I Never ever thought that I would actually make it to this chapter! *Teary eyes* so thank you very much and I'm very sorry to have left you here and for waiting… I'm really, really sorry for the hiatus that had took possibly months to recuperate from. I just don't know where to start this, because I don't even know how you put filler. I'm really, really stupid! So, enough with the talk which I think has exceeded 80 words now and I'd really like to go on with the story

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When the snow was really blinding me, I can't see

The shard of mirror that I seek

Stumbling upon the rock which had been lying there

Where was it, the diamond of hope?

Chapter 7

-The Diamond of Hope-

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If hope was all it takes for someone to be able to do something…

Chirol would not be here by now.

In the break of dawn Lizza had woken up, and she immediately took a bath of warm water. She had cared not to wake Garret up and then reached for a small, thick book. Inside it was illustrations, drawn by Lizza herself, and small shards of magicite was embedded to each page. They were like a recorder, so if you concentrate some mist in the stone it will replay what it had recorded from the events before. She flipped into the very middle of the book; it was a ball when Miss Anastasia, the daughter of the governor, was to be taken as a fiancée for the Baron of a town in Rupie Mountains.

And it was when it all happened.

News came that the Baron was killed by a mob of angry highwaymen, and that he had been betrayed by his own personal guard. The region of Rupie Mountains had been covered in a total chaos. Anastasia was heartbroken, and thus chosen to lock herself in her room. When a month had passed and the door was finally opened, the guards were in for a great shock, for the lady herself wasn't there anymore. Many said that she had committed suicide, but none of her personal guards would believe such a lame fact. The governor's right-hand man, who was by that time the Paladin Fenrir, had commenced that the search team had to seek every possible nook and cranny. A month later he died of a mysterious cause, and then his assistant, Will, took away his position. After that, none had been heard of the searching team, except that he had made them retreat on the reason of the increased discomfort of the townspeople when the soldiers were around.

After that, the name Lady Anastasia was nothing but a sweet song…

Lady Anastasia, strong and sweet
with a charm like the flowers which invited the bees
and with a greatbow, her alluring thorny tendrils
was she not the most beautiful of all roses?

Lizza flipped into the other page, and she found a Marriom Heather flower between the pages. It was brown and dried up, but it had still maintained its alluring fragrance and appearance. She was about to recall the past events when she had slipped the flower inside the book, but a series of loud knocks on the door had startled her.

"Miss Lizza!" a familiar moogle called from inside. "Hurry and wake up, kupo! Because it is morning and our guests are awaiting their breakfast" Lizza closed the book with a smile and called back, "I'll be there in an instant, just go ahead, OK?" she stood up, letting her soft purple garment to hang off her defined waist. The Viera strapped a rapier on her belt just in case, and marched outside, when the few people who had been awake were to leave early for urgent missions. Jumping right into action, the fencer skillfully cracked eggs and mixed them with wheat flour, sugar and salt followed suit, and she packed the cut succulent fruits inside the fluffy batter. Then after baking it with the steel oven she had usually used, she pulled the iron tray after making sure she was properly using her gloves. She served them warm on small platters and continued to make different menus after it was done. She didn't even realize that the sun was beginning to peek in from the edge of the world.

And today was something quite different, for the twins had already wakened up before she had even planned on waking them up. The first one to come down was Christopher, followed with her Gria twin who looked like she had a great hangover. Well, actually not, it was just that she hadn't had her proper sleeping time in the recent days because of the apparently crazy errands that the Viera had set up on her as a part of her training. Her eyes were slightly baggy and every one or two minutes she would yawn, and then she sat on one of the dining tables with her brother and grabbed the tomato ketchup that was on the table, unconsciously pouring it on the table as if there had been a glass there.

This action went unnoticed until Garret had finished frying the egg that Christopher had ordered; and with his short feet, marched to the table and felt his shoe touch something slippery. Without even caring to look down and examine what was that slippery thing on the wooden floor, he took another step towards the table…

He slipped at that instant.

His tiny feet were launched into the air as the shoe's soles gave up to the liquid, and in that split second the animist had tried to balance himself, reflexively flapping his red bat-like wings; only to fail since all four of his paws were off the ground. And he fell, head-first, followed by the sunny side-up egg landing on his furry face earliest before the ceramic platter had followed suit. That was marked with a loud "KUPO!" and Evelyn snapping of her disastrous trance because of the yell.

"Uh, w-what am I doing?" She asked, looking around frantically and releasing the big bottle of ketchup at once. What she saw was a moogle, drenched in a pool of red liquid, and losing consciousness because of the hard hit he had received on his poor pom-pom and forehead. At once she became panicked and shook the moogle, thinking naively that the spilled ketchup all over him was blood. Actually, the poor animist also had some yellow liquid on him as the yolk of the half-raw egg had splattered all across his features. Attracted in whatever commotion had caused his twin to go in such a panic, Christopher turned around and saw the moogle drenched in tomato ketchup. His reaction wasn't much different than Evelyn's, as he immediately called for Lizza, who immediately rushed to the scene.

"What's up…" she said, and then stopped to stare at the unconscious moogle before her. "In the name of the Holy Seraph!" she cursed, shaking her one and only co-chef. "What had happened to you, Garrett?" apparently, she had also mistaken the tomato ketchup for blood, if only she didn't smell the tomato scent emanating from all over the moogle instead of the steely scent of blood. She then smirked, putting the moogle in front of the counter, and then rubbed the ketchup with a piece of wet cloth. That was stupid.

"Now…" Lizza stared coldly at the twins, making the two of them shiver at once in contact of the icy gaze fixed on them. "I would like to know who had spilled this amount of tomato ketchup on the floor. It seemed that it's coming from your table, and it was a waste of Gil as well as staff"

Christopher immediately stared at Evelyn, as if telling her to confess. Evelyn didn't know that she was the cause of the ruckus, and even if she was to confess and tell Lizza that she was unconsciously pouring tomato ketchup, she won't be released unharmed. The two kept silent, one staring at the other, and because three minutes had passed since she asked the question and nobody had answered it, Lizza let out a sigh and grabbed the two of them, shoving the siblings into the storage and told them to take the mop. The first words that came into their mind as she did this was "Detention" and "Being late to work"

"You children need to know your responsibilities" Lizza said as she watched the two of them mop the red-stained wooden floor, in an amateur way. Evelyn was doing it much better that Christopher did, and if you were to ask the younger one about how she had managed to do so, he would not answer 'because she was a nice girl' or 'she was doing housework', but the answer instead will come as, 'She had done this more than five or six times before… as a detention'

"Hey, I'm no kid" Evelyn protested as she drove the wooden stick with cloth attached into it forward and back, pouting. "I'm already 15"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm 70, so be a good kid who listens to the adults and go on with your job" Lizza replied, indifferent. Somehow Evelyn got these kinds of Goosebumps that told her that she would have her exercise job doubled today or even worse.

Finally, after fifteen minutes of sweat-excreting activity called 'mopping' and five minutes of decent lecture, the two were finally allowed to leave the place to do their part-time jobs. Well, it had been more than ten days now since Chirol went missing. The room was still locked as ever and the things inside it untouched. What had worried her was if Chirol had kept food inside, it should rot by now. The smell wouldn't be very pleasant.


In front of the Axel's Armory…

In front of the twins, the building was surrounded by a huge mass of people. That said, not only Humes, but also all the other races. They were all murmuring some incomprehensible words because they were mixed badly against each other and they were speaking in almost the same volume.

"What's going on?" Evelyn tried to ask one of the people that had gathered up here. To be precise, it was a moogle time mage.

"Eh, you see… kupo" he answered in tattered words, "It seems that the person running this store… is...uh… kupo… how can I say this, kupo…"

"Just tell me…" the Gria repeated herself, not wanting to wait any longer. However, she had a bad predicament about these kinds of situations. "It's not like I have any intentions on biting you or anything"

"Well… kupo" The moogle was still tattering, not sure what to say. "He… Axel… he…" then he stopped right there. He didn't want to tell any further.

"Aww, come on!" she was finally angered, and at this point, Christopher, pulled her arm, causing the Gria to jerk and the turn around. She met with a not-so-happy face of her twin's.

"It's not very polite to force someone to say what they didn't want to say, you know…." He said, and then looked at the frightened moogle. "It's okay, sorry for causing you trouble."

"I'm very sorry" Evelyn said, admitting her fault. "I was very impatient"

Now it was the time mage's turn to feel guilty. Still with the stuttering words, he also said his sorry, which was quite strange for the twins, and finally said, "W-well, kupo, they say t-t-t-that… h-he's been m… kupo… murdered, kupo"

"WHAT?" the twins shouted in unison, attracting some of the crowd's attention. Evelyn was extremely shocked, and Christopher looked like he was going to break down at that moment. What they heard was totally unbelievable. How come…? Did somebody assassinate him?

Evelyn immediately stood up, grabbing her brother's arm tight, and marched into the shop's entrance. "We're going in" was the simple words that she said, as they went pass the short statures of the moogles, the fatty mass that was the Seeqs' tummies, and the long, fluffy tails of the Nu Mous that they almost stepped on several times. They were the first to get pas the broken wooden doors, as nobody had dared to do so, and they were the first to take sight of the awful scene.

Tragic, only that word fits to describe the situation inside the shop. The weapons were littered everywhere, some coated with a red substance. A big hole was on the roof and below it a massive crater which had demolished everything in its range of contact. The room itself was so stinky of the smell of blood, but the worst was the Scholar's corpse nailed against the wall, beside it written big and thick with blood was: 'REVEAL YOURSELVES, TRAITORS OF THE GOVERNMENT!'


Ruins of Delgantua- hall of blessings

The hall of blessings was a historical feature of Jylland. It was there where the Legendary Seraph Ultima was to land long ago on that land. It was now an abandoned place, as nobody had cared to go there, except a few….

Hurried footsteps resounded through the silent hall, accompanied by the sound of flowing water and occasional pants. Several people were gathered inside the hall, and they were nothing else than the rebellion forces of Moorabella.

"Reporting, sir!" a Hume soldier announced to the Blue mage as they gave a salute to each other.

"Please go on" Anastasia said, also standing up to hear the news.

"A civilian had just been murdered last night. The victim was Axel Genardine, who runs the Armory near the Snowcandy inn. There was a big writing on the wall, written with blood, asking us to reveal ourselves to the government"

"What shall we do, Lady Anastasia?" Dylan, the blue mage, asked the royal daughter in response of the reported situation. "This is definitely a trap to lure us out"

"How low the government had fallen into, killing innocent civilians as cruel as that!" the Viera exclaimed, very upset. She hadn't expected for the government which had been run by her father to have sunk so low. "But we shall not fall into their trap. We will not give ourselves in that easily, knowing these cursed deeds"

"The next target might be another person closest to him…" Lidol stated, thinking really hard. "As long as the information gives it, he doesn't have any relatives in the town. The people who were working in his shop were the mechanist, who was going to the city of Goug for supplies, and the others were the part-timers… Evelyn and Christopher, they have the closest possibility being the next targets if this murder was to continue."

Chirol, who was among the people who had gathered there, immediately stood up to join the discussion. "If the matter had gone into them, I shall go, kupo"

All the eyes immediately turned to the juggler. It seems that everyone had their own reasons for complaining this moogle.

"Remember that you are their target, Chirol. We can't just let you go. At least until we can assure that your position is safe" Lidol stated the obvious, and the others also nodded.

"Do not put your personal feelings ahead of your duty, kupo!' Abie added, "We all had gathered here to go on your plan, and you are an important factor in it! If you were to go, who will carry out this plan? And why did we have to gather here, kupo? You have to understand that!"

"B-but…!" Chirol was to complain again, but then he stopped. He didn't know what to say at all. If he were to say that the world's fate would one day depend on the two of them, who could have believed in him? They'll just think that he's a madman who's not worthy to trust! No, he had greed to help in the mission and he can't just break his promise. But how can he do this?

"I'm sure they can take care of themselves…" Anastasia said, trying to calm the moogle down. "But if not, at least they will have done their best…"


"…Are you sure that we're going to do this, Eve?" Christopher asked rather nervously, packing several potions into their old backpacks.

"Actually, I'm not so sure…" she answered, stuffing the red Diary book inside the knapsack. "I wonder if this is the right thing to do, actually I didn't want to say goodbye to them…"

"Me too… but it's the best way for all of us and them, right?"

"Yeah, maybe…" Evelyn muttered, staring into the brilliantly decorated night sky. It was so different from the cloudy sky of her home-world. Leaning her head against the wooden wall, she looked at her twin and noticed something.

"Why are you bringing that thunder rod with you, Chris…?" she asked, feeling curious.

"Well, I want to keep it as a keepsake, and actually when you were having your special lessons with Miss Lizza I had some magick Training with Mister Axel as well" the Hume replied, zipping the rucksack and getting ready to sleep.

"Well, good night, then" Evelyn said, preparing her pillow and leaning herself of the bed, making sure not to give any pressure on the wings and tails.

"Good night"


It was already midnight, and a Bangaa trickster entered the inn, with a Nu Mou sage and a Hume fighter. Lizza was half- asleep, and she was surprised to see people coming at this late an hour.

"Excuse me, Missy, but did ya know of people called Evelyn and Christopher living in this inn? We would like to see them"



Cliffhanger… again! Sorry! It had been long since I had put up a fighting scene inside this story. Pardon the chunks if drama I did put inside and the piece if terror, with me being a girl and all its just plain hard to resist it. Thank you for people who were still here to listen to my preaches^^


Bonus section: About Lidol

Name: Lidol Campoise
Race: Hume
Gender: Male
Job: Seer/ Soldier
Hair color: Dark brown
Weapon: Arnath Glyphs
Hat: White Hat
Armor: Magick robe
Accessories: Orb of Minwu
Likes: Cat, Jokes
Dislikes: Tomatoes, Alraunes

Lidol was one of the queen's personal guards, until he was dismissed along with the others when Will had stopped the search for Lady Anastasia. He is a mood-maker and he also had a cheerful personality, though at times he gets overboard. He's very energetic and had strength more than average mages, which was influenced by his past as a soldier.