FCL64: Now, on to chapter eighteen.

Kiyoshi: Eighteen? Long story. It's just getting started. Quite often your stories are almost over by now.

FCL64: Be quiet.

Kurama pov

1349 A.D.

Suddenly Kuronue becomes sober. It drives me crazy when he does this. He'll be laughing one second and brooding the next. And it's the pendant. It's always the pendant.

"It's been nearly a century," he says. "You're my best friend, Kurama."

Where is this coming from? He must mean how long we've worked together. "And you are mine." It is very odd to say those words out loud despite their truth. I chuckle, and he looks at me. "You are my only friend," I say, slightly embarrassed to be discussing such things. "And I could have done a lot worse in that area."

He grins. "My point is I trust you, Kurama. Whether or not that's a good idea." He reaches over and hands me the pendant. It is far heavier than it looks. "Do you feel its power?"

Yes. The raw power, energy courses through my hand and up my arm. Such a powerful artifact. What is it worth? "Yes," I say. How could I not feel its power?

"You cannot give it a price. It's value is immeasurable. And not for sentimental reasons." Of course he knows what I am thinking. But he isn't angry. It's my job—our job—to analyze artifacts such as this in this way. "But the power you feel. That is when it is dormant."

"Dormant?" This is fascinating. Such power.

"You can invoke its true power, summon it."

"And what happens?"

"Without sufficient willpower, it can control you rather than the other way around. It drains your energy." He still isn't telling the whole story.

"Kuronue, if you don't want to tell me, that's fine." But I want to know. I've always wanted to know. "I accepted decades ago that you'd tell me if you wanted to, but I don't feel it's required."

"I want to tell you," he murmurs, jumping up. "I just don't know how.

Interesting. I wait rather impatiently as he paces back and forth, wings fluttering as though he wants to take off and fly away. I want to know. But I respect his silence and hold my tongue.

Finally he says, "You use your aura to call on it, and it summons power. You do not need to decide this; it just happens. The energy is immense. No one could ever possess that much aura. That is why your will is necessary. You need to believe with your entire mind and being, you must be one hundred percent sure, completely confident that you can control it. If there is even the tiniest glimmer of doubt, you will be destroyed. And even if you have sufficient will, it still hits you like a ton of bricks going ninety miles an hour. Then you just have a single thought of where you want the energy to go, and it does. But it has only one purpose. To destroy."

He shakes his head. "I tried it once. Once you have seen its destruction, you never use it again. You do not forget it. You guard it fiercely, with your life if necessary, so a murderer does not get it."

I look at him seriously. "We are murderers, Kuronue."

"But we do not kill for the sake of killing. We may be murderers, but we are not psychopathic killers."

True. We start the raid quietly and only kill if cornered, which happens rarely but not never. We occasionally kill for information. But in those cases we do have a tendency to go overboard. Slight torture is often involved. But that is hardly relevant. "What could possibly possess such a strong, negative energy?"

"Nothing," he says simply. "The stone draws all energy from its surroundings, taking it in as positive and emitting it as negative. Releasing it is only part of the destruction."

"What is the other part?"

"It leeches every last ounce of energy from every living thing within twenty meters in any direction. And without sufficient will, it sucks out all your energy too. And the more life it sucks out of the area, the harder it is to maintain enough will that you can control it. It kills everything, Kurama. It exists to destroy." I have never seen him so distressed.

"Then why not destroy it?" I know when something is dangerous beyond the point where it should even exist. This thing definitely falls into that category. How could I have been in such close proximity to it for a century without realizing that?

"It has been tried by many. It cannot be done. The best we can do is keep it from those who would intentionally use it to destroy. And Kurama…"

"Yes?"

"The most frightening thing is how good and pure energy feels as it is funneled into this evil thing and how dark and sinister it feels when it emerges. It's unnatural."

1501 A.D.

That locket. I don't feel I truly understand. Ayaka looks at us. "I could make it make sense if Kaien were here to help me." She clutches the locket tightly. While Kuronue's pendant had a power raging in it, Ayaka's was strangely calm. Not violent, somehow.

Kuronue looks at me. I shrug. "That is up to you."

Ayaka groans, "I hate it when you guys do that."

Then Kuronue explains the power of his stone, the devastation it can cause, the way only one person is needed in comparison the two required for Ayaka's piece.

Ayaka's face is a mask of horror.

I do not blame her.

Now to the review... I hope you all found this chapter enlightening.

animegrlsteph: How do you like the explanation of the pendant?