Hi! Your authoress is back. I know it’s been a while, but I’ve been really busy. I hope you all are enjoying this because I haven’t gotten much feed back. Anyway, I’ll shut up and let you get to the good stuff. As always, I don’t own the ronins or their companions, I’m just borrowing them. The others are mine. If you’d like to borrow them feel free, just let me know first. Happy reading!

LillyJ

Chapter Five

"Your Lady seems to have adjusted to life in this century. But she seems to have few ties to the people here."

"Four hundred years of change will do that to a person. My mistress has spent her life waiting and searching for a way to retrieve her sister and fiancé. No thanks to your master. He found a way to keep her alive all these centuries and then he left her."

"My master had important calls. He had to attend to those things or else the world could have ended."

"It will end with Talpa this time. Your master is gone and now my mistress is completely alone."

"She has the boys and Mia and you and me."

"Very true, but she has no spiritual advisor. She has completely merged with Etheria now and Etheria has taken a back seat to my mistress. She may know more and be able to access more than a normal person, but she still needs your master’s guidance. She has always needed it and he was hardly ever there for her."

"I am sorry that was taken from her at a time when she needed it most. But, she has turned out to be a wonderful guardian."

"That she has. I only hope she can face the challenge that lies ahead. And if she cannot retrieve her fiancé and sister this time, I fear she will go mad.

***

"Dais, why are you still here? Didn’t the master already tell you to leave?" Sekhmet said as he walked into Dais’ chambers.

"Yes, well, I have already discovered more information than he could hope for. And all I had to do was take a trip to see our fourth warlord."

"Would you care to enlighten the rest of us?" Cale asked as he teleported in.

"What is this? Party in my chambers?" Dais cried.

"Essentially," Cale replied.

"Apparently someone forgot to let me know, else I would be serving refreshments."

"Dais, drop the wit and cut to the chase," Sekhmet said

Dais proceeded to divulge the information he had gathered from Warlord number four.

***

"Ok, who wants to come into the city with me to get stuff from my apartment?" Rhiannon called into the den. Five men clamored over each other to get to the door first to go with Rhiannon. She gulped and turned around. Fortunately, Mia was close by and she was able to diffuse the hormonal time bomb that was about to go off.

"Sai, you promised you’d come shopping with me today. We need more food or else Kento’ll start eating furniture. And to get food we’ll need to go half way across the universe to find a store with real people in it. Sage, you and Kento said you’d clean the house for me, since it never looked like this before the six of you moved in. And Ryo, it’s your day to occupy Uli while the rest of us get work done around here. So that leaves you, Rowen, to go into Rhiannon’s apartment," Mia finished.

"I’m all yours," she said with a smile.

"Don’t temp him," Sage said with a smirk. "He’s been rooming with me."

"Yeah," Ryo added, "who knows what kind of bad habits he’s picked up!"

"Hey! I resent that!" Sage cried.

"Guys! Let it go. We’ve got things to do," Rhiannon said as she headed out towards her car. ‘It’s a good thing I decided to drive here instead of just riding with the guys,’ she thought to herself. "Rowen, come on, I don’t have all day here!" she called behind her.

"How come he always gets all the fun things?" Kento whined as he and Sage headed upstairs to start cleaning.

"Because he’s the smart one. Things just work out for him," Ryo said as he took Uli and White Blaze outside for a game of something or other.

"That’s not fair," Sage said, "I’m the good-looking one."

"You like to think," Rowen said as he grabbed his wallet and headed outside.

"Onyx! Come on, baby! We’re going to get you some real breakfast," Rhiannon called as she opened the passenger side door of her car. Rowen had to dodge the huge ball of fur as Onyx hurled herself in and plopped down right where Rowen was going to sit.

"Sorry," Rhiannon said. "You’ll have to deal with a back seat. Onyx always sits there. If anyone tries to take her spot she sits on him—and I really don’t think you want her to do that. It may not look like it, but that dog ways a ton."

Rowen just nodded and hopped into the back. And with that they were off.

"So what do you do at the hospital? And what keeps you so busy that you’ve been here for two years and still haven’t met your neighbors?" Rowen asked as Rhiannon drove in to the city.

"I’m a neurosurgeon. I work at the hospital four days a week and teach at the university the other three."

"Why do you work so much? Surely neurosurgery is a well-paid field."

"It is, but I’ve never really been a ‘people person,’ so to speak. And if I have time to myself, I tend to think about things that I don’t really want to dwell on."

"What about your fiancé? Doesn’t he mind not getting a chance to see you?"

"I haven’t seen him in quite a long time."

"I know you said that the warlords took him, but what about before the invasion? Didn’t you see him then?"

"There was an invasion before this one. You and the others are too young to remember it, but he was taken in that invasion."

"The only other invasion the ancient told us about was the one almost 500 years ago."

Rhiannon "mmm-ed" noncommittally. "Here we are," she said as they pulled up in front of one of the most expensive apartment buildings in the city.

"You live here?" Rowen asked, astounded by the opulence of the building as they walked into the foyer. The building, remarkably, had not been destroyed in any of Talpa’s raids.

"Yep," she said as she inserted a key card into the private elevator that would take them directly to her penthouse suite. "I’m not home much, but when I am, this is what I call home." The elevator doors opened up to someplace inside Rhiannon’s penthouse and Onyx dashed out and to her food bowl, fervently hoping that there was something left in it. Since there wasn’t, Rhiannon scooped some into the bowl for her. "I just have to grab a few things from my bedroom," Rhiannon called as she walked back to the master bedroom. "There’s soda and iced tea in the fridge and there should be some snack-like objects in the cabinet to the right. Make yourself at home. I’ll be right back."

Rowen was thirsty so he grabbed some iced tea from the fridge. Rhiannon had said to make himself at home so he wandered over to the mantle where there were loads of pictures displayed. As he got closer, he noticed that most of what he thought were pictures were actually paintings. And very good ones at that. There was one of a young girl with long red hair and piercing blue eyes. ‘That must be Rhiannon,’ he thought. She was as beautiful then as she was now. Next to it there was another painting of a young Rhiannon and another girl with long blue hair. They looked so much alike that Rowen initially thought they were twins. But at closer examination, the girl with blue hair looked slightly younger. The third was of Rhiannon and a man. He was a great deal taller than she was. He had piercing green eyes and long, straight red hair. From the way they looked at each other, it was obvious that they were very much in love. Rowen assumed that man was her fiancé. There were several other paintings on the mantle but what caught Rowen’s eye were the two hanging on the wall. They were obviously professional portraits of Rhiannon and her fiancé. They were absolutely beautiful. There was so much detail in each of the paintings. He had to admit, Rhiannon and her fiancé made a striking couple. But there was something that unnerved him about the other man. Rowen had the feeling that he had seen the red-haired man before. He just couldn’t put his finger on it. He was on the verge of remembering who the other man was when Onyx and Rhiannon emerged from her bedroom.

"Are you ready?" she asked.

"Yeah, I was just admiring the portraits. These main ones are of you, your sister, and your fiancé?"

"Yes."

"Your sister is very beautiful. She looks a great deal like you. I was surprised at the resemblance. I thought you were twins, but she looks a bit younger."

"She is, but only by barely a year. We were very close. She was my best friend. We would always turn to each other whenever we had problems. I never thought that when I needed her the most would be when she wasn’t there."

"I’m sorry," Rowen said, feeling genuine compassion for this woman who had lost so much more than he ever had. "Your fiancé looks very familiar. I was just wondering if I could have met him before."

Rhiannon looked very uncomfortable for a moment.

"And then I remembered that you said he was taken in an attack by Talpa that we’d be too young to remember."

Rhiannon let out a barely audible sigh.

"Well, you said you were ready to go? You have everything you’ll need? Knowing Mia, she’ll have you stay for the next six months." Rowen bent down to pick up the 35lbs bag of dog food while Rhiannon grabbed her rather large overnight bag.

Rhiannon laughed, "I can see where she’s coming from."

"I can’t say that I blame her," Rowen said as he and Rhiannon stepped into the elevator that Rowen realized was discretely hidden in the sitting room. "I don’t think it’s too easy on her. We try to help out as much as we can, but she misses her grandfather and her girlfriends. Living with a little kid who screams and five guys who wear mystical armor, are responsible for the survival of the world as we know it, and eat her out of house and home can’t be real easy on her. I think that with you there, she’ll be able to relax and have time for ‘girl talk,’ whatever the heck that is."

Rhiannon just laughed. They drove in companionable silence until Tracy Chapman’s "Fast Car" started playing on the radio. Rowen reached to change the station just as Rhiannon announced that that was one of her favorite songs.

"Oh, I’m sorry," Rowen said as he turned the station back. "It’s just always made me uncomfortable."

"If you don’t like it, just change the station. I don’t need to hear it right at this moment."

"Thanks," Rowen said as he changed the station again. For some reason he was compelled to say more, "It’s just always struck a chord too close to home," he looked out the window, but still he went on. "My father’s an alcoholic," he all but whispered.

"Rowen," Rhiannon said, reaching her hand out to find his. Onyx decided that she wouldn’t mind running back to Mia’s house; she needed some exercise so it would be ok if Rowen sat in her seat. "Does he…"

"Sometimes he gets upset…" Rowen said, answering Rhiannon’s unspoken question. "I’m kind of hoping Mia won’t mind if I stay a little while after this whole Dynasty thing is over with."

"Rowen," Rhiannon began as she pulled into Mia’s driveway, put the car in park, and turned to face Rowen, "if you want to talk…"

"Usually, that’s the last thing I want to bring up. I don’t know what possessed me to tell you. You just exude some thing…I don’t have the vaguest idea of what it is."

Rhiannon opened her mouth to say more when Onyx jumped onto the hood of the car. Rowen shrieked at the top of his lungs and Rhiannon started laughing hysterically.

Rowen looked at Rhiannon in shock. "How can you just sit there and laugh? That is not funny!"

"She does it all the time. I guess I’m just used to it." Rhiannon and Rowen got out of the car to be greeted by White Blaze and Uli running from what looked like a very winded Ryo.

"Can’t talk, gotta run!" Uli shouted as he ran by, right behind Blaze. Ryo ran up and leaned on Rhiannon’s car to catch his breath for a minute.

"If you can’t keep up with a little kid and a tiger, how do you expect to defeat the Dynasty, oh fearless leader?" Rowen asked with a chuckle.

"At least…we…have our armors…when we…fight…Talpa," Ryo panted.

"You’ll never catch us!" came a gleeful shout from the direction Uli and White Blaze had taken. Just then Mia’s jeep drove up. She and Sai got out and Mia bellowed at the top of her lungs: "Kento, Sage, and Uli get out here now! We need help with these groceries!"

Kento came barreling out the front door. "Food!" he cried.

"Back off, Mouth," Sai said shoving his best friend out of the way. "It’s got to be cooked first. Here, take this in."

The eight of them all started unloading groceries and carried them into the house while making all kinds of stupid jokes ranging from Kento’s appetite to the Dynasty and Talpa. Unknown to all those on two legs, one eye watched the goings on while deeply hidden in illusion.

White Blaze and Onyx growled and stalked towards the lake behind Mia’s home. A branch swayed and the two animals took off. White Blaze pounced, but Dais had decided that enough was enough for one day. He immediately teleported back to the Dynasty leaving White Blaze and Onyx sorely disappointed.

Later that evening Rhiannon and Onyx retired to Rhiannon’s room for the evening. Onyx arffed about what she and White Blaze had sensed.

"I know, baby, but he’s no threat to us right now. He’s only observing."

Onyx arffed again.

"Don’t you think he would have attacked already if he wanted to. We know how they act, and this is his typical observational behavior. We must be close if Talpa’s this worried, this early in the game. Now, come on, let’s go to bed."

***