Author's Note
Urm. I have no excuse whatsoever for how freakishly long this chapter took. Beware: it contains a Fight Scene, and as I have no experience with Fight Scenes, it may be rather awkward. Following Piers' diatribe I shall return to praise my lovely reviewers, disgruntled as you all must be.
Onward!
Piers' P.O.V.
Of all I have encountered in my years, of all I have seen, heard, smelled, felt . . . I have enjoyed none more than these: the taming of the sea and the subtle art of cooking.
Oh, it seems odd, I'm sure, that the child of such a distinguished society would bind himself to such a menial task as the preparation of food. But when your kind is as long-lived as mine, it is not the seemed simplicity of a task that calls you, but the possible permutations of its devising. The sea, for its part, fulfills such guidelines easily; a water first kind and enduring can, in an eye-blink, revert to such savagery to tear an unwary vessel to shipwrecked fragments. The wind, the waves, the clouds: none can be trusted entirely, and never even in their full entirety can you believe what they foretell.
Likewise cooking, although mundane to the unenlightened eye, offers a tantalizing array of near limitless possibilities. A dropped or added second of heat can set the difference between burnt and undercooked. A simple pinch of ingredient could mean the distinction between culinary perfection or disaster. Simply put, cooking is both a basic and an infinitely intricate endeavor, tailored to the ambitions of the chef, sculpted to the devotion and creativity of the attempter.
Our travels have been an intriguing experience for me. Whereas in previous years I had been exposed to the customary techniques and ingredients of Lemuria, we have in the past few months experienced the culinary achievements of over a dozen societies. It has been, to say the least, an eye-opening venture.
However, despite the variety I have recently discovered, I currently find myself facing a most diverging challenge. While we had a certain abundance of food, albeit often exotic, while journeying, the numbers of those for whom I cook have grown from an average traveling party to a good-sized village. Likewise, following Vale's destruction our resources have been doubtlessly limited; despite the warm hospitality Vault's citizens have shown our displaced kinsmen, it is difficult for a village to suddenly support twice its accustomed population.
Therefore, I was making stew.
"Piers, that smells delicious." Isaac's mother hovered over the stove, taking a moment to waft steam from the boiling pot. She was positively beaming: had been beaming, in fact, since our arrival at Vale's outskirts. Isaac had confided to me that he found this action disconcerting, but I admit I can understand the reasons for her jubilation.
I took a moment to check the condition of the bread baking within the oven's interior. I was browning nicely, exuding a gingery, tantalizing scent; twenty more minutes aught to do it.
"Thank you, Dora," I replied, admittedly not as impressed with my creation as she appeared to be, "but I fear it's still missing something vital."
"Piers, if it tastes as good as it smells, believe me, no one is going to mind." She offered another dazzling smile of reassurance, swiping the unused remains of a green pepper before vanishing out the doorway in a twirl of dull skirts.
How lucky Isaac is, I mused inwardly, not for the first time in those days, to find parents so alive once more . . .
It was not a kind train of thought. For all my years . . . ah, I must not dwell on such things. Regret is the cruelest thing to befall my race, and it is best rarely visited. I set the memory away, filed the comment for later reference, and returned to my cooking.
The stew was simmering, and I dutifully stirred it to reseat the potatoes and bits of meat that had settled lamentingly to the bottom. A few pieces seemed far too large now that the stew was in motion; these I sought and easily broke apart with my whisk.
Lifting a ladle to my lips, I willed a cooler temperature to the captured soup and tasted a small portion. It was thick, meaty, bearing just the exact amount of sliced vegetables for its volume. It was, I must admit in all modesty, fabulous, but it still lacked a certain pungency to its flavour. I had already allotted it several liberal dashes of what aught to have been the idea spices, but it yet remained unfulfilled. And what could possibly be added now, so close to the dish's potency?
I sighed, admitting sad defeat, and set the ladle and whisk aside to observe the final sewing—
--only to have the latter snatched up by a rather familiar hand.
"What the hell," Garet demanded, hair and garment still damp from his recent river jaunt, "are you using a whisk for in making stew!"
He waved the whisk pointedly, a demanding look spread across dripping features. I suddenly received the odd impression of a sodden firecracker, tall stalk steaming futilely in an attempt to shower spark despite all dampness to the contrary. I had to stifle my amusement; luckily, I have had much practice in doing so.
"The whisk," I explained impatiently, "serves to break up the larger pieces of ingredients."
"What? You don't break up the chunks! They soak up the flavor!" Garet strode up to the simmering pot, peering into it questioningly.
"May I please have the whisk back?" I was never certain where I stood with Garet. Admittedly, he was an accomplished chef in his own right. For one so young, I consider this an impressive achievement; however, our methods differed so immensely we soon found it necessary to alternate cooking duties so as to, and I use Garet's exact wording, 'not cramp each other's style.' While I prefer cautious experimentation, Garet prefers a more extreme approach. Where I measure carefully, Garet uses handfuls and pinches. Where I memorize exact recipes, he remembers general concepts. In essence, Garet sees cooking as an art, while I view it as a science. I have yet to determine which is the more productive method.
Commandeering the ladle as well, Garet appropriated a sip of the bubbling stew and brought a testing mouthful to his lips. I found his expression as he sampled my creation quite annoying: some baffling combination of superiority, curiosity, and concentration.
"Mmm . . . Needs more salt," he declared and, to my horror, followed the statement by unscrewing the lid of a nearby salt shaker and dumping its entire contents into my creation. He sealed the brash action by recklessly stirring the purified mineral into the simmering mass. Moments later, he tasted the concoction once more and left a satisfied smile behind as he licked his lips contently. "Oh, yeah. Much better."
I fear I must have gone rather pale at his actions, for Garet sent me an incredulous frown upon turning from the pot. He waved his free hand dismissively. "Hey, Piers. It's alright. I didn't ruin it, sheesh." In attempted appeasement he held out the steaming ladle toward me, offering the final mouthful of stew still contained within.
Unable to bury my distrust of the altered concoction, I attempted a wary expression as I hesitantly accepted the proffered stew. Perhaps,I consoled myself cautiously, it won't be so very off . . . I can certainly attempt this recipe again on another occasion . . . I cast one last furtive glance at Garet as I raised the ladle to my lips, carefully took in the final mouthful . . .
. . . and, to coin a phrase often touched upon by my young friends, all hell broke loose.
It was the sudden scream that first drew my attention, cascading impressively through the solid inn walls from the direction of Vale's impromptu canvas tent suburb off Vault's western limits. Garet and I reacted immediately; regardless of near-finished cooking, any possible attack had, in the last few months, come to preclude instant priority.
Haphazardly tossing the now-empty ladle to clatter against the far counter, I snatched my Fire Brand from its careful placement against the kitchen table. In my peripheral vision I noted Garet mirroring my actions in his reach for the Levatine. Despite the relative peace of recent days, habit brought us to maintain certain precautions in our daily activities: although as of late we had forgone our armors, we could not bring ourselves to pack our now-familiar weapons out of arms' reach.
Moving in unison, Garet and I raced each other for the inn door, bolting through the town and up earthen stairs to leap in easy synchronization from the upper reaches of Vault's encircling ledge into the temporary village below. Although the sky had been clear when last I viewed it, rain was now falling in earnest, oddly muting the scene of screams and reined chaos.
Already our colleagues in conflagration were engaged in awkward battle, still sodden and startled from their recent river jaunt. The instigator of this mayhem was immediately discernible; looming above the treetops, the creature was grotesque even by our traveled standards, seeming horribly mutated in an almost pitiable, if gruesome, manner. The beast was almost reminiscent of the small bulbous rodents I had noted roaming the surrounding wilderness, although if I had not previously encountered the vermin I could never have conceived the resemblance. Garet seemed to note the similarities as well, for as we surveyed the situation he expressed like comments: "That's a Vermin! What could have made it spaz like that!"
"I do not know," I admitted freely, "but I fear there is little possibility of discerning such. We must defeat it before it can wreak more havoc on the camp."
To his credit, Garet withheld the retort plainly hiding behind his lips. Instead, he drew his weapon to a vying angle against the ground, gesturing toward the creature with a calculated tilt of his head. "Then let's hurry up and take the bastard down, eh?"
I leveled my own blade in kind, unable to restrain a lopsided grin of response. "Let's."
A moment of calculated hesitation—ah! The opening!--and we sprung forward, weapons held in mirror, dodging the well-placed Psynergy of our fellows with practiced ease. Garet howled a berserker cry as we leaped into our attack, bringing our blades to bear on the beast in simultaneous synchronity. The familiar jolt of impact resounded up the length of our swords--
--and redoubled, dashing us from the creature's hide as though we had set steel upon itself. An enraged bat of the beast's arm swept us aside to tumble, dumbfounded, among our mud-streaked comrades.
"What the hell was that!" Garet demanded, and for all my years I could not discern an answer. Even in our travels we had yet to face a creature that didn't take the faintest damage from even our simplest of weapons, and the swords Garet and I bore were of such enchanted mettle that only the material of our teammates' blades might bear against them.
A familiar feminine voice stole us from our bemusement. "You idiots," Jenna shouted from our left, sweeping familiar healing flames about our fellow warriors with a moment's concentration. Through the rain and growing evening I could barely make out a harsh gash on her arm reseal into pinked flesh. "Why do you think we're using Psynergy! Ivan nearly nicked the Masamune on that thing!"
So informed by Jenna's deserved remark, I quickly realized the sheathed location of the others' weapons and, with a mild reluctance, stowed my own in kind. Despite my original wishes to the contrary, I must admit I have come to prefer blade-work to the water miracles inherent of my race. However, when times require . . . "My apologies, Jenna," I replied congenially, already searching for another opportunity to attack the ulcerated rodent. This, I had begun to realize, was not to be the carefree battle I had originally hoped. Later the implications of this encounter would weigh heavily on me; at that moment, however, I merely slipped further into the intuitive battle mentality that had developed upon me those past months.
The creature towered above the treetops, offering an anguished howl to the tumultuous skies as it attempted to stomp closer to the fragile camp. Already the late Vale's citizens had scampered to the relative safety of Vault's earthen walls, but if we could not quell the beast shortly, both canvas and permanent villages would soon suffer. To my relief, even the Psynergy-capable of Vale had sought shelter, conceding to our admittedly superior battle prowess in protecting the populace, ready to assist in whatever healing they could offer. Fewer inexperienced fighters meant fewer bodies to protect as we worked our attack.
As I gathered up the rain surrounding me to convalesce into iced hail, I noted Ivan, perched on the beast's opposite, calling a reign of storm-accentuated plasma down on the raging beast. Despite it's usual destructive power, however, the impressive electric light-show seemed to only confuse the behemoth, temporarily blinding it instead of charring it as the Jupiter mage had doubtlessly intended. A moment later I released my flurry of frozen missiles, plummeting them against the ogreish Vermin's hind-side . . . only to watch in dismay as they crackled off, rebounding near-uselessly to litter the sodden ground.
"My Psynergy just isn't making a dent!" I caught Ivan say, his small voice barely audible against the backdrop of storm and battle.
"It appears to be a creation of Jupiter and Mercury!" I concurred in a shout, leaping sideways to avoid an out-flung paw, although how such a dual-creation had arisen from such an unimposing creature, I did not know. "Perhaps it is drawing it's power from this storm," I added, more as a comment to myself than a general exclamation.
"Yeah, well, my fire's not getting anywhere in all this rain!" Garet called back, an expression of annoyed distaste coloring his features as he watched the downpour extinguish yet another attempted flare of Mars Psynergy. "Isaac, Felix?"
"We'll take care of it!" Isaac agreed, his voice sounding from somewhere to my right. "The rest of you: draw it away from the camp!"
Already the beast had trampled dangerously close to the makeshift village, gruesomely threatening the canvas dwellings with its worrying proximity. A few more careless steps, and . . .
"That's easy enough!" Sheba chorused. Through the rain I caught a blurred glimpse of her dancing behind the monstrosity before she flung herself up its form in a burst of Jupitarian speed. "Hey, ugly!" she taunted, her voice a sing-song as she lilted across the creature's right arm, batting it with her staff to gain its attention. "Over here, you big stupid!"
"Sheba!" Felix exclaimed suddenly as the Vermin swept a grisly paw in her direction, but she vaulted easily over it, moving like an acrobat to leap down the offending arm and back to her original position. "Yeah, that's it, yah creep! Nyah, nyah, can't caaatch me, knucklehead!"
"No, Sheba, get away--" Felix shouted again, apparently seeing as I suddenly did the uncanny glow growing in the creature's eyes. I barely caught the inhuman blur of Ivan as he sped to shove Sheba away before we were all caught in the sudden explosion of storm-siphoned Psynergy pouring from the beast. The combined wind and wave threw us back and, slammed to the ground like so much batted refuse, it took me a moment to regain my full senses.
Isaac stood in the midst of the fray, having apparently avoided the worst of the Vermin's attack through a cascading shield of Psynergied rock. The reaching spikes seemed to have finally made an impression on the beast, however, for even wounds had appeared in its belly, sloshing blood, hued black in the dimmed light. Now wounded, however, the creature seemed enraged to further madness, now neglecting all we smaller annoyances in lieu of its attacker and the fragile village beyond. With a furious wave of its paw, the Vermin batted Isaac's make-shift shelter to scattered fragments; suddenly defenseless, our undeclared leader took a startled step backward as the creature advanced.
"Isaac!" a girl screamed frantically, although I could not place the speaker beneath the thunder of rain. Issuing a screech of pain and fury, the bleeding creature advanced in blind rage, reaching claws glistening in a sudden burst of lightning. Isaac shrank back, seeming about to attempt to dodge--
--and then inexplicably straightened. In actions even he could not later explain, his arms splayed toward sky and earth, seeming to call upon elements in each, a mantle of suddenly lava-like Psynergy glowing about him. Simultaneously the ground vanished beneath the creature's taloned feet, spilling away to reveal an unexplainable pit of molten earth.
Even as the monster fell toward it, however, another wonder streaked from the sky: a meteor, its rock center exuding flame even in the torrent of rain cascading around us, drove into the plummeting Vermin, cutting off its howl of pained disbelief in a blossom of flame and earth. Expression unreadably foreign, Isaac made another twist of his hands, and the earth closed in about the distinctly defeated creature, gathering to disguise the hole that had engulfed it until only an unnatural pinching of earth remained.
For a long moment, no one moved, stunned into silent frozenness by the sudden impossible finality of the battle. Even Isaac seemed shocked by his unexplainable Psynergy, and until he finally stumbled backward in what I could only guess was a wash of shock and exhaustion from his exertion that anyone regained their mobility. As he fell back to sit weakly on the muddy ground, Garet emerged from the rain-streaked darkness, stumbling toward his friend.
"Didn't want them to find out like this. . ." sounded a weary voice behind me: Ivan, still collapsed against a tree where the beast's Psynergy had so carelessly tossed him, his expression dull as he shook his head dazedly in tempo with his words. "Not so soon . . ."
Garet had strapped on a cautious smile as he helped Isaac back to his feet. "That was a flipping awesome fire pit, man. Now hurry up and give Jenna back her fire djinni so she and Mia can take care of us all."
Even before Isaac spoke, I knew the truth; from Garet's uneasy expression, despite his contrary words, I could see Garet knew it, too.
Isaac shook his head dumbly, gathering himself together as he took advantage of Garet's steadying grasp. All around the drenched battleground I could see my friends slowly dragging themselves to their feet, all eyes still focused on Isaac despite themselves.
"Can't," he said numbly, still-pounding rain spilling from his dirt-blonde locks. "I haven't got any."
More Author's Note
And yes. So ends the fourth chapter. I as yet still declare unyielding devotion to Actually Finishing this fanfic, however long it may take me. I really aught to get my butt in gear before the powers that be actually churn out an official GS sequel.
A great thank you to all of you who have reviewed thus far; you make my work far more enjoyable, pathetic and slow as it may sometimes be.
Draconia Silverflame: I'm sure you reviewed mainly because I forced you to read this, but thanks greatly for offering your support! I appreciate it greatly.
VampireNaomi: I'm honored that my work inspired a dream! I admit to having nightmares regarding my writing, but that some good imagining came of this gives me hope. )
Capito Celcior: Talking like Yoda isn't necessarily a bad thing . . .
Silvie-chan: Thanks for the lovely encouragement! I do hope to be able to supply.
Ten-thousand Years: That's so kind of you! Secretly I'd love to eventually publish a book, but I've got years to go before I can attain that magnitude of dream.
Corycian Muse: Heheh. Actually, as of yet I have absolutely nothing planned between Rakka and Alex. I am, however, oddly a fan of Alex/Jenna, so we'll see what finally occurs . . .
Germs: Glad to see you like it! I do hope I'll be able to manage a bit of variation in it, though, to accommodate for the different points of view I hope to detail.
Alyss: Yay! I hath pwned something. D
Kuroya: Wow. Your support has been fantastic. I'm thrilled to see you enjoyed the chapters thus far; hopefully my subsequent ones will continue to appease. Mwaha. I have special plans for Alex . . . He may have been misguided and sometimes cold-hearted, but he had good intentions. As for your offer of beta reading, I'm honored. I've never had a beta reader before, and it would be marvelous to have a sounding board for ideas.
Thank you all once again, and now that you've suffered both Piers' and my diatribes, I have a small question for you all. I intend to introduce another character, this time originating from Prox. Because I'm satisfied to let ghosts lie, it won't likely be a character referred to in the game, but would you prefer a male or female to chase after Alex's group?