend again. I guessed the tunnels must have taken us past the grounds underneath the house, and we were making our way back to it.

Ed broke the silence. “What do you think that thing was?”

I shivered as the image of the creature with the yellow eyes came into my mind. “It was more humanlike than anything else, and obviously somewhat intelligent. But there’s no way that was a normal human being. Do you think it was a chimera?”

“That’s what I was thinking. I wonder if it lives down there.”

A thin beam of light came into view, and I saw the outline of a door.

“We made it!” I ignored the pain in my leg and ran up the remainder of the stairs, as fast as my injury would allow. We emerged into another bedroom, and were met with shouts coming from the hallway outside.

“There’s Al. I bet he’s wondering where the hell we’ve been..."

He burst into the door, and if I could’ve seen his expression, I’m sure it would have been one of extreme relief.

“Where have you been! I’ve been looking for three hours!”

Ed waved away the question. “Sorry, Al. Did you find anything?”

“Of course not! I was looking for you!”

I put my hand on Al’s arm. “We’ll tell you what happened later. Right now let’s finish looking so we can get out of here.”

Before he could argue, Ed dragged me along with him and told Al to look upstairs while we went into the basement. The stairs were pitch black, and the room below seemed to be even darker. I groaned at the thought of going into the dark again.

Ed grabbed my hand and started slowly down the pitch black staircase.

If it hadn’t been for his firm grasp on my hand giving me no other choice, I don’t think I would have followed. “And how do you plan on seeing anything down here?”

“Matches. I found some on the nightstand in the bedroom we found Al in.”

We never made it all the way to the bottom. About half way down we heard a loud creak underneath us, and before we could do anything the wooden stair we were on collapsed. Our screams were cut off when we hit the cold stone floor below. I couldn’t see anything, but it wasn’t hard to tell that I’d landed right on top of Ed. He groaned underneath me. “You okay?”

I pushed myself off of him, silently thanking the darkness once again for hiding my reddened face. “I think so. Sorry about that.”

I could tell from the sound of his auto-mail against the stone that he was standing up, and suddenly the light of a match bathed us in a small circle of light. Ed offered me a hand. “It’s better than you landing on your bad leg.”

I let him do most of the work pulling me up, and tried to avoid putting too much weight on my leg. He moved the match slightly while helping me, and I caught a glimpse of something on the wall. “Ed, move the light over to that wall.”

He did so, and it revealed a pattern on the wall that resembled a transmutation circle. It looked to be made of blood.

He stared at it in awe and a smile broke out on his face. “I think we found what we’re looking for.”

“What?” I asked, looking from Ed to the wall. “What is it?”

He put a hand on the wall and took in all of the detail. “It’s a blood seal.”

“You mean like Al’s?”

“Sort of. But I think whoever made this one, most likely that woman, made it to keep people out. Look closer.”

He moved backwards slightly, so the light would cover more area. I squinted around the outside of the circle. “It’s a door.”

He stepped forward again. “This is why no one could get to her research. She sealed the door using her own blood, so that only she could get inside.”

I realized finally what he was smiling about. “So then that means, if I really am her descendant, then I should be able to get in because I share her blood, right?”

He had a triumphant look on his face. “Exactly. Since she apparently had no living relatives, this method worked perfectly to keep everyone out.”

“But I don’t know any alchemy.”

He shook his head. “That shouldn’t matter. It’s designed to let anyone with that blood running though them to enter. Just place your hands on the circle.”

I raised my hands up, afraid that it wasn’t going to work. When I placed them on the circle, however, I was awestruck at the sight of a red light shine through the cracks of the door. The light faded away and the door slowly creaked open.

I stared at the darkness inside, amazed by what had just happened. The fact that my family had actually originated from Amestris was finally sinking in. “Ed…this is too weird.”

I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Small world, isn’t it? Or in this case I guess you’d say universe.”

The room was musty, and everything was caked with dust. It was fairly small; a bookcase and a desk covered in yellowed papers were the only things inside.

Ed turned to the door. “I’m going to go tell Al we found it. Start looking around.”

I wasn’t exactly thrilled to be left all alone, but turned to the papers to keep my mind off of it.

I started digging through the papers on the tables and in the drawers, finding that I had already read most of it from all the research I had done with Ed and Al.

Finally, something sparked my interest. I found what looked to be a diary, and turned to the last written page.

“This must be the last thing she wrote before she disappeared…” It was strange knowing that this room had been used by my who-knows-how-many-greats grandmother.

The handwriting was faded and difficult to make out, and I had to read each sentence a few times in order to decipher it:

February 24, 1812
~I’ve finally succeeded in creating a Philosopher‘s Stone. It’s been a couple weeks since the boat accident and no one has found anything, so I’m almost positive I’ll get away with it now. The only way to see if I really succeeded is to try it out. I used my own blood in the process of creating the Stone. If my calculations are correct, that should mean that, should I be lost in another dimension, someone who remains here should be able to simply use the Stone to call me back. For this reason, I am going to teach Sal a small amount of alchemy so that he will be able to call me back if need be. This is the only information I am going to give him about the Stone and my research. Although the Stone is extremely powerful, and it would normally be dangerous to leave it in the hands of those who are unaware of its extreme power, or those who would seek to abuse it, I have no reason to worry. Once again, using my blood to make the Stone linked it to me. Only someone with my blood can bring out the full power of the stone. It’s true I could be taking a big risk in depending on Sal to bring be back, but I’m willing to take that risk. He is the only person I can ask. I have to see if I was right, if all of my work paid off. Experiencing it firsthand is the only way to confirm if my ideas about the Stone’s abilities are true.~

I reread the page several times, waiting for all of this to sink in. So many things were racing through my mind; what was ‘the boat accident?’ I guessed that Sal was her husband. The fact that even she was doubtful of his trust assured me that Al had been right about him. If only someone of her blood was able to bring out the Stone’s full power, then did that mean I was the only one here who could do it? It made sense; that was most likely the reason no one had been able to do anything of significance with it, because they couldn’t use it to its full potential.

I jumped when I heard Ed and Al walk into the room.

“You find anything?”

“Yeah,” I said, still staring at the diary page. “And I think I’m a little more involved in this than I want to be.”

The two of them sat down. “Do tell.”

I told them about what I’d read, how I was the only person that could use the full powers of the Stone.

Ed stared at me wide-eyed. “Let me see that.”

I handed him the diary, his expression growing more incredulous with each word he read. He finished, handed the tattered book to Al and turned back to me, a grave look on his face. “Whoever has the Stone has to be looking for you.”

I shrugged. “Probably, but isn’t that a good thing? We’d never be able to find them on our own. This will bring them to us.”

He looked down at the floor. “Even so, I don’t like the idea of someone stalking you. We’re going to have to be more careful.”

Al handed the diary back to me. “So what? We just wait around for him to find us?”

Ed’s brow furrowed in thought. “What if he tries to kidnap you, Marie? We can’t just wait around for something like that to happen.” He sighed. “I don’t know what to do, but somehow we have to find this guy.”

I stood up and stretched. “Let’s just get back to the inn. We’ll worry about it in the morning, I’m too tired to think about it now.”

We decided to leave everything where it was. This room was the only safe place for it.

On the way back to the inn, I rode on Al’s back again. A new paranoia seemed to have taken over Ed. He kept glancing around, as if expecting my potential kidnapper to leap out of the trees.

We got back to the inn and Ed told the innkeeper to take our name off the second room, that we only wanted one.

We started up the stairs, and I looked over at him. “What was that all about?”

He continued to look forward. “A kidnapping is less likely to succeed if the target is with other people, genius.”

“Could you cut the sarcasm for once? I was just asking!”

He ignored me and went into what was once going to be my room to get my bag. Al set me down on the bed in the other room. I laid down on it, mumbling about Ed’s attitude.

Al heard me. “He’s just tired.” He chuckled and added, “Not that he hasn’t always had a bit of an attitude problem.”

“Yeah, I noticed.”

Ed walked into the room and dropped my bag on the floor. He frowned when he saw me on the bed. “So who said you get the bed?”

I yawned and stretched out. “I did.”

He folded his arms in defiance. “I’m not sleeping on the floor.”

I closed my eyes. “You’re the one who got rid of my room, you deal with the consequences.”

“Will you two quit arguing?” Al broke in. “One of you can take my bed, it’s not like I can tell the difference between that and the floor.” He sat down in one of the chairs. “Now how about some peace and quiet, huh?”

Ed and I glowered at each other until he collapsed on the other bed and turned off the lamp.