After thinking about it for a while, I decided it would be better to post these next two chapters together. greyrondo

Disclaimer: I don't own Star Ocean!! I promise…

Chapter 21

"Helgrave!! You have to get up now," a voice he could have sworn was Lady Nel's insisted. "We're leaving for Arias. We have to get you out of here."

Helgrave blinked awake, and grumbled something insubstantial as Lady Nel shook his shoulders just to make sure he was truly waking up. "Lady Nel??" he murmured sleepily.

When he sat up and looked around, he became only more confused. It was bright morning, hours after the first meeting of the Circle of Voices would have begun. If he was not mistaken, Lady Nel—the only Zelpher remaining—should be there, not here.

"Lady Nel, with all due respect, what in Apris' name are you talking about?"

He stared blankly as Lady Nel breathed once for patience. "Your brother is missing. I suspect foul play. It's better to be safe than sorry; I would rather you not be in danger, Helgrave."

Helgrave was quiet. She had said his name softly. "Lady Nel…"

"There's no time for this now," she said hesitantly.

But despite that, Helgrave sat for a moment more in abstraction before the urgency of Nel's words finally struck him. "Wait, Albel's gone?"

Nel looked at him in disbelief. "Yes, Helgrave! That's why I'm getting you out of harm's way!!"

He stood up, but it wasn't to depart. He paced the small room as he said, "wait, Nel, you're overreacting… just because he's gone doesn't mean that something happened to him. Well," he amended, "actually it does mean something happened to him, but not like you think. He's probably just left or something…"

"Your Count Woltar's investigating his room at this moment; I daren't allow Crimson Blade to do so. If he did leave, he left the Crimson Scourge behind, Helgrave."

Helgrave took in a deep breath. "Wait, wait," he said as his hand shook, and gestured patience. "It doesn't necessarily mean any foul play. I know that sounds crazy, but…"

He had almost said 'but Albel's crazy'; he held his tongue. That was not something that easily left the family.

"Just let me go talk to Count Woltar. Five minutes, Nel, and I swear we'll decide on some course of action."

He had barely seen her waiting nod, as he swept out of the room into the next.

"Woltar," he said in the doorway. After a breath of thought, he closed it. No need for anyone to hear what may pass in their following conversation. "What's this that Nel—Lady Nel's claiming?"

The old count pulled himself from his kneeling position on the floorboards. The indiscriminate white cloth he had been examining was limp in his mottled hand. "It seems our young lord has pulled a disappearing act."

"We should have detained him," Helgrave sighed, defeated. "Like when Sieg died. We should have known he would have lost control like this."

Count Woltar nodded solemnly. "But that time, it was easy to save him from himself. It would be hard to pretend that he committed treason and lock him away again, this time. However, I discovered something that you will find curious. This," and he offered the strange scrap of fabric to Helgrave.

Helgrave frowned as he looked at it, rubbed it between his fingers, and then carefully brought it to his nose. A small inhalation, and he quickly pulled it away from his breath. "That's drugged," he said in astonishment as he handed the cloth back to Woltar.

"And look here," Woltar pointed to the floorboards.

Helgrave recognized the five telltale scars that ran perpendicular to the wood grain.

"I would take Crimson Blade's offer of protection and leave with Lady Nel as soon as you depart my presence."

Helgrave looked at him blankly. "What about you?"

The Count laughed. "I have no Sylphide blood, boy. You think I'm a threat to these Aquarian madmen? Lady Nel Zelpher, take this young man to safety," he addressed behind Helgrave, to the doorway.

Helgrave swiftly turned around, wide-eyed, to find Nel's waiting hand, outstretched as if it would catch him. By her side were her two always faithful soldiers, the bronze-haired Tynave and violet Farlene. They would not meet his eyes.

In another state of existence entirely, Fayt called out the names of Maria, Sophia, anyone. He heard only his own voice, tinned and refracted in the quiet place's unseen blue walls. With too much ease had they approached Styx, and with the Metaphysicist's help and Sophia's powers they once again opened a path into the next dimension. It wasn't a true walkway, of course, but that was their intention.

It wasn't getting into the quiet place, Fayt realized sinkingly, that was the problem. It was finding the Incantatrix and getting out. But he could not even find himself, or the others.

"It won't work for you," a clipped female voice with an indistinguishable accent told him.

"Where are you?" Fayt demanded. He could see no one, not even a breath of a soul's resilient trail in the cold and empty air. "Are you the Incantatrix?"

A quiet, pleased laugh. "No, no. I'm the Historian. Don't worry, I won't harm you. Walk forward a little, won't you?"

Fayt frowned. He had already walked forward. Backwards, sideways, anyways. It had not done anything for him before, but he grudgingly obeyed the Historian's words, if that was truly who she was.

"What if you're really the Engineer? What then?" he said suspiciously, knowing he would not get a straight answer if she was.

But even as he stepped forward, the transient air solidified into a cold workspace. An array of screens giving readouts, cabinet upon cabinet of files saved onto chips the size of a grain of salt stored in impossible order.

It was all the sterile white of a hospital.

"The Engineer can't come here to the quiet place," a dark-skinned girl in her teens informed him. In complete contrast to the surroundings, she wore a shimmering robe-like dress in the gradient hues of a vibrant sunset. It hurt to look at her, after all of the dimness from before.

"Especially not here, where the databases are. She can request information to get her stories straight, but she can never enter personally. Sit."

And at a wave of her hand, a perfectly ordinary office chair materialized in front of the largest computer screen.

"Is there anything you would like to know?" the Historian then asked as he warily took a seat.

Fayt looked into her dark eyes. "What do you mean?"

She fanned her hand to the keyboards. "At your fingertips lies the entire history of your dimension. Everything recorded, nothing forgotten or deleted—I made sure. Here in the quiet place, you could spend hours, days, watching and only seconds will pass to your friends.

"I've looked at the records. You and your group have come to rescue the Incantatrix from this prison. The Incantatrix was my only true friend at Sphere," she admitted. "I owe you in return, for her."

"What about you?" Fayt wanted to know. By the way she said it, it seemed as if she did not know she would be coming with them as well.

The Historian was quiet. "I can't come with you."

"What?!"

She continued. "I don't exist outside of this game. Unlike the others on the development team, I... don't have a body to return to in 4D space."

Fayt frowned. "What do you mean? Tell me," he asked.

"There was an accident. When Luther launched the Eternal Sphere for beta testing. It had to be shut down; I was left inside. My brain told my body it was dead, so my body reacted accordingly. The Incantatrix hacked the system and found this remnant of myself. The quiet place has been my home ever since."

Fayt looked straight at her. "Well, that doesn't make sense. If what you say is true, then you're a resident of our world now. It's ridiculous of you to stay in this place by yourself. Come with us, and you can live out there."

The Historian was taken aback; Fayt was as well. He had not expected such a sudden and warm invitation to come from inside himself, but there was something in the Historian's isolation that reminded him of something. Something he wanted desperately to amend.

"I would like that," the Historian finally said.

Fayt nodded. "Then… can I look up something that a person's doing at this moment, on this computer?"

The Historian shook her head. "No. It only shows the past. Albel Nox of Elicoor II, right?"

Fayt's eyes went wide. "Yeah."

"If you really want to… I can show you something of his past. Something he could never fully describe to you."

"You would do that?"

The Historian nodded.

"Is it… his Accession of Flame?"

She studied him for a moment. "There are many things in Albel's past that would fit my description of 'inexplicable', but yes. That is the worst. If you will stand it."

Fayt turned away from her stare. "I would… want to know." He then nodded, convincing himself that it was so.

In waking, Albel looked up through his bangs, hair stringy and clotted because of the blood that had trickled from the deep cut on his scalp. But he only saw earthy darkness, the type of darkness he recalled from the bowels of dragon's homes. There was light, if that hellish glow from the seeping magma could do more than dimly imitate its celestial counterpart.

He had awoken with a fright, and his heart had not slowed its fleeing pace. The nightmare surrounded him.

That early, early morning, just after Helgrave had left him. Albel had just returned to the place halfway between meditation and wakefulness when he was disturbed again. He caught his reaction to bolt up when the door opened with only the slightest bit of sound. If he had been sleeping, the noise would have not even woken him.

Instead, his gaze darted up to the intruder. It was not Helgrave, not anyone he knew.

No, he amended that. Something in his intruder's presence identified him as Crimson Blade. Not one of Nel's.

Of Astor's, then. His mind called up flashes of the dark swordfight he'd fought in his room at the inn as he flexed his gauntlet.

"What do you want," he said carefully. Even as he spoke, a pair of dark-clothed soldiers came in to bolster the initial intruder. Those he recognized instantly. "Tynave, Farlene," he said quietly. "I did not think you would hold a grudge so strong that you would go against Lady Nel's orders."

"Who do you take us for?" Farlene said in covert reply.

"How else would Aquaria survive so long against abnormalities like you, half-breed," Tynave said to him. "How else do you think Astor's men got away that night?"

"That's a good point," Albel said quietly.

Tynave continued. "You may have the look of Aquaria, but you're not one of us. You're a blood-soaked Glyphian to the core, and it's our blood that has stained your soul. We never forgive. And we always remember."

He ignored them as the man, presumably a subordinate of Astor's, revealed an indiscriminate cloth from beneath the folds of his clothing.

"You're not stepping anywhere near the Circle of Voices," Farlene told him.

Perhaps it was the shock of Tynave and Farlene, perhaps it was the four sleepless days that had worn and frayed his muscles and reflexes, but he was pinned to the floor with the soaked cloth against his mouth and nose before he had even drawn his sword.

He fought the infectious urge to breathe in. The overwhelming intoxication was burning and sick in his lungs. The more he struggled against their combined restraints, the further he felt himself sinking. When the world dissolved around him, he felt the vague sense of separation from his left arm, and then an engulfing abyss.

And now his head throbbed thinly, his left arm a void—the mechanics had been rendered motionless, somehow. Damaged, perhaps beyond repair. Chain bound his remaining limbs, his throat; he had been tied to a natural pillar with the metal links in a cross over his chest in his forced sleep. Without his gauntlet, a channel for the desperate runology that Albel claimed as his own, he was as helpless as his aggressors wanted him to be.

Albel was deathly afraid. There was no one else to save him from the beast this time.