"Look…I told you I can't dance!" protested Domino as she tripped over her tail again.
"Nonsense, anyone can dance, if I can, you can." Replied her husband as he held her to prevent her falling over.
They tried moving into a waltz again and for a moment it looked like they were succeeding, then when Thunderchild tried to pirouette Domino beside him she tripped up again and fell into his arms laughing.
"I told you so!" she said
"Honestly, what are you like?" he asked laughing too.
For a moment they just stood there staring into each others eyes, the war against Jara forgotten, everything forgotten except their love for each other. Then Thunderchild swung Domino around to face him and started dancing again, slower this time.
"Ok, lets take it slower. Just follow my feet with yours." He said, Domino looked down at his feet and followed them as closely as she could, this worked fine until she misjudged a step and trod right on his foot.
"Yowch!" exclaimed Thunderchild as her heel dug into his soft leather boot, he jumped away and started hopping on one foot, cradling the other.
"Oh Thu, I am sorry…did I hurt you?" asked Domino rushing to his side.
"It'll be ok." He said before breaking into laughter
"What's so funny?" she asked as she started to giggle too.
"Domino the destroyer…defeated by a dance routine!" exclaimed Thunderchild in hysterics
"Defeated by a dance routine eh? We'll see about that." She replied with a mischievous grin on her face as she held out her hand for Thunderchild to take.
"What the?" he asked as he took her hand and she pulled him out into the centre of the dance. Other people swirled around them immersed in the spirit of the dance.
"What are you doing Dom?" he asked her
"Ok wise guy…you follow me!" she said smugly and taking him by the hand started dancing almost like she had done it all her life.
Thunderchild was confused by this sudden change in ability and he was so deep in confusion that he misjudged a movement and tripped over Dominos foot, stumbling straight into Nagy.
"Hey watch where you're…oh…hiya Thu…I thought you were a good dancer." He said
"So did I!" exclaimed Thunderchild as Domino pulled him back to her.
She swung him around and he nearly lost his balance again, she moved so gracefully so effortlessly that he was amazed, she stood out from all the others in the crowd for her agility and beauty.
After a little while he managed to adjust to her dancing and follow it almost as though he was glued to her.
"You're better than you think." He said to her
"So are you." She replied with a smile.
"Shall we take a break?"
She nodded and led him out of the crowd onto a sand dune a little way from the party where they sat and watched the stars shine above.
"Whoa…Déjà vu." Muttered Thunderchild
"Pardon?"
"I was just thinking…me and you, dancing at a party, sitting out watching the stars…all over again."
She turned and looked at him, the moonlight illuminating the side of her face and making her eyes sparkle.
"All those years I went without you…thinking you were lost." She said
He looked back at her
"All those years I never knew you…"
A small dot of light shot up from near the bonfire and exploded in the still night air creating a shower of red sparks which faded as they fell to the ground.
"Jara!" asked Domino her face suddenly concerned.
Thunderchild shook his head
"No…someone's got some Counterweight Continent fireworks out. They're quite pretty…we used to have similar things on Terra."
Another firework exploded overhead, a blue one this time. The explosion reverberating across the sand dunes.
He turned to Domino, his face lit up by another exploding firework and put his arm around her.
"I love you."
She turned back to him and smiled
"I love you too…forever."
And under the starlight, the moonlight and the light of the exploding fireworks they kissed as though never before.
Far away a shadowy figure stood on the top of a sand hill looking down on a small town which was nestled in a small dip with a river running through it.
Behind the figure in the darkness of the night things stirred and moved. Muted roars and growls broke the silence of the night.
Another figure, this one with a tail, joined the first.
"It is ready Mother." It said
Jara Gedyen turned, her face in a cruel smile.
"Very well Funaho…you shall lead them in. Do not fail me again."
Funaho bowed deeply to Jara
"I will not Mother."
Funaho turned and held her hand high in the air, her fist closed.
The shadows began moving down into the town, and with them they brought death and destruction.
A figure ran up to Nagy in the party and whispered something in his ear. Nagy turned and looked at him with shock on his face and said something back, the messenger nodded and repeated his earlier statement.
Nagy pushed his way through the crowd towards Proeliator and Beowolf and repeated it to them, they too were in shock at whatever he said and so together they made their way out of the party and onto the sand dunes where they had seen Thunderchild leave.
"He's not going to like this at all." Muttered Beowolf
Thunderchild and Domino were lying in each others arms on the sand dune, kissing and holding each other.
Nagy cleared his throat which made both of them jump and look up.
"Sheesh, Nagy, what are you doing sneaking up on us like that…aren't a husband and wife allowed some privacy?" asked Thunderchild
Domino giggled and adjusted her top, bringing one strap back up into its rightful place, then she saw the serious look on Nagy's face.
"What's happened?" she asked
Nagy sighed but couldn't break himself to break the news so it was up to Beowolf to say it instead.
"It's Jara…she's attacked another town…" he said
Thunderchild sat up immediately, a look of worry crossing his face.
"Where?"
Nagy spoke up now
"That's the thing…it's Kitrit…they've lost all contact with it…last reports indicated an army moving in."
Thunderchild jumped up and began running back towards the party, Nagy ran with him and Domino quickly got up and followed.
"How long ago was the report received?" asked Thunderchild of Nagy as they both ran.
"About half an hour ago."
"DAMN!"
Domino was confused, she didn't know why her husband had reacted so much to the news of the town falling. He'd never mentioned Kitrit or any connection with it before.
Thunderchild ran to the edge of the town and stopped, looking out into the desert.
"Hope you're listening old girl." He muttered before putting two fingers in his mouth and whistling extremely loudly.
"What's the matter?" asked Domino to Nagy.
There was a distant rumbling noise as though a large beast was moving through the desert toward them.
Out of the desert night a white beast with a silvery tail and mane came galloping into the town from the shadows of the night, the beast I presumed to be what Thunderchild had called a horse, it looked a lot like a unicorn or unipeg, just without the horn or wings.
"Shamara…it's been too long." He whispered to her as he stroked her white mane.
Shamara gently nickered back at him and nuzzled him.
Thunderchild smiled gently and jumped up on Shamaras back, the white mare neighed loudly and galloped off into the night.
Domino turned to Nagy again and asked
"What's the matter!"
Nagy blinked as if noticing her for the first time.
"Oh…I'm sorry….Kitrit is where Thunderchilds parents…err, step parents live."
Dominos face drained of all colour as she stared at Nagy, her mouth slightly open in horror.
"His step-parents? Oh my god, no." she said, then she ran over to the nearest horse she could find and leapt onto the back of it, vaulting effortlessly from the ground straight onto a spot just back from the withers.
The horse reared up in the air but despite not having a saddle or any other riding tack Domino managed to stay on its back and not fall off.
Then the horse galloped off after Thunderchild and Shamara.
Domino rode through the sandy desert, clinging to the mane of the horse she was riding, she could see the hoof prints from Shamara in the sand in front of them and so could tell they were heading in the right direction.
Oh I hope he doesn't do anything stupid she thought
Behind her in the western sky an orange glow began to spread across the horizon as a new dawn began.
But in front of her a black cloud drifted up from fires that burned out of control somewhere in the distance, as the light slowly increased she could see a small cloud of sand not too far in the distance which showed her where her husband was.
Urging the horse on faster she cleared another sand dune and carried on riding.
Less than an hour later she crested the top of another sand dune and came to the outskirts of Kitrit.
"Oh god." She breathed as she saw Kitrit, or to be more precise, what was left of it. There wasn't a building left in Kitrit that hadn't been destroyed, fires burnt out of control everywhere and bodies lay bloodied in the street.
She slid off the side of her horse and patted it twice on its side before walking down into the ruined town. She saw some footsteps she recognised as Thunderchilds and followed them into the centre of the town, there the footsteps disappeared and she was forced to look around, the smell of smoke made her cough and it made her eyes water.
The sound of fires burning around her drowned out every other sound except one, the sound of crying, she knew it so well, people always cried around her. The smell of burning, the sound of fire and crying, a destroyed town around her, it all reminded her too much of her days as the destroyer.
She followed the sound of crying, she didn't have any other thing to follow, any other thing to guide her and so she moved through the rubble, climbing over the debris of fallen buildings and all too frequently the bodies of the inhabitants of the town, drawn ever closer to that sad sound, the sound of sorrowful weeping.
Then she found him kneeling by the fallen rubble of a small home on the banks of the river which flowed through the town, in his arms he cradled the limp body of a dark haired woman who looked to be in her late thirties an arrow protruding from her stomach. Over in the corner of the house a dark haired man with a goatee had been thrown against the wall and lay still on the ground, his scimitars broken blade beside him.
"For five years I never knew my real parents…I still don't know my father…for five years these people were my parents…" said Thunderchild through the tears.
"I don't have any parents so I can't really understand what you're going through."
He nodded, wiping away some of the tears from his eyes with one hand.
"Neither do I now…my mother is dead, so are my step-parents…and my father is on another world somewhere."
Suddenly the woman opened her eyes and tried to focus on Thunderchild.
"Khit?" she asked, before speaking slowly in Klatchian
Thunderchild shushed her and kissed her lightly on the forehead, she tried to speak again but had a coughing fit, coughing up spurts of blood from internal injuries.
Thunderchild spoke to his step-mother in Klatchian, assuring her of something, she smiled and nodded, seeming satisfied with what he said, and then she said something to him and pointed over to a small box which was half buried in rubble near the crumpled form of his step-father.
Thunderchild nodded deeply to her and gave her a gentle hug before speaking very softly to her as she sighed deeply and died in his arms.
Then he broke down into tears again, crying head bowed over her body, as her blood spilt out into the wreckage of her home, it mixed with the tears of the adopted son she had left behind.
Domino put her hand on his shoulder to offer what comfort she could, but the situation was something she had not encountered before and so she didn't know what kind of comfort she could give so she kept her mouth shut and let him grieve in peace.
In the sky behind her the sun had risen and it shone down on the devastation around her, she couldn't begin to fathom the size of the army which had torn this town apart, and the cruelness of the person behind it. This little town hadn't done anything to harm Jara or her army but she had wiped it out, as a boy destroys an anthill for sheer wantonness of power.
Thunderchild looked up into the dawn light, Domino could see uncontrollable hatred in his eyes, such hatred she had not seen since his transformation into Dragon Trance, something she feared was happening again.
"NOOOO!" he yelled before turning around and launching a large fireball at a nearby ruin which exploded into flames, he fired another and another until more of the town around them was on fire now than it was when they arrived. Then he started smashing the broken bits of wood around him with Draconus, sending them flying past Domino into the fire, she could see my husband had totally lost his temper and many months of barely controlled emotion were now seething through his veins. Another piece of wood was destroyed and another.
"My love…" she said
"WHAT?" he turned on Domino, his hand raised for a fireball launching blow, when he saw who he was attacking, he stopped and burst into tears, sobbing on my shoulder like a little boy while the fires he had created around them burnt. Many minutes past, Domino did not know what to do other than to just be there for him, the shoulder for him to cry on and the hand to pat his back and stroke his hair, then he pulled away from her and wiped some of the tears away from his moist eyes.
"My path is set…" Thunderchild muttered as he dried his eyes with his robe
"What do you mean?" asked Domino
"My future…it's set out. I will destroy Jara…"
"Destroy Jara?"
Thunderchild stood up and shouted into the smoky dawn.
"Yes, I'm going to kill the bitch! Jara! You hear me! I'm coming to end your twisted life!" he shouted into the silence of destruction around them.
"Then what…?" quietly asked Domino
Thunderchild paused and turned back around to his wife and frowned at her.
"What?"
"After you've destroyed Jara, then what?" she asked him
"Well…erm…I, I can't see that far ahead." He said shrugging "Things will move on no doubt."
Domino stood there studying him, he seemed to her even more determined than before and she couldn't help but remember Reigannas warning.
"Don't you think you're getting a little carried away with all of this?" she asked
Thunderchild turned on her, his blood red cloak swinging around behind him, his face was dark and his eyes flashed with anger.
"CARRIED AWAY!" he roared "Jara has taken you from me once, killed my foster parents, hurt many innocent people, invaded the Twilight Forest, need I go on? Domino, I have to stop her…it is my destiny!"
"Your destiny?"
Thunderchild nodded, his hands curled into fists
"Yes, I can see it now, I've come this far because I have to end Jara, no matter how this plays out I have to stop her…I will stop her…" he said, turning his back on Domino and staring out at the destroyed town surrounding him.
"When I was still in service to Lawrence, I once escaped and caused much devastation on Terra, two cities I destroyed and nearly another before I was recaptured, I can remember Lawrence being pleased with me, but he was the only one. I changed during that time though, I met a young girl, her name was…was Deis…" she went to continue but Thunderchild turned around slowly
"Did you say Deis?" he asked
Domino nodded
Thunderchild suddenly darted up on a piece of masonry, surprising Domino with his agility, he sat there and thought, his hand on his forehead.
"Deis…She was my sister!" he suddenly yelled
Domino flinched, more memories suddenly emerging from her hidden past.
"You were there…you were with them, the army…"
Thunderchild nodded
"Hallis city, you were the renegade genome…I should have known that it was you…Zero-One-Five."
Domino flinched
"It was your sister that gave me the idea for my name, it sounds better than Zero-One-Five."
Thunderchild leapt down from the wreckage and embraced Domino, more of his past coming back to him, hidden for so long and then the veils uncovered.
"I can remember more now Domino, I can remember it all, Janus, Ashilla, all of them!" he exclaimed
"I wonder what happened to Deis?" muttered Domino
Thunderchild sighed, this was a past he had only just found and now he realised that he had lost it too.
"She must have been killed along with my mother. Oh Domino, she was so young, so…so…"
"So trusting and friendly."
Thunderchild nodded
"But her death, all their deaths will not be in vain. I may have lost my home, but Gaia is my home now, I will not lose it."
There was a whinny from a distance and as the two looked up they saw three riders approaching from the south.
"It is Nagy, Proeliator and Beowolf. Come, my husband, we must head for Terra."
Thunderchild nodded and drew his sword, kneeling by his foster-mothers corpse he muttered softly under his breath words that Domino could barely hear.
"I promise over your dead body to avenge your deaths, even if it means my own."
Then he stood up and sheathing his sword again he picked up the small box which lay nearby in the wreckage and smiled. Then he found a piece of wood and began digging a hole in the desert sand. Domino understood what he was trying to do and so finding another bit of wreckage she joined in.
When Nagy, Proeliator and Beowolf rode up, they found Domino and Thunderchild placing the sand back in the graves and fixing up small headstones out of wreckage.
"So the reports were true, I feared as much." Said Proeliator
"His foster parents dead, will this push him over the edge, I don't know if you guys have noticed but he's been under a lot of strain lately." Muttered Beowolf
Nagy frowned at Beowolf
"He'll be fine 'wolfie. He's strong, he'll pull through…how, I don't know."
They dismounted and walked over to Thunderchild.
"I'm so sorry." Said Nagy, speaking for the three of them.
Thunderchild merely nodded and saluted them, he put his hand on Nagys shoulder and said.
"Thank you for telling me as quickly as you did. I only wish I could have gotten here sooner."
"Her force is large Thunderchild…there was nothing you could have done, there was nothing any of us could have done to stop her."
Wiping a tear from his eye Thunderchild nodded, his face devoid of emotion but the tears that leaked from his eyes betraying his sorrow.
"So…what do we do now?" asked Proeliator, trying hard to change the subject
Thunderchild looked up
"I've got information as to the location of my fighter craft, we head there now."
"And then?" asked Domino
Thunderchild punched his opened left hand with his right hand curled in a fist.
"And then my sweetheart I will erase Jara Gedyen from existence, no matter what it takes."
The determination in his voice frightened both Domino and Nagy, they had never seen him this determined and ruthless before.