Sealed Fates
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A/N: Yeaah... kinda mad at this chapter... had to re-write the whole darned thing 'cause it doesn't like making sense... :grumble grumble:: But now it does and everything is planned out:D
Welp, I think this is where I say "Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Happy Kwanzaa and so on. Happy Holidays!" Don't expect any updates until 2007... unless it's something like Sheelos Fluff... or Like Father, Like Son. 2007 will be... hectic.
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A flock of ravens gathered in an irregular meeting spot located in the middle of a forest. They perched themselves on the branches supplied by the thick vegetation and silently observed their prey with eagerness in their eyes and a hunger in their bellies—yet they moved not an inch. They were not ones to kill their own food, but rather scavengers—puppeteers of those around them.
The breeze spun into a cold rush of wind as the ravens continued their soundless surveillance. A few unfurled their feathery cloaks as the draft chilled their frames; individually, each shook itself as to re-furl and tighten their veils of down, some shedding a single black feather as they did so. All watched with vigilant beady eyes as the feathers gently wafted down from the trees; eight feathers placed by fate upon the eight souls, sound asleep and so blissfully unaware as time only tightened their strings to the finger and whim of the puppeteer.
One such feather landed softly below the nose of Tethe'alla's former Chosen, and as he inhaled he felt the greasy, smooth hairs dance over his skin—but not in the way any quiescent person would like.
His sub-conscious awoke; he sniffed, then, "Ah-chit!"
Kaw! Ka-kaaw... kaaw... kaaw... cried the ravens as they flew away in a chaotic shadow below the morning sky. Zelos looked up just to catch the last of the stragglers hurried on their way. He had only time to blink at the strange phenomenon before he heard the Chosen opposite him mumbled (in her sleep), "...G'Bless you..."
Colette garbled something else before sighing and snuggling into the nook of her shoulder and arm as she lay awkwardly on her side.
Zelos frowned slightly to himself—seriously, how many manners could someone imbed in their child without the poor thing exploding?
Wait, why was he worrying about such a frivolous matter? He had no clue where he was, or more importantly, why everyone was sleeping on the ground in such uncomfortable looking positions. The last thing he remembered was traveling through the portal... but then what?
"Colette," he hissed. "Colette, wake up!"
The Turbo-Waitress did not budge.
Zelos crawled over to where she lay, a bit annoyed, and gently shook her shoulder. "Colette, wake up." He said firmly.
She tilted her head groggily so one blue eye peeked out from the darkness. She closed it and pushed herself slowly into a sitting position. "Zelos?" she yawned, stretching her arms. "Good morning..."
He skipped the formalities—even the opportunities to make any sort of flirtatious comments—and got straight to the point. "Do you know what happened?"
Still a bit drowsy, she mumbled to herself, "Something happened; I know that much..." she shook her head and spoke up, "Let's see, well... we met you at the Mana Tree, then went back to your mansion to talk about what was going on. You went up to the balcony with Sheena to talk about something, and a few minutes later you came flying through your own front door, so we followed you two—I think you were chasing Sheena, maybe?—into this forest where we saw you and Sheena and Lloyd fighting... kinda. Lloyd said you had been possessed or something, then he said something and put us to sleep aand..." she clapped her hands together in conclusion, smiling. "...Here we are!"
Nothing she explained jogged his memory, irritating him to no end. If only to add to his frustration, he faintly remembered being told something important regarding a day in the future (possibly today, depending on how much time had really elapsed). Whatever it was, he had no idea other than the fact that it was dire.
"...Let's get everyone else up." He stated, getting to his feet.
Colette gave a small thumbs-up, "Okay." then proceeded to lightly shake Genis and the Professor, reciting, "Wake-y, wake-y!"
Subconsciously, the younger half-elf slapped away Colette's hand and rolled over in protest, grumbling. Raine opened one eye. "...Colette?" she muttered, opening both eyes. "What... what time is it?"
"It's mid-morning, I'd say." Zelos answered monotonously. "I'll get everyone else up..."
Shocked, she scrambled to her knees. "That late!?" she exclaimed. "Yes, get everyone awake, we have a lot to discuss!"
Colette nodded in agreement as she, again, attempted the daunting task of awaking the young half-elf—he had a short temper when grouchy, did not like being awakened, and could control mana to a frightening degree at will.
She moved his kendama far out of his reach and proceeded.
A few minutes later, with the others awake and alert, Raine began their symposium by stating the obvious. "We need to know what exactly is transpiring before we can take any more actions. We don't have much time to talk, so we have to make things brief, but informative. Let's start with the basics," she suggested. "Did anyone have any direct encounters, eye-witness reports...?"
Kratos spoke up. "I've had both; I encountered Lloyd earlier at the Mana Tree and a creature akin to whatever Lloyd's becoming."
Thoroughly intrigued, Raine inquired, "Could you recall your encounter with Lloyd?"
The seraph nodded, "Noishe was the one who first found him, however, it seemed Lloyd didn't want to be found as he sent back Noishe with some sort of acidic like substance covering his face. Aft—"
"Lloyd attacked Noishe?!" Colette nearly shrieked, her eyes wider than humanly possible as she gripped the protozoan.
"Yes," he responded calmly, going on: "After which, he avoided my questions, but didn't try to flee immediately. What he did say, however, is that he's still fighting for this world, but in a different way."
"We cannot trust that statement completely." Presea puts in, then adding quickly. "Go on, I apologize for interrupting."
As much as Kratos disliked it, he had to agree with her observation. "No, you're right. We can only judge his intentions by looking at his actions—not his words. Which leads me to say he never took the opportunity to strike the entire time."
"So you fought him," Raine said, making an inference.
"I did, but I realize now it was not the smartest choice." Kratos admitted. "Regardless, there's another point I want to make clear.
"I managed to get a few clean hits on him, which had an effect just like it would any other time. When I encountered the creature, on the other hand, any kind of attack—both physical and mana based—gave minimal to no damage at all... mostly the latter." He paused, deciding to tweak his story a bit. "With no other choice, I tried to escape into a nearby thickly wooded area seeing as the creature was fairly large and couldn't navigate to safe its life. Inside, a rancid stench filled the entire area and I had the fortune to stumble upon the source. It was a corpse of a smaller animal just like the one I was fighting, so I bathed my spare sword in its blood and tried once more."
"And you were successful?" Regal implied.
Raine put on a pretense of total comprehension with the information given, while really she was still a bit in the dark. She didn't put up the façade in order to save her dignity, but rather she knew there was a falsehood within Kratos' story that prevented her from piecing together that which Lloyd purposely left out. According to the plan the young swordsman had told her of, there was no way a being of the Other could simply be laying dead in the middle of a thicket.
But as they had all agreed, actions spoke louder than words. For the first time since this escapade had begun, she felt her heart twinge ever so slightly with a feeling of true betrayal.
She realized that it had grown a bit silent, so she spoke up to reinitiate their session. "If nothing else, that gives us one bit of information: a way to defeat them. It's a good start, but if we could get some more background on this, it'd help us much more. Anyone?"
Colette hesitated slightly before raising her hand, a custom she had never quite let go of. "I remember," she started, "before Lloyd starting acting any differently, occasionally complained about having constant headaches."
"Probably thinking induced." Genis snickered to himself.
Ignoring her brother's comment, Raine replied, "That's a good start. Do you have any ideas why that might be?"
She paused to think, then shook her head.
Mostly putting the pieces together of what he had missed, Zelos mumbled distantly, "Maybe some sorta radiation got to him..."
"Radiation?" Presea repeated in a puzzled tone.
"Like from space?" Regal followed up.
It was then that a real conversation sparked between them... and contrary to her interested look, Raine was none too happy about it. She secretly shot him an irritated glare out of the corner of her eye before she stated loudly, "From space? That's absurd!"
"Not necessarily," the Duke countered, saying, "What's absurd is thinking that any specie from this planet could evolve so fast that it would become immune to all forms of attack that we know of."
Genis backed him up by adding, "And even if it wasn't an evolution completely, but rather a genetic flaw, then the flaw couldn't be successfully passed on to the next generation of that creature which would mean that Kratos had killed the only one—which obviously isn't the case."
Colette agreed. "And above all, it wouldn't give any sort of explanation as to why Lloyd is the way he is!"
Raine had intended on letting a little bit of the truth slip in this conference, but she was starting to fear that they were coming too close to the truth. They had to be averted somehow. "But... K-Kratos—" she started erratically, regaining her composure once everyone had quieted down to a degree. "When you were on Derris-Kharlan, you told us yourself that you had observed some odd changes in the planet; so that means that you were in a fairly close orbit of some sort and could've seen if there were any of this 'invaders', correct?"
The seraph gave it a moment of thought before replying. "...That is true. The Core system didn't record any unusual disturbances around the atmosphere..." he admitted, "But that doesn't exclude the other world; there's no way to monitor that,"
"What do you mean, 'the other world'?" asked Colette, full of wonder.
"He means Hell, or the Spirit World; basically where Nebilium and the Tomegathericon came from." Genius supplied.
"Ooh."
Raine all but blanched as they went on. They had hit the nail on the head and there was nothing she could do to steer them away from the truth. From there, the conversation skyrocketed with varying guesses and theories as it seemed like everyone was talking at once while Raine was desperately trying to think of something to say.
Unbeknownst to those in the continuing banter, Zelos glanced over at Sheena, noticing she had not made a single input the entire day. "Hey, why're you so quiet all of a sudden?" he paused, realization dawning on him. "It... it wasn't something I did last night, was it? I couldn't—"
"No, it's not that," she answered, slightly biting her bottom lip. "It's just... well, don't you have that bad omen feeling in the pit of your stomach? Like something bad is bound to happen anytime soon?"
"Thank goddess," he said, "I thought I was the only one."
Meanwhile, the Professor found that the way to lead them astray was through her own miscalculations: if she announced a theory then they'd surely believe her to some degree, after all, she was one of the smarter people in their group, so naturally they'd believe her, right?
"Quiet, quiet!" she proclaimed, "I think I know what's going on, and—no offense—but I think all that we've come up with, though it has it's speckles of truth, is completely and totally—"
"True."
All turned to see a figure cloaked in shadows step out from behind the darker regions of the woods. The females of the group startled for the most part as they recognized the figured. Scarcely.
Needless to say, it was Lloyd, but not the Lloyd they knew at all. His hair, an untamed memoir to his late mother, had turned the darkest of blacks and his eyes a fierce gold. The crimson marking that used to line him had taken over so much as to make what remained of his skin look like the abnormality. His clothes hung in shreds from every part of his body—the ends charred as if they had been set aflame. Dark circles had appeared beneath his once vibrant eyes.
He spoke in a low voice, scraggly but strong. "I'll tell you everything," He said, "I'll tell you what's going on and why this is happening; I'll tell you how we can still save this world... all I ask for in return...
"...Is your trust."