Evernight

"WHAT?! Get away from me, you twisted little lizard!"

Kevin gazed forlornly at the statue that blocked the way into his homeland. It was huge, standing at least twice his height, and composed of solid stone that was carved so perfectly that it could only have been done by magic.

:Luna's work, looks like.: the faerie told him, trying to console him, no doubt. He sighed. She floated at his shoulder, using him as an excuse to be away from Angela, who was fending off the dubious advances of a deprived fire elemental. :It isn't your fault that we can't get in. If an Elemental doesn't want you somewhere, you don't get in, and that's the end of it.:

"Not that." He mumbled to her. A feeling he could not quite put into words lingered in his mind, evading articulation nimbly. He wanted to see his old friends again; Olgath, who was old enough to be Kevin's father's father, who sat in a rocker before the fireplace, and told stories to the children. Pieta, a little boy who was still too young to have developed the characteristic contempt for humans that all beastmen held. Even Else, the slightly crazy lady who made him very nervous, and not because she was crazy. They'd rejected him, and yet he missed them. After he'd come back from the wilds with his brother Karl, he'd lived for five years with them, they were what he knew. He had never really been happy, not in a place where men killed each other openly to obtain more power, but he still missed it. He might despise it theoretically, but it was still home.

Deathjester, he'd changed all that. Kevin had watched the spineless man slowly wind his father about that skinny little pinkie of his, and hated every moment of it. Deathjester offered fame and power through violence, both of the things the Beast King desired, and by his preferred method. In the months that followed the arrival of the clown, Kevin found himself further alienated from his people. What few friends he'd had before the man came began to avoid him, fearing the king's wrath should they fall into the displeasure of his favorite minion.

But not Karl. Kevin though. Karl was always loyal, always a true friend. Then, Deathjester took him from me, too.

He hated the man, but it was against his nature to hate. He struggled with the unfamiliar emotion, ignoring the fight that exploded between Hawkeye and Riesz over the manner with which they might get past the statue. The faerie floated nearby his head, gazing at him concernedly.

:Kevin? Do you have any idea of how to get through here?: she asked him, then retreating from his mind when he lashed out mentally; the equivalent of a spiritual bite. The anger bubbled up within him, and he lashed out physically with a strength to match that of his mind. His fist crunched into the stone statue, then through it, almost as though it had not been there. The barrier it had been maintaining across the entrance to Mintos dissolved as it crumbled to the ground, and Kevin removed his fist, amazed. He turned back to his friends, and saw that Hawkeye and Riesz were staring at him with almost identical expressions of surprise. Duran looked impressed, and Angela was too busy smacking Salamander with her cane to even notice that anything had happened.

"Kevy-poo did it! He brokeded the wall down!" Carlie gushed, bouncing up and down on the sand, her ridiculous hat jingling. Hawkeye and Riesz noticed each other staring, and whipped around so that their backs were facing each other.

"That was fugging awesome, Kev!" Duran exclaimed. He meandered up to the pile of rubble that had once been a statue, thumbs through the loops of his belt. "How'd you do it? Can you teach me? No, I guess not, it's probably one of those things they teach you at home. Still, you knocked through that fucker like it was a candy cane!"

:Oh, that's perfect, Baby. Get yourself a candy cane and beat me with it, it'll be HOT and SWEET!!!!:

"All right, that's it, ICE SMASH!"

Kevin gazed down the trail that led to Beast Kingdom, noting the huge, clawed footprints that indicated the presence of his people. For a long moment, it was all he could do not to sprint down the path and bang on the gates until they let him back in.

"Whatcha lookin' at Kevy?" Carlie asked, bouncing on his shoulders energetically. "Faerie lady said we should hurry, 'member?"

Kevin grinned toothily and snapped out of his reverie.

"Oi, mate!" Duran called from down the left fork. "Get your wolfie arse up here, we don't have all day!"

"It's night time, you dolt!" Angela screeched shrilly. "Leave the kid alone, we kept quiet for you in Forcena!"

"That's not how I remember it…"

Kevin chuckled and turned away from the path to Beast Kingdom, choosing instead the path that led to his friends. Carlie played air drums on his head with her little fists as he ran, but he didn't mind. At least not much.

"Coming!" He shouted gruffly, and Duran gave an answering shout to show he'd heard. None of the six of them noticed the dark figure trailing them through the trees, and their shared laughter masked the soft clank of a big man's armor.

"Which did you choose, Kevin?" Riesz asked as she fended off the blows of a crazed werewolf with her spear. Purchased in Mintos, the weapon was forged of mythril silver, a metal that could only be melted to liquid form at night. Ordinarily, such a weapon would be practically priceless, and was so outside of the Midnight Village. However with deposits easily obtained in the nearby mountains, as well as the constant night provided by Luna, the local blacksmiths had given her a fair price for the weapon. It was ideal for fighting against werewolves, since it left terrible burns wherever it touched their skin.

"What do you mean?" he asked, punching a nearby bat out of the air. The giant bats of Beast Kingdom were legendary for their terrible tempers, and Mana's decline had certainly not improved their demeanor.

"Light, or Darkness?" pressed the valkyrie. "Charlotte summons fiends from below, and Shade follows her like a lost rabite; her choice is obvious." Smoothly she slashed the deranged lycanthrope through the gut, flowing easily into a mercy stroke across the neck. She drew back, standing the spear on its haft, and produced a cloth from her pouch, with which she cleaned her silvery blade. Kevin made sure that the bat would not be coming after them and released the half of himself that was wolf.

"It's not that simple, Riesz." He told her. Her answer was a scoff.

"Of course it isn't simple. Not many people class change anymore, and there's good reason. But that's no reason to balk in telling me. If we're going to be traveling together, fighting the darkness together, we'll need to know what we can do."

Kevin sighed. "We're getting behind."

"Then talk as we walk." Riesz replied, not to be deterred from her purpose. She strode off willfully, leaving Kevin to trail along reluctantly in her wake. They moved in silence for a time, but Riesz quickly grew impatient with him. "Oh! Don't walk around behind me like a sick puppy! I won't bite, not so long as you stop being a muley little boy." She slowed a bit until they were walking shoulder to shoulder and matched her pace to his. "Well?"

Kevin sighed and relented. "Carlie and I, we must have made it to the Stone before you all. She touched it first, even though I told her not to. It gave me mixed feelings, like it was good and bad at the same time."

"Most of the Goddess' creations have both good and evil in them, Kevin." Riesz told him, frowning. He shook his head.

"I know that. But this was different from what you might find in a human, not the occasional vice or crime. It was like the stone contained everything good and everything bad that had ever happened, that ever could happen, just ready to be tapped. I wasn't sure I wanted anything to do with it, but before I knew it, Carlie had made her choice, and I was stepping forward to touch it myself. Something pulled me forward, even though I didn't really want to go."

Riesz's frown grew deeper, and her eyebrows knitted themselves together. "It sounds like you weren't ready. That's strange. All of the legends say that the Stone rejected those it didn't think were ready."

They rounded a corner and caught the sound of Duran and Angela arguing, at the top of their lungs as usual. Kevin did not strain his ears to hear what they were fighting over; their banter tended to be meaningless and nearly ever-present. "I think I only thought I wasn't ready. The Stone gave me a vision…"

"That happened with the rest of us, too." Riesz interjected. Kevin frowned at her, and she quieted quickly.

"I don't much want to talk about the vision; something tells me we aren't supposed to discuss them with anyone but ourselves. But there was a choice, one that I didn't really want to make."

He massaged his temples, careful not to stick himself in the head with his claws. Riesz did not say anything for a long time, but slowed her pace enough that it would be a while before they caught up to the others. When she finally spoke, it was with a calm, clear voice that reminded Kevin startlingly of rapture.

"My choice was easy. I was born in light, and raised in it." She sighed breathlessly. "It is really that difficult to tell me?"

Grinding his teeth, he summoned up his courage and let it bubble out through his mouth. "I chose the light, too." He said simply. "Maybe I was tired of living in the dark."

"Maybe." Riesz replied noncommittally.

They prayed at the statue of the Goddess for some time before moving on into the clearing in the trees that marked the foot of Luna's tower. Kneeling with one knee in that circle of peace where the night seemed less dark, Kevin tried to come to terms with his new place in the world. For some time, he had been rejecting the magic that came to him through his bond to Wisp, the aspects of the monk that he did not think himself ready to adopt. It was easy enough to hide the fact that he could do magic at all from the others; Carlie and Duran did what he could do a hundred times better, so he let them do it. Wisp seemed disinclined to inform anyone else, even Angela, and beyond the initial teaching of the cantrip to heal minor wounds, never badgered Kevin into practicing. When Angela called them all out of their various forms of worship (though Kevin noticed that Hawkeye had been standing watch, not praying), Kevin rose fluidly to his feet. Something made him head into the clearing first, a vague pulling sensation that he could not pin down. The others did not seem to mind, so he entered, and suppressed a snarl at what he saw.

A man, or some gross parody close enough to be recognizable, was feeding on some sort of raw meat that Kevin could not identify at first. He, or it, Kevin was never quite certain which, was somehow squat and skinny at once, and wore a hideous jumper of purple with a four-pointed jester's cap. As the beast boy moved in closer, his eyes, sharp even at night, caught the image of a conical blue hat with a wide brim lying on the ground next to where disgusting noises of flesh being torn and devoured emanated from. Kevin nearly lost his lunch as he realized that the hat must belong to an Altenan soldier, for that meant the body the Deathjester was eating was human. Forcing down bile, Kevin padded closer silently, or so he thought.

"Don't you know it's rude to interrupt someone while they're eating?" queried a sickly, contemptuous tenor voice. It was so high pitched as to be on the verge of soprano, on the edge between the two ranges indeterminately so that it sounded only vaguely male. "Really now, I've met dogs with better manners than you, Prince."

That last was said with mocking emphasis, and Deathjester rose from the corpse, arms swinging bonelessly. Kevin snarled.

"You killed Karl."

Grinning insanely, Deathjester cocked his head to one side, and bells tinkled as his hat swung around to the other side of his head. "I did. That little wolf's soul was particularly tasty, I must say. Innocence tastes just like chicken, did you hear?"

The wolf inside him leaped forth, and Kevin found his nails turning to claws as he swept across the clearing to the thing in man's clothing. Pure animal rage drove him, there was no thought or caution, and when the blast of cold air smashed into him, he was totally unprepared. Lifted clear off of his feet and blown into a nearby tree, Kevin felt a nauseating cold spread all over his body. The wolf retreated into a tiny niche of his mind, whimpering, and when he tried to move, he found that he could not. Even his lips would not part for speech.

"And now, Prince, I will devour your soul. I am told that it is a particularly painful experience, thought the gibbering wisp of ghost that told me so was probably not a very good source for me to quote. He wasn't precisely sensible when I asked him, down in Hell. Eternal damnation, and all that."

Deathjester took a step toward him, and every scrap of courage he had left him. The cold swept into the gap, seizing total control of his body, prying his eyelids open and holding them that way, so that he could not even blink. "Yes, I think you will make an excellent appetizer."

"Bad man took Heathie away." Said a quiet, even voice. Kevin could not see, but he recognized the voice. There was no real way to tell what had kept Carlie and the others, but he was relieved to hear the little girl's voice. Deathjester stopped mid-step, grinned at Kevin, and pivoted to set down the foot that he had lifted.

"Well now, I wouldn't say that, little girl." He said, voice dipping down into a soothing baritone that made Kevin want to sick up. "Your "Heathie", as you say, is doubtless enjoying the company of our Master just this moment, and would not leave for sheer adoration. I know I would not be here, chasing down you silly children, if I could avoid it. To be honest, I think that "Heathie" is the luckier of the two of us." He bounced from one foot to the other comically. Carlie did not laugh. Kevin could just make her out beyond Deathjester, it was impossible to see if anyone else had made it in yet.

"Bad man give Heathie back!" There was a flash of golden light, and Deathjester took a step back, flinching.

"Is that your best? Well, let me show you the right way to do it…"

"Allow me."

Kevin would have jumped up at the sound of the new voice, but of course, could not. Deathjester's confidence crumbled, and he simpered shamelessly.

"Yes of course, Lugar, anything you like. I'll…just go check on the Stone."

"You do that." Lugar spat. Kevin could see the beastman's furry ankles, exposed by the pants he wore gathered just below his knee. Kevin was heartened to hear that note of contempt in Lugar's voice, but the sneer Deathjester gave him as he bounced up to the tower gate told him that the creature intended much the same for Lugar. The gate swung shut behind Deathjester audibly, and Lugar turned to face Kevin's friends, ignoring Kevin as though he did not exist.

"I will be your opponent." Said the beastman. "My name is Lugar."

"Your name's gonna be Shitface when I'm done with you!" Duran growled.

"There won't be enough left of him to name, more like." Angela added. Kevin could almost see Riesz nod with satisfaction.

"Very well." Lugar said, voice still calm. "You are arrogant to carrying the honor of the prince of my people. All right then." A flash of light Kevin recognized as a transformation into full werewolf form. "Come."

And so they did. A dagger sprouted in Lugar's back, one of Hawkeye's, though Kevin could not really see very well to tell from the angle he was looking. A string of white spheres lashed at Lugar, encircled him, and sliced into him, but he growled, and they broke apart. That was all that Kevin saw before the fighting moved out of his view; he still could not move for the life of him, though his courage had returned.

"Rain, rain, come today, wash all Kevy's hurt away."

Warm water seemed to rush all over his skin, erasing the traces of Deathjester's spell. Almost immediately, Kevin was able to sit up, and he found Carlie leaning over him, worry in her large, round eyes.

"Kevy all right?" she asked. He nodded, and she rose from her knees. Oddly, Kevin found that her head was even with his that way. She pressed little lips together and glanced at the battle at the other end of the clearing.

"Come on." Kevin said, as he rolled to his feet. "Let's go help our friends."

"The purest light for unclean souls." Angela muttered, weaving her hands around a pool of golden light. "A golden bell for the dead tolls." The light snapped into a triangle with three equal sides. "A bright-eyed herald for darkened shoals, be all your sins forgiven." Magical energy fought at the confines she had defined for it, but she would not loose it until she knew it would not hit her friends. It was said that the Saint's Beam, the highest level of light magic a spell caster could obtain, drew its power from the martyrs and saints from times long past. Some called it Shendi's Fire, for the High Priest of Light who had died defending the city dedicated to his element more than a thousand years before. Angela did not really care where the extra strength came from; she just wanted to use it.

Lugar danced around Hawkeye's dagger strikes as though the ninja was not one of the fastest men ever to walk Fa'Diel, slapped aside Riesz's slashes with her spear like she was a kitchen wife with a broom, and practically ignored Duran's slower sword strokes. Burdened with his shield, Duran just could not move quickly enough to keep up, and was relegated mostly to healing. Angela's heart leaped into her throat as Lugar grasped Hawkeye, the lightest of the trio attacking him, tight about the waist and leaped into the air, coming down hard in a suplex that would have snapped any man's neck. Angela cried out, but she saw the opportunity to let her magic do its work, and seized it, forcing thoughts of her friend from her mind.

"Saint Beam!" she shrieked, emotions blasting through even if she would not let thoughts, and a lance of pure light erupted from the glowing triangle entrapped by her fingers and her will. It caught Lugar in the back as he tried flip up to his feet from the ground, smashing him a few paces away and to the ground on his belly. In moments he was back onto his feet, rolling into a lunging punch at Angela that took her completely by surprise. She gave a shout and tried to swing her staff up to block him, but she was too slow, and the beastman moved across the ground like he was flying. The attack hit her squarely between her breasts, knocking wind and blood out of her mouth with its force. She went down like a sack of radishes, only to watch him fly over her, spring boarding off of her stomach into a flying kick toward Riesz. Silently, as blackness swarmed in to block her vision, Angela prayed that Riesz would be faster…

And quite suddenly, was sitting up again, eyes blinking as the world returned to focus. She still felt death's cold, slimy fingers all about her, and shivered, but she was alive. She looked down, her leotard was ruined. Lugar's punch must have driven into her with killing force; she could still feel his hairy fist slamming into her chest. The healing had not been perfect, her cleavage was a mass of bruises, but she was alive. Bless the Goddess, she was alive. She looked up, intending to thank Carlie for the healing, and caught sight of Kevin's form, altered by his werewolf blood, bounding away from her and into the fray. Her eyes bulged.

Kevin knows healing magic? Wisp never told me... But if he healed me, what is Carlie doing?

She got to her feet, leaning on her staff for support, and found Carlie standing sturdily just finger lengths from the fight, enveloped in an ominous blue glow. Dark chanting in light soprano fled from the little girl's lips as she spat out the words of a treaty with the Underworld. Angela did not know much of the evil language used by demons and imps and their ilk, but she knew enough to understand that this was no ordinary pact. She was glad to see that Hawkeye was back in the battle, his daggers flashing about as quickly as ever. Riesz had a determined look, and Angela noticed that every time Lugar shifted his attention from herself to the ninja, Riesz would interpose her body, quick as lightning, and take the hit instead. As Angela was trying to figure out how in the world one man could fight four at once, since Kevin had joined in to support the others, reality split. There was no other word for it. Half of her screamed, while the other half just stared at Lugar, whose body strained upward toward the full moon with every fabric and sinew of his flesh. Half of her heard words in the same language Carlie had been using just moments before, only in a deep, hissing voice that was somehow reminiscent of black ice, while half of her heard only total silence as she had never experienced. Three agonized breaths, and it was over. Reality reasserted itself, and Angela went crashing to the ground with her staff beneath her.

"Zer kal raize tun vetz!"

Angela lifted her head slightly and shook it to get the blood out of her eyes. From where she lay slumped, prostrate upon the grassy ground, she could see Carlie as she kneeled in the green and finished her incantation. For a long moment, nothing happened, and Lugar swept Carlie aside with a brawny arm. Or tried to. Somehow, when his arm met the blue field that enveloped the little enchantress, he was caught and bound where he stood. Long, thick tendrils of dark magic lashed out from Carlie's form, grasping and groping and holding him exactly where she wished him to be. Angela looked at the girl's eyes, and saw that they glowed with blue fire; she had given herself entirely over to the Underworld. For the moment, Charlotte was a portal into the dark planes that lurked beneath the earth, and Angela shivered. Those dark places had nearly taken her twice, and spat her back out at the calling of a friend. Cackling voices that sounded like the deformed shouts of small children serenaded the sorceress as she slumped and fell into unconsciousness.

Wave after wave of tiny creatures with poisoned spears stabbed into Lugar with demonic viciousness. Those points were deadly needles, made mercilessly of some dark equivalent of mythril that burned inside of his flesh wherever it pierced him, and it pierced him nearly everywhere. Lugar howled, shamed and frightened and hopeless, and thought that this torture would never cease.

Kevin still reeled from his encounter with the legendary Seiryuu Death Fist (and where in Mana had Lugar learned that?), but maintained much more coherence than the inert sorceress. As he watched Carlie, something inside of him curled up and wept, though no tears fell from his eyes. Lugar's screams cut him as the spears of the gremlins cut, and though nausea and bruises warred with each other to smash him to the ground, somehow he forced himself to stand, to walk. Charlotte's eyes still flashed blue, but her mouth, normally smiling, was fixed in a pained grimace that would have left wrinkles on an older woman. Kevin made his slow, agonized way over her, stepped over Riesz's prone form, and made reached out to the medium.

"Carlie." He forced the name out through lips cracked and bleeding. "Carlie, come back. Come back to us. Come back to your friends."

His voice was caught and snatched away by the amalgamated cacophony composed of Lugar's screaming and the gremlin's horrible singing. Yet Kevin saw Carlie shake her head, almost imperceptibly, and that gave him the strength to clear the rest of the distance between them. Gently, he wrapped his arms around her midriff and called out again. "Carlie."

Azure flames licked at his arms, but did not burn him. Death's fire was cold, not hot, just as everything else related to death was. "Carlie." Kevin whispered one last time, and slumped against her. Abruptly, the light in her eyes died, and the flames around her dissolved into gray ash, and then not even that remained. Lugar fell, and she stared down at his mangled form, bewildered for a moment. Then, her eyes narrowed, and she struggled to her feet. Kevin could hardly move, not even enough to resist a girl half his size.

"Bad man took Heathie. Now Carlie will take Heathie back, and bad man can't do nothing about it."

Lugar's only response was to cough up blood. Carlie stalked away to the gate, where she stood, hands on her hips, glaring at it as though that would get it to open for her. Kevin pushed himself to his knees and crawled over to Lugar, then tried to summon Wisp. The Light Elemental appeared, but his "eyes" were narrowed to tiny dots, and he somehow managed to look dejected.

:I'm sorry, Kevin, he is beyond even me. I can't save him, not after…not after what Charlotte did to him.:

"Kevin, son of the Beast King. Noble, talented, soft Prince Kevin. How I hated you."

Kevin's eyes shot over to Lugar, who coughed again and laughed. "Oh, don't look so surprised. You were the Prince, the Beast King's own brood, and the only one in the litter, to boot. You should have been great. But no, you had to be a…" He coughed bitterly. "A pacifist. I should have had your place; I would have brought the beastmen to such glory as has never been seen on Fa'Diel."

"Lugar…" Kevin stammered, but Lugar was on his last breaths, and he rode over anything Kevin might have said ruthlessly.

"Shut up, dog. I envied you your place in life, and hated you for wasting it. Yet what could I do, without a drop of noble blood in my veins. So I trained, every day, harder than you ever did, and grew strong. I rose through the ranks, hoping to one day get a chance to kill you. But even then, after all that, I couldn't win. Damn you. Damn you and your peace."

The beast man shuddered, and grew still. Wisp melted into shadow as Kevin fell over Lugar's tattered breast, letting his tears fall. "No, Lugar." He wept. "We should have been friends. Don't die. Please don't die."

With a howl, he sent a prayer storming through the woods, to any who might listen, begging for life where there should be death.

Black armor rattled as the Darkshine Knight fell to the ground, stricken helpless by the elemental shriek that slashed through the forest. He struggled to regain his footing, but it was all he could do to wait it out, until it finally stopped, and even then, he lay prone on the ground for some time after it passed.

:You have very strong lungs, child.:

Kevin did not raise his head. He knew who was before him, even without the gentle yellow glow suffusing the clearing.

"He's dead." He told Luna bitterly.

:Actually, I may have some say in that matter.:

The glow grew brighter, then focused on Lugar, filled the cooling body in Kevin's arms. Then, quite suddenly, Kevin was holding nothing. He searched the clearing frantically until the brave squalling of a newborn drew his attention to the ground. He stared; the baby crawling about on the ground had Lugar's eyes. "How?" he murmured. Luna was all too happy to oblige with an explanation.

:I am Mistress of Change, child. I could only bring him back in the form of a babe, for he had lost too much of himself in his tousle with Charlotte. Still, I am quite powerful in my own, quiet way, and this is my domain. Lugar was of my chosen people, as you yourself are, though Wisp appears to have staked some claim on you as well. I suppose that is well, we are both of light, though his taste and sense of moderation are staggeringly lacking.:

:Hey!: Wisp retorted, apparently not quite gone. :I resent that!:

:Of course you do, dear.: Luna replied patiently. :Now run along and enlighten one of your followers, will you? I have some business to attend to. Unless you want to be around for the giving of my blessing…:

Since Elementals were forbidden to see the rituals of their fellows, Wisp quite abruptly was gone at that remark.

:Hmph. Impertinent fellow.: Luna grumbled. :Now, let's see what I can do about guarding my Stone, if that crazed lunatic hasn't broken it already. I spent a good century on the charm keeping this forest pleasantly dark, and if he messed it up, I swear I'll do something drastic.: She paused. :I just have to remember what it is first.:

Author's Note: Apologies for the agonizing slowness. No excuse. Next chapter should come out more quickly.

Truewind