Fic-DBSK/Tales of Phantasia-The Spaces Between (Chapter 4: Towards the Stars)
Title: The Spaces Between; Chapter 4: Towards the Stars
Author: virdant
Length: 1,943 words; 4/5
Rating: PG / PG-13
Genre: Crossover with Tales of Phantasia (AU) / Drama / Tragedy,
Pairing: None
Summary:
Story Summary: Midgard on the eve of war.
Chapter Summary: “Give him to Luna then, if he’s of Midgard. The Tower of the Twelve Stars is Midgardian. What better spirit to commit him to?”
Yoochun grimaced. “Luna doesn’t accept warriors that aren’t her champions.”
Boa said-softly but sharply, quiet enough to keep the children for paying attention but sharp enough that they looked up anyways, “He died for Midgard. He died fighting against Dhaos. Doesn’t that make him champion enough?”
Warning: Character Death, reference to events from a game, but no actual quoting from the game because I don't have save-files for this time period orz. AU-fic, and a decent amount of self-angst right from the start~ (Additionally, now BoA and S.H.E. will be playing more major roles because the plan has changed orz, though I suspect BoA will be cut out for Hebe because I think I'm hitting Hebe characterization more...)
Notes: I draw most heavily from the SNES game, with references to the OVA. I am also using this walkthrough to insure that the events I write remain moderately accurate. If anybody has a savegame file for this time period, I would love you so much, words would be unable to describe my love. The story should be understandable if you do not know a thing about Tales of Phantasia.This story has been plot-beta'd by muu_chan.
Chapter 1: On the Edge / Chapter 2: Enter Hither / Chapter 3: South the Valhalla Plains / Chapter 4: Towards the Stars / Chapter 5: Over the Edge
The Spaces Between
“Truly if there is evil in the world, it lies in the heart of mankind.” - Edward D. Morrison
Chapter 4: Towards the Stars
From Chapter 3: South the Valhalla Plains
In the morning, Midgard was alive again.
The news came from a guard, rushing ahead to deliver news: “Klarth F. Lester’s team has defeated Dhaos’ general!” the guard cried. Upon hearing the news, the population left in Midgard cheered, despite the fact there was no news of the wounded or the dead.
Jaejoong stood on the wall in North Midgard, Selina and Tiffany with him to keep them out of the other kid’s skins. The two of them had the most fights, but with them out of the way, the others subsided into peace. They watched the army come back, cheering for every soldier who walked back to Midgard alive.
At the front of the procession was the boy-man and his team, who had traversed the Valhalla plains to attack the leader of Dhaos’ army.
“Yay!” Selina and Tiffany shouted with the others on the wall as they waved the colorful pennants they had made of scraps of old rags. “Hurray!”
Jaejoong scoured the crowd for Changmin, Junsu, Yoochun, and Yunho.
“Hurray!” Selina cheered.
“Hurray!” Tiffany continued.
Jaejoong couldn’t see any of them.
Horror twisted his throat.
“Hurray!”
“Yay!”
“No,” Jaejoong breathed.
But there was no mistaking the fact that he couldn’t see any of them.
*
He staggered off the wall an hour later, Selina and Tiffany in tow. The walk from North to South Midgard was exponentially slow, and despite the flutter of joy that slipped out of every passerby’s mouth, Jaejoong could only feel heaviness in his chest as he staggered back into the orphanage.
What use was winning if there were no survivors?
“You look like you’re the wounded one, not Yoochun,” Changmin murmured dryly.
Jaejoong yelped, whirling to stare.
There was Changmin. Yoochun clutching a bandage to his arm. Yunho smiling wanly.
“Where’s Junsu?” Jaejoong asked. The horror from before crept upwards, choking him and filling his mouth. Changmin closed his eyes. Yoochun grimaced. Yunho shuddered.
Then Jaejoong saw the shroud.
*
The living belongs to the world. Everybody knows this.
The dead, they belong to something else. They belong to the spirits, for the spirits to hold onto the remnants of their worldly life.
All came from Origin. All return to Origin at death.
But their bodies belong to the other spirits, the spirits that had held and protected them during their time on the world, for what use has Origin for the worldly when his domain is the beginning and the end?
So the bodies are given to the other spirits-to be immortalized in the world, to be promised to that which held them-while the dead return to the Creator.
Such is the way of the world.
Such is the way of Aselia.
*
“Cremation,” Yunho suggested, voice tight.
Jaejoong frowned. Let Ifrit take Junsu? Let Ifrit burn away everything that Junsu did-every kind action to the children, every smile, every monster slain to protect Midgard-in some mockery of everything he did in life? “Give him back to Gnome,” he retorted. Let him return to the earth he came from. Let Gnome immortalize his deeds in the earth.
Looking up from the dusty shroud, Yoochun murmured, “His family doesn’t have a burial plot-he’s an orphan, remember?”
“We don’t even know which doctrine he followed,” Changmin mumbled bitterly, “not even for death.” Followed. Already, Changmin referred to Junsu in past-tense. As if Junsu had already been given to the spirits for peace.
“He’s from Midgard,” Jaejoong muttered. “We don’t follow any doctrine for burial. Usually Gnome though.”
Changmin frowned-as a Venezzian, he believed in letting Undine wash away troubles and bring peace to the dead. Yunho, after his stint in Freland studying the medicinal properties of the desert creatures, believed in cremation and letting Ifrit burn away the deeds of the living. Yoochun and Jaejoong believed in returning to Gnome’s embrace and letting Gnome hold the days of living in his hands.
“Do we know anything about Junsu’s doctrine?”
“He liked to spend time by the lake,” Changmin said. Changmin had let Junsu go already then, hadn’t he? Let Junsu leave in the same way the tide pulled away from the shore.
“He’s flighty,” Yoochun said slowly, because Junsu hadn’t been given to the spirits yet. Junsu was still here, though covered in a shroud, no longer able to move, to walk, to breathe. Yoochun continued, “Mercurial. Constantly changing.”
“Like the Sylphs.” Jaejoong struggled to control his distaste for that though; Sylph doctrine was the antithesis to Gnome doctrine, and most considered the Sylph doctrine perverted-to give bodies to the birds like that, even if they were shrouded in the grey-white with the blue-green-red of Sylph Upon the Sky. It wasn’t right to leave the remains of one’s life up high for the birds to feed upon.
Changmin murmured, “Not like the Sylphs. Like the ocean-kind one second and roaring the next.” Wasn’t Undine’s doctrine little different from Sylph’s? Shrouding the body with blue-upon-blue for Undine, mourning and tears and tipping them into the water weighted down with stones for the fishes to feed. Better to commit them to the earth, to let them return to the ground they walked on-people were born to stand on Gnome’s domain, let them return to Gnome’s domain upon death.
Yunho’s lips pursed. “Not Sylph,” he agreed. He looked weary. “Not Sylph… give Junsu to the fire”-
“Junsu never followed Ifrit,” Yoochun protested, voice level.
Hebe broke in from where she sat, supervising the children playing-Tiffany pulling Selina’s hair and shrieking with laughter as Selina squawked, Ella quiet, but active, all the children vibrantly alive in contrast to the white shroud covering Junsu’s dead body. He would have the white until his body was given away, the white shroud of Origin. “Give him to Luna then, if he’s of Midgard. The Tower of the Twelve Stars is Midgardian. What better spirit to commit him to?”
Yoochun grimaced. “Luna doesn’t accept warriors that aren’t her champions.”
Hebe said-softly but sharply, quiet enough to keep the children for paying attention but sharp enough that they looked up anyways, “He died for Midgard. He died protecting Midgard against Dhaos. Doesn’t that make him champion enough?”
*
“I’ll make the final arrangements,” Changmin muttered, walking out of the orphanage. They watched him leave.
“Do you”-Jaejoong choked a little-“Do you know what happened?”
Yoochun nodded slowly. When he spoke his voice was soft and raspy. Jaejoong looked away from the dampness in Yoochun’s eyes. “He wasn’t stationed far away from where we were. We’re at the edge of Valhalla. Right where Valhalla starts from the farmlands. Junsu… Junsu, he…” Yoochun shuddered. Hebe offered a worn handkerchief. Yoochun wiped his eyes and continued.
“There was a drake. One of those monsters, with a sword and everything. A lizard tail and lizard tongue. It shouldn’t have even been where we were, where Junsu and Changmin and their team was-there were teams all ahead, paving paths”-
Yunho broke in with a quiet murmur. “Somebody let a drake slip through the defensive line.”
“Maybe they couldn’t help it,” Yoochun protested through tears. “They’re not human, these monsters. One could have slipped through. Or one could have gotten hurt… There are others dead.”
Yunho closed his eyes. “Or maybe they just didn’t want to die, so they let the drake through. There weren’t any casualties from Junsu’s team beyond Junsu. I know that.”
Yoochun shuddered.
“What happened?” Jaejoong pressed again.
“The drake moved. It was so fast. It almost reached us, in our part of Valhalla. We were right at the edge of the plains, right at the edge of where Valhalla and farmlands meet. Junsu, he tried to fight the drake. He tried. I saw him try to hold off the monster. But something happened.”
“Monster-magic,” Yunho murmured.
“Junsu froze, as if he were stone… Maybe he was stone, for a second. Then he just crumpled.”
Yoochun twitched the shroud away, and Jaejoong stared at Junsu’s face, frozen in rictus and death. His skin was ashen, almost as if he were stone, but he was flesh. Jaejoong touched Junsu’s cheek gently. Not stone. Just the cold stiffness of death.
“I think the monster turned him to stone. But Junsu had taken a remedy bottle before, for a poison wound, and the medicine was still in him, so he simply slowed down, paralyzed,” Yunho said carefully, his voice cracking on the edges. Not crying yet, but it wouldn’t be long until grief brought him of tears. “And then the drake killed him. Stepped on him on his way towards us. We were lucky that Changmin managed to kill the drake.”
Yoochun shuddered and wiped tears away. “Lucky!” he spat out. “Lucky. It shouldn’t have been him! He shouldn’t have died!”
“Yoochun,” Jaejoong began.
“It should have been us. Why did he have to die? Why did he have to die?”
Then the alarm of Midgard sounded, and Jaejoong found himself falling.
*
They staggered out of the orphanage, children in tow. “What’s going on?” Yunho shouted as they pushed through the crowd, forcing their way towards the fortress.
“Look,” old man Choi rasped from his position at the fortress gate, raising a hand to point up at the sky.
Monsters.
Flying.
Jaejoong choked back his horror. “We’re going to die,” he whispered. His mind swam with memory: black filling his vision as a demon swooped from the sky. The caravan overturning, supplies from Alvanista-through Freland-rattling in the barrels. His mother, screaming. His sister, crumpled behind barrels, screeching. His father, drawing a sword.
The demon, laughing, stretching out a clawed hand, hissing-
“Don’t say that, Jaejoong!” Yoochun hissed. Memory slipped away.
Jaejoong tugged away from everybody. “What can we do against flying monsters?” he demanded, hysteria rising up. They were Sylph-blessed to fly. “We’re not Sylph-blessed!”
Yunho hissed under his breath. “Sylph-blessed,” he repeated, horror filling his eyes.
Jaejoong was only barely aware of a man dashing out the fortress, calling out: “Goddess of Water, the pact is complete, Undine!” before a gush of water rose from the lake south of Midgard, bursting high above the walls, streaming towards the monsters. The ground glowed with the power of the summoning, the circle and the runes; Jaejoong’s breath hitched: a summoner.
“I must say, I haven’t heard anybody call upon the spirits in years. Except for Lester just then.”
Lester?
“Klarth!” It was Mint.
“Klarth F. Lester’s team has defeated Dhaos’ general!”
Klarth F. Lester.
“I can’t reach them all,” Klarth F. Lester snarled, eyes focused on the blur of water as it danced through the demon-monsters. “Get them all, Undine!” he cried again, the ground glowing with the force of his summoning. The blur of water was Undine, Jaejoong realized. Undine, Goddess of Water.
“Then use Sylph!” the boy-man-Cless-cried.
“They’re Sylph-blessed,” Yunho hollered, a baby squalling in his arms and Tiffany clinging to his legs, “you can’t!”
“Damnit!” Klarth slammed a fist against his tome. “And none of us can go that high: Arche!”
“My broom doesn’t fly that high!” the girl screeched as she channeled power through her hands. Mana glowed around her. “Lightning!” A bolt flashed through the sky, shredding a monster’s flesh. Wings beat and the monster swerved away. “Ligh”-Arche broke off, the circle fading.
Then Jaejoong felt the ground rumble. “The fortress,” he whispered, turning around to stare at the fortress.
A single tower glowed golden, shimmering in the light of the sun and something else.
Klarth shouted. The blur of water-Undine-shrieked in horror and collapsed.
And then a beam of pure energy shot through the sky.
To Chapter 5
Author: virdant
Length: 1,943 words; 4/5
Rating: PG / PG-13
Genre: Crossover with Tales of Phantasia (AU) / Drama / Tragedy,
Pairing: None
Summary:
Story Summary: Midgard on the eve of war.
Chapter Summary: “Give him to Luna then, if he’s of Midgard. The Tower of the Twelve Stars is Midgardian. What better spirit to commit him to?”
Yoochun grimaced. “Luna doesn’t accept warriors that aren’t her champions.”
Boa said-softly but sharply, quiet enough to keep the children for paying attention but sharp enough that they looked up anyways, “He died for Midgard. He died fighting against Dhaos. Doesn’t that make him champion enough?”
Warning: Character Death, reference to events from a game, but no actual quoting from the game because I don't have save-files for this time period orz. AU-fic, and a decent amount of self-angst right from the start~ (Additionally, now BoA and S.H.E. will be playing more major roles because the plan has changed orz, though I suspect BoA will be cut out for Hebe because I think I'm hitting Hebe characterization more...)
Notes: I draw most heavily from the SNES game, with references to the OVA. I am also using this walkthrough to insure that the events I write remain moderately accurate. If anybody has a savegame file for this time period, I would love you so much, words would be unable to describe my love. The story should be understandable if you do not know a thing about Tales of Phantasia.This story has been plot-beta'd by muu_chan.
Chapter 1: On the Edge / Chapter 2: Enter Hither / Chapter 3: South the Valhalla Plains / Chapter 4: Towards the Stars / Chapter 5: Over the Edge
The Spaces Between
“Truly if there is evil in the world, it lies in the heart of mankind.” - Edward D. Morrison
Chapter 4: Towards the Stars
From Chapter 3: South the Valhalla Plains
In the morning, Midgard was alive again.
The news came from a guard, rushing ahead to deliver news: “Klarth F. Lester’s team has defeated Dhaos’ general!” the guard cried. Upon hearing the news, the population left in Midgard cheered, despite the fact there was no news of the wounded or the dead.
Jaejoong stood on the wall in North Midgard, Selina and Tiffany with him to keep them out of the other kid’s skins. The two of them had the most fights, but with them out of the way, the others subsided into peace. They watched the army come back, cheering for every soldier who walked back to Midgard alive.
At the front of the procession was the boy-man and his team, who had traversed the Valhalla plains to attack the leader of Dhaos’ army.
“Yay!” Selina and Tiffany shouted with the others on the wall as they waved the colorful pennants they had made of scraps of old rags. “Hurray!”
Jaejoong scoured the crowd for Changmin, Junsu, Yoochun, and Yunho.
“Hurray!” Selina cheered.
“Hurray!” Tiffany continued.
Jaejoong couldn’t see any of them.
Horror twisted his throat.
“Hurray!”
“Yay!”
“No,” Jaejoong breathed.
But there was no mistaking the fact that he couldn’t see any of them.
*
He staggered off the wall an hour later, Selina and Tiffany in tow. The walk from North to South Midgard was exponentially slow, and despite the flutter of joy that slipped out of every passerby’s mouth, Jaejoong could only feel heaviness in his chest as he staggered back into the orphanage.
What use was winning if there were no survivors?
“You look like you’re the wounded one, not Yoochun,” Changmin murmured dryly.
Jaejoong yelped, whirling to stare.
There was Changmin. Yoochun clutching a bandage to his arm. Yunho smiling wanly.
“Where’s Junsu?” Jaejoong asked. The horror from before crept upwards, choking him and filling his mouth. Changmin closed his eyes. Yoochun grimaced. Yunho shuddered.
Then Jaejoong saw the shroud.
*
The living belongs to the world. Everybody knows this.
The dead, they belong to something else. They belong to the spirits, for the spirits to hold onto the remnants of their worldly life.
All came from Origin. All return to Origin at death.
But their bodies belong to the other spirits, the spirits that had held and protected them during their time on the world, for what use has Origin for the worldly when his domain is the beginning and the end?
So the bodies are given to the other spirits-to be immortalized in the world, to be promised to that which held them-while the dead return to the Creator.
Such is the way of the world.
Such is the way of Aselia.
*
“Cremation,” Yunho suggested, voice tight.
Jaejoong frowned. Let Ifrit take Junsu? Let Ifrit burn away everything that Junsu did-every kind action to the children, every smile, every monster slain to protect Midgard-in some mockery of everything he did in life? “Give him back to Gnome,” he retorted. Let him return to the earth he came from. Let Gnome immortalize his deeds in the earth.
Looking up from the dusty shroud, Yoochun murmured, “His family doesn’t have a burial plot-he’s an orphan, remember?”
“We don’t even know which doctrine he followed,” Changmin mumbled bitterly, “not even for death.” Followed. Already, Changmin referred to Junsu in past-tense. As if Junsu had already been given to the spirits for peace.
“He’s from Midgard,” Jaejoong muttered. “We don’t follow any doctrine for burial. Usually Gnome though.”
Changmin frowned-as a Venezzian, he believed in letting Undine wash away troubles and bring peace to the dead. Yunho, after his stint in Freland studying the medicinal properties of the desert creatures, believed in cremation and letting Ifrit burn away the deeds of the living. Yoochun and Jaejoong believed in returning to Gnome’s embrace and letting Gnome hold the days of living in his hands.
“Do we know anything about Junsu’s doctrine?”
“He liked to spend time by the lake,” Changmin said. Changmin had let Junsu go already then, hadn’t he? Let Junsu leave in the same way the tide pulled away from the shore.
“He’s flighty,” Yoochun said slowly, because Junsu hadn’t been given to the spirits yet. Junsu was still here, though covered in a shroud, no longer able to move, to walk, to breathe. Yoochun continued, “Mercurial. Constantly changing.”
“Like the Sylphs.” Jaejoong struggled to control his distaste for that though; Sylph doctrine was the antithesis to Gnome doctrine, and most considered the Sylph doctrine perverted-to give bodies to the birds like that, even if they were shrouded in the grey-white with the blue-green-red of Sylph Upon the Sky. It wasn’t right to leave the remains of one’s life up high for the birds to feed upon.
Changmin murmured, “Not like the Sylphs. Like the ocean-kind one second and roaring the next.” Wasn’t Undine’s doctrine little different from Sylph’s? Shrouding the body with blue-upon-blue for Undine, mourning and tears and tipping them into the water weighted down with stones for the fishes to feed. Better to commit them to the earth, to let them return to the ground they walked on-people were born to stand on Gnome’s domain, let them return to Gnome’s domain upon death.
Yunho’s lips pursed. “Not Sylph,” he agreed. He looked weary. “Not Sylph… give Junsu to the fire”-
“Junsu never followed Ifrit,” Yoochun protested, voice level.
Hebe broke in from where she sat, supervising the children playing-Tiffany pulling Selina’s hair and shrieking with laughter as Selina squawked, Ella quiet, but active, all the children vibrantly alive in contrast to the white shroud covering Junsu’s dead body. He would have the white until his body was given away, the white shroud of Origin. “Give him to Luna then, if he’s of Midgard. The Tower of the Twelve Stars is Midgardian. What better spirit to commit him to?”
Yoochun grimaced. “Luna doesn’t accept warriors that aren’t her champions.”
Hebe said-softly but sharply, quiet enough to keep the children for paying attention but sharp enough that they looked up anyways, “He died for Midgard. He died protecting Midgard against Dhaos. Doesn’t that make him champion enough?”
*
“I’ll make the final arrangements,” Changmin muttered, walking out of the orphanage. They watched him leave.
“Do you”-Jaejoong choked a little-“Do you know what happened?”
Yoochun nodded slowly. When he spoke his voice was soft and raspy. Jaejoong looked away from the dampness in Yoochun’s eyes. “He wasn’t stationed far away from where we were. We’re at the edge of Valhalla. Right where Valhalla starts from the farmlands. Junsu… Junsu, he…” Yoochun shuddered. Hebe offered a worn handkerchief. Yoochun wiped his eyes and continued.
“There was a drake. One of those monsters, with a sword and everything. A lizard tail and lizard tongue. It shouldn’t have even been where we were, where Junsu and Changmin and their team was-there were teams all ahead, paving paths”-
Yunho broke in with a quiet murmur. “Somebody let a drake slip through the defensive line.”
“Maybe they couldn’t help it,” Yoochun protested through tears. “They’re not human, these monsters. One could have slipped through. Or one could have gotten hurt… There are others dead.”
Yunho closed his eyes. “Or maybe they just didn’t want to die, so they let the drake through. There weren’t any casualties from Junsu’s team beyond Junsu. I know that.”
Yoochun shuddered.
“What happened?” Jaejoong pressed again.
“The drake moved. It was so fast. It almost reached us, in our part of Valhalla. We were right at the edge of the plains, right at the edge of where Valhalla and farmlands meet. Junsu, he tried to fight the drake. He tried. I saw him try to hold off the monster. But something happened.”
“Monster-magic,” Yunho murmured.
“Junsu froze, as if he were stone… Maybe he was stone, for a second. Then he just crumpled.”
Yoochun twitched the shroud away, and Jaejoong stared at Junsu’s face, frozen in rictus and death. His skin was ashen, almost as if he were stone, but he was flesh. Jaejoong touched Junsu’s cheek gently. Not stone. Just the cold stiffness of death.
“I think the monster turned him to stone. But Junsu had taken a remedy bottle before, for a poison wound, and the medicine was still in him, so he simply slowed down, paralyzed,” Yunho said carefully, his voice cracking on the edges. Not crying yet, but it wouldn’t be long until grief brought him of tears. “And then the drake killed him. Stepped on him on his way towards us. We were lucky that Changmin managed to kill the drake.”
Yoochun shuddered and wiped tears away. “Lucky!” he spat out. “Lucky. It shouldn’t have been him! He shouldn’t have died!”
“Yoochun,” Jaejoong began.
“It should have been us. Why did he have to die? Why did he have to die?”
Then the alarm of Midgard sounded, and Jaejoong found himself falling.
*
They staggered out of the orphanage, children in tow. “What’s going on?” Yunho shouted as they pushed through the crowd, forcing their way towards the fortress.
“Look,” old man Choi rasped from his position at the fortress gate, raising a hand to point up at the sky.
Monsters.
Flying.
Jaejoong choked back his horror. “We’re going to die,” he whispered. His mind swam with memory: black filling his vision as a demon swooped from the sky. The caravan overturning, supplies from Alvanista-through Freland-rattling in the barrels. His mother, screaming. His sister, crumpled behind barrels, screeching. His father, drawing a sword.
The demon, laughing, stretching out a clawed hand, hissing-
“Don’t say that, Jaejoong!” Yoochun hissed. Memory slipped away.
Jaejoong tugged away from everybody. “What can we do against flying monsters?” he demanded, hysteria rising up. They were Sylph-blessed to fly. “We’re not Sylph-blessed!”
Yunho hissed under his breath. “Sylph-blessed,” he repeated, horror filling his eyes.
Jaejoong was only barely aware of a man dashing out the fortress, calling out: “Goddess of Water, the pact is complete, Undine!” before a gush of water rose from the lake south of Midgard, bursting high above the walls, streaming towards the monsters. The ground glowed with the power of the summoning, the circle and the runes; Jaejoong’s breath hitched: a summoner.
“I must say, I haven’t heard anybody call upon the spirits in years. Except for Lester just then.”
Lester?
“Klarth!” It was Mint.
“Klarth F. Lester’s team has defeated Dhaos’ general!”
Klarth F. Lester.
“I can’t reach them all,” Klarth F. Lester snarled, eyes focused on the blur of water as it danced through the demon-monsters. “Get them all, Undine!” he cried again, the ground glowing with the force of his summoning. The blur of water was Undine, Jaejoong realized. Undine, Goddess of Water.
“Then use Sylph!” the boy-man-Cless-cried.
“They’re Sylph-blessed,” Yunho hollered, a baby squalling in his arms and Tiffany clinging to his legs, “you can’t!”
“Damnit!” Klarth slammed a fist against his tome. “And none of us can go that high: Arche!”
“My broom doesn’t fly that high!” the girl screeched as she channeled power through her hands. Mana glowed around her. “Lightning!” A bolt flashed through the sky, shredding a monster’s flesh. Wings beat and the monster swerved away. “Ligh”-Arche broke off, the circle fading.
Then Jaejoong felt the ground rumble. “The fortress,” he whispered, turning around to stare at the fortress.
A single tower glowed golden, shimmering in the light of the sun and something else.
Klarth shouted. The blur of water-Undine-shrieked in horror and collapsed.
And then a beam of pure energy shot through the sky.
To Chapter 5