As his fingers crossed her, the Lady drew him to the edge of the pool, enfolding his hand between both her own, her skin warm to the touch. She was at once as human as his wife and as ephemeral as the powers she served. "Look into the pool, Rhys." Her own eyes, wise and old, turned to look down at the surface of the water.

As it had done once before in his presence, the surface reacted to her intention. It rippled slowly from a drop that had never fallen, slowly clearing to reveal someone unnamed and unknown. A young woman, not more than twenty-five years old at a guess, flaxen blonde hair falling about her shoulders, framing a beautiful face dominated by large, green eyes. She was smiling, it seemed, her attention focused on something beyond the sight of the pool, that smile achingly familiar to one who had seen the smile from which it had come.

The Lady pressed Rhys' hand between her own. "This child has haunted me for many days," she said softly. "Tell me who she is."

He stepped forward to gaze into the pool in which he had once witnessed his own future with Natalya - a future which had yet to happen. Though fear gripped his heart, his hesitation was gone, needing to see for himself what the pool might show him to answer the questing of his heart. As before, he hadn't expected to see much of anything, full of wonder as he watched the water ripple and clear to reveal the face of a young woman he did not know or recognize and yet whose identity was unmistakable. For a moment, he was reminded of his mother, though he had not seen her since he was a boy and had not even looked at a photograph in many years. He felt his heart lurch at the sight of that familiar and yet unfamiliar face. He saw his own eyes in her eyes, his smile in her smile. "She's smiling," he murmured in wonder, grateful for at least that.

The Lady smiled at his murmur, her sadness piqued by the recognition in his gaze. "This child is an innocent," she told him, regret deep in her voice as she spoke. "Long past the time when the world should have taught her more than blind trust in those who offer her care. Yet she is not in the world, not truly. There is some veil that separates her from reality as you know it, a veil that can be crossed by means of some token I cannot see. There is power in innocence, Rhys, power that often is abused to the detriment of all." She raised her eyes to study his profile, watching as he witnessed the smile fade from the face of the vision, leaving behind it the innocence of which she spoke. "Who is she, Champion of Avalon?"

His gaze never left the vision in the pool, afraid that to look away would mean she'd disappear from view, and he'd never see her again. He found his gaze growing misty with tears as he realized he was indeed looking on the face of his sister, wherever she was. There was no other answer. It was her he had come here to ask about; it was her he was trying so hard to find. "She's my sister, I think," he replied quietly, a little uncertainty and doubt creeping into his words, though somehow he knew in his heart that it was true. "I thought she was....I thought she was dead," he explained, his voice catching somewhere in the middle. "She's alive?" he asked, his gaze still riveting on the vision in the pool. She looked happy, and he wasn't sure he had any right to take that happiness away from her because of his own selfishness. Where was she" What was she doing there" How did she get there" Who had stolen her" "Abaddon said if I killed him, I'd never know what had really happened to her."

"Abaddon did not have the knowledge of Avalon," the Lady told him quietly. "We are a secret kept against the hordes of darkness, for if they knew of our existence, they would seek to take the Isle from us. Perhaps he knew of me, but he did not know my reach." She lowered her gaze to the pool once more, watching as the perspective changed, drawing back to reveal the entirety of his sister's diminutive form, and the shape of the prison in which she was kept. It was a room - bright with color and the illusion of sunlight, sparse in its furnishings. It held nothing more than a bed; no books, no paintings, no window to the outside world. Revealed was what she had been smiling at - the antics of a pair of fish in a small bowl, her only companions in that beautiful, desolate place. "She is alive," the Lady assured the brother who watched with her, as the young woman in the pool seemed to sigh, turning her eyes away from her fish to gaze into nothingness. "Innocence is easily maintained, when it is partnered with the bite of loneliness. She does not yet live. She merely exists."

He took in the whole picture of his sister's meager and lonely existence as it was revealed to him, his heart aching to go to her, to see her, to talk to her, to save her from the place that seemed to have become her prison. "Where is she?" he asked. "Why is she there?" It did not seem to be Hell, though he had never been there himself. "You said she's not in the world. Then where is she?" Not Rhy'Din. Certainly Fate could not be so cruel as to send him there without even knowing she was right under his nose. She could be anywhere in the vastness of Time and Space. How was he supposed to find her" Perhaps that was the better question.

"The veil that keeps her from the world is of the world's making," the Lady told him, her voice still soft as she released his hand to kneel by the pool. Her palm trembled as she reached out above the water, her eyes closing for a long moment as she sought the answer he needed. "Dark power, of selfish origins. Demon touched, but human made." She gasped suddenly, snatching her hand from above the water, and within the pool, the vision of Rhys' sister looked up sharply, as though responding to that gasp. Those eyes so like his seemed to look straight at them, through the ripple of the pool, searching for the source of the sound that that disturbed her.

Rhys needed no further explanation to understand where such power came from. "Witches," he murmured with a clenched jaw, though what witches would want with his sister was beyond him. It was a guess, but dark magic seemed the only answer. It fit what the Lady was telling him, and he knew witches and demons were often in cahoots, though each might have their own separate objectives. "What the hell is she-" He broke off as the Lady gasped and the girl - no, young woman - looked up and straight at him, as if she could see him as clearly as he saw her, and suddenly he remembered her name, though he wasn't sure how.

"Rachel," he murmured, unsure from what part of his memory the name had been dislodged, but somehow knowing the name belonged to her. He leaned closer, inexplicably drawn toward the vision of her face, as if all he had to do was reach out and touch her and she'd be right there with him. The pool rippled once as a single tear dropped within its depths, not even aware of the wetness on his own face. "No!" he exclaimed. "Don't go! Not yet."

She gasped as he kissed her cheek, her fingers gripping his neck briefly as she answered that kiss with her own touch of lips to his skin. "I'll remember," she promised, reluctant to let go even as he began to fade from her sight. "Don't forget me, Rhys. Please."

"I won't," he promised, his voice growing faint as he faded from view. "I'll never forget you. I love you," he told her, hoping she'd hear his words before he disappeared completely and understand and believe him. Once again, he felt himself being tugged, almost against his will, back through the mist to come out on the other side to return to Avalon. He hoped whoever it was that was holding her there wouldn't punish her, but to punish her would be to take away her innocence, and he sensed from what the Lady had told him that whoever it was that held her prisoner needed it for some reason.

Back through the mists, through the silence that swallowed his sister's parting words to him, with nothing but the gentle grasp of the Lady against his back to keep him on course. As he stepped from the pool, dry and untarnished by his journey, the Lady staggered, falling back to her knees, her face pale, her form shaking with the effort such a journey had demanded of her. She was breathless as though from some great exertion, her eyes held closed in quiet contemplation as the pool clouded over once again, returning to water with no form hidden within.

It seemed important that he tell her he loved her. It was not a lie. He had loved her before she was born, and he would love her again, as a brother and a friend and the only family she had, if only he could find her once again. He choked on a sob as he found himself back in Avalon, back beside the pool where the water had turned cloudy, the vision faded, though he now held the proof of her existence in his hand. He returned just in time to catch the Lady as she stumbled to her knees, never realizing until that moment what it had cost her - what it had cost them both. With his hand still closed around the pendant, he caught her in his arms before she collapsed on the ground. "It's all right," he murmured. "I've got you." He was startled to see her so weak, but this was something he could handle. He tucked the necklace into a pocket for safekeeping and swept her up into his arms to carry her away from the place. "Where should I take you to rest?"

She did not resist him as he swept her up, the greatest power of Avalon cradled like a child in the arms of her Champion. "The bower," she told him through her gasping breaths, a shaking hand gesturing to where the trees and shrubs themselves twisted their branches into a low bed, covered over with a canopy of their own changing leaves. "I will be ....I will be well again, soon. Do not fret."

"Don't tell me not to fret when you did this for me. You should have told me what it would cost you," he told her, shifting her weight slightly in his arms as he looked to the place she was indicating. He carried her there carefully, easily, not much of a burden; she seemed more woman or child in that moment than Goddess, her power sapped by the spell she had cast for his sake. "I didn't ask you to do that," he almost scolded her. "But I am grateful."

She smiled to herself as he scolded her, a part of her seeming to wonder what the Handmaidens and servants of Avalon would think if they were to witness the way he spoke to her when they were alone. Rhys was the only one of her people who had ever spoken to her like this, as a friend rather than a servant, and though he didn't know it, she was grateful to him for it. It kept her tied to the humanity that seemed, at times, to have left her forever. "Power is not given to us to horde or squander," she said in a quiet voice, her breath returned to her easily as she let the beating heart of Avalon, her gardens of life, restore her strength slowly. "There was a need. I answered it. What else am I for?" The way she said those last five words ....there was a knowing lilt to her tone as she met his eyes. She knew, somehow, that she had echoed his own sentiments of a few days before, offering them up in a gentle reprimand of her own in this moment when she was most vulnerable.

He settled her gently in the bower of trees in her garden, accepting that here she'd find healing and rest. It never really occurred to him to talk to her any differently than as that of a friend, though not quite an equal. Though he was in his own way different, he never thought of himself as any better than anyone else, and though he deferred to her, he preferred friendship to worship, and she seemed lonely enough to need it. He winced, his face flushing with remorse and shame as she seemed to scold him in return for words he'd uttered in anger and frustration a few days before. "That's not what I meant," he told her, a little more defensively than he'd realized.

She lay against the twisted arms of the bower with a deep sigh, not even having the strength to hold her own head up. But her eyes, blue as the summer sky, held his with gentle understanding. "Words spoken in anger hold more truth than we wish to admit, even to ourselves," she told him softly, reaching to cup his hand in her own. "Do not regret your doubts, Rhys. They are a part of what makes you human. I told you once, did I not, that some shadow of your past would return to you? I asked you then not to let your pride keep you from asking for my help. I ask you now not to let your doubts keep you from seeking the answers I cannot give. There is another who knows what happened that night. She will come to you, if you call on her."

"Well, what good is any of this if it can't be used to help those you love?" he asked, trying to put his own thoughts and feelings into words that made sense, now that the anger had passed. "I did not mean any disrespect, and I am grateful for all you've done for me and Natalya. I just needed to know. That's all. What kind of man would I be if I went on with my life when she's out there somewhere? She's my own flesh and blood and she needs my help." He sighed, realizing he'd said too much again, crouching down so that they were at the same level. He reached into his jacket and pulled out the necklace, letting it dangle from his hand, the moonstone shining in the dappled sunlight. "She gave me this." He frowned at the mention of another, knowing instinctively who she meant, though he wasn't sure he was ready or even willing to call on her for help.

"I cannot accomplish the tasks laid before you in your stead," the Lady said in her soft voice. "Nor am I in any place to judge you for the decisions you make. All I can do is furnish you with the tools you need to do as you see fit. Your sister is alive; she is within reach. Yet that is all I can give you." She sighed, seeming to deeply regret how powerless she was to assist his quest to complete his family once more. "The Grand Master will give Natalya what you need for your defense." She raised her hand to touch the moonstone that dangled from his hand, smiling faintly as it brought with it a sense of the innocent girl he had been forced to leave in her gilded cage a while longer. "Your sister is a part of this stone. Use it to guide you to her."