Diary ~
Gods above, it is cold here.
We went to go see the Queen Theresa first, like Dart said to, and Shana, Meru, and I all nearly lost fingers in the cold. Father said it was perhaps because we were women and weaker than men. I suppose that makes sense, seeing as how Rose was the only woman who didn't freeze her butt off.
I had gone completely numb by the time we reached Fueno, and I nearly leapt into the fire that the mayor built for us, entirely forgetting how much it hurt to defrost so quickly. So by the time we actually went to go see Queen Theresa, I was a shivering mass of chatters.
Miranda went in first, speaking in hushed tones to the Queen and to Wink, about Setie. Wink screamed and fled to the back room. Theresa sat down hard in a chair and shook her head. "And Luanna?" She asked quietly, clasping Miranda's hand tightly.
"Staying in Neet for the time being, trying to help the villagers adjust."
Dart spoke up then, a little awkwardly. "I think that you now understand the sheer power and destructive nature of the Divine Dragon. It has to be imprisoned again, now."
"It cannot be imprisoned." Rose interrupted him harshly. "None of us holds enough magical power to restrain and control the King of all Dragons. We will have to kill him." There was a little whimper from Meru, but Rose continued, "With the Dragon Block Staff, we can cancel out its power. Then, us warriors will do the rest, weakening him until Lloyd can kill him with the Dragon Buster."
It sounds like a good plan, it makes sense and all. But just how difficult would a fight with the Divine Dragon be? I had been there when it did what it did to Deningrad and I'm a little scared. I had been there when it tore apart the Crystal Palace and Deningrad. I had felt its awful power. It seemed the toughest and strongest of all the enemies we would have fought. But we must help Mille Seseau, and this is the only way how, so I must steel myself and ready for the journey.
The Queen offered to send her guards and knights with us, but we told her it was unnecessary. With the Dragoons here, they would mostly get in the way, especially since they had no experience with the Dragon. However, we did take along one of Miranda's friends, Deleoh, as a guide. He claims that he knows the safest path to the mountain and back, and it seems right, because we are fighting less monsters than we should.
Theresa also insisted on giving us food and supplies, and we are now a day's journey away from the mountain. The guide tells us that it is called the Dying Dragon's Mountain, but from the sounds of the roaring and screaming coming from it, I would think that the Dragon is anything but dying. We've stopped for a rest now, and I'm writing this while eating. Miranda's being oddly quiet and subdued. I hope she's okay.
Ow. In pain. Ouch.
The rumbling has finally subsided, but we're staying here on the mountain just to make sure there's no side effects or baby dragons or anything.
It was shaking when we came here too, the mountain throwing rocks at us. The Dragon awaited us at the top, and at first it was hidden in an underground cave, but Shana, for some reason, found him. Her psychic powers seemed to be stronger. She navigated the paths easily, finding the shortest and easiest route.
We ambushed him, surprisingly. Dart, Albert, Rose, and Kongol—the blade users—surprised it by stabbing it in the side and jumping back before it turned. After its claws came down at nothing but air, Father, me, and Meru took on its chest, pushing it back. Lloyd, waiting behind our two female archers, tossed the Dragon Block Staff into the air. It did something fancy, then a white light washed over the mountain.
The Dragon screamed, but so did the Dragoons. We hadn't known that would happen. All of the Dragoon fell to the floor clutching their heads and howling like the devil incarnate, even Rose, maybe her most of all. I wanted to check on them, but Dart was yelling at me to attack the Dragon while it was down. Shana and Lloyd joined me, both being unaffected by the anti-dragon magic.
Sure, we managed to injure the Dragon, but not enough. It regained its bearings again, nearly trampling me in the process. The Dragoons clambered to their feet and the battle was met.
I don't understand how our plan could have gone so wrong. We had surprised and ambushed the Dragon, yet it still met us strike for strike, injuring us more than we did it. I had hit my head on a cliff face, and dazed, my sight had been blinded for a while, something that every fighter feared.
Meru pushed me out of the way, fast, as one of the Dragon's claws were coming down. I saw her, screamed. At the last possible second, she transformed. She had just enough energy to transform for a short while, I guess. Her Dragoon armor and heightened strength was all that saved her life. As soon as the claws rebounded off her silver armor, she faded back into her Wingly form, and I dragged her to the side. Now we were one short, and the Dragon was still there.
Then Deleoh, who had been hiding behind a rock all the battle, was suddenly thrown from his spot by a lash of the Dragon's tail. Smelling fresh weak meat, the Divine Dragon aimed for him.
Miranda leapt onto the Dragon, landing on its neck, stabbing it with one of her arrows. Crazy, barking mad, I tell you. When the arrow broke, she began pummeling it with her hands. The rest of us were so shocked that we just watched as the Dragon reared and screamed, and Miranda was screaming along with it, though her yells had words, and none I would care to repeat.
The Dragon finally slung her off though, and she landed with a broken leg and a mouthful of curses. Taking Shana's hand, she dragged herself further back, playing her role as archer.
Hurting badly and almost hopeless, we still managed to pull through. Lloyd, his speed and swiftness being his best asset in this battle, ducked in and out of the spaces to stab at the Dragon, then pulling back to heal us. But he wasn't fast enough; the Dragon knocked him aside. He just barely avoided smashing into the rock face by flying and skidding to a stop.
By sheer luck and chance alone, Dart found the weak spot. "Lloyd! Aim for its eye!"
"It has seven of them, which one?"
"The largest one!"
But the Dragon had swatted Lloyd again like a fly and he dropped with a grunt. Abandoning my combo and letting Father take my place, I ran to him, checking for injuries. He was fine, but it was not like the Dragon to leave a wounded prey alone, and it ignored Father and stalked toward us with footsteps that shook the mountain and perhaps all of Mille Seseau.
I don't know how I did it, but I did it again. I grabbed the Dragon Buster from the ground and Called on the blade again. Fire burned my arm and snaked down to the hilt. I was unused to a sword, but I had seen Dart learning from his swordsmaster, and knew enough how to hold my weight, and tilt the sword up, impaling the Dragon's foot with it.
It pulled back, nearly trampling Meru's unconscious body. The rest of them, moving as one, cut out its other front leg, felling it just in front of me. The giant eye blinked maliciously, nearly freezing the marrow in my bones.
I probably should have given it back to Lloyd, let him kill it, he wouldn't have made such a mess. But I was just so scared, and I thought Lloyd was unconscious and everyone was screaming and I didn't know what to do and I just stabbed.
Like a basic hammer fist I brought down the sword and shoved it into the biggest eye.
The Divine Dragon stumbled around, howling and screeching. "Move!" Dart yelled, and all of them dissipated, Albert grabbing Meru's body and flying the both of them to a safe rock cliff. Father and Lloyd pulled my arm, yanked me out of the way before the Dragon's head landed where I was standing.
"By all the gods…" Dart breathed, crawling over to me on hands and knees amidst the silver blood of the Dragon that splattered the ground and my black fighting uniform. The blood was like the raindrops that roll off a duck's feathers; they easily came off with a flick of my fingers and shimmered on the ground.
Everyone was basically okay, scraped and battered and bruised, but for the whole okay. Miranda broke her leg, my left arm is hurting again, and Father has a gash on his shoulder. Meru has a shattered rib, I think, and Shana's casting her special magic trying to help her with that. It is like she has almost doubled her psychic powers on this mountain. I can feel something strange about this mountain too, I'm not sure exactly what…it's like a presence in my mind, a piece of a puzzle that I haven't even realized was there yet. Mine is an inactive power, but Shana is using this opportunity to play with her magic a little, casting stronger and stronger healing spells to see what is her limit.
Lloyd was furious with me for having used the Dragon Buster. He says I should have let him kill the Dragon, that it was he that wielded the flame-sword of the Winglies. I told him that I had used it before to deflect Lenus's attack, and that I was perfectly fine, but then he just shook his head.
"You used it to defend yourself the first time, nothing big. This time you used it to kill a being, a very strong one. The Dragon Buster is not a regular blade or sword, Claire. It holds an extreme magical power that takes a great amount of control to hold back and influence."
"What?"
"The Dragon Buster does not just stab the enemy." Rose said, tying a bandage around a deep cut in her forearm. "It uses the wielder's power as its essence. You have a strange life essence because of your presence during the Moon Child's journey. Perhaps that is why you are able to Call the blade. But the Dragon Buster took your energy to be Called, to be formed, and to be wielded. It killed the Divine Dragon, and then it took its energy. The massive energy of the Divine Dragon surged through the Dragon Buster to you."
"Taking the life of something as powerful as the Divine Dragon could have caused a magical backlash capable of killing you." Lowering his voice, Lloyd said to me, "I have been living for a long time. I know how to use the sword. You don't. You could have been killed."
I don't quite understand what they mean by the entire thing, but if they say the Dragon Buster can kill me, that I'm keeping my hands off.
Our talk seemed to have reanimated Miranda. She dragged herself using nothing but her hips and her arms over to the Dragon, poking it harshly with a forefinger. The inquisitive poking became an annoyed punch and then an insistent pounding on the corpse. "You bastard!" She screamed. "You killed my sister!" We let her vent her rage for a while, punching and hitting the Divine Dragon's body, until she tried kicking it with her good leg and howled in pain anyway, at which point Shana then helped her relax.
But her kick seemed to have dislodged something in the huge corpse. It shuddered once, scaring us all, then from where the stab wound to its eye was, something was puked up. A silver light flew into the air and burst like a firework, dimming the red glow of the volcano and bringing sharp pain to our eyes.
It faded and condensed itself into an all-too-familiar Dragoon Spirit, a silver-gray stone like galena floating on a chain. It hovered in the air and then flung itself at me.
Me! It circled my head once, and I had a feeling that if it were a person it would be tilting its head. For some reason, I thought that might be possible to see that if I touched it, and lifted a hand to do so.
It was like the world exploded, every single splash of color narrowing and becoming a dagger that stabbed into my eyes. Briefly I felt myself falling and everything swirled like a giant headache. The white darkened to silver then black. It was a sort of pleasurable pain, like finishing stretches early in the morning.
There was someone that stood in front of me, a girl, slight of figure, clothed in what looked like tree bark. Light danced along her arms and legs. Her eyes were the darkest that I had ever seen, and seemed to crackle through with lightning and thunder. A wind swirled around her slender limbs and brushed back her hair, which seemed to be made of flame. She stood on a tiny geyser that randomly propelled her higher and lower.
She was small and girlish, but then when she spoke my estimate of her age shot up by centuries at least. "Do you know who I am, Clarina?"
Nobody knew my full name except for Father and he hadn't called me it in so long I think he himself might have forgotten. I looked at the girl even though she was hard to focus on, and then it hit me. Maybe Rose is right and I do have some sort of gift of "realizing."
"You're the spirit that controls the elements."
"Close. I am the spirit of the Divine Dragon. The Original that used to wield it."
"But you are a human."
"I am a faerie, thank you very much." She dropped her act of ethereal mystery and put her hands on her hips. "I am one of the earlier races, and I held the power of the Divine Dragon. The Spirit chose you, and you will have to accept the power."
"Whoa. Wait." I didn't want to accept the power without knowing what would happen when I did so, and I'm sure that everyone would understand that. I saw the differences in the Dragoons, how Shana had seemed to grow up after she got her Dragoon Spirit. She seemed so different from the little girl that I knew and had watched change from a child into a young woman, and the same went for every single one of the Dragoons. It changed them, made them more powerful and wiser, and I wasn't sure if I was ready for that.
"It's all right." The strange "faerie" girl did tilt her head and motioned me closer to her. "I will show you what it is you will be accepting, and it is you who will make the final judgment."
I had no idea where the hell I was, and there seemed to be no harm just walking a few steps closer to her, so I did it. She took my head between her hands, and the light that had been washing over her arms moved through my hair from the roots to the ends, then down my entire body until the cuts seemed to disappear and I felt cleaner, softer, as if I had already soaked in a hot tub.
She kissed my forehead, and the light spread from there, hotter than flame and faster than wind. The elements danced and reveled in this world at their strongest. Everything about the elements, all the knowledge and power of the world, flooded into my mind so strongly that I screamed. I struggled to get away but she merely held me tighter, yelling.
It was too much, diary, it really was. The power and knowledge and strength of all the universe would have appealed to most, but not me. I didn't want all that. The sheer wisdom that poured into my brain nearly killed me. It was too much to deal with. I knew that I did not want it, and I fought her off.
"Wait. Tell me one thing: where is this?"
"This is the Realm of the Divine Dragon, a pocket dimension that I created, originally to keep myself isolated when I wanted to be alone, but eventually it grew to have more uses." She smiled. "You've had a small taste of what it could be like to become the Divine Dragoon, the most powerful of all Dragons, the ruler of them all. What do you choose? It is many a mortal's dream…"
I don't know how long I stood there looking around. The blackness seemed to shift every time I looked at it, becoming something different, sometimes a person, sometimes an environment, sometimes an animal or plant. It was amazing and beautiful and too out of my world.
"I don't want the power of your Divine Dragon. I choose to stay human."
The faerie girl stared at me for a long time, head tilting again. After a long while of silence, she spoke, her voice considerably softer and younger. "Very well, Clarina. The decision is yours. The Dragoon Spirit shall go to the second best candidate, though he would never reach the potential you could have." She touched the tip of her finger to my temple and the white light washed over me again.
When I regained consciousness, the rest of the group was leaning over me, watching anxiously, so I gather I could not have been out for more than a few minutes.
"Mom? Mom, are you all right?"
The Dragoon Spirit was now hovering in the air again. This time it floated to Lloyd, who was more hesitant than I to touch it, and fell in much the same way.
"Leave him." I told the others when they went to him. "He will be fine in a few moments." And I was right because he came back to us after a couple of minutes, and the Dragoon Spirit latched itself around his neck.
I guess he accepted.
I honestly don't know whether or not it really happened, the whole thing with the faerie girl. I haven't asked the other Dragoons what happened when they accepted their powerstones, nor have I spoken with Lloyd yet. The faerie girl could have been my imagination. I don't know. I did feel cleaner and my cuts were healed—though not the soreness—but it just seemed too weird.
Deleoh is quite traumatized by what happened, and I myself just want to take a long nap. We're on our way back to Theresa to claim the Moon Mirror as reward and complete our mission. Anything else that happens from here to there, we'll just have to wing it. Unsuspectingly, the faerie girl already triggered an idea in my mind. I can't tell you exactly what it is, because I don't know either, but it's there and it's big, whatever it is. When the time comes and we need it, I'm sure it will come in handy.
But for now, a nap.