--Written by: Naki
"They have been thought of though," Matthias said in a quiet voice. "Many, many times over."
Charle glanced over at her long time friend. "Yes, my friend. Many times I myself have thought of this very matter. Forgive me if I stumble through this, I'm not too sure how to put this into words."
"That's all right," Albert said softly. "Go ahead at your own pace. We have plenty of time, Lady Charle."
Charle nodded at Albert before turning to encompass the whole group in her sight. "No one knows when the Dragon Prophecy was written, but very few believed it before the Dragon Campaign came to be. Many Winglies of court thought the prophecy was ridiculous and not to be believed. They believed that some crazy old man wrote it and tried to make people believe it. And they thought the ones who believed it were just as crazy as the old man believed to have written it. 'Ridiculous.' 'Unbelievable.' 'Time waster.' People called it many things, but didn't want to believe it. The prophecy stated that those who are being controlled would rebel in a grand war using the power borrowed from great beasts. The Winglies, I am embarrassed and ashamed to say, were so arrogant in thinking that they were unstoppable and were so drunken in self-pride to think that the pitiful Humans, Giganto, and Minito weren't strong enough to overthrow the great Wingly race."
The only sounds at this pause were birds singing and faint voices coming from the background. Charle took a deep breath before continuing.
"The Minito were wiped out not long before the Dragon Campaign in the Gladiator-style games that took place in the Royal Capital Kadessa. This genocide angered the Humans and Giganto alike, and together they formed a secret society. The society soon grew into a small empire and the Humans elected a man named Diaz to lead them. Initially, Diaz didn't want to lead it; he felt incompetent and not worthy of the leadership. It took about a month to convince him to become Emperor. He was Emperor in title only. Diaz was like a father figure to those who, in the future, became the Dragoons. Diaz studied the prophecy and mythology with a passion, and it was he who discovered the ability of the Humans to control the Dragons. He personally handpicked the six Humans to inherit the power of the Dragons and also included one Giganto to keep the society complete. Originally a guerilla force, the seven Dragoons would strike from hidden places. The rebellion came to a screeching halt when Zieg, the leader of the Dragoons was captured. I visited him down in the dungeons of the castle and was astounded by the way he was always optimistic and never pessimistic about anything. Pain was something not foreign to him, so he said. I was amazed by the way he was polite to me even after he found out that Melbu Frahma was my baby brother and, breaking my bond with the Wingly Court, I secretly helped him escape. My brother never found me out. Not long later, Princess Erisi, the youngest of the Royal Wingly Family, wandered away from the Crystal Palace and met the Dragoons. She too decided to help out. She was in a more precarious position than I was, because she was betrothed to my baby brother. He was insistent on always keeping her under his care and always having her by his side. I convinced him to let her have breathing space, so she could become more comfortable with him in her life. He agreed, having most of his waking time engrossed with the mystery of the evasive Dragoons."
"They couldn't find 'em," Matthias added with a smirk. "They couldn't find us."
"That's true," Charle nodded. "Not too long after the Dragoons made themselves know, Erisi would disappear from the palace for days at a time. Even Melbu figured this out during his time out of study. He would confront her at times, demanding where she was. Most of the time she would smile and say that she was busy with other matters and for him not to worry. After that, she would come to me saying how much she hated him. I knew better; her heart belonged to someone else. AFter being told she was to be married the next day, she ran off and even I did not know where she went to."
"A month past from when I last saw Zieg and the others," Matthias broke in. "I was suddenly overcome with a drive to wander. Eventually, I came across the broken and dying body of a dragon who had been attacked by Winglies. It was then the dragon bequeathed to me its spirit before it died and I realized my fate was not to live, but to fight and represent something that was not physical of this world, but spiritual. Death is something not foreign to any of us, but it is something that you cannot see and cannot touch. Sure, you can touch a dead thing and you can touch a live thing, but you cannot see or touch death and life. To me it seemed that I and the Daughter were the physical representations of death and life."
"I was in a village within the empire of St. Imperial Gloriano with all seven of the Dragoons the night it happened," Charle continued after Matthias finished, "the village was attacked by a platoon of Wingly soldiers. It was a desperate situation..."
Fear was in the very air, weighing it down, thickening it up, making it even harder to breathe. People screamed and ran through the streets, attempting in vain to get away from the perpetrators. Winglies flew in from all directions, laughing insanely and cowardly attacking Human men, women, and children from behind. Swords, spears, daggers, and other articles of weaponry were tinted and dripped red with the blood of the slain.
The seven warriors chosen as the seven Dragoons stood in the Town Square, circling the decrepit stone fountain. Their feet were spread apart on the cobblestone pavement and their weapons, also stained red, this time with Wingly blood, wavered tiredly in their hands.
The flickering light from the burning houses that surrounded the Square reflected off the beads of sweat that dripped from the foreheads of the seven. The sweat not only came from the heat from the fires and the humidity of the climate; their nervousness caused them to sweat too. The Winglies could come from any direction with no warning but a sudden whoosh and no time to react.
The Winglies began to close in on the Square and the nervousness of the seven grew. There was no way they could work up enough energy to become the Dragoons before they were completely surrounded.
Rose gripped her rapier in her left hand and dropped it to her side as she used her shaky right hand to wipe the sweat from her face. As she dropped that hand to her side, Zieg reached over and gripped it with his left hand. They exchanged a glance, his blue eyes attempting to calm her troubled blue eyes. He leaned over and kissed her as he whispered how he loved her.
A scream rang out near them and Rose lifted her eyes just in time to see her sister run towards them, hugging her infant daughter to her chest. Her foot caught on a raised cobblestone and she tripped. She whirled about to see a Wingly hover above her, sword raised to strike. Rose lunged forward, calling to her sister. Zieg reached out and caught Rose, stopping her. Everything seemed to move in slow motion. Rose watched in surprise rather than in horror as a strong pair of arms gripped the body of the Wingly before he could strike and threw him into a neighboring building with the force equal to that of an explosion.
The arms belonged to a muscular young man with black hair. His race was indistinguishable at the time; he looked from Rose's sister to Rose, at whom he smiled.
Zieg turned around at the feeling of a soft hand on his tired arm. There stood a young woman with long white hair and a shapely short body. Her crystal blue eyes gazed up at him with loving recognition. She moved her gaze from Zieg to the strange man with black hair.
"It's time to finish this," she said, her quiet soft voice cutting through the sounds of carnage around them like a hot knife through butter.
"I agree," his rough voice replied.
Power spun around both of them, encircling her in a burst of white light, while he was encompassed with a darkness that was darker than the fear of the village. The power faded and revealed two Dragoons. The female's armor was a silvery white that was styled similar to that of the Blue Sea Dragoon's armor and she was armed with a wide-bladed crystal sword. The male's armor was black and styled somewhat similar to that of Red-Eye Dragoon's armor and he was armed with a double-bladed scythe.
The female releaded her grip on her sword and it floated in front of her, its point facing the ground. Energy surrounded her and kicked her hair up away from her face as she held her hands just inches apart from each other in front of her. Sparkling specks fell from the sky like shooting stars that cleansed and healed the seven and the wounded Humands lying in the streets.
The energy faded from around her as she regained her grip on the handle of her magnificent sword. She turned her head to her male counterpart. He nodded gravely.
"Do what you must," she said. "Though I realize how it will hurt."
Dark energy swirled about him and diffused into his double-bladed scythe. He gripped the long rod of the scythe in both bands and brough it back with both arms completely extended. Taking a deep breath, he slammed the end opposite of the blades into the cobblestone pavement. In a heartbeat, a morbid black fog crawled out of the ground, creeping up into the air and into the bodies of the opposing Winglies. The black fog invaded their bodies; those in the air choked and gagged as they plummeted to the ground. The Winglies dropped like flies, though with their vast numbers it took several minutes to kill them off.
Zieg was amazed at both the powers of the pair and the way the Winglies died so fast. He looked to the female; her face was streaked with tears due to the internal battle she had to fight. Death went against everything she was, but it had to be done.
As the last Wingly fell to the ground dead, suffocated by the black fog that blocked his airway, the male turned to the other.
"There...it is done."
Her face was grim. "The battle is over, but not the war."
Power surrounded both of them, and they returned to their original states.
Zieg found his voice. "Who...what are you?"
The female turned to him after coming to her partner's side. "We are what the prophecy foretells. We are the children chosen to bear the spirits of the children of the Divine Dragon. We represent life and death, the fragile axis on which existence turns. We are Erisi and Matthias."
"Erisi is the Divine Daughter?" Dart asked.
Matthias ran a hand through his dark hair. "Yes. And now she is in the hands of the enemy. She lost her powers that were given to her and now those powers have moved on to her 'children' so to say."
"Children?" Kurintsu asked, sharing a glance with Deirdre.
"Yes," Charle answered. So much was being divulged now; she wasn't used to telling so much she had secreted away in her mind for so long. "It is written in prophecy that those who live long periods, as in millennia, will have their consciousness' reborn into others. So, it's like living long enough to trick fate into thinking you're dad and into rebirthing you. Think of it as reincarnation before you die. Kurintsu and Deirdre are Erisi's. And, though it is difficult to tell," she paused, gazing from one brother to the other, "right now I think Dart is Zieg Sr.'s."
"There was one stipulation to Erisi's power," Matthias started. "She's the stronger of the two of us. If she had gone against the Dragoons, she would have lost her ability to become a Dragoon and lost all the power that had come with it. That means..." Matthias stopped suddenly, the weight of the situation dawning on him. "Charle...she's aging."
Charle stared back at him. "How long has she been under they're control?"
Matthias shrugged. "I don't know. How fast will she age?"
"Like any normal Wingly or Human would," Charle answered. "Zieg was frozen in stone for about eleven millennia, and when he was released from it, he aged normally."
"Yeah, but he wasn't alive for that time," Matthias pointed out. "Erisi found him when the spell wore off. She said he thought it was right after the fall of Kadessa. When he inquired about Rose, she couldn't tell him what she had become.
"I know," Charle whispered, staring at the ground. "She told me too. She said she forced herself to look morose as she told him that eleven thousand years had passed since the final battle of the Dragon Campaign and she comforted him when he realized that he had to start over from square one. Not long after, he met a young woman named Claire." Charle smiled at Claire who sat between her sons. "And we see the result of that among us today."
"Zieg was a charmer," Claire smirked. "He had me hooked the first day I met him." She paused, but continued when she saw the probing looks from all three of her children. "Uh...geez, where to start? I met Zieg about two weeks after leaving home. I was walking through the outskirts of Deningrad, looking for work and a place to stay, when five mean-looking young men jumped me. They wanted more than food or money from me that's for sure. I doubted my chances with odds like that. I wasn't sure what I was going to do, and then someone tapped the man in front of me on the shoulder. As the man turned around, Zieg Feld came into my life by punching that man in the face and breaking his nose. Then he said, 'You guys don't know how to treat a lady.' He bent down and scooped up his sword and brandished it, saying to the other men, 'Who's next?'"
"Geez, mom, you never told us how you met dad," Zieg Jr. complained.
"Sorry, you never asked," Claire smiled.
Deirdre looked to Matthias. "How did you meet Erisi?"
"I was with Zieg and Kantas. Kantas was the first Violet Dragoon and had a short fuse. I saw her hiding amonst the prairie grass outside a village in the empire of St. Imperial Gloriano. I approached her, we introduced ourselves, and after she decided to join our cause, we...fell in love. Since we became what we are now, Erisi's personality has changed since we first met." He looked at the twins. "That is why you twins now exist. Erisi's personality and state of mind totally changed from when she was princess to when she was Divine Daughter. When she was princess, she was fragile and innocent. That's the Erisi you represent, Deirdre. When she became the Divine Daughter, she was not so innocent and had more of a drive to fight. That's the Erisi you represent, Kurintsu."
Kurintsu started at the ground, attempting to digest the sudden onslaught of information. After a few moments, he looked up at Matthias, his eyes bright with determination. "Then we must get her back."
"Yes, we must. I cannot reawaken as the Divine Son without her," Matthias said.