I emerged from the doors of the temple to find Allen sitting in a meditative pose with his sword across his lap, waiting there.

"Allen?" I said, a little surprised. "What are you doing here?"

He looked a little abashed, coughed into his hand once and reluctantly said

"In a trial for knighthood it is traditional for an older, more experienced knight to stand guard outside the place where the childe, or knight-to-be takes his vigil. Even thought you're not going to be a knight, I felt that I should do something at least. You've gone to much trouble to help me, and my family. It was the only thing I could think of."

"Oh," I said, a little touched. "Well thank-you for the thought anyway. I'm done here."

"But you were only in there for a day!" Allen protested. "Even the most rudimentary of spiritual training takes months at the least. How could you have acquired the knowledge of a fully trained… whatever-you-are in so short a time?"

"Where there is a Will there is a way," I said, unwilling to really discuss the subject.

I was still somewhat sorting the thing out in my head as it was. In my own mind I felt like I had been in there for years learning everything and yet in the rest of the world it had been no more than a day. The mind became greater somehow when a persons spirit was inside Ougura. I knew all I needed to know, and I was ready this day.

"I have all of the knowledge I require, I just don't have any real practice in using it. My reserves of energy and endurance to use my powers are still those of a novice… but in the case of your sister, my knowledge alone will likely be sufficient."

"Likely?" questioned Allen. "The way you say that makes me nervous."

"What I am about to do is the spiritual equivalent of a surgery," I explained. "And as with any surgery, I can make no guarantees that it will be successful. All I can tell you is that I believe it will be."

"Your belief is a strong thing Hitomi," Allen said. "I will simply have to put my faith in that then."

"Come, wake your sister and we shall start," I said. "After I have had a bath and changed out of these clothes, that is."

An hour later I had cleansed in one of the holy springs nearby, the energy that flowed from the Ourgura Seal permeated the holy waters and just soaking in them gave me a sense of well-being. I dressed in some kind of strange kimono-like robe provided to me by one of the temple attendants; a the top was white with long bell-like sleeves and togged closed with a row of frog-and-toggle knots down the left side the pants were sapphire blue and voluminous.

"This way mi'lady," the temple attendant said bowing respectfully to me. It had apparently been a long time since someone had been trained by Ougura itself. I followed the attendant who did not seem inclined to give me her name through a white stone-lined path leading through a small wild garden with elegantly placed trees and decorative fountains and a series of springs and bridges, the light of stone lanterns reflected off the waters. I would have taken more time to admire the elegant gardens but all too soon the path widened out into a soft clearing with a misty spring the size of a small lake. There was a wide decorative stone bridge that led across half the span of the lake to a small island in the center that held a pagoda sheltering Celena, Allen and High Preist Lagusu.

High Preist Lagusu and his two apprentices were going to accompany me and assist in this most dangerous of undertakings. Lagusu to mentor me through m first true attempted spiritual healing and guide me in case I should begin to fail or grow unsure of myself. For though I had all of the knowledge and my spirit knew the hows, whys, and wherefores my body had yet to actually perform any such thing, and I was nervous.

At an encouraging nod from the High Preist I activated my othersight and examined Celena carefully.

Wow! I thought in amazement as I noted the difference between a trained Gift and an untrained one. Everything is so much clearer! What had once been noting more than a colorful but indistinct haze surrounding the body of a person was now made of soft points of light in a line down the body, and many many soft little glowing lines weaving in and out between them in a complex web. The Aura I had gotten used to seeing around peoples bodies were actually radiating out from their Focus Points!

By looking at Celena I could tell that not only had Dilandau perverted and wrapped about her emotional and mental Meridians but her physical meridians as well. He was going to have to be removed completely from her and placed in a separate body all of his own; we couldn't just borrow a corpse so we'd have to create one for him. It was here in the most sacred of the Sacred Springs of Ubdo that we would have access to the power to will such a thing into being.

Naturally, Lagusua had chosen a spring on the outside of the energist to minimize interference from the seal, in case it should somehow go rogue in the presence of our ritual and gift Dilandau with a piece of it's Source Energist. The idea of Dilandau merging with a Source Energist was not to be thought of.

"Could such a thing happen?" Allen questioned a little skeptically when I told him why we were placed so far away from the temple where the source of power was housed.

"It isn't entirely out of the realm of possibility," Lagusu said. "The Ougura Seal has absorbed a great deal of the twisted energy from the Fate Alteration Device and Dilandau was made of that same energy, it might create a resonance with the seal once he is separated from the dampening effects of your dear sister young man."

I sent out a spirit call to Folken as well, just to have all of my bases covered.

:Stand by please: I told him when he raised an eyebrow inquiringly about my summons. :I do not know that granting him a physical body will be successful and if his spirit is powerful enough I believe he may prove a danger that we do not have the means to stop. I want you to nab him on the astral plane if that is the case.:

:Yes: Folken replied, noddingonce.

Allen stood with his sister Celena on a small island in the center of hte outdoor spring the spirit of Folken stood tensely beside him, poised to strike at Dilandau spirit form in case we could not conjure a body and he should take it onto himself to try to find one on his own. Lagusu stood across from me on the other side of the water and his two apprentices equidistant to either side. As one we stepped into the holy waters and cast out a barrier shield both to protect ourselves from outside interference and to protect the outside world from our powerful energies in case something should go wrong.. My first physical casting of a barrier shield was an odd experience; it was like I was out my thought to encompass everything around me, understanding that area and then simultaneously blocking it out and closing it in. With the barrier in place the real working could begin.

I could feel him chafing at the bit, still trying to dominate over Celena; this time we let him. His efforts to establish his own identity over hers would only aid us in our own attempts. Unfortunately, because the Sorcerers of Zaibach hadn't had much of a clue on what they were doing when they created Dilandau, they had messed his and Celena's energy patterns up severely before getting a successful experiment. That meant I was going to have to be very careful when I made the extraction; I would probably have to take him out in bits and pieces in order to get a clean removal.

I steeled my nerves, and set to work. First was to bind their Foci. This would freeze up their meridians thus enabling me to distinguish one from another more easily when they weren't flowing. This was the easy part of the task. I took a deep breath and started in. Once their Foci were bound that twin spirits slept peacefully I began the delicate, delicate work of traveling down each twisting, spiraling meridian in their body one by one and untangling their two different energy signatures from one another.

I started with the meridians of their physical shell and as I worked to separate them Celena faded to a specter. Allen steeled himself at the pain of seeing his only sister fade so much but trusted in me to do the job without harming her as much as was possible. As with any surgery, it was by far no certain thing. As I untwisted each of Dilandau's meridians from where they tangled with Celena's I twirled them round into a little ball and set them aside to deal with later so that I would not have to go back and repeat the process of untangling more meridians when I had finished with her. Tiny globes of spirit-light danced in a pale glow over the water's surface.

It was rather like having a massive pile of string that the cat had been playing with tangled at your feet and patiently and carefully working out the knot until it was all straightened. It took hours! Once I was finished with their physical meridians I had to then move on to their emotional and spiritual ones. It was far easier to tell these ones apart; where Celena's were bright and glowing with health, Dilandau's were blackened and blotted with rage and hatred. If it had been only a tiny spot of such dark rage I could have helped and healed him but his all of the entirety of his meridians were blighted so. He was not mentally or emotionally well, and the damage was not something that could ever be repaired save by utterly erasing his entire mind and personality from the meridians and starting over from scratch, but with that method there would be nothing left of Dilandau as we knew the guy. Part of me thought it would be better that way but I had no right to make such a decision, I would heal what harm I could and interfere only in such a way as to return the natural balance to the way it should be.

By the time, hours later, I had at last managed to extricate every trace of Dilandau from Celena's mind, heart, and body my own strength and energy reserves had begun to fail. It was after all my own energy I was using to guide the delicate process and it wasn't like using a solid tool like a knife or a scalpel. It was more like walking at a brisk pace up a slight incline; not a problem at the very first but after a long way it began to take its toll. Using spiritual energy or physical energy was still using energy. Lagusu and his two apprentices summoned up personal energists of their own (yet another thing I had learned that people could do, set aside energy to use at a later date, and I mentally reprimanded myself for not thinking to do so earlier) and they kindly sent the energy at me to bolster my flagging strength. It was like getting a second wind and I doggedly pushed onward, determined to complete the procedure.

Now came the tricky part, in order to create a physical body for Dilandau I had had to borrow a piece of Source Energist from the Seal at the Holy Spring because Dilandau had no Source Foci of his own (because he had no actual parents). Using he Source energist as Dilandaus Source Foci I needed to take all of those meridians I had just separated out and re-weave them into a fully separated Dilandau.

I sent tok the piece of Source Energist, still not fully healed from splintering off from the corrupted main, and tried to purify its taint using my powers. The piece of Source Energist, apparently had other plans however. It fought me, the warped dangerous greeny-black energy of corrupted energy tangling with my own which had the unfortunate effect of "like attracting like" as they say. Dilandau's own separated energy foci zeroed in on it like a heat-guided missle, the corrupted strands of his own energy patterns unwove themselves from the neat little balls I had spun them into and began trying to anchor themselves in the Source Foci! It was an unfortunate complication that only got worse.

The holy spring itself, that drew its power from the great seal energist started to resonate with the song of energy coming off from the crystal. I was busy battling away the threads of what had once been Dilandau's meridians while Lagusu and the two others tried to handle the situation with the waters of the spring trying to attract themselves into the mess we had going on with the enrgist. We were surrounded in the midst of a swirling vortex of energy in no time, the water glowed a tainted green as it shlepped and lapped about my feet, trying to get closer before I managed to purify the energist stone before me. The barrier sheild we had erected (and our own wills holding it up) were the only thing keeping it from bursting inward and overwhelming us.

Bugger this! I thought in frustration. I had not come this far just to lose it all now and if I couldn't pull things together then Celena would never wake up. I genuinely liked the girl, we had a lot in common I had discovered from liking the same kinds of books to enjoying a good shopping trip. She'd introduced me to her favorite Gaea sweet-shop and I'd shown her my all-time favorite romantic movies. We were like sisters in our hearts!

I reached down into my powers and burned away the Taint inside the crystal with a swamping wave that left me momentarily weak-kneed and then started in on the mess surrounding me. Now that the Source Foci (to-be) was purified, Dilandau's energy patterns wanted nothing to do with it! Instead the threads of life-energy tried to merge with the equally tainted holy waters swirling around us.

I reached out with my powers and roughly gathered the rampaging energies swirling about me, packing it crudely together like one might pack a snowball. When there got to be too much for me to handle and I felt like I had fire flowing along in my veins instead of blood I set my will into it with a simple command... Live! With a last burst of strength I sent my energies exploding outwards to gather up the power, then I reversed the flow of my powers and sucked it back inwards, swamping us all with water and light. I used the last of my strength to burn away the creeping green miasma from the water.

It was all or nothing!

There was an enormous flare of blue-white light that blinded me as energy burst out all around us, battering at the barrier sheild which at last fell from the blow. A hot wind kicked up from out of nowhere blowing water about. I no longer knew what was happening but I prayed that Celena and her brother were okay as I sank to my knees, unable to do more.

The tempest died down abruptly until only a few seconds later there was nothing more than silence and the ripples of water falling back onto the pond. I looked around me, amazed that we were safe. I and the High Preist walked carefully toward the part gathered on island and saw that there were indeed more people there than the two we had originally started with. I blinked my eyes in shock and amazement. It couldn't be!

But there he was, in full, living flesh lying (well, naked...) beside the one I had gone to great lengths to separate out from my new best friend Celena. There he was... Folken Fanel.

Talk about your lucky accidents, I thought dryly.

He had been standing by, ready to attack Dilandau in spirit form in case our attempt to recreate a physical body for him should fail. It appeared that he had gotten caught up in the momentum of events and the command and power I had sent out to neutralize the situation had worked its way upon him as well.

Allen was the first to recover, he checked on and roused his sister shortly after he regained consciousness. Celena said she felt fine; better than fine actually, she could no longer see him or hear him inside her mind and it was an enormous relief to know that he was gone for good this time. Speaking of Dilandau...

He roused himself as he did everything; with as much noise and violence as possible. It took him only a moment to take stock of his surroundings before he attacked the nearest thing standing to him. That being me I was glad that he was still not at full strength just yet and I automatically threw him over my hip and into the water where he fell facedown. Allen moved quickly, drawing his sword and placing it at the back of the guy's neck as a warning that he would either behave or be beheaded.

I sighed. I really hadn't thought far enough ahead on this one. I had been concentrating so hard on getting Dilandau out of Celena's and Allen's hair that I hadn't really considered much about what we would do with him after we pried the little weed out.

"So now that we have him out of her," I mused aloud. "What are we going to do about him? We can't keep him here, we've already imposed upon the good nature of the denizens of the Holy Spring Ubdo long enough. He's too dangerous to simply let go to wander the wilderness, who knows what kind of trouble he could get up to."

"I hope you aren't talking about me," Folken said, sitting up with a groan. He looked surprised for the first time I had ever seen him. Usually Folken had one of two settings for his facial expression; cool-depressed and cool-amused. The look made him seem pretty human.

"I-...I am alive?" he said, looking like he didn't quite dare to believe it.

"Yes," I said watching as he looked in awe at his two fully functional, fleshy hands like he'd never seen hands before.

"A strange side-effect from the spring," Lagusu said. "But with that Dornkirks blasted machine making everything go crazy, nothing is working quite like it should be."

"Could somebody get him a towel please?" I requested. He was after all, stark naked, no matter that he was up to his waist in spring water.

A nearby attendant who had come when the commotion occurred rushed forward with two cloaks, one for Folken and one for Dilandau.

With the realization that all was well for the moment and that I was done all the strength that adrenaline had seemed to give me simply flowed away from my body leaving once more drained and exhausted. For now I think I just needed to...

And the world faded out.

I woke in a comfortable bed, warm and cozy and decidedly disinclined to move for the moment. The decision was taken away from me however by the sound of shouts and ringing steel.

"Get the hell out of my way damn you!" a dismayingly familiar voice yelled. I heard the sound of a sword ringing against a sword several times and Allen replied that if Dilandau wanted to escape, he'd have to go through him.

"My pleasure," Dilandau said in that bloodthirsty tone of his. "I'll cut right through you!" There was more sword-noise and I hopped out of bed, grabbing the nearest pair of pants in my reach, the same ones I'd worn the other day, and hurried out to the courtyard where all the commotion was.

There they all were; Dilandau was facing off against Allen with Folken at his side. Celena stood off to one side wringing her hands and looking frightened and upset.

"Please, don't fight them Dilandau!" she begged.

"Stay out of it wench!" he snapped. "Now that I'm free, nothing will stand in my way!"

I sighed a little. I really hadn't thought too far ahead on this one had I? I should have known he'd do something like this, crazy little psychopath.

I summoned up the energy I'd regained while sleeping and slapped a barrier around him. Unfortunately it wasn't quite strong enough to physically detain him, The stubborn parasite, and he charged right through it. Well, it looked like I was going to have to think of something else then.

"Could you maybe hurry up with that a little Hitomi?" Folken urged as they tried to work Dilandau into a corner without hurting him. Apparently they still weren't certain whether an injury to one would be an injury to the other. Perhaps it was a valid fear, I still didn't know whether the separation of the two of them was actually a complete one or not.

"I'm thinking, I'm thinking!" I replied, wracking my brain for a way to hold him. His spirit and mind were so warped that they were likely beyond my ability to control; I could handle a healthy mind just fine but one as messed up as Dilandau's was beyond anyone's ability to reach. Well, anyone except perhaps...

My gaze focused on Celena.

There might still be just enough resonance between them to work in some kind of command of subjugation through her!

"Celena," I called. "I need your permission to work with your meridians again."

"What are you going to do?" she asked absently, her entire attention focused on the fight before her.

"I think there may be a way that I can reach Dilandau through you, but I'll need your permission to do it." That was one thing I had learned about healing, it only worked when the person involved gave their consent. Perhaps i was bending the rules a bit when it came to Dilandau but desperate times called for desperate measures.

"You have it then," Celena said. "Anything to stop this fight so that my brother doesn't get hurt." I thought about reminding her that Allen was a swordsman and so thus likely to get hurt at one point or another but decided against it. She probably already knew that.

I wasted no time in sinking back into her meridian network to see what I had to work with. They were two polar opposites but they had shared a body if not a mind and soul for most of their lives; while they didn't have any common bonds connecting the two of them, their meridians did resonate with each other still. It wasn't much but it was something. I snagged one of the meridian's spiraling out from her Source Foci and sent it twisting toward Dilandau, if I was lucky, they were still enough alike that they would catch and hold onto one another. It was a bit like spinning two threads together.

And they did, there was still enough resonance between them to create a bond between their bodies. I bound up Dilandau's Foci so that the connection only went one way and turned to Celena.

"Celena!" I called. "Reign Dilandau in!"

"What?" she asked, justifiably confused. I tried to think of a way to tell her to give a good yank on that cord I'd just made but realized that she wouldn't know what in the world I was talking about or how to do it even if she did.

"Picture something stopping him in your mind and put your whole heart into it. Then say... um... heel!"

Celena looked at me a little oddly but closed her eyes and concentrated. The cord glowed for a moment as she said heel, like one would restrain a disobedient cur. Dilandau found his neck jerked back by an invisible choke-chain. He yelped and I couldn't restrain a giggle. It did look kinda funny. He went at Allen again and Celena restrained him again, this time a little more firmly as she seemed to gain confidence from her own strength.

Dilandau, no fool despite being psychotic, turned towards her and decided he'd take the problem at it's source before moving on to take care of his enemies.

"Uh-oh," Celena gasped, frightened. She tried to back up a pace or two in preparation to run for her life.

"Don't give way," I told her. "It's what he wants. If you do, then he knows he's more powerful than you are."

"He is more powerful," Celena replied fearfully.

"Don't be daft, of course he isn't," I said. "Just because he has a sword doesn't mean anything. You have the ability to stop him in his tracks; use it."

"I'm too scared," Celena said.

Oh that's right, fear does inhibit the using of energy.

"Calm down, take a deep breath, and let him have it," I advised. She couldn't rely on other's all of the time, sooner or later she was going to have to depend on her own strength. Perhaps now was not the best time for her to start learning that lesson but the world was seldom as we would have it.

Celena, trembling in every bone in her body, took a shaky breath and shouted

"Dilandau! Heel!"

Not only was he brought up short by a choker this time, he received and extra little shock along with it to reprimand him for his bad behavior. Alright Celena!

Folken and Allen came up along either side of the guy and put thier swords at his throat saying without words that even if Celena and I were not willing to kill him they had no such qualms. He backed down and subsided into good behavior, or what passed for it for Dilandau. That meant that while he might be shouting and cursing at us all very imaginatively he at least wasn't trying to kill anyone.

Ah, another wonderful start to an eventful day.

I was hungry. I hadn't been awake for five minutes after collapsing from some seriously difficult work involving the complex manipulation of energy patterns when I'm at it again. You know how I mentioned that all use of power has a cost; well all that energy manipulation came from me and it needed to be replaced pronto. The best and easiest way to do this, I was told, was with food.

Luckily for me and my short hunger-temper (you know, the one you always get when you're hungry and you haven't eaten in a while?) the Draconians were well familiar with the toll that energy manipulation took on the body and had perfected the art of the carb-diet. I was eating pasta like a pro wrestler. Where Freid had specialized in many different kinds of curry and thier incredibly string tea that they called Kaiyiber and Asturian cuisine consisted mostly of artfully prepared fish in a variety of subtle dishes (the closest earth food I could compare it to would probably be French gourmet), Draconians seemed to prefer pasta. Their noodles were thicker than I was accustomed to and had been fried lightly before they were added to whatever sauce that the Draconians made for them but they were quite good.

After Allen and Folken had bound Dilandau up in so many ropes he looked like a mummy they carried the struggling, cursing, screaming boy in to eat breakfast with the rest of us, plunking ungently nearby and tieing him further to a chair. The ubiquitous attendants to the temple in their white and blue robes laid out a full breakfast for me and all of my friends on the table in the public room of what must have been the guest lodge.

"Now that the problem with Celena is taken care of," I said seriously over breakfast in the guest suite where we were staying.

"For the most part anyway," I amended as Dilandau growled and tried to gnaw his way through the ropes that Allen and Folken had bound him up in. He snapped at poor Celena as she graciously tried to spoon feed him a little something, the sweet girl was utterly convinced that the reason he was so grumpy right then was just that he was hungry. Yeah, right.

I decided that I nice walk around the place would do me some good, clear my head a bit. I knew I could use my powers reliably now and in a far different way than I had ever imagined in my wildest dreams; who would have thought that I'd have the ability to manipulate lines and points of energy? It still amazed me but it was a fact. Despite the feeling of utter wellness that I'd had yesterday today was a new day and it occured to me to start feeling a little weird about my strange powers. It also occured to me to start feeling even weirder about the mission I was about to be sent on.

Am I really up to this? I wondered. Merely being powerful wasn't enough, I'd have to be smart, determined, heroic and who knew what else. I'd have to be things that I didn't know how to be. I wasn't any of those things, not really. I was scared. I'd accepted this mission but all I really wanted to do deep down was go back home, climb into my bed, pull the covers over my head and hope the world didn't notice me.

I stared down at my fidgeting hands.

I made my choice, I reminded myself. I've already accepted the responsibility of doing this task.

But oh it seemed so big, and all that great shadowy unknown future seemed to loom so frighteningly at me. Maybe I wasn't up to this after all. But if I wasn't up to it... then who would do it?

"The heart is indeed a wonderous thing," a kind, elderly voice said off to one side of me. "The power of Atlantis is the power of the heart you know. All of the energy, crystlized will."

"So I've heard," I replied.

"I will tell you a great secret," Lagusu said, sitting down on the stone bench beside me. "It is not just the Atlantians that have the power to change the world through human will; everyone does. We do it every day. With every action, with every choice, we leave the world a little different than we found it. Better sometimes, or worse, depending... but different. We change each other too, love them, fear them, pressure them, heal them. That's also part of the power of the heart. Just imagine Hitomi, why there could be power within a single soul to, well, change the whole universe! And that may just be the greatest secret of all."

"I don't have a very strong heart," I said. "I rely too much on Van. I don't feel easy or confident without him there."

"That's only to be expected. No-one is meant to stand alone after all. The greatest souls in history never triumph all by themselves. The universe understands this and provides for it."

"Huh?" I asked, intelligently.

"The human heart can be as fragile as it can be strong. It can stand against the worst that the world can throw at it without flinching when it's true or shatter at a touch when it's reached its limit. The heart can be easily swayed by danger and uncertainty. That's when we find other souls to help us remain strong in the face of our fears."

"I have someone I seek when I'm worried, but he has enough to worry about right now and I don't want to give him too much."

"Him is it?" Lagusu said. He looked long and meditavely at me. "You share a... conection with this person?"

"We understand each others hearts like no other; and our feelings always reach each other."

His eyebrows raised nearly to his hairline. It was a long pause when he finally said

"We Draconians believe that every soul has power in it, but that some souls are born with a special force, a gravity for great events if you will. They're often at the nexus of great change, they have a sort of force that events seem to naturally unfold around. We call it Ashu Kreshtona: the Force of Destiny. It's as if they can take the threads of fate a re-weave the fabric of future history all through the power of their hearts. We believe that universe bears them into the places where they can do the greatest good; if they so choose. Though they may be placed in the position they are most needed for at the time, they are still mortal and their hearts are as easily swayed by danger and uncertainty as the next. We Draconians believe that the ashu kreshtona are born with a sort of fail-safe a way to keep their hearts strong and pure in the face of the great troubles, fears, and responsibility that being so special will demand of them."

"A fail-safe?" I asked. "What kind of fail-safe?"

"The comfort of one soul in the world finding its perfect complement in another such," Lagusu said, peering at me intently. "A sacred and holy bond created by the universe itself to entwine two threads of greatness together to make a stronger whole."

"I don't quite..." I trailed off.

"You know that Varie came from this Enclave," he said, in an abrupt change of topic. One minute we had been talking about the very fabric of existence and the next... the dead draconian queen, Van's mother.

"I should have guessed," I said. "The lake's right near here."

"Varie was the most powerfully Gifted of the Draconians that our kind had seen in three generations," Lagusu said in his maundering sort of way. "She could see the pathways of energy, see the Elementals, as well as command them. She had a very special relationship with Ougura too. She was the pride of our Enclave and we all knew she was destined for greatness."

"You must have been most upset when she left," I said.

"We knew that one day she would," Lagusu replied. "It was prophesied on the day that she was born that when she had reached four and twenty years as the Mystic Moon and its younger sibling rose over the western mountains; she would go to that lake and meet..."

"The one she was destined for," I finished for him. "I saw that in a vision once when I touched Van's---ergh, nevermind." I cut myself off in an effort to salvage Van's secret; he probably wouldn't thank me for bringing up the knowledge of his being a draconian and blabbing it to all and sundry in normal conversation.

"Feather," Lagusu replied imperturbably. "Or his wings. Either one."

"How do you know about that?" I asked. As far as I knew, the knowledge that Van was a Draconian was strictly hush-hush.

"How could we not?" Lagusu said with easy humor. "It wasn't exactly a state secret that his mother was Draconian, and if he was really fortunate, he would inherit the wings from her."

"My head hurts," I said. "And I still don't get it, why tell me all of this?"

"Because Lady Varie's prophesy did not stop there," Lagusu said.

"There's more?" I questioned.

"Oh indeed, much more," Lagusu agreed. "Twenty years of peace, would follow the Joining of the Ashu threads. At the time of the new Dragon King's ascenscion, the force of destiny would move. It would block the hand that reached forth to consume all of Gaea, the hand that came from the moon but sprouted fingers of this world."

"I understand that last part, it was talking about Dornkirk," I said, puzzling my way through it. "That probably wouldn't make sense unless you actually knew that he'd come from Earth though. But it was definitely talking about the Zaibach Empire."

"Yes," Lagusu said. "The prophesy spoke of Varies thread. Goau was her Soul-bonded Mate. Their threads entwined at their inception to give them the strength to become a force of destiny in the fullness of time."

"But they just settled down and had children," I argued skeptically. "Aren't forces of destiny supposed to be a little more proactive?"

"But you forget child, at this time there was another who meddled in the forces of destiny, another who sought to make the power of the Ashu Keshtona come to him and act upon his will."

"Dornkirk and his fate experiments," I said, with a sinking feeling in my gut. He nodded in the manner of a teacher whose student had made the connection.

"His experiments warped the threads in fates tapestry as we have seen with dear Celena," he continued. "They affected more than the individual in question, they created holes in fate's designs, holes that rippled out to all of the other threads having unforeseen reactions. One of these reactions nearly ruined the design completely and certainly interfered with the way the prophesy was supposed to fall into place."

"How?" I asked. "How was it supposed to fall into place?"

"King Goau was supposed to have lived for the remainder of the twenty years, for one," Lagusu said regretfully. "Varie's soul bonded mate was never supposed to have died. The two of them were to be the ones to defeat the Empire when their son, Folken, took the throne. Dornkirks mucking about with fate cut his thread short leaving Varie without the piece to complete her place in the prophesy."

"She grieved," I said sadly. "I can't imagine what its like to loose a piece of your soul forever."

"At the time," Lagusu continued after a small pause for respect for the departed. "We decided that perhaps we had mis-read the prophesy; the optimistic thought occurred to us that perhaps the Joining of the Ashu threads in Varie and Goau was for the purpose of creating a new ashu thread and that that would be the one to defeat the Empire before it could overrun our world. We decided that Folken Fanel was the one to fulfill the prophesy after he ascended to the throne."

"Folken never ascended to the throne, It was Van who-" I started.

"The tapestry of fates design was greatly warped by Dornkirks interference," he explained gently. "We believe that the former emperor interfered directly this time with the prophesy by deliberately swaying Folken to their side in order to avert their own demise."

"It fits, and it sounds like something he'd do," I muttered darkly.

"After his disappearance, Varie searched desperately for her missing son, not just for her own sake but for the sake of Gaea's future. We believed at the time that only Folken would be the Dragon King to ascend the throne and halt the darkness."

"And then...?" I questioned.

"Fate had to work very quickly I imagine," Lagusu said, his eyes twinkling with amusement. "There were no other Draconians of the appropriate power to reverse the effects of Dornkirks machine so we had no choice but to sit back and watch and wait to see what happened. Time passed and in that time the last potential Dragon King prepared to ascend the throne. Imagine our surprise when we felt Fate act."

"He was brought to me, and I was brought here," I said.

"And that... was the beginning of it."

"So you think I'm one of those special souls, that Ashy Fleshtoner," I said, not entirely certain I liked the sound of it. All this being jerked around by some cosmic puppet-master toying with my strings didn't set well with me.

"My dear, there is not a doubt in my mind of it," Lagusu assured me emphatically.

"And you think that Van and I are Soul-bonded Mates," I said.

"Do you not sense it for yourself?" He said, sounding surprised. "You feel him in every breath you take, sense his heart within yours, feel his thoughts in the distant corners of your mind."

"Only when I'm not paying attention," I grumbled. "For the most part I figure that it's better to try to keep the two of us separate, seeing as we live on two separate worlds."

"You feel the empty place that he is supposed to fill," Lagusu said.

"Look bub, that's private. There won't be any filling for quite a while yet!" I snapped.

He merely looked at me as if I had missed the point. I probably had.