Chapter 3:Mithos

Okay, I have to decide on a new name by the end of this chapter because I want to do Martel and I don't want anyone to be unable to find this. This is Mithos' history though, including Spiritua, Tabatha, Colette, Lloyd, Zelos, and his group. There will also be a description of how I think Pact-making with Summon Spirits feels. And how Mithos managed to get those funky exspheres. And maybe even how babies are born with rocks in their hands sometimes. Seriously, who expects their son/daughter to be the Chosen of Mana? I'd get pretty weirded out if I had a baby with a rock in her hand. It's like, "I never ate any rocks! How the $ did this happen!" I was talking about that with my friend, who just started the game: what the heck is up with that?

Anyway… Now chanelling Mithos' exsphere…

A blonde boy with rainbow wings hung in the air next to a giant, glowing, blue flower. He was thinking of the woman contained in the flower, which was really a seed masquerading as a flower. But then, life was pretense, wasn't it?

It hadn't begun like this. He used to be a child in Exire, the city of half-elves, who lived with his human mother and his sister, Martel. She had fallen in love with a store clerk named Yuan. Yuan was okay. He was just barely taller than Martel, and he had blue hair, which he kept in a horsetail with bangs. He was a year older than her, but she was twenty-four, so what did it matter?

What did matter was that there had been a war going on between the continents of Sylvarant and Tethe'alla for nearly a thousand years. Exire, the city in the sky, which belonged to neither continent and wanted no part in the war, was bombed one day. No one could predict it beyond seeing the warships. It had been safe for a thousand years, so there should have been no danger… right?

Eventually, they had seen the threat and evacuated as many people as they could. Yuan, Martel, and Mithos had gotten out, but Mithos and Martel's mother hadn't. In the camp that the Exirians had set up, Martel and Mithos stayed in Yuan's tent. Yuan taught Martel healing arts while they lived together. Mithos learned offensive magic from books. He taught Martel some, but she was more interested in the weak art of healing.

One day, Martel decided that she wanted to stop the war. Yuan wasn't sure, but Mithos thought it would be really fun to end it, because then people could be nice to each other again. Not wanting to leave Martel, Yuan came with them. Before they left, they bought weapons in the small town near their camp. Martel chose a mage's staff that could also be strung and used as a longbow, Yuan a strange, axelike thing called a Swallow, and Mithos two finely crafted swords. They knew that there were better weapons, but these were the best they could afford at the time.

Martel decided that, to become a force that armies (she always called them monsters) would have to pay attention to, they should form pacts with the eight Summon Spirits. The trio decided that, since Mithos used the most offensive magical energy, he should be the one to make the pacts. So, they went to the Seal of Water, where Mithos defeated Undine. He then made the pact and Martel healed him. He was her little brother, after all. Mithos Yggdrasil. He had always found it funny that the initials of both of their names spelled "MY," especially with Martel being so selfless.

After the Seal of Water, they went to the Seal of Wind. To get there, they had to go through Hakonesia Battleground. There had been a big, green-and-white bird who flew up to them, calling. Martel trusted animals, sometimes too much, so they followed it and found a man, nearly dead, who had been left behind after the battle.

Martel and Yuan healed the man, who said his name was Kratos. His protozoan, Noishe, was in the Aeros form.

Mithos and Yuan had doubts about Kratos for a long time, but Martel liked him, so he stayed in their party.

After making a pact with Sylph, Mithos collapsed from the amount of mana he had just received. Kratos, having been on long military campaigns before, pitched their tents more quickly than the others could and helped to treat Mithos. He knew everything about forests and plants than any of the others, and he knew all sorts of military tricks.

They were all fine until they went to Tethe'alla. Martel stopped eating, saying she wasn't hungry, then she stopped being able to sleep. He slept like a log, but Kratos and Yuan got mad at him, saying that Martel was so upset with him that she couldn't sleep. When Mithos asked her, she just smiled and said that it wasn't that bad, but her smile seemed sort of… forced, and her fighting and magic only got worse. It didn't help that she had Chronic Angelus Toxicosis Syndrome, which they (meaning Yuan) managed to heal with the Unicorn Horn that Martel had insisted that they should get back in Sylvarant.

Later, she didn't seem to get hurt as much. It was good that she was getting better at defense. She always said that men were babies, that they'd complain over a scratch, but he always trusted her to predict when people were going to be hurt severely and time her healing to when it would really be effective, and she always healed him after he fought the Summon Spirits.

After he defeated the Summon Spirit of Lightning, the last pact he had to make, she had stopped speaking. No matter what he did, she just wouldn't talk to him. Yuan and Kratos blamed him for that, but what had he done? He had come close to saving the world, that was what he had done. Finally, one day as they were going to Heimdall, Martel ran to catch up to him and told him that, "W-E-T-H-I-N-K-T-H-A-T-I-T-W-O-U-L-D-B-E-B-E-T-T-E-R-I-F-K-R-A-T-O-S-M-A-D-E-T-H-E-P-A-C-T-W-I-T-H-O-R-I-G-I-N-I-N-S-T-E-A-D-O-F-Y-O-U-H-E-C-A-N-I-N-J-E-C-T-A-I-O-N-I-S-I-N-T-O-H-I-S-B-L-O-O-D-A-N-D-I-T-W-I-L-L-A-L-L-W-O-R-K-O-U-T-G-R-E-A-T-W-E-N-E-E-D-H-I-M-T-O-B-E-L-I-N-K-E-D-T-O-T-H-E-S-E-A-L-I-T-W-I-L-L-S-T-I-L-L-B-E-Y-O-U-R-P-A-C-T-B-U-T-K-R-A-T-O-S-W-I-L-L-H-O-L-D-A-L-L-O-F-T-H-E-M-A-N-A-F-R-O-M-O-R-I-G-I-N-Y-O-U-R-E-A-G-R-E-A-T-L-I-T-T-L-E-B-R-O-T-H-E-R-Y-O-U-R-E-A-L-L-Y-A-R-E-B-U-T-I-M-N-O-T-S-U-R-E-H-O-W-M-U-C-H-M-O-R-E-M-A-N-A-Y-O-U-C-A-N-H-O-L-D"

Mithos had become good at deciphering long sentences, and he knew exactly what she was saying. He got mad and threw a fit. It seemed so infantile now, and yet… if he had held Origin's mana, they wouldn't have killed him. Mithos contemplated what it felt like, to die, and decided that he liked life better that the… existence that he was living in. Why was it, that he could take out any being he so chose, but he couldn't destroy his own exsphere?

After that was over, he started going over his story again. After his little fit, they had gone through the Elven forest and found Origin. They knew that, to obtain total power, they would need Maxwell, but they would fight Origin for now.

In the forest, they found a little lemur/chinchilla thing. Mithos threw fireballs at it and Martel hit him on the head with her staff. They followed the lemur, though, and eventually it led them to Origin. It didn't seem to be hurt by the fire. Mithos distinctly remembered that it had bitten him after he fought Origin.

The interesting thing was that Kratos was more affected than Mithos by the mana from the Summon Spirit. He said he felt sort of dizzy and faint after taking Origin's mana. …but that could also have been because he had just seen a pretty Elven girl. He was more controlled than some (evil) people, though, because… well, he didn't help to create any more half-elves in his lifetime. The only son he ever had in his entire life was entirely human. Actually, Anna might have been a tiny bit elven, but Lloyd didn't have any signifigant amount of Elvish blood in his veins.

After defeating Maxwell, who remained in the ruins of Exire, the four went to Meltokyo to speak to the king. He payed his way, not with bribes, but with threats and his want for peace.

After speaking to the King of Tethe'alla, they went back to Sylvarant and spoke to the King in Palmacosta. He secretly used Origin's swords to split the two worlds and create the Holy Ground of Kharlan, then used complex magic to combine the swords into one, splitting the world into two. This created a single place for the two kings to converge and make peace.

The day after, they signed the peace treaties, and the day after that, as they walked out of the Tower of Salvation on the Tethe'alla side near Ozette, as Mithos and Yuan were arguing about a cookie and Martel was walking behind them with Kratos, they heard someone scream, "Curse the man who split the word in two!" (yeah they would've used worse language, but this is K+) and stabbed Martel. Mithos ran towards the man, but Yuan grabbed him and said,

"It's no use. You shouldn't kill a person for killing a person. If people did that, then we'd all be dead. Kratos, c'mere and help me!"

Kratos and Yuan did what they could, but they still couldn't save Martel. All they could do was make it less painful for her. He still remembered her last words: "I love you, Mithos. Don't be afraid to make mistakes. I always hoped… I always wanted to see a world without discrimination. Yuan, I hate to leave you. Don't blame yourself for my death. And Kratos, Thank you for… being… there…"

They were the first words she had said to him in a long time, but not the last words she had ever said to him. Over four thousand years, though, she had gone insane, and told him that discrimination was okay. Or maybe that horrible Chosen, Colette, was responsible. Perhaps she was influencing Martel's thoughts.

Martel had always had a soft voice, and when she died, it was only a whisper. After she died, Mithos had cried (Yuan and Kratos both called it hysterics) and Yuan got really quiet. He didn't cry, he didn't sob, he just stared into space. The look in his eyes… Kratos didn't cry. He had known people before, in the army, and they had died. Martel wasn't any different to him. He pitched their tents, started the campfire, and started cooking. When he was done, he tried to get both of them to eat. He said he understood, that he had cried the first time one of his friends had died, but life still went on.

That night, Mithos overheard Kratos yelling at Yuan. He couldn't hear the whole thing, but he heard the word "suicide" a couple of times. He also heard "stupid", "idiotic", "Martel," and "throwing your life away." He could guess what Yuan had tried to do. Kratos was smart to sleep in the same tent as Yuan: Kratos didn't sleep very heavily.

In the morning, Yuan had started to cry. He contained it, but… Martel and he were planning to be married soon. He couldn't give her up completely, not even over four thousand years. He got better about lying about his feelings for her, that was all. He would love her forever.

Mithos had spent the next few weeks completely sullen. Martel, his sister, his only living relative, who had saved him countless times and loved him always, who had loved everyone, even those who despised her for her blood… She was all he had had. Yuan and Kratos were nice, but it just wasn't the same. That was when Mithos came up with the idea of the Chosens.

Two days after Martel's body had died (they had saved her exsphere) Mithos started thinking of how he could make her live on. With complex magic, it could work…

They killed the dragon in the Earth temple a few times, then went to a seller of artifacts and oddities who just happened to have a seed from the Great Kharlan Tree. They payed for it with the money from the dragon, and Mithos explained his plan to the other two.

Yuan and Kratos said that he should destroy the exsphere, but they didn't understand the way that he did.

He got his way, eventually, and told the people of both worlds about the Chosens and the Mana Lineage. He told them about the Seals, where the Angels would speak to the Chosens, and the Tower of Salvation, where the Chosen could only go after unlocking all of the Seals.

Then he called the Asteroid, Derris-Kharlan, and Gnome helped him to build the Tower of Salvation. He built it on the Holy Ground of Kharlan, the place where the two worlds met, and shere they linked. He also linked the worlds with the Summon Spirits, returning each to its rightful place on either Sylvarant or Tethe'alla.

He cried again. He had split the world into two, linked them together, and stopped a thousand-year-old war while he was at it, but he was still only fourteen and his sister had been killed. To add to all of that, his voice would never get deeper. Sure, he had cool rainbow wings, but he would sound like a wimpy little kid for all of eternity.

While he was crying, he heard Kratos open the door a little, then shut it quickly and walk away. He didn't know how he knew it was Kratos, he just did. Maybe it was just that Yuan hadn't come out of his room for three days.

A minute later, Noishe bounded into the lonely room. Mithos yelled at him and pushed him out of his room. He only wanted to be alone. He knew that Kratos was trying to cheer him up, but he just wasn't ready to be cheered up yet. He just needed to be alone.

Now, after they killed him, they would kill Martel, too. What did it matter? He could hear them coming, exploring all the rooms of his castle. Now they were fighting his dragon, the Gatekeeper. They were discussing strategy and doing healing spells. Now they were talking about how important this battle was. Then they would kill him again. Of course they would. They were stronger than him. Then they would kill Martel, too, and destroy his Age of Lifeless Beings. He'd better take a pineapple gel.

Mithos' story ends sadly. I can imagine Yuan committing suicide after Martel's death. I mean, if he would search all over both worlds just to find a ring she gave him four thousand years ago, what would be the point in living when she had just been murdered in the place of her brother?

I think this was suitably Mithos-ish. I mean, not entirely, but it was kind of almost close. And he never admitted to making any mistakes, just like Grasshopper Man said. Did you ever notice that Kratos (the official pictures) looks kind of like a big, purple grasshopper from behind? He does. Do an image search. The ones that look more like anime and less like chibi and show him from the front, side, and back are the official ones.

The next one should be interesting. I mean, if you're already dead, then unless you're Mithos (because that's his last form) you can't look back on dying. And he didn't. It just mentioned that Lloyd's party had killed him. You know, Lloyd called a lot of people bastards, but did anyone ever stop to consider that he, Genis, Raine, and Colette are? Genis and Raine didn't have a dad for long, Lloyd didn't have a mom after he was three, I'm pretty sure Colette's mom died during birthing… I mean, imaging having a kid with a rock in her hand. That has to be hard. So, the four Sylvarant people are all, technically, bastards. And you have to admit, they rock. Except for Lloyd. He's just dumb. I think Lloyd just has issues with his past.

And the story after I add Martel's bit will be called… Sacrifice for the World.