Author's Note: Wow I've been moving slowly about this, for all that I've had several days where I rolled the plot around in my head. I feel like I'm starting to lose the skill I once had with fighting scenes, but what I liked about this game wasn't so much the fighting system (though it is enjoyable) as it was the story, the world, and the potential it has. Which is kind of why I started to write this story in the first place, I guess.
Disclaimer: I do not own the Legends of Legaia franchise.
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Chapter 24: Volcanic Vent
Shera sighed and wiped at her forehead with a grumble, wondering when exactly the air had started to feel warm. She wasn't the only one feeling uncomfortable, she knew, as the others were starting to act a bit grouchy. When they had stopped to let Vahn rest, she had been the one to sit up.
She had meditated while she waited for the others, and found that the earth itself had a beat to it not unlike a heartbeat. She hadn't experienced that before, and had no idea why not. Like in living creatures, there was a source for it, and right now, they were headed for that force. She didn't know what they would find.
"Hold on. Meta says that Terra should start to shield us from gases and the heat." Shera blinked at Vahn and lifted an eyebrow. It dislodged a drop of sweat that then got into her eye and made her flinch.
"Will it make the heat we feel right now any better?" Mule glowed on her arm, and she glanced to it, a scowl lining her face. She was far more grumpy than she normally was, and she felt disgusting with all the sweat sticking to her.
"I'll lend Terra my help. It'll cool you all down somewhat. With where we're going, we'll need it. I'm not sure if we'll be able to keep things too terribly cool. The Mist gets thicker the farther down we go." Shera sighed, but held her arm out towards the others. Noa was already doing the same thing.
Both Ra-Seru glinted, the gems that released light shining brightly after a moment. Wind started to circulate around them, warm at first, but then blessedly cool with moisture wiping away some of the sweat. All of them sighed with relief, and Shera scrubbed at her face with the sleeve of her other arm.
"I didn't realize just how warm it was getting until now. That's quite the difference." Shera grinned lopsidedly and wiped the back of her neck as well, tilting her head to the side.
"And that's part of why I don't like leaving the coast. Even if it's miserably hot, if you go down by the ocean, it'll be much easier to stay cool, for one reason or another." Gala snorted a little at Shera, but was also wiping his face to get rid of the sweat stickiness.
"Enough, let's get going again." Vahn gestured and started to walk, dust kicking up around the bubble of wind that Terra had created. As he walked, Shera blinked as she noticed that it wasn't just one big bubble that had been created, but four smaller ones that merged seamlessly when they stood near each other.
Shera shrugged a little to herself, and started forwards again. Perhaps it was a good thing that they were a bit too warm, seeing as she didn't feel as stiff as she could have. The heat had kept her muscles limber.
They walked along quietly, aside from the butt of Shera's spear rapping against the stone underfoot. They came across what seemed to be the bottom of a chasm finally, and Shera tilted her head back to look up.
"Almost enough to make you dizzy." Shera hummed a bit in agreement to Gala, who was also looking up, and then looked around to take in the rest of their area. She stepped forwards, holding Mule high, and stopped mid-step as she saw the straight lines of the structure in front of them.
"That's...the...what was it called? Palace of Meditaton?" Shera's voice was soft, almost reverent. Despite how she had grumbled about Hari's not telling anyone about the impending earthquake, she had been affected by his death.
"It is." Vahn sighed a little and stepped past Shera, stepping carefully on the rubble as he walked along the path. The building had landed square on top of it.
The building was mostly in one piece, though some chunks of the roof had broken off to lean against the walls. Gala stepped past Shera with a grim set to his mouth, and helped Vahn to break the door off of its hinges.
Everyone took a couple of steps back as the scent of rotting flesh erupted from the door. Shera swallowed hard and covered her nose, resisting the urge to retch. Gala and Vahn both gagged a little, grimacing at the scent.
"I'm gonna be smelling that for a looong while." Vahn took a deep breath in to calm himself and gagged again. Shera was fumbling at the satchel she carried one-handed, and pulled out a length of cloth, which she quickly wrapped around her nose and mouth.
"Here, someone gave us scarves for some reason. Might block out some of the scent." The others turned to look at her as she held up another wad of fabric. Noa quickly grabbed one, and mimicked Shera as best she could. Vahn grumbled but accepted one of the scarves before ducking carefully into the building.
"Vahn?" Gala was in the middle of trying to figure out how to put his scarf on as he looked to the leader of their group. Shera was picking her way over to the door to do the same. "What are you doing?" The man turned around to look at them, the hand with Meta on it holding the scarf to his face.
"Finding their bodies. They deserve more respect than lying in this rubble." Shera shrugged a little and tilted her spear so that she could duck into the door. "Shera, no. Your spear could knock loose some of the rubble. Stand guard by the door for us." The brunette scowled, but backed up anyhow. He was right.
She was a little bored as the other three went digging through the rubble, though when they came out carrying the bodies of those unfortunate enough to have remained inside the building as it fell, she was glad that she had stayed outside. She hadn't known that the body could be that particular shade of green-blue. At least they weren't swollen.
While Gala and Vahn went back into the building to find more, Noa stayed outside to help Shera build cairns over and around the bodies, arranged in front of the building in a neat line. There weren't too many bodies in the wreckage, thankfully, though Vahn's satchel did look a little more full than it had before. Gala had a new club tucked into his belt. It looked more practical than ceremonial, but seeing as it had been inside, who knew what it had been used for before.
When they were done with the cairns, Shera sighed and sat on a rock facing them, feeing exhausted. She wasn't the only one. Vahn looked more tired than he had been for quite a while. Gala was still looking ill, his head hanging a bit as he crouched by the path.
"I feel like we need to leave something besides these cairns. Something that tells anyone who bothers to come all this way that this is where Hari the prophet was laid to rest." Shera's voice was muffled by the scarf. She didn't dare remove it, even though she was warmer than she would have liked, even with Mule and Terra's aid.
"We don't have the supplies. Or the time." Vahn sounded almost regretful as he shot down Shera's suggestion. Most exhausted, but partially regretful. "Maybe the people above can make a monument to mark where the building used to be. We can't wait for that, though." Noa whined a little at that, sitting next to Shera.
"Can we just stop to rest instead of arguing about this?" The rest of them turned to look at the redhead, and she flushed a bit. "Well, we're all tired and grumpy, and last time that happened..." Shera grunted. She didn't exactly recall the last time they had all been exhausted at the same time, but knowing how they all reacted, she could guess at what had happened.
"We probably should rest, yeah. Just...not here. If not because of the scent, then out of respect." The boys nodded, and hauled themselves up. Shera did the same, leaning on her spear as she did so.
They walked until they couldn't smell the bodies they had buried. Shera spotted a niche for them to try, and rapped at each of the walls with the butt of her spear to make sure they didn't camp right next to one of the stone monsters again. Nothing shifted, so they bunked down to rest.
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"Shera!" Vahn just couldn't get the brunette's attention as she walked away from him, her hands empty of her weapons. Finally, she paused, yards away from him, and twisted to look back at him.
A bright grin crossed her face before she turned away again, and started to walk. Vahn tried to run to catch up to her, seeing that she was heading towards a massive shadow that keened in a very familiar tone. Her silhouette changed, from her trousers and armor, to what looked like a long dress or robe.
"Shera!" The Rim Elm native jerked as he woke up, his breath coming short in the hot, humid air that was still circulating around him. Something shifted nearby, and he lifted his arm so that his Ra-Seru partner could cast light on whatever it was.
Shera was what had shifted. She seemed to be sleeping calmly, curled up in a ball with her spear tucked between her shoulder and chin, though the brighter than normal glow from Mule suggested that the Ra-Seru was doing something more than the others.
"Vahn? What's wrong?" The blunette looked at his right arm, seeing the faint red glow that came from his Ra-Seru pulsing with the words that slipped into his head. "Oh, a dream...My apologies, I didn't think that I would need to buffer you from your emotions like Mule does for Shera..." Vahn shook his head a bit, shifting so that he could sit cross-legged.
"Don't worry about it..." Vahn ran his left hand through his hair, his eyes still haunted by the dream he'd had. "It was just a dream." A light snore drew Vahn's eyes to Noa, who was supposed to be on guard. He frowned, but didn't say much anything. They had all been working hard, and Noa was the youngest. They'd all been exhausted, and he couldn't honestly say whether or not he would have been able to stay awake, himself.
He stood carefully and inched over to sit in the opening of the niche, his feet tucked under him so that he would take up the least amount of space but still be able to get up in a hurry. Shera shifted a little, and Vahn turned his attention to her, a frown briefly crossing his face.
Ever since they started to travel together, Vahn had been a bit unsure of how to deal with Shera. He knew how to react to her while they were both still living in Rim Elm, but the moment they were both out the gate, things changed.
At one point, they'd simply been working alongside each other under Tetsu, but now that they didn't have someone that they knew for a fact was in charge, they didn't quite know what to do with each other. They argued and bickered a bit, but in the middle of battle, they would shout out something to do and the other would do it. In his eyes, they were equals, but...maybe not in the eyes of others.
He couldn't help but remember the Biron monks that they had bumped into in Jeremi. They'd scowled so hard at Shera, and while she didn't really even acknowledge their disapproval, they had accepted him as though his role as leader were natural. It was something he'd seen in Rim Elm, too, but it was really starting to rub him the wrong way.
"Vahn?" Shera was peering at Vahn blearily, wiping at her eyes with one hand as she shifted a little. He forced himself to smile a bit and nodded towards Noa.
"I woke up, and Noa was already asleep. I'm keeping an eye on things, don't worry." The brunette grunted a bit in acknowledgement, and shifted again, pulling herself back into a ball. Within moments, she was asleep again.
Vahn couldn't help but frown a little. Did she normally wake up in the middle of the night? If so, why hadn't he noticed that before? With the task they'd been set, they all needed to sleep well. Meta had mentioned that Mule buffered Shera from her emotions while she slept...He...hadn't known that was something that a Ra-Seru could do, or, really, that anyone needed.
Such thoughts kept Vahn awake until the rest woke the rest of the way. Noa was dismayed that she'd fallen asleep while she was supposed to be on watch, but Vahn assured her that it was fine. She was, after all, younger than the rest of them. She needed more sleep than they did.
At some point after they broke camp, another earthquake started. They had reached a surprisingly open part of the path, so there wasn't so much a risk of a cave-in as there was of things simply falling on them.
"Look! The pillar is moving!" All of them turned to look at what Noa was pointing at. It was one of the pillars that held up the town above. Shera glanced up, and then around. She frowned a little, and brushed her bangs out of her eyes.
"That's the only one that's moving so much." The quake stopped, but none of them eased up on their readiness to dodge just yet.
"That's one of the pillars holding up Octam." Gala's murmur just gave voice to what Shera had already figured out. "Why is..." He trailed off, a worried look on his face.
"Hari said that the henchmen of the Mist were attacking Octam from the bottom of the Fire Path...What better way to attack a settlement that isn't drenched in the Mist but to knock it into the Mist?" There was a slight quaver in Shera's voice.
"We have to hurry, then. Before any other pillars crumble and make sad things happen!" The others nodded to Noa's exclamation, and started off again. Not too far from where they had paused, the Mist became thicker.
The longer they walked, the more heat leaked into their bubbles from the surrounding air. Shera seemed to be having the least amount of trouble, but whenever her bubble intersected with one of the others, there was a rush of warm air that washed over her. Of course, it didn't help any that the air smelled like sweat and body odor.
After a break to drink some of their precious water resources and eat, they pressed on. After a few moments, Shera paused mid-step and blinked, looking surprised. The others looked to her wordlessly, and she pointed at a Rem Statue that was set just off the path. It looked a little worse for wear and was laying on its side, but it still held the glow that marked it as holy to the god Rem.
"That's...I guess that's an omen of some sort?" Shera shrugged to Vahn's words, and carefully set the statue upright before praying silently in front of it. The others took the chance to take a short break and rest. Once she was done, they pressed onwards. Vahn looked distracted, but she didn't point out that he'd prayed at the small shrine in Drake Castle but not the one here.
Not too far from there, they were shocked to find a lake of flowing lava. At least, Shera thought it was lava. She didn't know what the difference was between magma and lava. Shera tugged Noa back before she put her hand in the molten stone.
"It's no good. The lava is blocking our way forwards." Shera sighed and looked around, letting go of Noa for the moment. The heat from the lava made the air dance and twist like running water, making it harder to see anything over its surface. "Noa, what are you doing?" The brunette snapped her head around to see where the little redhead had disappeared to.
"This ledge is sturdy enough to support us, and it goes a fair ways!" The girl had indeed found a ledge to walk along. It was above their heads, but judging by how easily the girl stood there, it was wide enough for them to walk on. Shera's eyes followed where the girl was pointing, and squinted. There was what looked like a sturdy bridge made out of stone arching over the lava.
"That...may be just what we need." Vahn gave Shera an odd look as she leaned the spear against the wall before jumping up onto the ledge, her boots scrabbling until she was able to sit on the ledge. She grabbed her spear again, and then stood, padding along the ledge to scout out where it led.
By the time she came back, Vahn and Noa were helping Gala climb onto the ledge. She raised her eyebrows at them as she waited for them to get settled. Once they were catching their breath, she spoke up.
"The path leads clear over the lava, from what I can tell. This should work." Vahn nodded, and stood up, ruffling his hair. He looked sweaty. "Before we do that, though...Mule, can you re-do the cooling bit?" She lifted her arm and looked down at the iridescent blue material that covered it.
"Not without exposing you all to the fumes the lava is giving off." Shera sighed at that, but then shrugged. Vahn sighed heavily at that, but rolled his shoulders and started forwards.
The stone bridge stopped at an island in the middle of the lake of lava, but there was another bridge that led in another direction. Just as Shera was starting onto that bridge, another earthquake hit, causing even the lava to ripple. There was more strength to the quakes now than there had been earlier. Vahn steadied Shera as she backed off of the bridge, pale.
"The shakes are getting stronger. Woah!" Noa ducked as what looked like an off-color blob of lava shot up out of the lake of molten stone below them. Three more followed, and Vahn tugged Shera back away from the edge. The blobs halted in the air and bobbd there for a moment before unfolding to reveal that they were snake-like creatures.
"Gola Golas! They're fire based Seru. Don't let them coil around you!" The others nodded, hearing what Mule had said. Shera swung her spear up to fend off one of the Seru that had been swimming through the air towards her.
The mass of fighting shifted back towards the center of the island. Shera had a bit of a hard time landing any hits on her chosen target, but what hits she did land seemed to do a great deal more than what Vahn was doing. Finally, frustrated, Shera whipped her spear around in a sideways figure eight, which finally struck a good hit on the Seru.
The snake-like creature fell to the ground before turning partially transparent and drifting towards her lazily. It took her a few moments before she realized what was happening and let Mule absorb what remained of it. She then looked around in time to see Meta absorb the Seru that Vahn had been fighting as well. Noa and Gala were gasping for breath and looked scorched, but were otherwise okay.
Shera closed her eyes for a moment and tugged on Mule until the information about the Seru Orb coursed through her, healing not just her but the other three as well. It was a cooling sort of healing, instead of the warmth that it had been before.
"Who- Oh. Thanks, Shera." The brunette smiled a little at Vahn and then looked around again. Even she was sweating again, and wiped at her face before gulping down some water. Seeing her drinking some water reminded the others that they were thirsty as well. Vahn sorted through one of the satchels and handed out the blessed waters that they had collected from somewhere. Shera grimaced a little at the taste of her Magic Water, but didn't object to it.
Once they had rehydrated again, Vahn led the way over the stone bridge, glancing back at Shera several times to make sure that she didn't freeze up on them again. She was shaking by the time they reached the far side of the bridge, which was another ledge. There, another group of Gola Golas set on them. Noa and Gala acquired the information on the Seru finally. The ground shook under them, very nearly knocking the group off of their feet. Shera leaned against the wall until the earth stopped trying to buck them off, and then made sure that the others hadn't fallen into the lava.
"We must be practically on top of the source of the quakes." Shera heaved Vahn onto his feet as Gala commented on how strong the shaking was. A glance to him and Noa showed that they had done the same thing as Shera had, while Vahn had simply fallen on his ass.
Gala was right about how close they were to the source of the quakes. Just around a corner was a large creature that looked like a cross between a bull and a man, with the metallic substance that marked a Seru on its head and hindquarters. It was pawing at the ground as its human-like parts rolled their shoulders in preparation for another bodyslam into the pillar that it was facing.
Shera and Vahn exchanged glances, and stepped out into the open before the creature could make another attack on the pillar. Judging by the way that its attention was diverted directly onto them as soon as they walked into its sight, Shera had a feeling that it was more sentient than the average Seru. That feeling was shortly confirmed.
"Don't interrupt me! I'm doing something important ordered by Dohati!" Shera snuck a glance towards Vahn, lifting her eyebrows. He shrugged just a little in response to her unspoken question. This creature may have some intelligence, but it wasn't smart. It hadn't realized that they were its enemies.
Instead of leaving it be, though, they stepped into its way. Shera kept her spear in hand, and Vahn was just barely in front of her, one hand on his dominant hand's sword hilt. Gala and Noa were quick to follow them, though they weren't as obvious about being ready to fight.
"Didn't you hear me? I said I'm in the middle of something important! We can talk after I push over this stone pillar and kill everyone above us!" Shera's mouth tightened. This creature didn't even seem to be bothered that it was tasked to kill dozens of people. She shifted how she was holding her spear, sliding into a ready stance. That shift seemed to get the beast to take a closer look at them. "Hey! You don't take no for an answer, do you? What on earth do you want? Hey, those Seru on your arms...Those...Those are...Ra-Seru, aren't they?"
Now the others slid into their ready stances, even as the beast did the same. Vahn slid his swords out of their sheathes. Shera couldn't help but smile a little. She rather liked the singing sound that the blades made as they came free of their cases. It reminded her that she wasn't fighting alone.
"Oh no. Just my luck! That means you guys...are the enemy." Vahn nodded slightly to the beast's words. The creature sighed gustily, though the wind did nothing beyond ripple over the bubbles of protective air that surrounded the four of them. "Alright, alright! I'll fight you. All four of you, come at me at once! Feel the wrath of Xain!" Shera arched an eyebrow at the creature's announcement. She had no choice but to assume that it had given them its name.
Shera was plenty glad that the ledge had widened out into what seemed more like a field at the base of the pillar, because it gave them more space to scatter when Xain charged at them. And he did charge at them, several times. Shera took advantage of his inertia to gouge several deep wounds into his flanks.
Xain's physical abilities weren't the only trick he had, though. The first time that he had thrown a punch at one of the group that was distant to him, they hadn't known to expect, but it certainly wasn't for several chunks of rock to coalesce in front of his fist and shoot across the distance to his target. Vahn kept on top of healing the entire group, calling on the power of Orb whenever someone seemed to be injured.
Pretty quickly, the quartet began to settle into a pattern, where Gala would taunt Xain into charging at him so that Shera and Vahn could get a couple of good strikes in while he raced past them, and Noa would call the bull Seru over to the other side of the place. More than once, Shera wondered what would happen if they allowed the beast to charge headlong into the lake of lava.
They didn't get the chance to find out, as the pattern they had fallen into made fairly short work of the beast, though they all looked a bit battered by the time it fell. Shera had a cut over her right eyebrow that bled into her eye, causing her to favor that side. She mostly kept it closed in a vain attempt to keep her own blood out of it. Noa was limping a little, having landed hard after one of the strange punches had caused her to dive to the floor to avoid most of the small boulders. Gala looked a little dazed. Being less agile than the rest, he'd needed to be healed more often than the rest. Vahn had a sluggishly bleeding cut on his arm from one of Xain's horns, but it was partially healed already, and hadn't been a deep wound to begin with.
The four of them stood ready in case the Seru was faking its death. Shera risked a swipe at her bleeding cut, wincing as her sleeve aggravated it even more. She was twisted a little so that her good eye was on their enemy. In the space it took for her to wipe at the blood, the Seru had dislodged itself from its host body, which immediately started to bubble and cook from the heat. Shera grimaced a little at that, but turned her attention back to the Seru that was floating in front of them. There was no chance that it could take over one of them, they were all protected by the Ra-Seru.
Instead, the Seru floated over their heads until it was over the lake of lava. Shera turned as it moved to her blind side, and glanced to Vahn. At some point, she had shifted so that her spear was a third contact point on the ground, as she couldn't entirely trust her balance at the moment.
"You got me! I never thought you guys were this strong! I've lost my host body...Now I'm going to die...I bet you're happy! You're happy as can be over defeating me, aren't you!" Shera couldn't help but blink at the Seru's accusation. Why wouldn't they be happy at defeating it? It was trying to kill people they were trying to save. And on top of that, it seemed to have a rather sadistic streak. Or a single-minded determination to complete a task, it was hard for her to tell. "I can't stand it! Just looking at your faces makes the anger swell up in me! I'm going to use what strength I have left to make your lives hell!"
The four of them stiffened a little. While they didn't know what the Seru could do without a host body, they couldn't exactly stop it. It was hovering a couple of yards away from the edge of the platform the fight had taken place on, well out of reach of their attacks.
The Seru started to glow, and spun faster before it dropped like a rock into the lava. They could still hear the Seru, somehow, though it was fading rapidly.
"This is my curse on you! My anger! The energy of my revenge! The absolute power of darkness!" Shera lurched towards the edge to peer down at the lava, wincing against the light that shot up from where the Seru had landed.
A sudden force, colder than anything they had had to contend with on their journey, slammed into Shera, making her stumble back. The bubble of air that Terra had placed around them was swept away by the frigid wind, leaving her gasping. Terra glowed abruptly and air swirled around each of them as the other Ra-Seru glowed as well, cleansing the air of the dangerous gases that they'd been trying to avoid in the first place.
By the time that she and the other three had caught their breath again, they were shivering. They had been sweating because of the heat, and now that sweat was cooling rapidly. Already they could see their breath form clouds. Shera fumbled a little as she dug out the scarves that they had gotten from the people of Octam and wrapped one around her neck, heedless of the drips of blood that landed on it or the fact that it would surely stink of her sweat, let alone that it already smelled of the corpses that they had relocated a day or so before.
Vahn called on Vera's power to heal Shera's forehead while she handed out the scarves to the others, as well as hats that she found in the bag as well. She hesitated as she felt the flesh knitting back together and shifted the circlet that she still wore so that it wouldn't interfere with the healing. The last thing any of them wanted was to have to cut it free of her skin to take it off.
Once her cut was tended to and her eye partially washed out so she could somewhat see again, the others' wounds were tended. Noa had a sprained ankle, and Gala had a concussion in addition to Vahn's noticeable gouge. Mule, Ozma, and Terra stopped glowing, though Meta continued to do so, warming the air in their combined bubble so that they wouldn't cool down so quickly they got ill.
As soon as they were all healed up, they started back towards the bridge they'd crossed to get there, only to find that said bridge had been broken by a rock that had fallen from the ceiling. There were many such rocks scattered around, broken free by the sudden cold. Vahn seemed discouraged at that, though Noa's attention was on other things.
"It hardened! Vahn, look! Xain made the lava hard!" Gala blinked at Noa's point, and found a path down to the now-solid rock below them. He hesitantly reached a hand out to it to test its temperature before stepping onto it.
"It's hard, alright. It's even got frost on it, somehow. We should be careful, there's –" He cut himself off and looked around, an odd look on his face. "It's snowing underground. How strange. Who knew that the Seru of the Mist had the power to reverse temperatures so drastically?" Shera slipped and scrabbled until she was on what was once lava as well, and looked around.
"If we can follow where the bridge was, we should be able to find our way out. If there was any of the lava still molten, there would be a wind, right?" Noa nodded to Shera's question, understanding why she had asked. Of the four of them, Shera and Noa knew what it was that caused currents to form, though it was still along the lines of instinct than true knowledge. Or rather, what their Ra-Seru told them.
Vahn and Noa slid down to where the two brunettes were, doing their best to hold onto the freezing cold stone with their bare hands. Shera blew on her hands to warm them up while she and Gala waited. It had occurred to her that it was possible that the freeze was simply temporary and would flip back to lava while they were in the middle of what had once been a lake of death, and it made her want to hurry.
There were patches of ice dotted across their path every once in a while. Shera had accidentally hit Gala in the face while pinwheeling her arms to keep from falling over. The ex-monk bore the slight with a grimace, but didn't yell at her for it. He did haul her out of the way when a strange blue Seru leaped down at them shortly afterwards, though.
"How can new Seru show up so quickly?" The brunette couldn't help but complain as she wriggled a finger in her ear. The Seru had horns that acted like tuning forks and rang when hit. Vahn had absorbed the Seru that had ambushed them, though Mule had informed all of them that the Seru was called a Freed, and was actually water-based.
"Who knows. Let's see if we can get back to the entrance before any more of those things show up." They didn't, of course, but all that meant was that each of them ended up with the Seru's powers by the time they got there.
They all were shivering when they reached the exit and headed back to familiar territory. Noa practically clung to Gala as they walked, leeching as much warmth from him as she could. Shera would have been doing the same to Vahn if not for the fact that Meta was still putting out heat. Fortunately for them, the temperature seemed to get warmer the further away they got from the former lava.
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End notes: I was really hoping that the fight with Xain would last longer... It is kind of hard to draw them out with this game, though, because so much of it is repeating patterns, damage, healing, defending, etc. Oh well.