Dwarven Vow 37:
Is treasa dithis a' dol thar àn àtha na fad' o chèile.
Two should stay together when crossing a ford.
57-
Lloyd and Colette shared the story of their visit with Song, trying not to leave out any detail. Kratos listened, his frown growing deeper with each passing statement.
"That idiot. How long has he been wearing the Cruxis Crystal?"
Colette shook her head. "I don't know how long, but it's been a while. He said he no longer feels heat or cold or pain, he doesn't get hungry, and he hasn't slept in weeks."
"I see." Kratos let out a frustrated sigh. "It's been a long time. No wonder the crystallization is so severe."
"I don't get it." Lloyd shook his head. "Isn't that disease, like, super rare? Only Colette and Martel ever had it before."
Noise pressed next to Kratos' side, whining and flicking his tail back and forth as Kratos answered. "In cases like Colette's and Martel's, it was a problem with their Cruxis Crystal properly bonding with them. Unlike exspheres, Cruxis Crystals can't be passed to a new host after the previous host dies. The angel transformation bonds the Cruxis Crystal to its host through their mana. Because of a rare problem with their mana signature, Martel and Colette's bodies rejected their crystal as though it was already bonded with someone else. That rejection forces the crystal to override the body's defenses by changing the cells to match its own composition. Rejection of a new crystal is extremely rare. But rejection of an already-bonded crystal is almost guaranteed." He paused and cursed under his breath. "Song should've known that."
"Do you think the rune crest will help?" Lloyd asked.
Kratos shook his head. "I'm afraid not. A rune crest is meant to help facilitate bonding. But in Song's case, Yuan's Cruxis Crystal will never bond to him. If he doesn't remove it, he'll die."
"What'll happen if he takes it off?" Colette inched closer, clutching at her skirt. "Will he be able to recover?"
"Yes. Once the crystal is no longer forcing his cells to crystallize, they'll slowly return to their previous state."
Lloyd threw his hands up. "You're saying all he had to do was take it off? Why go through this trouble? Why hurt Colette?!"
Kratos' expression didn't change. "Clearly he didn't want to take it off."
"But-!" Lloyd began, and pounded his hand against the arm of the sofa. It spooked Noishe, and he inched closer to Kratos as Lloyd spoke up again. "...I know he's grieving, but that's not an excuse to hurt other people. Didn't he take some kind of doctor's oath to 'do no harm?"
Colette hugged her arms tightly around herself. "I don't think there's any logic in what he's doing. You heard what he said about Yuan and Adora. He's beyond logic right now."
"She's right." Kratos reached down and patted Noishe's head. "If we want to save his life, we'll have to do it by force. If we don't remove the Cruxis Crystal, he'll die. We may already be too late."
"Don't say that!" Colette gasped, though the force of her exclamation left her cringing and gripping at her waist again. Lloyd put his arms around her in an attempt to calm her.
"You shouldn't try to go anywhere yet. Get some rest while you wait for Zelos to get here-"
Kratos cut him off mid-sentence. "You invited Zelos to my house?"
"Colette is sick!"
It was an obvious answer, and Kratos couldn't argue with it. He sighed and stood up, motioning for Lloyd and Colette to stay where they were. "I'll get you some blankets. Settle in for the time being."
Within a few minutes, Colette had curled up on the sofa, pulling the blanket tightly around her as she tried to sleep. She tossed and turned, however, and it wasn't until Noishe padded back into the bedroom and returned to place one of the fox kits next to her that she finally managed to fall into a fitful sleep. Noishe returned for the other, and he curled up beside the sofa, resting his head next to Colette's.
Lloyd and Kratos watched from across the room, where Lloyd was seated in a chair trying not to drift off himself. Kratos noticed him nodding, and offered a quiet "you can sleep if you need to."
"N-no," Lloyd protested, shaking his head to rouse himself again. "I promised Colette she wouldn't be alone. I can't fall asleep on her."
"You're very diligent." Kratos couldn't help a smile, and Lloyd smiled back at him.
"It's the same as with Sheena. I'd been too focused on what I wanted to pay any attention to what Colette was feeling. We talked at dinner, and she told me she'd been worried about me moving back to Luin. Being together in Iselia while I was recovering made her realize how unsatisfied she was living so far apart when she was in Meltokio. There were times we didn't see each other for months, and it was awful. Letters and radio communications just aren't the same. She doesn't want to go back to that. And, to tell the truth, I don't either."
"Traveling to Luin from Iselia is much easier than from Meltokio. There's a ferry that runs daily, so overnight trips are easy-"
"Yeah, but what about Mizuho? I still don't know where they're going to move the village. Even if it's in Sylvarant, there's no way they're going to have public transportation. If I'm already dividing my time between Luin and Mizuho, then finding time to spend in Iselia is…" Lloyd's voice trailed off.
"What happened to 'figuring it out?" Kratos asked, and Lloyd flinched.
"I-I'm not giving up or anything! I'm just saying, there's a ton of stuff I haven't considered yet-"
Before he could finish, the front door slammed open without so much as a knock.
"COLETTE! ARE YOU ALRIGHT?!"
The sound of Zelos' voice sent Noishe scrambling to his feet, the fur on his back rising in alarm as he struck a defensive pose in front of Colette and the kits. After a moment, though, he realized it was just Zelos and calmed slightly.
Colette shifted and sat up on the sofa, rubbing her eyes as she looked up at Zelos. He had already knelt down beside her, his hands held over her shoulders as he examined her.
"I'm so sorry… my darling Colette… I wasn't there for you… do you feel sick? Are you hurt? Tell me what's wrong."
"I'm-" Colette began as if she was going to say 'alright,' but her eyes filled with tears and she collapsed into Zelos' arms. "I'm scared! It hurts!"
"Don't you worry," Zelos assured her. "We're gonna fix it, I promise."
Lloyd stood up, watching the scene and waiting for a moment to break in. "I'm sorry. This was all my fault. I should've realized what was going on."
Colette looked up from her hug long enough to protest. "No, Lloyd, you couldn't-"
"Hunny, I'm just glad you were there," Zelos began at the same time as Colette, and she went quiet as he continued. "Whatever Song did, he was determined to do. Colette might have gone alone, and there's no telling what would have happened. If I have to trust my darling's safety to somebody else, you're the one I'd pick. So, thanks."
"He's right," Colette added once Zelos finished. "Because of you, I wasn't alone. Thank you for that, Lloyd."
Lloyd approached the two and threw his arms around them both, pulling them in for a hug. He didn't expect Kratos of all people to chime in, but Kratos' voice spoke up again.
"It's easy to focus on what you weren't able to do. Sometimes you have to recognize what you were."
Colette nodded, her head resting against Lloyd's shoulder. "Dwarven Vow 67," she reminded him, "failing means you're playing."
"Colette, I love you!"
"Yeah, yeah, we all know that." Zelos was the first to break away from the hug, and he pulled on Lloyd's arm to encourage him to do the same. "But there's another hunny you love, and she'll have my head if you're late to the meeting this morning. Sheena said that if you don't show up on time, she'd blame me. So if you care about me-"
"Yeah, yeah. I'll be fine." Lloyd gave Zelos a shove and then stood up again, turning back to Kratos. "Will you guys be okay, tracking down Song without me?"
"Of course we will. Like you said, the old Triet base is a good place to start. If he isn't there, we can try the one near Flanoir."
Lloyd nodded. "That sounds good."
Meanwhile, Zelos cursed under his breath.
"God, I hope he's in Triet."
It was already light by the time that Lloyd's rheiard approached the Mizuho area. He wasn't worried about time just because of that- given the age of the council members, the meetings never started exactly at sunrise. But as he flew closer, he noticed some unfamiliar and unsettling patches along the mountainsides where the trees had been stripped away. Having grown up in the mountains near Iselia, he recognized the signature of a landslide when he saw it. But these were bigger than anything he'd seen during the snowmelt season back home. Rivers of reddish soil cascaded down the mountainsides, and Lloyd could feel a knot of nervousness in his stomach as he drew closer to the village. This looked like the handiwork of an earthquake, and if what Kratos had said was true, then…
"Sheena! Everyone!"
Lloyd's voice was lost to the wind as he increased the rheiard's speed, turning it sharply to descend toward the crowd that was gathered beneath the trees on a hilltop next to the village- or, what was left of it. Buildings were half-buried in the sandy soil, and a mass of loose soil on the ridge directly above was frozen- quite literally- into place.
Sheena ran to meet the rheiard as it came in for a landing. Lloyd noticed right away that she looked exhausted, and he slipped off the seat just in time to catch her as she stumbled against him.
"What's going on? What happened to the village?" Lloyd asked, catching the frightened looks from the rest of the crowd around them.
"...earthquake," Sheena breathed. "Early this morning. After you spoke to Zelos on the radio, he dropped the others back at Sybak and then brought me here. I tried to get some sleep before the meeting, but…"
Igaguri stepped in, helping support Sheena as well. "We were lucky. There was a smaller foreshock that brought everyone out of their houses. Things were beginning to sink and we were trying to recover as much as we could from inside, thinking that was it. But then the main quake struck, and the mountainside above began to slip."
"I summoned Celsius to freeze the landslide," Sheena explained with a nod, "and tried to maintain her power as long as possible so that we could get everyone to higher ground. But maintaining a spirit's power is…"
Her voice trailed off as a series of loud cracks sounded from the nearby hillside. A slurry of half-frozen mud began to fall further down the slope, and there were some gasps from the crowd. Lloyd looked up to Igaguri. "Is everyone safe?"
"There are still a few unaccounted for. Orochi returned to find them, but insisted we not send any more rescuers in case the ice fails while he is still in its path."
Sheena groaned. "If I could just summon Celsius a second time, I could buy us more time-"
"No way!" Lloyd interrupted, propping her up against the side of the rheiard. "You're already past your limit. I'll go help."
"You can't-"
Lloyd was already looking to Igaguri for instruction before she could finish her protest. "Who's left unaccounted for? Do you think they're injured? Orochi might need help getting them up here."
Tiga had joined in, hearing Lloyd's offer, and gave him the names of those they still hadn't found. There were a pair of elderly residents, as well as little Kumiko, who had run back into her house for a forgotten toy before part of it had collapsed into the ground. Kumiko's mother was still yelling, and a group of five others was holding onto her and assuring her that Orochi was going to find her daughter. Lloyd felt a pang of sympathy in his chest- and a soft pain in his head- as he watched.
"Alright, I'm going. The sooner we get everyone out, the better. Keep Sheena from doing anything stupid, okay?"
He could hear her call "that should be my line-!" but was already skidding down the mountainside toward the village. Lloyd jumped over loose tree stumps and dodged branches, listening to the menacing cracking noise coming from the still-frozen landslide as he did so. His head was fuzzy from pain and lack of sleep, but he knew if he didn't make it back in time, Sheena would try to summon Celsius again out of desperation. Doing so when she'd already depleted so much of her mana could kill her.
He had to succeed.
As Lloyd started into the village, careful to test the ground in front of him before he put his weight on it, he listened intently for the sound of voices. There was a child crying, that he could hear clearly, and a man's voice calling out to her. Locating the source of the voices wasn't the problem, though, it was actually getting to their location. By the time that Lloyd made it to the other side of one of the sinking foundations, he found Orochi and the elderly couple steadying themselves against the well.
Kumiko, however, was not with them.
She was a short distance away, in the middle of a large patch of watery sand, sunk up to her knees. Orochi had thrown her the rope from the well, but the more she tried to pull herself out, the more she seemed to be sinking. Her eyes were raw with tears, and her voice was hoarse from screaming. It was no use. Lloyd wracked his brain, trying to remember what his dad had taught him about quicksand. The secret was in one of the Dwarven Vows, he'd said. Which one was it? Eighty, right? Quickness and neatness don't go together...
"Kumiko! Don't struggle!" Lloyd called out. "The faster you move, the more you'll sink! Lie on your back slowly and try to float, like you're swimming in the river."
"But if I do that-! But if I do that, I'll-!"
"You'll float, I promise. I know it sounds crazy, but you can trust me. Dwarven Vow thirty-three: often wise counsel comes from a fool's head."
That got a giggle out of Kumiko despite her fears. She followed Lloyd's instructions, lying back and allowing herself to float on the surface of the quicksand. It loosened the sand's grip on her, and she was able to pull along the rope until she reached Orochi, who hoisted her into his arms. Lloyd smiled, sighing in relief as Orochi nodded to him.
Now they just had to make it out before Celsius' ice failed.
Lloyd pulled the old man's arm over his shoulder and looked back to Orochi to make sure that he had Kumiko and the old woman supported. "I'll lead the way," he instructed, and Orochi nodded.
"I'll follow you, then."
Going up the mountain was harder than going down it, but it felt less dangerous. Lloyd remembered where all the obstacles were and used what plants he could find as anchors against the damp and unstable ground. Even through the ache in his head, he could hear the last of the ice crack and give way, crashing down on the village below them with a sickening roar. The group at the top of the mountain began to panic, having seen the last of the landslide topple down without knowing what was going on in the village.
"We're here!" Lloyd yelled up, and hoisted the man he was helping up the hillside into the arms of another villager. Orochi passed up Kumiko, and Lloyd handed her over to her crying mother while Orochi tugged the last woman to the hilltop with him. There was a flurry of praise and questions from the crowd, but Sheena pushed her way through to get to Lloyd first.
"What the hell were you thinking?! That was so stupid-!" She clung to the front of his shirt with tears in her eyes. "You could've gotten killed!"
Lloyd motioned to the group that he'd escorted up. "So could Kumiko... and Genji and Momoka... and Orochi too. I couldn't just leave them."
Sheena's expression softened. "Dwarven Vow two, huh?"
"That's right. Never abandon someone in nee-"
Before he could finish, he stumbled forward and collapsed into Sheena's arms.
"Lloyd? Lloyd?! LLOYD!"