Alys tried desperately to open her eyes, but even the smallest amount of movement caused great amounts of pain. Where am I? she thought. She was lying down and she tried to feel the ground beneath her. Sand, she managed to establish to herself. I must be out in the desert. Why?

It took a great effort to force her eyes open. Everything was blurry, but she managed to make out the image of a pink-haired girl with pointed ears. What the hell is this? she thought.

"Chaz!" the strange girl cried out. "It's no good! Even Gires won't repair Alys' wounds!"

Rika, that's right, Alys remembered. They had met the genetically modified Rika in Birth Valley and agreed to take her along. As Alys started to become slightly more aware of her surroundings, she recalled her last memory before she had blacked out.

Zio was much more powerful than any of them could have predicted and had Alys known how great his strength really was, she never would have let them enter his fort unprepared. All their attacks and techniques were ineffectual against him and the dark magician simply stood there and cackled at them as they tried in vain to at least injure him. While he was laughing at their efforts, Alys was the only one to see him prepare for an attack and he was aiming directly at Chaz. Moving purely on her instincts, Alys had tried to protect him, but wound up directly in the path of the wave of dark magic.

Alys heard Chaz calling her name and felt relieved that she had at least been successful in saving him. She tried to answer him, but everything around her went black again. When she next awoke, she felt herself lying on a bed.

Everything in her entire body hurt, more than it ever had before, but she tried to think clearly through the pain. Moving her head was intensely difficult, but she tried to see everyone in the room with her. Chaz, Rika, Gryz, she mentally checked off. A small yellow android stood off to the side and Alys remembered saving her before Zio had appeared. Demi, she thought, remembering the female android's name.

She tried to see who else was with her. There's Hahn in the back of the room. Standing next to Hahn was a blue-haired person, and Alys was initially confused. He can't be here, can he? He wouldn't know...As the blue-haired person came into focus more clearly, Alys recognized the figure as Saya, Hahn's fiancee.

Having counted the people around her, Alys became vaguely aware of an ongoing discussion regarding defeating Zio. She tried to speak, to help them out, but it was so difficult. She didn't want to give up, but staying awake was becoming harder and harder. "I...if only Rune were..." she finally managed to murmur.

"Alys!" Chaz immediately rushed to her side. "Don't talk!"

Once she had gotten the first words out, it somehow didn't seem as difficult. "Rune should know...some way to do it."

Rika came into Alys' line of vision. "Alys, don't worry. We'll defeat Zio somehow."

Alys tried to sit up to talk to them, but it was no use. "Now listen," she said from her reclined position, her voice hoarse and tired. "With what we have right now...there's no way we can win." She tried to fight through the waves of pain and darkness clouding her mind. "We've got to do something about Zio's magic barrier."

"'Magic barrier'?" Chaz asked.

"'Magic'!" exclaimed Rika. "That sort of thing should have ceased to exist a thousand years ago!"

"Come to think of it," Hahn said, "Rune was indeed using some kind of magic! Something called 'Flaeli'."

"That's right," Alys managed to choke out. They were fading away from her again, even though she was trying so hard to cling on to them. "So...if you can get the cooperation of...Rune...oooh!" It felt as if an invisible hand was wrapping itself around her throat. The words weren't coming out any more and it was difficult to breathe. She could faintly hear their voices around her, but she couldn't quite make out the words. A promise from Chaz to find Rune did gradually make it's way into her mind and she tried to thank him, but she could only whisper his name before she fell back into the darkness.

Hours could have passed by, or it could have been days, or even weeks; Alys had no concept of time as she drifted in and out of consciousness. The faces of her teammates floated in and out of her mind and sometimes, she could swear that they were right in front of her. Other times, she was back on the battlefield with them, fighting alongside the people she had vowed to protect.

She saw the face of Zio. Sometimes she tried to run, sometimes she tried to attack him, but each time, she was frozen in place, his maniacal laugh ringing in her ears. Sometimes she could see another face behind him, a grotesque, distorted face that belonged to no mortal man. She tried to shield her eyes from the hideous sight, but she couldn't force it away from her any more than she could get rid of the constant pain she felt.

The gentle face and soothing voice of Saya would appear every now and then, usually coaxing Alys to drink some water or to try to eat a little food. Alys tried to warn her away from the evil demons inside her mind and struggled with her, though sometimes she consented to taking a few small sips of water or broth. She wanted nothing more than to get up and fight with her friends, for her friends, but her body and mind had turned against her and refused to respond to her commands.

The sound of his voice traveled up the stairs and into her room, and somehow, Alys knew this was no hallucination. She willed herself to open her eyes and the faces of her two closest companions came into her view. "...Chaz...were able to...meet Rune?" She struggled to string words together coherently. "That's goo..d..." She fixed her bleary eyes on Rune and barely recognized him for the tortured look on his face.

"Alys! Alys!" Chaz was crying out her name. "Rune! Can't you do anything with your powers!" he begged.

Rune spoke in a low, controlled voice. "'The Black Wave' is not a product of Zio alone. It contains an even more evil power which I can't cure." His words hung heavy in the room, as the last bit of hope vanished right before them.

Somewhere in the back of Alys' addled brain, she knew that she had gone on her last mission, collected her last commission, fought her last fight. "Chaz...don't worry," she tried to console him. "Chaz...Ru..ne..." She could barely say their names any more.

Rune dropped to his knees beside the bed so she wouldn't have to strain to look at him. "I'm here." He wanted nothing more than to take her hand, to touch her, but he didn't want to cause her any additional pain. "I'm right here, Alys."

If she could trust anyone to keep an eye on Chaz for her, to protect him where she had failed, it was him. "...Rune...Please help...Chaz...Rune..." Her pleas trailed off into silence.

Rune nodded grimly. "Don't worry...leave it to me."

She thought she heard Chaz protest, but she had confidence that the two would eventually be able to work together. "Chaz...come here...let me take a good look at you." His face reappeared next to Rune's. "You've become an honorable adult...before I knew it..." It was so hard to keep her voice audible, but she tried to muster up as much energy as she could to speak to those closest to her for what could be the last time. "From now on...you have to carve out...your own destiny...by yourself..." Her voice was barely above a whisper now.

"Alys! Don't say that!" Chaz didn't want to accept what was about to happen. "Alys!" he cried.

"Ch..az...Thank...you..." For bringing him back to me. The last words never escaped her dry lips. She looked back at Rune and tried to speak. There was so much to say, but even if she could, she didn't know if she would have been able to find the words. She wanted to reach out to him, to touch his cheek, to stroke his hair, but her hands wouldn't listen.

Alys fixated on his eyes, those clear blue eyes that she had felt watching her every movement so many times before. She had never doubted that he would always eventually return to her and she resented that she couldn't promise the same for him. Black clouds began to blur the edges of her vision, but she tried to keep his eyes in focus as long as possible. As she looked directly into them, she knew that she didn't need to say anything. In that moment, he could read her every thought, see directly into a dying woman's soul, and they knew, though they hadn't said it often, how much they had meant to each other. She held on as long as she could, but finally, she had to release her last breath as she succumbed to the darkness.