Hey, people. Well, person, since only ONE PERSON bothered to review my last chapter! -glares-

Btw, two questions for you, Phoenixfire. One, in Nihal (i think that's it) Desert, why does Kalas keep fainting and two, do I need to grab a few Pristine Waters or something?

Dis: The author is broke, and thus it is time for the Laywers of Author Sueing to once again leave her alone. The chase is over.


The shirt was blue and on the left side of the chest, there was a white ink bottle and paper, the symbol for the store she worked at.

She ran out the door.

As she ran, she thought back to her relationship with Robert. She was about ready to slap herself when she saw all sorts of little clues that she never noticed before, but she wasn't given the time to really think about it because the store she worked at was rapidly approaching.

Paper and Ink was a rather small bookstore, but they made decent profit. It wasn't a hole-in-the-wall, or tucked away in some distant corner, but it was small compared to the huge bookstores that major cities have. The important thing was that they sold most of the major authors.

Arietta ran in, past one of the counter-girls, to the back, where Mark was. Mark was basically her supervisor. Arietta peeked in, not really wanting to deal with him right now. Seeing no one, she cautiously tiptoed into the room.

"You're late."

The voice made her jump. Whirling around, she unconsciously started forming one of her spells. She let the half-spell dissipate when she saw it was only Mark.

"Only by a minute! Now, just give me my job and leave me in peace. I had the crappiest day in history and I don't want to deal with anyone other than a customer," Arietta snapped. At the mention of her 'bad day', her chest tightened painfully. Mark gave her a half-hearted glare, but said, "Fine. Today all you have to do is wander around and help people if they need it." Arietta nodded and left the back room. She slid her 'hi-I'm-more-than-happy-to-help-you' smile on and started her job.

-------

Two days previous

"Light Flare!" a female's voice yelled over the fray. A brilliant flash of light-based magic hit four of the monsters and they died.

"Nice shot, Xelha!" a boy yelled. He looked to be at least nineteen or twenty, with blue hair and blue eyes. He was wearing brown pants and some sort of shirt covered by a ragged brown cloak. In his hands were a sword and dagger. He took a swing at another monster. "Damn it! No matter how many we kill, they just keep coming!" he growled. As soon as he said it, all of the monsters that were previously attacking vanished.

On the ground in front of them was an envelope. In thin, spidery writing on the front, was a name.

Kalas

Said person put away his weapons and picked up the envelope carefully. Seeing that it wasn't going to explode, he opened it. Inside was a note in the same spidery handwriting.

Destruction is destroyed, and now it's time for Chaos and Discord to reign supreme. What better place to rule from than the City of Gold? The Ocean shall vanish once again, the Land shall take flight, and so, too, shall its inhabitants, as anarchy takes form.

Eris

Kalas looked at Xelha.

"I think we need to gather the group again, Kalas," Xelha said quietly. Kalas nodded.

A day later, the six of them plus Ayme and Folon stood in the Duke's Mansion in Mira.

"What do you think it means?" Kalas asked. The note lay open on the tablebetween them.

"Well, 'Destruction' obviously means Malpercio, but I don't know about the 'Chaos and Discord' bit." Gibari said as he scratched his head.

"The City of Gold is Mintaka." Ayme said without missing a beat.

"'The Ocean shall vanish once again, the Land shall take flight, and so, too, shall its inhabitants, as anarchy takes form.'" Lyude read. "Does that mean that the Islands will be in the Sky again?"

"And if the Islands be in the Sky again…" Mizuti trailed off.

"The people will have Wings of Heart again…" Kalas finished for her.

"It says 'as anarchy takes form'… does that mean that everything will fall into chaos?" Savyna finally spoke up.

"Oh! The Great Mizuti be reminded of something!" Mizuti exclaimed. "The Great Kamroh told Mizuti that he found an interdimensional crack! He told Mizuti that the crack be leading to another dimension. The crack be opening and closing, and Spirits be coming through. If someone goes through while it be open…"

"We could get the Spirit back!" Xelha exclaimed.

So it was decided that Ayme and Folon would go through, since Mizuti said that the crack wouldn't let anyone who ever had Wings go though. After being allowed to prepare and rest for the night, Mizuti showed them where the interdimensional crack was. It was in the heart of Nekton. After a moment's hesitation, the two soldiers stepped through.

-------

Arietta was at the counter. Her shift was over, so all she wanted to do was get a new book and drown herself in whatever fantasy world it had. Anything to get her mind off of her ex-boyfriend. However, fate at another thing planned. She was browsing the shelves for a book, when she came across an all-too-familiar tome. The leather-bound hardcover jumped at her at once, and she picked it off the shelf. Looking at the first page, she saw the sentence that, by now, she knew by heart; the sentence that had started her adventure as a Guardian Spirit.

"In this world, there are things that people mustn't touch…" she recited.

"God, why does Mark always have to give me the big sorting jobs?" she grumbled. There were five other boxes besides the one she was in front of. Getting up, she tried to stretch her legs, but accidentally knocked over one of the other boxes. Swearing violently under her breath, she was about to pick up the fallen books and put them back in the box when one book caught her eye.

It was a thick leather-bound volume, with a gold trim. On the front was a crest of some sort; a heart with a pair of raven wings and crossed swords. She flipped to the first page. There was only one line.

"In this world, there are things that people mustn't touch…" she read aloud. She made a small sound of disagreement. "Who cares?" She put it and the other spilled books back into the box and went back to her job.

It had taken her hours, but she eventually had all the books sorted and shelved. That's when it happened. At first, she only felt light-headed. Then the feeling escalated into a full-blown migraine. Arietta hissed in pain and suddenly collapsed as the world around her went black.

Arietta grinned slightly at the memory. At the time, the book had been empty except for that one line. Now, as she flipped through it again, she saw that it had words in it, as well as a title.

"Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean..." she murmured. She snapped it shut and told the third-shift girl, Anne-Marie, that she wanted the book.

"Odd," Anne-Marie said as she rung up the purchase, "I don't remember this book coming in…"

"You also don't have sorting duty," Arietta retorted, grinning. Anne-Marie grinned back.

"Yeah. Well, have a good weekend. I think tomorrow's your day off?"

"Yep. Thank th-" she cut herself off, about to say 'the Whale' and changed it at the last second, "God for that." Anne-Marie gave her a strange look but didn't say anything. Arietta waved at her and left.

The sun was setting, and the streets were steadily getting darker. Arietta had taken out her new book and began to read. That's probably why she didn't notice the person in front of her until they ran into each other.

"Oh my god, I'm so sor-" Arietta started, and then she saw that it was Melissa, "Okay, no I'm not." With that, Arietta picked up her book from the ground, and ran home, her heart pounding. She could feel her magic surging in response to her emotions, and forced herself to calm down. With her mother working late, her brother gone for two weeks, and her father on a job that would take him all week, Arietta was able to go directly to bed without being questioned.

-------

The next morning, Arietta woke up with the sun, due to another nightmare. Unable to sleep any more, she got dressed and headed out for the day, leaving a note for her mother on the fridge. She wandered around Rose Plaza for a while, before growling in frustration and looking at the clock on her cell phone. Seven-thirty-three. Paper and Ink opened at eight.

Stamping her foot, Arietta gritted her teeth to stop from casting a spell in her frustration.

"Hey, you."

Arietta jumped and spun around so fast she had to wait for her hair to settle to aim her half-formed Shining Seraph. The male voice that said that was so very familiar, and she never thought she'd hear it or any of the others again.

About ten feet in front of her was a man and a woman. The man had very pale skin, borderline translucent, with dark eyes and blue and orange hair with the orange so dark that it passed for brown. He was wearing jeans and a leather jacket, but even with this appearance, he was unmistakable. He had a cocky smirk on his face, and he swayed back and forth slightly, in and out of a light fighting stance.

The woman had dark skin and light eyes, the opposite of her partner. Her hair, though, was a shocking shade of violet, and it earned her odd looks from the early-morning passersby. She was wearing jeans and a denim jacket, and she bounced a little on the balls of her feet, as if ready to move at a moment's notice. She also had a cocky grin, but not as intense as her male counterpart. She, too, was unmistakable, despite her appearance.

Ayme and Folon. Two people that Arietta thought she would never see again. In a strange way, she was glad to see them, but she was mostly on-guard, since they had only really helped once.

"Whoa, whoa!" Ayme yelled, eyes glued to the spell. Folon also kept his eyes trained on the gathered power. "We were sent to find someone, and we wanted to know if you knew her!"

"Yeah, some chick with a weird name!" Folon added. "Ari-something!"

Arietta glanced around. Seeing no one, she motioned for them to go into the alley behind Paper and Ink. They complied, and they waited for her to join them before they spoke again.

"We were sent by a friend of ours," Ayme started, placing an odd emphasis on the word 'friend'. "He told us to find his old partner; I think her name was Ariella? Aritta? Something like that."

"Arietta?" Arietta supplied. Folon nodded.

"That's it," he said, and Ayme agreed.

"And since you're so clearly using magic," Ayme gestured to the magic gathered in Arietta's hands, "I'm assuming you're her."

Arietta nodded cautiously.

"We can't explain why, since we really don't know ourselves, but they want you back. Folon," Ayme looked at the other soldier, "when should a crack open next?"

Ignoring Arietta's confused look, Folon reached into his pocket and took out an odd-looking device.

"Right…about…now," Folon said. As if on cue, the wind picked up drastically, making Arietta wonder if someone had a Wind Blow Magnus activated. At the end of the alley, time and space itself seemed to open.

"Our one-way ticket back home!" Folon yelled over the wind. With that, he ran headlong into the crack. Ayme followed. Arietta liked at the crack. Even as she watched, it was slowly shrinking; reality knitting itself back together. Not wasting any time on second thoughts, she jumped through.

She landed in a forest clearing. Ayme and Folon were back to their original appearances. Arietta got off the ground where she landed. Looking around, she almost started crying at the place she would know in her sleep. Nekton, the Forest of Spirits.


There. I'm trying to get all (or most) of my ideas out now, so I'm sorry if this seemed rushed. I'm also sick right now, so that may have had something to do with it.

So now go REVIEW!