Author's Note: GASP! Ffnet isn't fully functional, but yet I can update! *^^* Very long chapter here, dealing with Uru Mais and some freaky dream stuff I've been into lately. o__o


If you had been traveling as long as Vahn had throughout the vast Karisto Kingdom and always paused under the shadow of the Floating Castle, watching it spit out Mist that the Ra-Seru trio were impervious to, you would have gone crazy too if the object of your affection had been out of your sights for month ... most likely wanted to cleave you open ... and was of the same gender.

Chunks of a rancid jelly-like substance from the defeated ball of slime ran down Vahn's knuckles and slipped to the earth below with a thick splat. Noa made a face and shook her hands free of it as well, dancing on the spot. Through the Mist that surrounded them on all sides, she could see their next destination. "Uru Mais is just up ahead!" she squeaked. "Let's go!"

As always the only truly excited one of the trio, she darted ahead to the ancient temple with Gala and Vahn dragging behind. Uru Mais was a small area dotted with small stone houses, and a three-legged apparatus atop a high pentagon platform in the center.

"This is the great temple of Uru Mais?" Gala said, following Noa's jumpy lead up the stairs to the structure. Vahn shrugged into the silence, tilting his head side to side to inspect the thing in front of them. "We should be able to put the Ruins Key that Mrs. Usha gave us somewhere in here!" Noa cried, snatching the key from Vahn and running around the apparatus in circles, searching for a keyhole.

Her frantic dashing was stopped by a weary voice that called out of nowhere. "The Ruins Key will most likely not fit into any hole," it croaked. "The eyes of Tieg can see a hole within each of you that must be fulfilled. Go to the doors on either side of the temple ... and fill those holes... inside..." And with that it stopped, and when Gala looked down to question the voice, noticed Noa was missing. Her cheers were calling out from a hallway beneath the temple, signaling she had already gone to fill her own hole.

Shaking his head slowly with a sigh, Gala walked to the edge and jumped off, walking to the door lit by a gentle blue light. Vahn did the same for the door with a red light, being bathed in its warmth as he entered a bright corridor.

Wondering what could be the hole inside of him that the eyes of Tieg saw, he walked down the turning hallway until he came to a completely black void at the end. His eyes suddenly felt heavy and his legs turned to iron, weighing him down to the invisible surface below. His body collapsed and his head hit it hard, knocking him into a painful yet deep sleep.

As if he were controlling a camera far above the places where his dreams took place, Vahn was stuck hovering over Rim Elm. It zoomed down towards his house and his eyes widened, he thought he was going to crash right into his own front door -- but he melted right through it and was jolted, like an electric shock, into the body of his younger self. His father, Val, was well and not crippled, and his mother was alive but very ill with the same virus that killed her. "Vahn, please stay inside and look after your mother while I go to find some Drake Water," he heard his father say. Hearing sound inside of a dream was a very odd and hurtful feeling, like there were speakers surrounding his brain and blasting sound out of his ears.

All he could do was nod and watch as Val walked out of the house and off into the night. A coo of satisfaction was heard from behind him, and he turned to see a rocking wooden cradle in the corner of the house. Inside was his baby sister Nene, looking up at him with enormous violet eyes and an innocent smile.

Suddenly his world became fuzzy and he swayed on his feet, groaning in a voice that had gone up half an octave due to his temporary change of age. He fell right back onto the wooden floor with a thud that sent Nene into upset tears of confusion, but he was right back into that painful, deep sleep again with her cries echoing throughout his mind. Once her voice faded, the weary one that he had heard at Uru Mais returned just as horrible as it was before. "That is not ... your hole inside," it said in a croak. "The eyes of Tieg see one much deeper that crosses many more emotional boundaries and has just been dug. Tieg hopes it does not upset you..."

In a horrible flash of light he was kneeling in front of a thick puddle that showed his reflection for only a moment, but then it disappeared. "You are invisible, my boy," the voice said one last time but in a deviously quiet sort of tone. He could still feel himself moving, though, and stood to look for a door or way out. A hole high up in the ceiling was all that he could find after peering around through the eternal darkness, and it seemed as if just looking at it caused him to levitate up through it. He popped up inside of what appeared to be a throne room with a tall and thin purple-haired woman sitting on the throne, gazing down at her kneeling subjects.

He was in Zora's throne room, in the Floating Castle.

And the kneeling subjects in front of her were Gi, Lu, and Che Delilas.

Even though he was invisible to them, he was so flustered that he had to duck for cover behind a column close enough to where they were, just for protection. "Gi knows already, but the Ra-Seru kids have revived the Genesis Tree of Sol," Zora said amusedly with a swing of her booted foot from its crossed position. "I want you three to pay a little visit to Koru and stop them." He could hear a quick, breathless mumble of "Yes, Lady Zora" from them that made her smile. "They should be arriving there within a matter of days, so be ready," she concluded. They mumbled that again and faded away in blurs of blue, pink, and green.

Feeling curious, Vahn followed the blue blur that was Gi to a Mist-filled chamber. Gi manifested from the blur and walked in a slump to an open silver cocoon, where he lowered down onto it and stared where the ceiling would be. As Vahn was about to walk in, Lu stepped into the doorway and leaned on one side, looking disappointed yet concerned. "Gi, you really have to tell us what's wrong," she said in a firm tone.

Gi turned over, blinked his crimson eyes at her ( which were brimming with a mysterious moisture ), and sighed. He sat up in an upset fury, and began rambling to her. "It's Vahn!" he said finally, and Vahn's jaw unhinged. "Ever since Tieg-knows-when, he's just been everywhere I look and in everything I think. It's driving me insane, but I think I know why. You know what I'm talking about ... you have the same problem with that hyperactive Noa girl." He looked up, desperate, searching for a clue that she didn't think he was insane.

Rather, her face showed complete surprise but with no denial. "I know what you're talking about," she finally replied, fading to the edge of his cocoon and sitting by his side. "And for some reason you can't shake the feeling, even if we're supposed to be their mortal enemies?" He just nodded mutely, eyes cast to the floor bathed in the Mist that was supposed to bring him such serenity. Days and weeks and years of corrupting the world with just some stupid Mist to calm him was getting quite boring, perhaps the reason he was contemplating life other than being Zora's slave until the day he died. He would probably serve her in the Valley of Noaru once they got there.

"I'm supposed to be his evil counterpart," he continued in a hopeless voice. "But how can I? This isn't supposed to happen ... not at all ... but it did." His hair became tousled into thick, unruly spikes as he raked his fingers back through it, gripping each spike in unexplained madness. "I don't even know if it's love or lust anymore because of this stupid voice inside of my head. I don't know what to do anymore, Lu..."

As they sat in silence, comforting each other and rubbing out the sorrow that they alone felt within the Delilas family, Vahn felt his invisible self shuffling backwards into the wall beside the door, spine running parallel with it. This couldn't be real ... Gi couldn't have said that at any point, and neither could Lu about Noa. If the eyes of Tieg saw that this was the hole inside of his poor, miserable soul, then Tieg was blind. This was wrong ... this was all wrong...

He began falling back into that sleep again, at an agonizingly slow pace. "You'll tell him when we see him, won't you?" Lu asked Gi, their voices beginning to echo and become distorted. Gi shook his head, now a moving blob of color. "I don't know ... it could go all wrong. This godforsaken thing could change the fate of Legaia as we know it." Vahn's vision began to blur and the world around him started to spin like an amusement park ride, picking up speed.

This just can't be real, Tieg...

"If we don't do anything about it and fight them and win, Koru will destroy Karisto Kingdom with the heat unless we say different..."

Please don't say that he feels the same way...

"If we don't say and fight them and lose, they'll continue ridding the world of Mist and we'll eventually die without energy for our Seru..."

...please don't die, please don't go, Gi...

"If we confess, things will stay the way they are and we'll either live a damned happily ever after or they'll slash our heads off..."

No ... no ... please don't tell me...

"We have to decide, Lu. I never knew that fate could lay in our hands so suddenly."

As things faded into a swirling white void, Vahn began to materialize and he was rushing backwards, screaming at the top of his lungs if Gi could hear him. "GI! PLEASE JUST SAY YOU HATE ME!" he found himself bawling through incredible tears. His body hit something hard and he was pressed against it vertically, wriggling against invisible bonds, feeling tears of molten lava streaming down his face. He never thought that he could ever fall into the hole within his own soul.

* * * *
"Vahn! Vahn, are you all right?!"

"Vahn, please wake up! Stop screaming!"

A red light hit his eyelids and poured through, forcing them open at once. He was still screaming on and on about Gi until Noa and Gala's faces swam into focus. Noa breathed a sigh of relief and they pulled him to his feet, his arms slung over each of their shoulders for support. "Are you okay now?" she asked in a meek tone, looking just as deathly pale and surprised as he knew he did.

He nodded and swallowed, unable to move. "I think Tieg tried a little too hard to show us those holes inside of us," she said with a quick sigh. "But look, we got the Fire Droplets from him while you were still asleep." She held up what looked like three large, frozen drops of red water that shimmered in her palm before she shoved them back into the item sack at her side. "What did Tieg show you? He showed me two things. One of my parents and me when I was a baby, and ... and ... OH! Look!" She pointed suddenly at something encircling Uru Mais like an enormous, scaly vulture eyeing its prey.

It was the Juggernaut, with a pleased Songi standing by its head. Gala assumed the same freaked-out expression and wore it as they rode into view, his eyes locking from a distance with Songi's own. "Well, well, well, if it isn't the moron brigade!" Songi said with the usual sadistic glee. "Did you have fun with Tieg? I hope you did, because he has to go home now..." From there on for Vahn, it was a whirl of Noa and Gala dragging him off to the surrounding forest as Juggernaut opened its mouth wide, strings of saliva and blood stretching out and dripping from the fanged teeth within, and in one chaotic blast leveled Uru Mais to smoking heaps of the odd silvery metal and bricks that the platform and the small pueblo-like buildings around it were made of.

Noa let out a scream of agony as the many bodies of Tieg rushed towards the sky like spirits, never to return. Gala now glared up at Songi in a rage he thought that he could contain from now on. "Songi! You ... you heartless bastard! What do you think you are, a god?! Destroying powerful souls like that with a Forbidden Seru! How dare you!"

Songi just smirked and spat down at them, which landed inches from Gala's right foot. "I'm hurt, Gala," he countered smoothly. "Juggernaut had to burp, he just devoured some yummy humans." The dark purple Seru on his wrist, which had grown considerably in size, gleamed as did his fierce eyes with pure malice. "And don't you go calling me a heartless bastard, you better not be screaming that later. Until we meet again, dear morons!" Juggernaut faded from beneath his feet, and the sky warped to let him disappear into the same portal he always came out of.

Gala was shaking with rage, and Noa was stomping furiously on the ground with her arms flailing. "I hate that Songi!" she cried, her voice echoing out into the wreckage that they stood in. "I hate him sometimes too," he replied quietly. Much unlike his chaos-protesting self, Vahn was sitting slumped against a tree with his eyes closed and his head back, neck exposed. Once their anger died down, he finally talked. "What was the second thing you saw, Noa?" he asked.

She walked back over to him and sat down on the ground, cross-legged. "Ehrm, I don't really want to say ... that is, I dunno why I saw it, but ... you know Lu Delilas? She and Gi were there and talking. And she looked really upset. You didn't tell us what you saw yet." Attempting to cover it up, she perked up and peered at him patiently, head canted. He didn't budge as he thought the words over in his head so that they didn't sound wrong. Lately, everything sounded wrong. "I saw my mother when she was still alive but very sick ... and I saw Gi and Lu, too. They were talking about us. About me." Her shrill gasp made him open his eyes and stare up into the canopy of treetops and slanted rocks that pierced the sky.

The sun was peeking through the leaves and shining in small rays onto his lifted face, trying to provide the warmth he knew he could find elsewhere. "You saw them too?" she cried, flailing her arms. "Wow, that's so cool! So I guess our holes are the same sizes and have the same stuff in them, huh?" Back to her bouncy self, she giggled and stood, hopping over to Gala. "Come on you two, let's go back and give the Fire Droplets to Doctor Usha!" She twirled in the air with an arm raised and darted ahead impatiently.

Wondering how far from now his next meeting with Gi would be, Vahn pushed himself to his feet and followed her excited lead out of the area. He wasn't so sure what to do anymore ... he had heard the words Gi said in his dream that could be the turning point in Legaia's fate, and they were all too true. If they won, Buma would be saved and they could continue ridding the world of the Mist. But then the Delilases would die because their Seru would have no energy. If they lost, the three of them would die and Karisto Kingdom would remained unsaved -- and possibly destroyed by Koru.

If all came down to it, they could win and he could commit suicide. That way he and Gi would be together in the Valley of Noaru forever.

*Forever? Is that what it is? You think it's fate and love, Vahn? Hmm?*

There was one option.




Told ya it was weird ... s' what I get for listening to Enigma too much. O_O