LEGAL DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN BREATH OF FIRE OR ANY TRADEMARKS THEREOF. CAPCOM DOES, ASSUMING THEY DON'T SELL THE RIGHTS BY THE TIME THIS COMES OUT.
Hello, readers. Before continuing, let me introduce myself: I am Silverlocke980, and as you will see if you click my profile, I have many varied interests. But the main one is RPGs. And I find Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter to be a classic in this respect. Very innovative, in all respects, particularly SOL, which adds replay value galore to this necessarily short game.
However, it is not perfect. The main problem I have with this game is it's lack of character development. It has the perfect (and I do mean perfect) setup for some great character development: Ryu's extreme power vs. the fact that it's killing him, Lin's anti-government tendencies (think along the lines of "Why does she hate the government?"), Nina's birth as an experiment, and a million other things. But Capcom, as it almost always does, screws us over by not really expanding these things. So, we here at Fanfiction.net have to do that for them.
This is a short, one-shot story involving the endgame cinema. So, before I go on:
SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!
Okay, with that done...
This is my extended version of the conversation between Origin and Ryu at the end of the game. Seeing as how I haven't attained the ultimate D-Ratio (damn you Kokon-Horay! Damn you all to hell!), there may be some *purely* unintentionable mistakes. If there are, please be gentle in reviews; I'm kind of stupid when it comes to details. Or, if you want, you can simply pretend they don't exist! (big smile) Please?
Enough jabbering. It's...
"SHOWTIME!"
Breath of Fire IV
Dragon Quarter
A Sapphire Dream
Ryu looked up. The gate was open. They'd done it. They'd... broken through... And it was everything he'd imagined it would be.
The sunlight... it felt so strange on the skin. So warm, so powerful, but so gentle... He couldn't imagine what a life in that strange light would be like. Not that he would get a chance to experience it. The dragon running rampant in his system would see to that soon enough. But, still... He offered up a small prayer to whatever great Being had been so kind as to let him live long enough to see the sunlight he'd fought through all darkness for. A small kindness, but as the life ebbed from Ryu, he saw that maybe it was the smallest kindnesses in life that were the most important.
His neck growing too weak to hold his suddenly heavy head, Ryu dropped his gaze to his left side, and saw their the gored and mangled remains of Bosch. Even now, even in death, he felt a rage in him for Bosch. The bastard. A spoiled, rotten child of a Regent, arrogant beyond reason, born with a high D-Ratio and henceforth believing he owned the world. The fool. He had never actually matched Ryu in combat, even before all this. That fact had always grated on him. And now it was over. Chetyre, another of the dragons who suddenly seemed to be sprouting up everywhere now that Ryu had merged with Odjn, had torn him apart in it's efforts to stop Ryu and Odjn. But that had been in vain- and Chetyre's own efforts had worked against it. For the seal on the surface had required a sacrifice to open, and Chetyre had unwittingly become that sacrifice. These thoughts had sped through Ryu's head from Odjn whilst they were driving Chetyre back to the surface, and Ryu had registered a most satisfied grunt of pleasure from his draconic companion when Chetyre had died. Strange, how their twin minds worked when they became the Wyrm. Odjn's thoughts and feelings transmitted to him, his given to it. The connection had grown stronger as more and more of Ryu's body was consumed by Odjn, and lately the dragon had been in an almost ecstatic mood, waiting to devour Ryu and come into being from his dead body. So why, in that last moment when all his lifeforce had been gathered in one final assault on Chetyre, had he felt sadness come from Odjn? What could be making the dragon sad? It had the thing it had always wanted: a way into the physical realm. What could it possibly be sad about?...
" A good question."
Ryu turned his heavy head. Origin stood to his right, invisible to Nina and the now collapsed Lin (collapsed because she'd suddenly found the grief in her heart was been too heavy for her legs to carry, tears spilling across her face for the brave, noble man who had given his life in the only true display of honor she'd seen in the dark hell of Sheldar), a strange being seemingly made of wires. Which was fitting. He was a program, cybernetic in nature, part of Odjn but separate from him, made by Elyon to find a suitable host for the dragon, and guide that host forward. To find the surface. To find... the sunlight...
" Here... to watch... me die?" Ryu said jokingly, coughing slightly. A few small drops of blood flecked out of his burning system. He ignored them.
" And a hard one to answer," Origin continued, ignoring Ryu's question for a moment. The strange figure lowered it's head, as if thinking, and then said, " To understand, you must realize what Odjn is. What you are. Maybe, even what I am."
" Huh...? What are you... talking about...?" Ryu's dying mind was confused, and he had a strange half-thought that stated something along the lines that no one should die confused. Shaking off that absurdly sensible feeling, he concentrated all his failing facilities on listening to Origin.
" Odjn... was born and bred to destroy. But, when you create a monster, you must do more than just give it power. You have to give it hate. You have to give it indifference. When Odjn was made in the depths of time, it was shown all the evil and weakness in the world, all the darkness of the heart. Odjn saw and believed that man was a weakling thing, doomed to die and suffer and bleed and hurt all things, both itself and others, incapable of high acts. And so Odjn saw no reason not to end everything. It became callous, a thing of mockery. It found all life entertaining, but most of all it enjoyed a life's death. The screams, the tears, the sorrow, all these things became comical to the dragon, amusing in the extreme. And so it has passed it's years."
" But you... you changed that. Odjn just wanted a body to control, so it could be reborn. But you showed it a high thing, a mighty thing. You showed it honor."
Ryu, feeling that he should speak only truth in his last moments, said in his weary voice, " No, I did not. I merely followed the program... the program you gave me."
Origin laughed, a strange sound that caused the red cracks in it's face to flare brightly for a few seconds. The laugh was bittersweet and slightly self-mocking. " Yes, I gave you that program. But you surprised me. Because, though I tried to give you a direction, you disregarded me and chose a path of your own free will. You wanted to help her. To help the girl. I tried to impose bonds of iron on you. You cut them apart with a will stronger than steel. You didn't do what you did because I gave you a program. The program was irrevelant to you. It was your will, your drive to change all things and move the mountains themselves if it would save Nina, that really did all this. Elyon sent me out to make you a host suitable for Odjn. I was also supposed to give you the drive to head to the surface. But I ended up doing nothing."
" What?" Ryu said, his tired mind not realizing what Origin was saying.
" Even when I tried to give you a direction," Origin said, looking at the dying Ranger with an expression that could have been sadness and might have been awe, " I failed. I did not predict Nina, nor the resultant events surrounding her. And so, though the desire to reach the surface was in you, you made that choice yourself. And, all unwittingly, you finished my program, not because you even gave a damn for it, but because you wanted to help Nina. If Nina's salvation had lain in the very core of the earth itself, you would have forgotten all about my program and delved downwards. It was your will that shaped your destiny."
Ryu smiled, glad that in the end, his acts had meant something and were not the meaningless motions of carrying out a program. " That's... good..."
" You've earned more than my respect," Origin said. " You've earned Odjn's reverence. He's a monster, he knows that. But you- even though the power would kill you, even though every time you used it you felt a desire for chaos and death, you restrained yourself and only protected your friends, making the obliterating flame a guardian fire. You never allowed yourself to give in to Odjn's madness, and though death was the only possible path left to you, you lived out the rest of your life with honor. And when the ultimate test came, you gave everything you had in you. And that has changed everything. Odjn has never felt the better, higher emotions. It has only dwelled in darkness. Odjn doesn't know..." and here Origin changed, seemed to become more like the Wyrm in form and shape, like a silhouette half glimpsed at night, and Ryu realized that Odjn was now talking to him directly, " I don't know if there is a chance for a creature like me to ever be worthy to see the sky. I don't know if I can change. But I can try."
Odjn stretched out his hand. Ryu lifted his own and took it.
" I don't know what I'll do, from here on. Destruction's all I've ever known. But maybe... destruction can be an act of creation..."
Ryu thought he saw Odjn smile.
"... When properly applied."
Through the claw that now held his right hand, Ryu felt strength flow into him. Felt life, in all it's infinite and myriad possibilities, flow through him. The fires of destruction, power beyond imagination, sent to rekindle a dying soul. The destruction of death, in other words. Looking at Odjn, Ryu barely muttered, " What?..."
" We have not traveled through darkness together merely to fall now. Come, my friend. Let us see the sky."
Light.
~*~One Century Later~*~
The sun shines bright over this place, pouring down in an endlessly beautiful rain that brightens the lives of all who come into contact with it. It hasn't been long, now, since three friends stood on an empty plain of grass and trees and stared into the endless sky, crying and laughing at the same time. Not very long at all, in the history of this ancient world to whom centuries may pass in an eyeblink.
But it has been long enough for a life. Three lives, really. And though no one will ever forget these three heroes, though they shall live on both in memory and in that place where all the good and noble receive recompense in full for what they suffered in life, here they have died. Lin was the first, dying of old age, peacefully and in her sleep. Ryu and Nina died barely days after her, in the same easy manner. All three friends leaving this mortal coil together, as they probably would have wanted. When they died, the people of this new city (the first new city on the surface, named "Windia" by Nina in honor of the great winds and breezes of this new world) had not the skill nor the ability to properly bury them, and so erected a small shrine over their remains. Now, however, as more and more people reach the surface (from Topsector to Bottomsector, all are welcome here so long as they hold to the laws expounded by Ryu, Nina, and Lin, laws for peace and justice and hope in this new world), they have created a proper, fitting monument for these three lives who so changed the world. Many are the visitors who come here, to stand and stare in wonder at the gravestones of this peaceful place.
And so it is with the man now entering the great doors of this reverent place. But he is special, unique, in this world. For he is not of it. His homeworld is a secret lost to the ages of history, a secret hidden only within his mind now. As this man walks forward, his red hair flowing in spiky waves over the top of the cloak he wears about his entire body, the people in the small entry lobby instinctively step aside. This is a man of special power, of special awe. A great man, come to pay his respects. The lobby clears as he walks through it. Small glass stands, holding many objects that had special importance to the heroes (Ryu's official Ranger badge, Lin's Trinity mask, and Nina's ankle bracelet, among other things), are set in and around here, and a small board holds the original Writ of Law that the three friends drew up to guide the new world, to prevent it from ever making the mistakes of the old.
He steps inside the great monument proper and gazes up. The ceiling is made of glass, so that the sky may always be open and free above the heroes who fought to reach it. Three statues, in a triangle formation, dominate this bare room. A few people mill about, but they suddenly seem dazed, as if in a dream. The red-haired man steps forward to one of the statues, gazing at it. The people inside, still with that half pleased dream look in their eyes, leave quietly, in a murmured hush and whisper. They will have no memory of it later. But that is alright; the power the man is using is not a power of evil, but a small, special right he has earned through his deeds to have a few quiet moments to himself. That, at the least, he has earned.
The walls are marble, as is this statue. It is of a young woman, obviously a Woren, looking upwards, right hand on a gun in her belt. Her tail curls about her legs, and her face holds an expression of pain and loss, hope and fear. This is Lin, the young Trinity member who helped an enemy and in doing so saved a world. Underneath her statue, above the ground where her physical remains lie buried, a small plaque sits. On it is her epitaph. It reads, " Though it all seemed lost, she fought on." A simple phrase, like all the epitaphs here. And yet it means so much more than words can say.
Traveler turns and walks directly opposite Lin's statue, towards a far smaller statue, this of a young girl barely past her twelfth year. She holds a small staff in her hands, clutched protectively over her small chest, wearing clothes seemingly fit only for a slave. Two small, weak wings emit from her back, and her large eyes hold the pure innocence only a child can muster. This is Nina, the reason any of this was possible. The person who gave Ryu the drive that allowed him to conquer everything, even Odjn himself, so that he might save her. And save her he did- the pure air of the surface restored Nina's weakened, dirty ventilator, granting her new life. By the end of her days, the soft glow emitting from her wings was not black (as it became when she absorbed the poison of LowSector), but white. Her epitaph reads, " May we all see life as she did." Traveler bows to her as well, the same slow solemn bow he made to Lin.
He turns to his left and walks to the final grave, this one larger than the other two. With good reason. For this is the site of two souls' remains: Ryu's and Odjn's. Though but one body is buried here, two died with it. The grave is larger, showing a boy of about sixteen. He is not handsome- in fact, he is rather thin and ungainly- but that doesn't hinder the aura of honor and dignity emanating from him. He holds a common broadsword in his right hand. Though at first glance he seems just a boy, his eyes hold the truth; life has made him a man. Behind him, a figure of terror, Odjn lays, tail laying in front of Ryu's legs, mouth open in a roar, wings partially wrapped about Ryu's form as if to grab him. Below them, on a plaque, reads the one epitaph that always stays with the visitors, one they take with them wherever they go. As is fitting. For Lin wrote this. Sheldar drove out most of her spirit, but Lin still had a small talent for poetry when she reached the surface. She honed it over the years as she helped run Windia, and the day before she died she wrote a poem. In her will, it asked that it be placed over Ryu's grave, and he agreed. As Traveler bows, he reads this phrase, the end of two brave souls' tale:
One, a boy, without power and without hope.
The other, a dragon, death and destruction incarnate.
Together, heroes.
Traveler straightens up. He turns and walks outside, letting his power fade about the people. They wake almost instantly, returning to what they were doing and ignoring the tall stranger in their midst. As Traveler steps outside, he lights up a cigarette, and as he puffs lightly on the end he overhears something. He stops and smiles, as he listens to four friends make a vow to explore this world, as Ryu and his friends did. And in the open air Traveler laughs lightly.
" Do stories ever really end?" he says aloud, a small smile on his face. " Or... do they continue on? Do our lives make ripples that move far beyond ourselves?..."
He laughs again and puts the cigarette to his mouth. And as he puffs out the smoke, as his body begins to disappear to reappear on another world far away (for there are many places Traveler must be, many places that require his aid and intervention), he speaks aloud once more, as four friends who will change this planet once again begin their quest, as four souls given strength by the tale of the courage of three souls before them head out into the world, as the story continues on.
" Do stories ever really end?"
- Well, there's my ode to one short, grim, but beautiful RPG. Please forgive me if I made any mistakes- Silverlocke tries people, he tries. R&R, please.
Hello, readers. Before continuing, let me introduce myself: I am Silverlocke980, and as you will see if you click my profile, I have many varied interests. But the main one is RPGs. And I find Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter to be a classic in this respect. Very innovative, in all respects, particularly SOL, which adds replay value galore to this necessarily short game.
However, it is not perfect. The main problem I have with this game is it's lack of character development. It has the perfect (and I do mean perfect) setup for some great character development: Ryu's extreme power vs. the fact that it's killing him, Lin's anti-government tendencies (think along the lines of "Why does she hate the government?"), Nina's birth as an experiment, and a million other things. But Capcom, as it almost always does, screws us over by not really expanding these things. So, we here at Fanfiction.net have to do that for them.
This is a short, one-shot story involving the endgame cinema. So, before I go on:
SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!
Okay, with that done...
This is my extended version of the conversation between Origin and Ryu at the end of the game. Seeing as how I haven't attained the ultimate D-Ratio (damn you Kokon-Horay! Damn you all to hell!), there may be some *purely* unintentionable mistakes. If there are, please be gentle in reviews; I'm kind of stupid when it comes to details. Or, if you want, you can simply pretend they don't exist! (big smile) Please?
Enough jabbering. It's...
"SHOWTIME!"
Breath of Fire IV
Dragon Quarter
A Sapphire Dream
Ryu looked up. The gate was open. They'd done it. They'd... broken through... And it was everything he'd imagined it would be.
The sunlight... it felt so strange on the skin. So warm, so powerful, but so gentle... He couldn't imagine what a life in that strange light would be like. Not that he would get a chance to experience it. The dragon running rampant in his system would see to that soon enough. But, still... He offered up a small prayer to whatever great Being had been so kind as to let him live long enough to see the sunlight he'd fought through all darkness for. A small kindness, but as the life ebbed from Ryu, he saw that maybe it was the smallest kindnesses in life that were the most important.
His neck growing too weak to hold his suddenly heavy head, Ryu dropped his gaze to his left side, and saw their the gored and mangled remains of Bosch. Even now, even in death, he felt a rage in him for Bosch. The bastard. A spoiled, rotten child of a Regent, arrogant beyond reason, born with a high D-Ratio and henceforth believing he owned the world. The fool. He had never actually matched Ryu in combat, even before all this. That fact had always grated on him. And now it was over. Chetyre, another of the dragons who suddenly seemed to be sprouting up everywhere now that Ryu had merged with Odjn, had torn him apart in it's efforts to stop Ryu and Odjn. But that had been in vain- and Chetyre's own efforts had worked against it. For the seal on the surface had required a sacrifice to open, and Chetyre had unwittingly become that sacrifice. These thoughts had sped through Ryu's head from Odjn whilst they were driving Chetyre back to the surface, and Ryu had registered a most satisfied grunt of pleasure from his draconic companion when Chetyre had died. Strange, how their twin minds worked when they became the Wyrm. Odjn's thoughts and feelings transmitted to him, his given to it. The connection had grown stronger as more and more of Ryu's body was consumed by Odjn, and lately the dragon had been in an almost ecstatic mood, waiting to devour Ryu and come into being from his dead body. So why, in that last moment when all his lifeforce had been gathered in one final assault on Chetyre, had he felt sadness come from Odjn? What could be making the dragon sad? It had the thing it had always wanted: a way into the physical realm. What could it possibly be sad about?...
" A good question."
Ryu turned his heavy head. Origin stood to his right, invisible to Nina and the now collapsed Lin (collapsed because she'd suddenly found the grief in her heart was been too heavy for her legs to carry, tears spilling across her face for the brave, noble man who had given his life in the only true display of honor she'd seen in the dark hell of Sheldar), a strange being seemingly made of wires. Which was fitting. He was a program, cybernetic in nature, part of Odjn but separate from him, made by Elyon to find a suitable host for the dragon, and guide that host forward. To find the surface. To find... the sunlight...
" Here... to watch... me die?" Ryu said jokingly, coughing slightly. A few small drops of blood flecked out of his burning system. He ignored them.
" And a hard one to answer," Origin continued, ignoring Ryu's question for a moment. The strange figure lowered it's head, as if thinking, and then said, " To understand, you must realize what Odjn is. What you are. Maybe, even what I am."
" Huh...? What are you... talking about...?" Ryu's dying mind was confused, and he had a strange half-thought that stated something along the lines that no one should die confused. Shaking off that absurdly sensible feeling, he concentrated all his failing facilities on listening to Origin.
" Odjn... was born and bred to destroy. But, when you create a monster, you must do more than just give it power. You have to give it hate. You have to give it indifference. When Odjn was made in the depths of time, it was shown all the evil and weakness in the world, all the darkness of the heart. Odjn saw and believed that man was a weakling thing, doomed to die and suffer and bleed and hurt all things, both itself and others, incapable of high acts. And so Odjn saw no reason not to end everything. It became callous, a thing of mockery. It found all life entertaining, but most of all it enjoyed a life's death. The screams, the tears, the sorrow, all these things became comical to the dragon, amusing in the extreme. And so it has passed it's years."
" But you... you changed that. Odjn just wanted a body to control, so it could be reborn. But you showed it a high thing, a mighty thing. You showed it honor."
Ryu, feeling that he should speak only truth in his last moments, said in his weary voice, " No, I did not. I merely followed the program... the program you gave me."
Origin laughed, a strange sound that caused the red cracks in it's face to flare brightly for a few seconds. The laugh was bittersweet and slightly self-mocking. " Yes, I gave you that program. But you surprised me. Because, though I tried to give you a direction, you disregarded me and chose a path of your own free will. You wanted to help her. To help the girl. I tried to impose bonds of iron on you. You cut them apart with a will stronger than steel. You didn't do what you did because I gave you a program. The program was irrevelant to you. It was your will, your drive to change all things and move the mountains themselves if it would save Nina, that really did all this. Elyon sent me out to make you a host suitable for Odjn. I was also supposed to give you the drive to head to the surface. But I ended up doing nothing."
" What?" Ryu said, his tired mind not realizing what Origin was saying.
" Even when I tried to give you a direction," Origin said, looking at the dying Ranger with an expression that could have been sadness and might have been awe, " I failed. I did not predict Nina, nor the resultant events surrounding her. And so, though the desire to reach the surface was in you, you made that choice yourself. And, all unwittingly, you finished my program, not because you even gave a damn for it, but because you wanted to help Nina. If Nina's salvation had lain in the very core of the earth itself, you would have forgotten all about my program and delved downwards. It was your will that shaped your destiny."
Ryu smiled, glad that in the end, his acts had meant something and were not the meaningless motions of carrying out a program. " That's... good..."
" You've earned more than my respect," Origin said. " You've earned Odjn's reverence. He's a monster, he knows that. But you- even though the power would kill you, even though every time you used it you felt a desire for chaos and death, you restrained yourself and only protected your friends, making the obliterating flame a guardian fire. You never allowed yourself to give in to Odjn's madness, and though death was the only possible path left to you, you lived out the rest of your life with honor. And when the ultimate test came, you gave everything you had in you. And that has changed everything. Odjn has never felt the better, higher emotions. It has only dwelled in darkness. Odjn doesn't know..." and here Origin changed, seemed to become more like the Wyrm in form and shape, like a silhouette half glimpsed at night, and Ryu realized that Odjn was now talking to him directly, " I don't know if there is a chance for a creature like me to ever be worthy to see the sky. I don't know if I can change. But I can try."
Odjn stretched out his hand. Ryu lifted his own and took it.
" I don't know what I'll do, from here on. Destruction's all I've ever known. But maybe... destruction can be an act of creation..."
Ryu thought he saw Odjn smile.
"... When properly applied."
Through the claw that now held his right hand, Ryu felt strength flow into him. Felt life, in all it's infinite and myriad possibilities, flow through him. The fires of destruction, power beyond imagination, sent to rekindle a dying soul. The destruction of death, in other words. Looking at Odjn, Ryu barely muttered, " What?..."
" We have not traveled through darkness together merely to fall now. Come, my friend. Let us see the sky."
Light.
~*~One Century Later~*~
The sun shines bright over this place, pouring down in an endlessly beautiful rain that brightens the lives of all who come into contact with it. It hasn't been long, now, since three friends stood on an empty plain of grass and trees and stared into the endless sky, crying and laughing at the same time. Not very long at all, in the history of this ancient world to whom centuries may pass in an eyeblink.
But it has been long enough for a life. Three lives, really. And though no one will ever forget these three heroes, though they shall live on both in memory and in that place where all the good and noble receive recompense in full for what they suffered in life, here they have died. Lin was the first, dying of old age, peacefully and in her sleep. Ryu and Nina died barely days after her, in the same easy manner. All three friends leaving this mortal coil together, as they probably would have wanted. When they died, the people of this new city (the first new city on the surface, named "Windia" by Nina in honor of the great winds and breezes of this new world) had not the skill nor the ability to properly bury them, and so erected a small shrine over their remains. Now, however, as more and more people reach the surface (from Topsector to Bottomsector, all are welcome here so long as they hold to the laws expounded by Ryu, Nina, and Lin, laws for peace and justice and hope in this new world), they have created a proper, fitting monument for these three lives who so changed the world. Many are the visitors who come here, to stand and stare in wonder at the gravestones of this peaceful place.
And so it is with the man now entering the great doors of this reverent place. But he is special, unique, in this world. For he is not of it. His homeworld is a secret lost to the ages of history, a secret hidden only within his mind now. As this man walks forward, his red hair flowing in spiky waves over the top of the cloak he wears about his entire body, the people in the small entry lobby instinctively step aside. This is a man of special power, of special awe. A great man, come to pay his respects. The lobby clears as he walks through it. Small glass stands, holding many objects that had special importance to the heroes (Ryu's official Ranger badge, Lin's Trinity mask, and Nina's ankle bracelet, among other things), are set in and around here, and a small board holds the original Writ of Law that the three friends drew up to guide the new world, to prevent it from ever making the mistakes of the old.
He steps inside the great monument proper and gazes up. The ceiling is made of glass, so that the sky may always be open and free above the heroes who fought to reach it. Three statues, in a triangle formation, dominate this bare room. A few people mill about, but they suddenly seem dazed, as if in a dream. The red-haired man steps forward to one of the statues, gazing at it. The people inside, still with that half pleased dream look in their eyes, leave quietly, in a murmured hush and whisper. They will have no memory of it later. But that is alright; the power the man is using is not a power of evil, but a small, special right he has earned through his deeds to have a few quiet moments to himself. That, at the least, he has earned.
The walls are marble, as is this statue. It is of a young woman, obviously a Woren, looking upwards, right hand on a gun in her belt. Her tail curls about her legs, and her face holds an expression of pain and loss, hope and fear. This is Lin, the young Trinity member who helped an enemy and in doing so saved a world. Underneath her statue, above the ground where her physical remains lie buried, a small plaque sits. On it is her epitaph. It reads, " Though it all seemed lost, she fought on." A simple phrase, like all the epitaphs here. And yet it means so much more than words can say.
Traveler turns and walks directly opposite Lin's statue, towards a far smaller statue, this of a young girl barely past her twelfth year. She holds a small staff in her hands, clutched protectively over her small chest, wearing clothes seemingly fit only for a slave. Two small, weak wings emit from her back, and her large eyes hold the pure innocence only a child can muster. This is Nina, the reason any of this was possible. The person who gave Ryu the drive that allowed him to conquer everything, even Odjn himself, so that he might save her. And save her he did- the pure air of the surface restored Nina's weakened, dirty ventilator, granting her new life. By the end of her days, the soft glow emitting from her wings was not black (as it became when she absorbed the poison of LowSector), but white. Her epitaph reads, " May we all see life as she did." Traveler bows to her as well, the same slow solemn bow he made to Lin.
He turns to his left and walks to the final grave, this one larger than the other two. With good reason. For this is the site of two souls' remains: Ryu's and Odjn's. Though but one body is buried here, two died with it. The grave is larger, showing a boy of about sixteen. He is not handsome- in fact, he is rather thin and ungainly- but that doesn't hinder the aura of honor and dignity emanating from him. He holds a common broadsword in his right hand. Though at first glance he seems just a boy, his eyes hold the truth; life has made him a man. Behind him, a figure of terror, Odjn lays, tail laying in front of Ryu's legs, mouth open in a roar, wings partially wrapped about Ryu's form as if to grab him. Below them, on a plaque, reads the one epitaph that always stays with the visitors, one they take with them wherever they go. As is fitting. For Lin wrote this. Sheldar drove out most of her spirit, but Lin still had a small talent for poetry when she reached the surface. She honed it over the years as she helped run Windia, and the day before she died she wrote a poem. In her will, it asked that it be placed over Ryu's grave, and he agreed. As Traveler bows, he reads this phrase, the end of two brave souls' tale:
One, a boy, without power and without hope.
The other, a dragon, death and destruction incarnate.
Together, heroes.
Traveler straightens up. He turns and walks outside, letting his power fade about the people. They wake almost instantly, returning to what they were doing and ignoring the tall stranger in their midst. As Traveler steps outside, he lights up a cigarette, and as he puffs lightly on the end he overhears something. He stops and smiles, as he listens to four friends make a vow to explore this world, as Ryu and his friends did. And in the open air Traveler laughs lightly.
" Do stories ever really end?" he says aloud, a small smile on his face. " Or... do they continue on? Do our lives make ripples that move far beyond ourselves?..."
He laughs again and puts the cigarette to his mouth. And as he puffs out the smoke, as his body begins to disappear to reappear on another world far away (for there are many places Traveler must be, many places that require his aid and intervention), he speaks aloud once more, as four friends who will change this planet once again begin their quest, as four souls given strength by the tale of the courage of three souls before them head out into the world, as the story continues on.
" Do stories ever really end?"
- Well, there's my ode to one short, grim, but beautiful RPG. Please forgive me if I made any mistakes- Silverlocke tries people, he tries. R&R, please.