"I think we're supposed to bring them back at least in a coma!" he yelled. "Come on! We can't fight here!" The Paladin began to run towards the entrance.
The Sage roared and lashed out with his huge claw-arm, sending Raven sprawling. He/it raised the claw, and prepared to strike down upon the helpless Paladin…. Gukko raced by, grabbed his friend's headwrap, and dragged them both outside the cave.
The Sage-turned-Languas waited patiently inside the cave, followed by the children, whose forearms were already significantly lengthening. So they had disturbed the process of the metamorphosis, but only hindered it…
"They'll be out here at night," Raven stated.
"Mhmm…"
"So… What do you think we do?"
"Well, we have these silver blades…"
"Uh-uh. Why would the Sage give us the blades in the first place, if he were planning to kill us?"
"Then…" Raven grinned. "Do you have any of Hejaat's fever medicine?"
"Erm, yes, I bring a few pellets everywhere I go. Why?" Gukko asked curiously, prying out a heavy bag from his belt.
Raven sat down and began to mold the grayish pellets into shapes. That done, he pressed them down into the runes on the sword. "There!" He raised the sword in the air to catch the sun.
"What did you do?"
Raven fingered the sword. "Can you read runes?"
Gukko smiled sheepishly. "Not really…"
"Malice-Evil-Hate-Malevolence-Loathsome-Morbid-Invasive…" Raven read the runes. "Here, give me your sword."
Raven did the same process with the medicine pellets.
"What does it say now?"
"Dandelions-Smiles-Laughter-Benevolence-Happiness-Wonder-Amazement-Love-Goodness…" Raven laughed. "Since the medicine has a bit of silvril alloy in it, I'm assuming the sword'll think the new runes are part of it. Come on, we must get rid of them before night!"
Gukko stepped forward first. "Well, are you sure?"
Raven shrugged. "Nope. What made you think I was?"
Gukko sighed and charged, slicing the Languas.
For a moment, nothing of particular interest happened. Then…
"He's getting bigger! Oh no!" Raven cried.
"Ssh!" Gukko chided.
Indeed, it was getting bigger, swelling up like a wineskin. But then dandelions began to sprout. The Languas roared a roar fearsome and alien enough to scare Adrammalech under a bed. Dandelions wove through, their golden heads reaching towards the sun. Then, they began to change, turning huge, white, and puffy. Finally, with one final roar, the Sage-Languas collapsed. A gem fell out. Gukko picked it up.
For a moment, he fell nothing. Then he felt a flurry of emotions- sinister, dark moods.
Raven! Why should Raven share in the reward? I killed it!
Hejaat! Why should Hejaat be alive?
Pellets? Why should those malevolent things even exist?
Me! Why should I exist? What have I done…
All those emotions suddenly stopped, replaced by a sharp pain in his hand.
Raven held Excalibur now by the sacred, golden blade. It was cutting into him too, Gukko could see where the blade had started to part the flesh of his hands.
He was his own hand. There, the gem lay shattered, the blood fragments sucking the light out of even the darkness of the cave.
"They're changing back!" Raven exclaimed.
Indeed, the children's forms were reverting back to normal, like a withered flower sucking up water, the petals fanning out once more.
They began to wail.
"GUKKO! MAKE THEM STOP!" Raven howled, his hands clasped to his ears.
"YOU MAKE THEM STOP!" Gukko wailed in return. "Ouch!" There was a sharp pain in the side of his head.
"LET'S JUST GET BACK AND TELL THEM THE CHILDREN ARE SAFE!"
The Alchemist put on his wyrm-hide gloves. "If one shard enters you," he confided to his apprentice, then depending on the size of the shard, you may become tainted; evil. You see, the Languas is an embodiment of pure evil. The power is drawn from the gem. Now, we must place it together now, to make sure that no one has taken a piece."
After hours after hours, the gem was back in place. "This gem seems much like it is made well and whole again. Now to destroy it." The Alchemist prepared to throw it into the sacred circle which he had made.
"Wait!" The apprentice thought he had seen something… A tiny, unnoticeable miniscule, chink taken out of the gem! It was missing! But it was too late. The gem had disappeared with a beam of bloody-golden light.
"Huh?"
The apprentice shook his head. Probably just a shadow. "Nevermind.
In a matter of minutes, the kidnapped children were back with howling, crying parents.
Ellia, the little viera girl, chewed the hem of her robe thoughtfully. She did not know why her Assassin mother was crying and weeping and yelling over her being gone for a little while.
Sandra, the raven-haired human toddler with huge eyes, told her best friend Ellia that her wrist was hurting.
"Stay still! You're not okay!" the exasperated healer exclaimed. Yes, she was thankful that her cousin Sandra and her best friend Ellia were back safe and sound, but was it the nature of all young men to assume that they could go out on adventures with huge, bloody gaping wounds?
Gukko struggled. "Madam, I'm fine, really, I'm okay!"
"No, you're not. Ray!" she hollered. A huge bangaa (impossibly even bigger than Douglas) that had to kneel down and squat-walk to get through the door came in. By his uniform, he was a Gladiator. Probably a dispatched unit from some clan. Whoever the bangaa, Ray, was, he pinned Gukko and Raven down with only one hand.
"Good, Ray. Hold them steady…"
Gukko and Raven both groaned.
"Please! You guys have gone up and above the requirements of the mission!" Shelly exclaimed. The Summoner pressed another bag upon the two.
"Um, thanks, but I don't think that we'll be able to carry all your gifts, much less use all of them. Please, we don't want to rob you of everything."
"Sir, Daddy's new chocobos hatched. He says that since you bought me and my brother Sammy, my sister Tammy, my other brother Teppin, my other sister Penelope, my cousin Hannah, and my third cousin twice-removed Hanni back safe, he wants to give you one." Sandra thrust before her two twin chocobo chicks, just a few days old. The two fluffy puffballs looked up and kwehed with giant, liquid eyes.
"Well, thank you, little girl, but we-"
"Take them!" Sandra looked pleased to have bought them the two chocobos.
"Well, okay, thank you."
After more times of villagers pressing gifts upon them, Gukko shook his head. "I have a family and a clan waiting. We both have to go-" he launched into a long thank-you speech in the end, the head Elder nodded.
"Love, victory and good fortune be with you!"
"So what exactly did we get?" Raven asked. They were carefully avoiding the Uledon bog and were an half hour's walk away from home.
"Well…" Gukko drew out the bags.
The chocobo chick kwehed again, begging to be fed.
"Ugh, the little bugger's constantly hungry," Gukko moaned, handing out another two handfuls to both chicks, who happily ate it, leaving trails of saliva behind.
"Let's see…" Raven began an account of their inventory. "Hmm… Gil. Lots and lots of it. An Angel Ring… Wow. A lifetime supply of Bracers… More gil… A chocobo egg. Lots of magical stones…" A few minutes later, Raven ended his list.
"No wonder we got so tired carrying it all," Gukko moaned.
"Let's hurry home now."
"Ow!" Raven suddenly crumpled.
Gukko bent down. "What-"
"My foot…" Raven moaned. Gukko wished he didn't see the way the ankle was twisted into an angle that ankles weren't supposed to be twisted in.
"There's a village. Here, lean on me."
"Just twisted ankle. Rest for the night- a room's ten gil," the healer said.
"Thank you." Gukko placed ten gil on the countertop. "Cheap!"
"Tonight's the Discount Night. Normally forty gil."
"Thank you," Raven said, touching his normal-seeming ankle and wincing. "Ow!"
"I forgot to warn you, don't touch it."