Alert: There are quite a few major spoilers in this chapter. If you never did the Seraphic Radiance side-quest, firstly, Why Not? and secondly, there are some spoilers later on.
"While yes, in the past, we tormented our hosts, reveled in their pain and bathed in their metaphorical blood, now I believe that it is time for us to set this behind us. This young man is our last hope against the oncoming storm, and we will need him. Mark my words, we will need him," Death Emperor began, voice ringing with conviction. He was still in his cage; however, the other fusion souls had left their gravestones to watch the hearing. Death Emperor referred to it as the Spectacle, but that was in the privacy of his own thoughts. He ignored the bitter muttering around him as he continued.
"This…Judge, I shall call it for lack of a better word, will come here and sweep the world clean of all humanity. There is no way that humanity can withstand its wrath, and it will fall. And we too, shall fall, for our fate is intrinsically bound to theirs."
"What of it if the humans perish?" a voice called out. "We shall be freed from our prison!" The muttering increased, as if showing support for this stance. Death Emperor spat upon the crowd.
"What of it?" he demanded. He looked around at the audience, staring at each individual member of it. "That theory is only one of many," he continued, speaking softly. "The accepted theory is thus; if the Harmonixers die, so shall we. This haven," Death Emperor gestured, encompassing the Graveyard in his wide arm sweep. "Is our only protection from the ravages of time. If the last should fall, it will collapse like a soap bubble and we will cease to exist. Not to mention the Soul Wells. If this place should fall, they will be let loose upon the world. No, we cannot let this happen. Set me free, allow me to continue my appointed task of molding the Hyuga into one who can face his Judge, and win us a reprieve."
"You were never appointed such a task," another voice cried out.
"I appointed myself to it," Death Emperor replied coolly. "If my task is not to your approval, that is not my concern. My concern is ensuring that my charge lives long enough to see his destiny through. Which, you are keeping me from. Also, I have a duty to discharge to certain individuals." He looked out upon the crowd.
"You know the truth. Will you stand aside and allow me to continue, or rage against the chains of fate?" None of the audience seemed particularly interested in either option.
"Oh, for the love of…." Amon spat. "Revelation!" In the resulting chaos, she slipped over to Death Emperor and freed him from the cage. He jumped lightly onto the ground and looked at her gratefully.
"Thank you Amon," he replied quietly. She shook her head.
"It was nothing," she replied, shrugging her shoulders. "Now go!" Death Emperor gazed at her one last time, some indescribable emotion in his eyes.
"Go well, Amon and if fate is good, I shall see you again," he whispered. She whispered something into his ear, a soft murmuring of a language two millennia dead. He closed his eyes against the tears in her eyes and disappeared.
*
Yuri ran blindly, from what he did not know. All he knew was that if he could not allow himself to be caught.
"Look, you stupid boy. I shan't hurt you," a familiar voice snarled. Yuri stopped and turned around, eyes wide.
"Yes, it's me. Let me in, damn you, before they catch me," Death Emperor continued. Yuri shook his head in confusion. Death Emperor rolled his eyes and grabbed Yuri by the wrist. His claws punctured Yuri's skin and he dissolved.
*
Valentina watched in consternation as cuts formed on Yuri's wrists. She bound them and continued walking, cursing bitterly under her breath about fool boys who didn't even have the courtesy of doing their witchcraft closer to her mistress' stronghold.
*
Halley opened dazed eyes and blinked blearily at the smear of red that filled his vision. He groaned and raised his hand to his head, trying to assuage the building headache.
"Halley!" his mother cried softly. "I was wondering if you would ever wake!" Halley smiled slightly and closed his eyes once more. Koudelka leaned in closer, only to sigh in relief when she realised that it was just sleep that had bound him, and not a spell trance.
*
Amon stood in defiance of the crowd, arms folded.
"I did what was needful," she said disdainfully. She unfolded her arms, sighed mentally and began her speech.
"Something that you all seem to have forgotten. We were once gods and now? We whimper and crawl in the mud, desperately clinging to our misbegotten pride. We have no pride left; we prostituted it for our immortality. However, we can win it back! Allow Death Emperor to fulfill this task he has appointed himself, and we too can win glory! We can aid this Hyuga and achieve a reprieve from the Judge!" She gazed upon the crowd.
"Free ourselves from our self-imposed slavery and allow ourselves to once again alter events in reality! That is all I ask!" She paused, trying to win people with her eyes. The crowd seemed unimpressed. Actually, they were more interested in what was happening behind her. Amon whirled around, only to have her arms pinioned by two fusion souls. She fought furiously, but was unable to break free. Realising the futility of her situation, she began to speak again.
"Cast me out, shall you?" she whispered. "The Hyuga boy will come and he will claim you as battle trophies. Abandoning me to whatever sorcerer with a penchant for demons comes along is cruel, but not as cruel as the fate that boy will have for you. Death Emperor is bitter, and now, so am I." The crowd seemed to shrink back for a moment, then shrug nonchalantly, as if saying, that will never happen to them. She turned from them in disgust.
"Take me away. I am weary of their discontent," she spat to her captors.
*
"My lady, the Hyuga boy is here," Valentina whispered from her bow. The subject of her abasement was a clear-eyed thirteen-year-old girl, with waves of dark hair framing a delicate face dominated by huge brown eyes.
"The boy is older then I am physically," the girl replied.
"Ah, my lady, that is true. However your gifts…."
"Yes, my gifts," the girl answered, somewhat bitterly. "Tell me Valentina, what if you could see the end of the world? Could see how one seemingly minor decision could alter the course of fate? What would you do?" Valentina blinked at such a question.
"I would try to alter fate to one that suits my purposes," she replied promptly. The girl shook her head, as if in pity.
"I have tried to alter fate, and sorrow has befallen us. Another, a master player has interfered with my strategy and all has fallen into ruin. And, I see now that my interference was for naught."
"My lady, that is not true! We have the Hyuga boy, we can still salvage something surely!" Valentina protested.
"The Hyuga boy is strong, yes. Strong enough to stand alone? I think not," the girl replied calmly. "And, Valentina, my name is Celeste. You have had always the right to call me by that."
"My lady…Celeste, whether the boy is strong enough or not to bear these burdens is not our concern. We need to focus on salvaging enough from this to ensure our survival," Valentina argued. Celeste raised one hand.
"Valentina, I will not use him as a tool. For one, I cannot force him to sacrifice himself for us. He is not bound to our course, and cannot be so bound. Also, I…we don't even know his name!"
"Yuri," Valentina supplied. At Celeste's slightly incredulous look, she shrugged. "He introduced himself when I gave the Chimera the knives. Which, I may add, he did not use."
"Valentina," Celeste sighed. "We cannot force another onto our path. If Master Kerry refused the offering of the knives, then it is no longer our concern. I did foresee it, but I hoped that we could avert that path."
Yuri moaned quietly from his position on the floor, breaking the tension between the two. Celeste started.
"May I take my leave and escort Master Hyuga to his chambers?" Valentina asked formally. Celeste nodded and Valentina scooped Yuri from the floor. He twitched and one arm moved out, as if to drive away attackers. Valentina sighed and walked away, Yuri still in her arms.
Celeste watched their departure with wistful eyes. If only she could be as naïve as Valentina, with her insistance that this Yuri Hyuga could be the solution to their problems. He couldn't even take care of himself. When Valentina unceremoniously dumped him on the floor, Celeste had been hard pressed not to cry aloud as she was inundated with Yuri's experiences. She had been very careful not to touch him, fearing that she could have been drawn into that whirlpool, never to return.
She shook her head, as if clearing her mind of Yuri Hyuga and his emotional problems. She had enough dilemmas of her own, without adding those of a psychically fragile boy to them. She reminded herself that he was older then she was, a fact that she had pointed out to Valentina. However, it was hard to remember that when he insisted in presenting a mental image of a small boy with wide brown eyes looking around in confusion at the world and events that he had not foreseen.
And that fusion soul. Celeste struggled to put her finger on what was so significant about it and in particular, the bond between it and Yuri. It seemed especially deep for parasite and host, and as such, required further monitoring. Perhaps the bond with change with time, or with intervention.
*
"Yuri, you must wake," a male voice whispered. Yuri rolled over and buried his head in his arms. "I can't stay out here for long, so wake up!"
"Death Emperor, I don't care at the moment," Yuri muttered into his arms, sighed deeply and slipped back into sleep.
"Who said I was Death Emperor?" the voice asked rhetorically. "And if you must insist in sleeping, must it be in the Graveyard? What's wrong with the inside of your head?"
"He and the Graveyard are one," Death Emperor pointed out. "For him, the Graveyard is of his own imagining. He has the Hyuga stubbornness, especially in this regard."
"As did we all," the voice replied wistfully. "From the first to the last, we always fought."
"However, this one hides as well. Have you seen his 'Fox-Face'? Quite unusual, I've found," Death Emperor added. "He believes that it is you. Tragic really."
"Oh?" Ben commented. He grinned wryly. "Nice to know that he has such a high opinion of me. Yet he still searches for proof that I died for real. Subconsciously, admittedly, but still."
"And how do you feel, Ben Hyuga, knowing that you have been the one thing that has shattered his sanity repeatedly?"
"You know how I feel about that!" Ben snapped. "It's heart-breaking, knowing that I can't do a thing about it. That I can't even tell him that I'm sorry for what he has endured and what he will endure, if he should ever encounter it."
"He will," Death Emperor replied calmly. "Now, return to your prison, before you set it free well before he is ready for it." Ben nodded and disappeared.
*
"Yuri? Yuri Hyuga? There are some questions that I need to ask," a soft voice insisted in Yuri's ear as a hand shook his shoulder. Yuri frowned and weakly tried to pull away. Realising the futility of this, he cracked open his eyelids. Unfortunately, that didn't help him much. Now everything was blurry instead of black.
"My name is Celeste and I need some answers. What happened to the Chimera?" the voice continued. Yuri scowled in the general direction of the voice.
"He had a name," he chastised. "His name was Alec. And he died." He heard a soft sigh of exasperation.
"I know that he is dead. I know how, I just don't know why," the voice continued. "He should have lived, I gave him the knives." The voice sounded puzzled. Yuri mentally shrugged. Not his problem.
"He was supposed to merely touch the Soul Well with the knives and all would have been well," Celeste continued.
"How?" Yuri rasped. "The girl was dead. Had been dead for a long time." Celeste sighed again.
"She was not supposed to be dead. She was supposed to be alive. The lines said that she was alive!" Celeste insisted. Yuri shook his head and smirked feebly.
"Lady, you're not listening. Clara died about five years ago. I remember, I was there." He blinked, and the room swam into focus. As a result, he was rather startled by the young girl staring at him intently.
"And you're just a kid," he blurted in surprise. Celeste shook her head.
"I am no child. I have not been a child in a very long time. And that girl, Clara should have been alive. Unless…." she trailed off, eyes growing wide.
"Unless…." Yuri prompted.
"The master. He has been interfering for so long?" Celeste whispered. "It cannot be so!"
"Less free association, more explaining things," Yuri suggested. Celeste glared at him. Yuri shrugged. He was not scared of a little girl.
"One more word from you, Hyuga, and I shall tell you of the exact manner of your death. And let me assure you, one of the possibilities is not pretty," she snarled. At Yuri's unimpressed look, she bared her teeth. "And let me assure you, I can do that."
"Woah!" Yuri threw up his hands in the universal 'I have no weapons so don't gun me down here' position. "Someone's a little PMS." Celeste's look could have stripped paint.
"All I have to say to you is this," she said quietly, shoving a hand mirror into his hands. Yuri accepted it blindly. "Look into the mirror and see yourself." With this, Celeste walked out of the room.
Waiting a few minutes until he was sure that she had gone, Yuri picked up the hand mirror and looked into it. His eyes widened with shock at his new appearance, drawing attention to it. His eye colour had changed, from brown to some weird colour, as if the brown was now being seen through amber glass. It was rather disconcerting. Yuri ran a hand over his face, testing to see if it was really his face. He knew that it was stupid, but some part of him insisted that his eyes couldn't have changed.
"Death Emperor? What's the deal?" he asked quietly, not wanting to draw attention to the fact that he was talking to himself. Death Emperor didn't respond.
"Death Emperor?" Yuri asked again. Then, his voice much smaller and almost trembling, he added, "Why won't you answer?"
Authors Note: Hah! Yuri's screwed over now! Don't worry, there is a reason, and it's not particularly innocuous. This chapter was written with the aid of the 'flu and the resulting fever that goes with it. Hey, it kept the clowns away. Now clowns are scary.
This chapter was nicknamed the Shakespeare Chapter, because all of the characters seemed to want to rant a lot (he used to call them soliloquies, but we all know the truth, they were rants). Blame Greyfriar's damned 'What kind of writer are you' survey she has linked on her webpage. Supposedly I have read the obscure Shakespeare plays. In reality, I've only read three of his plays. While on that topic, has anyone read Macbeth? Now, if you haven't, and you enjoy Shadow Hearts, that is a play for you! Also, has anyone thought that Yuri would make a good Hamlet? After all, he has already done the graveyard thing with Ophelia/Alice. Ahem. I shall shut up now, before I begin a comparative essay between Shadow Hearts and Hamlet.
"Get thee to a nunnery!" - snort. Long story. Anyway, don't ever say it in a theatre showing Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. No-one (with the exception of year 12 english students) gets the joke.
Oh yes, this will be my last update until the 20th June. Finals. How do I loathe thee. However, there should be a chapter up on the 21st!