Provenance

"Nnn..." Elsword groaned as he pulled his head off of a narrow burlap cot, sitting up lazily and letting his head droop forward as he rubbed his eyes. "Is it tomorrow already...?"

"No." On the neighboring cot, Aisha rolled over on her side to face him, her hair disheveled and her eyes red and weary. "It's not even midnight yet."

"Ugh... damn." Elsword rubbed his neck and reached around blindly for the pitcher of water at his bedside. "I still feel like I'm gonna puke."

"Do it on the other side then." Aisha grumbled as she pushed herself up, squinting and scowling as she felt her bones creak and pop back into place. As soon as she was sitting upright, her stomach growled ferociously and she slid a hand over her waist. "...nngh, I want food. Elsword, get us some food."

Glowering, Elsword tried to move his legs and found them both still painfully sore. Looking around, he spotted a small tray of hardtack and dried fruit beside the water on the table nearby and grabbed it clumsily. "Here."

Startled by the sudden appearance of food, Aisha blinked and slowly picked off half the food on the plate. "Oh, thanks."

As Aisha bit into her meager rations, Elsword piled the remainder of the food onto a plate at his side and began gnawing on a dry square of hardtack. For a few minutes, neither of them had the energy to do much more than chew their food and they sat in silence, their eyes narrow as they recovered from the day's fighting. Once they finished with their food, their mood and posture improved dramatically. Stretching her arms out overhead, Aisha sighed sharply and let her hands fall to her side. As Elsword twisted his spine and stretched his arms, she noticed a light bloodstain on his back and she slowly rose to her feet.

"Wait, don't move. You tore your bandage off just now."

"Huh?" Elsword reached around to his back, slapping his hands around aimlessly as he searched for the errant bandage. "Where? I didn't feel anything."

"Hold-" Aisha bent over and pressed her hand into his shoulder to keep him steady. "Hold still a second, let me fix it."

"Wait, I can get it-" Elsword turned away, fixing his eyes on the pitcher of water on the far side of the room as Aisha pulled up his shirt and replaced the bandage on his back. Blushing slightly, he began to pout, indignant. "...You gotta be so close when you do that?"

Aisha's mouth wrinkled up awkwardly as she pressed the bandage into place. "Stop fidgeting, you just messed up another one..." She pulled away quietly and grabbed a strip of gauze from the cabinet nearby as Elsword stared into the corner, trying not to move. After waiting for more than a few moments, he glanced back over toward Aisha and froze; back of her jacket had been sliced roughly from shoulder to shoulder, falling open just enough to give Elsword a glimpse at the long, dark red streak soaking through the bandage on her back. As he stared, a grim chill crept across his chest. When Aisha turned and headed back toward him, he finally noticed the bruises on her arms and the slender, shallow cut across the side of her neck. The color quickly drained from his face and a heavy, suffocating fear seized him.

"Turn around, I can't fix your back like that-" Aisha sat on the cot beside him, stopping when she saw the quiet terror in his eyes. "Are you okay? What's wrong?"

Before she could move, Elsword stretched his arms out beyond her and wrapped her tightly against himself, his eyes shut tightly as he buried his face in her shoulder. Aisha blushed wildly, her hands raised and about to push him away when she felt his hands trembling against her back. As she felt his heart pounding against her chest, her hands slid around his shoulders and held him close.

This wasn't the first time Elsword had seen her injured, it wasn't the first time they had both collapsed after a fight only to wake covered in bruises and bandages, and this wasn't even the first time this week that the two of them had been forced right up to the edge of life and death. By all accounts, today's fighting was fairly banal and tepid compared to the early skirmishes when the demons in the courtyard still numbered in the thousands, but against all reason Elsword's anxiety persisted. He held onto Aisha as tightly as he could, desperate to protect her from wounds that had already been dressed. He knew it was foolish, clinging to her even though there was nothing he could do just by holding onto her like this and panicking over a few cuts and scrapes that would heal within a few days' time, but somehow he couldn't calm down. They had been fighting and bleeding and covered in ash and soot for weeks now, and it was only now that Elsword felt truly afraid. He chided himself as his breathing slowed; he had always known that they could be hurt, that they could die, and that each moment they spent on the field could be their last moment alive, but somehow he felt the urgent need to reach out and hold Aisha so that she wouldn't slip away. The delirium of exhaustion quickly began to take hold of him, and soon he was leaning against Aisha with all his weight.

"H-Hey, Elsword, what-"

"Um, excuse me..." A soft, crisp voice spilled in from the doorway of the small recovery tent and both Aisha and Elsword jumped away from one another in an instant. Out of his armor and completely unarmed, Chung slowly poked his head inside and glanced around the room before resting his eyes and Aisha and Elsword. "I'm sorry, I'm looking for miss Eve... Do you her, or do you know where she might be?"

"Eve?" Aisha stared blankly, first unsure of where Eve might have gotten to since the end of the battle and then wondering whether or not she was the Eve this small boy was really looking for. While she negotiated with her memory, Elsword chugged a glass of icy water and kept his face turned toward the wall, concealing the red in his cheeks. "I... I'm not sure." She blinked, pausing as she took stock of the stranger standing in the doorway. "Are you lost?"

"No, well, not exactly." Chung stepped into the room and glanced around the room again. "I came here with miss Eve, and I don't really know anyone else here... She told me that she'd introduce me to her friends after the fighting was over, but we got separated and I haven't seen her since then."

"Nn..." Elsword crossed his arms and finally faced forward as he pushed himself up to his feet. "Alright, come on. I'll help you find her." He grumbled as he took his first steps away from the cot, limping slightly and steadying himself on the nearby nightstand.

"Wait, where are you going?" Aisha stood up quickly and supported his right side as he faltered. "You can't even walk straight yet. Stay here, I'll go help him."

"T-that's okay..." Chung smiled awkwardly as Aisha and Elsword glared fiercely at one another. "I'll just keep looking on my own..."

"That will not be necessary." A slight breeze ruffled the walls of the tent as Raven, Rena, Eve, and Oberon filled the doorway behind Chung.

"Ah, there you are." Chung smiled softly and stepped aside, allowing Eve to move past him and took up residence in the center of the tent. "Are these your friends?"

"Huh?" Elsword blinked as both he and Aisha turned to Eve, lost and bewildered.

A few feet away, Eve hesitated, blushing slightly at Chung's insistent use of the word 'friends' even though Eve had repeatedly, though unconvincingly, referred to them as only comrades. Ignoring his question, she held her hand out and pointed to Aisha and Elsword.

"This is Aisha, and that is Elsword. The two standing with Oberon are Raven and Rena." She turned and held her hand open at her side, motioning toward Chung. "And this is Chung Seiker, first crown prince of Hamel."

"Ah, um, hello everyone." Chung gave a quick, slight bow. "I've heard a lot about you all from miss Eve, it's a pleasure to meet you."

"Wait, that voice..." Raven's eyes narrowed as he studied the young prince.

"Yeah, you're right, I heard it before, but where..." Elsword stared, his voice trailing off as he searched his memory. In the corner of the room, Rena simply smiled, waiting for everyone else to realize what she knew from the moment she walked into the room. Finally, after a few seconds of awkward scrutiny, Aisha's eyes went wide and she nearly shouted.

"You're the one who was fighting with us on the bridge!" At that moment, Elsword and Raven realized it as well and the three of them

Eve turned to her, staring quizzically. "Of course. Why do you seem surprised?"

"Hm..." Raven closed his eyes and crossed his arms. "I guess I shouldn't be though. What was that weapon you were using?"

"Oh, the Destroyer? It's-" Chung opened his mouth wide with excitement and immediately reigned himself back in, stifling his enthusiasm. "It's a barrier cannon, we've been using them in Hamel for a few decades."

"Well, you might be interested in his weapon..." Rena smiled coyly at Raven and stepped forward, "but I'm a bit more curious to hear just how he met Eve in the first place."

"Ah, well, I was floating in the sea, but-"

"Wait." Elsword grimaced as he glared aimlessly. "Where the hell is Hamel?"

At his side, Aisha scowled and seared the side of his face with her eyes. "Have you never looked at a map before in your life!?"

"Well, I never heard of it before so how the hell would I know to even look for it?" Elsword turned aside and met her gaze and they glared hard at one another. Across the room, Eve moved alongside Chung and lowered her voice.

"Please do not mind them. I do not understand entirely, but they are fond of arguing with one another even though they get along quite well when left alone."

"That makes sense." Chung nodded plainly. "They seemed to be getting along just fine before I got here too. I wonder why they argue so much when there are other people around then?"

As soon as Eve and Chung had finished their exchange, Elsword and Aisha choked up immediately, their faces flushed and frozen as Rena burst into a fit of laughter. In the corner of the room, Oberon had doubled over laughing, and even Raven was covering his mouth and stifling a chuckle, all while Eve and Chung stood staring blankly at them.

"Well," She giggled slightly, "Is this true? Have you two been secretly getting along while we aren't looking?" Her voice was sly and mischievous as she glanced sidelong at them, waiting to see their bashful reactions.

"Wh-what are you talking about?" Aisha blushed and stepped aside, suddenly aware that she had been holding Elsword's shoulders up ever since Chung arrived. "I mean, we just get along normally, like normal people in a normal way! B-besides-"

The fragile timbre of her voice was soon buried under the sound of a hasty march as shouts filled the air and a frigid howl cut through the night. Before the second howl sounded through the camp, everyone rushed out of the recovery tent and turned to see the flash of sparks and steel at the foot of the ruined bridge. Panicked shouts and painful screams echoed through the crowd of soldiers as they darted through the maze of half-standing tents and scattered supplies as a cloud of ghastly smoke crashed through the campsite as though it were a hail of artillery fire. In the shadows of the chapel gates, a circle of robed demons stood waving their hands through the air, chanting loudly as Feita's knights struggled to stand against the formless ghosts that were reaching past their blades, through their armor, and into their skin, leaving twisting black bruises on everyone they touched. Without hesitation, Elsword reached over his shoulder and prepared to run into the fray... when he realized that his sword was still laying beneath his cot in the recovery ward. As he turned to retrieve it, Rena glanced back at him and smiled confidently.

"Hold the line back here, okay? We'll take care of things at the front."

"But-" He scowled as Aisha reached over and grabbed his shoulder, sending a sharp pain shooting down his arm.

"Do you really think you're in good enough shape to do anything right now?" Aisha glowered at him, annoyed by his thoughtless bravado even as she shared his frustration. Reluctantly, the two of them returned to the medical tent to retrieve their weapons while their friends headed out into the dim haze of shrieks and screams.

As Chung ran across the camp to retrieve his Freuturnier and Raven hurried to guard the infirmary, Rena and Eve quickly took the high ground and surveyed the field; nearly a quarter of the campsite lay in ruins as the wispy revenants tore through everything they touched and left only rubble in their wake. Across the courtyard, soldiers scrambled to their feet and ran to the outskirts of the camp. Those that stayed behind to fight and cover their comrades' retreat found themselves swinging through empty air, their blades unable to touch the wavering form of the spirits around them. As they struck out desperately, a swift, unseen force thrust them through the air and hurled them far across the courtyard, sometimes right through the canopy of nearby tents and onto the wounded within.

Drawing her bow, Rena fired a round off into the deathly mist below only to see her arrows pass through the spectres and dug into the ground.

"Hm..." She frowned slightly, disappointed. "I was afraid of that... let's try and take out those mages." Just as she trained her bow on the circle of demons gathered across the ravine, a ghastly claw swept across the wall beneath her feet and slashed through the ancient stone, forcing Rena to leap back and retreat along the high wall. Just as she landed, however, the ground underfoot gave way as another ghost crashed through the wall, leaving her suspended in the air over a swirling, shrieking mist. As the ghosts below opening their gaping, shapeless mouths to swallow her whole, Rena felt a firm hand pulling her up into the air as Eve rushed in and carried her back to safety.

"Rena, are you uninjured?" Setting her feet firmly on the ground, Eve lowered her arms and helped Rena back up to her feet.

"Yes, thanks" Rena smiled softly and sighed. "They're not giving us much breathing room. Do you think you could distract them a bit while I line up a shot?"

Eve nodded. "Of course. Oberon." Eve held her hand out at her side and Oberon appeared before her. In a single, smooth motion, she reached down and grabbed Oberon by the collar and pitched him through the air and tumbling into the chapel's ornate facade. As he fell from the wall, dizzy and disoriented, he crashed into a pair of chanting demons and inadvertently knocked them to their knees. As soon as they stopped mumbling their summons, two of the ghastly beasts in the courtyard froze and faded away. Grabbing onto another demon's cloak, he pulled himself up to his feet and shook his head out, regaining his composure and preparing to deliver a single, fatal strike to mages around him. Before he could act, the two mages he had bowled over hopped up to their feet and began beating him with their wands while a third chanted quickly beneath his breath and called forth a billow cloud of thick, black smoke that charged toward him.

While Oberon fled the advancing cloud of seething ash, Elsword and Aisha watched anxiously as the camp slowly came apart all around them. As their eyes traced the coursing flow of the fight, a dull streak of silver sped through the sky toward them. Within moments, Raven crashed into the soft ground beside them, slamming his left arm into the earth as he landed to soften his fall. As he caught his breath and rose to his feet, Elsword and Aisha hurried over to his side.

"Raven, you okay!?" Elsword looked down to see Raven's sword and left arm covered in a thin coat of rust, his chest and shoulders splashed with broad, oozing black bruises. Stabbing the ground with his sword and using it to steady himself, Raven stood slowly and scoffed.

"Mostly. Looks like I'm useless this time though..." He glanced down at his blade and scowled. Not only had his attacks all passed through the phantoms without leaving so much as a scratch, but every part of the blade that came into contact with its shifting form began to decay. Taking note of his failure, Elsword latched his blade onto his back and kindled a small flame in each of his hands.

"Alright, then we'll do it this way."

"That won't work either." Aisha called up to him from a nearby crate where she sat skimming through her grimoire. Sensing Elsword's indignant glare even without pulling her eyes from the page, she stole a quick glance at the approaching spectres and spoke swiftly. "If it can't be cut with a sword, normal magic won't work on it either. The magic we us all the time is focused on changing the physical world around us, to cut and burn and guard and hold things, so if something doesn't have a physical body then our magic will just pass right through it. You've got to use a spell that channels magic into the spiritual realm but..."

"But what?" Elsword glared at her impatiently and she scowled fiercely as she slammed her grimoire shut.

"It's not like I know any of those formulas!" She stood abruptly and grabbed her wand, gripping it tightly. "It's a lot more complicated and there's not much use for it normally, so there's only one aether spell I know off hand..."

"Well, you'd better hurry up with it." Raven pulled his sword from the dirt and held it out at his side. "They're headed this way."

Frantic, Aisha searched through the dredges of her memory for the last lines of an old incantation while Elsword and Raven stood helplessly at her side. In the very next instant, a ghastly whisper ripped through the air and crashed down around them as a cloud of spectral haze rushed toward them. As a pair of airy claws closed in around them, Aisha's mind went blank and the last words of the spell she had been searching for fell away into the breeze. Stunned, she could only watch as the spectre's shadow came crashing down on her, its jaws breaking away from its bulk and circling around her head ready to clamp down on her neck... and then, in the next moment, vanishing.

Gleaming brightly in the night, a heavy blade parted the deathly fog with a single stroke, its surface alight with an unearthly glow. Behind the blade stood Penensio, eyes full of fire as he spun round and cut through another ghost at his back. As the air cleared around him, a faint stream of light rose from his sword and broken into a thousand tiny shards that crackled and scattered into the sky.

"Oh, you're the ones they call 'captains', aren't you?" Penensio smiled confidently as he returned his sword to its sheath. "Are any of you hurt?"

"N-no, we're all fine, I think..." Aisha shook her head out lightly, checking herself for new wounds. "Raven, are you still-"

"What the hell was that!?" Elsword leapt into the conversation head first, his eyes fixed on Penensio's scabbard. "How'd you cut that thing?"

"Oh, that?" Penensio reached for his sword and drew it out just a few inches. When he did, a small sigil began to shine across its surface before he dropped it back in its sheath. "I enchanted the blade so that I could cut through aether. Have you never seen someone use the Runes before?"

"Runes? Yeah, I have but- wait..." Elsword blinked and pondered a moment before erupting in a frantic fit of excitement. "You're one of the Red Knights, aren't you!? Have you ever-"

A soft tug on his sleeve pulled his attention away as Aisha stared at him with a curious concern. "Elsword, we're in the middle of a fight..."

"But-"

"Hahaha," Penensio gave a hearty laugh as he turned and walked back toward the sounds of battle. "Don't worry, we can talk once this is all finished." Without looking back, he drew his sword and charged into a shrieking spectre, slashing through its gaping fangs and rushing off to face his next opponent. Clenching his jaw and breathing heavily, Elsword's eyes were filled with anxious unease. Although they were all safe for the moment, he looked even more worried now than he had been when they were under attack.

"What's wrong with you?" Aisha glared at Elsword in an attempt to draw an answer out of him but her voice and eyes softened when she saw his fingers trembling. "...Elsword?"

"Huh?" He shook his head out hard, clenching his fists and rolling his shoulder as his eyes drifted off to his side. "Yeah, I'm fine..."

Aisha scowled at him, annoyed. "No you're not, now-"

"Leave him, for now." Raven stepped forward and glanced aside at Elsword. "...If you're going to lie, make it better than that. It's fine if you don't want to talk about it now, but take care of it before the next fight. Leaving an open wound to rot will kill you."

As Elsword met his gaze, his chest tightened and for a moment, he forgot to breath. For the breadth of a second, he saw a raging conflict boiling behind Raven's eyes, hidden quickly behind his calm demeanor. Shocked and entirely exhausted, Elsword could only nod lightly in agreement.

Within three minutes of the Red Knights' arrival on the field, the battle was over. With their summoned spirits easily defeated, the demonic necromancers fell quickly under Oberon's blades and a hail of gleaming arrows. In fact, by the time Chung had retrieved his Freuturnier and returned to the field, many of the soldier had already begun sifting through their ruined tents and salvaging every scrap of material that they could.

In the center of the camp, the Red Knights gathered together in the field hospital and tended to those who bore the oozing black wounds left by the phantoms' touch. Sighing heavily at the side of an empty cot, Penensio waved the next soldier over. Wincing as she lowered herself onto her side, she gripped her ribs tightly as Penensio inscribed a series of runes into the air above her. Within a few moments, the runes began to shimmer and glow, lifting a dark miasma form the soldier's wounds and clearing her skin of the ghastly curse.

"There you are, those wound should close up within the hour now. Be sure to dress them as normal, I may be able to lift a curse in seconds but an infection isn't so simple."

"Thanks- Nngh..." The soldier cringed as she rolled onto her back, gritting her teeth and clenching her fists as she waited for a doctor to come by an finish her treatment. As Penensio searched the room for the next beleaguered warrior waiting for the necromancer's curse to be lifted from their bones, he felt an intense gaze burning into the back of his skull. When he turned around, Elsword's eager eyes were there to greet him.

"Oh, it's you," Penensio looked down and acknowledged Elsword's presence briefly before wringing out his hands and rifling through a medical kit at his side. "I'll be a little bit longer here with all the wounded. Could you come back later, at the end of the evening?

"..." Elsword stared silently, his gaze stern and severe as he held his ground. "...I'll wait here."

Penensio paused, his hands slowing to a stop as he studied Elsword's face. "...I suppose this is about something a bit more serious than runes and ghosts, isn't it?"

Elsword didn't answer. Closing his eyes and breathing in slowly, Penensio set aside his medical kit and turned toward the back of the tent. "Alright, I'll hear you out. Follow me, but just keep in mind that we'll have to make this quick."

Nodding, Elsword hurried after him, through the rows of weary soldiers and out into the crisp summer's night, across the mangled campsite and into the far corners of the moonlit courtyard. As soon as Penensio stopped, he scribed a circle in the air at his side and two nearby torches were wrapped in a gentle flame. With a satisfied nod, Penensio turned and leaned back against the wall, smiled warmly with his wrist resting across the hilt of his sword.

"So, what's on your mind?"

Silence stood as Elsword struggled to reign in his racing heart, his jaw clenched and his knuckles white. Breathing in sharply, he felt his chest ache as he opened his mouth at last. "...Have you ever heard of a Red Knight... named Elsa?"

As that name brushed Penensio's ears, his smile faded and his eyes narrowed as if a grim shadow had fallen upon him. "Boy, what's your name?"

"Elsword." He replied without hesitation even as his anxiety grew. "Elsa's my sister."

"..." Penensio stared in awe and dismay, scarcely even breathing until finally he gave a great, weary sigh. "So you're Elsa's brother... She told me about you, but I didn't expect I'd meet you in a place like this... It's been... how long now, well over a year now since we've had word from her detachment. Now, calm down a moment..." Penensio raised his right hand just as Elsword's mouth began to fall and the color drained from his face. "We haven't heard from her, so I can't say where she is or what she's doing, but there's no need to panic over her as it is. I've seen her fell a bear in a single stroke, so I doubt she's come to any harm." For a brief moment, as he watched the waves of relief and terror washing over Elsword's face, Penensio realized why his subordinates never allowed him to deliver bad news, or any sort of news for that matter.

"Do you know where she is though?" Elsword's voice cracked and jumped sharply, his eyes pleading as he spoke, "I've been... I've been looking for her for a long time, and..." His words caught in his throat, trapped by a cruel sense of helplessness and a steadily growing fear. Without another word, Penensio grinned and gave Elsword a hearty pat on the shoulder.

"What are you doing, looking like that? You're going to feel like a fool when she marches back into Velder with half her squad slung over one shoulder and an ox over the other." He chuckled fondly and stared off into the maze of stars overhead. "Ah, yes, you haven't seen your sister in a few years then, have you? She told me about you several times before, though I never expected you to look so much like her..." He glanced down quickly and noticed that Elsword had calmed down considerably. Lowering his eyes to meet Elsword's gaze, he smiled, soft and wistful as the breeze swept his hair across his shoulders. "Well then, would you like me to tell you why we call her Elsa the Dragon Butcher?"

Elsword's eyes went wide and for a moment, he forgot to breath. "Dragon Butcher? That's what you call her?"

Penensio gave a deep, jovial laugh that filled the dark corners of the courtyard. "Well, to be completely honest, she's earned more than a dozen different titles in the past few years... Elsa the Bear Tamer, Elsa the Mountain Cutter, Elsa the Red Terror, though the one she's probably best known by among the Red Knights is the one I'm a bit ashamed of... Elsa the Rune Slayer." He reached up and rubbed the side of his neck as the memory of an old wound crossed his mind once more and Elsword watched in curious wonder. "You may have heard, but in order to command your own division within our order, you must first fight against the commander, which right now would be me. Now, we never tell them this, but it's a fight that we expect them to lose. The idea is to test each knight to see how they react to fighting a battle that they know they will lose, to see how they will handle themselves under such extreme pressure. We tell them they have to win, and then we put them in a situation where victory is impossible. In hindsight, it may have been more than a little arrogant on my part to assume that I'd be able to best any challenger, because when Elsa stepped into the ring to face me, she not only beat me, but she did it in less than a minute. I didn't have a chance to cast more than a single rune in that fight, and at the end of it everyone started calling her Elsa the Rune Slayer. I doubt I'll ever live that day down..."

"Heh..." Elsword lowered his eyes and laughed softly. "I coulda told you it'd turn out like that. My sister's the strongest person I know."

"Well then, I don't think I'd be wrong to say the same goes for both of us." Penensio grinned and stepped away from the courtyard wall. "Your sister's something of a legend among the Red Knights you know. I've got a hundred stories to tell about her, if you ever want to hear them."

Elsword blinked and nodded quickly "Yeah, of course."

"Haha, excellent." Penensio patted Elsword on the shoulder as he walked past and headed back toward the field hospital. "I've got to treat the rest of the wounded, but come over the Red Knight's camp whenever you like and we'll be sure to tell you of all the times your sister's put the rest of us to shame. And Elsword," he turned back for just a moment, his eyes warm and confident, "If you can make it through this, then I've no doubt that you'll find Elsa someday."

Elsword grinned broadly as the torchlight faded and the moon slipped out from behind the clouds. "Damn right I will."

"Hmm..." Running his hand across finely chiseled stone, Chung strained his eyes to see the shrine's ancient etchings in the faint and flickering firelight. Standing in the shadows at his back, Oberon looked on over his shoulder at the graven images of the earliest nasod standing atop the altar of dedication alongside humans, elves, and every other inhabitant of Elrios. Each time the summer breeze brushed against the nearby torches, the shadows cast across the wall shuddered and revealed another fragment of the faraway past.

"These have to be at least as old as the glyphs in the water temple back home... I don't really understand what's going on in them though. Do you recognize any of these people?" Chung looked aside to Oberon who promptly shook his head. As the torches flickered in the wind, however, he caught sight of a small, meticulously carved figure standing atop a floating island. Tracing the figure with his fingertips, he suddenly grew calm and his normally erratic movements slowed to a stop. As Chung followed his fingers and studied the figure himself, he realized that it wasn't altogether unfamiliar to him.

"Ah, that... why does that seem so familiar..." he grabbed the nearest torch and took it in hand, raising it up over Oberon's head and illuminating the stone reflection of an ancient Nasod army. "I think I've seen a picture of this nasod before... miss Eve has a picture of her somewhere, doesn't she...?" He wracked his memory, trying to trace the familiar face back through his mind and meeting with little success. "Mmm... this is going to bother me now. I wonder who she is..."

"She is the Empress Astarte... The last ruler of the Nasod Empire." Stepping out of the night and into the ruined corridor, Eve's feet scarcely made a sound as they fell across the crumbling marble floors. Alongside her, Rena held a single, bright torch to light the way for Eve and Allegro, the overburdened secretary, historian, and treasurer of Feita. As they arrived at the wall where Chung and Oberon waited, Allegro nearly tripped over himself and lost his grip on the three dozen rolls of parchment that he held between his arms.

"Ah! S-sorry..." Allegro bowed his head quickly as he knelt down to gather his scrolls up only to find another hand reaching out toward his own.

"Here." Chung held out a handful of rolled parchment with an bright smile on his face.

"Oh, Thanks..." Accepting the scrolls with a nod, Allegro fumbled over to the wall and knelt to the ground, carefully placing his cargo on the cleanest bit of rock and rubble he could find. "So where would you like me to begin?"

"Hmm... well, can you start by telling us the history of the Last Day?" Rena moved toward the wall, torch in hand and smiling awkwardly. "I've heard it before, but that was a few decades ago... and I doubt Eve and Chung have heard the story from the shrine's perspective before, right?"

"Yes." Eve glanced over at Oberon, her eyes fixed on the image at his fingertips. "I would like to hear your account of the Last Day."

Lost and confused, Chung turned to Eve and blinked. "The Last Day? The last day of what?"

"You might know it by a different name, if you aren't from Lurensia..." Allegro reached into his satchel and pulled out a long, narrow scroll. "For most of the world's early history, the El wasn't scattered around all over the world like it is today. Over a thousand years ago, at the top of this shrine, on the altar of dedication, there stood a single, massive El crystal that lit the entire world and allowed every race to prosper. It wasn't like today, where there are hundreds of acres of land that nothing can live or grow in for a lack of El, and even though there were still wars and famines, it was probably a much easier time to live in than the present..." He paused, unfurling his scroll and pinning it down with a pair of pebbles from the ground at his feet. "You see, the sum total of all the El in the world isn't actually enough to cover every part of Elrios with its light, but when the El was all in one piece at the shrine, it could be amplified so that it covered the every inch of the land and sky. In order to do that, the first high priestess of Feita became the Lady of the El, the one who watches over the El without tiring, every moment of the day. I'm not really sure what sort of person she was, but the way the scholars have written about her, she almost sounds like a goddess..."

Drawing her eyes across the scroll at Allegro's feet, Rena nodded quietly and set her torch in a recess in the wall. "Yes, I remember hearing a few different versions of the story when I was growing up. Some people thought that the Lady of the El was just a ceremonial position that was handed down from one high priestess to the next, but the elders in my village were always insistent that she was the very same person all along... If that's the case, then she would have been hundreds of years old by the time the Last Day came along..."

"Yes, that's what I think too, at least. If the Lady of the El was just a hereditary, ceremonial position like it is today, then the rest of the histories don't make much sense..." Allegro withdrew another scroll from his pack and spread it out across the wall, revealing a finely detailed sketch of the mural on the wall before them. "About twelve hundred years ago, during the Harmony festival, almost every leader of all the world's kingdoms and empires and nations gathered together at the shrine to pay homage to the Lady of the El and thank her for tending to the El Crystal for another year. Most people admired the Lady of the El and a few were indifferent, but supposedly, there was just one person who despised her position. According to this carving, Salvatore Solace, the master of the sun, felt sorrow for the Lady of the El and came to hate the masses of the world who demanded that she remain with the El, day in and day out without rest and without a moment's peace for herself. He felt it was cruel and unjust that in the midst of their feasting and celebration of peace and harmony that the one person who was forbidden from taking part in the festivities was also the one responsible for protecting the peace of the world in the first place. This is where things get a bit tricky, since there are more than a dozen different versions of just who or what caused Salvatore Solace to finally fly into an open rage, but in the end, he cursed the world that had practically enslaved the Lady of the El and he sought to free her from her fate, carrying her away from the shrine and far across the world to a place where she was no longer bound to her duty. Without the Lady of the El to channel its energies, however, the El crystal began to shake violently and soon it exploded into billions of smaller shards and stones that flew out across the world. With the light of El retreating from so much of the land, hundreds of thousands of people died in that instant alone and thousands more died from starvation and the wars that followed. The catastrophe of the El's explosion was so great that many people feared it was the end of all life as they knew it, so they began calling it 'The Last Day' out of the fear that it would be the final day of life on Elrios..."

Rolling is scroll back up and replacing it in his pack, Allegro backed away from the wall and sighed. "Is that all you wanted to hear about?"

Pausing for only a moment, Eve traced the wall with her eyes and shook her head. "No. I am more interested in what happened after that. I have heard from Empress Astarte herself about the wars over possession of the El that came about as a result of the Last Day, and I saw their results myself..." Eve's voice wavered, as if a wave of sharp pain had passed over her as she spoke. "However, I have not heard of what happened to Salvatore Solace and the Lady of the El after that time."

"W-well..." Allegro hesitated, biting his lower lip and glancing aside. "That... that's not something we know a lot about... according to tradition, the other guardians of Elrios set out in pursuit of them, and they're still chasing them to this day... I think..."

"Well, that's one version of it..." Rena sighed lightly and leaned back against the wall. "It's also the one passed on by the followers of Salvatore Solace. I've heard a little bit about the alternate histories, but I don't know them completely. Do you mind filling in the parts that I don't know?" She smiled softly at Allegro and won him over, although his eyes continued to shift uncomfortably as they spoke.

"A-alright, if it's just bits and pieces..."

"Good." Rena nodded and glanced aside to Eve and Chung as they watched and waited patiently. "So, the official history is that Salvatore Solace valiantly rescued the Lady of the El from the shrine where she was practically kept as a prisoner and forced into servitude for eternity, and then they escaped together and live somewhere far away as a happy couple while the world crumbles all around them. That's the version told by the followers of Salvatore Solace, who were the only ones left alive after the explosion of the El. I've heard another history of the Last Day that claims that the Lady of the El was actually kidnapped against her will, and that Salvatore Solace abducted her either as a result of unrequited love or misplaced altruism. Either way, because he was a kidnapper and not a savior in that version, all of the other masters pursued him relentlessly not to punish him, but to rescue the Lady of the El. Then, there's the matter of just where they are now, which is what I've never really heard much about..."

"Ah, um..." Allegro fiddled with his sleeves and cleared his throat quietly. "Well, that... that version of history isn't entirely inaccurate... as for where they are now, it's hard to say, but there's one popular theory about it. Supposedly, Salvatore Solace alone would have stood no chance against the combined strength of the other guardians, so he had to flee to a place where they couldn't follow him. Since the world of Elrios was their domain, however, there was nowhere in this realm that he could go to hide or escape, so he crafted a spell that drew upon the power of the El to open the gates into another world..."

As soon as Allegro spoke those words, his eyes went wide and his mouth dropped open. Contemplating this recent revelation, Eve and Rena exchanged a quick, knowing glance. "Then, it is possible that the current invasion is a result of Salvatore Solace's actions during the Last Day."

Allegro paused, sighing wearily. "I'm not sure... I... I suppose it's possible..."

"Um..." Chung raised his hand, smiling blankly as he stood entirely bewildered. "I have no idea how you made that connection."

With a light giggle, Rena stepped over to Allegro's pile of scrolls and extended her hand above them. "May I?"

"O-of course." Allegro nodded quickly and Rena picked out a scroll of musty vellum and held it open for Chung to see.

"You see all these sigils? This is the sort of magic that's used by the guardians of Elrios. I don't know if you saw anything like it in Fluone, but these sigils are all over the temples and shrines across Lurensia. There's no way to know for sure, but it's possible that Salvatore Solace used a sigil like this to open a gate into another world. Since his power depended on the El, he probably had to carve the sigil into an El crystal that would have stayed behind on Elrios... Do you see what we're getting at?"

As Rena's words cascaded across Chung's ears, he slowly fit the pieces of her logic together in his mind. If Salvatore Solace created a spell that would open a gate to another world, then he would have left a record of it behind, and then someone else could have easily come along and copied that spell. Then, if that's the case, anyone who found that same spell could use it to open another gate and, unless Salvatore Solace used that same spell again in whatever world he fled to...

"Then..." Chung's eyes narrowed as the memory of Hamel's fall flashed across his mind. "What you're saying is that there's a good chance that the person who opened the gate and let the demons in is someone who was already in this world."

"Yes, it's definitely possible." Rena returned the scroll to Allegro and her eyes fell across the shifting shadows along the wall.

"It may not matter at this point, but..." Eve's voice melted into the wind as she stared across the solemn history of the end of their world, an ominous weight settling across her chest as she acknowledged the one possibility that she had been dreading. "...if these creatures have come from another world, and if the gate they passed through was opened from this side, then these demons are not our only enemies..."

With the curse from his wounds finally lifted, Raven sat upright on his cot and rubbed the soreness from his left shoulder. "Tch... this arm's not moving like it should..." He tried to flex his left elbow only to see it creak and lock up, a result of the phantom's corrosive touch. He thought to ask Eve to look into it tonight, but the sharp pain in his side and the grumbling of his stomach forced him to concede for the evening and head back to the captains' tent where Elsword and Aisha waited. Or rather, where they were supposedly preparing the evening's meal, though Raven was more than a little skeptical about what he'd be eating; there were no streams nearby and thus no fish they could catch and char, and as far as he was aware that was the extent of their combined culinary abilities.

When he approached their tent, a disheartening plume of smoke drifted past his face.

"Ah, what are you doing!?" Aisha reached over Elsword's shoulder and grabbed his wrist, pulling it back just before he tossed a bundle of tiny orange peppers into a bubbling pot of soup. "If you put in that many it'll be too spicy for anyone to eat!"
"It's all we've got to season it with though." Elsword scowled and pouted, "Fine, it'll be your fault if it tastes like crap."

"..." Raven stared at them, for a moment unsure of whether he had walked into the right campsite or had somehow found his way into the home of a bickering old couple. Laughing to himself, he headed over to Aisha's side where she sat spinning a wild boar on a spit. On his way, he noticed a pile of greens and herbs gathered into piles next to Elsword and a boiling pot of rich broth and knuckle bones before him. Since the best meal Raven had seen in the past two months had been a pile of bear jerky and a baked apple, he greeted the feast with great caution. "Where did you get all this? The forests around her have been bare since the demons showed up..."

"Oh, I picked it up outside of Velder..." Aisha spun the boar onto its side and brushed its skin with a mixture of vinegar and spices. "It put up a fight too, so I kind of had to pre-cook it a bit..." She smiled sheepishly as she doused the hide with spices once more before turning it again.

"Hey, Aisha, hand me the butter..." Elsword held his hand out over his shoulder and Aisha tossed him a large, icy block of butter from her pack while Raven stood somewhere between dumbstruck awe and abject horror.

How... How is that possible... Velder is at least two days away from here on horseback, and she made the trip in less than three hours, carrying a boar? And where did they get all those spices, and butter, and...He stared, wide eyed and amazed. Truly, Aisha and Elsword's devotion to food was a profound and mysterious thing. As he resigned himself to accept this as one of life's many unexplainable phenomena, Rena, Chung, Eve, and Oberon stepped out of the shadows and into the light of their campfire.

"Ah, it smells really good" Rena smiled and hovered over the pot of boiling vegetable stew just as Elsword added a pair of onions and a handful of tiny potatoes. "Do you all need any help?"

"Nah, we're fine." Elsword answered as he chopped a row of carrots down into tiny chips before tossing them into the pot. "You guys find what you were lookin' for?"

"Hm..." Rena paused and stood back for a moment. "Well, yes, but we'll worry about that later. Tonight's the first time we've all been together in over half a year, so let's just relax for a while~"

"I agree. We will have plenty of time to talk about that tomorrow." Eve moved across the campsite and sat down on a bench beside Aisha.

"Speaking of tomorrow..." Raven grimaced bitterly as he gathered himself and walked over to Eve, extending his left arm out to her as best he could. The moment she saw it, she glared up at him sharply.

"..." Eve glared silently at Raven, and Raven stared back uneasily. After a few moments of intense scrutiny, Eve closed her eyes and turned her attention back to the fire. "Very well, I will repair it tomorrow. We will need to make modifications to all of our armaments anyway if we will be facing any other enemies similar to the creatures we fought with tonight."

"Ah, no, no no no!" Aisha reached down into a bucket at her side and found it full of air, her hand tapping the bottom with a light thud as she searched its depths and corners. "I need more water, can somebody fill this bucket for me?"

"Oh, of course!" Chung rushed over and picked up the bucket and hurried off to the supply caravan without another word. Across the fire, Rena took a seat next to Raven and giggled.

"He's got a lot of enthusiasm."

"Heh... yeah, reminds me of how I was at that age..." Raven smiled slightly and stared off into the sky, indulging in the fond warmth of nostalgia. Stunned by this apparent revelation, Aisha and Elsword had dropped their tools and turned to face Raven, staring skeptically at his rugged, scarred face and struggling to imagine him as a spry, happy, young gentleman.

"You... you were like that...? Like a prince?" Aisha tried to blink away her disbelief as she spoke, though it was obvious to everyone that she doubted her own words. Not surprisingly, Raven doubted them as well.

"Well... no, not really anything like that actually..."

Rena laughed and poked him in the side with her below. "Although I might like to see that; Raven dressed in a gold trimmed jacket and little pointed shoes..."

Eve immediately turned toward them and opened her console, enlarging the image of a fanciful outfit made of velvet and lined with lace. "I prepared a diplomatic wardrobe for Oberon before we arrived. Those clothes would likely fit you, if you have a desire to wear such a thing... though there are no pointed shoes."

"...No thank you." Raven scowled at the very thought and everyone but Eve chuckled lightly. Just a few moments later, Chung returned with a five gallon bucket of water which he promptly set down at Aisha's side.

"Here you are. Did you need anything else?"

Aisha shook her head slightly. "Thanks, I'm fine, but you didn't have to run to get the water, I didn't really need it that badly."

"No, it's no trouble at all." Chung smiled brightly, "I run with my Destroyer all the time, so just one bucket of water is really nothing."

"R-really?" Aisha turned aside to Eve and whispered into her ear "Are you sure he's not a Nasod?"

Eve nodded. "He is entirely human, though I do not believe he is what you would consider 'typical'."

"Um, miss Aisha-" Chung reached out slightly and drew his hand back as soon as Aisha turned to face him. "Or, I guess, since you're older than me, I should call you Aisha-Noona... I heard from miss Eve that you're a really powerful magician."

"T-That's..." Aisha blushed lightly, caught completely off guard by such blithe and effortless compliments. "That's exactly right!" She grinned smugly as she splashed a spoonful of vinegar over the roasting boar. "I am a great and powerful magician who deserves to be called -Noona by everyone younger than me!" She glared across the fire at Elsword who scoffed and turned away to focus on his bubbling pot of stew. Settling in alongside her, Chung knelt down to the ground and let his eyes drift off toward the fire.

"We don't have that many magicians back in Hamel... actually, they aren't too common in all of Senace, so I think it's really impressive that you're so strong already..."

"Tch." From across the campsite, Elsword dropped his knife and marched over to Aisha's side, picked Chung up by his shoulders, and plopped him down on the ground next to Eve.

"...Huh?" Chung blinked and looked all around him, confused by his sudden change in perspective while Elsword scowled and returned to the stew. "What happened?"

"Elsword." Aisha glared sharply at him and he returned her biting gaze. The very next moment, however, Rena's lyrical laughter cut through their silent feud.

"Aisha, don't worry about it too much. He's being rude because he's jealous, and he's probably just jealous because he likes you~"

"No, that's not-" Elsword turned and spat out half a denial before Rena's coy smile silenced him.

"Not what?" She tilted her head and tapped her fingers against the bench. "I'm just teasing you, you know, you don't need to get that worked up about it."

"Nn..." Elsword bit his tongue and turned away while Aisha kept her head down to hide the red that had crept into her cheeks. Thoroughly perplexed, Chung turned aside to Eve and lowered his voice.

"What did she mean when she said he was jealous... I don't think I understand what's going on."

"I am not sure myself." Eve crossed her arms and glanced over at Elsword. "... though it likely has something to do with complicated human courtship rituals. It is best not to trouble yourself over it."

Chung nodded firmly. "I see. Then, if that's the case then you're probably right..."

As the evening wore on, the midsummer's breeze carried the echo of their laughter across the courtyard and through the hallowed halls of the ruined shrine. Crashing against the sealed gates of the underground chapel and winding around the spire's peaks, the wind carried the sounds of warmth and celebration up to top of the shrine, up through the clouds, and onto the altar of dedication. Resting in the midst of the altar, a single, massive El crystal pulsed and gleamed in the moonlight, it's surface scarred by the lines of a powerful, ancient magical seal. Hanging overhead, a colossal, shimmering circle of light rippled in the breeze, its surface reflecting a world far, far away from Elrios. As the clouds stirred below and washed across the altar, a great, fearsome howl split the air, churning the sky above and the clouds below as a thick haze of mist and fog gushed out of the open gate and a pair of bright, burning blue eyes opened onto the night.