Hello everyone, I don't know what you think about the story so far, but please let me know by leaving a comment. Well here's chapter two or three depending on how you look at it.


I pulled Emil along behind me, wary of letting him go for fear he might get lost. The idea that he had never been outside of this town on his own lead me to the conclusion that he also had absolutely no idea what to do if he got lost. He followed behind without complaint, but I could tell that he wasn't really sure if he had made the right choice or not on coming out here with me. There was no doubt in my mind that he would rather face a hungry Fenrir, then face his aunt or uncle when they figured out that he was out here.

I scouted the area around us and even the trees above as it was un-telling where an enemy would hide. While I was doing so Emil stood by Gale whom had flown down to meet us as soon as I left the town. I had explained that the town's people probably wouldn't appreciate me bringing a 6 foot tall griffin into their town and asked him to stay outside of the town until I came out myself. Emil was a little scared of him, you could tell by the way his knees wobbled a little bit and when he would constantly shift his eyes to look at the giant creature. Gale seemed to barely notice his presence and paid him no mind.

"Alright, it's clear, let's go." I waved to them from the tree that I was currently perched in and jumped down when they got close enough.

We walked through a few rows of trees before coming out at the side of the lake bed, the ground that was worn of grass because of the beating waters. I slid down the earth slide and jumped off and flipped when I got closer to the bottom, Gale just jumped clean off. I turned and waited for Emil to follow me. He shook his head.

"I think I'll just wait here." I shrugged and turned back around.

"Suit yourself but I'm going on ahead, let's go Gale." I smiled when I heard him scrambling after me; he probably wouldn't have followed me if I had let Gale stay with him. "Come on Emil, walk faster."

Emil tried to match my pace, but for some reason couldn't maintain any sort of stride length. We stopped we reached the middle of the lake bed, right before you turned off to go the cave.

"What should we do now? We've made it this far." Emil stepped back and gasped at whatever was behind me. I turned half-way to look and managed to jump out of the way before the bear's massive paw took off my head. When I landed beside Emil I stared at the bear in confusion. Those types of bears didn't exist around here. In fact they usually never traveled out of the forest without a damn good reason. The bear reared up higher and screeched at us before coming at us in a full charge.

I jumped out of the way again as its massive paw slammed into the ground leaving a crater when it pulled back up. I stared at the hole in shock. I pulled my sword over my shoulder and out of the scabbard. I spread my legs in a stance that was used only for artes.

"Blade fury!" I shot my arm forward and began the series of thrust towards the bear. It jerked back then howled in pain. I was surprised that none of the town watch people had come to see what was going on with this entire racket that was being made. I was so involved in delivering the final thrust that I didn't see another bear come up and begin fighting with Emil. The bear that I was fighting got in my way when I tried to go and help him. "Hang in there Emil; I'll come help you in just a second."

I started wrestling the bear again, while trying to keep tabs on how Emil was doing on his own. He seemed to be doing okay enough, but I got knocked down by the bear when I saw him stumble and land on his butt in the dirt with the bear looming over him. His sword had landed a few feet away from him, but I knew that Emil wouldn't be able to reach it unless he was standing up, which at this point was impossible.

"I don't want to die like this. Get away from me!" He threw his arms over his face as if trying to block an opponent's blow.

"Watch out!" I looked up in time to see a girl younger then Emil jumping out of the trees with a spinner and attack the bear. It fell but I could tell that it wasn't dead with the steady rise and fall of its chest. I rammed my sword through the rib cage of the bear I was fighting and watched it fall to the ground. Mine was dead; I yanked my sword out and walked over to Emil and the girl that was saying something to him. She offered him a hand and pulled him to his feet before the bear could rise again.

"It's not over yet," she said, "are you going to fight with me or run?"

"I-um…" Emil stuttered obviously not knowing how to handle the girl's feisty attitude.

"Come on you're a man speak up!" Emil looked at her when she said that and I saw the determination in his eyes. I ran and grabbed his sword and handed it to him.

"You ready for another try Emil?" He nodded his head and grabbed the sword.

"I'll fight." He directed to her.

"Okay, then I'll leave the front line to you two."

The bear charged us again; I ran head first towards it and pulled my sword along behind me. When I was close enough I pulled my blade upward. "Heavenly Tempest!" My upward slash pushed the bear up and off the ground where I proceed to do a series of complicated somersaults and continuously hit the bear. When we fell back to the ground Emil got in three hits before the bear swiped him across the arm.

"First aid!" The girl sent the spell to Emil and I watched as the skin stitched itself back up. His body was fine, but I couldn't say the same thing for the shirt. There was no way that thing was ever going to be repaired. Emil and the girl charged the bear while I jumped in to the air to prepare another arte.

"Raining Gale!" I swung my blade horizontally and watched as blades of air formed and struck the bear in the neck, both arms, and both legs. The bear had already fallen by the time I made it back to the ground.

"There, good work. It's pretty dangerous here, so you should probably get going." I mentally stuck my tongue out at her. Who did she think she was, I was a pro at things like this I have been doing this kind of stuff since I was 13. I got the feeling though she was more so talking to Emil when she flicked her gaze on him as she said it. I got a little suspicious when her eyes stayed glued to him.

"Hey, it's you?" She suddenly cried.

"What do you mean?" Emil asked her.

"You don't—you don't remember me, do you?" She walked closer to him and I say a look of awe in her eyes, whoever she though Emil was must have done something very nice for her. "Maybe I'm wrong, but you look just like him." She moved her head around his sides and looked him up and down.

"What are you talking about?" Emil sounded a little embarrassed and I couldn't help but laugh. It was cute seeing him get flustered because of a girl. He never got any attention from girls in Luin.

The girl shook her head. "It's nothing, never mind, I'm sorry. Anyway you should leave here as soon as you can, okay."

With that she turned and started walking towards the cave on the far side of the lake bed. Emil stretched out an arm almost like he was trying to catch her from falling. "Wait a minute!" He called after her.

"Yes, what is it," she turned back to look and talked with an annoyed voice, "I'm in a hurry."

"I wanted to thank you for saving my life. So my name is Emil, what is your name?" He scuffed his feet along the ground.

"I'm Marta, is that it?" I hope that this girl knew that she could be a real bitch when she wanted to be.

"If it's dangerous here, then maybe you should leave too?" He was getting flustered again. Oh Emil. I thought. Pick someone else, Please.

I watched as Marta started to fidget and wiggle around. Suddenly she ducked her head and when she brought it back up she was red a beet. "If things get dangerous, will you save me again?"

Again, but Emil had never met her before, had he. I looked to him to see his response but like me he seemed to have no idea what she was talking about.

"But you were the one that was kind enough to save me." Emil said as he rubbed the back of his head. A habit of his I noticed that he only did whenever he was embarrassed.

Marta laughed before saying. "You really don't remember, do you? I'm sorry to confuse you, but I really have to get going, take care of yourself Emil." When she turned to walk away the wind started to blow and her bangs flew out of the way to reveal a red jewel on her forehead. I remembered what they guy with the red hair had asked Emil. Could this be the girl that he was looking for?

"I wonder if Marta is the girl that that man was looking for." Emil asked as I looked towards the sky. It looked like rain was on the way, but if the wind kept blowing this hard it would shift the clouds and it would miss Luin completely.

"Well whatever the case, he asked you if you had seen her, therefore we should probably go back to Luin and let him know." Emil nodded in agreement and we turned to go back to town. "Hey Emil that was good fight out there, you should train and I think you could be a decent swordsman." I said as we walked.

That was actually the first time that I have ever used a sword though. I stepped back in shock. "Are you serious?" I said. "Most people don't even know how to swing a sword when they first try."

I got up and we continued to walk back towards the town. When we reached the edge of the lake bed Alba and his "Reinforcements" walked up to us.

"Why you little- what are you doing here?" Alba glared at Emil; while the others calmly stared at me like they were afraid I was going to attack them. Suddenly I jerked towards them they all stepped back and pulled out their spears.

"Put them away gentlemen, I'm not going to fight you. It's actually a good thing that you're all so jumpy. Less chance of getting sneaked up on that way. They seemed to inflate a little when I told them that, but I just smiled and returned to watching Emil and Alba.

"I'm sorry." Emil said hanging his head. I was really going to have to work with this boy if he was ever going to get anywhere in the world.

"You just have to go out of your way to cause trouble!" Alba replied. "Thanks to your little grudge against Lloyd the Great, there are rumors that our family is supporting the Vanguard. I had heard some of the rumors myself, but not many people really believed that Alba and Flora supported them. They only thought that about Emil. "Go home and keep your mouth shut, when I get home so help me…"

"So help me what Alba?" I said standing in front of Emil. "The boy has done nothing wrong and besides I was the one that asked him to come out here with me. He told me that he didn't know his way around down here, but I insisted. Surely you wouldn't punish the boy for helping me out, would you?"

Alba stared at me in silence and then looked over my shoulder at Emil. "Is this true? Did she ask you to come down here with her?"

"You doubt my word?" Alba didn't answer.

"Yes sir. I explained that I had never been out here before she wanted me to come with her anyway." I smirked in my head. Emil had picked up on what I was trying to do and was playing along. Alba looked like he didn't really want to believe us but nonetheless told us to go on back to the town.

"Alba, I'll be back after while, I need to go and pick up supplies which is the only reason that I'm not sending Emil home by himself, not to mention that it would be rather rude of me to have dragged him all the way out here and not take him back." Alba nodded and left towards the cave with the rest of the men.

"Thank you for that." Emil said when they were out of hearing range.

"Don't worry kid, besides, it's partly true."

Luin

"Where should we start looking?" Emil asked me. In fact I had no idea. I went over to a few people that were standing around.

"Excuse me, but have any of you seen a tall man with long red hair go through here?" One of the older women nodded at me.

"He went in the direction of the mayor's house." She said in a shaky voice. I thanked her and walked back to Emil.

"They said that he was at the mayor's house, which works out perfectly for me." I smiled at the way things were going.

"Why?" Emil asked. I walked in front of him as we went to the mayor's house.

"I wasn't lying to Alba when I said that I needed supplies. The fact of the matter is that I'm almost out of gels and what not and I need to pick up some more." I crinkled my nose at the thought of the young man at the shop beside the inn. "Besides, the desk worker at the other one is a creep." Emil laughed lightly and we continued onward.

When we reached the mayor's house I opened the door and held it for Emil. "Go on upstairs and see if that guy is here. I'm going to go ahead and get the stuff I need okay." He nodded and went up the stairs as quickly as he could because of the old woman that owned the store who was giving him the evil eye. I walked up to the counter and smiled kindly at her. I knew she didn't really hate Emil that badly, she had once told me that she only treated him that way so that she wouldn't be ostracized by the rest of the village.

Because I was a mercenary I was a really rich person. Therefore I bought thirty of every type of gel they sold, a new pair of boots, and about twenty life bottles. They were usually only used when I was on a job with another mercenary.

"Enough!" I jumped slightly at the aggravated tone that traveled down the stairs and knew that we had found the man we had been looking for. Just moments later he came tromping down the stairs and stopped to look at me. "I'll assume that you're going with us."

"Well even if I wasn't going with you per say I would still be going. Killing those monsters down there is the entire reason that I was hired to work here." I said smartly while putting everything in the right pocket on my waist pack. I had a bigger backpack that I carried when I was just traveling around, but when I knew for sure that there would be fighting; I only carried this one. He sniffed at me angrily before walking out and slamming the door behind him.

"I think that that young man needs to learn to control his temper." The old woman glared at the door and picked up the things that had fallen off the shelf when he slammed the door. I only nodded trying not to laugh. After a few minutes Emil came down the stairs looking deep in thought.

"Hey, what's with the face?" He looked at me then the old woman who was pretending to dislike him again.

"Nothing, I'll tell you later." He started towards the door. I thanked the old woman for her services before following him out and shutting the door "softly" behind me. We saw the guys standing a few feet in front of us and I turned to Emil.

"So what's his name again?" I asked him hoping that he would know.

"Richter," said person turned around as we walked towards him, "Sorry to keep you waiting."

"You apologize too much. Of course if you want to become a dog I won't stop you." he told Emil rudely.

"I'm sorr-oh" Emil stopped himself before he could finish the apology. I smiled at him, knowing that this guy could help Emil make progress. Richter looked at him like he had just said something very strange.

Emil drooped down. "Sorry." I sighed and rubbed my head. This was not going to be an easy task.

"Stop apologizing. Anyway I'm sorry for yelling at you earlier." Richter replied obviously as frustrated with Emil's constant apologies as I was.

"Oh so he was yelling at you earlier. I was wondering what was going on up there." I smiled and elbowed Emil lighted on the arm. He rubbed the back of his head and I laughed. Richter who had begun to walk off to the town entrance turned back to look at us.

"What are you waiting for, hurry up and take me to where you saw Marta." He said coldly.

I walked up to him angrily and just as I was getting ready to pass him. "What do you what to see her so badly for, you ask her out and she rejected you. Yeah I bet it's something like that. You do seem to be the jerk type." And then I continued to walk past him. I heard Emil gasp at my boldness, and Richter sniffed at me again. I turned back to look at them. "Well come on, chop chop boys we don't have all day."


Hello again, just reminding you to leave a comment and tell me what you think. I'm going to draw a pic of Ilex and put it up on my profile sometime. I don't know when, but be on the look out in the author notes sections of the chapters, because that's where I will post the news when I do manage to get it up. BYE-BYE.

-Lunarsnowdrift