"Oh man, we've screwed up big time..." Zidane thought when the armored stranger started walking towards them. He was definitely burmecian, his clawed feet grazing the earth with each step.

The king glanced at the trees. How many foes were still lurking in the shadows? Did they have them in their sights without him even noticing?

"Identify yourself!" Freya barked.

"Don't you recognize my voice, Cherry? You break my poor heart!" the intruder retorted.

The dragoon gasped.

"Sir Wulfweard..? Is that you..?" she asked, astounded by his presence in Alexandria.

"Technically I'm no longer a knight, but yes, it's me," the warrior replied, he then put down his hood to reveal his face. He was an old, grizzled Burmecian whose drooping whiskers had grown long enough to resemble a mustache.

"Uh... Freya? Mind telling me who's this guy and why is he calling you Cherry?" Zidane intervened, poking his friend's shoulder to call her attention.

"Oh, sorry for that..." she apologized, "he was my instructor during my years at the academy... and Cherry is military slang for rookie."

"And let's not forget about your lucky raincoat..." the old soldier added, tittering under his breath. "You acted, and looked like, a giant cherry."

Zidane snorted and made a mental note to tease Freya about her nickname later.

"What are you doing here, sir?" the dragoon asked him, lowering her guard. Zidane was unsure about trusting him so quickly, so he kept a hand close to his concealed dagger.

"Oh, please, you can drop the formalities, girl." he answered, drawing a small metal box from one of his pockets. He then approached his old student and handed it to her, "I was secretly tasked a month ago by King Puck to give you this if Ulrich ever managed to usurp the throne."

"Huh..?!" she mumbled, stunned by his words. She then took the golden case and studied it for a moment; it was very light, richly ornate and had the Dragon's Crest engraved on its lid.

"I must warn you..." Wulfweard said, his voice tinged with apprehension, "What lies inside will imperil your very soul should you decide to open it."

"Wait, wait, wait, hold on!" Zidane intervened, waving the warrior off, "What is all this soul mumbo-jumbo all of a sudden? Why is that thing so dangerous? Why would Puck give her something like that? I mean, why should we trust you, Sir Wulfweird or whatever you're called?"

The old dragoon smirked.

"You are Lord Zidane Tribal, King Consort of Alexandria, Savior of Gaia, am I right?" the burmecian politely inquired.

"I sure as hell am, so tell me why shouldn't I kick your ass and throw you into jail for infiltrating the castle and giving my friend an artifact of doom!" the genome exclaimed.

"Zidane..!" Freya blurted out, scandalized.

"It's fine, girl, what he says is completely understandable." Wulfweard conceded. He then produced a fist sized artifact from a leather pouch strapped to his belt. It was made of brass and loosely resembled a human heart. Its most striking feature was a small transparent window at its center that revealed a dimly glowing crystal core. "Allow me to give you this as a token of my trustworthiness, Your Majesty."

"What is this..?" Freya inquired, intrigued by the otherworldly device.

"We found it while raiding one of Ulrich's secret warehouses. He has been smuggling some strange containers into our kingdom, hiding them in remote locations to avoid attracting the court's attention." the old burmecian answered, "There were some kind of... mechanical monsters inside those 'coffins'. We took this from the chest cavity of one of them. We suspect it to be its power source."

Cold sweat started running down Zidane's brow. He didn't like the sound of that story at all.

"What do you think those... things are?" Freya asked, disturbed by her instructor's report.

"I don't know, but we identified four distinct types of these machines, each bearing a code name and a number on its container's lid: 'Shiva', 'Ifrit', 'Ramuh' and 'Odin'." Wulfweard said, taking a small notebook out of his pouch, "Here, I had my team's specialist speed-draw them for you."

Zidane and Freya started looking at the illustrations. Nightmarish clockwork aberrations glared back at them from the sketchbook's pages, sending shivers down their spines.

"Wait a second... Shiva, Ifrit, Ramuh..." Zidane muttered, "that would be ice, fire and lightning..."

"And look at the retractable blades inside the Odin model's arms..." Freya added, marking them with her finger.

"They must be golems of some sort... unmanned war machines..." Zidane said, staring at a drawing of an Ifrit's head, "Where the hell did Ulrich get weapons like these?"

"They are most likely mass-produced. Only two other realms in Gaia are currently capable of such a technological feat." Wulfweard said, "And we've known for a while that most of Ulrich's resources come from Treno, so that pretty much narrows down the answer to one possibility: the nation that never sleeps."

Treno. That name flooded Zidane's mind with bad memories, both old and recent ones. A terrifying realization dawned on him.

"Fire... ice... lightning!" he exclaimed, prompting both Burmecians to stare blankly at him. "Freya, hand me the heart, please!"

The dragoon obliged. Zidane looked for a moment at the strange device's core. Suddenly, he understood what he was looking at.

"Son of a bitch!" he yelled, repressing an almost irresistible urge to destroy the artifact.

"Zidane, what's wrong?!" Freya asked him, startled by his outburst.

"This is a Black Waltz core!" the genome told her, so enraged that he could barely talk.

"What?! But how?! There is no more mist to create them!" Freya exclaimed, terrified by the prospect of a clandestine black mage army hidden right under Burmecia.

"Look at the crystal! It's a human soul!" Zidane screamed. "Those motherfuckers have been making these things out of people!"

Freya felt the need to throw up, but managed to contain herself. Sir Wulfweard stared in shock at the abominable contraption, wondering what kind of twisted beast could be responsible of such an atrocity.

"What in the name of Reis is Ulrich doing..?" the old warrior muttered, "Ruin is the only possible outcome of this blasphemy!"

Zidane was going to suggest immediately returning to the castle when he noticed that something was off about Freya. He called her name but she seemed to have retreated deep into herself. She was trembling, her eyes closed, her fists clenched. Her Dragon's Crest abruptly started shining beneath her shirt and the emblem carved on Puck's reliquary responded with its own purple glow.

"Oh, no..." Sir Wulfweard muttered with a broken voice.

"What?! What's happening?!" Zidane shouted.

"Her wrath has attracted the Allfather's attention... he's calling her to replace Lord Puck as his Spear..." he replied, a single tear rolling down his cheek, "Poor girl... it didn't have to be this way..."

The old dragoon then prostrated himself in adoration.

"Are you insane, geezer?! Freya! Freya snap out of it!" the genome yelled and tried to reach for her. The spectral head of a dragon emerged from her body and rammed him with so much force that he was thrown against a nearby tree, breaking it in half like a twig.

...

"Open your eyes, child." a deep voice boomed. It seemed to come from everywhere at once.

Freya obeyed. She immediately gasped, terrified by what she was seeing.

"Wh-what kind of sorcery is this?!" the burmecian stammered. She no longer was in the Royal Garden or in Alexandria. She was in a place that did not even exist anymore: the house where she grew up.