His Story

By Magewriter

Chapter 1: Kratos

I felt like writing this. I didn't think that we needed a history of the whole stinkin' remade world, I just wanted to write this. It started as just Kratos, but I think I'll tell it from Yuan's and Mithos's perspectives. Who knows, I might change the name to The Beginning or something crummy like that and do it from Martel's perspective, too.

Two men sat in a room. It was a comfortable room, with a purple carpet, decorated walls, and nice furniture. They were friends from a long-ago war. One had red hair, the other blue.

"I know how hard it was to give up Martel," the red-haired one said suddenly.

"I gave her up over a thousand years ago. And I didn't really give her up. I wanted her spirit to be free. If she could be happy, I would be satisfied. And that happened. We did that. I'm sorry about Anna… and Lloyd."

"Mithos was a backstabbing traitor. I found that out 500 years ago. His lies were complete, but they were lies nonetheless. If I hadn't –"

"If you hadn't given the ranch to Kvar, you would never have met Anna anyway, and you wouldn't care about it. You have to figure out whether it was better to have known Anna and have Lloyd, or to not have known Anna and have Sylvarant still in decline. That's what I always tell myself about Martel: at the time, it seemed right to try to resurrect her. I didn't think that her spirit might be trapped for four thousand years. That isn't what you think while you're grieving. It would have been better to shatter her exsphere, but none of us were thinking about that."

"…I know."

"Have you told Lloyd yet?"

"No. I was thinking of doing it today."

"Okay. 'bye then. I have no doubt that we'll see each other again."

"Goodbye."

The redhead left the room, leaving the blue-haired one with his memories.

The red-haired one went outside the building to see the desert all around him. He boarded a portable, winged contraption and flew on it to the remote village of Iselia, in the northern section of the western continent of Sylvarant.

Repairs were going well since the fires. Lloyd and his wife, Colette, lived in a house on the outskirts of town.

He knocked on their door.

Colette, with her long, blonde hair, came to the door.

"Oh! Hi, Kratos. It's nice to see you again."

"I have something that I need to tell Lloyd."

"Oh… of course. Come in. Is there anything I can get you?"

"No, I'm fine."

"Okay. Wait here. I'll go get Lloyd."

She went out the door, and a minute or so later came back with 21-year-old Lloyd.

"Hi… dad. It still feels weird calling you that."

"Then call me Kratos. You did for our whole journey."

"Yeah, but I didn't know you were my dad then."

"…"

"Anyway, why did you want to talk to me?"

"I wanted to tell you about Anna."

"But… You already told me about her. You were in love, and you had me, then three years later she was turned into a monster and you were forced to kill her. I don't hold it against you or anything. Genis and I killed Marble. Regal killed Alicia. It happens sometimes."

"I wasn't going to tell you about that. I was going to tell you about her life, not her death."

"Oh… Okay."

"Colette, you don't have to eavesdrop. You can listen to this, too."

A blushing Colette walked back into the room and sat down next to Lloyd.

Kratos began his story.

"Anna… was the most beautiful woman there ever was. She had golden brown hair, and green eyes that always sparkled like the sun. But, she was from a Human Ranch. Our love was forbidden. We spent almost four years on the run from Mithos and the Desians. Eventually, we settled in Hima. It was an obscure, hard-to-find mountain village, little more than a trading post. She worked as an inn girl. Sometimes I'd get a job and I'd be gone for a day or two, sometimes three. It wasn't much, but it was a living.

"Then one day, I came home and Mithos had cast the lightning of judgment on Hima. You and Anna were safe, but the rest of the town was a shambles. We knew that we had to leave.

"We went to Iselia. The next Chosen had been born there, so they had a non-aggression treaty with the Desians. One day, we were out in the forest – we always traveled together, for protection – and Magnius' men tried to kill us. Somehow, her exsphere was knocked off, and she became a monster. I told you about that Lloyd – she was killed, and you fell off the cliff – but I still swore that I'd find you, alive or dead, very soon."

"But you didn't come back until I was seventeen!" Lloyd burst out.

"Imagine that your wife and son are killed by an association founded by one of your closest friends. What would you do?

"I went to Mithos. It always annoyed him that I called him that. I asked him why he had forced me to kill Anna. He said, if he had to suffer for his sister, then I ought to suffer for my love.

"That was when I said that he was different. I told him the truth, that Martel was already dead, and he should just destroy her exsphere and let her spirit go free.

"But Mithos was always stubborn, and he couldn't admit to his mistakes. He had been trying to resurrect Martel for four thousand years, and he wasn't ready to give her up. We had a fight, where I got much more heavily injured than he did, and I spent another fourteen years on the run from Cruxis. It was hard to fully heal because every time I got care in one city or another, Cruxis would find me. I was lucky I had a rheaird, because Mithos had really beaten me up. It took me about a month to fully heal, and I didn't want to endanger the Chosen by going to Iselia.

"The thing about Mithos is that, as long as you understood that he was more powerful than you, he would always trust you. He had to know that he was better than you, and then he'd be content in his own little world, knowing that he was the most powerful.

"Over the next fourteen years, I watched Iselia like a hawk. When I saw the omen coming from the Martel Cathedral, I knew that I could see you again without endangering either of us. Mithos had forgiven me by then, so when I asked to go with the Chosen on the Journey of Regeneration. He let me. Colette, I'm sorry for what I did, but I never lied to you. I said that I would protect the Chosen on her journey of regeneration, and I did. Once I got to know you, it was hard. You were just like Martel. You had her eyes, and her laugh… and you always looked on the bright side. I wasn't really surprised when the Unicorn called you by her name… but, I couldn't really do anything about how the Journey worked."

"But… why didn't you tell them what was happening?"

"I figured that if you wanted them to know, you'd tell them. Your life is your life, and who you tell about your body is up to you. Plus, if I'd told our group, that would be like revealing that I was from Cruxis. I couldn't do that.

"So, I went with the Chosen's party. I knew what was happening to Colette because it had happened to Martel when the last four pacts were made, in a way. That was why the Journey of Regeneration was the way it was. After the fifth Seal Mithos broke, Martel became sort of… listless. She wouldn't eat except to stay alive. After the sixth, she became deeply troubled and had a hard time sleeping. See, she always slept across the campfire from us. Sometimes she'd sleep next to Mithos, but never near Yuan or me. One night, I woke up around midnight and she was crying. Yuan was sitting next to her, hugging her. I went over to her to do the same thing. Mithos was becoming heartless, blinded by his own power. Martel was hit the hardest by it. After the seventh seal, she didn't seem to feel. She took her injuries and was silent about it. Mithos didn't pay attention to her, anyway. He had been all she had for so long… Only Yuan and I really cared for her. After the eighth, she wouldn't talk. Actually, when Mithos wasn't with us, she'd talk to us, but she was mad at him and she was trying to make him notice her. He didn't, though, and when she died… I don't think she really minded. If she wanted to stay alive, it was for Yuan and me, not for Mithos.

"She died the day after Mithos signed the contract signifying the end of the War. I was the only one who could still think straight. Mithos just cried, Yuan stared into space… Eventually, they came to their senses.

"The Great Kharlan Tree produced a single seed every hundred years. Yuan knew of a man who collected rare artifacts. We didn't know what Mithos was planning, but he was extremely intelligent and we had no doubt that it would work. We bought a seed and took it back to him. He cracked it in half and… well, we were the first people to have exspheres. He put Martel's exsphere inside of the seed, then used here key crest as a kind of… glue. It held the two halves together. He put the seed in Martel's hands, then called all eight Summon Spirits to encase them in an unbreakable shield of mana. He used the Eternal Sword, which he had received from Origin, to split the world in two. Yuan and I tried to stop him, but… Of course, he used all sorts of spells to attach and separate the two worlds. He created Derris-Kharlan and founded Welgaia, then created an alliance of half-elves, which he called Cruxis. Originally, the owners of the human ranches were only there to support the Desians who lived there, but eventually, after a Desian leader named Jute started using his slaves for exspheres, the other ranches started doing it.

"I was never proud of the lives I took, but… it's hard to stand up to Mithos. He's too powerful. I was smarter, but there was a certain number of exspheres that each ranch had to supply each year. So eventually, I handed my ranch over to Lord Kvar. That was roughly a hundred years ago. I told Mithos that I needed a break. A vacation, as it were. I met Anna about 75 years after that, and we had you, Lloyd, then we spent three years on the run from Cruxis. I gave you to Dirk, and we met each other fourteen years after that."

Lloyd and Colette waited a minute to be sure that the story was over.

"Just out of curiosity," Colette began, "who was it in your group who got the Angel Toxicosis?"

"Don't you know the answer?"

"Was it Martel?"

"Who else? He knew that, after Martel, I couldn't just let you die. But he was angry at you, and I had told you other things besides, and that was why he was angry.

"You know the rest. If there's anything else I can tell you…"

"No, of course not," Colette said. "And… Martel and I weren't really alike. If I'd been discriminated against like that… I probably would have hated the world. But she loved it."

"Of course you're different. But, you're exactly the same as she was at your age. With four thousand years to think, she realized that people were only scared. You can't be angry at someone for being afraid."

"Oh… Yeah, I guess so."

Lloyd, do you have anything to ask me?"

"Yeah. How did your group get together? Colette, Raine, Genis, and I knew each other because we all saw each other at school, you came to us at the temple, Sheena was trying to kill us and all that, but… how did your group get together?"

"Mithos and Martel were siblings and lived in Exire, where Yuan was raised. They met each other there. I met them on a war campaign. Yuan saved my life, and I couldn't find the rest of the company I was fighting with, so I began traveling with them. They were odd – in a time when magitechnology flourished, the only machine they had was a clock.

"We all looked out for each other. Mithos formed pacts with the Summon Spirits, but he wasn't strong enough to beat Origin. At that time, I was slightly stronger than him, so I dealt him a few more blows. Consequently, he formed the pact with me. He forged the Eternal Sword, which would help Mithos in his quest to save the world. Of course, Mithos split the world in two. In anger, a villager from Ozette killed Martel because she was in our group."

"But… wouldn't he want to kill Mithos?"

"That's one theory, yes. But she and Mithos looked almost exactly the same from behind. They had the same wings, almost the same hair… anyone who didn't know them could mistake one for the other.

"I let him go. Mithos might have killed him, but he was crying too hard. Yuan… I'm not sure he was thinking about anything other than Martel.

"One of the reasons that Mithos' experiment with the exsphere and the Great Seed worked was that we had one of the first models of exsphere. The elves developed them, and they were designed to give the wearer a long life. But instead, they made us live forever. Martel… reacted to it, but the elves helped us save her."

"So that's how you knew how to cure her."

"Yes. I healed her. Yuan was the one who actually noticed. He was hugging her, but her skin was hard. She told us what was happening, so we went to the elves. Yuan was mad enough to kill every elf in the village just for hurting Martel. They told us how to cure her, though, and we completed our journey to save the world. It sounds so petty, doesn't it? 'We're off to save the world. While we're at it, we might as well end a war that's been going on for a thousand years.' It sounds sort of stupid when you say it like that."

"No it doesn't!" Colette insisted, "World regeneration means the same thing, but we were the only ones who could actually do it! You didn't have a choice! If wars don't end, then no one can be at peace. Living is no fun when everyone's fighting!"

"Martel always said the same thing. Sometimes, Mithos and Yuan would fight. Then she'd go to the back of the line with me. I was quiet, so I seldom got into arguments."

"Like Regal!"

"…"

" Seriously! I always did that! He's really quiet, and he's always fair to everyone, so I'd ride next to him when Zelos and Sheena were shouting at each other on the rheiards."

"…"

"And Presea was nice, too. She didn't talk much, either. And Genis was always nice to talk to… But especially Lloyd. I guess I'm a lot like Martel!"

"…I guess."

"Hey, um, dad, do you have that rock you told me about?"

"Oh. Yeah. Here. Colette, I found something I thought you'd like."

Kratos held up a rock. It was purple and blue with sparkles, and it was vaguely heart-shaped.

Colette got the little pink-and-orange stripes around her head. "Ooh! It's sooooooooooooo pretty! Are you giving it to me?"

"Sure. I have no use for it."

"Oh! Presea has all these nice ribbons! Maybe I could wrap it in wire and thread it on one of those ribbons! Don't you think it would be pretty, Lloyd?"

"Sure. I'd do the wire part, though. I'm really good with metal."

"Yeah, you're wonderful Lloyd."

"Thanks."

"What do you think, Kratos?"

"…"

"I'll take that as a positive answer."

Like it? Explains a lot, doesn't it? I just beat Mithos the first time today, right after I got Colette and the rest of my group back. I killed Zelos though. I like Kratos a lot. I like Yuan the best though, because he knew that he had to give up Martel.