Next chapter ready! The Trimen have begun their quest, and it's already spelling disaster!
Hibiki swung his light lacrima, styled like a torch but instead of a flame at the tip, there was fixed a glowing multicolored lacrima. Eve and Ren both carried ones as well, but for now, only one was necessary, and they'd figured they should save the energy in them for when it would be needed.
Eve was hugging himself, his lacrima secured at his belt as he looked around the dark woods, filled with the rustling of the leaves and vines and occasional call of a less than cheerful sounding bird. Hibiki had cast a charm on himself and his guild mates to make them temporarily immune to any draining spells, and he'd already had to stop their trek several times to dispel more than a couple rune traps and barriers.
"Am I the only one who's totally freaked out right now?" Eve asked worriedly as he jumped the noise of Ren stepping on a twig.
"Yes." Both of his teammates said in unison.
Eve pouted, "We are in the West Woodsy, it's dark, the moon is only a crescent so there's barely any light breaking through the trees, and my skin is practically crawling with all of these weird noises everywhere!"
"Or maybe it's the giant man-eating spider crawling up your back."
Ren said nonchalantly.
"KYA!" Eve jumped up and spun around several times, swatting at the fabric of his shirt in panic before he realized the Hibiki and Ren were laughing at him.
Eve smacked Ren hard in the back of the head in fury.
"What the heck you jerk!" He barked.
Ren wiped a tear from his eye.
"Oh, man, I never knew you were such a scaredy cat."
"Oh, shut up, I just don't like dark, creepy, weird noise filled woods! At night! Have any of you even seen a horror movie lacrima? Three guys in the woods in the middle of the night, c'mon!" The snow mage exclaimed whilst flailing his arms around in anger.
"Oh, calm down, Eve, it's perfectly fine, we're all mages, we can protect ourselves if we need to, now let's focus on finding that barri-OW!"
Hibiki was cut off when he walked straight into an invisible barrier, Ren walked right into him, and the fact that he was already jumpy caused Eve to leap back out of the way.
Hibiki winced and rubbed his nose.
"Ok, found it." Ren said sarcastically.
Hibiki rolled his eyes and handed the light lacrima torch to him.
"Hold that up for me will ya?" He asked, Ren obeyed and lifted up the lacrima so Hibiki could see was he was doing. Eve edged closer to watch as Hibiki carefully back to work with the spell.
"Whoa. This is some high level defense magic. It's not black magic, which is was I was expecting, but it's gonna be tough to crack, give me a minute, alright?"
"Whatever." Ren sighed as Hibiki set to work.
He summoned up several different archive cards and attached a few small ones to the slope of the shield.
With these firmly in place, he began to incant under his breath and type.
Over an hour of typing and boredom later.
"DID IT!" Hibiki shouted out in victory as Ren jumped up from where he had been sitting on the ground.
"Really? About time!" The wind mage cried out, equally happy.
Eve stood as well and looked down, seeing four archive cards set in a square low to the ground.
"We're gonna have to crawl through one at a time, and it won't last long so hurry up!"
Hibiki exclaimed before dropping down onto his stomach and doing the sniper crawl through the square. Eve followed, standing on the opposite side and dusting the dirt off of his cream colored tee shirt as Ren pulled himself up. Eve glanced down just then.
"Check it out! A cobbled path!" He exclaimed, running down it a few yards and disappearing into the trees.
"Holy..." They heard his voice echo back. Ren and Hibiki sprinted down the cobble laid walk and came out of the trees to see it.
A giant twelve towered castle with intricate windows and a moat with the drawbridge up. It had flags on each of the towers and a large banner over the drawbridge. The gray brickwork was flecked with growing moss and some walls were covered in a thin layer of ivy.
"The castle really does exist." Ren murmured.
"It's beautiful. I can't believe it belongs to a dark guild." Eve said quietly.
All of them suddenly felt a pull, a tug of their magic reacting to others.
"Whoa." Hibiki said simply.
"This magic power...it's insane, this is like the grand magic games finale times two!" Ren exclaimed.
"Quick, turn that lacrima off, someone might see the light through a window." Hibiki ordered hurriedly.
"Right." Ren quickly shut off the lacrima, and they were depending solely on the light of the thin crescent moon.
They crept up the walk and under the arch, not bothering to take a good look at it, or at any of the banners or flags.
Eve frowned, a look of extreme discomfort crossing his face.
"Guys, I really don't feel anything dark about this place, maybe we shouldn't just break in." The snow mage suggested weakly.
Ren turned on him in a spurt of anger, "What? We've been trekking through this forest since the moon came out, it's freaking 1:00 in the morning and we finally made it in and your saying you wanna turn back!?"
Eve jumped at Ren's sudden change in mood.
"S-Sorry..." Eve sighed, resigning himself to silence on the matter.
Hibiki shook his head at the two of them, wondering what had caused Eve's sudden, very uncharacteristic statement.
They arrived at the moat and stared across at the thick wooden bridge that was barring their entry.
"Maybe we should try getting in from the back, perhaps there's less chance of being spotted back there?" The snow mage of the group suggested.
"Good idea." Hibiki said, nodded, thus they made there way around, gawked for a moment at the castles own personal lake, which had a suspiciously recently repaired looking dock. At last they arrived at the back wall of the mammoth stone structure, and Hibiki glanced around.
"Trouble is that the wall of the castle is built directly out to the edge of the moat, looks like it's supported underwater somehow, theirs no landing on the opposite side and than getting in. So how do we get across?"
Ren shrugged, "We could just swim, I mean, I can air-dry our clothes later."
Eve blinked, "That'd be too easy." He said.
"C'mon, afraid of getting a little wet?" Ren teased his younger friend as he fearlessly jumped into the water.
"YEEEEOW!" He howled as he shot back out out, he'd been violently zapped by the electrified water.
Ren landed with a thud back on land, sopping wet and his hair frazzled out.
"Yup, I hate to see I told you so but..." Eve began.
Ren shot him the look of death.
"Don't you dare say it." He hissed as he began to dry himself with the wind of his magic.
Eve raised his hands in defeat, but when he thought Ren wasn't listening he said.
"But I told you so."
Ren put a hand firmly on Eve's shoulder, gave him a little half smile when the blonde glanced at him in confusion, than shoved him into the moat.
"YEEEEOW!"
Eve landed hard on the ground and groaned after getting a taste of the lightning magic that powered the moat waters for himself.
"Ok, point taken."
Hibiki sighed at the two of them bickering, finally Ren, a bit more angrily than necessary, blow-dried his snow shaping friend.
Hibiki turned.
"Hey, can't you just fly us over with your wind spheres?" He asked.
Ren slapped himself in the forehead.
"Why on earth didn't you think of that first?" He asked himself.
Hibiki and Eve watched Ren momentarily scolding himself before the dark skinned young wizard looked up and said.
"Yeah, I can."
They were soon surrounded by wind magic, it blew about their hair and plucked at their clothes, but as they approached the wall, they hit a repelling rune.
"NO NO NO!" Ren barked out as his wind sphere's failed and three of them went plummeting into the dangerous waters below.
"YEEEOW!"
The soaked trio, now sporting wild hairstyles as a result of their electric dip, dragged themselves up out of the moat and onto the opposite side yet again. Ren sat up with his legs crossed in front of himself, Eve pulled himself up to sit cross legged, and Hibiki stood up and his knees to say.
"Ok, new plan, Ren flies us up without touching the barrier, I hack the rune with a virus I've stores that'll only eat away one section of the runes, and we slide through."
"Can I get blow-dried again first?" Eve asked.
Hibiki nodded, "Yes. Ren?"
"At this rate I'm gonna run out of magic power just keeping us from catching colds in wet clothes." The black haired mage grumbled as he blasted the area's surrounding all three of them with wind. When the gusts cleared away they were all dry yet again, but with even wilder hair to match.
Eve reached up and smoothed his blonde locks down as Ren and Hibiki did the same to their own heads of hair.
"Ok, let's go."
Now that they had dealt with their fashion disaster, Ren enveloped them in wind magic once again, and lifted them up, careful to avoid the repelling barrier, but at the same time float Hibiki close enough to work his spell.
"Uploading now." Hibiki reported over his shoulder as an archive card appeared on the surface of the rippling green runes.
A few moments of hovering and watching later, Hibiki announced proudly.
"It worked! Ren, move me forward so I can get through."
Ren pushed his wind power, and as a result, the archive magic, forward and was surprised when Hibiki gripped the edge of the deactivated rune and heaved himself through, landing nimbly on the rampart below.
Eve was sent, more like thrown through next, and finally, Ren landed.
"Ok, were in the clear for now, so let's do some investigating to figure out what this old ruin is all about."
Thus the three Trimen of Blue Pegasus headed for the tower door, gimmicked it open, and moved into down into the heart of the castle.
It was unknown to the three mages that the heart of this 'ruin' was still strongly beating.
The end! So the trimen's broke in, how much farther will that get before something bad happens? We'll see! Please favorite, please follow, please review! Thanks so much for reading!