Broken Wings
N.W. 245
The Curse of the Stars

If there was one thing Lloyd was never going to stop loving, it was the ability to soar through the skies at ridiculously high speeds. The wind whipping his face, the feeling of the air itself holding him up, a solid weight under his wings, the landscape flashing by below...

Tenebrae could keep up only by virtue of expending large amounts of mana, something he was trying his best not to do, which was why, more often than not, he'd simply meet Lloyd wherever the angel was headed.

Except on days like these, where Lloyd was racing the wind, and Tenebrae was annoying Richter and Ratatosk.

Hm... It had been a couple years since he'd visited Yuan and Martel.

The moment he'd fully processed that thought, though, he flinched. The last time he'd so casually commented about it being years since he'd seen someone (namely, Zelos), Colette had blown up at him for not staying in contact. They all seemed determined to pretend his decade-long stay with the dwarves had also meant a communication blackout, which baffled Lloyd to no end.

Colette, Zelos, and Genis all got mad if he didn't see them at least once a year, but Raine was looking at it the same way he was.

They were there, they weren't going anywhere unless they did something stupid, and that wasn't changing for centuries. They each had their own lives... So what did it matter if a couple years passed between visits?

Still, the last thing he wanted to do was make Colette upset again, and just when they were starting to reconnect.

And, it had been a while since he'd been by the Yggdrasill. The least he could do was stop in and say hello.

So as he neared the giant tree—boy was it big now—he dropped lower, speed dropping from 'too fast for humans to see' to something even Colette, the slowest in the air, could keep up with.

It was with a smile that he dropped into a dive, wings tucked against his body as he plummeted toward the mana tree. Dodging branches was an easy enough feat, especially since he hadn't hit it straight on.

He didn't land on the ground, instead finding himself perched on one of the lower branches as he looked around. He had to admit, the spring and small stream around the tree, the valley, the mist that was always so fond of popping up...

The area looked positively magical.

"You coming down, or not?"

Lloyd looked straight down, to where the blue-haired half-elf he'd been in the act of visiting stood. "Good afternoon to you, too, Yuan."

"I see you finally learned how to tell time," the man said, though the smirk said rather plainly that he was teasing.

Lloyd couldn't help it. He snorted and dropped to the ground, wings opening just enough to slow his descent and make his landing soft. "Nah. I've just been up for a few hours already." Well, more like he hadn't slept for the greater part of the last week, but Yuan didn't need details. Really.

...Something was... off. Not quite wrong, but...

"Yuan?"

The half-elf wasn't looking at him, hadn't really been looking at him the entire time.

Which was when Lloyd finally noticed just what was wrong.

Where he was used to blue-gray, there was now solid silver, a silver that was almost taking over Yuan's pupils.

If it had been a milky white, he'd have said cataracts. Except this was a metallic silver, like Yuan's eyes had been coated in a thin layer of liquid metal. He'd seen it before, only ever in elves, but still...

"Your eyes..."

"I know. I'd been fighting it off for thousands of years. But I knew, when Mithos died, that would be the end of it. It took a good long while to settle in properly, but..."

Lloyd grimaced. "The elves called it the curse of the stars."

Yuan nodded. "It's rare among them, even rarer for it to take hold of a half-elf. We noticed it when I was about a hundred, back during the Kharlan War. Martel figured out a way to stop it progressing... but it was too late to stop it altogether. Mithos was the only other person who mastered the elixir." He shifted, eyes unseeing even as they shifted toward him.

Humans had their own afflictions that would render someone blind, but Lloyd knew there was more to what was happening to Yuan than his loss of sight.

"I'm surprised your Cruxis Crystal didn't stop it," he admitted.

"If it had been equipped even a year earlier, it would have," Yuan said. "And maybe if we'd noticed sooner, Martel's elixir would have done more than just slow it down. But there's no way to turn back time... not without severe consequences. And... I can't really regret this, either. I've lived far longer than I ever believed I would."

No. No, he couldn't be taking this where Lloyd thought...

"Lloyd... It's long past time I joined my wife and brother-in-law. A part of me had planned on waiting for Kratos to return... but... And don't you dare tell Zelos this... I've struggled the past few years, not being able to see, and I can feel the curse trying to take a stronger hold on me. I don't think I'd hold out that long."

Again, Yuan's head tilted back, face turned up toward the branches he could no longer see, toward the sun that still managed to slip through the leaves.

As much as Lloyd wanted to argue, wanted to tell Yuan to stop being so dramatic, that he'd be fine... If the half-elf's Cruxis Crystal hadn't been able to stop the disease so far, that meant Yuan's days were numbered, and promised to be filled with pain, or discomfort at the very least.

And Lloyd couldn't bring himself to try to lie to him when they both knew better.

Yuan was already dying... And from the way the half-elf was fingering his Cruxis Crystal, it was clear that he'd made his choice.

Lloyd grimaced. "You know I hate this."

Silver-blue eyes closed, Yuan taking a deep breath. "I know. But you know I wouldn't ask if I could see another way out."

It was silent for a long moment, Lloyd bracing himself for what he was going to have to do shortly, and Yuan... It was impossible to tell.

"Lloyd. You've done an admirable job of dealing with your grief thus far. Please... Don't let mine be the grave that breaks your resolve."

"I won't. And Yuan... Thank you."

A small, sad smile was Yuan's only response. Though his eyes opened, they clearly did not see Lloyd.

It was a fairly simple matter to remove a Cruxis Crystal... but in doing so, the bearer would die. This, every angel on Aselia knew.

Lloyd had never seen a Cruxis Crystal removed before. But the burst of mana and the pale violet light that flared at Yuan's back only drew Lloyd's attention for a bare second. Then, with an almost audible whoosh of air, the angelic mana that had burst free, that which Lloyd recognized as Yuan's and Yuan's alone, swirled around and into the red crystal that was just touching the ground, even as Yuan's body fell.

Lloyd had acted without thinking, catching Yuan and lowering the half-elf's body to the ground gently, fingers ghosting over eyelids to close silvered eyes that had been as unseeing in their last moments of life as in death.

"Lloyd..."

The faint form of Yuan, knelt over his Cruxis Crystal, watched him with vibrant blue-green eyes that matched his hair in vibrancy, though not quite shade.

Lloyd hadn't realized that the blue-green-gray he'd been used to had been just as much a result of the 'curse' as their nearly-solid silver.

"Goodbye, Yuan."

Yuan bowed his head, a faint smile on his lips as Lloyd drew his sword, lashing out and striking the Cruxis Crystal with ease.

He would bury the red shards with Yuan, below the roots of the Yggdrasill where Lloyd and Martel would always watch over him.

And then, Lloyd decided as he stood and stepped over toward a teary-eyed Martel, he was going to go to the elves and figure out what they knew about their 'curse of the stars'. Just in case it ever struck one of his friends again.