SEASON 2. Chapter 1, Five years gone. . . .

Castle Ao'o, sunset. . . .2026 AC/DC

Brian leaned across the drinking gals and men, and kissed Star's hand as she reached out to him. She meant to shove him for a jest he made, but he kissed her hand instead. In the past five years, the two had become good friends. The Geordimen leader became a member of Holy Wood Courts and was faring well among them, backed by the Royals in command. The Power Band, which he received as a reward for aiding them in the Battle, had toured-without the Queen- on and off for the last few years and had recently taken a pause. The Younge Boys and their two guards returned to the Great Southern Island, Star already missed her Angus.... Brian was about to return to his Hills, back to his people.

When He leaned away, Star's smile began to fade. While he was a good man, a good kisser, how he took control of the Power Band is what made her heart sink.....these five years passed were not enough to stem the ache in her heart. Dawn laughed particularly loudly at a joke someone made or from the weed, Star didn't know. She broke out of her revelry to remember her fallen lover.

It disturbed her. How it happened, too fast and without a parting word. As if the Gods mocked her, his body seemed to get up and run away. . . . she hadn't seen him, nor any word on his body, since that day.

The Battle of Fields.

No Spyder prisoners captured that day remained alive now, all put to the death under Dawn's insistence. When none were willing to share any information on their escaped comrades, the Princess deemed them useless and her mother let her do as she wished with them. Star had too much else on her mind. That, and if what Kilmister said was true....she didn't want to be near the Spyders any longer, especially in death.

With the sunrise tomorrow, both Star and Brian, leaders of separate kingdoms, would travel away to the northeast. . . . .

_-_-_-_-_-_-_

Ao'o, sunrise......

Richi was holding the reigns to Star's grey mare. She was saddled and yawning into her palm. He grinned and shook his head. As she had many times, she didn't give a detailed explanation as to why she felt the need to leave. To visit the Sabbath Lands, her mystic friend Geez lived there, his massive fields of Herb supplied the entire span of kingdoms.

Yet he suspected her visit was about more than her herbal supply. She had changed since the Battle of Fields, Richi noticed, but he said nothing as he saw her off into the day, off to travel to the Sabbath Lands without guards. Under cover of a dark cloak and no royal flags or colors. He couldn't stop her, she would go if she truly desired to. Meanwhile, he was to stay and rule in her stead, as always.

As she blew him a kiss and departed, Brian tipping his hat in respect to the Lord as he passed, Richi shook his head again and said his good bye.

He turned back to the castle and walked up the steps, side glancing at the limo parked in the extended stables. Why she didn't drive the way with two guards made him frustrated, she claimed that the gas supply was short, and deemed the vehicle to be used for short distant travel. He went on, thinking about how best to placate his niece, Dawn. Every time Star left the castle, she left Richi in charge, never hr daughter. Besides the Wizard, it was the worst of their arguments. Due to a witch's tongue, Star refused to let her Princess rule as was her birthright.

The Queen believed in the tale, that only a bastard king may follow her. If a girl child sat after her, only death would she rule. He went inside and asked to see his niece, but was told she had just departed herself through the kitchens. She did this often, slipping away into the kingdom to avoid looking at the throne she so wanted. This left her own child Rosie, alone in her rooms as she was want to do. Dawn had an Underground society to run and act as judge and sheriff. Richi sighed at his dysfunctional family and made way to speak to the Managers, the collection of stewards and nobles who helped run Holy Wood.

They waited in the throne room to inform him on political matters their Queen sometimes overlooked; successions in families, population census, movements in other kingdoms and the BOC city state. Thus his day began as temporary overseer until his cousin's return. He had little time to worry about Dawn's feelings and where she went, he knew she needed no guard to save her.

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Sabbath Lands, the herb fields of Geez. Nightfall, a four days later...

The journey was not as long as she expected and the part between her and Brian came swiftly. She said her good bye, fared him well, and he left with gold and seeds to feed his people. She went on further to the east, to the land that lay before the Mountains of the Unknown, into which the Spyders had fled during their last war. Ever since which, the account of Highwaymen had reclined, it made her wonder. She crested a hill and was met with a slight overcast sky, the mist and clouds hovered in this valley often, casting it in a cool shadow.

In this part of the lands, was where her mage friend Geez dwelled, and she gazed upon his harvest of the summer. He had apprentices and workers helping him pull in the bundles of buds on their thick stems. He was instructing them when she rode up, and when she dismounted he turned and smiled in greeting.

“Ah your highness!” He said. “You made it safely I see!”

She embraced him, “Aye I did. Not a highwayman in sight this time. Though what IS in sight is your glorious harvest.”

They watched the workers mill about the fields. “Yes, soon to make way across the Kingdoms. Demand has increased, and this is a good crop. Here,” he stood next to a wagon being loaded and plucked a small, but heavily budded branch, of herb and nodded towards the holding barn where everything was to be stored for the trimming and distribution. “Come this way, we can smoke and talk of things.” The tone of his voice suddenly lowered.

Once in the barn he shut the door and ordered everyone to leave so they may converse in private. But one man in the loft, stacking stalks, did not move. Geez did not seem fazed.

They sat in two wooden chairs and he set the herb he brought with them under magnifying glass, lit by a fire. The heat concentrated on the plant and began to dry it quickly. While they waited he turned to Her and clasped his hands in his lap.

“Now that we have the place to ourselves, let us speak the truth of your visit. Why don't You join us up there?” He called to the man above.

Star heard the flick of a lighter and could smell burning cigarette. She watched the man descend and come to their gathering. It was Kilmister. His silver eyes bore into her behind the smoke of his cig and he nodded respectfully as he sat. Geez poked the drying herb and found it not dry enough.

“Queen, I believe you know this man. I believe you came here for him.”

She nodded. “I did. No offense to visiting you of course.”

“I understand,” the Mage said.

The two looked at each other, the two off-worlders.

“SO,” Star spoke first. “How goes progress? You said you wished me to come to the Sabbath lands.”

He nodded. “You shouldn't go back ya know.”

“But you build the Bridge in any case.”

“My freedom was for the bridge, I build it, and you decide who goes through. But it is unwise to go yaself.”

“Why?”

“You are a wanted thing.”

She pondered his words in silence.

Geez touched the herb again and found it to his liking. He began crumbling it between his fingers and onto a small piece of paper. He rolled it quickly and Kilmister handed him his ornate lighter.

“Be careful your highness,” the mage said suddenly. “When this man came to me for assistance I took him in and when he said you demanded the bridge be rebuilt, I was shocked. But it sounded like something you would want.”

“You've been helping him?” She asked.

“He could not do it without a bit of alchemy, and a touch of Sabbath magic.”

“True that bit.” Kilmister said, and drew on his cig. “It was destroyed with magic, and a bridge of this power IS magic. On both Mars And Earth, the shuttle technology, hundreds of years old, was lost. All scripture was burned by the leaders of the Divide. ” The Divide being the separation of Mars from Earth. “Not many other ways to get there and back besides that.”

“Then how did you get here?”

“The same reason you got me rebuild the bridge, those who sent me had one last shuttle, no one except me could bring it back to life. It was lost in my landing.”

Star was silent and then turned her look to Geez. “I trust you enough, with this do not betray me.”

“Fear not,” he assured her as he inhaled the burning herb. He gave her the joint. “I give you this in confidence.”

She took it and inhaled. “A pact of silence.”

Geez nodded.

“Is the Bridge near here?” She asked. “Stories always vary.”

“What do you think brought him this way?” The Mage asked with a hint of a laugh in his voice.

Suddenly her honey eyes darted to the Kilmister, staring at him intently. “Was it tempting for you? With the Spyder Army just miles from here, even running through here.”

He blew smoke between them. “No. If I was ever tempted to rejoin them, you would be dead.”

She silenced and her jaw clenched. She drew on the joint and let the smoke go. . . . .

-_-__-_-_-_-_-__

On the Road to the Sabbath Lands, earlier that same day. . . .

Dawn HAD gone to the Underground. She had stayed for a while, but her thoughts went to her mother. She had been very vague on her reason to visit the Sabbath Lands, usually she proclaimed dramatically why she was going somewhere, but when Brian said he was leaving back to the Geordiemen Hills, her mother promptly stood up and announced she would travel with him.

“The royal procession must prepare,” Richi began.

But Star interjected rudely. “No no, none of that now. Just myself, alone thank you.”

That made Richi suspect her, Dawn saw it. “No guard? No colors? No procession?”

“You act like I haven't before! Silly man,” she patronized him. “I'm just visiting Geez and I'll return within the week.”

Dawn shook her head at the memory. That made her leave her underground city, in the tunnels that used to be sewers, before she came and reformed them. Cleaned them, housed the homeless and street kids, and gave shelter to “gangs” of trouble makers. Built her own web of networks and spies.

 She left after just arriving, and silently traveled behind her mother and the Jasper.

What surprised the Princess most was that, while Star snuggled close to him at night by the fire, or kissed his cheek, or embraced him like a lover, they did not intertwine on the journey. This seemed odd behavior for her normally nymphomaniac mother. It made the princess realize that with this new behavior, her mother had not been arrested for fornicating with underage girls in the last five years. Odd.

She suspected it had to with Bon's death, that vile man. He tormented her mother even in death. Yes, she had replaced him in the Power Band with Brian, and part of her had hoped he would ease her pain. . .but apparently, he hadn't entirely. Still her mother functioned better than she did when the war broke out. Richi had to break her out of a drinking binge over the man's body. Pycho she was.

When they parted ways, Dawn had to watch from afar to not alert her mother of her following. She knew these lands even better than her. Trailing close until Star went into Sabbath Lands, and into the fields of Geez. There, Dawn could not follow so closely. Under cover of the night that fell, she quietly scaled a thick tree and hid in the boughs. She watched the barn into she had seen Star enter. The Princess would wait, though it would kill her to wait she would. The lanterns were lit outside the doors and the workers in the fields all dispersed.

It was some time before the Mother left, two men leaving with her. One Dawn recognized as Geez, the Mage who grew these crops. The other, she did not recognize. She was smart enough to know that whatever they had spoken of had to do with Him, or else He wouldn't have been there. Star would not let some stranger man into a private meeting with the Mage so easily. Yes, that was Dawn's target. She saw her mother saddle and then settled into her tree for the night.

Let her mother travel ahead, possibly stay at the Mob Stone Castle where she fancied a young budding Prince of Darkness. No doubt she thought Dawn in the Underground. She would skirt her mother while she holed up in Mob Stone and ride for the Underground throne she made for herself. That Loon was up to something and Dawn would find out.

As if trying to marry off Rosie to that Devil Angus after the war, wasn't bad enough! To solidify the ties between Power Band and Silver Knights, she had said, the Nerve! The Sun Princess would not allow it and that is what made her return to the Underground in the first place.This had happened often. Star had attempted several times to arrange a marriage between Rosie and Angus, Dawn saw it now as a cover story, to distract her from the truth. But she knew now the truth.....She would have to find out who the Stranger Man really was what her Mother wanted with him.