And part two.
BOOK 3:
Chapter 5...well, wait, no; according to the caption, we're in Part 2 of Chapter 4. We're in Mia's memory again; this time, she's recalling how she reacted with shock when her mom told that Ghaleon was way older than he looked. She then remembers the incident with Ghaleon bleeding & healing right away, then a remark from Sheila she heard in the Blue Dragon's dream on how Sheila didn't inherit her magic-race father's pointed ears or crimson eyes.
Ghaleon - oh, yeah; remember him? He'd materialized right in front of Mia - remarks: "Humans forget so readily it's cruel. A hundred years ago, one look at me, and I would have been instantly recognized as a mazoku." He tells Mia that the woman in the hologram was a "childhood friend" and a guildmistress from generations ago, and goes on to mention that it was the magic race that originally built Vheen - even though that fact has been expunged from history by the city's current residents. After a bit of expositing to catch Mia up on the parts of the story we've already read, Ghaleon relates that after Niea came to him in the shrine, they had a makeshift private wedding (Ghaleon giving Niea his "late mother's ring") and then went to live together close to the Frontier. "I lost my blood relatives at an early age...but the constant kindness I received from the humans and mazoku around me meant that I never felt unhappy." He says that Niea was the first one to teach him what it meant to have "a full life" and to be "overwhelmed with happiness."
Mia, meanwhile, is so shocked that none of this is really getting through to her; she's still hung up on the concept that Ghaleon is of the magic race and that an Ausa ran away from Vheen ("I'd never thought that was possible!").
Ghaleon, not really noticing this himself, continues his story. (He's in his SSS final-boss garb all throughout here; it's interesting to see him hold an extended, rather muted conversation in it.) Five years after they moved to the Frontier, officials from Vheen tracked the couple down and begged Niea to return - the same astronomy-related disaster that befell Vheen in the second volume is threatening to reoccur at this point in time. Ghal & Niea understand that they'll probably be separated if they go back to Vheen, but the big MacGuffin disaster is threatening not only the existence of Vheen but the Goddess Tower as well, and the loss of both would be too great a blow to Lunar to ignore. They both return to Vheen and help the guild members cast a spell, and disaster is averted. Since the plot-device disaster could happen again in the future, though, the current, KSK Guildmistress asks Ghaleon once more to leave her daughter - for not only her sake, but the sake of Lunar, as well. After gravely weighing the consequences, in the middle of the night, he does. Niea shrieks in horror upon learning of his parting - screaming that "we were happy - so happy - happier than anything in the world!" Niea is subsequently railroaded into a forced marriage and shuts herself up in the guild manor in grief.
(We're obviously going for maximum tragedy here, but this development makes Smarter Than the Average Guild Student and the KSK Guildmistress flatly villainous and Ghaleon weaker than he should be. Granted, he's at an earlier stage in his character development and would be more inclined to uphold the status quo in adhering to duty and protecting Lunar, but this turn of events, like the rest of the doujinshi, elides the protectiveness Ghal feels toward the humans he loves from his overinvestment in his parental role; I'm not sure he would give up this easily. But it makes somewhat more sense in the doujinshi's own little universe, particularly in this time frame...well, you can debate this back and forth yourself, I suppose; you don't need my help.)
Anyhow - not so long after the point of Maximum Tragedy, Ghaleon receives word that Niea's given birth to a child - and they've determined that it's got to be his, not STTAGS's. Ghaleon goes back to Vheen to see the evidence - whereupon he discovers that the infant's floating everything in her room without chanting spells (or knowing how to chant, or how to vocalize beyond baby noises, for that matter). "The child was so small, her skin so inflamed, her voice so weak...no one thought she would last long." Ghaleon says it wasn't as if there were no examples of human-mazoku children in history...but none of them lived past infancy. (Ghaleon credits the ring he gave Niea when they married for the kid surviving until he got to Vheen; apparently, it had some sort of healing magic trapped in the stone.)
Ghaleon relates how he put up the magic barrier in Sheila's room and traveled the globe in search of a cure for his child; in the meantime, Sheila gets better - somewhat. "And as she grew, she became my joy...my pride...my treasure." And, then, of course, she dies. "By the time I arrived...my child's body was already cold." Ghaleon feels rage, of course, that his child died to protect Althena's tower - and that Althena "denied her even a single blessing." As Ghaleon cradles Sheila's body, Niea appears, very weak herself and sobbing apologies that she couldn't protect their Sheila. Niea then collapses, and the next we see, Ghaleon is mourning over not one but two graves. Niea had been weak since giving birth to Sheila, and her daughter's death was an insurmountable blow; she passes away two days after her child. (This contradicts TnK, where we see her in flashback as a happy old woman, but, forward.)
Ghaleon then relates to Mia how the Ausa line continued through Sheila's half-sister down to Remilia and, by extension, Mia. He relates bitterly how the Ausas survived atop Sheila's sacrifice, and how even though they honored her as the "Sainted Guildmistress" in death, they expunged all trace of her mazoku heritage from history, just as they did Vheen's mazoku origins. Back in flashback land, younger Ghaleon eventually reconciles through remembering Tagak's words about how "we ourselves have always drawn our breath atop the histories of those nameless to us", at length concluding that the deaths of his wife and child weren't the fault of the humans or Althena or anyone: "That's what I kept thinking...that's what I told myself."
Then comes the Althena's rebirth scene with Dyne, and in this doujinshi, Ghaleon is given an extra motive for his attitude in that if Althena eventually gives up her divinity, then Sheila, who perished trying to save her tower and by extension her, will have died for nothing. "The countless people who have sacrificed themselves to protect the goddess - to protect Vheen... Niea and I...who were separated to ensure the continuation of the Ausas... All those who suffered by order of Althena's divine judgment... All the blood that was spilt to exile the magic race to the Frontier... All for nothing!" As Althena reincarnates, his thoughts flash upon Niea, then Morris (which will be explained presently), then the corpse of his daughter, and he concludes: "Athena betrayed us first."
Back in the present, Ghaleon continues to Mia that not all those mazoku exiled to the Frontier attacked humans - the old, young, and nonresisting were also banished by Althena, because, she said, any mazoku remaining in the interior not in Vheen would be "sources of conflict." He asks: "How is what I am doing now any different?"
As Mia's mind flashes back on meeting the demonic-looking mazoku who wanted only "green earth," Ghaleon goes on to claim that Althena has two faces: the "affectionate mother" and the "yaksi" (a malevolent demon in India mythology), and that since what Althena did to the mazoku was good for them, Dain and humanity were all right with the injustice: "without looking at the larger perspective; just seeing matters from their own selfish viewpoints."
Mia then looks distraught, and Ghaleon asks her what's wrong - prompting her to say something. Mia is initially quiet, but then asks: "Do you...hate me?" Reverting to a childish voice (doing that thing in Japan where young kids refer to themselves in the third person), shaking & crying, she continues: "Did you hate Mia...'Ghaleon-sama'? You did everything in your power to betray us...the guild...the Ausas...me....was it because.........you hated us...?" She goes on: "All these last 15 years...that you let me sit in your lap while you told me stories...that you picked flowers for me...all this time...behind that kind smile...you were just waiting to have your revenge..." (On the one hand, this is perhaps the best "Mia confronts Ghaleon" scene I've read. On the other hand, Mia, you're not really breaking the whole "own selfish viewpoint" thing.)
Ghaleon pauses, and says: "...Yes. You looked like Sheila. Every time I saw you, I thought: 'Why is she dead...and you alive?!'" In anger, Ghaleon slaps Mia - but, again, sees his own daughter in Mia's hurt expression, which shocks him back to...well, whatever normal is now for him.
He tells Mia to "go" - "I won't kill you now. Next time, though...I will." Mia skitters away, and Ghaleon watches her leave, silently thinking to himself: "I love you... I love you..."
(As mentioned previously, one of the casualties of this doujin's Ghaleon-Niea relationship and rewriting Ghaleon's motivations to support it is a lack of understanding of how he's mentally stuck in a parental role. I really don't like the idea of Ghaleon's fondness for Mia being a sham - though, to its credit, it's clear that neither it nor Ghaleon completely buys the explanation Ghaleon gives.)
Ghaleon then senses the presence of someone else in his garden, and Faithia, of all people, comes out. Did he leave the back teleportal unlocked or something? Faithia (who, as Ghaleon notes, has been cast out of the tribe by this point), is shocked by the revelation that Ghaleon was one of the "Vheen mazoku" (which I think is a distinction unique to this author). She asks Ghaleon why he didn't make this information public on the Frontier, as "I'm sure it would have made capturing the hearts of your brethren much easier." "'Brethren'?" says Ghaleon, sampling the word, then quickly states: "That means little to me." Faithia must then look into Ghaleon's mind or something, because she jumps back in sudden mental shock and thinks: "There's no one...no one reflected in this man's heart. Not my sister...not the magic race or humanity..."
Faithia asks Ghaleon what his "true goal" is - what he wants after he "[has his] revenge". In wordless response, Ghaleon looks at her and put his hand up to her face (maybe she looks like Niea to him? Or Sheila?). As this is happening, Faithia wonders if Ghaleon would be healed "if he did have someone in his heart." Ghaleon then turns away and tells Faithia to "Go. Sleep - and wait for a day when humanity and the magic race can once again coexist. --But I...can wait for that no longer." Ghaleon himself then walks away, thinking: "I no longer have a home to which to return." He thinks of the mazoku in Vheen, then Niea, then Dain, and believes: "I have no one...no one waiting for me."
(As an aside, this seems like an interesting tactic by the author to link SSS Faithia with 16-bit EB manga Faithia, which is not necessary but a nice endeavor.)
Meanwhile, present-day Dain turns up on present-day Remilia's doorstep. This brings us to:
Chapter 5, Legend of Heroes, opens with little backpack-toting "Kioku Suru Fuukei" Dain climbing up a steep ledge after Ghaleon. "Go home," Ghaleon says; "How long are you intending to follow me?" "I'm NOT going back!" Dain shouts, saying that he wants to see the world "with my own eyes"; "until then," Dain swears, "I'm gonna be on you like an arapaima!" Which is quite a metaphor.
We then flash to young Ghaleon - a small child, younger than in KSK; perhaps a bit older than when he fell off the wall - who has approached Zain to ask: "Why can't we leave the city?" "Because Heaven is far away now," Zain answers, "And so we must live in silence...and rot away in silence." (Zain might be on shrooms right now.) Someone off-screen - from the language, it seems to be Tagak or maybe Rouj, though later developments hint at it being Morris - yells at Zain to knock it off because "the kid's too young for that kind of talk." Naturally, little Ghaleon stands confused, asking his brother for an explanation - but before he can answer, Zain's face vanishes, and Dain's is in its place.
It is the time of the Four Heroes, and the previous two flashbacks have been a dream. Dain is rousing Ghaleon from slumber - "rare for you to be sleeping late!" - then runs over to Mel & Remilia. Ghaleon, however, lies still, yet stunned, wondering why he is "having such dreams at a time like this."
(It occurs to me that I was unkind in saying that the artist couldn't draw before; there are places where she has difficulty with perspective & just plain line art, but renders some expressions, like Ghaleon's stunned look here, rather well.)
(I should also mention, for metaphorical completism, that LSD Trip Zain refers to heaven as "the country above the clouds," which will be Significant in a bit.)
The Four Heroes are in the Stadius Zone, making their way to their "enemy's hideout" - a desolate cluster of mountaintop ruins that somewhat resemble the ruins in the back of Vheen in TnK. Remilia wonders aloud how the "Wizard of Stadius" managed to break through the barrrier Althena erected around the Frontier. Mel asks Ghaleon to confirm that "there shouldn't be anyone in this world who possesses Althena's power, should there?"; Ghaleon replies that "Althena's power is the foundation of Lunar" and that "no one can transcend the source." His mind, though, begins to consider one possibility...but he immediately dismisses it.
Mel then causally brings up how the mazoku allegedly trashed the Blue Star and that "this 'Wizard of Stadius' must be some fella if he let those guys loose!" This makes Dain pause, and he begins to bring Mel up on it, but Remilia takes care of the problem for him: she mentions how it was the magic race who built Vheen, and how their culture was responsible for many of the mysterious buildings found around Lunar. (Well, she mentions "legends" to that effect, but that's an author mistake; manga Remilia has a more solid grasp of her history.) Ghaleon says nothing during this exchange, except to note that Remilia's words are "one of many legends regarding the founding of Vheen."
We flash back to Althena giving the Four Heroes their mission briefing: apparently, the barrier sealing the magic race inside the Frontier is coming undone, and a great number of mazoku have been popping up in the Stadius Zone. Althena can't do anything, since, as framing-device Dain (more on him in a moment) reflects in his own thoughts, as a "god of healing and creation, her power can't be used in battle for anything less than absolute destruction" - she can't get rid of the mazoku without harming Lunar as well. Thus, the current expedition.
That night, as Dain & Ghaleon are sitting around the campfire (with Mel & Remilia inexplicably elsewhere), Dain suggests that Ghaleon tell the other two that he's magic-race. (What? Remilia already knows this. I don't know if the author is just forgetting "Tamashii no Kokuhaku," or if this is a deliberate plot change.) Ghaleon replies that "if they find out, I won't hide it, but there's no need to go out of my way to tell them." Dain objects that "they've got one-sided information...they don't understand, and...", but Ghaleon rebuts that "the feral mazoku are all sealed away, and of the exempt mazoku of Vheen, only three remain, myself included...and they probably no longer come in contact with humans."
(While we're on the subject of manga continuity changes: I've been letting it go, but idea that the mazoku at the beginning of KSK were the only "good" mazoku left in the entire world, rather than just the last of their kind left in Vheen, is not really supported.)
Dain is unconvinced, though, and urges Ghaleon that "even if you're the only one, as long as you exist, we can get them to understand!!" Ghaleon simply smiles softly, though, and says, "Dain. I have known humans who have supported me through times of pain and sadness." (Here, he thinks back to the guild students as they are building the airship.) "So while I am proud that I am mazoku," he continues, "I am capable of loving humanity, and loving Lunar. And...I have faith in the goddess."
The next day, the group arrives in front of the mountaintop hideout and wonders how to get in. They're currently in some mildly flooded ruins, in the midst of a still-standing ring of arches. Ghaleon looks around and discovers a magic circle carved beneath in the floor beneath the surface of the water; he utters a few magical words himself, and a staircase pops out of the side of the mountain. Mel, pleased, asks if he knew about this how this place was constructed; Ghaleon replies that "this is the first time I've been *here*, specifically," but that "these ruins all share certain points of construction in common." Some monsters then attack, and Mel urges Ghaleon to go on and infiltrate the ruins further while he and Remilia "take care of security."
Ghaleon has another flashback (aren't you distracting yourself during battle, Ghal?) to Zain talking to him before a map of Lunar. "You must understand how the ruins are constructed, Ghaleon," Zain says. "The ruins that are scattered throughout Lunar were the pride of the magic race's Research Institute. Even if the Institute has been destroyed, our task is not over. We must have a perfect understanding of the ruins so we can activate them as the Ausas wish in times of crisis. The magic race must support the Ausas and watch over the future of Lunar - right down to the very last of us."
Later, the four are back together again, and they're caught in a labyrinth. They have trouble making their way through, but Ghaleon's knowledge of the ruins and sense of direction prevails: "Once I pass through a corridor, I retain a map of it in my mind." Mel is amazed, and makes a comment about how "sometimes, I don't think Ghaleon's mind is human," at which Dain makes a worried face. (Which reminds me, in this doujinshi: What do Mel & Remilia think Ghaleon is, with his ears & eyes & everything? Do they think he just has a little beastman blood or something? But that's a question to ask everyone in the actual series, isn't it.)
Still later: Ghaleon is fiddling with soome crystal switches on a wall while Dain defends him. "Huh? Where'd Mel & Remilia go?" Dain exclaims, to which Ghaleon replies that "they probably lost sight of us," but that "the labyrinth ends up ahead; they'll catch up shortly." Dain does some more fighting while Ghaleon bangs away at a mazoku crystal keyboard. Dain brings up how the ruins were almost all built by Ghaleon's ancestors - "the magic-race brain trust, right?" - so they probably couldn't be unsealed by a human or the lower mazoku running around. Ghaleon, not looking up from his typing, confirms this: "the dispersement patterns of the mana from the holy magic that surrounds these ruins are constantly shifting; it would take a human or lower-mazoku mind hundreds of years to analyze them and develop a counterformula." (Ghal, that's racist.)
Dain then launches into a well-intentioned but ill-timed derail (but he's fond of these, isn't he, given his talks to Remilia near the climax of "Tamashii no Kokuhaku") on how even if people are of different races, "there's nothing preventing them from becoming friends or falling in love! I've become convinced of that since we started traveling together! And if it's natural law that they have to be apart...then why is it that their hearts can be drawn together?" (Dain, sit down and drink your milk.) Ghaleon, turns to look over his shoulder at Dain - "Ahhh...yes... In his words and deeds...he resembles her..." - and sees Niea in his face.
Meanwhile, Ghaleon has finished his 133t hacking, which has opened the doors to the Wizard of Marius's inner sanctuary. Ghaleon and Dain step into a pillared chamber with high ceilings to find...Morris, calmly waiting for them. "You look like Zain now, Ghaleon," he says, smiling gently. "Welcome to the Stadius office of the Magic Empire's Research Insitute."
"Morris...!" says Ghaleon, in muted shock; Dyne turns behind him to Ghaleon and shouts, "You know him!?" Morris continues: "You've probably realized, haven't you? That only a mazoku educated at the Research Institute could have broken the seal on old Magic Empire ruins. And only a mazoku who held magic power before Althena's descent could dispel the magic barrier on the Frontier - so..."
Ghaleon, panicked, asks Morris: "W...was it not the will of our ancestors that the Institute's facilities be sealed for all eternity?!" Morris, however, responds with different news: "Ghaleon...Tagak is dead." He flashes back: "Ten years ago, we were wandering the ruins...remembering the old days...when fanatics of Althena bombed part of the ruins." We see the explosion; the fanatics screaming, "Damned mazoku stragglers invading our ruins...!"; and a bloodied Morris, raising his head and calling to Tagak - but seeing only his hand in a river of blood. "They don't even remember that it was our ancestors who created these ruins...and they don't even know how to use them themselves. They simply persecute the magic race for no reason. More and more...'justice' just becomes a matter of numbers, doesn't it?"
"Hey, wait a minute," Dain says frantically; "I know there are humans who say things like that...but there are also humans who have opened their hearts to those of other races! You're just jumping the gun to write off all of humanity!" "That's right, Morris!" Ghaleon joins in; "You yourself should know that humanity and the magic race once worked together...elevated each other...the airship is proof of that!" This line gives Morris pause: "The airship... Indeed that is an indelible memory for me." He flings something in Ghaleon's face; it is Latona's ring.
Morris then attacks Ghaleon & Dain with lightning spells before they have a chance to do anything. "My...you've grown a bit, haven't you? But you were born after the fall of the Institute...can you stand against me, I wonder?" He then notices Dain: "And a Dragonmaster? But no matter how magic power you have assumed, your flesh remains that of a fragile human. Yes..." Morris says, turning back to Ghaleon, "just that that Ausa girl you loved 100 years ago."
This grabs Ghaleon's attention, and Morris, still attacking, continues: "Yes...I was the one who told her of your furtive departure that day 100 years ago. And I told her - the town in which you would stay the first night, and the road to take to get there." Dain, meanwhile, is really feeling the effects of Morris's magic (or Morris is upping the intensity on him), and he screams as Morris goes on: "I had no particular desire to reunite two young lovers... I was thinking only of the crushing effect the disappearance of the next guildmistress would have on the guild...on her mother." He envisions the "Kokuhaku Suru Kioku" Guildmistress, Niea's mother: "That was my meager revenge, you see. For even if it was in self-defense...that woman did kill Latona."
Ghaleon's eyes widen in denial, but he remembers Niea's words, how she said she left during the night, and the timing of her arrival. "It mattered nothing to me if she ran off with her forbidden young mazoku man. And if she were waylaid by bandits or monsters on the road at night - a young girl, all alone - so much the better! And so I sent her off, away from Vheen - to be an instrument of my revenge."
I'm not sure this should be a clean-cut impetus for revenge, but in reponse, Ghaleon screams and overwhelms Morris's magic with his own. Quickly, Dain recovers and runs Morris through with his sword.
We then move back to the framing story for this chapter, which is Dain/Laike, in SSS-present, relating this take to Remilia. Dain claims that after they he and Ghaleon interred Morris's body, they activated the self-destruct device for the ruins. (They then met up with Mel & Remilia - before the place blew up, of course - which explains why Remilia doesn't know what went on.) Remilia, though, is too shocked to learn that Ghaleon is magic-race really to take anything in. Remilia, you already know this. I'm not listening to this.
After laying down for Remilia a bit about mazoku biology re: aging that it seems odd for Dain to know, he turns back to his memories - private thoughts, not something he's telling to Remilia - and reflects how "that mazoku man's last words...always lingered in my heart..."
Back in the ruins in Dain's memory. Ghaleon, horrified, runs to Morris, screaming his name, and cradles his dying body in his arms. "Morris! I understand... You said those things so it wouldn't hurt when..." "--It's wasn't a lie..." Morris breaks in; "It was a miracle that she found you safely..."
"Do you remember...little one?...The story...you were told...about heaven..." Ghaleon urges Morris not to talk, but he persists, reaching a wavering hand up to caress Ghaleon's cheek. "To you...the strongest of the mazoku...I give your reward...the Dragonmaster's sword...the sword...of Althena..."
Free Talk: Well, not much Free Talk, actually. There's a lot of describing of the doujinshi's timeline that you can probably figure out yourself if you're familiar with Vheen Hikuusen.
(Also, I suppose Ghaleon's words to Mia about how he didn't really love her were meant to parallel, and have the same effect as, Morris's words to Ghaleon here pre-fight.)
BOOK 4:
Though Vol. 4 follows from Vols. 1-3, it's more of an afterword than a full-fledged volume, and follows the perspective of Mia rather than Ghaleon or other figures from his past.
At the beginning of Chapter 6, "The Nightmares I Confess," Arhes & co. have gotten to Xenobia, and she's doing that thing from SSS where she's making the party their dark sides. When Mia is plunged into darkness, she's taken to the day of her father's funeral. (Her father is not Dain in this doujin, I see.) Mia, as a little girl in black, sits crying silently in the funeral lilies as her father's casket is lowered into the earth. The attendees around her comment: "...Well, we all knew it was coming..." "...He didn't even last five years this time...it's terrible..." "It's like a sacrifice...just like the previous generation...and the generation before that. It's probably been this way since the first generation of Ausas... The Ausa women really are black widows." (Another attendee comments directly that "all the Ausa husbands die young," which I suppose holds for Ghaleon here as well; I mean, for a mazoku, to die in your mid-hundreds.)
This does not seem to be a direct memory for Mia; she doesn't recognize the scene initially, and she notes that she doesn't even remember her father's face. The funeralgoers talk on and on about how all the Ausa husbands die - and that this will go on and on in the years to come - and that little Mia's eventual husband will die early as well. Mia then screams for the memory to stop: "This is a LIE! I forgot all this!! I'm not going to listen to these lies!! I'll never... I'll never... ...I've pretended not to listen all this time..." Weak, she stops her ears and curls into a fetal position - whereupon she hears a voice calling her. "...Mia. What are you doing in a place like this?"
Mia looks up, and she is a little girl again, back in the funeral lilies and rain; Ghaleon, in his premier outfit, has come to her. "Come on out," he calls to her; "if you don't, you'll miss your chance to say your final goodbyes to your father." Mia sees Ghaleon with her young and older eyes at once; he gathers little Mia in his arms and says: "You're very little, Mia, and you might eventually forget about today...but if you don't go see him now, I know you'll regret it later. Come with me. I'll hold your hand all the while."
We flash to another scene. Child Jessica is with her father on a bright summer's day at the Meribia port. He holds her on his shoulders; they both laugh as they watch the ships come in. Little Mia is there, and she looks on enviously, wishing she had a father with whom she could do the same. Ghaleon, again present, then sweeps Mia up on his shoulders, and Mia happily watches the ships together with Ghaleon and Jess. She thinks in her mind how nice it would be if Ghaleon were her father; older Mia, however, shouts for these thoughts to stop - she can't afford to have them now.
Another memory. Mia, somewhat closer to her present age, is being reprimanded by her mother for doing poorly on a test. Mia stammers that she was afraid of the elemental spirit she had to summon, and afraid of the gathering mana (???); Remilia counters that "if you can't overcome your fear, you won't accomplish anything," and asks her why she can't make an effort to do so. Mia thinks to herself: "But...I'm not like Mother... I'm not strong. I'm just a coward, filled with fear..."
"Should I help you out a little, Mia?" Mia is with Ghaleon again, this time in his garden. (He's also holding a watering can.) Mia thinks to herself: "I love Ghaleon's garden. It's always so calm and peaceful." Ghaleon tells Mia that elemental magic is nothing more than "getting to know the elemental spirits - becoming their friends", and that the spells to summon them are "just like a greeting - they're nothing to be afraid of! It's the same as saying 'hello!' or 'excuse me' to a friend." He urges her to try the spells again: "Just be calm...and concentrate on your love for the beauty of Lunar."
"I really love Ghaleon, don't I?" A child version of Mia appears before the present Mia, who is huddled over crying; I think the former is supposed to be Xenobia in disguise, though, since her hair is the wrong color. "Child Mia" continues: "I'm not like Jessica, who was brought by her father to see him only one or twice a year. And I'm not like Nasch, who looked up to him only because he wanted to be a great magician. And I'm certainly not like Killy or Arhes, who heard of him only through other people's stories. All my life, I've been burdened by expectations as the next guildmistress. He was the only one who cared to treat me like an actual child." Older Mia counters, "That was in the past! Now, Ghaleon's struck Vheen from the sky, and is turning Lunar into a world of death, and drained my mother's powers..." "But I always liked Ghaleon better than my mother," says the other Mia; "better than my father, whose face I never saw, or my mother, who impressed on me my responsibilities as the next guildmistress...I loved him."
Mia initially tries to deny it, but she thinks back herself on her childhood days, when she "loved Ghaleon more than anything," and realizes that these feelings are true; she loses the will to fight.
She then thinks back to the time that she encounted Ghaleon in the graveyard, bringing flowers to Niea & Sheila's graves. In her memory, she sees him looking off to the side, dwelling on something, and wonders as to his motivations: "Is it revenge? Against Althena? The god who stole away those who were important to you? The part of you that had faith in the goddess?..."
"...Did you really hate me? What is your goal...in destroying the world that Dain and Althena wanted? Just a little longer...just a little longer, and it will be. And what will you do then?" Mia then awaken in shock; she recalls Faithia's words about how not even she or her sisters know what Ghaleon's true goal is: "I remember...the happy days you spent working together with humanity...how much you loved Niea...how hurt you were when Dain left... What...what is on your mind now? What are you thinking? I want to know... I want to see...!" Though I think Mia answered her own question there, her determination is enough to break Xenobia's spell, and she arises to fight - to see the true Ghaleon.
As she helps fight Xenobia, Mia thinks: "I can't stand how things are right now...I can't stand not knowing your true heart. Whether we defeat you...or whether I die...whatever happens, I can't stand for us to be eternally parted without knowing your true feelings. And so I will fight - not for the world, or for my mother...but to meet the real you. ...And it's not as if the names of the goddess, and the Ausas, are pure and unsullied, either. There are great crimes, and great sadness, lurking in the shadows" - here, she thinks of Sheila and the lower mazoku in the Frontier. "I can innocently idolize the goddess no longer. Yes - I will keep both light and shadow in my heart as I go forward."
After Xenobia falls, Mia looks at her corpse sadly: "...You loved Ghaleon...but that love never reached him. You never got to know his true heart...but your feelings were pure right to the very end." (Here, the artist echoes that metaphorical panel from the Younenki no Owari manga with Ghaleon, back turned to Xenobia, leaving her all along in a darkened room.) Mia then thinks, again: "...What about me? Was I really close to him?" She then turns from her thoughts: "No! If my feelings didn't reach him...I'll make them reach him!" The group then continues to the final battle.
Finally, in Chapter 7, "Stairway to the Stars," we return to the timeframe of Ghaleon's youth, seemingly a bit before KSK. A young Niea is happily bringing Ghaleon all the flowers her little arms can carry - beaming that she'll be carrying flowers when she marries him, too. Zain, watching this, tells a sweatdroppy Ghaleon not to make any "facile promises" to Niea just because she's a child. Ghaleon tries to assure him that he views Niea as just a little sister, but Zain breaks in to impress upon him: "In the future, you can fall in love with a mazoku woman, or a human woman, or a beastwoman - but not an Ausa. Do you understand? Other human women are fine, but the Ausas are taboo. We are fated to disappear from the face of Lunar..." (It strikes me that this, among other reasons, is perhaps why the KSK Guildmistress was so opposed to Ghaleon & Niea's union - she herself wasn't allowed to pursue her relationship with Zain.)
(Also, obsessed witih death much, Zain? I know you're not far from it yourself, but you really need to go back on your freaking shrooms.)
We then move back to the "current" timeframe, that of the climax of SSS, where we see that Ghaleon has been relating this vignette to the brainwashed Althena. He broke her laws - "you laws you set in place to ensure the continued existence of Lunar" - and he challenges her: What are you going to do about it? "As the goddess of Lunar, should you not pass judgment on me?" She blankly replies simply that she serves him, whereupon Ghaleon gives a long, villainous laugh.
Back on Black Rose Street, Dain reassures Remilia that Arhes & co. will save the world. Remilia, though, is still troubled: "I didn't know...how the exiled magic race felt all this time...that Althena's patronage came at a certain cost to others...how Ghaleon had despised this world for 15 years. I had faith in them - in Althena...in Ghaleon..." She pauses, then adds: "No...that's not it. It was just easy for me, the way things were...and to question everything you know, and tear down everything you've believed in...it's terrifying. I look back now, and I think how all of this could have been avoided. ...I can't even say I was betrayed, really... Though we were here together in Vheen for 15 whole years...I didn't know anything about him. ...I didn't even try to get to know him." Dain objects to her line of thinking: "We can never know any other person completely except ourselves. No matter how much we try, we all can only look at things from the outside in, from our own perspectives." "Yes," says Remilia, "but as a result, we've shifted our own responsibilities onto the backs of those children."
Meanwhile, Arhes & the others confront Ghaleon. After the others say their parts, Mia, shaking, speaks up: "Ghaleon, you don't believe in anything but power." A small voice in her mind, though, objects: No - that's not true. Mia continues to say that "No one should have...absolute...power...", but she continues to herself: He never wanted absolute power! When his heart was broken when Althena acted as an absolute god, no one hated absolute power more than he did... But there is no time for any more words or thoughts on Mia's part, as the final battle is joined, and there the doujinshi ends.
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Though Chapter 7 is followed by a "Part 1," there is no Part 2 to the chapter, as to my knowledge, this is the last volume in the Heaven's Corridor series, and there's a handwritten note on the last page thanking the reader for staying with the story "to the very end." It seems that the "Part 1" is a figurative device - a note that the author meant for the ultimate future of the story to be unwritten.
Oh, yeah; Free Talk: First up is song fic stuff; the author has a couple splash pages with song lyrics on them. The lyrics on the first, a picture of a slightly younger Mia back-to-back with final boss Ghaleon, are attributed to "Hoshi to Buuke no Serenaade" ("Serenade of Wind and Bouquets"), the theme song to Leda: The Fantastic Adventures of Yohko, which figures into a later discussion. In searching, though, the lyrics seem actually to come from "Hoshi no Tobira" ("Door to the Stars"), the theme song from Mujigen Hunter Fandora. (And, man, did looking this up bring me back to the days when I got Right Stuf catalogs. YouTube recommending Iczer videos 'n' everything.) Both of them are pretty '80's J-pop, much more suited to Mia than Ghaleon - but, then, this is Mia's book, isn't it.
The author also recommends two theme songs for Ghaleon, both by the Japanese group Zabadak: "Hoshi no Kotoba" ("Words of the Stars") and "Tsuki no Nai Sora" ("Moonless Sky") - which are both the same song, apparently, just with slightly different lyrics on a couple lines. Lyrics from the former version are on an illustration of final boss Ghaleon with little Mia. YouTube yields neither version, exactly; I'm finding only this live version, produced after the band broke up and one of the members continued solo. (If you have a NicoNicoDouga account and can put up with their horrible streaming, there's this version, which is apparently the original with...er, the poster singing along, and this video of someone's travel photos in England, which has the song at the 13:43 mark. So go make a snack for yourself till the site loads that far.
OK, enough J-pop and vacation slides! The author also has an interesting discussion of Kei Shigema's famous definition of Lunar as a boy striving to save the girl he loves, and saving the world in the process - defining it as a "boys' adventure film." She rightfully notes, however, the girl's role in this is not really satisfying. She notes that they don't "really act like princesses," since they have to work together with the boy to save the world, but overall, it's still for her, as a female, rather lacking.
She talks about the Sailor Moon R movie and the Urusei Yatsura movie Only You, and how they were reversals of this trend - the female lead going off to save her beloved, rather than vice versa. They were, in other words, "girls' adventure films." She wonders why, given its contemporary media, the Lunar games were following the opposite trend - "even though the female party members are treated as equals to the male ones." (Well, they kind of aren't, in Silver Star, anyhow - falling sick in the prairie/being kidnapped (briefly) by Xenobia/Killy resolving Jessica's father issues etc. There is a difference in the agency the Silver Star girls are allowed to have.) The author then takes into consideration two "girls' adventure films" she cites as examples where the female lead has no partner - the aforementioned Fantastic Adventure of Yohko, and Labyrinth, which she cites as an inspiration for this volume of the doujin. She states, half-jokingly, that the "true foe" is both of these films is "the heroine's own feelings for the enemy leader."
As mentioned, she also on the final page thanks the reader for sticking with the story to its end.
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When I initially got these, I said they were a "disappointment to a certain extent." I'd like to do a 180 on that: despite some significant flaws, I ultimately liked these a lot. Its biggest problem is the absence of Ghaleon's parental-role fixation; that's the key to his personality, and it's very sorely missing. Writing out a motivation for Ghaleon that made perfect sense re: Dain and shifting his entire center of being over to a romantic relationship with Niea is a pretty huge character displacement, and the aftereffects overegg Ghaleon's tragedy pudding. But it works way better than it should have: the idea of Ghaleon having a disabled daughter is interesting, and I cared about Sheila more than many canon Lunar characters (hello, Arhes). Niea isn't written as a Mary Sue, and the effects of the relationship aren't idealized, but considered from all angles, with a good deal of reflection on the relationship's lasting impact and what it means to certain parties.
It's obvious the author put a lot of thought into the story, the layout of the panels, and the character work, despite the aforementioned odd alterations to motivations. As I've mentioned, the art is rough, but the staging of the panels is really good and does actually recall the original Vheen Hikuusen manga. In general (with a few exceptions like the KSK Guildmistress), it writes its characters really well, and it's a joy how it gets certain little character beats right - Dain's ill-timed, well-meaning derails; Morris treating Ghaleon like an eternal child to him. It weaves several disparate Lunar story points together well, and its scope feels earned.
I also liked how the doujinshi had the guts to acknowledge SSS as a tragedy, and no real happy resolution is achieved - Mia ultimately isn't able to get through to Ghaleon, or communicate her feelings to him, and the only remaining hope is that Mia, in her realizations, might make things better going forward. I also liked how the author gave the effective final word of the story over to Remilia, a neglected character in SSS; coupled with her focus on Mia's thoughts, it feels like a continuation of KSK and its confrontation between two female characters - a female-centric inversion of Lunar's typical focus. Mia's a much stronger character in here, and this doujin actually made me actively like her again. (I almost think, given the other conscious rewrites to Lunar plot points in here, that the author should've just gone all the way here and made the final confrontation between Mia and Ghaleon only. Hell with everyone else.)
Finally, this series reminded me of how much I love these characters. I loved that someone loved Vheen Hikuusen as much as I did, to do all this. This author had a song in her heart, and persisted through her own drawing limitations to get it out there, and as a result, despite its flaws, and despite the fact that I never really wanted to read a Ghaleon-Niea romance, it's better than...well, pretty much any Lunar doujinshi I've read. An inspiration to us all!
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