Disclaimer: I don't own these characters.
Having failed at fighting, we went back to the village that we had once called home. We considered taking him back to the house and burying him there, but we figured that this was not his home. His home was far away, over the sea, but it would be a long time before we would go back there. We buried him outside of the village.
His brother was silent as we discussed what to do. Yuan was wondering if we would be able to fight the Sylph again; we were all thinking it. When our companion had died, was it more respectful to go on or to wait? Would he want us to try to end the war? Yuan would ask, and one of us would try to answer.
"Why would you ask what he wants?" His eyes were cold as he looked at us. "You wouldn't have stopped fighting if the Sylph hadn't gone away, do you realize?" There was laughter in his voice, a harsh and bitter sound. He stood up and turned away, heading for the door. "You didn't know him. You didn't even know his name! Why would you care at all? Go back to those monsters who took my brother away! Fight to end your war and leave me alone! Remember the ones that were lost because you sought power!" He stopped, letting out a laugh. "You didn't know his name, but you'll know mine. I am Kratos Aurion." With that, he was gone.
As he left, I noticed that his strange crystal was glowing, and I thought I saw the shadow of something on her back.
We waited a few days to see if Kratos would come back, but he didn't seem to.
Finally, Yuan snapped, "I don't see why we should respect him. He was a soldier of the other nation, and now his only tie to us is gone."
"What about us?" I asked, and he turned to look at me with cold eyes. "You- I- had forgotten him." He had told me not to let Yuan know, but I couldn't stop myself. What did it matter, now that he had left us? "He was your brother, our brother, once upon a time. He left you behind because he would have died, but he never stopped thinking of you, never stopped wanting to come back to you. And then we had..."
His eyes were wide, and he bowed his head. "How could I have been so foolish? That whole time... Should we find him?" His voice was very quiet as he realized the problem with that. "Do you think that he wants to be found?"
"I don't know what he wants," I said. After all of that, I wasn't going to pretend that I knew what anybody wanted. Was it for the best that we ended the war? "I don't know if he wants to come back to us, if we ever will. If we should keep going.. If it is what you decide, of course, I will follow you."
Mithos had listened to our conversation the whole time, and he sighed. There was sadness in his eyes, there was weariness. He saw the sadness, the pure anger that had been in Kratos when he had left us behind. "All I want to do is end this war," he said. "We have paid a cost, but all we can do is keep going. I don't think anything will be accomplished by waiting."
And so it was decided. Once again, we went to the mausoleum. To avenge our friend that we had never known at all and to accomplish the goal that had started this whole mess.
And, indeed, a mess it was.
We walked in silence through the temple. No talks of traps, no talks of history. Mithos lit the way, and finally we came back to the portal. "Sylph, we are ready to fight you again! For our friend, for the war to end, please, give us your power!"
And there they were. And, even though there were only four of us, we fought with all of our strength. We fought for the Aurion who's name we never knew, we fought for the war, we fought for the one who had left us behind. I felt power burning through me, the power of my crystal, and I poured my soul into that battle. I don't remember much of it. A flurry of movements and swords- and then, at the end of it all, there was Mithos. He stood tall and brave, holding his head high despite the pain I was sure he had.
"Hmm," one of the Sylph said, in their annoying little voice, "make your vow."
"I vow to use your power to protect this world," Mithos said, and then they were gone. Mithos took out his card and smiled. "It's over."
We had lost Kratos and his brother, but now four seals were done. We were half-way done, and that was enough.
We were ready to get a move on. We kept an eye out for Kratos, but it seemed like he was never coming back. Mithos smiled for the first time in a while as he saw the next location on the map.
"The Temple of Light." Something about that gave me hope.
Over the next days of travel, we continued to search for Kratos, but he was nowhere to be found. And so we continued on to the Temple of Lightning. One day, less than a day's walk from the temple, we reached a small town. It was nightfall, so we decided to rest. And, looking back on those days, I can't help but wish that we had just kept walking.
"Half-elf, what are you doing here?"
I was walking with Mithos, going to get supplies in a quick run, when somebody called that out. Mithos flinched, but she kept his head down and pulled me along. Then there was a man there, glaring in front of us. "Did you hear us? Hasn't your kind brought enough shame to us? What are you doing in this town?"
"We'll be out of your way soon enough," Mithos said, and the man huffed, pushing her away.
"That's not good enough! Your kind is always coming to our city and bringing trouble to us. It's your fault that this war started in the first place-"
"We're trying to stop it. Why don't you just leave us alone?" I yelled. I wished that we were in Tethe'alla, so that we had my power, so that I could make him stop, but I had to use words instead. Somehow, I felt like using my sword would only make things worse.
Then there was a group around us, leering at us. "It's all their fault," they said. "If they had never come here-"
"We're trying to stop them," Mithos said, and I saw him reach for one of his cards. "We're going to stop the war, we have the power of the summons spirits with us." I grabbed his hand to stop him, but they noticed anyway.
"Oh? A summoner?" one of the group said. "I'm sure our king will pay a pretty penny for a summoner."
"You won't take him," I snarled, and they laughed as I drew my sword. I pushed Mithos behind me. I knew that he had all of the strength of the four summon spirits now, but we both knew that it would only make it worse. It would be one thing to use that power against a monster but to use it against somebody else.
And then they were all around us, pushing towards us, barely giving Mithos room to draw his cards, certainly not enough room to draw my sword. And they were grabbing me and him, and it was all a blur-
"Leave them alone!" And then Martel was there. I don't know how she knew that we were in danger, but she was there- and a massive amount of power was coming off of her, like I had never felt before- and then there was-
Wings. Wings exploded from her back. Suddenly, everybody took a step back as they saw beautiful Martel with those beautiful wings. Even the humans could feel her power. "Stand back! Step away from them!"
And the crowd parted, and Martel ran over to us. "Are you all right?"
"Are they... are they with you?" the first man who had come up to us asked her, and she nodded. She must have realized that she suddenly had power over these people. I had never known her to use that kind of power, but, well, desperate times called for desperate measures.
"These two are under my protection," she said. Her voice sounded booming to my ears, it almost hurt to hear it. "If you know what's good for you, you will stand aside and leave them be, do you understand?"
"Yes, ma'm." Just like that, the crowd was gone, leaving just the three of us. Mithos was staring at Martel's wings.
"Martel," he asked, his voice was shaking, "w-what... what..."
And finally, she looked over her shoulder and saw the wings. She nearly jolted at the look of them. "W-what? Was this why they were so afraid of me?"
"I think so, Martel," I told her gently. Mithos was staring at her as if he didn't know what to think. I suppose it was all kind of a shock for him. And she saw the look on his face, and she bowed her head.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hide it from you. I think it was from the crystal that I got-"
"You never got a crystal, did you? You said..." She let out a sigh and removed her shawl. Her crystal was beautiful and glowing, like her wings.
I sighed as she looked at me to explain. "When we went to the mine, it was because Martel was sick. The people in Palmacosta told us that we could find ore to help heal her. The fact that we all got crystals was just a bonus." Mithos looked at me with accusing eyes, and then I saw something that hadn't been there before. We hadn't been in battle before, but Martel's shoulder looked like it had been wounded. It was like her crystal. "Martel, what is that? Your shoulder?"
She froze as she looked down, and she saw that her shoulder. "I-I don't know." Her wings faded back, and she was suddenly quaking. "I can't... I don't-" Suddenly, she fell.
"Martel!"
"I've never seen anything like this before." Martel was resting in the inn. We had gotten a doctor- a half-elven one- and we had been waiting for a long time. In the time that it took for the doctor to examine Martel, we had explained things to Yuan, and he had yet to leave her side. "Her mana is drained. She's very weak, and her shoulder... It's not that she has been wounded. Her shoulder is hard. There's no easy way to say this; her shoulder, her body is... crystallizing."
"Crystallizing?" I had never heard of anything like that.
"These crystals that you wear... I fear that, if this growth doesn't stop, she's going to turn into one of them."
"No!" Mithos and Yuan cried; I just didn't know what to think.
I thought that the ore would reverse the change. But I raised my head and I said, "What can we do to fix her?"
"I don't know. There are ancient texts, in the city of the elves."
"They kicked us out of Heimdall," Mithos said, bowing his head. "Is it my fault? If we hadn't nearly been attacked, then she wouldn't have had to protect us..."
"I think that it would happened anyway. Her wings only sped up the process," the doctor explained.
"What do the books say that we need to get?" Yuan asked; his eyes were filled with determination.
"I don't know," he said. "As much as I would love to, the texts are in the ancient library of the elves." We all sighed. We had to get back to Heimdall then, no matter what. "Although, I have heard that there are some in the... Temple of Light."
Our next destination then. We would save Martel, and we would get the fifth summon spirit. We would save her, I knew. We had to.
We left Martel there to rest. Yuan said that he would stay with her; he refused to leave her side. And so Mithos and I went on alone, to the temple of light. I was nervous about the fight this time, but I still felt strong. I felt like the two of us could do whatever it took to save our friend.
We entered the temple. I wasn't sure what to expect, but Mithos's eyes went wide as he saw the ground floor. I suppose it made sense, in a strange way, that a temple would have a library. And Mithos ran to the books and began to pull them out. In this massive library, how were we supposed to find any information? I guess, I thought, we better start.