Chapter 16: The Tragedy of Alicia Combatir
The morning arrived without much of a spectacle. The sun rose, and everyone in Altessa's house slowly began to awake from their nightly slumber. It was Tabitha and Altessa himself that made their appearance in the main room first, especially since Tabitha had to work on breakfast. The dwarf looks at the teenage Overlord, who was sitting at the southern end of the table with his back leaning against the edge of it, and says to him "Hmm, I didn't expect you to actually go through with your night watch."
"Did I look like someone who could fall asleep easily?" Riku replies calmly, leading to the dwarf laughing and mentioning "Not at all, it's just unusual for a human to not require sleep."
"If you don't have an answer, then neither do I." The teenage Overlord then says in a joking tone as Zelos stretches his arms and enters the room. After smacking his lips, suavely, of course, the Chosen of Tethe'alla looks at Riku and says "Oh hey buddy! How's it going today?"
Zelos' was being surprisingly friendly with the teenage Overlord, which is a suspicious act that immediately grabbed Riku's attention. "Hey Zelos, are you awake at all? You usually don't talk that nicely to a guy." The Chosen's eyes widen in surprise and disappointment as he looks at the boy and says to him "Whaaaa? Can't I just ask someone how they are doing? You hurt my feelings Riku…" Zelos plays the whole thing off with little concern in his voice.
"E-Errr, sorry about that." Riku drops his suspicions once Zelos acts like his goofy ol' self and apologizes in a stuttering voice. Before he can say anything else though, Genis rushes between Regal and Sheena as they leave the guest room, saying in a panicked tone of voice to everyone "Has anyone seen Raine? S-She wasn't in her bed when I got up!"
Sheena looks at Genis and asks "Raine's missing? You sure about that Genis? She could just be outside getting some early morning fresh air." The half-elf turns towards the ninja and shakes his head before pumping his fists up and down and stating "It's not just her who vanished! Her bag is gone as well!"
"…That is definitely a cause for concern." Regal mentions in a serious tone. Meanwhile, Zelos looks over at Riku and says to him "Hey, you were on watch duty last night. How did she slip by unnoticed?"
The teenage Overlord flinches momentarily as all eyes focus on him. In a matter of seconds, Riku is forced to come up with an excuse to keep his promise to Raine. "I was on top of Altessa's house keeping watch for part of the night. When I looked away, that must have been when Raine took off."
"BUT RIKU, I-" Tabitha was about to spill the beans about what happened last night, but the teenage Overlord subtly jolted his left pointer finger to the right and sent off a bolt of electricity to quiet the girl while simultaneously rising up to his feet and saying "We should try and look around, there's no way she didn't leave behind a hint about where she went."
"There's not much ground to cover, but it would be wise to look around." Regal states, though he glanced briefly at the teenage Overlord in a suspect manner. The group then scatters around the house to try and find any signs of where Raine went off to. During this period of time, Colette woke Lloyd up urgently and dragged him outside the house by the time the group has gathered there.
"Ok, what's going on here? What happened to the Professor?" Lloyd asks in a tone of tired confusion. Genis walks closer to his friend and lifts a note up, commenting in a concerned voice "It seems Raine left a note saying she had something she wanted to investigate…But she left without saying anything."
"Riku, how did she escape your watch?" Lloyd asks, and the teenage Overlord glares at him and comments "I already told everyone else, she must have left when I wasn't looking at the door."
"I DO BELIEVE THAT RAINE AND-" Tabitha is once again ready to reveal what happened last night, but a quick glance from Riku made her reconsider her words as she instead mentioned "FORTUNATELY FOR US, I HAPPENED TO BE WATCHING THE ENTRANCE LAST NIGHT. RAINE LEFT FOR THE SOUTH WITH ONE OF THE RHEAIRDS."
"…The direction of Altamira." Regal comments in a realizing tone. Zelos leans one hand against his sword handle and comments "Now that you mention it, Her Highness was acting just a bit strange yesterday. She was going on and on about the Otherworldly Gate."
Lloyd ponders this information for a bit as Genis asks "What should we do Lloyd? I'm worried about her being by herself…" The boy looks at his friend and comments "Let's go find her. We can't afford to be separated right now."
Mithos, who had been mostly quiet since he got back from his little departure, asks of Lloyd "Ah…um…will you take me with you?" His naturally fake tone of nervousness made Riku sick. Genis replies "What are saying? It's too dangerous for you, Mithos."
"I know that, but I'm worried about her. There are monsters all over Tethe'alla right now. This is the first time I've met another half-elf besides me, so…I want her to be okay." Mithos says. As Lloyd then stands there thinking about what to do, Riku walks up behind Mithos and slaps him behind the back gently, taking him by surprise as the teenage Overlord wraps his left arm around his back and says with a bright smile "Come on Lloyd! Let's let our good new friend Mithos join us!"
"All right, guess there's no harm." Lloyd replies with a more natural smile on his face. As Riku backs his hand away from Mithos the half-elf says in an appreciative tone "Thank you, Lloyd!" Lloyd nods his head and explains "Any friend of Genis is a friend of mine."
This surprised Mithos for a couple reasons, and after a moment of hesitation he turns to Genis and says "Let's do our best, Genis!" Genis nods his head and says in response "Thank you, Mithos…"
Lloyd is quick to point out "By the way, we're going to have Mithos ride on your Rheaird, Genis. I hope that's not a problem." Genis nods his head again and says enthusiastically "Okay! Let's go!"
The group began to swiftly depart, but before they went too far Altessa stopped both Lloyd and Presea with a simple "Wait." Lloyd glances back at the dwarf as he walks forward and extends his right hand out, showing the boy a golden Key Crest. "This is for Presea…" He explains in a regretful tone.
"Altessa…" Lloyd says in quiet surprise. "…It's hardly enough to call it an apology, but I went ahead and made one last night. It will be more reliable than the make-shift one she has now." Lloyd takes the Key Crest from Altessa after the dwarf explained himself, and upon turning to face Presea he says "Are you ok with accepting this, Presea?"
The girl takes a moment to pause in thought, and she glances directly at the dwarf to see his regretful expression. With hesitation on her mind, she takes the Key Crest from Lloyd and says quietly to Altessa "…T-Thank you…"
Presea and Lloyd run off to join with the rest of the group, while Tabitha says to her master "HMMM, I WONDER WHY RIKU DIDN'T WANT ME TO MENTION THAT I SAW HIM LETTING RAINE GO LAST NIGHT?" These words make Altessa's eyebrows raise before he turns towards his creation and comments in a puzzled tone "Wait, what did you say Tabitha?"
After getting onto their Rheairds, everyone took off towards the southern skies in search of Raine. With everything Regal and Zelos suggested, the obvious destination was the famous city of Altamira, where they'd hopefully either find Raine or get more information about the Otherworldly Gate. The trip takes a good fifteen minutes, and once they can see the city Lloyd is amazed by how the place looks.
"Wow! It's almost as pretty as Meltokio! …Hey, what's that over there?" Lloyd glances at a bright building and a series of strange and large contraptions. Zelos rides up beside Lloyd and says to him "Heh, that right there is the epicenter of about everything a man can want in life. Thrills, gambling, and plenty of women!"
"Sounds like you have experience here, Zelos…" Lloyd realizes what he said and blankly stares forward while commenting "…Why am I even surprised." With that little matter out of the way, the group landed at the entrance of Altamira and got off the Rheairds. As they approached the welcoming and tall orange stone gate, Regal suddenly paused in place and commented "…I'm sorry, but I'm going to wait here."
Lloyd glances back at Regal and asks "Huh? What's up?" The man goes surprisingly silent, leading to a prolonged period of awkwardness between everyone before Zelos comments "Won't say why, huh? Well, if you don't want to talk about it, that's your business. Lloyd, he doesn't really need to be with us, let's leave him alone."
"I guess so. We'll catch you on the way out, Regal." Lloyd says, and the man nods his head to thank him and Zelos for the empathy. The group then walk into Altamira, with the goal of finding Raine planted in their heads. As they walk through the area, Presea glances up and to the right at the seven-story tall hotel, finding herself captivated by it's beauty and stature to the point that she fails to notice a man walking out from the building.
She runs right into him and bumps him back a couple feet, leading to her then snapping her head forward and looking awkwardly at the man she ran into. He was an elderly figure with a comfortable looking red suit and bushy grey mustache. His hair was slicked back and had a bit of a glow to it, and overall he looked very refined in stature. The man brushes the side of his coat and glances at Presea, which causes his face to suddenly go pale in shock.
"I'm sorry sir, I wasn't paying attention…" Presea apologizes for her mistake in a polite tone, but the man only continues to stare at her in sheer disbelief before commenting "…Impossible…Alicia, is that really you?"
This name makes Presea's eyes widen in a frozen position for a few seconds before she blurts out "You…know Alicia?!" The reaction of the girl caused the man to relax for a moment, albeit with confusion presenting itself as he says "What? Wait, then who are…?"
Presea quickly explains "Alicia is my…sister…" The man's eyes go blank with fright, and as he glances down at the innocent girl he found himself barely able to say what he wanted to. But the truth was better than a lie, he was taught, and he explains in a gentle tone "…I'm terribly sorry to say this. The one known as Alicia Combatir passed away quite some time ago. As of now, she couldn't possibly be standing here…"
Presea's face goes blank with disbelief, leading to her stumbling back a couple feet out of her own control as she proclaims "…P-P-Passed away?!" With the girl frozen with distraught, Lloyd looks at the man and asks "What happened to her?"
The man hangs his head low slightly and explains in a melancholy tone "Alicia came to work in the service of the noble Bryant family, but she was caught up in an unfortunate incident that led to her death." Colette asks urgently "How did she die?!"
The man shakes his head and replies "I dare not speak the details. Please forgive me." He then reaches into his suit and pulls out a card that he hands over to Lloyd, explaining further "Alicia's grave lies in the Sky Terrace of the Lezareno Company headquarters. Please stop by there if you have the time. Alicia would surely be pleased to receive a visit from her younger sister. If you show this to the receptionists, they should let you through."
The man departs, in the midst of his shock and sadness forgetting to tell the group his name. Genis looks at the distraught Presea and then comments "Younger sister? Presea, I thought you were the older one?" The girl didn't reply, her body was entirely motionless out of distress.
"We should head to the grave. We can't just leave Presea like this." Lloyd comments in an empathetic tone, leading to Zelos saying "I agree. Seeing sweet little Presea looking this down is affecting me as well. Let's go find the ferry, it should be able to take us to the Lezareno Company building."
With Genis' help, Presea is able to follow the group along. Meanwhile, at the entrance to Altamira, Regal stops peeking out from behind a wall and lets out a tired sigh, saying to himself "George…I'm sorry I couldn't show myself."
The group makes it to the ferry and manage to group themselves onto it despite how small it is. With a quick look at the controls, Zelos manages to set the ferry on a straight course to the Lezareno Company building. The boat jerks slightly before it carries forward, gliding along the water at such a calm pace that the group couldn't feel it move at all.
It takes a good five minutes for the group to approach the gigantic company building, but instead of docking outside the building the ferry is carried into a canal underneath it that takes them inside the building itself. The ferry stops at a singular end, and everyone is able to get a good feel of the atmosphere as they exit. The air was fresh, and the structure had a mixture of ancient stone and modern metals. It was definitely a place that focused on both the past and the present.
Lloyd broke off from the rest of the group with Presea and Genis prematurely, heading for the elevator when an armored guard similar to one of the Papal Knights approaches him and holds his right hand up. "I'm sorry, but may I ask your reason for visiting our company today?" He was polite in his mannerisms, leading to Lloyd quietly pulling out the card George gave him and holding it out as he says "We want to go to the Sky Terrace, if that's ok."
The soldier looks at the card and says in a tone of surprise "This is George's…!" The soldier pulls back a bit and says "My deepest apologies. Please, go on inside." After the soldier backs off, the group makes their way for the elevator to the left, cramming themselves inside of it and heading straight for the roof of the building. The ride is smooth and quick, and when the doors open up everyone is greeted by a breathtaking view of the sky.
Presea immediately rushes ahead of everything without saying a word, and the group quickly follows behind her towards the center of the terrace, which was decorated beautifully with palm trees, perfectly trimmed grass, and a shrine past a tiny pond of pure water. In front of the pond was a perfectly created gravestone. At the bottom of the grave was a stone plate with the words "Alicia Combatir, the most loyal and innocent person I ever knew."
Presea kneels in front of the grave in sheer disbelief of what she was witnessing. To her, there was no such thing as reality at the moment, for it just didn't feel right for something like this to exist. "Alicia…what happened to you?" Presea wanted to cry, but found it incredibly difficult to do so at the moment.
Lloyd, who placed an empathetic hand on Presea's right shoulder as he kneels down, looks at the front of Alicia's grave and notices a familiar red jewel placed into it. "An Exsphere?" He comments in a puzzled tone. Presea looks up at the Exsphere and stands upright, saying in a bewildered tone "Why? Why is there an Exsphere?"
As Presea was about to reach for the Exsphere, the jewel released a bright light, and within seconds the thin visage of someone began to form in front of the grave. She was a girl about Colette's height but Sheena's age. She wore a beautiful black and white maid's outfit with knee-high black stockings and pearl-like shoes. Her hair was pink like Presea's, but with smaller pig-tails. She looked down at Presea with her brown eyes and commented in a surprised and delighted tone "Presea? …Sis! It's you, isn't it?"
Presea steps back slightly as she lets out a frightened gasp. The girl standing before her recognized her by name, but the appearance of the girl was much different than the memories Presea held dear to her heart. After a momentary reminder of the days when she would play with a little girl that was a foot shorter than her but had the same hairstyle as the one floating in front of her, Presea's heart became hollow with sorrow as her eyes began to well up in tears and she blurted out in disbelief "Alicia?!"
The phantom girl folding her hands in front of her chest and smiled brightly, her own tears trickling down her face as she said "I'm so happy I can see you again before I disappear…" Presea shook her head in confusion while asking "What's going on? Are you still alive?!"
Alicia stopped crying for a moment and looked down at Presea, saying to her in a distressed tone of voice "I…I exist only in the Exsphere. Soon, even my consciousness will be gone. The Exsphere killed my body and absorbed my consciousness."
Presea clenches her fists together and admits "…I can't believe you've become a victim of the Exsphere as well…" As tears continue to trickle down Presea's face, Alicia looks at her with solemn eyes and asks of her "Presea, I know we haven't seen each other in a while…But I ask of you to fulfill a request before I disappear. Please, find my master. Please find Master Bryant!"
"Bryant? The noble you went to serve?" Presea asks. Alicia nods her head, but as she began to explain herself her visage faded in and out of existence "Yes. By killing me, he…" She doesn't get to finish her sentence, leading to a confused Presea extending her right arm out to the grave and exclaiming "Alicia! He killed you?! Please, tell me what happened!"
Alicia appears again for a few more seconds to beg of her sister "Please…Presea…" As she began to fade away, Presea stepped forward and unconsciously held her arms out as though she wanted to embrace Alicia in a hug, reaching for the part of her sister's body where the head would have been were she still the young girl she grew-up alongside back at Ozette. But even if Alicia hadn't faded away in that moment, Presea would be hugging nothing but empty air.
Presea widens her eyes again, realizing just what exactly she was doing in that particular moment before she stared blankly at the grave and pulled her arms back, collapsing onto her knees with her head held back and tears trickling down the sides of her face. Everyone else was silent behind her, sharing empathy at the lose of a departed one especially in the case of Lloyd, who takes a glance at his Expshere and grits his teeth in anger at everything Yggdrasill has done to the world.
Presea looks at the grave one more time and thinks back to the past. Cheerful days of running around and having fun with the young Alicia were the most prominent things in her head, and then the horror of reality struck her deeply. How did Alicia perceive her older sister when she was entrapped by the Expshere? Presea had not aged at all, while time passed for Alicia and the world she continued to live in…The visage projected from the Exsphere was proof enough of this, for Alicia had grown beautiful and mature while Presea still had a child's physique.
And in the end, Alicia ended up being another victim of the Exsphere, killed in spite of her undying loyalty to the man known only as "Bryant". This gave Presea something to focus her emotions on, and as the tears dried away from her face she forced herself back upright and turned to look at Lloyd, asking him with all of her might "Please, help me find Alicia's killer."
Understanding the pain Presea has experienced, Lloyd doesn't hesitate to nod his head and reply "Of course. We'll beat this Bryant guy to a pulp and drag him back here!" Genis also backs-up his friend by mentioning "Yeah! I won't let him get away with killing your sister!"
Presea looks at her two friends, smiling at their selfless desire to help and saying in an appreciative tone "…Thank you." With a new mission in mind, the group starts to leave the Sky Terrace, with Mithos taking one quick glance at the grave, which doesn't escape Genis' attention as he asks "What's wrong?"
"…Exspheres are terrible things, aren't they?" Mithos says, and after a moment of looking sorrowfully at his own Exsphere and remembering whose life was taken to make this one exist he replies with a melancholy "Yeah…"
Riku takes one look at Alicia's Exsphere as those two talked about it, thinking to himself as he recalled last night's discussion with Mithos "…Could I revive Alicia? I would be doing it for Presea, who unlike Mithos is innocent in the grand scheme of things…But would it be fair to revive one innocent and leave another dead? With the amount of stress a single revive would likely put on my body, there's no way I could do more than one on this journey…"
"…Who am I kidding? It's impossible to revive Alicia if she no longer has her body…I'm sorry to both you and Presea, If I could revive you, maybe it'd be easier to decide this…" Riku dispels his line of thinking after her mentally apologizes to Alicia, and then goes off to meet up with the rest of the group. As he departs, Alicia's voice whispers out one more time "Who was that? …How could I hear his thoughts?"
Leaving Alicia's grave behind for now, the group heads back down the elevator to resume their search for Raine, seeing as Presea was now not in dire spirits. When the group end up at the bottom floor, they manage to come across two generic looking employees conversing about something convenient. "Isn't the Otherworldly Gate going to open tonight?" One man says.
"Man, I don't like thinking about that. It could suck us over into the hellish land of Sylvarant." The other guy says. Lloyd quickly runs over to those guys and says "Excuse me. That Otherworldly Gate you were talking about just now, where is it?"
One of the guys looks at Lloyd in a flabbergasted manner and blurts out "Who the hell are you?" Mithos tries to handle the matter with a little more tact, and says to the two men "I apologize. We'd like to go see the Otherworldly Gate. Would you be kind enough to tell us where it is?"
The man changes his mood instantly, explaining to the group as they approach "If you're looking for the Otherworldly Gate, it's to the east of this city. There are huge rocks all over it. You can't miss it. But tonight's a full moon. If the legend is true, then the gate will open and you'll be sucked into the world of Sylvarant!"
"I wonder if Raine is there." Mithos points out, while Lloyd shrugs his shoulders and points out "Who knows. But it's the only clue we have. Let's at least take a look." Everyone is about to head back for the ferry, but then Riku grabs Lloyd by his thin white scarf gently to stop him.
"Hang on a second there Lloyd, we shouldn't go for the gate quite yet." Riku suggest, leading to Lloyd turning around and saying in a puzzled tone "Huh? Why not?" The teenage Overlord explains in a concise manner "Raine likely heard about the full moon affecting the Otherworldly Gate, so I wouldn't believe that she'd go there until night comes. Considering you all just got up an hour ago, we probably have at least eight hours before Raine would appear at the gate…Assuming I'm correct about the lunar cycle here."
"You sure about that? Wouldn't it be a good idea to try and check the gate just in case she went there early?" Zelos suggests. "Well I guess we could try that. I don't know, we just have a lot of time to waste before the gate supposedly opens up."
Riku closes his eyelids and thinks to himself "What DID they do between Altamira and the Otherworldly Gate? Seriously, they never explained this." The teenage Overlord then snaps his fingers and says to the group "Hey! Maybe there's a library around here we can use to study the Otherworldly Gate! Either we'll find Raine there, or at the very least we'll be well informed on the place!"
"But what about Regal? We can't just leave him waiting at the entrance for us." Sheena says, leading to Riku commenting in a realizing tone "Oh yeah, that's right. Ummm…" As he awkwardly tries to think how to handle that matter, Zelos waves his hand out and offers to the group "How about Lloyd, Riku, Genis, and Mithos stay here and research the Otherworldly Gate while the rest of us meet up with Regal up front. We'll take some of the Rheairds and check the gate, and then perform a couple quick checks at Sybak and Mizuho to see if Raine went there."
"That sounds like a better plan than any, as much as I hate to admit it, Zelos." Sheena says, but after a moment of realization she looks angrily at the Chosen and blurts out "Hey! You're just trying to take all the females with you! I almost fell for it too!"
Zelos snaps his fingers and smirks, saying in a somewhat disappointed tone "Can't slip anything past you, can I Sheena? Oh fine, you can stay with Lloyd and the others. But I think Colette should stick with us just in case Cruxis change their minds AGAIN and try to capture her. A mobile target is better than a stationary one, as they say."
"…I have never heard anyone say that." Riku stoically points out, leading to Zelos commenting in response "…We're just going to go now." Zelos, Presea and Colette leave through the ferry out of the building, with Lloyd giving Colette a quick "Be careful" before she departs all the way.
For the next few hours, Lloyd and his group stick to the Lazereno Company's Library, trying their hardest to find anything related to the Otherworldly Gate. When they are unsuccessful even after scouring every book in the area, they head out of the building and try to gathered information from any citizen they run across, leading to another couple hours of time wasted when they mostly get the same information they already knew.
Night begins to fall upon Tethe'alla by the time Zelos and his group make it back to Altamira's front gates, where Lloyd and his group meet up and say "Well, we didn't come up with anything. Did you find Raine or her Rheaird?"
Zelos shakes his head and mentions "Not a single sign of her. Looks like Riku might've been right on this one, we'll just need to head back there now that the full moon is up." The teenage Overlord turns his head to look at the sky, where the bright white light from the moon gleams off of his eyes. "Then we need to hurry, especially if what they said about the gate is true."
With urgency on their minds, the group boarded the Rheairds and quickly took off for the Otherworldly Gate to the east of Altamira. As the two men stated, it was easy to see the gate thanks to the tall and archaic brown stones gathered around what appeared to be a buried runic seal. And as Riku correctly predicted, Raine was standing in plain sight close to the seal with most of her books and supplies scattered about as she tried to examine the entirety of the gate.
The group landed their Rheairds and used the wing pack to store them before approaching Raine. Lloyd took the lead and commented "Professor?" to try and grab her attention. Raine flinches in fright and immediately flips herself around, saying in a puzzled voice "Everyone! Why are you all here?"
Genis says in a disbelieving voice "Why do you think we're here? I-I mean we were worried about you!" Mithos adds on to his friend's concerns by mentioning "It's dangerous to come here alone. As a fellow half-elf, I can't just leave you here by yourself."
"Why did you come here professor?" Colette asks, which leads to Raine hanging her head slightly in a melancholy manner before she replies to the group "…This is where Genis and I were abandoned."
This bit of news is puzzling to most of the group, especially to Genis, and Lloyd in particular brings up "What are you talking about? You two are from Sylvarant." Raine shakes her head and explains concisely "I happened to catch sight of this place when we rescued Colette from Rodyle and it's been on my mind ever since. Then, when I heard Altessa's story of this place, I became certain. The images in my memory…the ruin I've been searching for all this time is this place."
"So what are you saying? The two of you were born in Tethe'alla?" Sheena asks. Genis shakes his head and blurts out in disbelief "It can't be! All of my memories are of Iselia! I don't know this world at all!"
Raine folds her arms and glances sadly at Genis, explaining to him to the best of her ability "…We were born and raised in the village of the elves, from which we were eventually ostracized. We were abandoned here because this place was said to be the path to the fabled Sylvarant."
"The village of the elves? But isn't that off-limits to anyone except pure elves?" Mithos asks. Raine says in response "Yes. I don't know the details of what happened, but I'm positive that I was left here along with Genis when he was just a newborn. And we eventually ended up Sylvarant…"
While Genis was reeling back from the revelation his sister gave him, a voice called out to the entire group "Then this time, let me send you to hell instead!" Lloyd immediately flips around in the direction of the voice and asks "Who's there?!"
Sheena recognizes the voice and turns alongside Lloyd to find Kuchinawa standing at the top of the nearby hill with his eyes burning with a furious glare. "W-What? Kuchinawa, what are you doing here?!" The ninja is silent for a few seconds as he raises his right hand into the air, saying in a bitter tone to his friend "My chance to avenge my parents' deaths has finally arrived."
At the command of his snapped fingers, about a few dozen Papal Knights swarm around the entire group, entrapping them there with little cause means of escape. As Sheena flipped her head back and forth she said in confusion "Avenge your parents? What?"
"Correct…" Kuchinawa callously says as he pulls a kunai out of his suit and points it at his fellow ninja. "You will die for killing my parents along with countless others when you failed to pact with Volt!"
"T-That's insane!" Sheena blurts out as her emotions on this matter becoming extremely conflicted. Lloyd pulls out his swords while saying to Kakinada "That was an accident! Why are you doing this now?"
"Accident?!" Kuchinawa furious exclaims at the group, further explaining himself by stating "I could have accepted things if she just failed to make a pact with Volt. But then, she failed to assassinate the Chosen of Sylvarant, thereby placing Mizuho in danger. Yet look at her now. She's made pacts with SIX SUMMON SPIRITS like she is some sort of expert!"
"You have it all wrong!" Colette exclaims in defense of her friend, where the angered Kuchinawa replies quickly with "Do I?! I think she wasn't really trying during the first pact-making! Because of that, she killed my parents and our people!"
Sheena hangs her head low in shame and comments "I did the best I could! I…" But her former friend would have none of that from her, and exclaimed to the Papal Knights "Enough excuses! Kill them all!"
The Knights were about to charge straight at the group with their weapons raised, but suddenly a ring of fire forms in front of them all. At least ten Knights are burned alive by coming in contact with the flames, their armor scalding into their flesh and leaving them as nothing more than metallic skeletons on the ground once the process is complete. The rest of the Knights take pause, and glance into the ring of fire, where they find Riku lowering his right hand after carving the ring of fire into the grass.
"That's enough Kuchinawa, you won't be having your petty revenge anytime soon." Riku bluntly says to the ninja, but upon glancing at Kuchinawa the teenage Overlord finds him reaching into his outfit to pull out a blue seal. "You think you are the only one who can control elements, Overlord? Behold the arts of Mizuho clan!"
With a slam of the seal against the ground, Kuchinawa summons forth a lithe fleshy monster with a water-like mill attached to it's back. In a matter of seconds the atmosphere is filled with rain that dissolves the fire in front of him. Kuchinawa wastes little time in demanding of the Papal Knights "Now, no more distractions. END THEM!"
Riku quickly raised his right pointer finger into the air and thought to himself "Fine then Kuchinawa, if that's how you want to do this…I'll stop you before-" "Kuchinawa! Please! Don't drag them into this! I'm the one you despise, right? Then I'm the only one you need to kill!" Sheena exclaims with all of her might.
Kuchinawa extends his hand out of interest in what Sheena had to say, leading to the Papal Knights stopping in place and waiting for further orders. "Sheena, what the hell are you saying?!" Lloyd blurts out in sheer disbelief.
"It's okay Lloyd…Kuchinawa, please!" Sheena begs of her former friend to take her words into consideration, while behind her Riku was glancing at the girl in disbelief while thinking "…I should have just killed him without hesitation. Removing him is an interference that won't hurt the world at all…"
Kuchinawa pauses to think about this matter for a bit as the rain subsides, but as he was in the midst of this process he along with everyone else failed to notice the full moon perfectly aligning with the seal. The moon glows brightly, sending forth a piercing beam of light that crashes into an invisible force and converges into the shape of a sphere, and this very sphere stretches out into multiple strands of foreign electricity that touch the tips of the stones surrounding the seal.
The engravings on the stones light up with a pale green glow, and from this event the area begins to shake as a large purple void surrounded by an ethereal white and green edge begins to form from in the center of it. Raine's many tools and books are swiftly sucked into the void, and as Zelos glances back and forth between the void and Sheena's ridiculous antics he finally has enough and sheathes his sword while exclaiming "You've got to be kiddin' me! Enough of this, Sheena!"
Zelos doesn't waste any time in sprinting at the conflicted Sheena and grabbing her by the right arm. Sheena doesn't get a chance to say anything more than a surprised exclamation as Zelos flips around and drags Sheena towards the rift. The Chosen exclaims to his pal "Lloyd! Get a move on!" As he runs into the void and both he and Sheena instantly vanish through it upon being converted into a series of neon sparks.
Lloyd sheathes his swords and says to the group "Everybody, let's get into that gate!" He immediately turns around and runs for the gate, with everyone following one after the other soon enough. Kuchinawa tries to stop the group by sending the knights after them, but Riku punches the ground to create a large crack that sends forth a circular plume of dirt that blinds and stops the knights long enough for him to get back up and leap onto the rift the moment the event comes to a sudden end.
With all of his targets having vanished into the Otherworldly Gate, Kuchinawa can only stand dumbfounded at the matter as he clenches his fist in anger and proclaims "Damn them! The guardian signature trail disappeared! They've escaped into Sylvarant!"
Next Time: Return to the Declining World