Author's Note: Firstly, thanks for all the great reviews, Kojiros! I also hope everyone who likes Ar Tonelico gets a chance to read this and give their thoughts on it. By the way, I have no ownership over the characters or world of Ar Tonelico.
If you haven't read the first part of Rite of Slumber, this may not make ANY sense. You should probably go back and read it; but if you're too lazy, and also in review, just know that Lyner and the gang have just survived a freak encounter with the menacing Reyvateil monster Mimas, but the battle has left them all (but Shurelia and Luke) blinded in both eyes. They have also happened upon another secret tower, Ign Saradorn, where multiple magical civilizations reside. Lyner and the gang have multiple objectives at this point, mainly: destroy all 5 Quiad Reyvateils (giant space station monsters made entirely of song magic), retrieve the Severed Serpent relic from the hands of an army of two-headed minotaurs, rescue the powerful songstress Mir, bring to justice the assassin of the former Tenba president, and possibly find a cure for Aurica's impending death. As you can see, Lyner, Shurelia, and everyone else have a BUNCH of work to do.
Disclaimer: I have absolutely, explicitly, no stake in the Ar tonelico franchise….nor any steak. :(
Ar Tonelico: Rite of Slumber, Pt. 2
Ign Saradorn
Chapter 17: Cursed Sight
That feeling of sick despair in the depths of his throat had finally started to wane.
Lyner sat in utter darkness on what he supposed was a discarded wheel in Luke's trashed workshop. Having already made the painful mistake of touching his eye-slits, Lyner was forced to concentrate on either his other senses or Shurelia to get around. Fortunately his only goal on the moment was to merely sit in the vicinity of Luke's makeshift diving machine housing Vincent and the utterly gorgeous Mahine. The high-ranking Tenba scientist and his standard-issue Reyvateil were currently working on a spell that would grant the party sight, which is understandably an extremely useful advantage in battle.
Personally Lyner had doubts that Vincent, who had at times proven himself not entirely reliable, would be able to pull off such a drastic feat. Lyner realized that he had never seen someone dive before, being an avid diver himself, so he reached over and happened to feel a female pair of legs. "Uh, Shurelia?" he asked with a stone cold expression. The loss of sight had been plenty to lower his spirits lately.
"No, it's me!" Aurica said surprisingly cheerfully for someone whose beauty was forever marred due to the ugly pink gash across her face. "How are you doing?"
Lyner made a noncommittal noise through his nose. "I was just wondering if people's expressions change in the outside world when they're diving?"
"No, they stay the same," Aurica said with a trace of amusement lining her voice. "I really wish I could see Vincent, what with all those streams of water brushing against every curve of his body…he's so hot!" she sighed.
This naturally pissed off Lyner, who narrowed his eyebrows accordingly. Deciding on the spot to get her back for all the times she had complimented Vincent, he cleared his throat and said, "Well, I wish I could see Mahine right now; oh man, I bet her kimono's flying all over the place from the water, and, uh…um…I can see her breasts! Ha-ha-ha, that would be so GOOD!" He smiled, for the first time since they made it to the workshop.
"Uh…Lyner, you do realize all of our clothes got destroyed in the battle with Mimas, right?" Aurica said smartly, causing Lyner to curse and strike himself hard on the calf.
Lyner suddenly got an idea. "Hey Shurelia? Are you here?"
"Yep, and might I just comment that all of you look uglier than Bourd right now!" the Tower Administrator said cheerfully.
"Thanks, thanks," Lyner said, scratching the back of his head in embarrassment. "I was going to suggest, do you want to go look around for a clothing store now? We might as well do something useful."
"Okay!" Shurelia said excitedly, standing up. "Everyone come up and touch me, and I'll lead us to some clothes store somewhere!"
"Alright," her downtrodden audience said, (with the exception of Jack, who said it quite giddily) and she was treated to a variety of hands touching her.
"Oh my!" she giggled, rearranging a few of the hands so they were placed in less invasive parts of her body.
"Just go already, Shurelia!" Misha commanded, and Shurelia proudly led the caravan of heroes out into the blistering sunlight.
"Happy stealing!" Lyner heard Luke call after the party, evidently remaining behind to operate the dive system.
"Just holler when they come out!" Lyner called back, and turned his attention back to following Shurelia.
"Hahaha, you said 'come out…'" Jack laughed.
"Hmm…" Shurelia said as she carried the party aimlessly down the dusty streets. "This city is so incredible! I've never seen a place look so alive and yet have no activity at the same time!"
"That's probably because most cities have people in them," Ayatane said snidely from somewhere very close to Lyner.
Remembering he was naked, Lyner edged away a bit so as to not touch the samurai. "Any luck finding a place?" he asked his girlfriend.
"Nah, everything around here just looks like government buildings, like libraries and courthouses and stuff like that."
"Well, hurry up and get us out of this!" Radolf whined, his voice cracking a little. "I am SO tired of feeling dirty!"
A sudden smack was heard, followed by Radolf yelping. "Wh-who the hell just smacked my butt?"
No one answered, but Lyner laughed, "Ha-ha-ha, bet you feel dirty now, Radolf!"
"YOU!! You did this!" Radolf snarled. "I always knew there was something wrong with you! If I had my spear, I'd run you through on the spot!"
"Radolf!!! Cool down!" Aurica yelled at him. "Stop being so stressed out. Everything's going to work out soon, trust me!"
"Don't talk to me like I'm a little kid or something!!!" Radolf bellowed and bolted away from the group, followed by a loud impact and an "Oof!" coming from the fallen Archbishop. Lyner could barely hear him start whimpering and sniffing by himself.
"Er…guess we'll have to come back for him," Jack said.
"Oops. I guess I probably shouldn't have slapped his ass?" Ayatane said a bit drunkenly. Everyone laughed but Lyner. He wondered if anyone else had seen Ayatane's flagrant advances towards him on the beach when everyone was under Mimas's influence. Was there some base for his actions? Aurica and Vincent certainly did appear to have feelings for each other, after all. Lyner's throat suddenly felt a little acidic, a feeling he couldn't swallow down.
Instead, he decided to break the silence that had now descended on the group. "So what exactly happened here? Why are all the villagers in an underground prison?" he asked the people who had been separated from him and Shurelia.
"Well, it would probably be best to ask Luke, since he could see throughout the whole thing," Misha said to him, from somewhere far away in placement around the circle. Her voice resonated with something hungry to stir deep inside Lyner, however, and he suddenly wished he was right next to her. "But apparently, the festival was run on psychotropic drugs of some kind, and Luke somehow jacked up the way things were supposed to be, and everyone committed suicide, or at least tried to. But you said they're still alive?" she continued politely, never one to flirt with him in front of everyone else like Aurica and Shurelia.
"Y-yeah," Lyner said, struggling to return to reality from his futile attempts to recall what Misha looked like naked. "Everyone's still…alive."
"And kicking," Shurelia said with a giggle. She and Lyner went on to explain where they were whisked off to when the group separated (with Shurelia spending an uncomfortable amount of time going in detail about her goings-on with Lyner inside of Mimas's skull, a topic that caused Aurica to stiffen tremendously beside him, after which he patted her consolingly on the arm) and both Mimas's death and the sentence that the Love Goddess placed on the villagers (Luke was currently keeping Mimas's corpse until Vincent was in the proper state to analyze it).
"Oh, hey, that kinda looks like an armory over there!" Shurelia said, interrupting Lyner as he was talking about how he drew his new sword out of a giant hand.
"I heard that!" Radolf exclaimed happily from behind them, causing everyone to jump.
"Wait; you were following us the entire time?" Ayatane asked with trepidation.
"Yessss…" Radolf said in a low voice. "And you all ought to be ashamed of yourselves for acting so…immoral!"
Everyone snorted at this, and the group allowed Shurelia to take them into the armory. Once inside, Lyner heard a bouncy tune playing over a sound system, one detailing an odd account of the story of a moose named Jimmy Jack. "Hmm, they must have left the shop open while they went to watch the parade," Jack commented.
"Sweet, so; are there clothes here!?" Radolf cried out in desperation.
"Yes, you'll be thankful, there are plenty of great clothes here! And weapons too," Shurelia said with a roll of her eyes. "Now; who wants their outfit picked out for them first! Of the guys, mind you, since you girls are still clothed in your Dress Songs."
"Oooh, ME! Pick me!" Radolf exploded out.
"I said, 'not a girl,'" Shurelia reminded him wryly, eliciting a 'huh?' from Radolf.
"Well personally, I'm in no rush to get clothed," Jack said lazily.
"Hey, yeah, I like being naked too," Ayatane said from next to him. "…DUDE!!!" they exclaimed nudging each other with camaraderie.
"TRUST me, you guys aren't going to be picking up any chicks anytime soon while you're naked," Misha said.
"I couldn't agree more," Shurelia said happily. "If I have to look at your naked skeletons any longer, I think I'm going to have to kill myself! Now come on up here, Jack, I'll pick something out for you!"
"This isn't going to be good, I can tell," Jack grumbled as he got up and walked blindly over to Lyner's girlfriend as he and Radolf chuckled to themselves.
(In Mahine's Soulspace)
As Vincent arrived in what he took to be Mahine's Soulspace, he was immediately put on guard. Her mind was not like any other Omega Reyvateils' he had visited. Instead of a wide spectrum of black nothingness, Vincent was greeted by a very dark underground river of some kind. He was standing on the only dry ground in sight, that of a wholly-moss covered stone erection out of the tumultuous sea beneath him.
Vincent looked up at the only source of light, an unsettling Latin inscription in the arched ceiling, glowing with a murky teal color. He wasn't able to read Latin, but the inscription read quite clearly, "Obscurum mos cado in suus lux lucis."
Both ways up and down the stone tunnel were enshrouded in darkness, so Vincent decided to study the black water below him for signs of life. He hated the water; you never knew what could jump out of it and attack you!
"Mahine?" he asked quietly. Something was off. Why didn't she have an empty cosmosphere? Perhaps she wasn't an Omega after all?
He heard a leathery laugh belt out behind him. Shocked, Vincent stood up and spun around, nearly losing his balance and plunging into the sea below. He was in for another shock though when he saw what was observing him. There, plastered on the wall was the disembodied, bloody, and distorted head of a Cyclops with two massive elephant tusks.
"Ha-ha-ha," the face laughed slowly. "Do you not know me?"
"Uhhhhm, should I?" Vincent said, struggling to find his voice. He was actually about ready to soil himself, having little experience in dealing with skinless demonic entities.
"No matter, you shall remember me in the end."
"A-are you Mahine's Mind Guardian?"
At this the face laughed quite loudly in a low octave. "No; THIS is her mind guardian," it said, sticking out a large olive tongue, upon which rested the digested remains of a bleeding octopus.
Vincent visibly gagged. "Er, may I ask where Mahine is?" he asked.
"Now, now, don't make a brother talk with his mouth full!" the demon said sharply, swallowing the octopus again. "I suppose you have noticed that Mahine is, shall we say, unique for an Omega Reyvateil?"
"Er, yeah. What is this river, and who are you, anyway?"
As usual, the head ignored his questioning. "Mahine has a special sight called Scrynevour, a divine blessing in which she gains unconscious glimpses of the future. This entire structure is a combination of multiple parts of your future, mainly occurrences in the depths of the Jungle Galdevar."
"Wow…" Vincent said, looking out across the violent black waters. I doubt there's much I can glean from continued observance of this. However, I do wonder how I end up in such a rotten-smelling place! "Hey, um, sir? Most Omega Reyateils have the ability to seal themselves so that only one person may enter them. Can I do this with Mahine as well, for security reasons?"
"Yes, as a matter of fact!" the twisted excuse for a face said, suddenly blasting off from the stone wall and gutting its tusk into Vincent, plunging with him down to the black water below.
"Oouuaaghhhga!" Vincent hurled green chunks all over the cyclopean elephant demon head. "What did you do that for?!?"
"Oh, you know, security reasons!" the head said evilly, at which point the struggling pair smashed into the water with a splash, where Vincent felt a powerful current carrying him down into the blackness.
Wait, what am I doing? I gotta fight back! Vincent thought, unsheathing his giant double-bladed sword and slashing mightily across his adversary's face, which was tough to do with the current working against him. Realizing this, Vincent pivoted his hips around, forcing the enemy downstream. At this point, slashing became much easier, and Vincent slashed two more times across the demon's face, aiming vaguely for its eyes. Eager to get that horrible tusk out of his gut, he also slashed swiftly at the joint where the tusk met the head's face, and that did the trick, breaking the demon off. Unfortunately, the tusk was still wedged soundly inside of Vincent, and he could feel his blood running out like a stable of racehorses.
The pair was now in pitch blackness. Vincent listened intently through the rushing water and heard a few wheezes far out in the water, at which he lashed out and cut, always meeting nothing. Apparently, the demon was circling around him as he flew down the river.
Suddenly, orange wreathes of flame spouted from the head, all blasting into Vincent's chest. "Oh god!" he cried as the searing pain collided with his nervous system. Realizing that he had light now, whether it was coming from his chest or not, he took his one clear shot at the demon, this time chopping it clean in half. The split head fell like a rock to the stone floor, at which point Vincent turned around to see what appeared to be the end of the river, embodied by a hulking underwater lizard, with jaws as wide as a whale shark.
This new section happened to be lit by yet another Latin inscription, this time in a disturbing red color on the stone floor. Vincent took no time to look at it though.
Still on fire, Vincent bucked and pulled until the tusk broke free of his abdomen, whereupon he held it straight up, knowing he would have to use it to prop open the mouth of the seafaring dinosaur. As he looked at the reptilian leviathan, however, Vincent vaguely wondered if it would be any use, the beast's mouth was so big.
As the monster began to slurp Vincent in, he started to bend to the pressure (and also due to the loss of blood), and he began lowering his tusk-spear. Realizing he would only get one chance, he poised himself as he entered the monster's mouth, knowing full well this could be the end. As soon as he gained entry, he stabbed the tusk straight into the lizard's carpet tongue, effectively propping the mouth gateway open. He hung on tight to his stake, receiving both the onslaught of the river's fury and of the reptile's violent barfing.
Vincent grit his teeth and kept his mouth clenched shut.
"Aeros!" Suddenly, a voice rang out through the fetid water, and Vincent looked upstream. There, rocketing towards him, was his gorgeous Reyvateil Mahine, covered with white blades of solid air. "I'm coming, Master!" she cried, her voice drenched in worry.
"Help me!" Vincent begged, getting a hearty mouthful of reptile bile as he did so.
The maiden stopped, hovering in mid-flight in front of the monster. "Vincent, you're going to have to let go; I'll swoop in and get you!"
"What?! No freakin' way!" Vincent cried. "I'll get eaten!"
"Trust me, master, there isn't much time!" Mahine said as she surveyed the quivering tusk that had made the beast's mouth it's temporary home.
"C-can't you just kill this thing?"
"Not with you in it, no! You'll be lost forever!" the water hid it, but tears of worry streamed out of her eyes.
"Alright." Vincent stared Mahine in the eyes, and gently let go, knowing she was his only chance.
Sure as her word, Mahine immediately swept in, her bladed wings cutting through the water with ease, and grabbed her Master from the starving throat of the gigantic lizard. Then she jetted out just as the cavernous jaws crushed closed, finally having snapped the tusk in two.
The two looked back, while Vincent wrapped his arms around his Reyvateil like never before. "Now, we kill it," Mahine stated, surveying the extremely aggravated water titan.
"W-what spell are you going to use?" Vincent said, groping Mahine absent-mindedly.
"Hmm… ooh I know!" she said, and then crafted a new song. "Black Vivisection!"
At this point, a massive steel leopard with a gigantic buzzsaw on its forehead blasted out of her persona and burrowed into the crawling reptile. The dragon heaved and cried as the leopard weaved in and out of its body, sending wave after wave of guts exploding into the river as it did so. Within a minute, the great titan breathed its last, labored breath and collapsed on the stone floor, dead (although the leopard continued to ravage the body quite vigorously).
After it collapsed the entire river stopped flowing, giving Vincent reason to relax.
"Wow, I can't tell you how glad I am to see you, Mahine!" he moaned, pulling her into his embrace, kissing her erratically.
Mahine giggled. "Calm down Master, you are still hurt." At this point she sang a simple song of healing, eradicating all traces of Vincent's burns and injuries.
Feeling absolutely perfect, he began to swim around in celebration, doing multiple flips in the now-calm river of darkness. As he passed over the blood-red inscription, he looked down with curiosity to study it. It read: vestri diligo mos terminus in cruor.
"Mahine; what does this say?"
"Why should I tell you when you can see it for yourself?" she asked warmly, and sang a new Blue Magic, Mahonic.
Vincent blinked; his vision had become a bit sharper, although with a tinge of violet. "What did that do?" he asked.
"Look at the inscription and see."
Vincent peered down and read the same inscription, but discovered that he quite easily grasped the meaning: Your love will end in blood.
"Whao! That's…really cool!" Vincent said, grinning broadly. He paused in thought; would this spell grant the party sight like they needed? Only one way to find out! he thought, and felt his soulspace eyes warily. These had to be artificial. After all, his real eyes had been destroyed.
The scientist unsheathed his knife, and with a quivering hand, proceeded to pierce the fragile membrane of his left eye. Words cannot describe the pain that ripped through him as his left optic organ erupted into nonexistence, again. His primal scream echoed throughout the entire tunnel, sounding more animal than human. When he finally opened his right eye, he noticed that his head was surrounded by a thick cloud of his own blood.
"It's okay Master, I have a fetish for eye patches anyway!" the perfectly-sculptured greenhead sang.
"Mahine! Could you sing that same spell again?" he sobbed into his bloodied hands, biting onto the knife in pain.
"Yes, Master!" Mahine sang Mahonic again in the same soothing voice, and instantly Vincent's vision returned to his left eye, but the pain remained.
"Oh my god! It works!" he said ecstatically. "Lyner will be so proud." He paused. "Okay, was that inscription for me?"
"Yep!" Mahine said, swimming over to him cheerfully in a black bikini, which she evidently had just sung into existence. "Let me show you what's at the mouth of the river; it'll make things more clear!" With that, she donned her air blades again with a cry of "Aeros!" and pulled him far upstream.
As they traveled, Vincent looked at her curiously. "So… where were you that whole time?"
"Oh, some crazy monster ate me," Mahine said. "But when you severed it with your sword, I was reawakened! And just in time, too! I was almost completely digested."
"Oh!" Vincent said. The Cosmosphere was just too weird sometimes. "W-well, we wouldn't want that!"
The two heroes swam through the darkness for quite some time, until they finally came to the beginning of the river, which was a door with a large brass handle.
Vincent looked at Mahine, who nodded and let go of him, whereupon he swam down and pulled the door slowly open, cautiously stepping inside into a brightly-lit wooden knoll.
Inside, he saw The One That He Loved sitting before him, sobbing. Searing happiness coursed through Vincent's veins at the view; he could not actually see who she was, only the radiant manifestation of all of his love for her in the shape of her body. Seeing all that love overcame Vincent's sensibility, and he began laughing at her in pure bliss.
Suddenly realizing that she was in fact crying and bringing an object suspiciously shaped like a gun up to her mouth, he cried. "NO!!!!!! I love you too much! Don't shoot!"
"I don't have a choice; nothing's the same anymore," the voice said, in the pure, unblemished embodiment of love.
"That's not true, w-we can work through this!" Vincent cried manically. He didn't know if he could handle it if she ever left, his heart was so firmly obsessed with her.
"Heh, yeah. Right. Thanks anyway, Vincent," she said quietly, and pulled the trigger, causing the entire, brightly-illuminated room to strobe-light into chaos as her head splattered everywhere.
Vincent roared out in pain, but this was different pain than before; this was pain of the soul, and as he cried, the veins in his head exploded, and his blood splattered enough to rival his love's mess. "Oh my Goodddddddd! The pain!" He roared, weeping hysterically and soiling himself all at the same time.
At that precise time, the odd wooden room disappeared, and Vincent found himself falling in an endless eclipse of blackness, still bleeding profusely.
Through his tear-stained eyes, he saw a gently-smiling Mahine fly up next to him. "I'm sorry Master, but that is a taste of your future. Now, you have to get out, now, before you die in the Soulspace!"
"Oh, okay!" Vincent sobbed thickly, blood dripping profanely down his throat. He quickly concentrated and disconnected himself from Mahine's cosmosphere.
(In Tong-Rhok, Luke's Workshop)
Luke looked up to see the bulbous shields around Vincent and Mahine fly up. "HEY guys, how ya doing?!" the seaslug man queried.
Vincent blinked a few times, looking extremely unsettled, but Mahine spoke up, "Check out what we made!" On the spot, she sang Mahonic, and four lightning bolts rained down from the heavens into their eye slits, striking a hole in the ceiling.
Luke's draw dropped, and not because of the destruction; his two companions had both sprouted gorgeous violet eyes, floating a little out in front of their empty eye sockets. "Whoa! Do they work?!"
"Yeah, they work," Vincent said with a sneer. "And might I say, you are the sorriest-looking thing I've EVER seen!" Abruptly, the blue-haired scientist leapt out of the diving goop and ran over to where Mahine was still seated, hugging her tightly.
"Wow Vincent, to what do I owe this honor?" Mahine asked in surprise.
Vincent deeply inhaled the scent of her long green hair. "Oh Mahine; I don't know what I would do without you."
Mahine pulled away and grinned at him with intense violet eyes. "I'll always be here for you, don't worry."
Luke leapt out of his seat in excitement. "That's great that you crafted the song! Let's go get the others!"
"Right," the Tenba couple said together and got out of Mahine's pod.
A/N: Hey, I hope everybody enjoyed it! Please do tell me what you think (I'm certainly willing to change some stuff if anyone wants)
