Kirito
"Do these flowers have a name?"
They might...but I do not know it."
"Probably a flower that doesn't exist in Cardina."
Around Kirito and Eolyne, a show of small, fleeting lights raise towards the atmosphere of Admina. Their source is the expending life of the flowers and bushes, damaged by the crash of the X'rphan Mk 13's crash landing. Within the yellow sea is a 150-yard long dark gash with the white plane at one of the ends. It is a sad sight, but lay the blame with whoever fired missiles at the X'rphan.
Kirito using Incarnation to minimize the damage by the crash possibly kept them alive, but the destruction of the Star King's craft is considerably beyond repair at the moment. Amazingly, all the damage is structural in nature; the heat and wind elements contained in the cannisters in the craft's back are safe, But the damage to the belly, including the armor and internal piping, will need extensive professional work.
Kirito glances up to the dark sky. Sunrise is still to the eastern, but it is catching up to them. Through the darkness, Kirito can see the blue planet Cardina, 300,000 miles away. The X'rphan traveled at 180,000 miles per hour, crossing the distance in over an hour and a half...and to get home requires just as much time. Even with his ability to fly with Incarnation, Kirito cannot travel that fast, and he would run out of time before he and Eolyne touched Cardina as it is now shortly after two o'clock.
Their only hope is to recover another dragoncraft or hope Jaymes arrives. He could travel between worlds in seconds with his teleport ability, but there's the possibility that Jaymes and Kirito may not meet up. They hadn't thought that far, as usual.
"Hey, Eolyne." The pilot commander, helmet off, kneels at the edge of the scar, looking over the X'rphan. As his name is called, he looks up to the Star King through his ever-present white mask. Kirito circles around and bends down, hand on his knees. "Do you still believe I'm the actual Star King?"
Eolyne blinks in surprise and nods. "Yes...I do."
"Then in the name of Star King Kirito, I forgive you for damaging the X'rphan. For one thing, it was my fault for not noticing that black worm coming up from below. So let's put an end to the self-pity and start talking about what to do now."
",,,,,,,,I wasn't pitying myself," Eolyne responds with a smirk.
"Liar. You were acting just like you did when we got locked in the cells under the cathe—I mean, never mind. Look, just stand up." Catching himself before he confuses Eolyne for Eugeo again, Brushing the leaves off the commander's uniform, Kirito glances as his ship once again. "We'll have to leave it here. On that note...how come whoever knocked us down isn't attacking?"
It's been five minutes, and there's been no signs of a follow-up attack. Not from the ground, not from the air. Apparently Eolyne had an answer prepared. "The question is, was that an automated security system that fired those guided missiles, or was it intended to slow us down here on Admina?"
"Automated security system? Do you have those things, too?"
"The ground force was trying to implement something like that. But they couldn't solve the issue of how to tell apart friend from foe, so the project was shelved, as I recall."
"Ah, I see." In the real world, radiowaves solved this issue, but the Underworld didn't have that. However the communication devices in the Arabel manor and the Norlangarth imperial villa used some other sort of power. This poses another problem for regrouping with Jaymes...and warning him ahead of time. "Meaning it's possible to create a device that can fire a guided projectile at any dragoncraft it detects?"
"...Theoretically. The problem is what was mixed among the guided missiles—what you called a black worm. Is it possible to load something like that in an automated launcher?"
"Yeah, that's a good question." Two pair of eyes gaze to the chuck of ice nearby, which Eolyne created to trap one of the aforementioned worms. On approach, Kirito gets his first good look at it. It is a disturbing creature, three-feet in length and covered with hexagonal scales. At the semitranslucent is a ring of dots that don't look like eyes, but like a parasite that infects on the superficial layers of skin. The red light that Kirito noted during the attack is gone.
For whatever reason, Kirito's thoughts tread on another topic. "...Hey, Eolyne."
"...What is it?"
"What does your family call you?"
"Huh?" the commander exclaims increduosly. "Are you really asking me that right now?"
"When you're having difficult conversations, it helps to abbreviate what you call each other, right? Just call me Kirito."
"..." Eolyne releases a disbelieving sigh, probably in doubt that the Star King is more casual than his station applies. "Mom...my mother called me Eo or Eol."
"All right. May I call you Eo, too?"
"Go ahead."
"Ahem... So, Eo, have you ever seen anything like this before?"
"No. But..." Eolyne steps up to the block, placing his hand on it, then immediately retracts it as if it caused him pain. "There is an ancient text that contains a particular passage. This black worm reminds me of it."
"Text?"
"It's a detailed record of the Otherworld War, a document that only members of the Stellar Unification Council can view. At the end of the Battle of the Eastern Gate, the Dark Territory's sorcerers used a forbidden art that converted the life of their fellow soldiers directly into spatial resources, fashioning them into living weapons with the capability to follow targets of their own accord. I believe they were called...deathworms..."
"It was those things that killed Eldrie." Kirito nods, remember that he learned of Eldrie's death from Alice who mentored him and possesses his weapon, the Frostscale Whip. Then he jumps in place and turn around, seeing the red and black attire that is the trademark of his real-world best friend, Jaymes. The former Crimson Emperor waves to Kirito and Eolyne, then turns to the downed X'rphan. "Seems you had some trouble with these guys."
"H-how did you get here, and so quietly?" Eolyne says in shock.
Jaymes point up to the sky. "I sensed trouble a couple of minutes ago as we were entering Admina's orbit, so we flew the Chaos Drake at full speed in the lower atmosphere but still far from the ground. All I could sense was multiple amounts of Incarnation being depleted until two remained - yours, Kirito, and I guess this ice block is Eolyne's. But I didn't show myself until I touched down and saw it was you two." He turns over his shoulder and nod. "It's fine."
Out of nowhere appears a girl right behind Jaymes. She looks to be around Kirito and Jaymes' age, maybe a year younger than the former. Her bronzed skin and purple steel light armor alone describes her as a dark worlder, so he had never seen her before. Her bronze eyes, however, are awfully familiar. Not the eyes themselves, but the way they are glaring at the ice - or the worm within - looks just like how Jaymes stares at something or someone when he's thinking to himself.
But what throws Kirito off is that Eolyne bows as soon as the girl reveals herself. "Princess Sylvie."
"Commander Herlentz. You say this is a deathworm? That's..."
"I agree, it doesn't seem possible. The large-scale offensive arts used in the Otherworld War were all supposed to be destroyed after the war was finished. Your mother and father saw to it. But of course...any sorcerer who was able to incant the arts would naturally have the formula memorized...so there is always the possibility that it was secretly written down and saved somewhere."
"Mother and father... Princess Sylvie..." Kirito murmurs those words to himself, then glances at Jaymes. "Um..."
"That's a later conversation." Jaymes says while holding his hand up, though he doesn't too pleased about the recent conversation. Was Eolyne supposed to keep that a secret or something? Or maybe Kirito is wrong, as that same unpleasant look is focused on the worm. "You say Eydis and I destroyed all large-scale offensive arts such as this? That doesn't sound like something I would do...right?"
Sylvie nods. "The Emperor and Empress did discard of those arts, but not entirely. However...that's a secret that only the royal family knows and has access to. It should be in the secret chamber. So how..."
"...If you understand the spellwords, you could alter the spell itself. That's also why I'm here, after all. I'm assuming you know about the Deep Freeze spell?"
Kirito nods. "Airy, the former platform operator, told us about it. But if you're here to retrieve the spell too, that means..."
"Airy the platform operator... Oh, her. She's still alive too? Huh... Anyway, yes, I do know an altered version of Deep Freeze, but altering it requires the time we don't have. It'd be easier if..." He shakes his head and sighs. " There's lot to talk about, Kirito, but we can do so later. Let's focus on the now."
"Right. So...what do we do with this worm?"
Eolyne thinks to himself for a moment, then suggests, "If the ice melts, it might start moving again. But I wouldn't want to damage it and cause an explosion, either. Can you do something with your Incarnation, Kirito and Jaymes?"
"Um...are you sure we're allowed to do that?"
"You used it when trying to stop the guided missiles and when the X'rphan landed, so there's no point trying to pretend that didn't happen. Of course, the smaller the effect, the better."
"I don't know if I can do smaller..." Kirito glances at Jaymes, who puts his hand on his chin. If the more experienced person with Incarnation doesn't believe it to be easy, Kirito might find it troublesome. Both boys understand that Incarnation requires more imagination the greater the intended effect is. And it correlates with the same application in the real world, too. Burning paper with fire is easy; burning metal, not so easy. But there is a possibility they could do it, if they operate with the properties of the world around them rather than pure imagery.
More specifically, the properties of the worm.
"Hmm." Kirito presses his hand against the ice. He "scans" the worm with the slightest bit of Incarnation without resistance unlike earlier. Because of that, though, Kirito senses chills coming from the worm. But not from the temperatire of the ice, but from within the worm. So that's how it worked as a "heat seeking" missile. It has a fear of the cold instilled in it, so it seeks heat - and the heat of the dragoncraft was like water in the desert for it.
Deeper within the worm, Kirito scans four dark elements. So that's what caused the "explosion" with the X'rphan; the volatile combination of dark and heat elements reacted and emitted a black hole of sorts. "Jaymes. I feel four dark elements inside. We should get rid of those first."
"Gotcha. Guide me." Jaymes place a finger on the ice and projects a light element from within. Light elements work as normal light does, so it moves through translucent material. Since Eolyne's frost-element conjuration of ice was formed without impurities, Jaymes' summoned light passes through the block easily. Leading Jaymes to the first dark element, Kirito uses Incarnation like a scalpel, cutting a small incision in the deathworm's hide big enough for the orb of light to pass through and hit the dark element. The eternal opposing element react without much violence as light and dark cancel each other out.
Three more times, and they were in the clear. The friends sigh with relief and nod to each other. "If only I was a master of light elements, maybe I could have defeated Vecta myself."
"I don't know, buddy. I believe his Incarnation was the issue. But weren't you already on your last legs anyway?"
"Well, yeah. Plus I really do prefer fire... Anyway, you sense that?"
"Uh-huh. Something is...alive inside the worm." What Kirito and Jaymes feel is a light conciousness from the body, but not specificy the worm's own. Kirito's eyes lock on the ring pattern on the worm's head, getting a feeling that his hypothesis that it was another organism. "I thought it was a parasite of sorts, like the one's in the eyes of snails."
"You mean Leucochloridium paradoxum, the green-banded broodsac? Yeah, snails are their immediate hosts, and they pulsate and grow within the eyes of snails, such as those in genus Succinea... Hey, what with that look? You appreciate it when Asuna's a smarty-pants."
"Because it fits her more than you, Mister Number 2 at school."
"Says the only gamer nerd who hasn't been truck-kun'd into another world."
"Says that nerd's friend who isn't a background male character... Got it." While the pair debated, Kirito reused the scalpel to carefully exorcise the parasite while Jaymes held down the larger worm's head. It took the entire conversation, but the organisms' parasitic relationship came to an end. The parasite didn't last long, as it shriveled up and turned to putty within the ice in seconds.
Bumping fists, the otherworlders turn back to their Underworld companions, who look mortified for some reason. Kirito believes it is due to the parasite...but he wouldn't be surprised if it is because the Star King and Crimson Emperor, the powerful rulers of the Human Empire and the Dark Territory, just spent the last couple of minutes acting like teenage boys. "I think that removes the danger."
"It's still alive, isn't it?" asks a distantly standing Eolyne, Sylvie, however, moves closer.
"Yes, it is...but it'll probably die if I crushed the whole ice block."
"Ugh... I don't really want to watch that..."
"I don't want to do it, either."
"Well, I'll squash it. No need for it to turn on us now-"
"No," Sylvie cries out to Jaymes. Hand on the block of ice, she turns her face towards Jaymes. "Don't kill it. It's... It's just a baby."
"A b-baby?"
"What do you mean, Sylvie?"
"It's a newborn worm. I bet those dark elements and the parasite were forced into it and turned into one of those missiles. Whoever created it and did those things...they're the real danger." Sylvie looks at Jaymes with angry, pleading eyes. Anger directed at the creator of the worm, for it is a man-made creature of darkness. Pleading for its life, for it did nothing but what it was forced to do.
Kirito had made his decision, and figured out a way to spare the weakened baby worm. Healing light elements can't save its life because it is created from the dark elements; however, pure dark elements will cause harm as the worm is solid material, which those elements erode. But dark elements are required to save it, just in a different form from a different element. If he paid attention in his classes back in his academy days at one point, Kirito remembers that cold ice is closer elementally to darkness than it is to light. He could convert the ice around the worm to dark mist and that'll solve the problem.
But he waited for Jaymes' say so, not that he needed any further persuasion. Jaymes crosses his arms and clicks his tongue. With a knowing smirk, Kirito converts the ice to mist, impressing Eolyne. "Oh...you can perform matter conversion without any spoken words? No wonder you're a legend..."
"Enough about that. Trust me—my conversion abilities are nothing compared to the great and mighty pontifex," Kirito replies. He realizes that it's the first time he spoke of Administrator in the presence of Eolyne and, in Sylvie's case, probably the first time she heard of the demi-goddess from someone other than her mother.
Returning focus to the worm, it had revitalized. The cut on its head was healing and had something akin to red eyes growing near the wound. The worm - or for a better word, the snake begins to wiggle its black slender body within the ice cavity, pressing its mouthless head against the walls for a escape.
"...What are you going to do?" Eolyne asks
"I think if I release it, it's going to return to where it was born."
"Ah...I see. And if we follow it, we might find out who made it...or failing that, the whereabouts of the production facility. Seems like a good plan to me..."
Jaymes nods. "It's our best bet."
"The problem is what we'll do if it starts flying with the same speed as the guided missiles." Kirito taps his foot on the ground, then says, "I guess we'll just have to tough it out and run. Are you good at running long-distance, Eo?"
"I'm not bad at it, but I don't like it, either."
"Neither do I. Well, let's set it loose..." Before that, though, he needs to hide the X'rphan. Sunrise is approaching, and the reflection of sunlight will expose the craft's location. To do this, Kirito firsr reaches out toward the dark gashes left by the crashing craft and projects a mental image of the yellow flowers upon them. From the scorched earth rises numerous buds. Each grows longer and larger, sprouting leaves and other buds, then bursting with yellow petals. After that, Kirito focused on the craft itself, picking the vine-based flowers to cover the X'rphan. He fused their bodies and grew them over the ship until it was completely covered nose to tail. The flowers then bloomed, becoming a flower-covered hill.
"...It's just like the story of Hoyer the Flower Summoner."
"W-wow... So this is the Incarnation of the Star King..."
Kirito tries to hold it back, but s simple glance at Jaymes breaks him out into a smirk. Jealous that he'd been shown up in front of who must be his daughter, Jaymes lowers his right arm from his face and cuts his eyes to the ice. "Yeah, whatever... You sure about running?"
The leather pilothood uniforms were light, so they wouldn't cause a problem with running. Jaymes must be asking whether Kirito was okay with running with the Night-Sky Blade and the Blue Rose Sword on his back. Kirito nods, knowing that he could cheat the weight of the swords with Incarnation. Drawing his sword for the first time in a couple hours, Kirito takes a moment o reflect on the usage of the sword. At minimal, it's been a month since he last wielded it, but as Star King Kirito...who knows. Formally greeting his partner, Kirito presses the tip against the ice block.
It split into two halves, freeing the worm. With the red rubies that is its eyes, it gazes at the humans while floating up in the air, then zips towards the dark western sky. "Let's follow it!"
"You two go on ahead. We'll catch up in a minute." Kirito did not question Jaymes, figuring he had a reason to delay his chase. Fortunately, the slithering deathworm was not as speedy in its natural movements as it was as a missile, but it was still fast. If this was the real world, Kirito wouldn't have lasted a minute...and he recalls his friend's scrunity of his physical condition after the first Ordinal Scale boss event.
But in the Underworld, physical endurance was tied to the object control. Eolyne's was 62, higher than most if not all Integrity Knights (Eydis withstanding at this point probably) and Kirito's slighty doubled that figure.
"Just say something if you're getting tired, Eo!"
"Same goes for you, Kirito!" Hearing that reminded Kirito of his late friend that it causes him to lost his speed and posture momentarily. But Kirito rebalances himself and focuses on the black snake ten yards ahead in the dark blue sky. If he loses sight of the thing... No, he can't. If for no other reason than to reunite Alice with Selka, and himself with Ronie and Tiese, he has to achieve his goal of recovering the Deep Freeze art.
So with that mindset, he runs on...and then a cycle-like vehicle with two passengers passes them by...