Broken Wings
N.W. 400
Return of Derris-Kharlan

"Lloyd..."

"Ratatosk told me it could be done, Martel. And Yuan wanted to wait for him to return... Are you really going to try to stand in my way right now?" Lloyd asked, stepping up toward the Yggdrasill with a confidence he honestly didn't feel.

But... he had to try.

He'd promised, after all.

Martel shifted to the side, fading away as she did so, and leaving Lloyd with a clear path to the massive trunk.

He was no Genis, to feel the mana in the air around him constantly, but he knew the touch of the giant tree's mana, and he took a deep breath knowing that this tree's life was his to protect.

He felt it, when the mana shifted. The tree itself was reaching out for its other half, for the cutting Kratos had taken with him to Derris-Kharlan. And Lloyd could feel the bridge that mana could form, if only it had focus...

He stepped forward, pressed his hands to the bark, and closed his eyes, focusing fully on the mana swirling around him, generated by the tree like the stream nearby was generated by a spring that sat... well. Under the Yggdrasill's roots, at the moment. Four hundred years ago, that spring had been just north of the tree.

Still, the flow of water, the flow of mana...

Lloyd's mana became the earth, the roots, the solid force that focused the mana toward the Derris-Kharlan tree just like the stream flowed along its banks. And the mana followed that 'stream' Lloyd gave it... before giving up halfway.

Lloyd grimaced. It was a bridge, a doorway of sorts, and it needed to be accessed from both sides for it to work. Which meant...

A deep breath, and Lloyd closed his eyes, determined to stay right where he was for as long as he could stand to.

But as minutes turned into hours, and hours into days, he could hear the mana around the tree starting to strain.

He could keep this up for days at a time, but the tree couldn't.

So with reluctance, Lloyd shifted, pulling back and recalling his mana. Would he feel it from here, if someone tried to open the bridge from that side? He didn't know, but it was his best hope at the moment. It was clear that he wasn't going to be able to keep it open from this end for very long.

"I think, you might be able to hold it open longer with time..." Martel said, once again stepping up beside him. "Yuan and Kratos never spoke so long that I truly felt the strain last time... minutes, perhaps an hour at a time. To keep the bridge open for almost three weeks..."

"The Yggdrasill was just a sapling back then," Lloyd mused. "But if you're right... then it's probably like a muscle, or... maybe just like Genis is always describing his control over mana. If he practices, he stays at the top of his game. And he's gone far above where most elves are willing to go. But if he doesn't keep himself in practice, he loses control of some of his stronger spells."

Martel nodded. "Exactly. And the Yggdrasill is pure mana. That bridge is, too. So, theoretically..."

"Enough practice, enough time stretching that connection, and eventually, I might be able to hold the connection for years."

But it would take millennia to reach that point, and Lloyd didn't think he'd need that long. At least, he hoped he wouldn't need that long.

Lloyd sighed and jumped up, wings catching the air just long enough to get him up into the branches of the Yggdrasill. He was mildly surprised that no one had come looking for him yet, but then again, he was on the 'vacation' that they'd all agreed on. And if he spent a few years of his at the tree, desperately trying to contact Derris-Kharlan and his father... Well, that was his business. At least he wouldn't be running around having an adventure when he was supposed to be taking care of his wife, like a certain half-elf whose wife was thankfully more amused than annoyed by her husband's frequent running about.

Hmm... He hadn't been in the forge for a while. Hadn't actually done a lot of smithing since Dirk had passed.

He needed to go back to it, and... maybe. Just maybe... It was time to move back to Iselia.

Or, well, the area that had once been Iselia. The town was gone now—between monster problems, the difficulties people had getting through the desert, and everything else, Iselia had basically been abandoned—but that didn't make the area any less his home. He'd grown up there, and even though the fields were grown over, the forest was running wild, and all that was left were faint signs of the ranch, he still wanted to go back, rebuild... Or, if nothing else, build his own little retreat.

It was something to think about, really. And with the bridge unable to be created unless it was opened from both sides, he had the time to think...

It wasn't long before he'd pulled out a sketchbook, quickly jotting down plans for another house. He'd built the one outside Luin mostly based on his original home in Iselia, although it was slightly larger to account for the guests he often had coming through. Since neither Colette, nor Zelos had actual homes anywhere, the two had been crashing at the old home more and more often as time went on.

Genis had a house in Sybak. Well, outside it, but close enough to say 'in'. He'd come up with the basic design, given it to Lloyd, and then the two had spent the rest of the week bent over plans. Lloyd had built that house practically by himself... and for all that Genis still traveled incessantly, it had been Miriam's home long before Genis had actually slowed down and married her.

They really needed to stop crashing at his house, and Lloyd needed another forge, since the old one at Luin was so rapidly falling to pieces.

So... that meant building again.

A small smile started to spread across his face as he worked, careful to include an extra guest room... that he hoped would be occupied by his biological father.

And while he waited for the tree to recover so that he might try again to reach Derris-Kharlan, Lloyd planned out his new home, already imagining it, the peaceful picture in his head a dream that he hoped might come true sooner rather than later.