When Sylie arrived, she was told that no-one knew where the Lord Fey or the Lady Alana might be. This startled and alarmed her. What could they have been attempting that they had not even warned their closest advisors? Brushing aside their various protests, she used her great speed to quickly lose them then began homing in on the source of the terrible emotional pain she could feel from her sister.
It led her deep into the dark interior of the castle, far from the outer and inner walls alike and below the level of the ground. There she found a door of iron. To her great shock, it was bound and warded with spells more powerful than she had ever seen. For a time she was near to distrusting her senses, for her knowledge to this day said that iron was anathema to spells of such power, that it could not be used in such a way. Her astonishment grew when she ceased fighting her senses and accepted the door for what it was, accepting at the same time that she would never be able to open the door without bringing this portion of the castle down around her ears.
She cast a swift scrying spell to peer through the boundaries of stone and iron and see what lay within. To her surprise, the probe was deflected. She could feel her sister's pain, which surely would not be so if the room was shielded, yet further tests convinced her that the room was indeed shielded and proof against every form of scrying she was competent to attempt.
This brought a sudden realization to her, a realization that instantly had her pounding on the door, heedless of the danger, and calling out for her sister. The terrible pain that she could feel from her sister, the mind-numbing agony that had reached her, three kingdoms away, was muffled. She was feeling only a portion of what her sister felt.
Luck was with her, for though the door was held against her, against its being opened from without, it was not silenced, nor was it bound with active defense spells. Its wards merely deflected the brunt of her force, rather than retaliating to destroy the one that attacked them.
Finally the iron door opened before her and her sister stared out unseeing at her, her face a mask of pain and self-loathing. The sudden wash of emotion that poured over Sylie with the opening of the door nearly drove her to her knees. She staggered then leapt forward as Alana collapsed, her grief and pain overcoming her at last.
The Lady had been by Ranma's side for four hours, by that point. Sylie was shocked by his condition. It took her a long time to manage to get Alana calmed down enough to tell her what had happened. She was appalled, but truly impressed. Maybe the boy really did love her.
Sylie did what she could for the boy. Her healing was as ineffectual as Alana's had been, but she bound his wounds and did all that could be done for him conventionally, before carrying him to his bed, leaving him there with Alana. She proceeded to take over the management of the castle, to ensure an orderly running of the household. She took care of everything the Lady Alana usually did, and then she took care of Alana, forcing her to eat, and rest. If Sylie hadn't been there, she figured Alana would have sat by his bed until she collapsed.
Each day, Sylie spent some time trying to heal the boy, and draw him back from the darkness. On the third day the flame burning in him finally ceased blocking her spells and she was able to aid in his recovery. Still his body resisted her spells and they had far less effect than she expected. She feared to cast too much lest his resistance cause a dangerous reaction. He improved rapidly, however, in spite of the limits of her spells, showing visible gains each time she saw him. She guessed that on his own he would have recovered in under a month. His powers of recovery were truly remarkable, but sorely tasked by the massive draining of both ki and magical energy that he had gone through.
It was a week later that he finally awakened, late in the night. The Lady was only just aware of his eyes opening, before they flicked to her, with a blue fire and he turned away, curled into a ball, crying. He had failed her. He had given everything he had to free her, and in the end, sought to embrace death to free her and even in that he had failed. The pain of this ultimate failure shattered the walls of ice he had built against his emotions. She had not seen him cry for nearly four years, but now his body was racked with sobs that seemed torn from the depths of his soul and his pain and anguish seemed to rise from him like waves of heat.
Lady Alana stood, and sat on the bed, pulling her legs up and lifted him onto her lap. He finally looked whole again. His hair, frazzled and crisped, which had broken and crumbled at her touch that first night, was silky and strong. His skin was smooth and unbroken and light again. She held him and rocked him back and forth through his tears, as she spoke quietly to him.
"Ranma, had I known you would go so far, I would not have let you try. Don't ever try to leave me alone again, Ranma. Not like that. Please. My freedom is not worth your life." He tried to protest, but she lay a slim finger on his lips and he fell silent, except for his quiet sobs. "You nearly died. I know you tried. I will never forget what you did for me. It shames me, that you would go so far, and yet I never told you the truth because I feared it would be too hard for you." He sat up at that, looking into her eyes.
"I knew from the very beginning why you could not see some magic. I know you've learned, on your own, though I never told you. But you still don't know why. I do and I did then. I am ashamed I doubted that you had the strength to hear this."
"Never, Lady. Never be that. I _am_ weak. I failed you." Ranma protested.
"No, child. It was I who failed you. Never have I seen such strength as you have, strength of spirit and heart and yet I doubted you, and it shames me. Now hush, and let me tell you now, what I should have told you long ago." He stared up at her, his mind blank. He had no idea what she was going to tell him. He knew why he had failed, knew his blindness. But what could she know, that went beyond that?
"When you first came to me, Ranma, I felt a problem in your mind. I thought that if I gave you my love, I might, over time, be able heal you. I failed... I failed you, Ranma. I failed you, far worse than you failed me." He looked into her eyes and grasped her soft hands in his, shaking his head in vehement denial of her words. She had not failed him. She had always known, always been right, about what he needed to learn and do. It was he who had failed her, failed to learn as completely as he should, been unable to free her. But she freed her hand and laid a finger upon his lips again and he remained silent, and let her speak.
"There is in every person, Ranma, a balance of male and female, the yin and yang your Tai Chi master spoke of. Your ki is in balance, but your spirit and mind are not. You are only half-awake, Ranma. When your father tried to force you to be a man, when he beat you for showing emotion, or crying, or being polite, he kept forcing everything that was feminine in your spirit and mind away, into the depths of your mind where you could not reach them. It's like he just reached out and tore you in two and now your female half is locked in your mind."
Tears started rolling down her cheeks as she spoke now. He wanted to comfort her, to stop her tears, but he had to hear this, had to let her speak. "Perhaps, had I done more when you first came to me, I might have been able to simply heal you. But I was a fool, and thought my love would be enough, be strong enough. It wasn't. As the years have passed, Ranma, your female half has grown in the depths of your mind, has healed about itself, as have you, and it will be no simple thing to rejoin you."
"You mean...," Ranma found it hard to continue. He understood, alright, or thought he did. Because of Oyaji, he had a sister, trapped in his mind, but if she awoke, since she was him... well, he could just imagine what it would be like if he suddenly woke up and was a girl. She would hate him. "Oh, Kami-sama. That's terrible. Lady, how can I free her? What must I do?"
"You do not understand yet, I see. Ranma, she is you, she is not a separate person and even if you could awaken that personality, you would not be freeing her. You would be denying yourself, rejecting yourself."
He stared at her, his eyes widening slowly. "You... you are saying that I..."
"You must learn to accept that side of yourself, you must become whole again. That is the only way you could ever master the magic you cannot see." Tears stood in her eyes, tears of pain and loss, as she saw the fear and disbelief in the blue depths of his own eyes. "I am terribly sorry, Ranma. It would have been far easier if I had forced this on you when you were young. Instead I let you strive to become what your father wanted, a man above all. I only made things worse."
"Too far," he murmured then his eyes cleared and hardened. "Then there is but one thing to do," he said firmly. Alana stared at him for a moment before looking away.
"What is that?" she asked. She feared this response. No, she dreaded it, dreaded it with every fiber of her being. She knew what he had learned from his home world, knew the ways of his people. To accept death was the mark of a man. Honor stood above life and though she had not suspected that he felt her imprisonment was so strong a stain on his honor, she could understand how the honor of achieving the goal he had set himself could be worth more to him than his own life, whether she agreed or no. To embrace his own feminine side? Surely he would once more choose death before accepting something so unmanly.
"I must become a woman," he said. Unbeknownst to her, he indeed felt as she feared he would, that death would be preferable to becoming a woman. At the same time, he had taken to heart the pain he had felt from her, and the fact that she had reached out and drawn him back from death. More importantly, death, or whatever that power was that had taken him, had given him back, had returned him to her. That path was closed to him now.
He looked up at her, gazing into her eyes. "I do not want you, especially you, nor any of my people, to see me like that," he said, shivering at the thought of the weakness he would have to embrace, "but there can be no half-measures. Your pain has been extended long enough, I will not draw it out for years upon years as I slowly come to grips with feminine things against the will of my heart. I must become a woman, I must set aside my manhood completely, lest I resist learning what I must, for the sake of it." Even as he spoke his words tore at his heart. Being a man was all he had ever wanted, to be a man his father could be proud of, to be a man his mother could love, to be the man his people could look up to, to be a man worthy of the love he had already been given.
"I need your guidance now, Lady, more than ever. I know of no spell that has the subtlety to do this. When I take the form of an animal, I do not truly change, I do not become the creature. The spells I know only change the outward form. I was still a wizard wearing the guise of a snake or a bird. I was not a snake. I was not a bird. If I took the form of a girl, I would not be a girl."
"That is the difference," she said softly. "The Mages never truly understood that but we creatures of the wild know it. Masculine magic draws on the power that is close to surface appearances, that which gives the detail to the tapestry. It is easy, with such magic, to produce visible and elaborate effects, to defy expectations. Feminine magic, when used by one who knows the difference, is deeper and more subtle in its effects. Where the warp threads, as you see them, make it easy to call a lightning bolt down out of a clear sky, the woof threads would bend more easily to the slow production of the proper conditions for a natural lightning storm."
"So... I need female magic to be able to become a female mage so I can learn female magic. What about you? Can you cast the spell for me?"
She sighed and shook her head sadly. "You've been changed, we don't really understand how, but you've resisted even simple healing spells. I dread to think of what would happen if such a spell were to take incomplete hold on you."
"Then is there nothing I can do?"
"There is... a place... on your world, called Jusenkyo. There is a spring there called the Nyannichuan. If you bathe in that spring, then cold water will give you the body of a young woman, and hot water will return you to your own. It is powerful, terribly powerful. I looked into its history and it has been used for terrible things. A dragon was trapped as a woman by it once, through the use of an artifact called the Chisuiiton that belongs to a neighboring people that call themselves the Musk. If it can affect a dragon so, then I think it will affect you equally. In the far past it was used as a training ground, to train great warriors to control their ki. Eventually, they would be able to use their ki to change themselves, or to prevent water from changing them. If you could manage this, you could hold yourself as a woman. Otherwise, you could find the Chisuiiton, then find the Kaisufuu, its counterpart, when you are ready."
She looked deeply into his eyes and saw there the determination and pride that would not let him back down from this. Though she dearly wanted to go with him, to aid him in this and to teach him to be a woman, she could also see in his eyes the desperate shame he sought to hide from her. The walls of ice were rising once more as he recovered from the pain of his failure but they were not yet high enough nor thick enough to hold back her gaze. If she came with him, she would be a constant reminder of his pain.
"You will cast a stasis spell. I can teach you how. I can survive a week without you... But for this, it might be a year or more before you achieved sufficient wholeness to cast the spell. In stasis, I will wait as long as you need. When you are ready, you could come back for me."
"I think I already know how, Lady. I did it once before. I will do this, because I must. I will go, but I swear, Lady, I will return. I will free you!"