Well, it looks like I'm onto another chapter.
Link: "Wow, it's chapter Ten already!"
Amazing that it's lasted that long… Okay, here are the chapter eight reviewers: LadyJenova Remnant AKA Fishie, Sir Canada Cowboy, Lady Amekoryuu, Ladymandrakefunnyjuice, and Lady Rini Tsukino.
Link: "Thanks for reviewing. I wonder where everyone else went… Usually more people leave comments."
True, but sometimes people just don't have time to get on the internet. Like me for instance, I wasn't able to even write this until just recently because of school/family business. I'm sure that it'll all work out in the end though. Now, it's disclaimer time!
Link: "Great… I.K.A. Valian doesn't own Zelda or Tales of Symphonia. The only thing he does own is me, plot changes, and… well not much else, just a crabby personality, and that's on a goo-mmmph"
Okay, that's enough out of you. On with the story!
- - - Sylvarant - - -
Kratos stood fast and silent, his cape and spiky auburn hair blowing listlessly in the dry desert wind. Before him lay the destroyed polycarbonate barrier stone and the open crypt that housed the Seal of Fire. Behind him, Zelos and Sheena looked on curiously.
"Something wrong?" asked Zelos.
"It appears so," was all Kratos said.
Zelos and Sheena glanced at each other and then back at the pieces of Polycarbonate stone scattered about on the ground. They put two and two together and figured that whatever was bothering Kratos, it had something to do with the rocks scattered about this crypt. To them, it looked like the rest of the desolate and barren ruins of Old Triet.
"Let us proceed," Kratos said at length. "Be wary and prepared for people and beings that should not be here."
The three then descended into the dark crypt. Unlike above ground, the ancient tomb was hot. A dim red glow reflected off of the hallway walls, its source unknown. The light provided did not allow sight beyond approximately ten feet, a fact which vexed Zelos greatly. As he trailed behind Sheena, he could see nothing of her but her dim silhouette. "This is no Altimira," Zelos muttered under his breath. Sheena however, heard the comment and scowled.
"Zelos, shut up."
"What's wrong hunny," he asked sweetly, "did something scare you. Well fear not for the great Zelos is here with you."
Sheena smacked her face and then dragged her palm across her cheek. "Oh please, would you drop the stupid act and be serious for once in your life?"
"Shut up," hissed Kratos, stopping the bickering pair moments before they rounded a corner. "Someone is coming, hide."
"But I don't-" Kratos quickly shoved Zelos into Sheena, sending both tumbling to the ground. They landed in a heap behind a large piece of rubble that had long ago fallen from the ceiling. "Ouch," Zelos whined, rubbing his lightly bruised head. He noticed, much to his enjoyment, that he had landed on top of Sheena and was now staring at her lovely, purple boot sheathed left foot. How he'd gotten into that position was beyond his comprehension, but now that he was here… "Sheena, you have such lovely feet."
"Shh, someone's coming." Zelos quieted and listened. Indeed, there were footsteps echoing down the dark, fire lit hall. And then they appeared, two shadows that held themselves with the dignity born from years of military training. "Where's Kratos?" Sheena whispered to Zelos.
He shrugged. "He shoved me into you and that was the last I saw of him. Which one do you want, left or right?"
"Left," Sheena said, bolting quickly from behind the rubble, Zelos right behind her. However, before either of them could get close enough to attack, the two shadows fell over, revealing another shadow standing behind them, his sword glowing red and orange, blood and reflected fire light.
"Quickly," Kratos said in hushed voice, "this way."
As the Chosen and Summoner approached the bodies, they slowed to a stop. Not because the body and the dead state it was in alarmed them in anyway. No, they dealt death to fellow humans all the time. Of course, these two poor fellows used to be Half-elves, and even that wasn't what fazed them. No, it was the fact that they were staring down at two most certainly dead Half-elf extremists known as Desians.
Sheena stooped down and turned the body around onto its stone cold back. The insignia sewn on the black fabric over the heart of the Half-elf that bought the farm was not one that belonged to any of the Desian factions that the Renegades had showed them. "What are Desians doing here?"
- - - Hyrule - - -
Four cloaked figures quickly sprinted along the cobble stone courtyard of the former Hyrule Market, the only sound they made being that of their cloaks flapping madly, and very quietly, in the wind. Formerly bustling, even at this midnight hour, the Market now laid empty save for the frequent Angel sentry making its rounds. The Temple of the Goddesses that once played host to the multitudes come to trade, now played host to the Angelic invaders. Where priests were once housed, prisoners now resided. Where parishioners prayed, soldiers were barracked.
The lead member of the small group infiltrating the Temple signaled to his comrades behind him with a quick hand sign. All four of them immediately melted into the shadows and disappeared. Seconds later, two Angels flew by, making their rounds. Yet, even their super enhanced sight was unable to pick up the shadow enshrouded Sheikah.
Once the Angels had flown away, the leader signaled again, and the four shadows sprinted forward once more. The group had to hide themselves fifteen times more before they reached their objective, a slight crevice in the jagged, rocky, mountain wall that the Temple was carved into.
On the other side of the crevice path was treacherous and tight as a ravine opened up to the left of the very thin path. Any misplaced steps would result in assured death. The possibility of death, however, did not have much, if any effect on these trained warriors. They stepped quickly and quietly along the hidden mountain path with sure feet and quiet confidence.
After moving down the hidden path for about ten minutes, the leader stopped and started searching around the wall. Finding a small notch, a carving in the wall, he pulled a golden bird talisman out from his back waist pouch and gently pushed it into the mountain wall until he heard a click. Suddenly, and surprisingly, very quietly, the rock wall a short length ahead slid up and open to reveal a darkened passage way.
The four Sheikah quickly made their way into the secret passage way. A few moments after the group entered, the stone slab slid back down, closing the passage. The golden bird talisman dropped from the wall onto the path, forgotten.
- - - Elsewhere - - -
"Uhmm… Miss Colette?" Colette turned her head to look at Rutina questioningly. "If you don't mind me asking, why did the Angels lock you up?"
"Please," Colette sighed, "just Colette. And I'm not sure why they locked me up. They're supposed to be helping me and working against the Desians. Instead they've locked me up and are working with the Desians."
"People only get locked up because they're captors are too weak to kill them," said Ubella.
Colin snorted. "Not everyone is barbaric like the Gerudo," he said.
"I do not think fighting at this time would be wise," said Rath. When the Gerudo and Hylian looked at him for further explanation, they found him staring at the wall. But they knew why. They'd all stared at it for a long time. Ganondorf lay on the other side.
"So, why did the Angels lock one of their own up," asked Colin, steering the conversation back to Rutina's question.
"What do you mean, 'one of their own' " asked Colette. "I'm not an Angel… At least, not yet."
"So, you're not one of them then?" asked Colin. "Then why do you have wings?"
"I have wings because I'm the Chosen One. I become an Angel after I go on a journey to regenerate the world and save it from the Desians. But the only thing that seems to have gone according to plan was the becoming an Angel part."
"I see," said Colin. "So you're not an Angel yet, but you're going to become one. And the Angels are supposed to be good guys, but they're working with the bad guys, err, you called them, Desians?" Colette nodded.
"None of that makes any sense," complained Ubella. "Either you're good, or you're bad, take you're pick."
"That's what I thought," said Colette, "But then this happened. I'm as confused as you are."
For several minutes they all fell silent. All was silent. Rath stood up and moved to the bars.
"We have to get out of here," he said under his breath. He was pacing the room now with one eye kept on the wall they shared with Ganondorf the whole time. "It can't be good if these guys can defeat and imprison the King of Evil. If they could do that, what else can they do?"
"I'm not afraid," said Ubella. "There isn't anything these weaklings could do that could scare me."
"I'm with Rath, I want to get out of here," said Rutina.
"But how are we going to get out of here?" asked Colin incredulously. "The bars are made out of steel. The locks are as well. We don't have anything in here to work with besides dead rat bones and that rotting body over there." All the occupants turned and looked at said corpse. As if responding to the sudden attention, the corpse slumped slightly as more pieces of it fell to the cell floor.
They all fell silent again, contemplating their fate and trying to figure out if there was a way to escape. They didn't have long to think, because the Desian Warden, what they all came to call the tall, muscular, and intimidating Desian guard, appeared at the front of the cell. He was obviously upset, which made his face all the more ugly.
The guard stared at them for several minutes, contemplating something that made his face scrunch up in anger more and more as the wait dragged on. Finally, the large man smiled cruelly, brought his hands together, and popped his knuckles. The cracking and popping noises that emitted from his large meaty hands sounded like someone's spine and neck being crushed by a steamroller.
"It's time you inferior beings did some manual labor," said the Desian. "And today we're going to start with something light and easy. All the bodies left over from when the inferior beings were killed are still lying everywhere. You will be dragging them piece by piece to a pit, which…" the Desian paused to chuckled loudly at a joke that only he found amusing, "… a pit which you'll also have to dig."
The Desian chuckled again and unlocked the door. It swung open with a whining screech and slammed into the stone wall dividing their cell from Ganondorf's. Arrogantly, the Desian walked into the cell, grabbed Rath, and shoved him out the door. The boy stumbled and fell to the hallway floor. Colin quickly joined him on the floor as the Desian threw him out. Rutina didn't have to be thrown out. She fearfully skirted the large man and stood next to Rath and Colin, both of whom were standing back up.
Then the guard came to Ubella, who had her arms crossed, her foot out, a sneer on her face, and a deadly look in her eye. Her entire attitude cried out tauntingly. The Desian walked up to the Gerudo and stood so close that she nearly fainted from his bad breath. The burly guard stood over the girl half his size, bulking and pushing out his muscles, grimacing, and doing all he could to intimidate her. Yet, for all his fanfare and arrogance, Ubella did nothing but stand there defiantly, glaring back at the guard.
The Desian, having had enough of this, grabbed Ubella by the neck with one hand and raised her into the air. He then started squeezing his hand shut, and in doing so, also started shutting off Ubella's air supply. Ubella struggled wildly, pulling at the Desian's large hand in an attempt to get air. Her actions became more and more frantic. Then, slowly, Ubella stopped moving.
Colette watched this, wanting with every fiber of her body to get up and strangle the man. Thinking quickly, she looked around her immediate area for something that she could throw at the man and spotted a bone in the pile of rat bones that looked almost exactly like a dagger, an extremely small dagger, but a dagger nonetheless. She reached out and grabbed the bone and then quickly flung it at the Desian.
The knife flew straight and true, embedding itself within the arm holding Ubella in the air. The Desian shouted out in pain and quickly dropped Ubella, who immediately began coughing and choking as her lungs once more filled with air.
The Desian pulled the bone out of his arm and threw it down onto the floor. Then he turned toward Colette with murder in his eyes. He started to move toward her, but didn't make it far before Colin jumped onto his back and started to try to choke him. The Desian's neck though was very thick and thus, all Colin accomplished before being thrown into a wall was making him angrier. Rath was next, attempting to knock the large man's feet out from under him by delivering a kick to the back of his knees.
The attack didn't work. The Desian swung around and knocked the boy off his feet, clocking him in the side of the head with his large fist. With Rutina frightened and shivering in a corner, the Desian deemed the fight knocked out of them. He then turned back toward Colette, who stood up to face him.
As soon as the large man got close enough, he grabbed Colette the same way he'd grabbed Ubella, lifting her into the air and squeezing. Like Ubella, Colette was writhing about as her air was cut off. Her lungs burning, her body instinctively reacted to the threat and lashed out with her leg.
Her foot sailed through the air with a loud 'vwhoosh'. It impacted between the Desian's legs and made a sound like cross between wood cracking and the sound meat makes when being tenderized. The chain that used to be restraining the leg had snapped like it was made out of clay.
The Desian's face slowly turned a darker and darker shade of red and his eyes were bulging farther and farther out of his head. The air in his lungs quickly excavated and his grip on Colette quickly lessened to the point that she could pry herself loose. Once she was on the ground, she massaged her neck and then did the first thing that she thought of, she punched the Desian in the gut, and did so powerfully enough to lifted the large man off the ground and throw him through the air, out the door, and into the hallway wall.
"Wow," remarked Colin. "If you could do that this whole time, why didn't you break out sooner?"
"I… I didn't know I could do that," said Colette breathlessly, "must come with the wings."
"Hey," shouted Ubella from the other side of the bars. "I thought you weaklings wanted to escape." She held her hand out expectantly. "Well… you coming?"
After several seconds of staring they all quickly made their way out of the cell. Rutina even built up enough courage to bop the unconscious Desian guard on the head, for good measure, she said.
- - - Elsewhere - - -
The four Sheikah, now disguised in Desian uniforms, walked calmly past a patrol of real Desians and Angels. They headed straight toward the round platform set up in the middle of the Main Hall of the Temple. Every few minutes, the machines around the platform would activate and then more Angels and Desians would appear on the plat form with boxes of equipment and supplies. The supplies were then unloaded and taken to their intended destination.
Once the disguised Sheikah made it to the plat form they discreetly dropped explosive charges all around the platform in positions that they would not be noticeable. Once the drop was made, the four continued on their way across the room toward the large hallway that led to the barracks.
After passing the Barracks and heading toward the back hallway, the leader of the group slowed down. He checked all of his surrounding and then frowned behind the Desian visor he was wearing. Then there was a loud boom as the explosives detonated. The leader of the Sheikah group moved on, past the frantic Angels and Desians, now with a smile on his face.
They turned left down the hallway, away from the prison cells below, and made their way quickly down the hallway toward the stairs that would lead to the offices and administrative quarters above. Before the Angels had invaded, the head priest and his servants lived above, while the lower priests lived in the newly created dungeons.
Upon cresting the top of the stairwell, the four Sheikah strode purposely down the hallway and into the former head priest's room. Inside were many Desians and Angels frantically running about, stopping to at one computer workstation for several seconds before moving to another in a mad rush to figure out what had happened.
The lead Sheikah made a motion that only his compatriots would notice and started moving about the room, attempting to blend in and look busy. The other Sheikah did the same and before long they were blending into the scene perfectly while confiscating as much intel as they could. Unfortunately, they were unfamiliar with how to operate the machines properly and so did not achieve much. However, whatever paper they could find, they stashed into their pockets and moved on as if nothing were wrong.
Suddenly another alarm went off and a loud, blaring voice begin emitting from thin air saying, "Warning! Intruder Alert! Warning!"
The Sheikah looked around nervously, wondering just how their disguises had been compromised. The entire room suddenly came to a halt as every Angel and Desian turned and saluted or bowed toward the green haired woman who floated into the room. She looked out of the crowd, staring at each and every one of the people in the room menacingly. When her gaze fell upon the Sheikah leader, he froze, not wanting to raise any suspicion. Luckily, she moved her gaze onto someone else quickly.
Unluckily, that other person was another of his Sheikah infiltration group, and this one had an itchy needle throwing habit. So when Pronyma turned her gaze upon him, he almost immediately broke cover and flung thirty needles at her. The needles sailed through the air and bounced harmlessly off of her personal Mana shield.
For a moment, nobody moved, all those present too stunned to process what had happened. Then, quick as a flash, the four Sheikah leaped backwards and dropped their disguises, landing in grouped together with their backs against the wall. Pronyma smirked at her good fortune.
"Found you," she said. Then she lifted her arm and pointed at the four Sheikah and said, "Get them!" All the Angels and Desians in the room turned and charged blindly at the infiltrators. With a single command, the leader sent his men running along the walls over the heads of the small army contained inside of the room while he flipped over their heads and bolted out of the door.
The four Sheikah made it down the stairs, out of the hallway, passed the barracks, and into the Main Hall. There they were confronted and stopped by a large number of Desians and Angels, all of whom seemed to fill the sky and blocked any and all escape.
"Now, now," chided Pronyma as one would to a misbehaving child. "No need for any of that. We're only going to rip your hearts out."
Seeing no other alternative, the leader signaled to his men. They all slumped their shoulders in defeat and moved as if to turn themselves over. Just as a group of Desians moved to capture them though, the four moved as one and lashed out, outright killing ten men with one blow each.
"Kill them," an enraged Pronyma shouted.
The four Sheikah bolted once more, only this time, instead of running away, they ran toward the enemy. Within moments there was a trail of dead bodies leading toward the wide open grand entrance. However the Sheikah weren't made for this kind of fighting. They were assassins, not knights. With overwhelming numbers at their disposal, the Angels and Desians wore the Sheikah infiltrators down until they could capture them all.
By this time, the majority of their numbers had been killed, but enough remained to apprehend the beaten Sheikah. Pronyma floated up to the four men as the Angels holding them forced their tired bodies to kneel. Behind them, the sun was just cresting over the hills in the distance, shining directly into the temple's Main Hall.
"This land is very lush and full of life. It's now ours," Pronyma said to her new prisoners.
"This land will never be yours," rasped the lead Sheikah in a high falsetto voice. "It belongs to the Goddesses and they'll never give it up."
"Don't think so highly of yourselves," Pronyma tutted. "Now, you are going to tell me where you're base is or you'll watch your friends here die." The Sheikah leader glared defiantly up at Pronyma but remained silent. "Suit yourself." She turned to one of the Angels and ordered him to kill his captive. Without a word, the Angel unsheathed its sword and ran the Sheikah through. The young man fell to the ground in an expanding pool of his own blood.
"Are you ready to talk now?" Again, the leader remained silent and defiant. Hatred now laced his blood red glare. "Alright, you, kill yours"
Another Angel killed his captive and dropped him next to his dead comrade. Their blood mixed on the stone floor of the Temple. Again Pronyma turned toward the leader and looked at him questioningly. The leader spit at Pronyma, but the saliva didn't make it very far. Pronyma shrugged and nodded toward the Angel holding the third Sheikah.
Moments later, the leader was the only one left alive from the infiltration group. His blood boiled and yet he did nothing but glare, ready to take his secrets to the grave, just like his comrades. Pronyma, with a disappointed pout, nodded toward the last Angel. The leader closed his eyes in preparation for the strike to come.
When nothing happened, he cracked them open again to find Pronyma on the ground in front of him and a young girl with glowing pink wings pulling him up. The girl quickly flew into the air, dragging him out of the Temple and into the desolated Marketplace with the Angels and Desians hot on their tail.
Well, that's the end of that part.
Link: "Wow, it took you forever to update."
I know, but like I said, I've been busy. But I finally managed to get things into order so now maybe I can write more often that I could have before.
Link: "Well… whatever. And hey, why wasn't I in this chapter?"
Don't worry, you'll be in the next one.
Link: "Ugh… fine. Please review readers."
And thanks for reading.