ATUHOR'S NOSE:

: 6/22/24, 12:32 PM
: chapter 10 of leaf story might be approaching postable ... i still gotta figure out the entire soundtrack though

... Ahaha. Whoops. And y'all here on FFN don't get to see it anyway cause Links Are Forboden.

Is there an established history of the pre-Symphonia times? Probably, somewhere, but I don't have it, so I'm just gonna make things up :V

Also, I somehow failed to notice just how much the windmaster was foreshadowing until I wrote this chapter. False divinity, meaningless sacrifices, "the needs of the many" except it's not even actually helping the many...

Anyway shout out to Wisp for looking this over before posting. This may or may not directly lead to an uptick in Raine going ruin mode in future chapters. :p

Since we were still waiting for someone to get back to us with that road pass, my few days of rest amounted to the same history study and note-decrypting that I had been planning to do anyway, just with less spear practice.

I did get one thing out of my notes that would be potentially useful, but it seemed like a long shot. Still, I wrote a letter for Neil anyway. If nothing happened, nothing happened.

It almost also contained more meditation.

"Your memories are clearly still in your mind, you just need to access them," Raine explained. "If you focus properly, maybe more will come back to you."

"Maybe," I said. "Problem is, false recovered memories are also a thing, and focusing real hard seems like a good way to make some of those — and I have no idea how to tell the difference. Without a real specific direction, I think I'm best off just keeping doing what I've been doing." And Raine begrudgingly accepted that, though she still wanted me to work harder on finding anything that could spark a connection. Unfortunately, neither of us could even come up with a direction for that.

By day three, though, I was starting to get seriously antsy. "I think I'm recovered by now, right? I don't feel mana exhausted anymore, at least."

Raine muttered an incantation ("Inspect Magic...") and took a look at... my mana flow or something, I assume. I'd asked for details the first time — or, well, it was the fourth time she'd checked, but the first time I had been awake to ask about it — but it had gone completely over my head, possibly because I had still been running on fumes at the time and could barely think.

"Hmm," Raine hmm'd. "Your mana finally seems to be recovering properly. You should be okay to resume physical activity again — just not too strenuous."

"Train, but not for hours, gotcha," I said, nodding. "... Say, why does mana exhaustion mean I need to lay off physical activity, anyway?"

"It doesn't, per se," Raine explained. "It's more that you need to refrain from any strenuous activity — but while I warned you explicitly against physical activity, you didn't need me to tell you not to cast magic, right?"

I considered the prospect of casting a spell and my head started to feel blurry at the mere thought. "Yeah, I can see what you mean. It's gonna be a few more days before that sounds like a good idea." Which was a shame, seeing as magic was, scientifically speaking, super rad.

Conveniently, it was later that same day that a Palmacosta guard showed up with our road pass. I handed her my note to take back to Neil ("Remember, this is specifically for Neil.") and finally, finally, we crossed Hakonesia Peak.

We made our way to the House of Salvation on the other side, and there, after a brief discussion, decided to head west to Asgard first. The Balacruf Mausoleum was approximately equidistant in the other direction, but we still didn't know which place had the real Summon Spirit and which had the impostor monster — even my own notes didn't have the answer, or at least not in the part of the text we'd decoded so far — and Asgard seemed like a better place to look into that.

Unlike in Palmacosta, we didn't immediately run into anything suspicious or, well, anything. It looked like a fairly ordinary town with a tourist attraction. Several tourist attractions, actually, mostly various sites of historical interest. Three inns, incredibly — we booked a room for the night at the cheapest of the three, and then...

"So," I suggested, "we split up and search for clues? Into pairs, I imagine would be best."

"Sure!" Lloyd declared cheerfully, immediately grabbing Genis by the hand. "C'mon, Genis, let's go look around!" And without waiting for a response, he dashed off, dragging Genis behind him.

"... in retrospect I really should have seen that coming," I said with an awkward grin.

"I will escort the Chosen," Kratos said, and immediately headed off with her.

I blinked. "Okay, that one I feel like I legitimately could not have predicted." Either way, it left me and Raine as the last pair. "Well. We passed a ruin on the way here. Shall we investigate?"

"This isn't just a ruin, Leaf!" Raine said, her eyes immediately sparkling with archaeological joy. "This is the mural hall of the first king of Asgard..."

...

While Raine explained the mural in complete detail, I skimmed over it more broadly, looking for the telltale wind-green of either our Summon Spirit or something that could reasonably impersonate them. I slowly walked down one collapsed hall, and back to the front branch area, then down another, and back... and groaned as I realized I was just not seeing it.

"Leaf, are you listening?"

"Course I am. You were just explaining about how Asgard wasn't actually called Asgard at the time, but the fourth king came up with that name and ordered the old one destroyed cause he hated king number 1. And apparently he did a good job of it cause nobody's found a single trace of the old name since then." Raine frowned loudly. "I know you used names there, too, but they didn't stick like the roles did."

"Hm. So you are paying some attention, at least."

"Don't get me wrong, history's fascinating and all, but — we're here for a specific reason, right?" I gestured expansively to the whole ruin. "But there doesn't seem to be anything relevant to that right here. So we head to the next ruin now, right?"

Raine barely suppressed a whine. "I... suppose that is the prudent option," she admitted begrudgingly.

"And hey," I said, "the next ruin's cool and historical too, right?"

"It is!" And of course she was immediately perked back up. "Just north of here, there's the remains of..."

...

There were four more ruins just nearby, and none of them seemed to be relevant at all, though one of them faked us out a bit by depicting an impersonator — but of the king, not the Summon Spirit.

So at this point we were wandering vaguely towards the center of town in hopes of meeting back up with the rest of the group, when —

B O O M

"What the hell was that‽" I shouted, immediately drawing my spears and running towards the sound.

"That came from the center of town!" Raine said. "There's another ruin there — that smoke is rising from its exact location!"

"Someone's doing terrorism now‽"

"I think it's doing a little more than scare people," Lloyd said, catching up from another direction, Genis on his back.

"It definitely is scaring people, though," Colette said, swoocing down from wherever she was. I looked back in hopes of figuring out where that was but only saw that Kratos had also caught up when I wasn't looking, somehow.

"That's not what — never mind, crisis, let's handle that already."

When I reached the top of the stairs, there was a big smoking crater in the back of what used to be a big stone stage, and a purple floating creature with a massive bladed tail menacing over two people I didn't recognize.

"Meteoroid." I jumped over, swiping the thing in the face as I came down in front of its targets. "So, this thing blew up this ruin?"

"Yes," said the one with short blue hair who was wearing glasses. "It was all this thing's doing."

The redhead with the bandana made an odd noise, but then — "Y- yeah, the Summon Spirit of Wind here did it."

I looked back at the redhead in confusion, then back to the monster. "This is a Summon Spirit?" It looked more like the guardian monsters we had to kill before Colette could do her thing.

"I am the master of the wind," the thing hissed, "and I demand tribute for this insolence."

"Or what, you'll blow me? I don't know what you are, but you're no Summon Spirit."

"Summon Spirit... yes, the fools that live here said that. They were all too willing to give their daughters to a Summon Spirit... who would I be to correct their misconception?"

I scowled. "I think I've heard enough from you." I glanced back at the two people still standing behind me. "Y'all are planning to get out of here, right?"

"R- right," the redhead said. "Let's get out of here, Linar."

The monster looked like it wanted to chase them down, but I was in the way. "Stand aside, false girl."

"Ain't nothing false about this, Nebula!" The others were finally catching up, so I immediately charged at the thing's face, both spears spinning.

"Pow Pow Hammer!" Colette swooced down and dropped a handful of hammers on top of the creature. "Leaf, you have to be careful."

The "wind master", who had blocked our attacks, now swung its tail in a wide arc, trying to hit both of us. Colette swooced around it and I jumped back, both of us avoiding the attack entirely. "See?" I said. "I'm totally being careful."

"I know, but — you still can't use magic. That's going to make the fight harder."

I glanced at the windmaster, who was eyeing Colette viciously. "Well, you didn't have to tell this thing that."

The windmaster snorted. "You are already nothing to me. Knowing that you lack magic cannot diminish you further than you already were."

I glared back at it. "You're an arrogant little bastard, aren't you?"

"Do I not deserve it? I am like unto a god. Air Thrust."

I jumped back, just avoiding the swirl of slicing wind. Almost instinctively, I reached for my mana — but of course, there was barely any there, I was still recovering. Realizing that wasn't going to work, I jumped back again to evaluate my options.

"Tempest!" "Double Demon Fang!" Lloyd and Kratos entered the fray with sword artes directly to the windmaster's face. Right, I thought, feeling rather silly, there are six of us.

"I grow tired of this foolishness," the windmaster hissed, swinging its tail again. "Air Blade."

"Guardian!" Kratos jumped out of the way of the blast, while Lloyd shielded it, deflecting it off into the sky.

"That's... gonna come down again eventually, I imagine," I imagined. "But for now," I jumped "Meteor —" slashed down at its face with my spear hilt, which it deflected with a wind-veiled arm "— Strike!" and stabbed with the full spear.

Something felt a bit off as I landed and bounced back out of melee range, but I didn't realize what until I heard a snap and saw a second broken half a spear in my right hand. "Wh- oh, come on!" I looked back up and sure enough, the front half was still impaled in the windmaster's chest.

It growled, but with a bit of a gurgling noise to it — had I pierced its lung? Did this thing have lungs? "Impudent mortal. You'll suffer for this—"

But Raine interrupted it before it got any more of that out: "Light! Photon!" Searing rays coalesced around the windmaster and burst, sending it collapsing to the ground.

I waited for a moment, ready to strike, until I concluded the thing wasn't moving. "... I think we won?"

Lloyd nudged the thing with his boot, to no response whatsoever. "Yeah, we won. You got it good with that attack."

"Yeah, but my other spear broke!" I pulled the front half of the spear out of the thing's chest and gazed upon it in dismay. "I mean it's wood and all, not whatever hyperadvanced crap my first one is made of, but still! I don't have a third one!"

At this point the guard finally arrived, their own spears at the ready. Or ready-ish, anyway; they didn't look like they actually planned on using them. I wondered if they had deliberately held back until we killed this thing.

"H- hey! Nobody's allowed up here without permission from the mayor!"

I glanced back at the blasted dais and fallen windmaster. "... you planning to postmortem all this, or what?"

The guard who had spoken made a sound like he was suppressing a growl and it belatedly occurred to me that maybe I shouldn't antagonize him, actually. "You two," he said, pointing to other guards, "escort them to the mayor for questioning. I'll investigate the scene."

"... so that's how things went with me and Raine," I told the group.

The guards had brought us to the mayor's mansion and told us to wait in a side room until it was our turn to talk, so until he got around to us we were comparing notes on what investigation we had done before the interruption.

"I learned a lot," I continued, "but it was all world history and nothing obviously relevant to the seal. At least we excluded a lot of ruins, I guess...? How'd things go with you two?" I asked Lloyd and Genis.

"We, er, talked to a whole bunch of people," Lloyd said, "but most of them were tourists and didn't have anything useful."

"Some of the people we talked to were here to see that dais that got blown up, actually," Genis said.

"It's a disaster!" the mayor exclaimed as finally entered, a pair of guards at his side. "Not only did someone blast a giant hole in our primary tourist attraction, but you people killed the Summon Spirit of Wind!"

"""That wasn't a Summon Spirit,""" interjected Raine, Colette, and I all at the same time. We looked at each other for a second, startled, before I spoke up — "I know that because it just flat admitted it to me when I called it out on lying." And Colette obviously would have heard that even with how far away she was at the time, though I didn't know whether I should say that. (It was always kinda unclear to me whether her being the Chosen and half-angel was a secret or what.)

"I know that wasn't the Summon Spirit of Wind because the seal of Wind hasn't been released," Colette said. "And it wasn't the guardian of the seal either, it was an evil creature."

"And I don't know what it was," Raine said, hoisting a big slab of carved stone onto the table, "but it dropped this tablet, and while I'd need more time to translate the text, the image is clearly a map to the Balacruf Mausoleum. Given what we read in the Book of Regeneration, I believe it's indicating that the Summon Spirit resides there, not here."

"I see," the mayor said, looking crestfallen. "So the dais wasn't the historical artifact we thought it was after all..."

"It was still a valuable archaeological site!" Raine snapped at him. "This map was left here for a reason, and that reason will no doubt turn out to be historically valuable! And it was damaged on your watch!"

"Yeah, why did the thing do that, anyway?" I wondered.

"I can't imagine," the mayor said. "Whatever it was thinking, all it got was you showing up and killing it. I don't like losing a tourist attraction but it's better than having to sacrifice more girls..."

I felt my blood run cold. Slowly, very slowly, I turned to face the mayor. "I'm sorry, I don't think I caught that," I said with as neutral an expression as I could manage.

"The thing demanded a sacrifice of one girl of a certain age each week." the mayor said. "Or it would summon the winds and destroy the city."

"... How many?" The mayor looked confused, so I continued. "How many girls did you sacrifice to this thing? Did you just figure it's a Summon Spirit, better keep it happy?"

"Leaf, what are you...?" Colette sounded concerned.

"What else were we supposed to do‽" the mayor snapped back. "We don't have warriors or an army —"

I stood up, hands on the table. "So you just handed those girls over straight off, to be killed, or — stars even know what else? You —"

"Leaf." Raine smacked me on the back of the head. "Calm down."

"Calm down? Calm down‽ I —" But something in the back of my mind stopped me. Everything in my body was tense, aching to lash out, but something — through the red haze I could just tell something was wrong with that.

Without waiting for further reaction, I turned and walked out the door. I didn't pay attention to the path I took, I just know that before long I was in the forest outside the city.

I spotted a tree, drew both of my spears (broken spears, can't keep a damn weapon intact), and started just slashing away for a bit — until, with a scream, I unleashed a wave of some kind of energy that tore it to bits.

Aaand of course with the mana exhaustion that immediately brought me to my knees. "Damn it... Raine's gonna be ticked." I leaned against what was left of the tree for a moment, just trying to catch my breath.

...

...

...

I'd just about recovered enough to stand back up when I realized I was distantly hearing a voice.

I looked up and saw mystery girl leaning against another tree.

"... oh, you're here," I muttered.

She frowned. "You didn't hear a word I just said, did you?"

"Not a one. What was it?"

The girl sighed, sounding annoyed. "Eleven, is what I said. Eleven girls Asgard gave to the windmaster. Ten are dead already, and the eleventh... wishes she was."

"Stars save." Of course the thing had specifically asked for girls, but I had really hoped I was guessing wrong about why. If it wasn't already very thoroughly dead I'd have stabbed it again. "... Where is she now?"

"I'm taking care of her for a bit. Figuring out whether it's a good idea to send her back to her parents or not." She shrugged. "It probably is, but I figured I'd check just in case."

I nodded, and then suddenly my mind caught up with itself. "Hey, wait a sec, how'd you know — are you just spying on me all the time?"

She blinked, looking confused. "... Seriously, Leaf?" But before she could elaborate on that, we heard the sound of approaching steps. "Ah, already? I thought I'd have more time to chat... I guess I'll see you later, then." And without waiting for a response, she waved her scythe and swirled away.

"Wh- hey, why'd you even... Gah, but she's gone already."

Lloyd walked down the path, looking worried. "There you are, Leaf. Are you okay?"

"Well, I've gone from rage to confusion?" I waggled a hand. "Sort of a lateral move, really. Mystery girl showed up and was mysterious at me," I added to clarify when Lloyd looked confused.

"She didn't try to fight you again?" Lloyd asked, still looking confused.

"I did blast her into a wall before. Maybe she thinks I'm too powerful."

"Didn't you explain how that move is actually kinda bad?"

I shrugged. "Yeah, and I still beat her with it, so maybe she's scared of what I could do with my moves that are actually good." Though given that she had been specifically goading me to use my "good attacks", I had to wonder if maybe she had a specific counter to them or something. "Or maybe she refrained from attacking me for unrelated reasons. She wasn't around very long, so if she was planning on explaining she never got the chance."

Lloyd frowned for a moment, considering that. "Do we need to worry about her?"

"Mm, I'm thinking, probably, but probably later. She'll tire of this tactic eventually, and that's when we'll need to be on our guard." I sighed, still feeling like a wrung-out washcloth from the mana sickness. "Hopefully that's not too quickly, though..."

We headed back to town — not the mayor's house, though. "The Professor wanted to move to a better place to study the tablet, and the mayor... kinda didn't want to talk to you again?"

"Well good, I don't want to talk to him either," I — almost snarled, but managed to restrain myself, since the mayor I was so angry at wasn't actually here. "So, uh, where are we going, then?"

"The Professor is working on translating the tablet with Linar," Lloyd said. "It turns out he's super into ruins too, just like her!"

"Oh, sounds fun," I said, glad to have something to think about that wouldn't boil my blood. "What've they got so far, anyway...?"

...

"... and so Cleo III built the dais to have the calamity sealed within," Raine said, wrapping up her explanation. Lloyd had wandered off somewhere out of boredom, and Colette had followed him, leaving just me and Genis to listen to the explanation, alongside Linar, his sister Aisha, and his redhead friend who I now knew to be named Harley.

"Most of that makes sense," I said. "And if the dais was just to seal that thing, and we just killed it today, there's no need to worry about the damage."

"I'm still mad that the mayor allowed a priceless artifact to come to harm," Raine grumbled. "... But on a practical level, no, there's no danger."

"It'd just be aesthetic, but I might be able to help with repairing the damage," Linar said. "I was studying the dais before the wind master awoke, so I have plenty of notes on what it looked like before it was destroyed."

"Huh, now there's a dilemma for you," I mused. "Repairs like that would be completely ahistorical — but so is the crater left by the windmaster's inexplicable explosion. To repair or not to repair..."

"Yeaaaaahhh, that was real inexplicable," Harley said, suddenly avoiding looking anyone in or near the eyes.

"Personally, I think such repairs would be highly inappropriate," Raine said, "but leaving it as is would be just as bad, so I suppose I should leave the decision to Asgard. In any case, if the dais is meant to seal the calamity, then as I suspected, that makes the Balacruf Mausoleum the true location of the Summon Spirit."

"Brilliant," I said, standing up. "Killing that thing would've been worth it on its own, but it's even better that we found our next step on top of it."

"I knew we could count on Raine's wisdom," Harley said. "She is a half-elf, after all."

"Is that a thing? Wisdom doesn't seem like it'd be genetic." I mused, before suddenly realizing hey wait a second —

"N- no, Raine's an elf," Genis said. "We're both elves!"

"Eh?" Harley looked even more confused than I felt. "What do you mean, 'both'? And I wouldn't mistake my own..." He glanced at me for a moment, as though I could help him somehow instead of just shooting him a bewildered look. "... uh, maybe I was mistaken, actually. I guess you two are pureblooded elves."

"What... gave you the impression they were half-elves?" I asked in a feeble attempt to grasp what was going on right now.

"N- nothing, honestly," Harley said. "It's just a really easy mistake to make. You know how it is."

"I... guess?" Yeah I wasn't getting anywhere with this.

Harley frowned loudly, but didn't get a chance to say anything further, because Raine interrupted. "I just realized it's getting pretty late. We should head back to the inn."

"Y- yeah," Genis said. "I gotta go find Lloyd so he doesn't stay out all night running around."

I let them walk out ahead, still rotating all this in my mind trying to figure out what anyone was talking about. "Harley, what... what do you mean 'you know how it is'?"

"Leaf, I..." Harley trailed off as I just looked confused. "I'm sure you're definitely a regular ordinary human."

"That sort of overemphasized assertion is actually less reassuring, you know!" I couldn't process any of this, and the exhaustion, both mana and regular, definitely wasn't helping. "I — never mind, I do need to get some rest." And with that, I headed out behind Raine and Genis.

"You saw that too, right Aisha?" Harley said as I left. "Is she really...?"

"And at least wait for me to get out of earshot before you start saying stuff behind my back!"

"Hh... Who in Zentraidon are you‽"

"Doesn't matter who I am. What matters is that you're outnumbered. Drop the boy and leave."

"Rrr... you'll regret this, interloper." Blink.

"Doubtful!" the interloper said with deliberately-incongruous cheer.

The other girl ran forward and hugged her brother. "Dan, are you okay?"

Dan coughed. "Ow... that was too close. Thanks for the save, Iji... and thanks to you too," he added, turning to the scythe-wielding girl. "How did you survive the Alpha Strike and the Tasen, anyway?"

"Easy." She twirled her scythe and opened up a swirling portal. "I was elsewhere."

Iji blinked. "I was going to warn you that Asha probably wouldn't let you get away with helping me, but..."

"Yeah, I don't think he'll be finding me," the girl said with a grin, patting Iji on the shoulder. "Good luck saving what's left of your planet, though I think your skill has it covered." She turned to the portal to leave, but then suddenly realized something. "Oh, I don't think you'll need this, but —" she tossed something to Dan "— just in case my appearance gives Asha any ideas."

And then she left.

"... That was really weird," Iji said.

"Yeah," Dan agreed, glancing around the hallway. "... Did you not find the tripmine?"

"No, I looked in materials storage like you said, but there wasn't anything like that there."

"Huh. I guess the aliens got to it first. Not that it matters, since clearly you didn't need it."

"Thanks to that girl, yeah... oh, damn it! She popped in and out so fast, I never asked her name."

I feel kinda stupid that it only now occurred to me I could just do stuff. Now where's the thing again...

... This wasn't meant to be a crossover fic, and it still isn't really, but I had already put in little crossover elements, and I looked at my lore behind those, and I looked at my characters, and I thought "oh, I have no reasonable way of making her not do a little crossing over here". (Because yes, if you guessed that she got into Iji the same way she got into Symphonia, you earned a fake internet cookie.) It really is just a cameo, though, Iji is not gonna form a secondary plot locale or something.

(Honestly, there's loads of other games she could've gone to and get something equivalent in about a minute without talking to anyone, but I had to make the trip interesting enough to show, otherwise a bunch of chapters from now you'd just be seeing the results out of nowhere as a fait accompli, and that'd be much less satisfying. ... Also, more importantly, it's more fun for me to write it this way. )

Anyway! Thing I decided between chapters, listing out all the artes I made up and/or adapted from outside Tales. ... It's a video game fanfic, of course I think of it in video game terms. Anyway I'm not editing notes onto previous chapters here cause FFN makes editing a huge pain, go look at the AO3 upload if you want to see that. Sometimes I don't know why I bother posting on this site at all. It's the nostalgia, probably.

Nebula: (Base) Deliver a continuous slashing attack. (Source: Original)
Meteor Strike: (Master) Deliver two jumping spear attacks. (Source: Original)
Doom Spike: (Master) Deliver a spear attack to all enemies in a straight line in front. (Source: Final Fantasy XIV)