Disclaimer: I do not own Grand Chase, however, I own this story and its plot and my own personal background to the chars. Please ask before using ^^. I also do not own the quote "First to aid, last to die." Please play Left 4 Dead if you desire to hear that term used.
Prologue and a Trial to Remember!
In every light, there is darkness. Sometimes it is more noticeable than others. No matter what it is, it always starts as the smallest speck and then grows like bacteria until someone puts power behind the light to drive it away. This is similar to the creation of the Grand Chase team. Formed out of necessity, Arme, Elesis, and Lire all came together to make the very base of this team. Despite the squabbles of the three adolescent females, they do their best to fight the forces of evil and be the power behind the light.
"…"
"…"
"…"
There was silence among the three as they seized each other up. There was the overly masculine red-headed knight whose name was Elesis as introduced by the knight master. She had her thick red hair piled into a hasty, messy, pony tail that was askew from fighting. Then there was the blond bombshell archer beauty whose every movement was shimmering in the sunlight named Lire. Her skin was pale and hair was worn down and long. Lastly we have the small mystical mage with light purple hair. Her hair was cut short and she goes by the name of Arme. All share their eye color with their hair color except for Lire whose eyes are green. Elesis who did not want to appear shy or soft spoken introduced herself formally first.
"Hi, my name's Elesis. I am from Kanavan and I don't take any lip from anyone be it human, elf, or monster."
Lire, feeling that she needed to go next stated, "Hello, I am Lire of the Eryuellian Archers. I hope we can get along very well."
"Hello," Arme stated going last, "I'm Arme and I try my best with everything I do. I have been known to have a sharp tongue so watch out Elesis." Arme winked at that last part.
"WHAT IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?!!?!" Elesis exclaims, now outraged by Arme's…introduction. Arme's only reaction was a giggle. The knight master spoke up now that everyone was introduced to everyone else.
"Good, now that we all know each other, let's see how you all work together. Go to Trial Tower and defeat Wendy the Wendigo."
Arme nodded, Elesis crossed her arms and Lire looked around for the tower. Spotting it in the distance, she alerted the others.
"We should get going now guys. The tower is this way, about twenty kilometers to the north east."
Arme was the first to comment, "Those are some nice navigating skills you have there."
Lire blushed. "Thank you, it comes from living in the wilderness. My town is pretty close to nature."
"Alright," Elesis said, taking control of the group before they got lost in conversation, "let's go complete the quest!" She exclaimed, now pumped at the thought at a new challenge. She runs off without allowing the others to even think about catching up.
"Elesis wait!" Arme exclaimed as she teleported as fast as she could. Lire dashed and jumped but no one could keep up with this knight. She soon found herself surrounded by monsters while Arme and Lire were approximately one kilometer behind. Elesis was swearing at her action and slashing the relatively weak monsters away as fast as she could but it proved to no avail as they seemed to just keep coming. Soon, however the other two girls approached.
"This is why you do not rush ahead of the group Elesis," Arme scolds as they take care of the last of the monster horde, "are you all alright?" Arme inspects Elesis first due to logic because she was the one who suffered the most prolonged beatings. Elesis shrugs her off as she finds a small wound.
"I'm fine," Elesis insists turning away coldly from Arme. She frowns and teleports to the other side of Elesis and quickly cleans the wound. She and Elesis struggle a bit with a bandage but Arme wins. Elesis is severely annoyed at this point and slaps Arme across the face.
"I said I was fine," Elesis scowls at Arme as she touches her face in disbelief. Arme, being wise, simply begins inspecting Lire for wounds instead of retaliating. Lire may now relax because there was not about to be a fight between the two. Arme finds no wounds upon Lire's flesh so she continues the trek to the tower. Elesis having calmed down a bit realizes her mistake on the way to the quest area.
Elesis feels bashful but tries to hide this by talking louder and somewhat obnoxious. "Arme, I'm sorry," She states looking away, "I shouldn't have hit you. You were only trying to help."
Arme's stride slows a little, "It's okay. I have an issue with injured or ailing people, no matter how little it is. First to aid, last to die I always say." Arme skips a couple steps to help indicate that she is no longer enraged by Elesis' actions. They shortly arrive at their destination and to say it was intimidating would be an understatement. This could make or break the formation of their group. There was a metaphorical "DON'T RUIN THIS!!!" Sign pasted on the tower making them all nervous.
Elesis took her place as natural leader, "Okay everyone. Let's try to work together and do this as fast as possible. All we have to do is defeat Wendy right? That doesn't seem too hard. Let's go!" Arme and Lire both had bitter thoughts about Elesis' self-placement as leader but didn't protest as they could not picture either of themselves as the leaders. The trial went by swiftly and easily up until the floor right before the boss room. Lire easily double jumped up, followed by Elesis jump running, but things aren't as easy for Arme.
"Just jump and run! It's not that hard!" Elesis exclaimed from the top of the cliff. She was getting rather impatient at the mage's inadequacy in jumping.
"Elesis, I can't do it. I can't run in mid air like you can. I've tried that already remember?" She said indicating her bruised, scratched, and dirty knees. Elesis sighed and rolled her eyes. Then she suddenly had an idea.
"Lire, come here for a minute!" she yelled at the top of her lungs because the elf was inside the teleport already. Lire came out and walked over to Elesis calmly."
"What is it Miss Elesis?" She asks gently.
Elesis kneeled over the edge of the cliff and motioned for Lire to do the same, "When Arme jumps, I want you to catch her left and I will catch her right. From your perspective it will be her right and my left. Understand?" Lire nodded, "Okay, Arme, jump, we'll catch you."
Arme was hesitant for a moment; after all, she could fall again. That would be painful. Did she really want to trust these two? On the other hand, did she really have a choice? She decided to jump. She went back to get a running start and then jumped as high as she could. She fell short of the cliff but got close enough that the others could grab her arms just as planned. She cringed until she found that the other two had actually caught her.
"Alright Lire," Elesis directed, "PULL!" And so they did. And that's how Arme got passed the demonically mischievous cliff of fatality.
"Thank you," Arme gratefully states as she sits on her rump and cleans her wounds/injuries from both the dungeon and from the cliff attempts. She then proceeds to clean Elesis' wounds, treat, and move on to Lire's, clean, treat, then finally heal the accumulative wounds of the three. Elesis had decided that waiting a little while to placate Arme as she heals her would not be too bad if it meant smooth cooperation. Rather impatiently, Elesis sighed.
"Can we get going now? I'm a bit anxious to fight this boss," Elesis asked. The other two decided it should be ok to do so and proceeded to head up to the boss room.
Upon arrival, they were greeted to an impossibly cold gust of wind and a very empty looking battle field.
"What?!!?! Where is the monster?!?!" Elesis screamed outraged by a lack of battle awaiting her. As if to answer her question a gigantic white furred beast with a purple face came rolling down the area where they stood nearly hitting them, had they not moved.
"Whoa!" exclaimed Arme as she nearly was blown over from the force of the wind created by the supposed 'Wendigo' that was now beating on its chest like a barbarian. She was starting to have doubts about this excursion.
Elesis did not feel the same; she was overly excited about this monster. "Let's go! The knight master won't wait forever!" She exclaimed as she charged towards the monster with all her mana charged up. Lire tried to find higher ground to provide support safely. Arme took a completely different approach. She stayed on the opposite side of the dungeon casting out her magical circle as frequently as possible. Things seemed to be going alright until It cornered Elesis and started beating her into oblivion. Elesis couldn't get a hit in edgewise and was starting to grow increasingly annoyed. Lire jumped in to try to help but it proved to be to no avail. Arme did not move at all. She simply raised her chest to the sky and did nothing to help. Elesis was growing quite upset at this point and started screaming at Arme.
"DARN YOU ARME!! WHY ARE YOU STANDING THERE DOING NOTHING?!?! ARE YOU TOO AFRAID TO COME OVER HERE AND FIGHT!!" Elesis shouted her voice breaking as she realized she was perhaps going to die.
"Miss Elesis, calm down, screaming won't help anything" Lire tried to reason with the fire faced female
Elesis did not listen. Instead she grew more upset about Arme ignoring her as she was dieing.
"I HATE YOU, YOU COWARDLY DEMON!!! I SHOULD NEVER HAVE HELPED YOU UP THAT CLIFF!"
This seemed to get Arme's attention from Elesis' perspective. She started running towards the monster as it attempted to cast the final blow upon Elesis and Lire and then all of a sudden she was in front of it. Elesis had closed her eyes preparing for death's embrace. Arme's shield protected them all and she was glowing from all that stored mana that she was getting from just "Standing there doing nothing."
"Meteor!" she cried and the sky turned black as fire-covered balls of rock attacked the Wendigo relentlessly in the back, effectively knocking it out. Arme turned to her comrades and saw that the knight was again the worst for wear. Despite her rude and cruel comments earlier, Arme once again took to tending and healing everyone's wounds. Elesis and she said nothing as Arme worked very hard to fix all of the little wounds, using up every single atom of the mana that she'd charged up. Tears glistening in Arme's eyes, she stood up and indicated the charm that was located on all of their wrists.
"This would make it so you did not die. You only become unconscious as long as you are wearing this. It will wake you up 3 times and after that it just protects you from further harm in your unconscious state." Without another word, Arme walked away and out of the dungeon. Elesis was shocked at the words that she'd said and then looked to Lire. Apparently Lire had also known and was mildly peeved at Elesis because she too, left her alone with her thoughts without saying a word. Elesis sat there in confusion and then slowly got up, shocked to feel zero pain. She continued on her own back to the castle.
When Elesis arrived, she found Arme and Lire at the entrance. She was confused but when she saw the expressions on their faces, she realized it was because they didn't want to appear disconnected from one another. Arme looked different and she couldn't quite place the cause. Perhaps it was because she didn't really look into her eyes.
Upon entering, Arme kept getting weird looks from the guards and such. Apparently Elesis was not the only one who noticed. As they approached the knight master she smiled at the sight. She was happy they had passed. She congratulated them all personally until she talked to Arme. The smile faded from her face as she adjusted Arme's head so she could see her face clearer. She congratulated Arme and then looked at Elesis imploringly, suspiciously. She deemed them all members of the first Grand Chase and sent them off. Before the Arme got away she caught her by the arm and asked to explain something to her. As Lire and Elesis rounded the corner, Lire pulled Elesis by the arm and drug her into a random room.
"You know why she was crying right?" Lire whispered harshly
Elesis seemed baffled, "She was crying?"
Lire shook her head disapprovingly, "Yeah, why else would she smell like salt and her eyes rimmed red?" Elesis' eyes widened in shock realizing what was different, "ugh, either way can you guess why?" Elesis shook her head, "Of course not. She was crying because of what you said. Apparently, 'Cowardly demon' is not her favorite nickname. I wouldn't be shocked if she left the group and we ended up disbanding now."
With those words Lire turned sharply out of the room and walked to her own to sleep off the stress that was rapidly building from this entire situation. Elesis once again was left nothing but shock and her own thoughts. She knew what must be done. She walked quickly to Arme's room and knocked on the door. She received no answer.
"Arme? It's me. I'm sorry about what I said earlier," She received no reply and started to talk a little bit louder, "Okay, you want to ignore me? That's fine. I understand I guess. You have to admit though, from the position that I was in, it looked like you were leaving us for dead so I guess that back then I really did mean it. Still, I regret what I said and I want you to know that I don't mean it anymore. Please at least respond." Elesis was feeling a little sheepish and embarrassed. She was not accustomed to apologizing to anyone in her age group, let alone so many times in one day. Suddenly there came the sound of someone clearing their throat in the hallway and who would have guessed it? It was Arme. She was smiling slightly and walked over to Elesis. Elesis blushed, "Erm…How much of that did you hear?" She asked while rubbing the back of her head. Arme just smiled a little more.
"All of it from '…What I said earlier…' and yes, hearing this I do forgive you. I'm sort of noticing a pattern…" The mage trailed off, "I probably shouldn't have done that on our first true battle together, but it all turned out alright."
Things grew awkward until Elesis cleared her throat to break the silence, "So no harm done?" Arme nodded, "Good, I'll see you tomorrow then? It's getting pretty late and we should probably head to bed." Elesis indicated the sun rapidly transforming from sunset to twilight. Arme agreed and headed into her room, which ironically was adjacent to Elesis' and Lire's.
"Good night Elesis, sleep well." Arme said as she bid her comrade and slowly developing friend adieu.
"Same here," Elesis said too lazy and tired to say anything more. She lay down on her bed and try to fall asleep. Arme went and did the same except for instead of finding rest, she found her tears and began to cry quietly. Elesis couldn't help but over hear and knew she was the source of her team mate's distress. She sighed as she tried to shake it off without success. Eventually Arme stopped crying and fell into a fitful sleep and Elesis finally found the retreat she'd been longing so desperately for.
A/N: Helluuu this would be my first original works for Grand Chase and I hope you enjoy it. I will be following the Grand Chase members throughout their journey to defeat Kaze'aze. I do not desire to carry the journey further than that so I shall incorporate the other members into my story line. Their backgrounds have been altered to a more dramatic state and I refuse to put Dark Anmon into this story seeing as I have not gotten that far in the story line in the actual game yet. So, I shall stick to what I know and try to make it as interesting as possible. I hope you enjoy this novel. I did steal a couple ideas about the background from another fanfiction called "Chronicles of the Heart" but with a twist. Arme's background will be the same as in my other fiction called "Arme Falls Apart" so you are warned. However, do not believe for a second that will be ArmexRyan. I don't support that pairing any more lol. My boyfriend is ticked off beyond belief but I do not care. I don't mind writing fictions about it so feel free to request such things. That's it for right now and I shall go to bed after posting this first chapter. Please R&R and Enjoyyyy~
Willow~