Really short chapter, but this is all I really had in mind for this. If I decide I need to make a mid game and a post game little short, I might continue it.. but for now, this is it.

Khroma landed before the Aer Krene. The spring hadn't been overly active, nor even disturbed, but something felt... off to her senses. An abnormality. An abnormality that felt like a human.

What human would willingly stay within an Aer Krene?

One. One human, friend of a great Entelexeia.

"Duke?" Khroma stayed still and heard the shift. She walked carefully, letting her talons click upon the ground as she curved a half circle so she could see behind the rock, allowing whatever it was behind more time to see her. Risky, but if it was Duke, she did not wish to startle him. "It is I, Khroma."

It was Duke. But the pale man wasn't as well kept as he had been when Khroma last saw him. He was dirty, his silvery hair unwashed, dull and stained with... blood.

"Duke, are you injured?" Bright scarlet eyes focused further upon her rather than the blank watching that had been before, then flicked to the side to watch the visible Aer.

"I am not wounded." The man's deep voice was dead, flat. Apathetic. Hoarse. His pale face was as grimy as the rest of him but for twin clean streaks from bloodshot eyes. Khroma decided to take a chance, and assumed her Krityan form. His bland, horribly still attention went back to her, then out to the Aer.

"Duke... What happened." She stopped out of reach – the swordsman would have to lean forward to be able to touch her outstretched hand with his should she present one. His bright eyes returned to her.

"The Empire took something dear to me." Duke stated, and his eyes returned to watching the Aer. "I returned the favor." For such a simple sentence, his voice held surprising darkness. Khroma remained silent as she thought. All of the Entelexeia knew of Elucifer's fall, and Elucifer had been a sort of 'king', to use the human term, of one faction of Entelexeia. The remaining faction.

Before she had left Zaphias to look at Aer Krene, the Emperor was announced dead.

"Duke, did you slay the emperor?" What she had heard, what had been announced to the population was that the Emperor's illness had claimed his life, but Khroma had heard of assassinations and poisonings that had been announced to human populations as such. It kept fear down, as she understood.

"I have slain no leaders." Duke states. A moment, and he adds. "I did sow confusion in the event succession is needed."

"Duke, what did you do?" Khroma asked, sinking to eye level with the sitting man. Duke looked at her, and raised his right hand from where it hung half curled at the left side of his drawn up legs, palm down. Khroma blinked as the albino swordsman slowly raised the hand, palm down, then blinked again as a blade floated to follow. It was curved, broad at the tip then slimming down toward the middle, a blade made of edge and little else. It was made of some sort of reddish metal, and floated half a foot from Duke's empty hand.

"That is... Dein Nomos.." Khroma watched the blade slowly turn under Duke's palm. "Duke, you stole an imperial treasure...?" Duke moved his hand slowly over to its side, and the blade moved with him, floating.

"The Imperial family had little use for it; it was merely a mark of status." Duke stated. "I ... have a use for it." The albino let the blade rest on the ground and wrapped his arm about his drawn up knees again.

"What can the sword do?" The Entelexeia may have been far older than the human, but there were some things nobility kept from curious Kritya. Duke tilted his head a little, regarding the blade on the ground beside him, then her without changing the tilt of his head.

"It holds the Rizomata Formula." Duke stated, looking back at the blade. "With it, it is possible for one to calm, control, and disperse Aer." His red eyes found Khroma again. "I can calm Aer Krene as well as any Entelexeia, with this." Disperse Aer... And there was no Apatheia around, either.

"Is that what you did with Elucifer's Apatheia?" Khroma asked. Duke didn't reply, staring off at the pool of Aer again, a slight shudder running through his frame. His eyes closed. "No matter." Khroma moved forward, grasping Duke's arms, and ignored the twitch, the bright red eyes that fixed upon her. "You need to bathe." She got him to his feet, grimacing inwardly at the dirt that fell from his hair. "You're going to disgrace the Entelexeia if you look as you do while calming Aer Krene." For a second she worried, the swordsman seemed to crumple as soon as she let him go, but it was only to pick up Dein Nomos.

"Very well..." He still looked far too lost, far too dead. She resolved to keep an eye on him as best she could.

"This way."

The way Khroma said "Duke didn't listen to you, did he? He is trying to protect the world in his own way." rang to me like... he was a child she was watching, who had started to walk where she couldn't or something. Like an awkward mother figure.

I dunno. Just something that I thought about.

Yes, I tried to leave things vague on purpose.