A/N: I have returned! Aren't you all so glad. XP Hopefully my lazy writing habits are finished for a little while. If not, NaNo is going to be hell next month. And also, you'll have to wait forever for yet another chapter. Oops? And this chapter is not my favorite and is kinda short, but at the moment, I'm just happy to have some forward momentum. Hopefully it'll pick up more next chapter.
Yuan had estimated the trip to be two days, give or take a few hours. This was considering the distance, the rough terrain, mild snow storms, and the fact that they had to walk. What he hadn't considered was the fact that he was traveling with a young boy who grew tired after only two hours, a girl who had gotten into the habit of slowly shuffling her feet through the snow, and a stubborn teenager who tried his hardest to counter every decision Yuan made. Because of this, Yuan found himself stopping for camp for the third night in a row, with a little less than a quarter of the way left.
Their camp had been easy enough to determine. One patch of snow was the same as any other; the only difference was how far away it was from the seal. As usual, there was a light flurry of snow, something that seemed to happen much more frequently on the plains than in the city itself. Yuan was amazed that the mountains surrounding the island hadn't been buried years ago. Some boulders had become lost under the snow, and of course over the last few days, it had always been Yuan who'd smacked his feet on their tops, since Aiden still refused to lead the way.
As soon as Yuan had reluctantly agreed to stop for the night, Eli had fallen to the snow, shrugged out of his pack, and rubbed at his booted feet, a motion that Yuan was tempted to mimic. Audrey dropped her pack next to him, untying the siblings' tent from the top and digging out the extremely long hooks needed to keep it in place. Aiden just flopped on his back, sinking slightly into the soft top layer of snow, content to lay there for a while. Yuan, however, wasn't so content to let him laze around and kicked the Chosen's pack next to him, throwing up a cloud of snow.
"Start getting supplies together for dinner," the angel ordered, digging around in his wingpack for firewood. When Mithos had told him he'd be starting in Flanoir, Yuan had made sure to grab a sizable collection of wood, knowing that it would be next to impossible to find on the barren snow plains. He was tempted to also grab an Apple Gel or two, since his shoulder was still aching and sometimes froze up on him, almost literally, but decided against it. Aches and stiffness were managable; the gels would be saved until someone was really injured.
Aiden looked at his pack darkly, as if he considered it to be at fault for his sudden job assignment. "Why can't you?" he asked, refusing to move from where he was lying, his question directed more at the pack then at Yuan.
"Because I'd poison us all," Yuan said matter-of-factly, trying to clear a spot for the fire. It was nearly impossible, since below the fluffy layer of snow was a packed layer, and beneath that was a thick slab of ice, but he did the best he could.
"I'm sure it's not that bad," Audrey said, struggling to drive one of the hooks into the ground with her foot.
Yuan paused in stacking the wood, looking over his shoulder at the girl, one eyebrow raised. "I'm not kidding. A friend of mine had to use Recover on Kratos to cure him of the effects of my cooking once. And since none of us knows how to cast Recover, I figure it's better safe than sorry," he informed them. Admittedly, that meal had been one of the first that Yuan had attempted to make out of raw ingredients (instead of simply heating up pre-cooked provisions), and he'd been angry at Kratos for some reason and had basically made the entire thing out of tomatoes, which had mostly likely been the reason for Kratos's illness, but he figured the simpler version had more of an effect. At the very least, Aiden pushed himself up and started rummaging through the pack without any further prodding.
When the sticks had been arranged into a neat little teepee, Yuan pointed the Sorcerer's Ring at it and fired. The first night, he'd asked Eli to light it with a Fireball but had decided that was a poor idea after one stray fireball lit the edge of his already ruined cape on fire. It had been simple to put it out, considering where they were, but Yuan was not eager to repeat the experience. He also didn't know how much more abuse his poor cape could take.
The fire was pitifully small, but Aiden didn't seem to notice as he started preparing a dinner of spaghetti. It would have been nice to have had a larger fire, since it kept monsters away as well as it warded off the cold, but Yuan's supply of firewood was running dangerously low, and they'd still need some for the return trip.
Dinner was a surprisingly quiet affair. Eli ran through a number of ideas he had about what the seal would be like, excited that they would be arriving there the next day, a feeling that Yuan shared, albeit to a lesser degree. Audrey quieted some of his wilder ideas, such as his thought that the entire seal would be one massive ice slide. However, that wasn't what was surprising. The real surprising part was that Aiden remained silent throughout the entire meal. Since he'd started cooking, he'd been deep in thought, and he hadn't snapped out of it long enough to even offer a single snide comment. After a while, it started to become slightly troubling.
By the time they had finished eating, night had fallen, and with it came large, heavy snowflakes that looked like they could be used as small snowballs if someone just plucked them out of the air. The thickening snow drew Aiden out of his contemplations long enough to frown up at the sky and mutter, "There's a blizzard coming in." Yuan looked up, too, but didn't see much of a difference between the sky now and the sky he'd seen since arriving on the snowy island.
"It'll be gone in the morning, though," Audrey said with her own glance up. "Come on, Eli. Let's get inside before it gets too bad." Eli looked like he wanted to protest for a moment but changed his mind when a sudden gust of wind raced over them, throwing snow up in their faces and practically blowing out their fire, which was almost dead anyway. The two of them hurried inside the tent, closing the flap behind them to keep out the quickly fattening snowflakes.
Surprisingly, Aiden made no move to follow. Yuan had quickly figured out that the Chosen was not fond of his company, and had noticed that Aiden was normally rather careful about staying as far away from Yuan as he could, when he had a choice. The fact that Aiden seemed to have forgotten his weird dislike for the angel, coupled with his continued silence, was unnerving. The silence quickly grew awkard, at least in Yuan's opinion, and was soon filled with the growing moan of the wind.
"You should get inside as well," Yuan said, glancing over at the teenager. Aiden looked weirdly uncomfortable. He was chewing on his lip and fiddling with his sword's cross guard with one hand.
Aiden didn't look over at Yuan but instead addressed the snow at his side. "I need to talk to you about all this Chosen stuff first, before we get there," he said, absently brushing large snowflakes from the top of his head. Yuan let out a breath that billowed out in front of him in a puff of steam. Though it was clear that the Chosen was reluctant to talk about his position, it was a conversation that the angel knew would be coming at some point. He'd just hoped it would have come later, like after the angel transformation really started occuring. Then he would have had more time to figure out how to explain without pissing off the foul-tempered boy.
"What about it?" Yuan asked, wrapping his battered cloak tightly about himself to create a thin, colorful shield against the more rapidly falling snow.
"Well...what in the world is it? All you said is that I'm the Chosen, so I have to become an angel and save the world and such. Which seems like a pretty poor explanation to me," Aiden huffed, finally turning to frown at the angel, shoving his hands into his pockets and ducking his head against a violent gust of wind that kicked snow up into their eyes. Aiden had certainly been right about the approaching blizzard, though Yuan knew this was, depressingly, still very mild.
"That's really more of an overview than an explanation, and you didn't really seem to even want to hear that, so I didn't elaborate," Yuan pointed out. Aiden's frown deepened.
"Well, I want to hear it now. So tell me. What exactly does becoming an angel mean?"
Yuan shifted uncomfortably. He'd had to explain the process before, and at the time it had been taken pretty well, but that Chosen hadn't been Aiden Norfel. The teenager had been less than pleased about being involved on this journey at all, even when it had been explained in such mild terms. Once he knew the truth, that he would essentially be dying for the sake of Tethe'alla and to fulfill a lonely child's wish, Yuan could only imagine this journey would be described as unbearable. If he even managed to convince Aiden to continue it.
"Basically, each seal brings you a step closer to ultimately becoming an angel," Yuan said slowly, carefully thinking over his words before speaking. "In the first seal, you're given angelic abilities - wings and enhanced senses. Every seal grants you a new ability, a way to use angelic mana that builds up in your Cruxis Crystal, much like how Eli casts magic. However, becoming an angel is more of a...trade system than a charity. In order to get these powers, you need to give something yourself."
Aiden's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Like what?" he asked, the wary tone somewhat lost as he raised his voice to be heard over a sudden howl of wind. Yuan paused to clean himself of snow before he became a living snowman, working to figure out how to explain it delicately at the same time.
"Like...parts of...you," Yuan said lamely, and Aiden's eyes narrowed further. "Not like physical parts or anything, just...mental bits." Yuan grimaced at the cold glare he was getting from the boy and took a deep breath. "At the first seal, in exchange for the wings and senses and ability and all that, you need to give up your ability to sleep. After that, eating, then your sense of touch, and finally your voice." Yuan paused for a moment, closing his eyes to block out Aiden's mixed expression of shock and outrage, finishing in a quick burst of words. "And at the final seal, you give up your memories and emotions in order to become a full angel."
When Yuan opened his eyes again, Aiden was giving him a darker glare than Mithos ever had, even after Yuan had accidentally set fire to Mithos's favorite toy when he was younger, and it was actually a little frightening. "So you're saying I have to basically give up my soul to save this place? Why should I?" the boy demanded, jumping to his feet and glaring down at Yuan. The angel rose to be on the same level, both to stop Aiden should the boy try anything stupid and also because he felt foolish sitting in the snow being looked down on, especially by a disgruntled teenager.
"I didn't even want to be the stupid Chosen!" Aiden continued, his voice rising quickly, and not just so he could make himself heard over the worsening storm. "But I agreed because it sounded easy and straight-forward enough, even if it's a major waste of time. But there's no way I'm going to do something like this if it costs me my life! What do I care if the world still sucks? It's been this way for a really long time, and it'll still be around when you find another gullible little idiot to do this stupid quest for you. But I'm not doing it. I'm not going to slowly die, especially not in front of my siblings! If you think I'm going to continue after knowing just what this means, you are sorely mistaken."
Yuan opened his mouth to try and say something, anything, that might curb Aiden's sudden anger, but the teenager wasn't paying attention. His rant done, the Chosen spun on his heel, sending up a great cloud of soft snow, and started stomping away. Yuan grabbed at his coat, bringing him to a halt for a moment, before Aiden turned violently and wrenched himself free, fire in his eyes. "Don't touch me," he growled. "Just leave me alone, murderer." Yuan blinked, surprised by the boy's vehement reaction. In that second of hesitation, Aiden turned and ran, disappearing into the blizzard within moments.
"Dammit!" Yuan screamed, hurrying after the boy. However, he only got two steps before he slid to a halt and swore again, turning and going back to the tent Audrey had set up. While he knew he had to go after Aiden, hopefully before the boy froze to death, he also couldn't leave the other two kids alone in good faith without at least telling them why they were being abandoned in the middle of a blizzard.
The angel slipped into the tent, shaking himself like a dog to dislodged the snow, and started speaking without preamble, almost without even registering Audrey and Eli's surprised looks. "Aiden's stormed off and I need to get him. Stay here until we return. Do not leave no matter what - we don't need more people wandering in the middle of a blizzard," Yuan said quickly, and both of the children's eyes widened. The angel plowed on before either one of them could speak, unclipping his wingpack from his belt and handing it to Audrey. "If you need anything, it's in here. Hopefully you won't need to get anything out of there, but you never know. Just sit tight and we'll hopefully be back soon. If we're not, well...we'll worry about that when it comes up."
Before Yuan could slip back outside, Audrey grabbed his shirt sleeve. Her eyes were wide with fear and worry, and she held the wingpack to her chest. "What happened? Why is Aiden out there?" she asked, her voice shaking.
Yuan shook his head, gently removing himself from her grip. "I'll tell you when we get back." Audrey just looked more worried but nodded, mumbling something that sounded like 'be careful'. Yuan didn't bother trying to figure it out as he slipped back out of the tent and charged blindly into the thick snow, hoping Aiden knew how to storm off in a straight line.