Arthur and Celica sat at the table as they read the Requiem to find any information on Lucilius. Anything that stated a weakness or how to defeat him. But there was nothing. The only clues that existed were the missing pages that were torn out, and there was no saying where those ended up. The stories of his defeat never gave any instructions on how to stop him, making it harder to understand how he was beaten in the first place.

Vanessa was sitting across the two with her own book, she was writing down the events of their journey in hopes there were hints to help them. Sorey looked over her shoulder and pointed out the temple again, they found the book in the temple, and from how Vanessa described it, it hadn't been touched in years. There had to be some chance that the missing pages remained in the temple.

There was also a certain time when everything happened, Arthur and Celica showed up at about the same time Velvet did, which was also when Crowe said she saw the temple appear. If Lucilius had been sealed away until that time, and he was the one who ripped out the pages, the missing pages had to be inside.

With a glimmer of hope, the party returned to the temple. Luckily, Lucilius was nowhere to be found. The party split up into teams to look for the missing pages, they checked the easily accessible rooms, the secret rooms, and rooms that defied the laws of nature. Vanessa and Sorey opened the door to one room that when looking up, looked as if they were underwater. A large serpent like monster swam above them, so they were careful not to make any sudden movements or loud sounds.

They reached the end of the room where a door was in plain sight. Vanessa opened it and found it was like an old bedroom, there was a bed with torn sheets, a small desk with unorganized papers and a lamp that looked to be broken. Vanessa went to the desk and saw the papers were written in the same language the Requiem was in.

"We should take these with us, Arthur can translate them for us." Sorey suggested, but Vanessa was preoccupied with something else.

"Look at the state of the papers," she pointed out the water drops on the paper and how most were crumbled up and thrown away.

"He was upset, being trapped here for years with just paper to keep him company. Come on Vanessa, let's keep looking for the pages."

Sorey and Vanessa eventually met up with Arthur and Celica. Vanessa showed Arthur the papers she gathered and he just looked at the in horror. She wasn't sure why that was his reaction, then he pointed out that how the words were written in black in early dates, then were red in later dated entries. Vanessa didn't realize it until then, there was no bottle of ink on the desk. Lucilius had used his own blood to write on the papers. Arthur folded the papers and put them away in his bag, their objective was to find the missing pages of the Requiem, anything else came was asecond priority.

The others didn't have much luck in their search, Lucilius really didn't want them to know what was on those missing pages, he probably destroyed them long ago and they were just wasting their time. But Vanessa wasn't ready to give up, she was determined to stop Lucilius, so was determined to find those pages. Rokurou agreed with her, nothing ventured nothing gained as he believed. There had to be somewhere they missed.

Sorey then thought about going back to Lucilius' room, maybe there was a clue there. Arthur and Celica agreed to go with Vanessa and Sorey while the other scoped the temple again. Arthur sat down at the desk and read through some of the papers with Celica holding the Requiem so he could see if any of the pages were from it. Most were diary entries, others were notes about the temple, and one was a letter. Arthur read it out loud, it was about Lucilius' father, how much Lucilius hated his father and wished things went differently.

Without context, it didn't make much sense, and the other papers didn't have any information on his childhood or any events before he was sealed in the temple. Vanessa and Sorey sat on the bed to take a break, Sorey kept trying to reposition himself while Vanessa just watched him, he said he felt like he was sitting on a brick. The bed itself was comfortable according to Vanessa, "soft and fluffy" as she described it. Sorey stood up and moved the blankets to find a box.

There were six gemstones on it, each one the same color of a feather that Vanessa had. She grabbed the feathers from her bag and unlocked the box, she opened the box to find something like that looked like a speaker. She pressed the button and a voice came from it.

"Are you having fun trashing my room? Looking for any glimpse of hope that something in there can help you stop me?" Lucilius had recorded lines, knowing they would search his room. "Here's a hint, phoenix kid, use your brain, or rather, your feathers. Have fun."

"What is wrong with this guy?" Celica asked. "Why is he helping us?"

"He wanted us to defeat the Phoenix, let us explore the temple and his room, and now he's giving us tips on how to find what we need to defeat him?" Arthur said completely confused.

"Do you think he wants us to gain hope just to crush it?" Vanessa suggested.

"I wouldn't be surprised, either way, we still have to find those pages, even if it just says he can't be defeated, we have to try."

"Use my feathers..." Vanessa thought. "These feathers opened the box, what else can they open?"

"Here we go, Vanessa is getting curious." Arthur laughed.

"Oh, shut up Arthur."

The entire temple shook, and made Arthur drop the papers he was holding. Celica immediately opened the door to see that the serpent monster was staring right down at her. She closed the door instantly and said they had a big problem. The monster banged on the door over and over again while the four prepared themselves for a fight, there was no telling why it had gotten so mad, but Arthur theorized it had to do something with the box Lucilius left them.

(Another author's note, I've read through a lot of early chapters of this story, and while I won't call it bad story wise, it is probably the worst I've done in both word count and formatting. I like a balance of dialogue and descriptions and there is just way too much dialogue for my liking. As much as I'd like to go through and fix all that, less dialogue, and longer chapters, I would run the risk of retconning information or repeating myself too much. So, instead I'm going to rectify that by making these next chapters longer. They should reach around 5K words instead of the 800 that I used to aim for.)