Though the fighting seemed so far away in my mind then, my heart was still racing as Kari and I tried to keep up with Judas and his inhuman stamina. Without attempting to argue thanks to our breathlessness, or mine better said, Kari and I followed Judas through randomly chosen hallways of pristine marble floors accented with baroque wall reliefs and soaring buttresses that held up the better part of the building's weight while giving the corridors an airy, vast feel. If it weren't so dark and gloomy, and I hadn't had the feeling of impending doom at every shadow that seemed to move, I would have considered the settings almost romantic.
Judas jerked his head around and dug a heel in, stopping abruptly. My heart jumped, thinking that he had caught wind of a pursuer. Though my senses are sharp, I had a feeling that Judas' were sharper still. This wouldn't have been the first time he felt something where I didn't.
When he thrust his hands out at an upward angle, that was my signal to drop and let the smooth stone floor carry my body past Judas in a slide. Kari did the same with a crash thanks to his armor.
"Dam Brass!" Judas shouted. Looking back, I saw the trail of red light leaving his joined hands in the direction whence we came. But instead of hitting some monstrosity born of the pit like I had imagined, the beam ended at the center of one of the hall's arches. Said arch proceeded to explode outward from where the spell had struck as if some powerful bubble of force had been blown inside the stone. A few pebbles fell from the spherical impression, and then the whole ceiling, or just about, came down and blocked the hall off.
"What the—?" The noise flushed out whatever expletive I'd inserted at the end. I was so startled that I didn't even remember.
"No time; let's keep moving," Judas interrupted me with his grim, hastened tone. With a shrug, Kari gripped my unprotected hand and dragged me to my feet. If this were any other day under any other situation, I would have hit them both with a Burst Rondo for hauling me around like dead weight. But I knew that it wasn't like any other day.
A few more ornate halls later, Judas deemed it safe enough to slow down to a quick walk. Grateful for the change in pace but still irritated, I strode up to Judas' side and almost punched his shoulder, rethinking it when I remembered that it would hurt me more than it would him.
"People say I wreck a lot of buildings, but at least I don't do it on purpose. What was that about?" I spurted between coughs towards our gray-skinned friend. With his style of looking particularly unimpressed all the time, Judas glanced casually in my general direction before speaking with a bladed tone.
"I'm blocking off their route," he growled resolutely. "Even if it doesn't stop them, it will at least slow them down."
"Fine," I muttered after a moment, "but you've probably trapped us now."
"That may be so..."
"But I think it's better than being dead, don't you?" Kari inserted a bit of his chipper, simpleton logic.
Of course it's better than being dead, you simple... simpering... SIMPLETON.
"We have to meet back up with King Phil and the others," I stated with the full knowledge that it was an obvious fact. "But where should we go? For all we know, the place is crawling with unfriendlies by now." Though I didn't sense any immediate danger, I figured by this point that the alarm had been sounded and there were patrols being dispatched as we speak. Of course, with the state of chaos that we'd created, it would make them have to work to get to us.
But, that didn't help my unease. Though it was natural to be nervous in a situation like this, what I was experiencing was more like the nausea that I felt whenever Dragomir was in the vicinity. What was causing it? Some sickening, gaunt feeling in the depths of my gut told me that I would discover it before I was ready.
When the three of us went quiet in favor of silent contemplation, someone's stomach let out a loud growl.
"... What?" I spoke up with a jocular voice, "The stale bread wasn't good enough for you?"
Judas and Kari glanced to each other.
"What?"
"Eh?"
"... You know. Your stomach's growling? It was a joke?"
"... Your jokes aren't very funny, Rina."
"Oh! I get it! Hahaha!"
Grrrrooooowl...
The three of us stopped cold.
Now, none of the palace braziers were lit, so it was very dark beyond a certain point of where we stood. We decided to rely on our natural night vision in lieu of a lighting spell in case there were any guards in the area. Naturally, we wanted to save our energy after we realized the kind of power that Dragomir freely wielded. We would need every ounce, every gram of our power in the inevitably destined final battle with him. I knew it was gonna be difficult and something I'm completely not used to. He cut my Dragon Slave like a dragon steak, and that, being my most powerful spell, alone instilled a certain sense of fear and caution in my mind that already gave him an advantage. Could he also deflect it back towards me? They were uncertainties like this, doubt, that were going to hold me back.
If I die fighting Dragomir, I don't want it to be because I gave him the ammo to kill me with.
Judas and Kari drew their swords. I took a step back in the event that a melee ensued within the second, but instead the silence grew oppressive. Something I could sense was making me wish there had been a brawl; I had a feeling that something worse than a gaggle of ironheads was ahead.
The corridor began to feel smaller, the air more compact. A humid quality suddenly seemed to grip the room's atmosphere. I noticed then that the patterned floor seemed to distort at a certain, horizontally straight line. My studies on sorcery and monsters suddenly shot through my mind like a premonition, and I instinctively grabbed Judas and Kari's sleeves.
"Get back! NOW! There's a giant ooze in front of us!"
In their startled confusion, I pulled them back and threw a hand out, a spell following.
"Diem Wing!" The blast of wind stopped me from going any further, instead pushing me back. In order for that to have happened, there must have been a wall — or something else — for the spell to bounce off of. Landing backwards in a skid, I took a few steps back with the momentum as Judas activated a Lighting spell. Kari angled his sword towards the gargantuan ooze that appeared before us and tensed his muscles. I could tell from the look in his eyes that he was about to charge, which was a very bad thing to do against a giant ooze.
Oozes are very unusual creatures that defy explanation at a certain point in studying them. They are usually encountered in deep caves and subterranean dungeons, but they were usually rare and not bigger than a horse. This one in front of us was gigantic; it was easily a hunk of puke green gelatin the size of a house. Its lurching mass did an excellent job of plugging up any way of bypassing it.
Kari took a step back, and as the force in his legs exploded, I put a foot out to trip him. Instead, he bounded over my sabotage attempt, both filling me with panic and rage at the same time.
"NO, YOU IDIOT!" I screamed.
SLURRSCH!
A sound that made me feel filthy simply by hearing it emanated from the translucent wall in front of us as Kari struck a normally fatal blow with his greatsword. But the confident smirk faded from Kari's face when he felt himself being pulled forward by his blade.
"What?" Judas gasped.
"Let it go, Kari!" I shouted.
"But—!"
The sword was suddenly jerked in, but Kari let go just before he, too, was yanked in. As we watched, Kari's sword rusted before our eyes inside the beastly goo. I knew from reading that this was the monster digesting the material it took in. In fact, more grisly remains were still suspended inside the monster's form. There were bones, bleached white, surrealistically hanging within the gelatinous creature. Whether they were human or animal bones, I didn't want to get close enough to find out.
Weaponless, Kari returned to us and clung to one of my mantle's shattered pauldrons.
"Wh-what is that thing?"
"An obstacle," Judas stated plainly.
"Thanks for the observation," I growled. "It's an ooze, Kari. These things wander the corridors of underground dungeons grabbing whatever is in their way and 'eating' them. The truly sick and wrong people of this world catch them and set them loose in their own little mazes for fun. Others use them as a form of security."
"Thanks for the biology lesson," Kari said with false graciousness, "but could we do something about it now?"
"Bram Blazer!"
The blue wave of light that shot from Judas' hands collided violently with the ooze, making it jiggle and shake for a moment, but then it kept advancing on us even afterwards.
"You idiot!" I yelled at Judas. "You're using an astral spell — an element that attacks the mind — on a creature without one!"
Judas gave me this irritated look in the seconds following, but he sighed and, instead of throwing a counter-argument at me, spoke just one too-familiar word:
"Run."
Without argument, we took off in the opposite direction. But we made it only maybe five steps before I heard a foreboding squishy THUD in the darkness beyond what used to lay behind us.
"... You've got to be kidding me!" I yelled. With a gesture, Judas confirmed another ooze coming down the corridor to sandwich us between the first one. Turning our backs to each other and sticking close, Kari muttered, "Any more bright ideas?"
... That's it!
A solution in my head, I stepped out to the ooze that was closest, the one that had appeared first. Kari and Judas followed closely, probably for the want of someone with a clue. With practiced ease, I chanted off a fire invocation and created a brilliant fireball over my upheld right hand.
"This is where it gets nasty!" I yelled, and then I threw the fireball at the center of the ooze with as much force as I had in my tired arm. The fireball hadn't even hit the creature before a loud hissing emanated from its amorphous flesh, and a rank odor quickly filled the room just before the fireball exploded at the rough center of the monster's anatomy at my command of Break. In a flash of light, the ooze was vaporized without a trace. Only the bones, now charred, and what remained of Kari's heavily corroded sword laid on the ground.
"W-what did you do?" Judas stuttered in awe.
"It was slightly obvious," I started as we began to trot in our original direction, "but I have to admit that it didn't occur to me, either, until after Kari proposed a bright idea.
"Y'see, these monsters live underground because the heat of daylight is utterly deadly to them. Even in arctic climates, the sun is up at least part of the day. Their bodies do a marvelous job of holding heat, you see, and that makes them slowly evaporate. There's something about how they're made that makes them turn into that funky vapor that's now haunting our noses when they're exposed to too much heat. I sped the process up with my super-hot fireball."
I smiled childishly, which didn't amuse Judas, but Kari gave me an approving pat on the head before we started to run again. We didn't waste our time with the second one; I guess we all silently agreed that it would play an obstacle to our enemies if they were chasing us. Well, at least Judas must have thought the same thing. Kari is not so quick to catch on.
It's observations like that that made me doubt any kinship to him whatsoever.
After only a few more minutes of running, Judas seemed to get his bearings back. As we ran by a few corridors, he would point out the details and utter a word that classified the halls.
"Dining.
"Ballroom.
"Kitchen.
"Servant's Quarters."
"Yeah, okay," I huffed at the last one. "So where is the King and his family?"
Snarling, Judas replied, "Well don't expect me to know..."
"I thought you were an excellent planner at first, Judas, but now I see that you're a wishy-washy, fly-by-your-pants suicido...maniac! Why didn't you tell me earlier?"
"Because then you'd just have flipped out earlier, my scrawny friend."
"SCRAWNY?"
"Mr. Judas and Miss Rina! Control your voices!"
The three of us looked up at the familiar but unseen voice that just chastised Judas and me. Hidden in the shadows of the hallway was a figure wrapped in white robes. At first it looked like one of the many faces and figures carved upon the decadent relief lining the palace's interior, but as it moved I could tell that it was Emilia.
"Princess?" Judas puzzled. Kari shrugged as if he wasn't sure about the answer, but the heavy and graceless landing punctuated the identity of the cloaked figure that had caught us in the hall. It was Emilia without a doubt.
CRASH.
Kari, Judas and I winced in concert. As Emilia stood up, dusting herself off with her left hand and practically resetting her arm socket afterward, she gave us a blank smile and a perky salute.
"I'm so glad to see that you're all okay!"
"Okay is relative..." Judas sighed. When Emilia produced a candle-dim Lighting spell, she raised her free hand to her mouth at the sight of Kari and me. It's not like we were horribly disfigured or anything, but I'm sure we would have looked better than this if we had been involved in an avalanche and an earthquake. At the same time, I think Emilia was just shocked because, from the looks of it, her party had had smooth sailing.
"What—"
"Not now," I interrupted with a grunt. "Hurry and lead us to where you guys are hiding out. I can explain what happened along the way."
As Emilia led us through the glassy halls of her home, I recounted what had happened to us when we followed in through the trap door. I explained that Dragomir jumped us in the throne room and that the fight didn't go so well for us. Kari was without a weapon, I was without a weapon and without wards now, and the two of us were beaten to a near-pulp. Only Judas was in any condition to put up an offensive now, and he likely couldn't fight an enemy of Dragomir's caliber on his own. I decided that giving grim news about Dragomir's apparent invincibility to Emilia now was better than waiting for her to find out on her own, so I did.
At about the time I told her that Dragomir had resisted a full-on Ra Tilt, she pushed the nondescript door of a seemingly random chamber open. A web of white light shot through the frame and formed a strange barrier where the door used to be.
"Hold onto me," Emilia stated in an oddly firm tone. She gave us no reason to doubt her, so the three of us took hold of her hands as she stepped through the portal.
When the glare from the light subsided and my eyes adjusted to the evenly lit, modestly furnished room we had arrived in, I noted the rest of the royals making council on a treasure chest sealed with the Royal Crest of Saillune. They turned their eyes towards us with a slight bit of hostility in them, that which panned away when they identified their visitors. Felicia had the sharpest response to our appearance, jumping up with a gasp and almost gliding over to Kari and me. As if she were my mother, she fretted over the menagerie of injuries I had sustained.
"Lord Laguladia..." she hushed, brushing aside some of my hair. I was annoyed somewhat, but I felt a strange longing for this kind of attention from someone. It could have been that I was missing my own mother back home in Zefielia. It could have been that I was actually afraid of the situation I had been thrust into and simply wanted someone to protect me, even if I knew that I was probably the most capable one with sorcery here.
Emotions are weird.
I batted Felicia's hand softly and shook my head. "Eh, all this is nothing, Felicia. Trust me," I said with a catty smile, "I've had worse bike accidents than this."
Cocking her head with a worried brow, she sighed through her nose and turned to Kari. Stepping past her, I glanced over to Phil and Emilio. Their faces were ashen and grave. As I met his eyes, Emilio shook his head.
"Dragomir took the Icon with him," he lamented. "I shouldn't have been so naive as to believe that he would leave it unprotected for an instant."
Judas eyes flashed. I caught his expression growing dark from the corner of my eye as he stepped forward.
"So," the swordsman canted. He paused, then continued, "So you're saying we're stuck here now? Without a reason?"
"So it seems... for now, anyway."
I eyed Judas cautiously. I saw his teeth bare before he turned himself away from the silent King and his son with frustrated deliberation. He wasn't telling us something; I could sense it. But before I could construct any sort of interrogation scheme, Emilia interluded.
"We can still escape..."
"And leave Saillune to whatever Dragomir wants?" Felicia remarked with unusual anger in her voice from where she was tending to Kari. Emilia jumped with a start, and then her expression dimmed like a smothered candle. Her face explained everything; Emilia's heart ached with the notion that she had even thought about abandoning Saillune to a despotic clergyman. Sheepishly walking by me, Emilia took her place beside her father, who put a huge hand on her head as if to console her.
"We will think of something!" Phil determined in his louder-than-rational boom. "By the Gods, we have plenty of time to recuperate here."
"Just where is 'here,' anyway?" I asked. Phil, turning on his bum, was more than happy to oblige, from his expression.
"'Here' just so happens to be the Mausoleum of Saillune. Or the gateway, that is."
Gateway seemed more accurate. The whole room wasn't very big; it was about the size of a typical parlor in a townhouse. The room was fairly dark, but the walls were lined with paintings of monarchs from ages past. The heritage of the current family was easy to see through the lifelike depictions. Across from where we entered was a wooden double door set in an arch styled like swirling clouds, the crest of the royal family set at the apex of the portal.
The sensation of a new presence in the room hit me like a brick. I jerked my head up in time to see that everyone else had done the same thing. At the point where our visions converged stood a smiling priest. The imminent danger that I saw in the smile faded away when I realized that this man was not Dragomir, but rather the priest that had intervened in our fight with him. Holding his gnarled staff perpendicular to his black-cloaked body, the violet haired traveler took a step forward and bowed.
"Ah, hello," he greeted in the most friendly voice anyone could possibly muster. "I apologize for our hasty introduction back in the main hall. Business is murder, as you may say."
For some reason, the way he said the joke was just wrong. It was chilling in a sense, almost as if he meant it literally. No one, not even Kari, found it funny. Everyone went stern-faced and suspicious, and the strange man's black humor wasn't making it any easier on us.
"... Well," he spoke after an uneasy cough. "It seems I've struck the wrong chord. Allow me to make reparation for that." With practiced courtesy, the man bowed to us again.
"My name is Xelloss." The newly introduced priest darted the gaze of his dark, lively eyes between each of us, seeming to pierce our forced defenses and observe us in an almost exposing way. I swallowed the lump in my throat and stormed up to him, puffing my chest out.
"And I'm Rina Erris!" I yelled. Grabbing his collar alarmed Judas and Kari; they seemed to remember him fighting off Dragomir. But I felt no fear from this punk, and the way I had been jerked around by the clergy at that point, I wasn't feeling like being hospitable. "Now that we have the niceties out of the way," I hissed, "what the hell do you want with us!"
Keeping that smile on his face, Xelloss raised a finger and made a clicking sound with his tongue. "Why, I just wanted to help you out. That Dragomir fellow really gets under my skin, if you know what I mean, and I have a long-standing score to settle with hi—"
"Lies!" I shrieked. "Dragomir told us in one of his long-winded diatribes that a priest of YOUR description told him about the Grimoire Inverse, the Sword of Light, and how to retrieve them from Saillune when he was first traveling this place! So we know that you know more than you're letting on, freakshow!"
Judas placed his fingers against the temples of his head. Kari looked confused as ever, and Emilia was whispering something to Emilio, who looked just as bewildered as his twin sister. Distrust filled the latter two's eyes, and I wondered if I should have just killed the bastard in my hands to be safe.
I doubt it would be that easy.
Xelloss' expression melted to neutral after my shakedown, but a smile slowly rippled across his thin lips.
"It seems that you know more than I realized. Very well! I will tell you everything."