Why was Alisha here? Hadn't she been detained for the war and to force Sorey into doing Hyland's dirty work? Or was there something else I was missing? As I stood there, thinking, Rokurou moved towards her with both hands on his daggers.
"She's a hellion. Don't be fooled." He said, frowning slightly. "Something must've corrupted her. She's just like me."
Something must've corrupted her? But what, and why? Thinking back, I remembered the event in the Water Trial Sorey undertook. Where Alisha had taken the sword that had been offered to Sorey and had said she'd prove she was better than Rose. By rending the world in two, in fact. I stared straight at her, unsure of what path I should take on confronting her. The smile on her face wasn't like any I'd ever seen on her face before, and not one I wanted to see again. The sword from the Water Trial was in her hand, and she stepped closer.
"I see that Sorey still takes Rose." She said. I noticed something on her neck, a sort of crack spreading out. Filled with Malevolence, no doubt. It seemed Rokurou had noticed this too, with the way he slowly pulled out his daggers and took a combat stance. Alisha's smile widened, and she charged him. He deflected her blow with ease, the sound of metal clashing against each other ringing out into the night. It was a grating sound, one that I lightly flinched to. Alisha slashed diagonally, but once again got deflected by Rokurou.
"How dare you get in my way!" Alisha yelled, infuriated. "By destroying the Oracle, I can weaken the Shepherd's reach! He won't be able to stop me then!"
"Man, you have problems." Rokurou said, blocking another incoming attack. "And here I thought I had major issues. Give it a rest."
"Fethmus Lkwi!" I armatized with Zero, aiming at her with the Armatus' bow and arrow. As I fired, she dodged out of the way and Rokurou dashed in quickly.
"Form Zero, Sunder!" He knocked her into the air with a slash, before gathering energy in the blade in his right hand. Lashing out, the gathered energy burst and hit her in a straight line. She fell to the ground with a thud, before getting back up and glaring at Rokurou. I aimed for her again, but she jumped up to the walls of Lastonbell.
"Know this, Oracle. I will kill both you and Rose. And then Sorey will see just how lost he is without me as his Squire. It's like it should've been, instead of that redhead bitch taking all the glory."
"Don't you dare talk about my girlfriend that way!" I yelled, releasing the arrow in her direction. But it missed its mark as Alisha dropped into Lastonbell and the arrow flew right by where she'd stood. I lowered the bow, staring at where she'd been. The armatization released after a moment, and Zero appeared right beside me. Rokurou sheathed his daggers and Aevar walked over to us.
"I didn't know Princess Alisha held those kinds of feelings in her heart." He said, looking at where she'd been just a few minutes ago. "I suppose she... had a lot of animosity towards Rose to end up becoming like that."
"It's not hers." I said. "While we were staying at the Marlind inn before we were conscripted into the war, Sorey told me about how his first meeting with Alisha went. She couldn't get to her spear so she pulled her fist back and punched him as hard as she could. He said he felt it for a week afterwards."
"That sounds like something she'd do. Lady Maltran trained her pretty efficiently..." Aevar frowned. "But then... why is she like this if it isn't hers?"
"That's right. You weren't there when it happened." I realized that he only knew a little of what happened, as he'd left earlier on before the reset even happened. Before Alisha had taken the sword from the Water Trial, and had proclaimed she'd rend the world in two to show Sorey just how much better she was than Rose. "After Sorey completed the Water Trial, Alisha took the cursed sword and claimed she'd rend the world in two just because she had something against Rose and wanted to prove herself to be 'better' in some way. I'm guessing that being imprisoned gave the past Alisha an opening to take over the Alisha we all know here."
"So that means the crack on her neck is the past Alisha, taking over this Alisha's body." Rokurou folded his arms against his chest and huffed slightly. "Wonder what exactly made that possible."
"...It was probably me." I said, taking off the mask and revealing my face to them. Rokurou, Aevar and Zero took a step back at this. "When the world was reset, I was given the past Rose's body to use as my own. With a good amount of you retaining your memories, plus that odd Sorey-amalgamation I had to kill in Marlind..."
"Might not even be your fault." Rokurou said, canting his head to the right just a tiny bit. "We don't know what kind of shit an entire world being set back would do. Right now, we just have speculations to go off of."
"I agree with Rokurou." Aevar said as I put my mask back on. "We don't know what's going on, but we just have to keep going. I think that's the basis of what he said, anyway."
"Yep." Rokurou nodded.
"We... should get going." I waved a hand, turning away. "There's really not much we can do here. Sorey and the others'll end up at Pendrago soon. Hopefully we'll have dealt with the Cardinal by that point, because it'll make one less stop for him on his quest."
"But shouldn't Sorey at least get the chance to realize he's not up to the task?" Zero spoke up as we all started walking again. "To head towards the Trials and undertake them to get the power to deal with Heldalf?"
"...You have a point there." If I took care of her before Sorey had a chance to realize he didn't have the power to defeat her at the time, then he would never find it in him to go to Gododdin to do the Fire Trial. It was crucial that he did, so he would start to gain the true powers of the Shepherd. More power than he would probably know what to do with, in all honesty. "We'll hang out at the inn until he leaves Pendrago, then we deal with Cardinal Forton ourselves. If we're lucky, maybe Miss Alisha'll give us another appearance."
"So we can deal with her?" Aevar asked, a frown on his face.
"So I can attempt to purify her. Given the crack on her neck, it might not be possible to do it the typical way." I replied, making sure to look around to see if there were any hellions. Oddly, the path through was pretty empty and devoid of hellions... maybe Alisha was the boss fight that made them disappear for a while, or someone-
"Oh yeah, I found this in the bag so I used it!"
-used a Holy Bottle. Zero tucked the empty bottle into my bag before patting it a couple times. There was a sly smile on her face the entire time she did that, as if challenging me to say something. I didn't, continuing the pace towards Pendrago. The weather shifted as we walked, slowly drizzling and then turning into a full-blown rain. It seemed Zero had retreated back inside of me to hide from the rain, and I didn't blame her one bit. The three of us remaining outside in the rain booked it towards the city limits and I shoved the gates open. Even the cobblestone felt like it was flooded as we made our way to the inn to escape the rain.
I pulled out as much gald as I could to buy a couple rooms. One for the guys, and one for the girls. It was only a couple hundred gald, given they didn't have much traffic here due to the rain, so I retreated to my room as quickly as possible before starting to pull off the wet clothes I was wearing. I shoved on whatever I could find in the bag, which turned out to be a spaghetti-strap white shirt with a slit in the left side that only went up to the beginning of my hip, a comfortable off-white jacket with light pink sleeves and pockets, a pair of black short shorts that mercifully covered enough. I forwent putting anything else on at the moment, knowing I wouldn't be leaving the room for now. I needed to sleep, but first...
I had to get my clothes up to dry.
"Hate wet clothes." I said, hanging my wet clothes over the headboard of the extra bed that wouldn't be used. It was the same bed I'd woken up in, when I had realized that Rose was gone and my dream had prophesized her death. I didn't really know what to do, besides go curl up on the bed that I was going to sleep on and stare out the window for a bit. The rain continued to fall, and I didn't really know what to do beyond just sitting here and staring out the window. Out of my peripheral, I saw Zaveid, Eizen, Kain and Zero appear.
"Worrying about what could happen afterwards?" Zaveid asked, taking a seat on the bed I was sitting on.
"Yeah. I'm wondering if what I'm doing is the right choice. Taking care of things, like the Cardinal. What if I mess things up? What if I end up causing major problems down the line?" I shook my head, looking at him. "Do you think, if I do this, Sorey'll get strong enough to not die this time around? Spend more time getting stronger so Lunarre doesn't get the better of him?"
"That's not really how Sheps works, and you know that." Zaveid leaned back. It was Eizen who spoke up next, so I turned my attention to him instead.
"You want to stop the Lord of Calamity, right?" He asked, walking up to look at me. His hands rested on his hips in a leisurely-like manner, but the look he fixed me with was a steely one. If I were the me of the past, the me before the reset... I would've flinched away. But I just kept looking. "If this is the path you're going to walk, walk it with pride. Don't let doubt keep you from doing what you think is right. If it means you're sparing Sorey from a harsher fate, then do what you can."
"Never thought you to be the one to give pep talks, Eizen." Zaveid said with a grin.
"Sorey's taking care of Edna, so we have to make sure to take care of him in turn." Eizen stated matter-of-factly. "And if this is the path Rani chooses to walk, we should support her every step of the way. Isn't that what you said eight hundred years ago?"
Zaveid laughed. "I did, didn't I?"
"If you two are done-" Zero cut in, folding her arms. "-then can we get some sleep? The sun'll be up soon, even though we won't be able to see it, so we should at least get some form of sleep before then."
"Zero's right." Kain agreed. "And lest we forget, Rani's the only human with us, so we need to keep her from keeling over."
"Yeah, I should get some sleep..." I took off the jacket, hanging it on the headboard carefully before moving to slip under the covers. "G'night. I'll see you guys later."
"Night, Rani." I heard them say, before I drifted off to sleep.