I don't own The Legend of Dragoon, any of the characters except the Takahari family, the Choose Your Own Adventure book I got the concept of kuji from, or Star Ocean 2, which is where I got the name of the Soul Slayer from.
Author's Note: This chapter is told from Ryan's perspective. I decided to try this in part because I don't recall any other first-person story having occasional chapters done from the perspective of other characters. Let me know what you think of it and if I should do it again later in the story. ~Solid Shark
I watched in shock as Ian began to collapse. "The shard…" he gasped, falling to the floor. Shock turned to horror as I realized what "the shard" was: a fragment from the Soul Slayer, the sword I had wielded as Doel's unwitting pawn. It must have gotten stuck in him after he shattered the blade, and slowly started to take him over. Unwitting or not, though, it was my fault.
"Ian!" Shaking off my shock-induced paralysis, I rushed to him. Feeling for a pulse, I relaxed slightly when I felt it: weak, but steady. I looked up at the others. "We've got to get him to a doctor!"
"Yes," Albert agreed. "Unfortunately, the nearest one capable of dealing with this injury is in Fletz, so we can do nothing for him but take him with us. And if that's a fragment of the Soul Slayer, we can't afford to let him wake up until it's removed. To do otherwise would be to allow Ian to become the same as you were: a pawn of an evil weapon."
I slammed my fist into the floor of the throne room. "Blast it! And this is all my fault. If I hadn't been trying to kill him…"
Haschel shook his head. "No. Remember that you weren't exactly in your right mind at the time, Ryan. Doel was using you, so you had no more choice than if you were a sword in his hand. And don't start thinking that Ian would blame you. I imagine that he'll think it was his own fault for not being careful enough. Besides, beating yourself up about it isn't going to do any good. With Ian incapacitated, you're our stealth expert."
I stood. "You're right. I imagine Ian would be more annoyed if I broke my hand by slamming it into the floor again." I looked around. "Somebody get me some rope. I hate to say it, but Ian'll be easier to carry with his limbs tied."
It took us a couple of hours before we were ready to move on to Fletz. Along the way, we stopped in Lohan for supplies. While the others were looking for potions and such, I stopped by a street vender who was carrying a shiny stone. Is that what I think it is? I thought, squinting at it. Yep, I think that's a Dragoon Spirit. Better buy it, whatever the price. Ian would skin me if he heard that I'd passed up a Dragoon Spirit while knowing perfectly well what it is.
The vendor was talking to everyone who happened to pass by. "You sir!" he yelled, spotting me. "This is the much-talked-about Shining Miracle Stone! For a limited time offer, I'm selling this priceless artifact for 1,000 gold. What do you think?"
"I'll take it." Without hesitation, I took out a thousand gold and handed it to him. Accepting the Dragoon Spirit of the Golden Dragon, I headed off to find Rose. Given what Ian had told me, she'd know what to do with it.
When I finally found the others, Rose confirmed my identification of the object. "That's that Golden Dragoon Spirit, all right. We'll have to find a bearer for it eventually."
"We can discuss it later, Ryan," Dart interrupted. "For now, we're ready to head to Fletz. We've got what we need."
"Right. Tiberoa's to the west, if I remember right?" I wasn't entirely sure, since Ian had collapsed mere moments after Doel gave us the information. An incident like that is rather distracting.
"Yes," Albert confirmed. "Serdio once had close relations with Tiberoa, but since the civil war started contact has been relatively rare."
"Whatever. C'mon, let's just get going." I'd always hated politics.
We arrived in Fletz several days later. The last stage of the trip had been hurried, because Ian was worsening all the time. I did finally find a stop-gap measure, though: I used one of my Time Dragoon spells to freeze him in time. That way, Ian would at least be getting no worse.
Pretty big city for this world, I thought as we entered.
"Claire Bridge…" Dart murmured, reading a sign. "That was my mother's name…"
"Your mother's name was Claire?" Haschel asked in surprise. "That is also the name of my missing daughter. Coincidence?"
I didn't hear anymore, as I was searching for a doctor. The spell I'd cast on Ian would be wearing off soon, and it was getting impractical to carry him around all over the place.
"Ryan!? Is that you!?" The voice from behind me almost gave me heart failure.
It can't be! She's dead! I turned slowly. My eyes confirmed what my ears had told me. "Karen!?" My sister was standing behind me. The sister I had thought killed on the night the assassins came. On the other hand, Ian and I thought each other dead, so why not Karen?
Realizing that it really was me, Karen slammed into me. "Ryan, you're alive!"
"Oof! Take it easy!" She let go. "Thought you were dead, too. How did you get here?"
Karen chuckled. "Would you believe I fell down a rabbit hole?"
I shook my head. "Is there anything more cliché than that? Good to see you, though. You're only the second familiar person I've encountered here."
"Someone else we know is here?"
"Yeah," I said, looking at the ground. "Ian's here, too."
"Ian's alive, too!?" Karen must have seen something in my expression. "How is he?"
"Not good," I replied. "And it's my fault."
"Your fault? How?"
"I didn't 'escape' from the attack on the dojo. The assassins captured me, and brought me to this world. I was taken to the leader of what turned out to be the Empire of Sandora, which you may have heard of by now. The Emperor, Doel, didn't even say anything at first. He just had me untied, then handed me a katana. Immediately, the sword, called the Soul Slayer, possessed me. From then on, I was Doel's unwitting assassin. He sent me to kill Ian, so I set about tracking him down. We finally met in a place called the Shrine of Shirley, where we fought a duel. Ian didn't realize that it was supposed to be a fight to the death, so he invited me to join his party. This furthered my assignment, so I went along with it until after we freed Basil's king from a prison.
"After that, things moved pretty quickly. Ian and I fought, the Soul Slayer was destroyed, and a shard of it buried itself in Ian's gut. I was freed, but we didn't think anything of the fragment until just after we killed Doel. Within moments, Ian was on the floor unconscious, presumably because the shard was attempting to turn him into a pawn, like me. He hasn't awakened since. I was looking for a doctor when you showed up."
Karen shook her head. "Don't blame yourself. You said it yourself: Doel used you. Where is Ian, anyway?"
"With the others. C'mon, I'll introduce you."
We met up with Dart and company outside a bar. Rose was looking disgusted. "What's the problem, Rose?" I asked.
"The Tiberoans believe that the stars control your fate, and some woman just talked our ears off about it." Rose seemed to abruptly notice my companion. "Who's this?"
"Dart, everybody, this is my younger sister Karen. Karen, these are Dart, Shana, Rose, Albert, and Haschel."
They shook hands all around. "I thought the rest of your family had been killed, Ryan," Shana said.
Karen answered with a snort. "Ian, Ryan, and I have all thought each other dead at various times. I, unlike you two," looking pointedly at me, "stuck around long enough to see who each body had been. I should have been suspicious when I noticed that Ian Ryan were both missing, but I just thought they'd been killed elsewhere. Unfortunately," looking again at me, "I know for sure that our parents were killed. I carefully checked the bodies. I guess it's just as well that we ended up here."
I deliberately changed the subject. "Have you heard about the Dragoons yet?"
"Yeah," she said. "What about them?"
I held up my Dragoon Spirit. "Thought you might be interested to know that we're the Dragoons."
Karen had the same reaction I had had: hers eyes practically bugged out of the sockets, and her jaw dropped. "All of you!?" I nodded. "Including Ian!?"
"Yep. I'm the Time Dragoon, Dart is the Red-Eyed, Shana the White-Silver, Rose the Dark, Albert the Jade, Haschel the Violet, and Ian is the Dragoon of the Diamond Dragon."
Karen finally recovered, albeit with a little bit of shock still visible. "That's really something. Now that the introductions are finished, would you mind telling me what you're up to now?"
"We're looking for a man named Lloyd," Albert replied. "Tall, platinum hair, dressed in black. Have you seen him?"
She thought for a moment. "Yeah, I think so. He was here a couple of days ago, but he left shortly after. What are you after him for?"
"He manipulated the Serdian Civil War, he betrayed the people who had hired him as an advisor, he killed a good friend of ours, and he's probably the one that gave Doel the Soul Slayer and had Sandorans attack the dojo." I said as calmly as I could. "That good enough reason?"
"Guess it is, at that. Where to now?" I couldn't help chuckling. Karen had always been like that. She adhered to the old axiom that it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission like a religion. It simply never occurred to her that other people might have a different idea of things, so it never entered her head not to come along, and she behaved accordingly.
Before any of us could reply, we noticed a commotion up near the Twin Castle. It appeared that Crown Princess Emille had shown up, and was being very rude. I couldn't hear it from where I was, but the reactions of the townspeople were clear enough.
Albert was clearly shocked. "But I'd heard Princess Emille was a very kind person!"
"Then you haven't been around here recently," Karen retorted. "I've been here for a month, and she's been like that the whole time. According to the residents, she started acting like that about five months before I got here. Before that, people had no trouble talking to her. Now, they flee when they hear Emille coming."
"Forget it, Albert," I said. "It's getting late, anyway. We need to find someplace to stay for the night."
"Not a problem," Dart replied. "A man named Nello has offered to put us up for the night."
"Then let's get some sleep."
"Ryan, what about Ian?" Karen asked.
"He'll be fine overnight. Tomorrow I'm going to try something, since there doesn't seem to be anyone here capable of dealing with it." I looked slightly reproachfully at Albert. "I thought you said there was a doctor in town."
He looked sheepish. "Perhaps I should have mentioned that my latest knowledge of this place is from about ten years ago. Judging from what people here have said, the doctor died five years ago."
"Great. From now on, Albert, I think I'll just assume that everything you tell us is at least two years out of date. That way the only surprises I'll get will be good ones." It was definitely getting dark, now. "Come on, let's get some sleep."
Sleep was something that Albert didn't get much of. Besides staying up to talk to the psychotic plant man Nello, Karen decided to pay him back for his outdated information: she made a kuji trap. A kuji trap was essentially a very creative form of practical joke. In this case, it was rather nasty. Using the magical equivalent of a tripwire to trigger it, it consisted of a rock-hard wall of invisible force about an inch above Albert's bed. As soon as contact was made with this surface, he would be flung into the wall, where a magical spider web would catch him, wrap him up, and hang him upside down from the ceiling, with a cloth gag tied over his mouth in the process.
When we found him hanging thus in the morning, I ended up laughing so hard it took me about half an hour to free him. Albert had now learned the hard way not to irritate my sister.
"So what did you mean when you said you had an idea about what to do with Ian?" Karen asked.
"I'm going to try a rather tricky kuji teleportation." I walked over to where Ian lay. "I'm going to try teleporting him, but without the shard. With the shard out, our White-Silver Dragoon can heal him."
Concentrating harder than I ever had before for a kuji spell, I first levitated him, to avoid having him reappear in the bed instead of on it. Then I carefully teleported him about a foot in the air.
I knew I had been successful when the chunk of steel hit the floor with a clang.
Shana was ready. "Moonlight!" Ian's wounds quickly healed with the metal fragment gone. I was rather amused when woke up and noticed the ropes around his limbs.
"Welcome back to the land of the living, Ian."
Author's notes: A relatively short chapter, and without fighting, but I decided that it was time for a more cerebral chapter. I hope you liked the idea of a chapter centered around Ryan.
In Chapter 5: Lloyd's Betrayal, I made an error that I thought I should correct. It mentioned that two of the three surviving Dragons had shown up. It should have been four surviving Dragons. I'd forgotten about Regole. Thanks for all the reviews, and please keep them coming. ~Solid Shark
