This is what me and my sister were working on.
We don't own Tales of Symphonia, Tales of Vesperia, The Immortals, Protector of the Small, or Trickster's Choice and Trickster's Queen.
This takes place at the of Emperor Mage and before The Realms of the Gods.
On their return ship to Tortall, they ran across a derelict ship. With Daine's senses telling her that there were no rats, and some sort of Immortal on board, they decided to investigate. It felt more like Skysong than Stormwings, in any case. The boat was clearly limping, and clearly unmanned, if the horrible condition of its decks was anything to go by. Armed with Numair's offensive magics, her bow, and Kitten's whistles, the teacher, student and dragon boarded the vessel, the Lioness remaining on the deck of the seaworthy ship, within earshot. The deck was in poor shape, stains marking the deck and splintered timbers indicating further how they got that way. Seeing nothing good, they decided on a dramatic, practical way to explore the cabin. With white sparkling black fire, Numair ripped the door off its hinges. A blade swung through the vanishing Gift, a double edged blade that didn't move quite as fluidly as it should. As Numair readied his Gift again, there was a thump of flesh on wood, as a man leaned heavily against the doorframe.
"Numair, wait." Despite that her magic didn't extend to humans, she could tell that this one was sick. His red hair was unkempt and unwashed, stringy from finger-combing, and the face that showed under it was starved and dehydrated, by cracked, bloody lips. Dark clothes hung from a once lean frame, and he held a young child carefully to his chest with his left hand. The man's right hand held the long sword, but the point wavered as his strength faded. Eerie crimson eyes struggled to focus on them, and Kitten trilled. Both the child and the man flared with weak light.
"Won't... let you... get him..." The man muttered, his voice hoarse and nearly gone. The man wavered, his blade slipping from his hand as he pitched over. Numair sent his Gift out, catching the man and child before they hit the deck and carefully lifting them again.
"What happened to the crew." Numair asked, seeing that the man was only nearly out of it. The open eye flicked to him, and the man tried to move, tried to bring a blade he only though he had through Numair, but could barely move. "Easy. You've still got ..him. We're going to take everyone off the boat, get you to safety. What happened?" Numair took a guess, that the child the man held was the 'him' he wished to protect, and was rewarded.
"..Pirates..." the man rasped, his fingers twitching as if to make sure the child was still there. "got.. crew... got..Anna..." his last word was filled with such pain that Daine winced. "I...got...them.. then...storm got...water..." the man murmured, then closed his eyes with a sickly sounding exhale.
"Daine, be careful. I'm going to get them onto our ship." Numair went to do so as he said. "Alanna! We've survivors!" Daine left the blade on the ground, keeping her bow at the ready. Her senses told her the Immortal was in the cabin as well, so she headed slowly in. Something smelled off to the air, one of the two bunks folded down and a chair sitting on its side from hasty departure with a blanket. A barrel was lying on its side, a bare handful of children's toys near and partially under the table.
"..Hello?" Daine called, standing in the doorway. There looked like there was something on that turned down bunk, so she slowly headed over that way. A low growl warned her, and she stopped before the sounds of padding paws alerted her to movement. It was a wolf-like creature, its fur silvery white and green with purple socks, although its ears brought to mind wings.
"Stay away from my Angel's mate." She head ripples, wing beats and the rush of wind in that voice when it rang inside of her head, but with her ears she heard quiet barks, yips and whines.
"I'm sorry, I was looking for anyone else alive." Daine explained in magic and two-legger speech, stepping back. She kept her bow down, watching the Immortal. It was nearly as tall as Numair if they stood with their heads near each other, its shoulder sitting somewhere around six feet even.
"Anyone else..." the Immortal stopped, tilting its muzzle to eye her with one intelligent dark eye. Those large ears shifted. "My angel, and his fledgling?"
"The red haired man and the brown haired child, yes. My teacher took them to our ship, and we've a healer, so she's helping them." Daine explained again in both magic and spoken word.
"Oh, good." The Immortal stretched rather like a house cat, extending its forelegs then its hind. "He was killing himself, the slow way."
"What?" Daine stared at the Immortal.
"Oh, you can hear me better than he can." The wolf-like immortal tilted its head. "He wasn't eating, or drinking. He gave it all to his fledgling. When food got scarce, he spelled his fledgling to sleep more often, like bears do in winter, then used his magic to keep himself alive." The immortal nosed the blanket bundle about, then picked it up with care. Daine could see clearly that it was a humanoid inside it, but from the limpness...
"Daine?" Numair returned, and stuck his head into the cabin. He blinked once at the Immortal. "Now, you're fascinating."
"I will take that as a compliment." The immortal commented, his vocals muffled via the blanket. Numair ducked back to avoid the wolf creature, and it set the blanket wrapped form on the deck then returned, packing the child's toys into a small sack then that into a larger pack, picking them up as well. As it padded back out again, then looked at the sword. "Someone else will need to pick that up, if I take these." He put the pack next to the blanked wrapped figure. Daine relayed this, and took up the blade. It was heavy, in a strange way that wasn't like other blades she had picked up before.
"Is there anything else?" Daine asked, catching sight of Alanna next to the man, whom they hadn't moved below deck yet, her hands shining violet. The Immortal watched the Tortallan Champion as well, then Daine.
"Nothing. Nothing but my Angel and his fledgling and their things. Well, I have their things."
The immortal allowed it grudgingly, and so Numair, Alanna, and Daine got to go through the pack while the wolf-creature sat curled about the redhead and child.
"It's bigger on the inside!" Numair exclaimed gleefully, sticking his arm into the pack without the worn brown cloth changing in the slightest. Alanna snorted.
"Quit playing and let's see what's inside." Alanna demands, nudging the black robe with an elbow.
"Yes, yes.." Numair pulled out two sack-like packs from within the larger, then a third, and a forth. The fifth and sixth were empty, but Alanna guessed they had been for food, then a seventh of thicker cloth, a lumpy eighth and a worn ninth. The first opened to child's toys, worn, well used and mended, and child's clothes, well mended but worn, most dark or red. The second held woman's clothes, in a handful of styles, but mostly simple dresses and shawls in creams and greens. The third held man's clothes, all in dark colors, all long sleeved, and in a variety of styles as well. The fourth held weapons and various care items.
"Well, if the sword he tried taking a chunk out of your Gift didn't give it away, we've got a warrior." Alanna said, lifting a broader sword than the one the man had held on the ship, her eyebrows rising as she lifted then swung it. "This one's balance is funny." The knight murmured as she used swings. "It's... heavier... when I swing..." There was a flicker of violet fire, then the Champion's eyebrows vanished into her copper hair. "There's mercury in this." She swung it again, looking like she was thinking. "Oh. That's nice." Numair and Daine blinked at her, and she explained. "The inside is a little hollow. There's mercury, a heavy liquid metal, inside. It moves to the tip when swung, making the blade heavier."
"Oh." Neither mage completely understood. The pack contained another three swords, one in the length of claymore, one in the length of short, and the last a strange blade that was strangely shaped, and far finer than the others.
"Magelet, this one's enchanted!" Numair lifted the gold-and-red hilted sword into his lap, running his hands over its gilded sheath.
"Okay?" Daine blinks a little. Alanna leaned closer, eyeing the work. The hilt was golden, large enough for both of Numair's hands to fit on, a smooth red gem of some sort in the pommel, and it had a curved hand guard over one side, edged with the same gold and enameled with red.
"That's not gold..." Alanna frowns a little, touching it. "Gold's too soft of a metal to use for anything like this."
"What's the enchantments?" Daine asks.
"Fire." Numair explains. "The blade burns when it's drawn... and I think there's something worked into the material as well. Something to keep it whole, I'm pretty sure." He glanced at Alanna. "It's powerful, and old, work." He lifted the sheath, offering it to Alanna. "Lady Knight?" Alanna drew the blade carefully. The copper haired knight held a blade that half seemed to be a flame crystallized and flattened, a nearly clear red edged with orange, dual tipped. As they watched, a heat haze sprung up over the edge, and when Alanna tested the blade, swinging it carefully, it left arcs of fire.
"I think it can blaze better than this, but I'm not going to try it." Alanna admits, testing the heat of the blade carefully. She pulled her hand back before she got close to the blade in any case, then sheathed it. "What else has he got?" the next weapon from the sack was a spear, followed by another of a different style, and a halberd. After that, was two different styles of axes, a collection of daggers for throwing, punching, skinning and thin flat ones for concealment, a small bow and arrows for it in a small bundle with extra string in oilcloth and cases, a chain flail, several small bundles of wire, and a strap that one could braid into their hair to prevent people from grabbing it, and a small wooden blade. They stared a little at the collection of weaponry. "I think that I don't know any knights who carry about this many weapons." Alanna frowned. "Or if they do, they're not all in this good of condition. So, is he paranoid, a packrat, or extremely skilled?"
"We'll have to ask him when he recovers." Numair decides, and they pack all the weapons into the pack again. It didn't so much as shift when they put the entire collection within it. The seventh pack produced a large number of books. Four of them were untitled, bound in black stained leather and unstained. The black bound books were runic bordered, with a stamped seven on one and eight on the other, but the second had no patterning as of yet. The plain leather was bordered with vines, marked with a five, and the other undecorated and marked with a six. The black book was nearly three quarters full of a small, neat print of some language they couldn't place but seemed to be some sort of journal, and the leather book was of sketches and what was likely observations. There were other books, also in the other language, and a map of lands that looked nothing like their own, with what looked to be drawn in connections.
"So he's a fighting scholar." Daine guesses, looking at the sketches. Some were of bizarre creatures, others of towns, and toward the end were many of a woman and child. The boy looked an awful like the sleeping boy the man held, but healthier. "And... a father?" She showed them the sketches.
"Well, it matches what the Immortal said." Numair nods, before packing the books up again. The next bag held these strange, gooey things, in various colors, which somehow managed to not clump together. The three stared blankly at them. There was a handful of cheery apple red, a few lemony yellow, a single orange, and a golden, an off-red and a bright teal. Numair poked one gingerly. It jiggled, but returned to a drop-shape.
"... Okay." Alanna stares at them. "That's... weird." Gingerly, she picked one of the red ones up, and sniffed it. "... This smells like apples."
"I think we should ask him what these are as well..." Numair looked about inside the bag and came up with a hand full of bottles. Three seemed to be of crystal and water that stirred on its own inside, another pair held some sort of bright liquid that seemed to change color subtly as they watched. A handful held darkness, and more held something that shone slightly. A dark glass bottle that sounded with some sort of pieces inside when shook, and opened to show little pills.
"... Sleeping drugs?" Alanna frowned. "Well, more to ask about." With them were small pieces of quartz, in red, blue, white, purple, grey, green, and yellow, and small crystal lenses like magnifying glasses. A sewing kit, with many dented thimbles.
"The quartz holds some sort of magic, but they aren't filled with someone's Gift." Numair says, running fingers along the quartz. "I think... they have elemental energies stored within them."
"Huh..." Alanna picked up a piece of red quartz, looking over it. "Well, might just be easier to ask him. Next pack." The last pack held armor, various suits of it. All had a same sort of theme, or at least had the same sort of gilding patterns where there was gilding. There was one set of ceremonial armor, and studying it and its crest, they had a name. "House Aurion, of Tethe'Alla." Alanna read the fancy script about the crest of some sort of wing crossed with a blade upon a shield before a crown.
"... Tethe'Alla." Daine repeats.
"I've never heard of such a place." Numair muses. "Could this Tethe'Alla be on the other side of the Copper Isles? Deeper through the inland sea?"
"Why are the words on his armor in Common?" Daine asks. "The letters in the books were something else entirely."
"Do we have a learned brigand on our hands?" Alanna guesses the next question, then shakes her head. "No, as weird as some of these armors are, they're all of the same build. They'd all fit the same sized man." Alanna picked up one of the shirts of mail and stood, holding it up. "Looks like it'd fit the Immortal's 'Angel', doesn't it?"
"Maybe if he had a little more flesh on his bones." Daine points out.
"He had been starving himself, according to the Immortal." Numair reminds them. "But yes, I think we probably have a knight, or a noble at the least."
"A knight makes more sense." Alanna says, putting the various armors back inside the pack. "Given the weapons, at least. A noble-born Knight, definitely." She helped them repack the packs. "Well, we may have even more questions for him, but I need to see if I can heal him up some more."
Two scenes and this is just getting started.
Tell us what you think.