Why Shurelia Sang Suspend - For crying out loud, lady, if you didn't want Lyner to wake you then you shouldn't have done the equivalent of telling him that only an utter, utter bastard wouldn't wake you! I suppose it works with the whole out of touch thing Shurelia has going on that she didn't recognize emotional blackmail when she used it. I mean, where has she been all his life? Lyner's buttons are very big and very obvious, and it's like she had a list and went through and hit them all. She knew he had a saving people thing, she was there for years of arguments between him and Leard about it, just for starters. If you don't want what happens when you push the big red button to happen, then don't push the big red button. Seems simple, right?

If this were an HP fic and I was a Dumbledore basher, I'd be going, "Of course the ancient wise person couldn't have been that stupid, it must have been an evil plot," but the thing is, smart people with lots of memories (and hence preconceptions about how the world works acquired in the wrong era) who are insanely busy and under a lot of stress miss obvious things all the time. She'd just gotten control of her body back after a boss battle against Mir that happened while Mir was in Shurelia's body, too. And then watching the little kid she raised fight a battle against Mir that Shurelia knew was ultimately hopeless, and Shurelia had the power to change that and save him.

It's just that, 'I did it to save you!' is an argument that cuts no ice with someone who doesn't want to be saved, especially not at the price of a reyvateil not being able to live freely.


Lyner grimaced and finished off his still-sleeping opponent. The song magic thing just wasn't working out.

As far as Lyner could tell, he had the standard hymn that was powered by the simple desire to blast the enemy, a wind hymn (like Aurica's fire and Misha's ice) that was powered by the desire to get the enemy out of his blasted way or suffer the consequences, and a healing hymn. Probably.

The first two were fairly easy to test. He'd found a small group of monsters, managed to put the last one to sleep, and just focused those emotions on the tower instead of his own sword. That was the easy part. It took a trained will to be either a swordsman or a reyvateil, and the new type of energy had been crying out to be used since the beginning: that was why he'd felt both physically tired and like he had to do something when all this had started.

He could use those two, but they weren't usable. He'd trained alongside reyvateils, so of course he knew that you had to take breaths even when you didn't feel like you needed to breathe so your voice didn't give out on you halfway through a passage, and he'd watched them spend just as many hours on voice training exercises as he had on kata, so he knew how to warm up and so on even though he was a total amateur with no real experience, but getting hit by monsters mid-hymn was distracting. If he couldn't focus while he was physically singing, there was no way he would be able to focus while just singing in his heart instead of out loud, the way people who had finished training could. It made his attention go the wrong way, just scrambled up whatever he was trying to do, and then the tower thought he was done and activated the hymn before he'd had any time to power it up.

He had no idea how the others could give status reports without breaking their concentration. Of course, they didn't have to pay attention to the monsters or the possibility of being attacked: that was what knights were for. Trying to keep track of opponents, dodge, block and strategize while staying at least half in that pure mental state: it really just wasn't going to happen. Well, Lady Shurelia could keep track of the battlefield and give orders while singing, but he wasn't Lady Shurelia.

Lyner hadn't been able to get the healing hymn to work at all, though, and he thought he knew why.

The third hymn was another pretty simple feeling: that he wanted to protect the people he cared about. He knew that feeling, he knew how to convey it, and yet the message wasn't reaching the tower.

It was easy to want to protect, but in order to send that emotion he had to be feeling it, and there wasn't anyone here to protect. Shurelia, Ayatane, Aurica, Misha, Jack… all of them were out of range of what power he had, he guessed, so the tower couldn't send that protection to them.

He couldn't heal himself, and that was because he didn't care about what happened to him.

That was really kind of disturbing. Sure, partners should put their partner's welfare before their own, but hadn't he learned his lesson from that damn idiot stunt he'd done to get the Linker crystal? Aurica had wanted it, sure, but she wanted him alive more. He shouldn't have done that to her. They'd be sad if he died, so he had to protect himself, for their sakes. He knew that.

He just didn't feel it, and trying to send his feelings to the tower had forced him to recognize that.

"Good thing they're going easy on me." The monsters here kept using attacks that did absolutely nothing. It was really kind of weird, and he'd suspect that Ayatane was behind it if it weren't for the fact that Ayatane wouldn't have let him run around like this in the first place. No, if Ayatane had found him he'd have brought him back by now. Running from so many groups of monsters was embarrassing, but it made it less obvious which way he'd gone.

"Ayatane never was any good at hide and seek."

If he could only find a dividing gate, the number would give him some clue where he was.

He found the outside of the tower first.

"Okay, so I'm really close to Em Pheyna, that's good." He didn't have to worry about the Blastline; he could just warp back up to Platina. "Now how do I get there from here?"

He heard the distinctive sound of somebody materializing behind him and whirled, expecting Ayatane.

Tastiella was a pleasant surprise. "Is that you, Lyner?"

He nodded. "I'm pretty sure I managed to lose Ayatane. How long have I been gone?"

"A few weeks." She looked him up and down, and then shook her head. "You truly are a reyvateil. Mir always was capable of so much." If only she had been able to use it for good.

"Tastiella, did you know why she became like this?"

She looked surprised. "Yes. That is why I became her prison. But that is a story for another time. Lyner, you must return to Platina. The teleporters will operate for you and your companions: I'll ask Flute to be your guard."

"Really, you shouldn't." Flute was the ruler of a city and he'd learned at his father's knee what an important and busy job that was.

"I insist."

At that point, refusing would be rude, so he didn't really have a choice, even though he didn't want to be a bother. Even thought he hated the idea of anyone going to any trouble protecting him.

"I'll be singing for you, Lyner."

What? Where had that thought come from? Or was it a memory? "If Flute agrees, then I guess I don't have any choice but to accept."

"No." Not when he was his father's son.


"Here it comes!" The cyclone wasn't quite strong enough to kill them, but what the force of the hymn itself didn't accomplish the way it slammed the monsters into the walls did.

Flute sheathed his curved and hooked sword. The style had just seemed a little eccentric when Lyner fought him, but Lyner had been wearing armor. Watching him pull out a monster's guts with it had given Lyner a whole new respect for that design.

"I know, not very impressive." Lyner almost tore the cap off the water bottle and gulped it down. While it was a good idea to get some actual practice on the way, this was murder on his throat.

"It's impressive that you can do it at all." The idea of a human male becoming a reyvateil was far more outrageous than a Teru being turned into one – The Teru Tribe was made up of descendants of various breeds that had been made in the way reyvateils were. "Maybe that story isn't as ridiculous as I thought."

"Story?"

"Tastiella wanted you to see for yourself," Flute said, and moved on.

It didn't take long to run into another monster. "Mind if I test out my healing hymn?" he asked so Flute didn't get insulted, thinking Lyner had assumed he'd need one.

"Go ahead."

This time it wasn't hard at all, even though… well, it wasn't that he disliked Flute per se, he had his duty, after all, but to be honest, Lyner really hadn't minded having to kick his ass in that trial of the moon, after he'd been such a jerk, not to mention uncooperative when Lyner had needed to rush to Platina.

He had been in the way.

Still, when he'd asked himself if he wanted to protect Flute, the response had been kind of an internal shrug and 'why not?'

Lyner looked up, to see what this song manifested as, and wondered why a healing spell would look vaguely airship-like.

The first surge kicked in, and he realized that this wasn't a healing hymn, it was a defense hymn. "Wow, I feel a little stupid." He should have realized that. The feeling wasn't 'I want to fix this,' but, 'I'll keep them safe.'

Once he framed the idea of fixing things, it felt like the hymn was on the tip of his tongue. He wondered if the others felt that way, when there was a hymn they hadn't crafted yet. It was like grathmelding, when he had the general outline and idea, but hadn't gotten the bolt of inspiration that would pull it all together. A reyvateil's partner was supposed to be their muse, the one that inspired them to sing and compose.

He wondered where Ayatane was. If Lyner were him, he'd be… frantically searching the Silver Horn, but the smart thing to do would be to keep an eye on Platina.

Thinking of things partners did reminded him that he'd need diquility soon.


"Lyner!"

A few seconds after arriving in Platina proper, Lyner found his arms full of black-haired woman. He'd expected random hugs, really, but she didn't seem to be one of his classmates, the cathedral employees, or anybody he knew. He hugged her back, just because, and then held her at arm's length. That hairstyle, "Misha?"

For a moment, he felt a strange sensation, like dizziness, but mixed with that 'tip of the tongue' feeling. The world narrowed in on her and he didn't even see the others crowding around. "That's right, you're Misha." Yeah, this was how Misha should be. Except that Misha was definitely a little girl. No, Misha was a little older than him, not younger; Hama was the one who was younger. Yeah, Hama was just a baby and Misha wasn't a big girl because big girls didn't cry, even when locked up all alone and Misha cried…

If Lyner had ever been on a boat in his life he might have compared it to rocking back and forth in strong waves, up and down and up and that feeling of falling when the world changed direction, when each surge passed.

And in those falling instants, he knew this person, even though he shouldn't. Even though he mustn't. "You don't like funbuns," he said, almost accusingly.

"Yeah, I've only told you that a thousand… Lyner?"

His fingers tightened, gripping her upper arms almost too hard. "Who are you singing for? It doesn't make anyone happy, not you, not Mir, and not me! It just hurts everyone!" He wanted to shriek his frustration to the heavens, and only the fact that he couldn't put it into song, not yet, not alone, kept him from it. "How could you say you were fine with it when you were lying? How dare you say that you were happy to do it for me?" She'd stood there, Leard's hand on her shoulder as she was about to be taken away, smiling at him, and it had all been so wrong, such a lie and he'd wanted to smash it all down.

"But I… I was happy, since you gave me Hama and you… Lyner?"

He couldn't hear her. His mind had already shut down in self-defense, and now Misha was the one that held him up.

"Whoa." Jack had never seen anyone flip out quite like that. "Guys? I really don't think we should tell him what Shurelia said, about why she sang Suspend."

Krusche stared at him. "You think?"