-The following is non-sequitur opening gag that has no relation to the plot. I will likely do more of these in the future when I can't think of witty comments to prefix the chapters with.-
"Um, Master?" said Lorelei as she floated up to Varrant. She was carrying a small, square box wrapped in shiny red paper, with a bright green bow on top.
Varrant's eyes immediately darted to this strange object. "What you got there, Lorelei?"
Lorelei fidgeted a little, attempting to articulate what to say to the Craftknight. "Well, you know... Christmas is coming up and all... I felt like I should get you something."
"This is for me? Sweet! Gimme!" Varrant proclaimed, quickly snatching the present from the valkyrie's hands. She folded her arms in reply, and scowled at him as he tore away the wrapping paper.
"You know, a thank-you would be nice..."
But Varrant ignored her, focusing his attention on ripping the paper to shreds. Bits of shiny red fell to the ground all around his feet, leaving behind a rather ordinary brown box. He pulled the lid off and examined the contents, smirking at what laid within.
"Oh, awesome! It's a second piece of dark matter! I... Wait," the Craftknight cut himself off to examine the little black stone more closely. "Lorelei, isn't this the exact same piece we got from the factory?"
Lorelei seemed to be incapable of looking him in the eye. "Um, well, by my definition, no. But by another, I guess a more accurate definition... Yeah. Yeah, you could say it's the same one."
"Wow, I don't know if I should feel offended that you thought I was stupid enough to ensure you could get away with this, or disgusted at how I don't have anything cooler for you to steal and then give back to me."
"Still waiting on that thank-you, Varrant."
Chapter 3 - The Big Hit
As Varrant stood outside the inn the next day, one thought hovered in his head: a curse upon whoever had allowed the world to function this early in the morning. The sun was barely even up and the air was still thick with night's chill. The cold didn't bother him - his overcoat, threadbare as it was, was still rather warm - but it was the principle of the thing. This was just too early for his sleep-until-the-afternoon mentality to handle. It was discrimination, really.
The Abomination had quite literally dragged Varrant out of bed that morning and forced him out to the front, where he was to wait until the enigmatic Daughter of the Abomination made her appearance. Lorelei was somehow managing to keep herself afloat, albiet struggling in vain against the sandman's grip. Like Varrant, she wasn't accustomed to this foreign time of day, that the souls of the damned speak of as "morning".
"Morning". The very word made him feel exhausted.
"Um, excuse me?"
The soft voice from behind him managed to break Varrant out of his musings regarding the horrors of the beginning of the day. "Are you Varrant and Lorelei?"
The Daughter of the Abomination had just stepped out of the inn, and was now standing behind them! Varrant, filled with a kind of morbid curiosity as to how hideous the daughter was in relation to the father, spun around as quickly as he was able. Upon laying sight on her, the Craftknight was briefly but immediately baffled at her appearance. He surmised that she was lucky enough to get her mother's genes.
The girl was not revoltingly ugly; she was quite pretty, actually. She was a bit shorter than Varrant and was wrapped up tightly in a dark purple cloak with several large buttons on the front. Her hair was blond and long, though not to the extent of, say, Lorelei's. She had a very wide-brimmed hat with a red feather in it, and a rather awkward look was on her face, probably because she was not accustomed to meeting new people.
"Yeah, that's us," said Varrant, rather relieved that he would not be in the company of some hulking monstrosity on his journey. "You're the Summoner?"
The Daughter of the Abomination Who Thankfully Looked Nothing Like Him nodded in reply, took off her hat, and did a flashy sort of bow. "Cerize Skyfeld, summoner-in-training, at your service!" she proclaimed, straightening her hat again. "Well, let's get going, huh? No time like the present, and all that stuff..."
Varrant groaned in reply. "Oh, man, we have to walk all the way there? We don't even get transportation or anything?"
"Well, we can't really afford transportation," said Cerize, stepping off the porch. "Sending me to the academy pretty much took off all our extra funds. Nobody comes to inns this out of the way, you see."
Lorelei groaned, getting closer to the ground with every passing second. "Ugh, I can't keep this up," she said. "Varrant, let me ride on your back or something, so I can get some sleep."
"What? No way! I can't walk all that distance carrying you--" but his protests were largely ignored by the valkyrie, who did not even wait for him to finish the sentence before putting her arms around his neck and falling asleep on his back. Not caring about the fact that she was not aware of him doing so, Varrant went ahead with his decision to give her a dirty look.
Having accomplished this, he shifted so that it was possible for him to both carry Lorelei and keep his sword easily accessible at the same time. "Okay," he said. "We ready to go?"
He was about to step forwards down the path, but stopped when he noticed the blue glow emanating from his coat pocket.
It was difficult arranging it so that he could reach into his pocket and keep Lorelei from hitting the ground, but Varrant somehow accomplished to produce the dark matter from within the folds of his coat. It had shifted from its normal, shining black color in favor of a vibrant sky blue glow.
"Whoa, weird," said a mystified Varrant, staring into it in the hopes of deciphering what had caused the occurrence.
"What's that you've got there?" Cerize asked, leaning in close to inspect the Craftknight's crystal.
"It's called dark matter," said Varrant. "Come on, I'll tell you about it as we go."
BREAK
Thankfully, the sun eventually rose high into the air to shine brightly through the trees that lined the path, thus signifying morning's fading and afternoon's appearance - something the Craftknight welcomed. It was very quiet here in the forest, the only sounds being the footsteps of the party, and Varrant's old antique jewelry clattering around as he walked. Lorelei snoozed happily away on her master's back, it still being a few hours before the usual time she awoke.
"Okay, I get it, I think," said Cerize. "So you need four pieces of dark matter in order to forge any weapons out of it."
Varrant nodded. "Yeah. But it's scattered around the world in all sorts of places, and we don't have any clue where to look next. This piece here was in an old factory near your inn."
"So, why was it glowing like that?" the Summoner asked. The little shard had been pulsing out its blue glow ever since they had left the inn, and showed no intention of stopping any time soon. Varrant had stuck it safely in his coat pocket, but its light was still glowing brightly through the cloth.
"Now, that I can't answer," he said.
"Maybe it means another piece is close by? It could--wait a second."
Cerize stopped where she was, and Varrant walked past her for a bit before realizing that she had ceased her progress along the path. He turned around. "What's up, Cerize?"
The Summoner's eyes darted back and forth across the trail. "Varrant, I think someone's watching us."
"Watching us? What makes you think that?"
"I just thought I heard something coming from the trees a minute ago."
"I didn't hear any--"
Varrant was interrupted by the sudden impact of something hard and flat colliding with his ribs. He went hurtling past Cerize and into a rather inconveniently placed tree, feeling something - either his bones or the wood, he wasn't quite sure - crack in response. Lorelei had gone flying off his back from the hit, and so was unable to protect her master from the impact. She hit the dirt and lay still.
Varrant staggered upwards, propping himself up with his sword. His vision was blurry and seemed to be fond of swaying around, but he was still capable of spotting the huge creature that had jumped out of the forest at them.
It was almost human-shaped, except for the rather notable fact that it was nine feet tall and assembled entirely out of stone. Its arms were very nearly as long as the rest of its body, in stark contrast to its extremely stubby, short legs. The creature's body was a big hourglass-shaped piece of rock with a stoic face carved into its center. Its eyes were glowing red and the creature as a whole seemed to be quite old - moss was growing all over its rocky body.
As it stepped forward, Varrant's eyes shifted from the monster to the person sitting atop it: a girl, no older than twelve, rode upon the creature's head. She looked more suited to a ballroom than a forest path in the middle of nowhere, Varrant thought as he observed her fancy, perfectly clean white dress that probably cost at least a million boam.
"Who're you?" demanded Cerize, as one usually does when confronted with this scenario.
"Oops," the girl in the white dress said, blushing a little. "I'm sorry, I was hoping that would have knocked your friend out, but it seems like he's still awake."
"Gonna take more than one smack to keep me down!" said Varrant, taking a stance with his sword. "Come on, Lorelei, let's--"
Varrant was cut off again, but he intentionally did so himself when his vision traveled to his valkyrie cohort. Lorelei appeared completely undisturbed - to the point that she was still in dreamland, as though nothing had transpired just now. She must really be tired, he thought. Like, to the point of hibernation. Lorelei rolled over in her sleep, murmuring, "Chocolate grapes? You know I'll eat them..."
Varrant was, again, unsure of who to place blame on. He decided it was the Abomination's fault, because he did not much care for the man.
"Let me introduce myself," said the girl in the white dress, finally deciding to answer Cerize's question. "I'm Cass, a Craftknight. This is my golem, Sundance. And it would really help us if you would please hand over your dark matter."