Sweey: See? You didn't have to wait long! Yay for consistency! I really wanted this chapter to be longer but I decided shorter meant sooner. So here you guys go. I hope it satisfies your curiosities!

Chapter 13: Bane of Despair

Rain gushed from the deadpan sky, causing murky dust to wallow in the thick air. The humid heat made even the sweat on Meta's back seem cool. He paused to rest, the heaving of his lungs providing him a barrier from his despair.

It was a sound.

It was his sound.

Pain ravished his body with each breath. Blood crept into his mask, pooling around his mouth, crippling his lungs. Crimson dyed the rain puddles he trod over. He turned to face the direction he had come to see he had left a red carpet streaming back to the bloody battlefield. It extended a blatant invitation to any stumbling demon.

He could not feel his fingertips. He could not feel the tips of his purple feet. The burns and incisions he had suffered from Wolfwrath had scathed his hide as well as his pride. He could not measure the amounts of honor he had lost walking away from that battlefield. He should have perished there. He should have stayed there with his friends and fought that demon to his last breath.

He lowered himself to the ground as an unshakable weakness crept over his body like clawed fingers. He saw a fallen tree wedged horizontally between two huge boulders. With hope in his eyes, he imagined the shelter it might provide. Rolling himself over, time and time again, he gradually felt the fall of raindrops cease. Fixing his gaze upon the tree's bark, he reached out and touched it. Would this be the last tree he would ever see? If he died here he surely would be forgotten, left to rot like an abandoned castle.

So far he had come. And yet there was still such a great stretch of distance ahead of him. If he perished here would his friends succeed? Restlessness began to overwhelm him. All the injustices he had witnessed began to stir life back into his flesh. His aching muscles groaned, gnashing their teeth at his nerves, defying his will to stand.

But Sir Meta Knight did stand.

He did walk.

He did live.

He smirked, laughing his confidence back into his lungs, shouting over the lurid thunderstorm that perverted the terrain around him. "Do you see this storm, Nightmare?! That is my breath! That is my wrath! Your recalcitrant creation still lives, hunting you to satisfy the injustices you have contrived! Let it keep you stirring through the night! Let it disturb your heart as this war has devastated mine!" He took off his mask, peering over it, "Be patient, old master… and do not despair, for when your eyes behold me again, I will send you back to your home in hell!"

He wiped the inside of his mask with his tattered cape and put it back on. Undesirably the heat and humidity caused the inside to fog. With the rain sweeping across the lens, he was forced to remove it entirely, carrying it as he limped along, drenched and burdened by his armor. He had to go on. He had a promise to keep.

Each footstep felt like it took an hour to place. The rain about him seemed to fall in slow motion. His life seemed as insignificant as a raindrop. But he had to press on.

Grimacing through the pain, he grinned. "Steady….. Steady Meta Knight…" He swayed a few times from the fatigue. Standing still for a moment provided a brief solution to the issue but his progress was infuriatingly slow. Scowling, he picked up his pace, managing to jog smoothly for a time until he reached the top of the next ridge. His breath almost left him when he saw the slightest glimmer of light through the haze.

With fresh confidence, he pursued that light with unwavering hope. He did not dare consider the possibility of being wrong, for once.

That risk had served him well. Two ghastly shapes of black gradually emerged into the figures of Garlude and Jecra. With great delight and equal alarm, his two comrades came to his aid, dragging him the last few feet over to their small encampment under a cliff.

Garlude wept openly, although somehow a smile still lit her pale face. "We thought you had surely fallen to that terrible monster! And then, after the volcano erupted, we lost all hope of ever seeing you again!"

Jecra began tending to the knight's wounds, his hands fumbling to treat the burns that littered his friend's body. "Glad to see you're okay, buddy. Really glad…" The concern on his face was as real as the rain. Meta Knight's wounds were serious. And neither Garlude nor Jecra were adequate medics, knowing only basic healing methods.

A faded, battered smile swept slowly across Meta Knight's face as he fell quickly into a death-like slumber.

The night that passed on Rock Star was terrifying, more so for the one who spent it alone.

Emit watched the clouds roll by, illuminated by the fire of the distant volcano. He witnessed the storm lash its serpent tongues to touch the mountaintops as the wind hissed a constant, eerie warning. With a soft curse, he decided to lay low until the storm passed, hoping he would not be too weak when that time came.

His heart swelled painfully in his chest. The despair that he felt there was worse than the pain of a friend's betrayal. To witness the untimely death of someone he had shared life with through so much laughter and torture was nearly as horrific as dying himself. He leaned forward, a groan rising to a scream as he cursed the mountains and the demons that haunted it for orchestrating the death of so many of those dear to him. Hatred caused his veins to rise. Fury lit his eyes awake. He was alert to the storm as if it were his enemy. This planet would grieve with him.

It was said that that valley remained cracked and dry, despite a wealth of vegetation in the surrounding mountains, eternally carrying the guilt of the warrior who cursed it, marking a wide grave for his fallen friend, Venton.

Galacta roared, thrashing down one of the abandoned tents that his army had once dwelt within. His body trembled with his ragged breaths as he stood over the defeated canvas tent. His hands shook and his eyes were wide, savage, and treacherous.

The camp was desolate. His entire army of demons had been smothered by the volcano. Their adversary, however, had limped away. Galacta fumed inside, his soul turning over itself and spewed with hatred. His righteous goal had been desecrated by the very planet.

He threw a spiteful scowl to the fiery peak of the volcano. The scene reflected his heart.

The two ninja in his company watched him in silence, standing a respectable distance from the irate knight, putting forth great effort to stay detached from the situation.

Galacta's composure shifted. He was suddenly quite calm. He pivoted, shedding off his fierce glower. He placed Sir Arthur's mask back on his face and walked away briskly to his tent. He returned from it with a metal box. Setting it upon the ground, a bright green light shot forth from it, splitting through the smoke. A short while after, a ship came and landed, opening its ramp to them.

"Come on," Galacta motioned the two shinobi. "This was merely a minor setback."

Yamikage's eyes narrowed a little. It seemed to him that Galacta was one card short of a full deck.

As they entered the ship and set off to their destination, Efurd, Galacta let out a burst of laughter. Perhaps he was just trying to reduce his anxiety after losing in such a devastating fashion. Yamikage allowed a little smile, quite amused. Or perhaps Galacta was missing more than just one card.

Sir Arthur sat on the edge of a stone, staring after the valley of lava, miles in the distance. So many had died under his command. So many had perished to Nightmare's demons. And what had he done other than send them- nay- order them to their deaths? Their casualties included the protégé of the Star Table, Sir Meta Knight. A great loss for the G.S.A., indeed.

The rain riveted against his back, soaking through his cloak, hiding his tears. A general was only worth the honor his men bestowed upon him. Without people to lead he was nothing more than a common soldier- a common man. What would he tell the wives of the fallen? What could he say to make it hurt less? They would ask him if their father, their mother, brother, sister, whoever they were to them…. If they had made a difference in the tide of war.

Had they?

It seemed that time only existed to be wasted. However, his soldiers were not expendable. They were individuals with a home, with a family. They had souls, they had ideals and dreams. They had dreamed of a galaxy that was free of the terrible nightmares. They had dreamed their children would be free. They joined the Galaxy Soldier Army in hopes that dream would exist as a reality. And because of Arthur's own sloppy execution of this battle, as he saw it, they would never see that dream come to be.

Perhaps it never would be so. Perhaps the galaxy would be overwhelmed, swallowed up, by the monsters and terror of Nightmare's ploys. Perhaps their effort was all in vain. The G.S.A. was but the smallest splinter in the enemy's finger. For every man that fell, twenty demons took his place on the field of battle. Those soulless, foul creatures of the darkness, were despicable. It was as if their adversary was a black hole, warping everything in time and in space until it existed only to be quashed.

A weighty sigh passed through Sir Arthur's lungs. His eyes strained to see where they had fought. The scenarios of death replayed obsessively in his mind. He had to find his hope again. Surely somewhere in his heart there was a light. He had always told his soldiers to hold onto the light in their hearts, so why then could he not? If Sir Arthur lost hope, he knew his men would also.

He stood and turned to scan the soldiers huddled in the rain. Their faces were written harshly with despair. Many among them sobbed with anguish, their faces distorted with grief. Many who were wounded wailed beneath the storm clouds, flesh red with gore. Others were stone-faced, hardened by what they had witnessed. None of them had the will to eat nor the desire to sleep. Restlessness and fear caked them like the mud on their feet. Terror shook them like the cold. There was nothing in their eyes that blazed. His soldiers were defeated. They may as well have lost their lives to the demons.

Sir Arthur turned his head again, looking back to the burning mountain in the distance. He saw something moving up the hill and he readied his blade, narrowing his eyes, squeezing his attention to recognize who it was that approached. His eyes widened with astonishment as he raced down the hill, slipping and sliding on the mud. He managed to keep upright on his way down, rushing to help Jecra and Garlude as they carried their companion up the slick slope.

"MEDICS!" His voice boomed over the rain. Two of the medics rushed down the hill, joining the company at the scene.

Jecra handed them his shield and they lowered it to the ground, carefully placing the fallen knight onto it.

"He's got a terrible fever!" Garlude said, her voice raised so they could hear her over the rain. "The rain can't be helping!"

One of the medics nodded, "We'll take it from here!" They slid the shield bearing Meta up the hill. They shoved four spears into the ground around the wounded knight, borrowing another soldier's cape to style a makeshift tent. There were rows of such tents where medics hustled about their patients performing crude surgeries and emergency amputations.

Sir Arthur shook his head, looking then to Garlude and Jecra. "How did you find him?"

"He walked to us," Garlude said, "And collapsed at our feet."

"We've been tending to him since then." Jecra said, glancing over his shoulder. "But we knew he needed professional aid that we could not provide. His wounds are pretty awful."

"Yeah… There's a gash in his side as big as my hand. My bet is he lost a lot of blood."

"Well, good work you two." Sir Arthur smiled sadly, passing them. "You did well."

The two soldiers saluted, feeling pride surge in their hearts from their general's compliment. But worry for their friend still claimed their thoughts.

Arthur stood at his cliff once more, watching the mountain battle the sky. He had to find a way to pick the hearts of his army up again. It wouldn't be long that they would have to face their adversary again. And in this condition, they would be no match for it.

"Sir Arthur," Sir Dragato approached with an umbrella and bowed. "Thorn sent us a letter, sir."

"A letter? Where is he? Was he not on the field of battle?"

"He left to inform the others of our situation. To gain us reinforcements, sir."

"That is well. What does it say?"

"He said he found out where the key is. I am not sure what that means, sir."

"I do." He stepped under the umbrella and looked over the letter. His eyes lit up and he grinned. "Galaxia…. Her secrets have been found out. This is the best news I could have hoped for!"

"Sir?" Dragato blinked.

"We will reoccupy the Southern Base as soon as the wounded are fit for travel. We have a treasure to hunt!"

"Sir!" Dragato saluted, dashing off and shouting the order.

Sir Arthur smirked at the lightning, feeling fear drip off of his soul like the rain on his folded arms. The blow Nightmare had dealt was now merely a setback. The Galaxy Soldier Army would not fail!

Sweey: So now we're finally hitting some canon nails on the head now. Sir Arthur has found out Galaxia's location thanks to Thorn (wherever he and his shadow may be…). I'm really excited about the next chapter's topics but it may be a little bit before I get to them (not too long though). Remember, I'm still accepting OC's to make cameo appearances. For instance, Dragato's role in this chapter could have been played by somebody else's character. I want to give this story the vastness of variety that will help with the idea that this is a HUGE army, because it is. The more the merrier. If you're interested, put it in your review!

Please read and review! This is the fuel to my writing. I don't get paid to do this you know! Haha